Some 3,000 supporters of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign met in Chicago June 17-19 for what was billed as the “People’s Summit.”

The ostensible purpose of the meeting was to take stock after the failure of Sanders’ bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. The real purpose was to prepare those assembled to support, actively or tacitly, an all-out campaign for the election of Hillary Clinton.

Despite a pretense of open discussion and respect for a diversity of opinions, the “summit” was tightly orchestrated and controlled. The mechanism for control was simple: no votes were taken on anything, and all decisions were taken behind the scenes, without any public discussion.

The conference organizers, for example, rejected a bid by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to attend and address the assembly. All discussion was premised on the acceptance of the political monopoly of the Democratic Party, even if harsh words were occasionally hurled at the Democratic National Committee and some of its leaders.

Image: The platform of the People’s Summit

The assembly was convened under the auspices of National Nurses United, which rented part of Chicago’s vast McCormick Place convention center and supplied the manpower as well as the money to run the event. NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro presided over the conference and other union officials and staff played major roles.

The NNU was formed in 2010 through the merger of several statewide nurses associations, notably in California, Minnesota and Massachusetts, and now has a membership of nearly 200,000 registered nurses. DeMoro, then head of the California Nurses Association, became executive director of the combined union and sits on the AFL-CIO Executive Council. She was one of the most prominent union officials to support the Sanders campaign.

Like most such gatherings of Democratic Party liberals, union officials and their pseudo-left apologists, there was a large element of political fraud. Speaker after speaker postured as a fierce opponent of Wall Street, “neo-liberalism” and various forms of oppression, despite having engaged in non-stop collaboration with the corporate bosses and their political representatives such as Hillary Clinton.

The tone of the conference was set at the opening session on Friday night, which combined “left” demagogy with political prostration before the Clinton presidential campaign. DeMoro of the NNU gave an opening address that praised those assembled as the “non co-opted and the un-compromised,” although the vast majority of those in attendance were long-time participants in groups that are either part of the Democratic Party, like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Progressive Democrats, or completely tied to it, including environmental, feminist, gay and anti-racist organizations. All these organizations have long since been co-opted by the corporate-controlled two-party system.

Image: Audience at the People’s Summit

Adopting a “left” pose, DeMoro declared, “Social and economic inequality, including racial and climate injustice, affects each of us in this country, except, of course, the privileged, who have extreme control over our political system, creating and perpetuating a system of exploitation that is predicated on private profit and greed.”

DeMoro declared that the Sanders campaign was the outcome of a series of protest movements, largely based on the middle class or sponsored by the trade union bureaucracy, including Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, immigrant rights groups, feminist and gay rights campaigns, “Fight for 15,” and what she called “the climate justice movement,” among others.

In reality, the sum total of these protest efforts had very little impact compared to the Sanders campaign, which won 12 million votes, including margins of 70-90 percent among young people under 30. The broad support for Sanders has been as much a surprise to the middle class protest groups and the unions as it was to Sanders himself. It represents an initial stage in the political radicalization of masses of youth and working people who are being driven primarily by class issues—jobs, income, a future for the new generation, anger over the dominance of big money—rather than by identity politics based on race, gender or sexual orientation.

DeMoro called for keeping the protest groups united (i.e., subordinated to the Democratic Party and the unions), but she tried to give this a left face, warning about the experience of the Obama administration. “Regardless of who is in the White House, we need to learn the lesson from the Obama years, where that movement was built on hope and change,” she said. “The moment he got into office the movement went away and Wall Street occupied the White House, and like termites they ate away at the foundation of democracy. The most important thing here is there will always be termites and we can never go away regardless of who is in the presidency.”

The truth is that once Obama entered the White House, the various protest organizations completely subordinated themselves to Democratic Party rule. Previous opposition to the war in Iraq was scrapped once the commander-in-chief was a Democrat, who proceeded to expand the war in Afghanistan, bomb Libya, extend the campaign of drone missile assassinations and engage the US in further military operations in Iraq and Syria. This example would certainly be repeated in a Hillary Clinton administration, which would mark a further shift to the right from Obama in both foreign and domestic policy.

Following these introductory remarks, DeMoro gave way to a panel consisting of Juan Gonzalez, a former columnist for the New York Daily News and co-host of the “Democracy Now!” program; actress Rosario Dawson; John Nichols, a slavish apologist for the Democratic Party in his role as political analyst for Nation magazine; writer Naomi Klein, author of numerous books, most notably The Shock Doctrine, and a prominent leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada (she is married to Avi Lewis, grandson of longtime NDP leader David Lewis and son of former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis).

Juan Gonzalez spoke only briefly, but delivered the main political thrust. He recalled his own history of radical protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, followed by a refusal to vote for Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic presidential candidate in the election won by Richard Nixon. He urged the audience to “learn from this mistake,” a clear call for a vote for Hillary Clinton.

He also suggested that the Sanders campaign could pave the way for a more leftward development in US politics, along the lines of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, parties of the pseudo-left that are implacably opposed to the interests of the working class.

Nichols performed predictably, with demagogic salutes to the working class rebellion against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in 2011 (betrayed and smothered by the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO, with the assistance of Nichols and Co.); while solidarizing himself with efforts to push the Democratic Party to the left.

Naomi Klein claimed that Sanders had “moved Hillary Clinton to the left” on issues like fracking and the minimum wage, and called for continuing efforts to build social protest movements so that the next president (whom she referred to as “her”) would feel the pressure from below.

She compared the upcoming American presidential vote to the 2015 Canadian elections, in which Canadians “voted out the worst guy and created space to dream,” suggesting that this outcome—the defeat of the Conservatives and the election of the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau—was a possible model for the US.

Chuy Garcia speaking, with Nina Turner and Tulsi Gabbard seated next to him

The second main session of the conference, held on Saturday afternoon, featured the same type of populist demagogy, with Cook County Councilman Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, defeated by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the latter’s reelection bid last year, and former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, a prominent representative of the Bernie Sanders campaign, serving as the featured speakers.

The overriding feature of the main presentations, aside from the demagogy used to provide a left cover for the shift from Sanders to Clinton, was silence on the question of war and foreign policy. None of the speakers cited above made any reference to the ongoing US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, to the drone missile assassination program, or to the Obama administration’s continued build-up of police state powers for the NSA, the CIA and the rest of the military-intelligence apparatus.

The conference organizers likewise downplayed the issue of war: there were no panel discussions or workshops or presentations devoted to the subject of war and militarism, or to government spying and attacks on democratic rights.

The reason for that is clear: Hillary Clinton is identified publicly with calls to step up the US military interventions in Syria and Iraq. In general, she is known to favor an even more belligerent foreign policy than that pursued by the Obama administration, which is now confronting Russia and China, both nuclear-armed powers, in regions close to their borders: Moscow in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, Beijing in the South China Sea.

The dangers that any discussion on war would pose to the pro-Clinton effort were demonstrated by the final speaker at Saturday’s main event, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran and major in the military police, has introduced legislation to cut off funding for US efforts to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. She made the growing threat of what she called “regime-change wars” the main focus of her remarks to the People’s Summit.

Gabbard said the same arguments used to justify US wars in Iraq and Libya were now being made in Washington on behalf of intervention in Syria. She cited the “dissent cable” by 50 State Department officials calling for military action against the Assad regime. And she warned that establishing a no-fly zone, as advocated by Clinton, would “lead to a direct confrontation between our country and the world’s other nuclear power, Russia. People have learned nothing from Iraq and Libya.”

Gabbard is not an antiwar figure, backing the US military operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But her somber statements in Chicago underscore how quickly the US government and military are moving towards major confrontations in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia once the 2016 elections are past, whether Clinton or Donald Trump is in the White House. No other speakers addressed these issues.

This is the reality that the Democratic Party—and especially the factions allied with Sanders and the pseudo-left—are seeking to conceal from the American people.

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On Thursday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders delivered a speech to his supporters live over the Internet in which he laid out the next stage of his “political revolution” in the aftermath of the Democratic Party primaries. The speech exposed the real political content of his campaign: channeling the leftward political radicalization of workers and youth into the Democratic Party, one of the two main parties of American capitalism.

The speech was doubtlessly coordinated closely with the highest levels of the Democratic Party establishment. It followed by barely a week Sanders’ closed-door meeting with President Barack Obama after the California primary, and by only two days Sanders’ meeting with Hillary Clinton, the party’s presumptive nominee.

Sanders began his speech by noting the widespread support for his campaign: 12 million votes including huge majorities among young voters, victories in 22 state primaries and caucuses, rallies and meetings that attracted 1.5 million people and contributions from 2.7 million people, averaging $27 a piece.

He also listed the political and social conditions in the country motivating those who backed his campaign: an electoral system dominated by billionaires, “the grotesque level of wealth and income inequality,” declining life expectancy, child poverty, soaring student debt, poverty wages, collapsing infrastructure, increasing homelessness and record corporate profits.

All the anger over these conditions, Sanders insisted, must now go into support for Hillary Clinton. Though he did not formally concede the nomination, Sanders said, “The major political task that we face in the next five months is to make certain that Donald Trump is defeated and defeated badly. And I personally intend to begin my role in that process in a very short period of time.”

This is to be the basic political framework for drumming up support for Clinton: “Anybody but Trump.” Sanders made no effort to provide any analysis of the origins of Trump, who arises out of a political environment steeped in criminality and violence, overseen by both political parties. Moreover, Trump has been able to make an appeal to the most socially distressed layers in large part due to the right-wing policies of the Democratic Party, which long ago abandoned its program of limited social reform.

Sanders also made no mention of the fact that Clinton is planning to run arguably the most right-wing campaign in her party’s history, directing her appeal to sections of the military and the Republican Party opposed to Trump’s candidacy on the grounds that she is the more reliable choice for “commander-in-chief.”

Sanders went on to say that “defeating Trump cannot be our only goal.” He sought to focus the attention of his supporters on the Democratic Party convention, saying he would be involved in “discussions between the two campaigns to make certain your voices are heard and that the Democratic Party passes the most progressive platform in its history and that Democrats actually fight for that agenda.”

As everyone who is knowledgeable about the functioning of the Democratic Party knows, the platform is a meaningless document that has played no role in the actual formulation of policy for decades.

Sanders continued, “I also look forward to working with Secretary Clinton to transform the Democratic Party so that it becomes a party of working people and young people, and not just wealthy campaign contributors: a party that has the courage to take on Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil fuel industry and the other powerful special interests that dominate our political and economic life.”

Sanders’ portrayal of Clinton as a “progressive” ally of working people to “take on Wall Street” is absurd. She is a time-tested defender of the status quo, a stooge of Wall Street and corporate America going back to her days in Arkansas, when she sat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart. As first lady, senator from New York and Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton has supported right-wing economic policies at home and war abroad.

Sanders did not try to explain the contradiction between his presentation of Clinton as a partner in “transforming the Democratic Party” and the campaign’s criticism, which the Vermont Senator has been downplaying in recent weeks, of Clinton’s incestuous financial ties to the banks and major corporations.

A major demand of his campaign, which Sanders repeated at debates and in his public appearances, was that Clinton release the transcripts of speeches she gave to private audiences of corporate executives and Wall Street bankers, for which she was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. These criticisms have been thrown down the memory hole.

Sanders makes no attempt to explain how he will accomplish the political alchemy of transforming the Democratic Party, which together with the Republican Party is the means through which the ruling elite asserts total political domination over every facet of American society, into “a party of working people and young people.” As he has done throughout his campaign, the Vermont senator also made no criticism of the Obama administration, which has overseen the largest transfer of wealth in US history and has helped create all the social ills that he listed in the beginning of his remarks.

It is worth remembering in light of the fact that Sanders is now serving as the chief promoter of illusions in the Democrats that until he formally registered as a Democrat in order to participate in the primaries, Sanders had spent his entire political career, dating back to the early 1970s, as either an Independent or third party candidate. If the Sanders of yesterday were to be believed, his decision to remain formally independent from the Democrats was because he did not have confidence in the capacity of that party to accept his program of “democratic socialism.” Suddenly, however, Sanders has shifted his position without giving any accounting of his own former political history.

In reality, Sanders’ nominal “independence” was always a political fraud, designed to provide himself with “left” or “outsider” credentials, while he caucused with the Democrats and voted with them more than 95 percent of the time. His decision to end this charade is due not to the Democrats demonstrating a greater receptiveness to social reform. Rather it is due to the Democrats’ need, under conditions of growing social opposition and deep alienation to the entire political process, for the political cover that his campaign could provide.

Sanders concluded his speech with a call for his supporters to seek “political engagement” at the state and local level, either running for office or volunteering in the campaigns of Democrats in order to oust local Republican officeholders. “I have no doubt that with the energy and enthusiasm our campaign has shown that we can win significant numbers of local and state elections if people are prepared to become involved,” he declared.

Through this mechanism, Sanders seeks to integrate the infrastructure of his campaign, and the popular support it has attracted, into a more or less permanent formation of Democratic Party volunteers and functionaries devoted to combating the party’s flagging electoral fortunes in many parts of the country. Undoubtedly, this statement is also in part an inducement to layers of the pseudo left that coalesced around his campaign, many of whom are meeting this weekend in Chicago at the so-called People’s Summit. He is essentially telling them that there will be positions available for them.

The winding down of Sanders’ campaign has forced some of the essential political content of his “political revolution” to extrude through his campaign’s fog of left-sounding rhetoric. No small number of people will begin to see through Sanders’ increasingly shopworn facade and view his pivot towards an open embrace of the Clinton campaign with contempt.

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Hiroshima, Vietnam, Cuba: A Hegemonic Power Never Says Sorry…

June 20th, 2016 by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

A hegemonic power never says sorry.

Three recent episodes underscore this truism.

When US President Barack Obama offered a floral wreath at the cenotaph of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on 27 May 2016, some peace advocates in the United States, in Japan and in other parts of the world hoped against hope that he would say “sorry” for the Atom bomb that the then US President, Harry Truman, had ordered to be dropped over Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945. The deadly bomb claimed 140,000 lives. Three days later a second Atom bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki killing another 80,000.

There is a view advanced by a number of scholars and activists that based upon documentary analysis Japan had already indicated to the US Military Command in the Pacific a couple of months before 6th August  that it was prepared to surrender if there were some safeguards for the position of the Japanese Emperor. But the US leadership wanted to demonstrate to the world — and particularly to the Soviet Union — its military superiority which it was determined to exploit to the hilt in the post- war world that it hoped to shape and lead.

Of course, the vast majority of the US populace fed on State propaganda over decades is convinced to this day that it was the bombing that brought the war to a close. Since it was a military decision that was justified, in their reckoning, there is no need to apologise for the mass murder. Obama’s refusal to say sorry was in that sense a reflection of the public mood and mentality.

But more than an apology, it is Obama’s failure to work sincerely towards a nuclear weapons free world that is the most damning indictment on the man and his administration. A few months after he became President, in a stirring speech in Prague in April 2009, he pledged to strive to achieve a world without nuclear weapons. Not only has he been slower than his three predecessors in “reducing nuclear weapons but he has initiated a trillion dollar effort to upgrade America’s entire nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.” It is this that renders his remarks at Hiroshima where he again spoke about the obligation of leaders to pursue a world without nuclear weapons, hollow and hypocritical.

Just before his trip to Japan, Obama also visited Vietnam a country that the US had attacked brutally in the sixties and seventies allegedly in order to stop the advance of communism. What the US fought against was essentially a nationalist movement which had defeated its French coloniser and was in no mood to yield to another imperial power. As a result of Vietnamese resistance to the US ground and air war, more than 3 million Vietnamese and a million Cambodians and Laotians were killed.

Like Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush Junior who had also visited Vietnam earlier, Obama saw no reason to apologise to the Vietnamese people. How could a hegemonic power that was vanquished by a technologically weaker foe apologise for the incredible atrocities committed in the course of the war?  The hubris of a hegemon would not allow for such a humiliation.

Besides, the Vietnamese government itself did not seek an apology partly because it was engrossed in rebuilding the country after two devastating wars. It was its goal of economic reconstruction that compelled Hanoi to turn to the market system especially since China, its ally during its resistance against the US, had also in 1978 chosen to adopt certain capitalist measures in its bid to transform its economy.

There is yet another aspect to Vietnam’s relationship with China which explains to an extent why an apology from the US is not on its agenda. Vietnam and China have clashed in the past. They fought a brief war in 1979. Chinese dynasties had exercised a degree of control over Vietnam centuries ago. Fear of Chinese dominance is one of the reasons why Hanoi has assiduously cultivated good relations with Washington for more than three decades now.

Initially these ties were largely economic culminating in Vietnam’s membership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Now a military dimension is beginning to emerge. US military vessels have begun to visit Cam Ranh Bay. And, during Obama’s recent trip he lifted the ban on US arms sales to Vietnam. It is obvious that the US regards Vietnam as an important player in its bigger agenda of containing China. Given this situation, there is no way that any Vietnamese leader is going to demand that the US apologises for the pain and suffering it caused his people in the past.

Vietnam would be a classic case of how geopolitics and economics have trumped moral principles in bilateral relations.

This brings us to our third episode. On 1st July 2015 Obama announced the restoration of formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, after a break of 54 years. However, the US will continue to maintain its commercial, economic and financial embargo of Cuba which makes it illegal for US corporations to do business with the island of 11 million people off the US coast.

The US had cut off ties with Cuba in 1961 mainly because it chose, after a popular revolution in 1959, to chart its own independent path to the future guided by Marxist Thought. In the decades that followed, US administrations went all out to crush the Cuban Revolution. Apart from a severe embargo, they sponsored a failed invasion, terrorist attacks on hotels in Havana, the downing of a Cuban airplane and countless attempts to assassinate the leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro.

It is perhaps not surprising that when diplomatic relations were re-established, the US leadership was not contrite about the terrible injustices of the past. One has come to expect this sort of behaviour from the military superpower of the day. It is the embodiment of the arrogance of power.

Cuba has not pressed for an apology. Its immediate concern is to get the embargo lifted and to persuade the US to return Guantanamo Bay where the US has a naval base, to Cuba.

From our three episodes, it appears that various factors are responsible for the unwillingness of the US leadership to say sorry to a nation or a people for past wrongdoings. Hubris arising from its hegemonic power is undoubtedly a significant factor. This is why hegemonic power at the global level has to end if that five letter word is to come out of the lips of the hegemon.

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

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This news-report consists of a compilation of accounts that Crimeans have given to human rights groups or directly posted to the internet, regarding their experiences when the freely elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who had received 75% of the votes of Crimeans, was violently overthrown during January and February of 2014.

On 20 February 2014, eight busloads of people from Crimea, who had come into Ukraine’s capital Kiev and were holding signs there demonstrating in opposition to the “Maidan” movement, which was seeking to oust Yanukovych, were violently attacked by “Right Sector” people who were leading the Maidan movement; and those terrified Crimeans then scrambled back into their buses, which promptly sped southward, toward home in Crimea.

An organization “Ukraine Human Rights” created and posted to the internet, on 14 August 2014, a 25-minute video, with English subtitles, telling these people’s stories. It’s titled “The Pogrom of Korsun”, and it reports, with testimony and some of the videos from survivors, the attacks against those buses when a gang of Ukraine’s Right Sector members caught up with those escaping Crimeans, near the Ukrainian town of Korsun.

Private cellphone videos that were taken of these incidents were shown in the compilation by Ukraine Human Rights, but one other striking cellphone video, which was posted to youtube on 15 August 2014, isn’t fully available anymore, and it showed the view from the rear seat of a car as it was approaching a blockage, and the blocked buses, some of which were aflame. A few car-drivers were standing watching at a distance, while the Right Sector people beat and killed Crimeans alongside their buses.

One Crimean who managed to escape Kiev and survive, happened to be a minor official of the Ukrainian government under Yanukovych, an assistant prosecutor, Natalya Poklonskaya, who got into her car while the Maidan demonstrations were peaking, and escaped back to Crimea; she soon thereafter was unemployed, and was, in early April,interviewed on Crimean TV where she told about her experiences during the overthrow, and she was shortly thereafter appointed by Crimea’s new government to be a prosecutor.

She was then, on 12 May 2014, banned from travel to U.S-allied countries. In the announcement of this ban, she was listed as “Natalia Vladimirovna Poklonskaya: Prosecutor of Crimea. Actively implementing Russia’s annexation of Crimea.” In other words, she was banned for simply doing her job — if not for her still just being alive (and unwilling to work under the people who overthrew Yanukovych).

On 10 June 2016, “The Saker” posted a brief video from Russian Television, which realistically portrayed what almost certainly would have happened to Crimeans “If Crimea Didn’t Reunite with Russia?” A reader there posted his personal account of what he had, in fact, experienced in Crimea during that fateful time, when the news was coming to Crimeans of the horrors occurring (such as shown here in January 2014, and here in February). His entire comment is worth posting, and thus now follows:

Auslander on June 10, 2016 · at 5:16 am UTC

The return of Krimu and Sevastopol to Russia was a lot more of a near thing than many people think. I remember very well the day, if memory serves it was the day of the ‘Tatar’, read right sector and mejlis, riot at Krim Rada [Crimean legislature]in Simferopol, that the Russian Black Sea Flot [fleet]commander stated when asked by a news type, that his[obligation] was to defend the Flot, not Sevastopol or the citizens.

That statement was like a bucket of ice cold water thrown in our faces and more than a few of the ‘new patriots’ of Sevastopol were given pause but most simply understood how serious the situation was, doubled down and got to work.

Right sector operatives had been coming down to Krimu and Sevastopol starting in mid January, one could spot them a kilometer away with ease. However, they were here and did start to subtly intimidate some of the citizens. On the other hand most were quietly noted and their little nests, usually in private lodgings in dachi areas, were located and listed. They were interesting to watch, three or four young men with a few young women, lounging around during the day on street and park benches during the time when everyone else was working. They would also nose around to every back alley and side street and photo everything while trying to pass themselves off as ‘tourists’. In January and February? Nice try but no cigar.

The were two major turning points in the events leading up to the success of the Third Defense of Sevastopol during that fateful week after the coup in Kiev.

One, our Berkut [police] and Militsiya [militia] units that were in Kiev during the Maidan coup d’etat had literally fought their way back to Krimu and Sevastopol after their betrayal [escape] by Yanukovich and his stalwart allies. Their welcome in Naxhimova Square in City Center was a flower strewn tumult and from the hearts of Sevastopol Citizens, so much so that some of our Berkut and Militsiya were reduced to tears. Berkut then moved to their lager in City where a cordon of citizens was set up to protect them from SBU as armed Berkut guarded from inside. As an aside Ukraine SBU[Security Bureau of Ukraine] were faced down more than once as they attempted their usual foolishness. After the first face down the word spread like wildfire through the citizenry that they were nothing but a paper tiger, a semi armed criminal gang that were nothing. That was the end of SBU down here.

The citizens of Sevastopol and Krimea began to set up road block posts at the Krim-Ukraine borders and around Sevastopol, Simferopol and Yalta. They were armed with clubs and one or two ancient hunting weapons. In mid week Berkut, after negotiations with Sevastopol locals, declared for Sevastopol, armed up and headed for the barricades to assist and stiffen them. The thugs in Kiev were, to put it mildly, furious.

The second watershed event was thus. After the riot at Krim Rada in Simferopol where right sector, clearly identifiable in the overhead videos, were defeated, as they withdrew they expressed their extreme displeasure at the turn of events and swore they would be back to burn Rada to the ground and show the locals ‘who was boss down here’.

Not much more than 24 hours later a small convoy of aging civilian vehicles appeared at the Krimea Rada Complex in Simferopol, well before dawn. The vehicles disgorged a fairly large group of well armed men who calmly tossed a flash bang through the door of Rada Building and stormed in, much to the shock of the Militsiya Guard Detail stationed there who were expecting a different group to arrive around dawn, politely but firmly removed the pistols and cell phones from Militsiya and invited them to leave. The cell phones were returned to the Militsiya worthies as they left, the pistols stayed in Rada building with the men.

These two events, Berkut pledging allegiance to Sevastopol and moving to the barricades and the taking of Krim Rada by the citizens, were the two salient events that led to the success of the Russian Spring in this peninsula. Unarmed citizens had already begun to block all major and minor bases of the Ukraine Armed Forces, demonstrations and marches were held all over Krim and Sevastopol and Militsiya, DAI and SBU were relegated to bit players in the events who were made well aware of the consequences to themselves if one citizen was harmed by them.

I have no doubts that Moscow was watching these events keenly and it was these two salient events plus the spontaneous blockading of the peninsula, major cities and the Ukraine Armed Forces that in my opinion was the catalyst for Moscow to move and come to the assistance of Krimea and Sevastopol.

http://thesaker.is/what-if-crimea-didnt-reunite-with-russia-alternative-history-of-crimea-by-rt/

 

The United States and its allies are now pouring troops and armaments onto and near Russia’s borders, and have imposed economic sanctions against Russia, for Russia’s having helped the people of Crimea, which Washington and its allies call ‘seizing’ Crimea. Russia doesn’t like having nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of NATO troops etc., on and hear its borders (no more than America’s JFK liked having Soviet missiles 90 miles from the U.S. in Cuba), and therefore a nuclear war could result, from Russia’s protecting Crimeans against being seized like the rest of Ukraine was, by the U.S. and its allies.

While building up these forces on and near Russia’s borders, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on 15 June 2016, as he presented the excuse for doing that, “Allies do not, and will not recognise the illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea. And we will continue to call on Russia to stop its destabilisation of Ukraine [which isn’t even a member of NATO, and therefore isn’t even within NATO’s purview].” He wasn’t referring to the U.S. government’s — the Administration of U.S. President Barack Obama — having illegally taken Ukraine in February 2014, in what one expert called “the most blatant coup in history”, but instead to Russia’s and the Crimean peoples’ response to it, which occurred the following month.

So, the world is heading toward what would be the biggest war in history, over little Crimea, and on the basis of only false arguments — strained false arguments, whose underlying assumptions cannot even bear to see the light of day.

One might think that this would be the central issue in the U.S. Presidential campaign. However, Americans don’t even know about it — and almost all of the few who do ‘know’ something about it, misunderstand it. Why is that the case? Why is all of America’s political debate focused on gun laws and other issues that even collectively are far less important than this one issue, whose stakes are whether or not a livable planet will end within a few years, or perhaps even within months?

Whatever is responsible for this issue’s being ignored, could destroy the planet, because it’s an essential part of what has been getting us nearer and nearer to where we’re now heading — which is heading toward the end. If we’re to turn away from the end, then when will that turn happen? Isn’t doing that, more and more difficult, the closer we get, to the end? And, if the end is to come, no one will announce it ahead of time: announcing it, would be to nullify effectiveness of the attack that will start the war, which might last from ten minutes to an hour. Basically, every nuclear weapon that’s not eliminated within the first ten minutes will be fired, and probably all of the weapons will be gone before the hour is up. It won’t be at all like World War II. It will be unprecedentedly brief, and final. (Although some people think not — or at least not for themselves.) The nuclear winter and mass-starvation following it, will be much slower, but just as final — and far more widespread.

Practically speaking, a change in direction might already be too late. But at least one can spread the word about the issue that everyone should be (and to have been) talking and thinking and writing about, in precedence above all other public issues — even if it’s already too late. Thus, this news report is provided, so that at least some of the public (and notonly the few people, such as Obama and Stoltenberg, and NATO Supreme Commander Curtis Scaparrotti, who are making the decisions) can understand what’s actually happening, and why.

Apparently, for the people at the very top in The West, staying #1 is more important than anything else. Obama said on 28 May 2014, to graduating West Point cadets, “the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come.” In other words: every other nation is “dispensable,” only the U.S. is not — and he is determined to dispense with any nation that challenges this. We’re heading there, right now. It can be said that we started on this path under U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, back in 1990. But now we may be near the end of it. And yet Americans aren’t even discussing it. In a Presidential election year, moreover. People don’t know about it; so, the government isn’t even being challenged on it. At all. This isn’t fiction; it is the reality.

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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Threat of Brexit – How Cameron Delivered Victories to Big Finance

June 20th, 2016 by Corporate Europe Observatory

From the day a referendum on UK membership of the EU was first announced in 2013, the financial sector started using Cameron’s re-negotiation process to promote its deregulatory agenda. Sometimes lobbying was required, but more often the UK government did its work for them.

From the day a ballot on UK membership was first announced by David Cameron three years ago, the financial sector has sought and won significant lobbying victories thanks to a complicit UK government and EU efforts to keep the City of London happy. The appointment of Jonathan Hill as European commissioner for financial services, the deregulation agenda of the so-called “Capital Markets Union”, the impending roll-backs on rules to protect against financial instability, and special decision-making privileges for the UK should the interests of banks come under attack, are all highlighted as the key triumphs of the sector and its allies in the UK government since the prospect of Brexit was raised as a serious possibility.

Revealing the main developments, actors and methods used in various lobby battles surrounding financial services (de)regulation, the study also examines the work of the International Regulatory Strategy Group (IRSG) – in which the City of London Corporation is involved – to promote the interests of the financial sector.

It also reveals how multinational banking and financial services company Barclays helped convince Commissioner Hill of the need for a consultation on what regulations should be scrapped.

Read the full report by Corporate Europe Observatory HERE

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Some suggest more abstract “theoretical” questions are a luxury. There is no time, given global crises, for such ivory tower work. Yet no less a revolutionary than Fidel Castro said that people suffer because of concepts. He made the point in Caracus after Hugo Chávez was first elected in 1998. The example he offered was not obviously political.

Castro said people suffer because of

“nicely sweetened but rotten ideas … that man is an animal moved only by a carrot or when beaten by a whip”. 1

That is, we suffer because of ideas about what it means to be human. Marx, after all, thought human beings are distinct from other animals because we care about such an issue: We don’t just try to realize our nature. We need to know what it means to do so. In capitalist societies, he argued, we suffer “unnatural separation” from our own humanity. We are alienated, not just from others but from ourselves, and from our “species essence”. To live well, Marx wrote, we must fulfill our “natural vocation” for “conscious life activity” and judge it to be a human one:

“Human beings will only be complete when the real individual . . . has become a species being”. 2.

Species essence is known through intimate felt connection between one individual and members of the species as a whole. Of course, now, in the North at least, we don’t believe in species being. Some political theorists, discussing “development”, refer to “shared humanity”. 3 But it is rhetoric. Properly understood, the idea is hard. It counters the ideology that living well is a matter of believing in oneself.

We give lip service to “connectivity” but resist pursuing it. It is why the “battle for ideas”, in Cuba, extends back two centuries, predating Marx. Independence activists saw the mistake in European liberalism. They argued against a philosophical presupposition of that view, namely, that human beings can know themselves by themselves, as if it’s easy, as if it can happen without real solidarity.

In Caracas, Castro said,

“We are winning the battle for ideas… They discovered ‘smart weapons’ but we discovered something more powerful, namely, the idea that humans think and feel.” 4.

Che Guevara knew this idea. He argued, against the Soviets, that human beings are not primarily motivated by material incentives. Even in the USSR, “nicely sweetened but rotten ideas” were holding sway.

In Cuba, such questions have always been part of the broader, global struggle, for peace and justice. In a speech on December 2, 2001, months after the attack on New York City, Castro said, “There is no more powerful weapon than an individual who knows who she is and where she is going”. José Martí said knowing oneself, as human, is every person’s most difficult task. He can’t be accused of being apolitical.

I was reminded of this line of thinking when I saw the acclaimed Cuban film, Conducta.5. At first glance, it is about Cuba’s many problems. It tells of a boy and his teacher. The boy’s mother is a drug addict and the boy is a problem at school. His teacher defends him and gets into trouble. School authorities try to force her to retire. Ten years past retirement age, she resists retirement for the sake of the children.

We learn about poverty, dog-fighting, discrimination and bureaucratic rigidity. Yet the film expresses what kept taking me back to Cuba, again and again, during the long “special period”, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problems seemed intractable. People were leaving. The ones remaining were skinny. The world’s media, almost without exception, predicted Cuba’s demise.

Yet underneath was an undeniable energy, human energy. Everywhere, problems were discussed, at meeting after meeting. I couldn’t see the way forward, or any real solutions. But I always left Cuba inspired, moved by something I couldn’t quite identify. I hadn’t experienced it elsewhere. People were saying they didn’t know where they were going but they were determined not to turn back.

In Conducta, the old teacher, called to a meeting to celebrate her (forced) retirement, interrupts the program to read a prepared statement. She describes the pride of her grandmother, descended from slaves, when the teacher showed her her teaching certificate. Children, she explains, whatever their problems, are still children. They can be guided and prepared. Her words are simple but direct.

She refuses to retire. They will have to fire her. And then she stands up and walks out, and on, into the street. It is this scene that represents what I have found so intriguing about Cuba. No matter how complex the situation, there are always individuals like that teacher. There may not be a clear vision of the future, but there is always a direction. It can be felt. It is people, driven by feeling between people.

It might seem paradoxical. We expect citizens of a country with a communist government, with a single party, to be automatons. Certainly, some are like that, as in any society. But there’s no contradiction there, in theory. Armando Hart, who led Cuba’s literacy campaign in 1961, says it’s a pity intellectuals don’t read Marx’s philosophy. If they did, they’d know a real alternative to liberal individualism. 6

Speaking to medical workers in 1960, Guevara advised: “If we all use the new weapon of solidarity … then the only thing left for us is to know the daily stretch of the road and to take it. Nobody can point out that stretch … in the personal road of each individual; it is what he will do every day, what he will gain from his individual experience”.

“What he will gain from individual experience”! Guevara was a dialectical materialist. This means he was a naturalist, recognizing causal interdependence. He saw human freedom as depending upon the “close dialectical unity” existing between people moving collaboratively in a definite direction. He was not against individual freedoms. He just had a more realistic, sensible conception of how we know them.

Part of the problem with “nicely sweetened but rotten ideas” is that material incentives give nothing back, humanly. The “close dialectical unity” Guevara refers to is a dynamic, constitutive relationship in which people receive back from others. They grow. Martí thought it was just “plain and sensible” scientific realism. Cause and effect. But it involves feelings. That’s different, in today’s world.

When Castro says, “we discovered … that humans think and feel”, he is not making a trivial statement. Although science tells us mind and body are connected, North Atlantic cultures, including academic philosophers, cleave them apart. This is well discussed, in Academia: It is acceptable to attribute some rationality to feelings but we don’t want to go too far.

Feminists deserve credit for insisting on embodiment. Arguably, Martí pushed the point further. He knew imperialism and how it dehumanizes. Thus, he also knew species being – humanness – needs to be discovered. And when something is unimaginable, unexpected, reason has limits.  Martí suggests, therefore, that reason alone cannot bring peace and show us how to grow, as human beings. 7

Some accuse him of being anti-science, or some kind of spiritualist. But like Marx, he was a naturalist and a realist, who recognized that we know the world through causal contact, sometimes felt in the body before conceptualized with the mind. Indeed, Che Guevara was bold enough to say “at the risk of seeming ridiculous” that revolutions can only be driven by “great feelings of love”. 8

Those who see Conducta as being about Cuba’s problems miss the point. A Cuban friend said about the film, “We are a society full of contradictions but with energy to persevere”. And now, for sure, there are new problems. The energy is still there. Its source, in ideas, needs to be respected. Guevara’s remark about love is part of a discussion of the centrality of individuals. The argument is deeply philosophical.

In the 2000s, I introduced a philosophy course at my university, taught at the University of Havana by Cuban philosophers. I wanted students to know that ideas come from Cuba, not just culture. Administrators quickly moved the course to Development Studies, which is a Social Sciences department. It was as if a course in Cuba could not be Philosophy. It had to be Geography or Sociology.

The course was renamed to be on culture, not philosophy. I had introduced the course as a philosophy course precisely to counter a stereotype: Ideas come from the North, culture from the South. When North Americans talk about freedom and democracy, we are talking about the human condition. We call that philosophy. When Latin Americans talk about freedom and democracy, it’s something else.

José Martí, for example, is taught in literature departments, if taught at all in the North. Yet, his many volumes of work offer a compelling vision of human freedom and how we know it. It was central to his radical independence movement. Respected Cuban scholars argue that he proposed a “revolution in thinking” and a “new way of being”. 9

In 1997, closing the fifth PCC Congress, Fidel Castro said, “What we cannot lose is direction. If we lose direction, we lose everything”. Right now, the vision for Cuban socialism is not fully clear. But the direction is still evident. It is about species essence. However, to know it as such, which we must, those “nicely sweetened” ideas should be properly identified. It may be urgent, politically and globally.

Notes:

  1. “A revolution can only be born from culture and ideas”. (Master lecture at the Central University of Venezuela, February 3) (Havana, Cuba: Editora Política,1999) p. 9
  2. Marx, Karl “On the Jewish question”. In Robert C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx- Engels reader: Second edition (New York, NY: Norton) p. 46.
  3. Amartya Sen, Development is freedom, p. 283
  4. “A revolution”, p. 21.
  5. English title Behaviour, Spain, 2014, Dir. Ernesto Baranas
  6. Ética, cultura y política (Havana: Centro de estudios martianos, 2006) pp. 132-4
  7. “Emerson” in Selected Writings tr. Esther Allen (Penguin, 2002), p. 128
  8. “Man and socialism in Cuba”. In David Deutschman (Ed.), The Che Guevara reader (New York, NY: Ocean Press, 1997) p. 211.
  9. Rodríguez, Pedro Paulo, “José Martí en tiempos de reenquiciamiento y remolde: Desatar a América y desuncir al hombre”. In Pensar, prever, server (Havana, Cuba: Ediciones Unión, 2012) p. 10;  “Una en alma y intento”: Identidad y unidad latinoamericana en José Martí”. In De los dos Américas (Havana, Cuba: Centro de estudios martianos, 2010) p. 5

 

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As predicted, the FBI is revealed to have approached Orlando shooting suspect Omar Mateen in 2013 with informants posing as terrorists in an attempt to “lure” him into participating in a terrorist attack.

USA Today’s TC Palm reports in an article titled, “Exclusive: PGA Village residents want answers from security firm,” that (emphasis added):

The FBI launched an investigation into Mateen after Sheriff’s Office officials reported the incident to the agency. As part of its investigation, the FBI examined Mateen’s travel history, phone records, acquaintances and even planted a confidential informant in the courthouse to “lure Omar into some kind of act and Omar did not bite,” Mascara said. The FBI concluded Mateen was not a threat after that, Mascara said.

This is in line with the FBI’s practice of approaching and entrapping potential terror suspects by posing as terrorists themselves and aiding and abetting them in the planning and preparations for high-profile attacks. These undercover operations include everything from “casing out” potential targets, to the obtaining and training with actual, live explosives, to the purchasing of small arsenals of firearms including the sort of semi-automatic rifles and pistols used by Mateen during the Orlando shooting.

Image: As scary as any cartoon villain – and ironically – quite literally a manufactured villain. Marcus Robertson is not only a former US Marine, but also a long-time CIA and FBI asset. He runs an extremist website on American soil with absolute impunity and is likely one component of the FBI’s counterterror entrapment pipeline. 

According to Fox News, Omar Mateen, the jihadist who carried out the mass-murder attack at a gay nightclub in Florida this weekend, was a student of Marcus Robertson, an Orlando-based radical Muslim who once served as a bodyguard to Omar Abdel Rahman — the notorious “Blind Sheikh” whom I prosecuted for terrorism crimes in the early to mid 1990s. In addition to the FBI’s undercover operation, it is now also revealed that Mateen frequented the website of another FBI/CIA informant, Marcus Dwayne Roberson, a former US Marine, turned bank robber, turned US government informant.

While US politicians, law enforcement officials, and media networks attempt to claim Robertson’s extremist website, the “Timbuktu Seminary,” was his own independent project, the extent of his association with the US government makes this difficult, if not impossible to believe. Instead, it appears to be the perfect mechanism to feed the FBI’s entrapment pipeline, attracting and identifying possible suspects for the FBI to then approach and “investigate.”

The National Review’s article, “The Orlando Jihadist and the Blind Sheikh’s Bodyguard,” would report (emphasis added):

The National Review also reported that (emphasis added):

In Robertson’s case, it is reported that he agreed to work for the government, gathering intelligence both overseas and in the United States. According to Fox, however, he was expelled from the covert informant program in early 2007 after attacking his CIA handler in Africa.

But Robertson’s stint with the CIA was not the only time he would work for the US government after his service in the US Marine Corps. The National Review leaves out the fact that before his dismissal from the CIA, he was an informant for the FBI between 2004 and 2007.

The Daily Beast in its article, “Was Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen Inspired by This Bank-Robbing Ex-Marine?,” would report (emphasis added):

“Plaintiff worked as a covert operator for the FBI Terrorist Task Force from 2004 until 2007, performing operations in the United Sates and internationally with and against suspected and known terrorist organizations,” Robertson says in court papers.

Robertson remained in touch with American law enforcement and intelligence officials when he moved back to the United States, according to court papers filed by his attorney, “served as a confidential source in domestic terrorism investigations from Atlanta to Los Angeles.”

Is the American public expected to believe that a US government asset who received special training in the military and served as an informant and operative for both the FBI and the CIA would somehow, suddenly be allowed to drop off the US government’s radar and be allowed to run an extremist website in the United States?

Image: How far do undercover FBI investigations go? How about building a van-bomb for a suspect after taking him to a public park to detonate real explosives? The FBI’s own affidavit reveals that is precisely what FBI informants did while investigating Portland, Oregon terror suspect Mohamed Osman Mohamud. Did the FBI’s attempts to lure the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, into committing a terror attack contribute in his radicalization? The FBI must answer to this.  

 

Indeed, no American should believe this. Robertson was step one in Omar Mateen – the Orlando shooter’s – radicalization. The FBI’s attempt to pose as terrorists to lure Mateen into going along with a terrorist attack was step two. Though the FBI has so far failed to disclose the details of that investigation, comments made by FBI Director James Comey himself indicate that FBI informants may have worked on Mateen for up to 10 months.
Between exposure to Robertson’s extremist propaganda, honed after years of working as an informant and operative identifying and exposing terror suspects, and the FBI’s own informants over the course of months, if not years, it is clear that the US government and its “counterterrorism” measures radicalized Mateen – not “ISIS.”

Image: FBI Director James Comey.

The Guardian in its article, “CIA has not found any link between Orlando killer and Isis, says agency chief,” further highlights this blatant truth by reporting (emphasis added):

The Central Intelligence Agency chief has not been “able to uncover any link” between Orlando killer Omar Mateen and the Islamic State, despite Mateen’s stated allegiance to the jihadist group during Sunday’s LGBT nightclub massacre.

If Omar Mateen was a “homegrown terrorist,” the FBI served as the gardeners.

The American public must now demand the details of the FBI’s undercover work regarding Omar Mateen, as well as the truth behind any enduring ties between Robertson and the US government. If Robertson has no connections with the US government, an explanation as to why he is allowed to operate an extremist website on American soil must be provided.

For political and ideological opportunists attempting to seize upon the Orlando tragedy to uphold an example of “Islamic extremism,” it is especially ironic that the facts indicate that the act of terrorism was entirely divorced from “Islam,” and instead the result of America’s ongoing view of terrorism as a convenient and versatile geopolitical tool, rather than a threat to genuinely combat.

That quite literally every aspect that contributed to Omar Mateen’s radicalization is directly connected to the US government itself, illustrates just who the real threat is that American’s should fear – the threat within the halls of its own government – not “terrorists” dwelling beyond them.

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French jurists delayed their decision on whether to reopen an investigation into the cause of Yasser Arafat’s death, but mounting evidence of polonium poisoning and shocking admissions suggest an explosive assassination cover-up has been underway for over a decade.

On Friday, a French court ruled to postpone a decision on whether to resume an investigation into the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat until June 24 or July 8. This comes amid growing suspicions that Israeli agents assassinated him using polonium poisoning.

In 2012, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader’s widow, Suha Arafat, filed a complaint after traces of polonium, a highly toxic radioactive substance, were found on Yasser Arafat’s personal effects.

Arafat drifted into a coma and passed away on November 11, 2004 at the age of 75, after suffering nausea, massive stomach problems, and other gastrointestinal related issues. His illness initially began on October 12, 2004, despite have previously been given a clean bill of health.

The French hospital treating the Palestinian leader determined that the cause of Yasser Arafat’s death was a stroke triggered by blood poisoning. Inexplicably, French officials have never inquired about the type of blood poisoning to which Arafat eventually succumbed.

Yasser Arafat’s demise is consistent with polonium poisoning, which causes gradual deterioration of the body, ending in death over the course of several weeks or months. Victims experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and hair loss.

Recognized as the leader of the Palestinian movement, some viewed Arafat as the father of Palestine.

On Thursday, Loud & Clear’s Brian Becker sat down with Dr. Ghada Talhami of Lake Forest College to examine what the evidence suggests about Arafat’s death.

“Well, the first thing that we know is that Souha Arafat succeeded in convincing the Palestine Authority in Ramallah to exhume his body so that they could take samples in order to have it investigated individually,” Talhami says.

“Additionally, according to Al Jazeera, she sent his toothbrush and some of his clothing to a Swiss agency to be tested for polonium and that was last year. The Swiss lab confirmed that there were, in fact, traces of polonium on his effects,” the professor explains. “Polonium is a radioactive material that has no smell, no visible color, and it is very secretive.”

“In order to pursue this one step further she would need to get a verdict, which can be done either by opening a new court case, that he was actually assassinated,” she adds.

Do Palestinians and Israelis believe that Yasser Arafat was assassinated?

“This is what I can tell you: According to a very well-known article by Uri Avnery, a member of the Knesset and a famous peace activist in Israel, said that he himself got some kind of confirmation by an individual named Uri Dan who was the loyal mouthpiece of Ariel Sharon for nearly 50 years,” she says.

According to professor Talhami, President George W. Bush authorized the assassination of the revered Palestinian leader when asked directly by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

“Uri Dan said that there was a conversation that Sharon had with him and President Bush, and Sharon apparently asked for permission to kill Arafat and Bush gave it to him on the condition that it must be done very quietly under the table,” Talhami says.

“When Uri Dan asked Sharon if it had been carried out, the former Prime Minister said that ‘it is better not to talk about that,’ so Dan took that to be a confirmation.”

Is there reason to believe that Israel would have killed Yasser Arafat?

“We have this and several instances that are very well known in Israel where the press would actually ask Sharon why didn’t you kill him when he was right under your nose, especially after Israel held Arafat’s headquarters under siege during the Second Intifada,” the professor says. “Sharon would say that I couldn’t do it because he had Israelis protecting him and living with him in his headquarters.”

“One of those Israelis was Uri Avnery who, along with two other Israelis, decided to live with Arafat as a human shield in order to protect him,” Talhami explains. “We also know during the Israeli siege of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War that as soon as the Israelis invaded Beirut on the eve of the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla, that Israeli soldiers would actually scour Beirut looking for Arafat.”

George W. Bush sits in front photo of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.
George W. Bush sits in front photo of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

“You put all of this together and the fact that there was this strange illness that struck Arafat which nobody knew what it was. Was it the flu? No. The French hospital decided that he had died of a stroke caused by blood poisoning, but providing no further details,” she adds.

“Either the French hospital that was treating him does not want to release the full story or French authorities are masking the truth. In Israel, the story is really linked to Sharon.”

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A police officer in Florida has revealed that Omar Mateen was targeted by an FBI informant in a failed attempt to push him to commit a terror attack.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to “lure” Orlando shooter Omar Mateen into committing a terror plot in 2013 through the planting of an informant in his life, revelations that raise serious questions about the FBI’s indirect role in shaping the recent Orlando terror attack through its entrapment policies.

In an exclusive interview published June 15, Sheriff Ken Mascara of Florida’s St. Lucie County told the Vero Beach Press Journal that the FBI dispatched an informant to “lure Omar into some kind of act” but he “did not bite.”

The plan, Mascara said, came after Mateen had threatened a courthouse deputy by saying he could order al-Qaida operatives to kill his family.

The FBI is known to be using similar entrapment policies when dealing with those they suspect of belonging to terror organizations or receptive to committing terrorist acts.

In a 2013 column for Mother Jones website, Trevor Aaronson, a journalist and author of “Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror,” revealed that

“nearly half of all terrorism cases since 9/11 involved informants, many of them paid as much as US$100,000 per assignment by the FBI.”

His data was based on studying 500 terrorism prosecutions since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and examining thousands of FBI records and case files. His book, based on original research, questions if the FBI had a role in creating domestic terrorism through its entrapment policies.

Such revelations raise questions about whether the FBI have played a role in shaping the motives of the Orlando shooter and increasing his distrust and paranoia in a country where Muslims are increasingly targeted for their faith.

“Now the question is whether the FBI was right to pursue Mateen before he could kill, or whether it played an influencing role in shaping his attitude towards politically-motivated violence,” authors and journalists Max Blumenthal and Sarah Lazare said in an article for Alternet website Sunday.

Commenting on such a possibility, Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent and division counsel, told AlterNet that “the FBI should scrutinize the operating procedure where they use undercovers and informants and pitch people to become informants,” and “must recognize that, in this case [with Mateen], it had horrible consequences if it did, in fact, backfire.”

The latest revelations come as the FBI is facing questions over telling Mateen’s former wife not to tell U.S. media he could have possibly been gay, raising question about the FBI’s intent to maintain the “Islamist terrorism” narrative instead of a possible personal motive.

The FBI is also facing backlash over refusing to release public recording to media relating to Mateen’s 911 call to the police in which he allegedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

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Saudi Arabia is the UK’s biggest arms customer and most shameful relationship. 

One of the world’s most authoritarian regimes, its repression at home and aggression abroad is propped up and supported by UK arms sales.

Not only does it brutally repress its own population, it has used UK weapons to help crush democracy protests in Bahrain, and now UK-made warplanes are playing a central role in Saudi Arabia’s attacks in Yemen.

The conflict has triggered a humanitarian disaster and risks destabilising the region further. The UK has continued to support Saudi air strikes in Yemen and provide arms despite strong evidence that war crimes may have been committed.

The UK should never have been arming repressive Saudi Arabia in the first place. The UK’s military support for the Saudi regime makes us complicit in its wrongs.

Campaign Against Arms Trade is taking legal action against the UK Government to stop the arms sales.

But we need your support to increase the pressure on the government to act. Please sign the petition:

Stop the arms sales to Saudi Arabia, now. Saudi Arabia is the UK’s biggest arms customer and most shameful relationship. One of the world’s most authoritarian regimes, its repression at home and aggression abroad is propped up and supported by UK arms sales. The UK’s military support for the Saudi regime makes us complicit in its wrongs. The UK must end all arms sales and military support to Saudi Arabia.

Sign the petition.

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The US anti-missile defense systems being installed near Russia’s borders can be “inconspicuously” transformed into offensive weapons, Vladimir Putin has said, adding that he knows “year by year” how Washington will develop its missile program.

Talking about NATO’s ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, Russia’s president said that the Americans are now deploying their missiles at these military complexes. 

The missiles are put into a capsule used for launches of sea-based Tomahawk missiles. Now they are placing their antimissiles there, which are capable of engaging a target at a distance of up to 500 kilometers [310 miles]. But technologies are developing, and we know around what year the Americans will get a new missile, which will have a range not of 500 kilometers, but 1,000, and then even more – and from that moment they will start threatening our nuclear capability,”

Putin said at a meeting with the heads of international news agencies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday.

“We know year by year what will happen, and they know that we know,” he said, adding that Western officials “pull the wool over [their news outlets] eyes, who in turn misinform their audiences.

The main problem, according to the Russian president, is that people do not understand how potentially dangerous the situation really is. “The world is being pulled into a completely new dimension, while [Washington] pretends that nothing’s happening,” Putin said, adding that he has been trying to reach out to his counterparts, but in vain.

“They say [the missile systems] are part of their defense capability, and are not offensive, that these systems are aimed at protecting them from aggression. It’s not true,” Putin told the journalists, adding that “strategic ballistic missile defense is part of an offensive strategic capability, [and] functions in conjunction with an aggressive missile strike system.”

The “great danger” is that the same launchers that are used for defense missiles can be used to fire Tomahawks that can be installed “in a matter of hours,” Putin noted. “How do we know what’s inside those launchers? All one needs to do is reprogram [the system], which is an absolutely inconspicuous task,” he said, adding that the governments of the nations on whose territories these NATO complexes are based would have no way of knowing if this had happened.

Washington engaged in deception from the very start when it claimed that it was moving its ballistic missile defense east to counter Iran’s nuclear threat,” Putin said, pointing out that Tehran’s alleged offensive nuclear capability now doesn’t exist – largely thanks to President Obama’s involvement. “So why have they now built a missile defense system in Romania?” he asked.

While pointing out that NATO keeps rejecting “concrete” proposals from Russia on cooperation, Putin said that US policy is now jeopardizing “the so-called strategic balance… thanks to which the world has been safe from large-scale wars and military conflicts.”

By unilaterally withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Washington “struck the first colossal blow at international stability,” the president said. To maintain the balance, Moscow has had to develop its own missile program in turn, to which the US agreed in the beginning of the 2000s, when Russia was in a difficult financial situation.

“I guess they hoped that the armament from the Soviet times would initially become degraded, he said.

“Today Russia has reached significant achievements in this field. We have modernized our missile systems and successfully developed new generations. Not to mention missile defense systems,” Putin told the international news agencies, stressing that these moves are counter-measures and not “aggression, as Moscow is so often accused of.

“We must provide security not only for ourselves. It’s important to provide strategic balance in the world, which guarantees peace on the planet… It’s the mutual threat that has provided [mankind] with global security for decades,”Putin concluded.

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Progressive politics and political pluralism aren’t Beltway attributes. America was never beautiful – now the greatest threat to world peace. Bipartisan neocons infesting Washington risk the unthinkable.

Many self-styled liberals support Clinton – the most recklessly dangerous presidential aspirant in US history – a neocon war hawk representing, backed by Wall Street and other corporate predators.

Certain Sanders’ endorsement awaits to be announced, betraying his loyal supporters. Liberal progressive in name only Senator Elizabeth Warren backs her, saying “I’m ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets any place close to the White House.”

Noted academic, father of modern linguistics, political/anti-war activist Noam Chomsky said he’s against Trump, supported Sanders, intends voting for Clinton, adding, “I don’t think there’s any other rational choice” – a shocking statement by someone who knows better. He understands money-controlled duopoly power runs America, a one-party state, both flip sides of the other, in lockstep on issues mattering most – notably war and peace, corporate empowerment and cracking down hard on nonbelievers.

Trump and Clinton differ more in style than substance, both representing dirty business as usual, offering voters no choice – a billionaire businessman wanting greater wealth and power v. a war goddess threatening world peace.

Supporting either endorses what demands rejection and condemnation, both recklessly dangerous, evidence of America’s deplorable state – a democratic free society in name only, lurching toward full-blown tyranny no matter who succeeds Obama.

Voters’ only “rational choice” is opposing both duopoly power candidates, supporting grassroots revolutionary change, unattainable electorally, possible only by taking to the streets, paying the price, enduring sacrifice, battling for justice, resisting tyranny because it’s the only thing to do.

Liberals for Clinton betray what they claim to support, more evidence of America’s deplorable state, too debauched to fix, its electorate largely uninformed and indifferent – why things deteriorated so badly in the first place.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]
 
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
 
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
 
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.  
 
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Dreams about Terrorists: Wolves, Wolf Packs and Resources

June 20th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Terrorists provide alibis for hungry security establishments in search of themselves.  Their physical effect is always small relative to the psychic disturbances they cause.  Know thyself, urges the Delphic maxim, but self-knowledge implies an acceptance of ignorance. Nothing doing when it comes to the issue of finding the elusive “lone wolf” terrorist, a creature that has become more irritant than reality in security circles.

The efforts on the parts of lone wolves, and more importantly, terrorists in general, are never entirely calculable, reliable or clear.  Yet they remain ever useful for policy makers, think tanks and pundits bloated on the largesse of the national security state.

Money may not have smell, claimed Emperor Vespasian, but one can never deny its allure.  (In the emperor’s case, it was reaped from an infamous urine tax.)  Bodies and entities receiving it will always operate on that truest of public service mentalities: more is always better, whatever the cause.

With the Orlando killings, another spike in speculative assessment was bound to take place, charging the strategic boardrooms and think tank workshops with the next model, framework and means of assessment.  What matters in such workings is that they are sold as scientific, positivist formulae, methods that clarify a murky, sodden world of incalculable variables.

Bruce Riedel from Brookings makes his contribution to the world of counter-terrorism chat by considering the threat of “wolf packs”. In the scrounging for the exceptional term in a field of re-invented wheels, Riedel is thrilled to have come across terminology that was used for the German U-Boats of the Second World War.

Showing no sign of awareness about its origins, he enthusiastically applies the term to understand the “greater threat” of having “small groups of terrorists” operating on home soil. Be wary of ostracising the followers of the Prophet or “the wolf pack threat will grow”.[1]

Judging from the body count occasioned by guns, the threat to the modern US republic seems far more a case of individuals who believe that mediation is best left out of the dispute resolution process.  Grievance is primary; ideology is secondary.  The issue of marauding packs of Allah-inspired lone wolves revives a frontier motif that is charmingly anachronistic, but typical of this field.

Nonetheless, Riedel insists that there was an attempt to mount “a wolf pack” assault on the New York City subway system in 2009 that “was foiled because our intelligence services detected the conspiracy.”

Amy Zegart, whose interests lie in the areas of intelligence history and theory, sees the response to the killings in Orlando in terms of process and assessment rather than the type of terrorist.  Keep it smooth, informed and reliable and all will follow.  Ask the right questions, she seems to be suggesting, and you will be set free.

Zegart takes as her point of reference the 2009 attack in Fort Hood, and smugly proclaims how the FBI got it wrong. (Naturally, she is also flogging her findings in a forthcoming book chapter.)

Questions, she asserts, should be raised in four areas, though all of these seem steeped in the structure and resources of countering threats.  The big word common to all?  Radicalisation and with that gathering and acting upon “early intel” about its noxious consequences.

In Fort Hood, the Bureau dragged its feat about early signs about Nidal Hasan, “a radicalizing Muslim Army officer who was emailing AQAP’s Anwar al-Aulaqi nearly a year before the officer went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood”.[2]  Much of this dragging on Hasan’s emerging plumage was largely occasioned by cluelessness, a lack of coordination.

Forward the historical wheel to Orlando, and Zegart asks if the FBI was similarly confused in its 2013-4 investigations into Omar Mateen.  Sharing information is all, though Zegart then proceeds to wonder what the FBI’s version of an “investigation” (in the Fort Hood case, four hours was given) is.

Pinching the hat of FBI recruitment, she wonders whether adequate staff were also at hand to assess Mateen’s case.  (Are they ever?)  In terms of Fort Hood, the relevant personnel had “no serious counter-terrorism experience.”

Her greatest scolding is reserved for last.  The FBI erred in treating Hassan’s case “through a law enforcement lens, not an intelligence lens.”  The right question to ask about Hassan was whether he “might in future be involved in terrorist activities”. What Zegart clumsily sidesteps is the obvious point that intelligence agencies have hardly covered themselves in glory in the soothsaying department.  The future is unknowable – even the Bureau can only act in accordance with what has happened.

Staff, resources, making the right decisions; these points characterise the remarks of Garrett M. Graff, whose Politico pitch makes clear that the national security state is suffering from a lack of personnel.  Graff does not take the cane to FBI assessments as Zegart does, but suggests a growing “surveillance gap”.[3]

Such observations seem extraordinary in a country boasting such agencies as the NSA, whose penchant for unwarranted surveillance has been pressed home since Edward Snowden spoiled the party.

For Graff, those wise men and women of the counter-terrorism brother and sisterhood insist that the Bureau “isn’t big enough to tackle the new era of online radicalization and independent acting lone wolves.” Policing No-fly lists and the Terrorist Screening Database consume resources at a voracious rate, a veritable “resource crunch”.

There you have it; the age old appeal for greater resources and personnel when facing crises new and remarkable.  When a justification to feed a security habit is needed, it is sufficient to simply call the emergency exceptional.

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

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“If we vote to stay, we are not settling for the status quo … we are voting to be a hostage locked in the boot of a car driven by others to a place and at a pace that we have no control over.” 

UK Justice Secretary Michael Gove (April 19, 2016)

.

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As many Americans remain captivated by the bizarre political cage match between Hillary and Donald, otherwise known as the 2016 US campaign for President, there are other English speaking nations confronting the ballot box.

Of particular note is the debate over whether the people of the United Kingdom should stay within or leave the European Union.

Campaigning for and against keeping Britain in the EU has been ongoing for months following the introduction and passage of the European Union Referendum Act  2015. There appears to be a split among the general electorate and even within political parties.

The European Union is a major economic entity on the world stage. What would the departure of a major political Great Britain mean, not only for the UK itself, but for the wider region? This is a question that Dr. Binoy Kampmark spends some time exploring with us.

On the other side of the world, the people of Australia are preparing for a visit to the polls on July 2.

The campaign is one of the longest in the country’s election history. Will that length of time help or hurt the incumbents?

On this week’s installment of the Global Research News Hour we are attempting to examine these developments with the help of Australia-based scholar Binoy Kampmark.

Dr. Kampmark holds a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge.  He currently serves as Senior Lecturer in the School of Global Urban and Social Studies. He is a frequent commentator in various media and is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

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La utilización de la deuda como instrumento de dominación y de alienación de la soberanía de un Estado se ve claramente en el destino que Francia reservó a Túnez en la segunda mitad del siglo xix. En 1881, Francia conquistó Túnez transformado a ese país en protectorado. Hasta ese momento, Túnez, conocido como Regencia de Túnez era una provincia del Imperio Otomano, |1| que gozaba de una importante autonomía bajo la autoridad de un Bey.

Hasta 1863, Túnez no tuvo deuda externa

Hasta el final del reino del Bey Mustafá en 1837, no existió en Túnez deuda pública alguna. La producción agrícola aseguraba la soberanía alimentaria del país. Su sucesor, Ahmed Bey, que reinó entre 1837 y 1855, emprendió un programa de gastos públicos que dio prioridad a la constitución de un ejército permanente, a la compra de material militar, a la construcción de residencias suntuosas y creó algunas manufacturas, como la fábrica textil de Tebourba, según el modelo europeo. Estas realizaciones quedaban muy por debajo de lo que había hecho con éxito el monarca egipcio Mohammed Ali, |2| que le valió la agresión de las potencias europeas. |3| De todas maneras, había al menos un punto en común entre esos dos procesos: la ausencia de préstamos exteriores durante la primera mitad del siglo xix. Las inversiones se llevaron a cabo con recursos internos del país.

El programa de inversiones públicas fue un fiasco puesto que no se fundamentaba en la valorización y el refuerzo de los productores locales. El ejército permanente fue licenciado en 1853, el mayor palacio no fue acabado y las manufacturas fueron abandonadas. El Bey de Túnez había recurrido al empréstito interno aceptando tipos de interés a menudo usurarios que aumentaron enormemente la deuda. El Estado del Bey contraía deudas vendiendo a los tunecinos y a los residentes extranjeros ricos, provenientes de Livorno, de Ginebra, de Francia…, los teskerés, o sea los bonos del Tesoro a corto plazo.

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Mohammed es-Sadok

Con la ascensión al trono de Mohammed es-Sadok en 1859, |4| aumentó fuertemente la influencia de las potencias europeas, de sus intereses comerciales, de sus empresas y en particular de sus banqueros. La corrupción se extendió desde la cúpula del régimen y su responsable principal fue el primer ministro Mustafá Khasnadar, que ya había ocupado importantes cargos desde 1837, comenzando por el de «tesorero» del Bey (tesorero: khasnadar en turco). Mustafá Khasnadar permaneció en la cumbre del Estado hasta 1873. Cobraba comisiones por cada transacción, por cada préstamo, por la recaudación de impuestos hasta tal punto que su fortuna devino colosal. Antes de su destitución en 1873, Mustafá Khasnadar tuvo un papel más importante que el del Bey mismo, en las decisiones del Estado y en los acuerdos tomados con los financieros y empresarios europeos.

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Mustapha Khaznadar

En 1859-1860, este personaje y el Bey aumentaron los gastos públicos y la deuda interna con la compra de armas inutilizables a Bélgica, reemplazadas luego a alto precio por fusiles franceses, y por la construcción de lujosas residencias consulares para Francia y el Reino Unido. Esos gastos no correspondían, evidentemente, al interés de la población. La deuda pública interna aumentó en un 60 % durante los tres primeros años del reinado de Mohammed es-Sadok. Los tunecinos ricos y los residentes extranjeros aprovechaban esa política de endeudamiento interno que les proveía de un rendimiento elevado. También se beneficiaron los altos dignatarios del Estado ya que desviaban una parte del dinero concedido en los préstamos — de hecho, eran también compradores de la deuda—, y los proveedores extranjeros que también sacaban su beneficio. Por el contrario, el pueblo debía soportar una carga creciente de impuestos.


El primer empréstito extranjero de 1863: una verdadera estafa

El primer empréstito de Túnez en el exterior fue el de 1863. Y constituyó una verdadera estafa que desembocó, 18 años más tarde, en la conquista francesa de Túnez.

En esa época, la plaza financiera de París era muy activa en su competencia con la de Londres, que era la principal del mundo. Los banqueros parisienses, así como los londinenses, disponían de liquidez abundante y buscaban ocasiones para colocarla en el extranjero. Los préstamos hacia América Latina, Asia, el Imperio Otomano, Egipto, Rusia, y América del Norte eran abundantes. |5| Los créditosestaban destinados principalmente a la construcción de ferrocarriles (que provocó una burbuja especulativa en el sector), a la refinanciación de anteriores deudas —como fue el caso de América Latina—, y a la compra de armas. El crédito obtenido por París, en su mercado local era de entre el 4 al 6 %, mientras que en el exterior era mucho más elevado: se podía alcanzar el 10 o el 11 % de rendimiento real.

A comienzos de 1863, cuando el Bey anunció que deseaba pedir prestado 25 millones de francos en el exterior, banqueros y corredores de Londres y de París ofrecieron sus servicios. Entre ellos estaba el barón James de Rotschild, otras sociedades londinenses, y en París el Crédit Mobilier y Émile Erlanger, un banquero de Frankfurt que tenía su sede en la capital francesa.

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Émile Erlanger

El cónsul del Reino Unido en Túnez sostenía las ofertas de los banqueros de Londres y el de Francia apoyaba las ofertas que provenían de París. Finalmente el banquero Émile Erlanger obtuvo el «contrato». Su biografía amerita ser resumida. |6| Según el cónsul británico, el banquero E. Erlanger le había ofrecido 500.000 francos si le daba su apoyo.


En qué consistió el empréstito de 1863

El banquero Erlanger, asociado a otros banqueros, obtuvo la autorización del gobierno francés de vender en la Bolsade París títulos tunecinos. Según un informe elaborado en 1872-1873 por Victor Villet, un inspector de finanzas francés, ese empréstito era una verdadera estafa.

Según el banquero Erlanger, se habían emitido 78.692 obligaciones tunecinas. Cada una de ellas tenía un valor nominal de 500 francos. Pero fueron vendidas a 480 francos y cada una otorgaba el derecho a recibir un cupón anual de 35 francos durante 15 años. Eso representaba una tipo anual de interés teórico del 7 % pero, como las obligaciones se habían vendido a 480 francos, el interés real era del 7,3 %. Para el comprador eso quería decir que al desembolsar 480 francos podía obtener 525 francos (35 francos x 15 años) en forma de interés, más el reembolso de los 500 francos que le había costado la obligación.

Mientras que el deudor, o sea el gobierno tunecino, recibía 415 francos (480 francos menos 65 francos correspondientes a la comisión de emisión y otros gastos que se quedaba el banquero) por cada obligación, debía pagar 1025 francos por cada una de ellas a su vencimiento.

Otra manera de calcular, en forma más global: el que pide el préstamo (Túnez) debía recibir 37,7 millones de francos (78.692 obligaciones vendidas a 480 francos cada una) pero se comprometió a reembolsar 65,1 millones de francos.

Según las investigaciones realizadas por el ya citado Victor Villet, el banquero Erlanger cobró un poco más de 5 millones de francos de comisión (es decir cerca del 13 % de la suma prestada). También faltaron 2,7 millones de francos que fueron desviados, seguramente, por el primer ministro y el propio banquero Erlanger.

Por lo tanto, el gobierno tunecino que solo recibió cerca de 30 millones de francos, se comprometió a reembolsar 65,1 millones de francos.

Para hablar de una verdadera estafa, se tendría que considerar algunos elementos agravantes en el comportamiento del banquero Erlanger y en el primer ministro tunecino. Erlanger afirmó que había vendido un poco más de 38.000 obligaciones en París y 40.000 en Túnez (recordemos que el total de obligaciones emitidas era de 78.692). Parece que la venta en la Bolsa de París había sido muy inferior a lo que afirmaba Erlanger y que, en realidad, más de 30.000 obligaciones no habían encontrado comprador y que continuaban en posesión de Erlanger. Sin embargo, Erlanger había descontado una comisión de más de 5 millones de francos como si hubiera vendido todas las obligaciones. Parece que Erlanger había pedido prestado a otros banqueros la suma que se había comprometido a transferir al Tesoro tunecino (cerca de 30 millones de francos en 4 cuotas). Es probable que se endeudase ante otros banqueros poniendo como garantía los 30.000 títulos que no había podido vender. Es lo que avanzaba el redactor del Moniteur des Fonds Publics en un artículo publicado el 19 de agosto de 1869: «Creemos que estamos en lo cierto cuando afirmamos que 5.000 obligaciones, como mucho, pasaron a propiedad de tenedores residentes en Francia… Quedaban, por lo tanto, cerca de 30.000 obligaciones en manos del señor Erlanger. En esa situación, éste se encontraba muy inquieto por no saber cómo hacer frente a los compromisos contraídos con el Bey de Túnez. ¿Cómo lo solucionó? Creemos que depositando en las manos del banco Comptoir d’escompte de París los títulos que no había podido vender y de esa manera obtuvo un adelanto con el que pudo enviar algunos fondos s su alteza.»

Un indicio claro de la solidez de esta hipótesis es que el banquero Erlanger pretendía haber recomprado en el mercado secundario de la deuda 20.962 títulos en enero de 1864 y otros 8.000 en 1865- Ahora bien, estas recompras no conllevaron un aumento de la cotización de los títulos. Y eso no parece verosímil. Una recompra de 20.000 títulos mientras 38.000 estaban oficialmente en circulación debía producir automáticamente un aumento de la cotización. Pero no se constató aumento de precio de las obligaciones tunecinas en el mercado secundario. Eso significaba que los títulos no estaban en circulación en el mercado. El banquero Erlanger simuló esa recompra cuando en realidad el ya poseía esas obligaciones.

Notemos, por otra parte, que esas 30.000 obligaciones daban lugar al pago de intereses cada año. Y como estaban en posesión del banquero Erlanger, era él mismo el que se embolsaba los intereses.

El resultado inmediato del préstamo de 1863

Ese empréstito exterior debía servir para reestructurar la deuda interna que estaba evaluada en una suma equivalente a 30 millones de francos franceses (recordemos que la deuda había aumentado un 60% entre 1859 y 1862 debido a los gastos del Bey Mohammed es-Sadok, que había quintuplicado las compras de mercaderías en el extranjero). Se trataba concretamente de reembolsar los anteriores títulos con el dinero pedido prestado al exterior. En realidad, mientras los anteriores títulos fueron reembolsados, las autoridades emitieron nuevos teskerés (o bonos del tesoro) por un monto equivalente. Eso es lo que contaba el inspector de finanzas francés Victor Villet: «al mismo tiempo que se reembolsaban los anteriores títulos en las oficinas del representante de la casa Erlanger en Túnez… un corredor del gobierno (el Sr. Gutiérrez) instalado en la vecindad retomaba del público el dinero que éste acababa de recibir, a cambio de nuevos teskerés emitidos con un tipo del 91 %. Gracias a esta comedia de reembolso, la deuda se había aumentado, simplemente… en cerca de 15 millones». La recaudación proveniente de la venta de esos nuevos teskerés se desviaba generosamente hacia los cofres del primer ministro, de otros altos dignatarios y de los residentes europeos ricos.

El mismo inspector de finanzas escribía: «Los fondos provenientes del empréstito de 1963 [que] se habían pagado en especies al Bardo (el Bey y el primer ministro tenían su sede en el palacio del Bardo) fueron inscriptos en una cuenta especial: pero no entraron en la contabilidad general del gobierno, tampoco entraron en las cajas del Estado y nada hace creer que hayan servido para el pago de gastos públicos».

En menos de un año, el empréstito de 1863 fue dilapidado. Al mismo tiempo, el Estado se encontraba de nuevo endeudado, pero por primera vez en la historia tunecina en el exterior y por un monto muy elevado, por lo que las sumas que cada año se debían pagar eran insostenibles. En cuanto a la deuda interna que debería haberse reembolsado con el préstamo del exterior, por el contrario se duplicó. El gobierno del Bey eligió bajo la presión de los acreedores transferir la factura al pueblo aumentando un 100 % la mejba, un impuesto por habitante.

La revuelta de 1864, una consecuencia de la decisión de aumentar un 100 % el impuesto por habitante para reembolsar el empréstito de 1863

El aumento del impuesto provocó en 1864 una rebelión general en el país. El rechazo del aumento del impuesto mejba, un impuesto individual, era la reivindicación principal de la protesta. |7| Desde el momento en que los agentes del Bey comenzaron a recorrer el país para cobrar la mejba, que se había llevado a 72 piastras, estalló la revuelta. El 10 de marzo de 1864, el vicecónsul francés Jean-Henri Mattei telegrafió desde Sfax: «Todas las tribus están de acuerdo en no pagar el nuevo impuesto de 72 piastras. (…) la unión de todas las tribus tendrá lugar a la primera señal de la salida de Túnez hacia cualquier lugar con la intención de cobrar ese impuesto». |8| Algunas semanas más tarde, en otro despacho consular se leía: «La insurrección es general y se extiende hasta (una distancia) a una hora de la ciudad de Túnez». |9| Según diferentes testigos, los insurgentes acusaban al gobierno, y en primer lugar al primer ministro Mustafá Khasnadar, de haber vendido el país a los franceses. Y la prueba era el empréstito de 1863 emitido en París por el banquero Erlanger.

Francia, el Reino Unido, Italia y el Imperio Otomano enviaron barcos de guerra a las aguas territoriales tunecinas con el fin de intimidar a las poblaciones y de prestar ayuda a las autoridades si la situación se volvía incontrolable. El Bey se hecho atrás frente a las protestas y anunció el 21 de abril de 1864 que renunciaba a duplicar la mejba. |10| Reiteró las concesiones en julio de 1864 con el fin de obtener un acuerdo con el principal dirigente de la revuelta Ali ben Ghedahem. |11| Luego, con el apoyo de las potencias extranjeras, comenzó la represión. El Sultán, monarca del Imperio Otomano, aportó su ayuda financeira al Bey para que pudiera hacer una leva de tropas frescas y enviarlas a la represión. Era una iniciativa del Sultán con la intención de no ser desbordado por Francia, |12| el Reino Unido e Italia.

Una represión masiva

El Bey se lanzó a una represión masiva a posteriori permitiendo extraer un máximo de impuestos y multas a la población. El cónsul francés escribía el 4 de diciembre de 1864 al ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores en París: «El gobierno del Bey rápidamente renunció a un sistema de clemencia que parecía que quería inaugurar…; volvió al rigor, al que se traduce por grilletes y tortura, para obtener, de las provincias del litoral, unos impuestos de guerra exorbitantes». «Es mi deber informarle» declaraba por escrito un vicecónsul al cónsul de Francia: «de qué manera bárbara actúa el general Zarrouk para ejecutar las órdenes del Bey, desnudando completamente a los indígenas, torturando a personas de edad y a mujeres que no tuvieron nada que ver con la revolución» (carta del 16 de febrero de 1865). Otro funcionario francés: «La multa solamente puede cobrase mediante la reclusión, el uso de grilletes, de los azotes y de los rigores más ilegales desde el punto de vista de nuestro derecho público actual. Entre esos rigores, señalaría la confiscación de bienes, la tortura hasta las lesiones o la muerte, la violación de los domicilios…y finalmente, la violación de las mujeres intentada o consumada ante los propios ojos de los padres o de los maridos encadenados», (1 de marzo de 1865). Jean Ganiage agregó: «En marzo de 1865, Espina, vicecónsul, calculaba en 23 millones de piastras, la suma que el gobierno había recaudado en el Sahel, desde octubre de 1864 a enero de 1865, sin contar alrededor de 5 millones de piastras extorsionadas por la propia cuenta de sus empleados.» |13|

El segundo empréstito externo realizado en París en 1865

Dado que el empréstito de 1863 no había mejorado en nada la situación financiera del país, el Bey y su primer ministro optaron por la huída hacia delante y firmaron un acuerdo con el banquero Erlanger para la realización de un nuevo empréstito en marzo de 1865. Túnez se endeudó por un monto de 36,78 millones de francos. Y lo hizo en condiciones peores y más escandalosas que las de de 1863. Efectivamente, mientras que los títulos de 500 francos habían sido vendidos a 480 francos en 1863, los nuevos títulos fueron vendidos a 380 francos, o sea, al 76 % de su valor nominal.

Un comprador de un título de 500 francos pagaba 380 francos y daba por descontado que recibiría un cupón de 35 francos durante 15 años, o sea 515 francos, a los que se debían agregar al vencimiento, en 1880, 500 francos. Una inversión de 380 francos que redituaba 1025 francos, es decir una ganancia de 645 francos, era muy atrayente. El tipo de interés teórico era del 7 % pero ya que el cupón anual era de 35 francos, el rendimiento real era del 9,21 % (35/380 x 100).

Si nos colocamos en el lugar del Estado tunecino deudor: la nueva deuda ligada al empréstito de 1865 se elevaba a 36,78 millones de francos, pero solo recibiría un poco menos de 20 millones de francos, ya que los gastos de correduría y las comisiones descontadas por el banquero Erlanger y sus asociados Morpurgo-Oppenheim se elevaron al 18 %. Hay que agregar que cerca de 3 millones fueron desviados directamente, la mitad por los banqueros, la otra mitad para el primer ministro y sus socios. El balance se explica en tres cifras:

La nueva deuda contraída en 1865 se elevó a 36,78 millones de francos.

La suma realmente recibida fue de menos de 20 millones de francos. |14|

La suma que se debía reembolsar en 15 años era de 75,4 millones de francos.

Los banqueros habían hecho un muy buen negocio: sin haber invertido nada, habían descontado en el momento de la emisión cerca de 6,5 millones de francos en forma de comisiones, de gastos de correduría y de puro y simple robo. Todos los títulos se vendieron en pocos días. En París reinaba la euforia a propósito de los títulos de los países musulmanes (Túnez, Imperio Otomano, Egipto), a los que se llamaba «valores con turbante». Los banqueros pagaban a las redacciones de los diarios para publicar noticias totalmente tranquilizantes, aunque la economía y las finanzas tunecinas se hallaban en pleno marasmo. Sin embargo, el semanario parisiense La Semaine Financière escribía con respecto al empréstito de 1865 «El Bey de Túnez esta ahora bajo el protectorado moral de Francia, cuyo interés es favorecer la prosperidad del pueblo tunecino ya que esta prosperidad es una seguridad de más para Argelia». |15|

Los tejemanejes de los banqueros Erlanger y Morpurgo-Oppenheim no paran allí. No contentos con endeudar a Túnez bajo condiciones leoninas, intervinieron también activamente para que el dinero prestado fuera utilizado en gastos de los que estos banqueros pudieran obtener beneficios. Dos ejemplos: convencieron al Bey para que comprara a un negociante marsellés, un tal Audibert, dos barcos inutilizables al precio de nuevos (250.000 francos). Según el ya citado Victor Villet, E. Erlanger que se había comprometido en proveer 100 cañones estriados de nuevo modelo por un millón de francos, en realidad suministró solo «viejos cañones cuyas culatas habían sido recubiertas por un tipo de capuchón. El fraude era demasiado evidente; se vio enseguida que esos cañones solo le habían costado al proveedor unos 200.000 francos». |16| La lista de los negocios de suministros que contenían signos de estafa era larga. Por otra parte, Erlanger obtuvo del Bey como garantía del empréstito, la concesión de la manufactura textil de Tetourba.

Las deudas acumuladas durante el periodo 1863-1865 condujeron a Túnez a la tutela francesa

Las nuevas deudas acumuladas durante los años 1863-1865 pusieron a Túnez a merced de sus acreedores exteriores, como Francia. Era simplemente imposible para Túnez reembolsar las sumas que se le exigían. La recaudación excepcional de impuestos a continuación de la represión de fines de 1864-comienzos de 1865, había permitido la entrada en el Tesoro público de una importante suma (30 millones de piastras, que superaba en mucho los ingresos de un año normal) que fue rápidamente engullida por el pago de la deuda así como por nuevas compras suntuarias y contrarias al interés de las poblaciones.

El año 1867 fue muy malo en cuanto a la producción agrícola. Además, para procurarse más ingresos, el Bey ordenaba la exportación de los productos agrícolas. Eso desembocó en una hambruna en varias partes del país y en una epidemia de cólera, favorecida por el estado de debilitamiento de una parte de la población (aplastada por los impuestos y afectada por el alza de los precios de los alimentos básicos) y por la ausencia de políticas públicas en el ámbito sanitario. Se habló de 5.000 muertes en la capital, principalmente debido al hambre, y de 20.000 en todo el territorio. |17|

En el ámbito internacional, los banqueros se habían vuelto súbitamente temerosos y en todo caso exigían rendimientos aún más altos que en el pasado. En 1866, México había infligido una derrota militar aplastante al cuerpo expedicionario francés y, a continuación, había repudiado el pago de la deuda considerada como odiosa, con respecto a los acreedores, banqueros franceses y tenedores de bonos mexicanos (especialmente aquellos vendidos en París por el banquero Erlanger en 1864 y 1865). Como consecuencia, el Bey y su primer ministro no lograron obtener la concesión de un nuevo empréstito en París o en otro lado. Esperaban un préstamo de 100 millones pero terminó en un fiasco. En efecto, en febrero de 1867, habían firmado un nuevo contrato con el banquero Erlanger. Mientras éste deseaba vender 200.000 obligaciones tunecinas en París en pocas semanas, en realidad solo había conseguido vender 11.033. Ya no había ningún deseo por la posesión de los valores tunecinos con turbante. De golpe, el Bey recurrió a «pequeños» préstamos con tipos de interés usurarios con otros banqueros de París como Alphonse Pinard, |18| director del Comptoir d’escompte de Paris que organizó en París un préstamo de 9 millones de francos en enero de 1867. Se contactó a Rotschild pero éste no deseaba prestar a Túnez. Oppenheim y otros exigían tipos de interés del orden del 15 %.

A partir de 1867, el Bey suspendió parcialmente el pago de la deuda interna y externa. Eso llevó a A. Pinard, director del Comptoir d’ecomptes de Paris, a demandar a Túnez ante el tribunal civil del Sena por la no ejecución de las cláusulas del préstamo de 9 millones de francos de enero de 1867. A. Pinard pedía la adjudicación de los ingresos aduaneros tunecinos así como los ingresos obtenidos por la cosecha de olivas. La sentencia fue dictada en agosto de 1867 y Pinard perdió el proceso: la Regencia de Túnez era un país extranjero y no sometido a la jurisdicción del tribunal.

Alphonse Pinard y otros banqueros comenzaron a utilizar una nueva estrategia. Pinard formó un sindicato3 de tenedores de títulos tunecinos en el que se encontraban también los banqueros Bischoffsheim, Bamberger, Lévy-Crémieu, Edmond Adam, y también Joseph Hollander, administrador del Banque des Pays-Bas, y futuro suegro del hijo de Pinard. Ese sindicato se encargó de «ayudar» al gobierno del Bey a pagar los cupones. Más tarde, en 1869-1870, consiguió estar representado directamente en la Comisión Financiera Internacional que tomó el control de las finanzas tunecinas y así obtuvo una victoria total (véase más adelante).

Las deudas que derivaron de los empréstitos del periodo 1863-1867 eran odiosas y se deberían haber repudiado

La deuda contraída entre 1863 y 1867 era claramente una deuda odiosa para el pueblo tunecino. Correspondía literalmente a la definición dada en 1927 por Alexandre Nahum Sack, profesor de derecho en París y teórico de la doctrina de la deuda odiosa: «Si un poder despótico contrae una deuda no para las necesidades e intereses del Estado sino para fortificar su régimen despótico, para reprimir a la población que le combate, esa deuda es odiosa para la población de todo el Estado. Esa deuda no es obligatoria para la nación: es una deuda de régimen, deuda personal del poder que la ha contraído; en consecuencia esa deuda desaparece con la caída del poder.» |19|

Y Sack agregaba más adelante: «Se podría clasificar en esta categoría de deudas a los empréstitos contraídos con objetivos manifiestamente interesados y personales de los miembros del gobierno o de personas y grupos ligados al gobierno —objetivos que no tienen ninguna relación con los intereses del Estado». Eso se aplicaba perfectamente al comportamiento del primer ministro Mustafá Khasnadar y a otros dignatarios del régimen del Bey. |20|

Sack subrayaba también que los acreedores de tales deudas, cuando han prestado con conocimiento de causa, «han cometido un acto hostil con respecto al pueblo, por lo tanto no pueden contar con que la nación liberada de un poder despótico asuma las deudas «odiosas» que son deudas personales de ese poder». El banquero E, Erlanger y sus asociados sabían perfectamente que los montos prestados no servían al interés general. Además, como ya hemos mostrado, fueron actores directos de una estafa.

Tratándose de la política de emisión de títulos de alto riesgo en el plano financiero y odioso en el ámbito jurídico por parte del banquero E. Erlanger, es necesario también mencionar que en la misma época, había emitido entre 1864 y 1865 títulos mexicanos por cuenta de un Estado títere establecido por el ejército francés en México, con Maximiliano de Austria como emperador, quien fue fusilado en junio de 1867. En 1863, E. Erlanger emitió en París y en Londres un empréstito de 15 millones de dólares para los estados esclavistas del Sur, los Confederados, con la garantía del algodón, lo que le permitió conseguir un beneficio inmediato de cerca de 4 millones de dólares. |21|

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El declive del Imperio Otomano


Francia buscaba el momento oportuno para tomar el control total de Túnez

Desde que se lanzaron a la colonización de Argelia en los años 1830, los dirigentes franceses consideraban que Francia tenía derecho a extender su dominio colonial a Túnez. Era necesario encontrar un pretexto y el momento oportuno. Existían también otras prioridades tanto en el ámbito interno como en el continente europeo o en otros lugares del mundo. En la región árabe, Egipto constituía una prioridad por razones geoestratégicas: la posibilidad de tener acceso directo a Asia por la construcción de un canal entre el Mediterráneo y el Mar Rojo, el acceso al África negra por el Nilo; la proximidad de Oriente por vía terrestre; el potencial agrícola de Egipto, la competencia con el Reino Unido: cualquiera de las dos potencias que controlasen Egipto tendría una ventaja estratégica sobre la otra. Napoleón lo había comprendido y lo había puesto en práctica con su campaña de Egipto en 1798. La conquista de Túnez no constituía una prioridad, tanto más que la estabilización de la dominación francesa de Argelia era costosa debido a la resistencia encontrada. En Francia, el sostén popular a una nueva aventura colonial no era una cosa completamente segura. En los años 1860, la conquista de México se volvió una catástrofe. Como ya ha sido mencionado, Luis Napoleón Bonaparte tuvo que retirar sus soldados de suelo mexicano en 1866 frente a la contra ofensiva victoriosa de las fuerzas progresistas mexicanas y tuvo que aceptar el repudio de las deudas reclamadas por los banqueros franceses a México (cerca de 60 millones de francos). |22| A fines de 1867, Napoleón III esta también preocupado por el avance de los camisas rojas republicanos de Garibaldi que amenazaba con tomar Roma, protegida por Francia.

No obstante, la búsqueda para conseguir la tutela de Túnez, o su pura y simple conquista, se volvió casi una obsesión para el cónsul francés en la capital que también era el representante plenipotenciario de Francia ante el Bey. Los hechos y los gestos de los diferentes cónsules que se sucedieron en la capital de Túnez lo atestaron. En plena revuelta de 1864, el cónsul francés, Charles Beauval, jugaba a dos bandas: mientras que oficialmente Francia apoyaba al Bey, éste cónsul negociaba con el principal líder de la revuelta, Ali ben Ghedahem, en el caso de que éste se decidiera a derrocar al Bey. Beauval escribía el 30 de mayo de 1864: «Será digno del Emperador reunir más tarde a todas las tribus de Túnez en una pequeña confederación árabe». En septiembre de 1865, según el historiador Jean Ganiage, «los asuntos tunecinos fueron discutidos en un consejo de ministros presidido por el emperador. Consultado, el gobernador de Argelia, el mariscal Mac-Mahon, proponía enviar un cuerpo expedicionario hasta la capital tunecina y presentaba un proyecto detallado sobre la marcha y la organización de esa columna. Pero ese plan superaba en mucho las intenciones del gobierno». |23| Dos años más tarde, siempre según J. Ganiage, «el cónsul de Botiliau no veía otra solución que una ocupación de Túnez por Francia, la anexión definitiva a Argelia o una ocupación temporal como garantía».

Por otra parte, las declaraciones racistas no faltaban en la correspondencia de los representantes de Francia en Túnez como lo atestigua una carta del 2 de diciembre de 1867 del cónsul de Botiliau en la que denunciaba «la moral de la raza árabe, su inaptitud para el trabajo, sus costumbres de falsedad, mentiras, corrupción…» |24|

La creación de la Comisión Financiera Internacional en 1869

La propuesta de la creación de una Comisión Financiera Internacional que debería tomar el control de las finanzas de Túnez fue puesta por escrito, en sus grandes líneas, por el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Francia, el marqués de Moustier en enero de 1868: «Parece que, ante todo, nuestros esfuerzos deben tener por objeto el de asegurar, si se puede, la buena gestión de los ingresos dados en garantía al gobierno del Bey, y que consiguiendo establecer un control serio sobre los productos del fisco, hoy abandonados en manos inhábiles o nada fieles, habríamos dado un gran paso hacia el objetivo que perseguimos. En el caso en que la aplicación de ese principio sea admitida, podríamos confiarle esa responsabilidad a una comisión que tendría su sede en la capital de Túnez.»

En abril de 1868, bajo el dictado de los representantes de Francia, el Bey adoptó un proyecto de decreto de constitución de la Comisión Financiera Internacional. Y quince meses más tarde, después de que Francia hubiera obtenido el consentimiento definitivo del Reino Unido y de Italia, el decreto definitivo fue aprobado por el Bey. El texto del decreto del 5 de julio de 1869 constituye un verdadero acto de sumisión de Túnez a sus acreedores (véase el texto completo en el recuadro). El artículo 9 es particularmente importante ya que indicaba muy claramente que la comisión percibiría todos los ingresos del Estado sin la más mínima excepción. Se agregó que no podría contraerse ningún préstamo sin su acuerdo. El artículo 3 precisaba, ciertamente en términos diplomáticos, que el representante de Francia era el personaje más importante en esa comisión y que era designado por el Emperador de los franceses. El Bey solo debía ratificarlo. Era la Comisión la que establecería el monto exacto de la deuda (art. 5). Desde el punto de vista de los banqueros acreedores era una cuestión fundamental ya que la Comisión reestructuraría la deuda reclamada a Túnez y determinaría si habría o no una reducción de la misma. El artículo 10 era también de importancia fundamental para los banqueros de Francia puesto que preveía que los dos representantes directos de los bancos formaran parte de la Comisión. Efectivamente, cuando se constituyó la Comisión en noviembre de 1869, el sindicato de tenedores de títulos dirigido por el banquero francés Alphonse Pinard obtuvo un representante al igual que el banquero Erlanger. |25| Los acreedores ingleses e italianos tenedores de títulos de la deuda interna estaban también representados.

Decreto del Bey de Túnez instituyendo la Comisión Financiera Internacional

Hemos visto la necesidad para el bien de nuestro reino, de nuestros súbditos y del comercio, organizar una Comisión Financiera Internacional en conformidad con el proyecto del decreto promulgado el 4 de abril del año pasado que fue ratificado por nuestro decreto del 29 de abril siguiente, de la forma:

Art. 1.- La comisión correspondiente a la promulgación de nuestro decreto del 4 de abril de 1868, se reunirá en nuestra capital en el plazo de un mes.

Art. 2.- Esta comisión estará dividida en dos comités diferentes; un comité ejecutivo y un comité de control.

Art. 3.- El comité ejecutivo estará compuesto de la siguiente manera: dos funcionarios de nuestro gobierno nombrados por nosotros mismos, y un inspector de finanzas francés nombrado también por nosotros mismos, y previamente designado por el gobierno francés

Art. 4.- El comité ejecutivo será el encargado de constatar el actual estado de las diversas acreencias que constituyen la deuda del reino, y los recursos con la ayuda de los cuales el gobierno estará en medida de satisfacerla.

Art. 5.- El comité ejecutivo abrirá un registro en el que serán inscriptos todas las deudas contraídas, tanto en el extranjero como en el interior del reino, y que consisten en teskerés o bonos del tesoro, así como obligaciones del empréstito de 1863 y de 1865. Para las deudas que no estarán controladas por contratos públicos, los tenedores de títulos deberán presentarse en un plazo de 2 meses. A este efecto, el comité ejecutivo supervisará que un aviso sea publicado en los diarios de Túnez y del extranjero.

Art. 6.- El comité ejecutivo declarará el deseo de tomar conocimiento de todos los documentos auténticos de las recaudaciones y los gastos, el ministerio de finanzas le proveerá de todos los medios.

Art. 7.- El presupuesto de las recaudaciones será de ese modo contrastado con el de los gastos del gobierno, aumentado en la cifra de la deuda, el comité ejecutivo buscará los medios de establecer un reparto equitativo de los ingresos públicos, teniendo en cuenta, en su justa proporción, todos los intereses, y confeccionará una tabla de ingresos que podrían agregarse al conjunto de las garantías ya atribuidas a los acreedores.

Art. 8.- El comité ejecutivo realizará todos los tratos relativos a la deuda general y le daremos todo el apoyo necesario, para asegurar la ejecución de las medidas tomadas a ese efecto.

Art. 9.- El comité ejecutivo percibirá todos los ingresos del Estado sin excepción alguna y no se podrá emitir ningún bono del tesoro o cualquier otro valor sin el asentimiento de dicho comité, debidamente autorizado por el comité de control; y si el gobierno estuviera obligado, lo que no quiera Dios, a contraer un empréstito, no lo podrá hacer sin la aprobación previa de ambos comités.

Todos los teskerés que se emitirán por la suma afectada por la comisión para gastos del gobierno, serán registrados en nombre de la comisión y llevarán el visado del comité ejecutivo. Esos teskerés no deberán exceder la cifra fijada en el presupuesto de gastos.

Art. 10.- El comité de control estará compuesto de la siguiente manera: dos miembros franceses representantes de los empréstitos de 1863 y 1865; dos miembros ingleses y dos miembros italianos que representan los tenedores de títulos de la deuda interna.

Cada uno de esos delegados recibirá directamente su mandato de los tenedores de títulos de los empréstitos y conversiones de nuestro reino, debidamente prevenidos a ese efecto por nuestros cuidados bajo la supervisión del comité ejecutivo.

Art. 11.- El comité de control conocerá todas las operaciones del comité ejecutivo. Estará encargado de verificarlas y de aprobarlas si hubiera lugar. Su aprobación será necesaria para dar un carácter ejecutorio a las medidas de interés general decretadas por el comité ejecutivo.

Art. 12.- Nuestro primer ministro está encargado de la ejecución del contenido de los once artículos que preceden. Nosotros nombraremos los dos miembros y pediremos el inspector de finanzas francés en el plazo más breve posible

Los doce artículos anteriores fueron escritos en el Palacio de La Goulette el 16 de Rabia El-Avel de 1286 (5 de julio de 1869). 

La reestructuración de la deuda tunecina

Una de las tareas principales de la Comisión, la más urgente, consistió en la reestructuración de la deuda. Victor Villet, el inspector de finanzas designado por Francia se puso de lleno en esa tarea. Como ya lo dijimos es, en principio, el personaje principal de la Comisión. En diciembre de 1869, propuso a la Comisión reducir en más de la mitad la deuda evaluada en un monto nominal de 121 millones de francos. La deuda reducida y reestructurada debía ser de unos 56 millones de francos. |26|

Los representantes de los banqueros rechazaron la propuesta del inspector de finanzas y obtuvieron el apoyo de sus gobiernos respectivos, en particular la aprobación del gobierno de Luís Napoleón Bonaparte, muy ligado a las altas finazas francesas. Así que ninguna reducción de la deuda se le concedió a Túnez. Por el contrario, los banqueros obtuvieron que la deuda fuese aumentada hasta los 125 millones de francos. Fue una victoria total para los banqueros representados por los delegados de Alphonse Pinard y de Émile Erlanger. Mientras que éstos habían recomprado en la Bolsa títulos de 1863 y de 1865 (que ellos mismos habían emitido por cuenta de Túnez) a 135 o 150 francos después de haber especulado a la baja, lograron, gracias a la reestructuración de 1870, un intercambio de títulos casi al precio de 500 francos. Concretamente, un viejo título de 1863 o de 1865, con un valor de 500 francos, lo habían comprado a 150 francos, por ejemplo, y lo cambiaron por un nuevo título de 500 francos. ¡Una verdadera ganga!

Cómo lo escribía el historiador Nicolas Stoskopf, se trataba de ajustar un poco más el nudo corredizo de la cuerda que el propio Bey se había puesto al cuello. Realizando un balance de la acción del banquero A. Pinard que dirigía el sindicato de tenedores de títulos, N. Stoskopf escribió: «Desde 1867, la bancarrota tunecina permite pasar a la etapa siguiente. En las agrias negociaciones y las ocultas maniobras que siguieron, Pinard no dejó de hacer los beneficios esperados, con un perfecto cinismo con respecto a los ahorradores franceses, como de la suerte de los tunecinos, pero con una eficacia temible de un financiero excepcional que le permite finalmente recuperar, cuando se produce la unificación de la deuda tunecina en 1870, trece millones por los cinco que había comprometido por el sindicato.» |27|

Las autoridades tunecinas fueron activamente cómplices de ese pillaje de los recursos públicos. El primer ministro Mustafá Khasnadar, otros dignatarios del régimen, sin olvidar a otros tunecinos ricos que poseían una gran cantidad de títulos de la deuda interna, todos pudieron hacer enormes beneficios mediante la reestructuración. Como en la gran mayoría de los países, las clases dominantes locales fueron solidarias con los acreedores internacionales puesto que esas clases sacaban una parte de sus ingresos del reembolso de la deuda. Era cierto en el siglo XIX y lo sigue siendo en el siglo XXI.

Los éxitos de los banqueros a costa del pueblo tunecino

Los banqueros Alphonse Pinard y Émile Erlanger decidieron retirarse de Túnez y se fueron indemnizados y muy satisfechos. Émile Erlanger logró construir un imperio financiero especialmente gracias a sus operaciones en Túnez. Consiguió introducirse en el banco Crédit Mobilier de París y, algunos años más tarde, en la famosa agencia de prensa internacional Havas. |28| Alphonse Pinard, por su lado, prosiguió sus actividades en Francia y en otros lados del mundo, contribuyó a la creación de la Société Générale (uno de los tres principales bancos franceses en la actualidad) así como otro banco que se transformaría en el transcurso del tiempo en BNP Paribas (actualmente el principal banco francés)

Este pasaje de El Capital de Karl Marx publicado en 1867 resume bien el papel de la deuda pública: «El sistema del crédito público, es decir, de la deuda del estado, cuyos orígenes descubríamos ya en Génova y en Venecia en la Edad Media, se adueñó de toda Europa durante el período manufacturero. (…) La deuda pública, o sea, la enajenación del Estado –absoluto, constitucional o republicano –, imprime su sello a la era capitalista. (…) La deuda pública se convierte en una de las más poderosas palancas de la acumulación originaria. (…) Con la deuda pública, surgió un sistema internacional de crédito, detrás del cual se esconde con frecuencia, en tal o cual pueblo, una de las fuentes de la acumulación originaria». |29|

Y agregaba: «Desde el momento mismo de nacer, los grandes bancos, adornados con títulos nacionales, no fueron nunca más que sociedades de especuladores privados que cooperaban con los gobiernos y que, gracias a los privilegios que éstos les otorgaban, estaban en condiciones de adelantarles dinero. (…) la deuda pública ha venido a dar impulso tanto a las sociedades anónimas, al tráfico de efectos negociables de todo género como al agio; en una palabra, a la lotería de la bolsa y a la moderna bancocracia.» |30|

El fracaso de la Comisión Financiera Internacional

Como estaba previsto en el artículo 9 del decreto de creación de la Comisión Financiera Internacional de julio de 1869, sus miembros tuvieron el control de los ingresos del Estado. Sin embargo, la política económica dictada para el reembolso de la deuda desembocó en un estancamiento económico ya que el Estado no realizaba ninguna inversión productiva, ni hacía gastos para estimular la actividad económica y en cambio, aplastaba con los impuestos a los pequeños productores locales, ya fueran rurales o urbanos. En consecuencia, las recaudaciones fiscales no eran suficientes para pagar una deuda de 125 millones de francos.

Los miembros de la Comisión que representaban a los banqueros se retiraron desde el año 1871 puesto que obtuvieron satisfacción, pero no beneficios de los trabajos de la Comisión, que tuvo que hacer frente a las políticas que la propia Comisión dictaba desde 1869. Tal era el fracaso que el primer ministro Mustafá Khasnadar, que ocupaba altos cargos de gobierno desde hacía 36 años, fue sustituido en 1873. Y además se le condenó a arresto domiciliario por los desvíos de fondos y la corrupción de la que fue responsable: finalmente bajo la presión de Francia, su actuación fue condenada.

Kheredine, el reemplazante de Mustafá Khasnadar trató de emprender algunas reformas, pero sin éxito y lo alejaron del cargo en 1876. En este caso particular porque no favorecía lo suficiente a los intereses de las empresas francesas. Kheredine deseaba también obtener una reducción de los intereses de la deuda. Y eso fue demasiado.
La situación de los artesanos tunecinos era desastrosa ya que, de acuerdo a los tratados de libre comercio, no conseguían competir con los productos importados de Europa. Los campesinos sobrevivían. No existía ninguna manufactura importante. La red de ferrocarriles no superaba algunas decenas de kilómetros como Túnez- La Marsa y Túnez- La Goulette. Las calles de la capital no estaban pavimentadas y no había sistema de alcantarillado.

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Artillerie Beylicale


Francia obtuvo luz verde de las otras grandes potencias para quedarse con Túnez

Durante el Congreso de las Naciones celebrado en Berlín en junio de 1878, tanto Alemania como Inglaterra comunicaron a Francia que podía disponer de Túnez como mejor le pareciera.

La Alemania del canciller Otto von Bismarck, que había infligido una derrota humillante a Francia en la guerra de 1870-1871 —se hizo prisionero al emperador Luis Napoleón Bonaparte en Sedam, se conquistó la región de Alsacia-Lorena y se obtuvieron reparaciones de guerra— consideró que era necesario un regalo de consolación para los nuevos dirigentes franceses puesto que el Segundo Imperio había sido reemplazado por la Tercera República. |31| Túnez no representaba nada atrayente para Alemania. Bismarck consideraba que si Francia se concentraba en la conquista de Túnez con su consentimiento, sería menos reivindicativa en lo concerniente a la recuperación de Alsacia-Lorena. Inglaterra, que daba prioridad al Mediterráneo oriental (Chipre, Egipto, Siria…) veía también con buenos ojos que Francia estuviera ocupada con la conquista de Túnez. Lord Salisbury, el representante de Inglaterra declaró a su homólogo francés: «Tomad Túnez, si lo deseáis, Inglaterra no se opondrá y respetará vuestras decisiones. Por otra parte, no podéis dejar Cartago en manos de los bárbaros». |32| El ministro francés del Interior escribió por su parte: «El señor de Bismarck nos ha hecho entender que podríamos tomar Túnez sin que el mismo tuviera nada que decir…». |33| El gobierno francés lo discutió largamente pero no se resolvía pasar a la acción, ya que tenía otras prioridades. Durante ese tiempo, el cónsul francés en Túnez buscaba ocasiones para provocar un paso en falso del Bey que justificara una intervención militar francesa. |34|

Finalmente, el paso a la acción se tomó en 1881 cuando hubo una mayoría en el gobierno francés que se decantó por la conquista de Túnez. El pretexto serían las «exacciones» de la tribu de los Krumir (véase más adelante).

Los banqueros informados de las intenciones del gobierno recompraron masivamente a bajo precio en la bolsa de París los títulos de la deuda tunecina que se vendían a 330 francos en enero de 1881. En la víspera de la intervención francesa, los mismos títulos valían 487 francos (para un valor nominal de 500 francos), o sea un precio al que nunca habían llegado. El razonamiento de los banqueros y de otros financieros era simple: si Francia tomaba el control de Túnez, se reestructuraría de nuevo la deuda y se indemnizaría a los acreedores. Y no estuvieron equivocados: la reestructuración de la deuda tuvo lugar en 1884, durante el segundo mandato de Jules Ferry y se pidió la contribución del Tesoro público para satisfacer a los banqueros.

La agencia Havas que pertenecía al banquero Erlanger, desde 1879, participó en una campaña mediática a favor de la intervención francesa.

Como ya se indicó, la diplomacia francesa no dejó de provocar para que se produjera un incidente o una ocasión que justificara una intervención de Francia. Théodore Roustan, el cónsul de Francia, maniobraba para ello. En mayo de 1880, este cónsul escribía al barón de Courcel, muy influyente en la diplomacia francesa (a partir de 1881 fue embajador en Berlín y en 1884-1885 participó en la conferencia sobre el reparto colonial de África) |35|: «Debemos esperar y preparar nuestros motivos para actuar antes que nuestros medios de acción. La estupidez del gobierno tunecino nos ayudará a hacerlo». El conflicto entre la tribu argelina de los Ouled Nahd y los Krumir tunecinos ofreció la ocasión para lanzar una intervención militar francesa de gran amplitud. Hacia fines de febrero de 1881, a continuación de numerosos diferendos entre las dos tribus, los Ouled Nahd «argelinos» atacaron el campamento de los Krumir «tunecinos». Murieron cinco Ouled Nahd y tres Krumir.

El cónsul francés estaba exultante: «No tendríamos mejor ocasión para actuar aquí y para actuar solos ya que es una cuestión en la cual las otras potencias no tienen nada que ver». Para vengar sus muertos, el 30 y 31 de marzo, de 400 a 500 miembros de la tribu nómada de Krumir atacaron dos veces a la tribu de Ouled Nahd en territorio argelino, pero se vieron rechazados por tropas francesas; en esos combates fueron muertos cinco soldados franceses. |36|

Jules Ferry obtuvo un crédito del parlamento para «restablecer el orden». Aquí vemos cómo Jules Ferry presentaba, de manera totalmente hipócrita y mentirosa, la demanda de crédito de guerra el 11 de abril de 1881 a la Asamblea nacional: «Iremos a Túnez para castigar las fechorías que conocéis, también vamos, al mismo tiempo, para tomar todas las medidas que podrán ser necesarias para impedir que esos hechos se produzcan de nuevo. El gobierno de la República no busca conquistas, no son necesarias (grandes aplausos desde la izquierda y desde el centro); pero recibió en depósito de los gobiernos que la precedieron esa magnifica posesión argelina que Francia glorificó con su sangre y fecundó con sus tesoros. Irá en esta represión militar que comienza hasta el punto que sea necesario para poner a resguardo, en forma seria y duradera, la seguridad y el futuro de esa Francia africana (nuevos aplausos)». |37|

Se enviaron 24.000 soldados contra los Krumir.

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El tratado del Bardo fue validado por una aplastante mayoría en la cámara de diputados francesa. Un solo diputado votó en contra, el valiente socialista Alfred Talandier. |38| Ese tratado del 12 de mayo de 1881 fue firmado por el Bey de Túnez y el gobierno francés. Se instauraba así un protectorado francés en Túnez. Por miedo de que los franceses lo destronasen, ya que tenían en reserva a su hermano Taïeb, el Bey se sometió y confió «al residente general de Francia» todos sus poderes en los ámbitos de las relaciones exteriores, de la defensa del territorio y de la reforma de la administración.

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El tratado del Bardo

Hay que señalar que algunos meses más tarde, Francia, bajo la conducción de Jules Ferry, reforzó su acción militar en Indochina para extender su dominio colonial. Durante el verano de 1881, Ferry hizo votar en la Asamblea nacional créditos para una ofensiva militar en Tonkin. |39| Francia utilizaba de nuevo un pretexto para justificar sus maniobras coloniales.

El ejército francés ocupó Túnez en octubre de 1881 y tomó la ciudad santa de Kairuán a fines de ese mismo mes. |40|

Ante la resistencia de la población y en particular de las tribus tunecinas que se rebelaron, |41| se incrementó la intervención francesa. El cuerpo expedicionario francés aumentó a 50.000 soldados. Francia, por la convención de La Marsa de junio de 1883, despojó al Bey de lo que quedaba de su autoridad e instituyó una administración directa de Francia en el país.

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Première page du Traité du Bardo

Es necesario subrayar que tanto el Tratado del Bardo (1881) como la Convención de La Marsa (1883) contienen disposiciones muy claras con respecto a la deuda como herramienta de sumisión y expoliación. El artículo 7 del Tratado del Bardo decretaba que: «El Gobierno de la República francesa y el Gobierno de Su Alteza el Bey de Túnez se reservan de fijar, de común acuerdo, las bases de una organización financiera de la Regencia, que tenga como función asegurar el servicio de la Deudapública y garantizar los derechos de los acreedores de Túnez.» El artículo 2 de la Convención de La Marsa precisaba: «El Gobierno francés garantizará, en ese momento y bajo las condiciones que le parezcan mejores, un empréstito a emitir por su Alteza el Bey, para la conversión o el reembolso de la deuda consolidada que se eleva a la suma de 125 millones de francos y de la deuda flotante hasta un máximo de 17.550.000 francos. Su Alteza el Bey se prohíbe contraer, en el futuro, ningún empréstito por cuenta de la Regencia sin la autorización del Gobierno francés.»

Conclusión

Podemos afirmar, sin riesgo de equivocarnos, después de este análisis de la irrupción de la deuda en Túnez durante la segunda mitad del siglo xix, que esa deuda era de naturaleza odiosa y que facilitó la dominación colonial del país.

A continuación, no dejó de ser una herramienta importante de dominación y de saqueo de los recursos naturales y humanos de Túnez, y por ello una de las causas fundamentales de su «retraso» y marginación.

Basándose en esta constatación, el pueblo tunecino tiene el derecho de reclamar reparaciones a Francia, que debería recabar la cooperación de sus bancos (por ejemplo BNP Paribas y Société Générale) y de las empresas francesas que aprovecharon la deuda para expoliar al pueblo tunecino.

Por otro lado, las enseñanzas que podemos sacar de este análisis son de gran interés para la comprensión de la situación actual de Túnez.

A imagen de la deuda contraída entre 1863 y 1867, la contraída bajo el régimen de Ben Ali, entre 1987 y 2010 es también fundamentalmente odiosa, y las instituciones financieras internacionales y los acreedores del Norte (en el primer lugar figura Francia) los saben perfectamente, como atestiguan las resoluciones del Senado belga (julio de 2011) y del Parlamento Europeo (mayo de 2012).

Las políticas económicas y sociales puestas en marcha por el poder beilical en el siglo xix para reembolsar su deuda son asombrosamente similares a las fijadas por las condicionalidades del FMIdesde su plan de reestructuración de 1986. |42|

En 1864, el aumento del mejba condujo a una revuelta popular importante. En diciembre de 2010, fue el abandono de las políticas sociales debido a la carga de la deuda lo que condujo a la revolución. Mientras que en 1864, Francia envió buques de guerra para hacer frente a la revuelta, en enero de 2011, propuso al régimen de Ben Ali su ayuda material con el fin de mantener el orden, por medio de la ministra del Interior Michèle Alliot-Marie.

Finalmente, allí donde los acreedores internacionales aprovecharon la situación en el siglo xix para instaurar tratados de libre comercio, la liberalización de los intercambios impuestos a Túnez por la Unión Europea desde 1995 para los productos manufacturados, y que está por extenderse a los productos de la agricultura y la pesca, a los servicios y a los mercados públicos (Acuerdo de libre comercio completo y ampliado –ALECA–) conduce a los mismos efectos desastrosos para la sociedad tunecina.

El derrocamiento del dictador Ben Ali en 2011 no terminó con el sistema deuda. Por el contrario, los gobiernos sucesivos, bajo la presión de los acreedores, no cesan de empujar a Túnez a más endeudamiento.

Al mismo tiempo, la lucha contra la deuda se organiza y se intensifica. Un proyecto de ley sobre una auditoría de la deuda pública externa e interna, desde julio de 1986, fue presentado en junio de 2016 ante la Asamblea de Representantes del Pueblo por unos sesenta diputados, sobre un total de 217.

Túnez no tiene otra elección, para salir del callejón sin salida de la dominación y del subdesarrollo, que romper las cadenas del sistema deuda.

Eric Toussaint

Agradecimientos: 

El autor agradece por sus lecturas y sugestiones a: Mokhtar Ben Afsa, Fathi Chamkhi, Nathan Legrand, Gus Massiah y Claude Quémar
El autor es el único responsable de los posibles errores contenidos en este texto.

Traducción: Griselda Piñero

Notas

|1| El Imperio Otomano conquistó Túnez en 1574

|2| Véase: Georges Corm, 1982 «El endeudamiento de los países en vías de desarrollo: origen y mecanismo», en Sánchez Arnau, J.C., coord. 1982, Deuda externa y desarrollo, Editorial Tercer Mundo, Bogotá, 1982 y Sánchez Arnau J.C.; Corm Georges, Debt and development, Praeger Special Studies, Praeger Publishers inc. Santa Bárbara, California, 1982

|3| En 1830-1840, hubo dos intervenciones militares europeas contra Egipto, una dirigida por el Reino Unido y Francia, y la otra por el Reino Unido y Austria. Véase Éric Toussaint: «La deuda como instrumento para la conquista colonial de Egipto» en http://cadtm.org/La-deuda-como-inst….

|4| Mohammed es-Sadok reinó entre 1859 y 1882, y fue el Bey que condujo a Túnez a la dominación francesa directa.

|5| Los banqueros de Londres y de París prestaron 3 millones de libras a los Estados sudistas durante la guerra de secesión norteamericana (1861-1865).

|6| Frédéric Émile d’Erlanger, nacido el 19 de junio de 1832 en Fráncfort del Meno y fallecido el 22 de mayo de 1911 en Versalles, fue un banquero de origen alemán entre los más notables de la plaza financiera de París y Londres durante la segunda mitad del siglo xix. Se le consideró el inventor de los préstamos de alto riesgo, en países en vías de desarrollo, que se multiplicaron en las plazas europeas hasta el escándalo de los empréstitos rusos. Entre ellos, los empréstitos sobre el algodón norteamericano en plena guerra de secesión o las emisiones de títulos para el Bey tunecino.

En 1853, el joven alemán Friedrich Emil Erlanger tenía 19 años y ya se mostraba particularmente dotado: el gobierno de Otón 1º de Grecia lo reclutó como cónsul general y agente financiero en la plaza de París. También negociaba para otras cortes reales diversos empréstitos. La reina María II de Portugal le otorgó como agradecimiento el título de barón, que se vio confirmado por el duque de Saxe-Meiningen. Durante un viaje de placer por Egipto, se cruzó con Ferdinand de Lesseps y le ofreció su ayuda para encontrar financiación para el canal de Suez.

El Banco Erlanger que dirigía en París así como su filial londinense, organizó en 1865 la suscripción del «empréstito Erlanger», permitiendo a los compradores de hacerse pagar con algodón de los Estados confederados del Sur. Esto sucedía en la época de la guerra de Secesión, con la suposición de la victoria del Sur. Esta apuesta fue remunerada con un tipo de interés relativamente elevado para la época, del 7 % por año. El empréstito era también negociable en Londres. Durante la guerra de Secesión, los Estados del Sur habían organizado una retención del algodón, que provocó una cotización histórica de 1,89 dólares la libra, que sigue sin igualarse dos siglos después. Esa alza representaba multiplicar por 20 la cotización en pocos meses, pero los industriales británicos habían tenido tiempo de constituir stocks. En 1870, cinco años después del fin de la guerra, el algodón norteamericano había llegado casi a su nivel de producción de antes de la guerra, y el país permanecería líder mundial del algodón hasta 1931, como lo había sido desde 1803. Sin embargo, los tenedores de esos títulos jamás fueron reembolsados.

Al mismo tiempo, el Banco Erlanger realizaba otra operación de envergadura gracias a los famosos empréstitos de 1863 y 1865 lanzados por el gobierno tunecino, bajo la dirección del primer ministro del Bey, Mustafá Khasnadar. Esa operación, por su imprevisto fracaso, contribuyó a la ruina de las finanzas tunecinas y aceleró la instauración del régimen del Protectorado francés.
El Banco Erlanger también financió en Suiza la perforación del túnel del Simplon, que unía el Valais con el Valle de Aosta, siendo, en esa época, el túnel ferroviario más importante de Europa. Ese banco familiar prosiguió su actividad en diferentes países.

Fuentes: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8…’Erlanger Véase también en ingles: http://global.britannica.com/biogra…   y https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3…’Erlanger. Hay que señalar que la biografía de este personaje en la Wikipedia en inglés es un panegírico muy dudoso, mientras que en la Wikipedia en francés es bastante correcta. No existe en la Wikipedia en castellano

|7| También se cuestionaban otras medidas tomadas por el Bey: la nueva constitución dictada por el cónsul francés en 1861, la reforma de la justicia que, en general, la encarecía y la hacía menos accesible a las tribus nómades.

|8| Jean Ganiage, 1959. Les origines du Protectorat français en Tunisie, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1960 et Maison tunisienne de l’édition, Tunis, 1968. Citado en la página 193.

|9Idem. p. 195.

|10| Finalmente la mejba que antes de la revuelta era de 36 piastras y que había sido aumentada a 72 piastras en 1864 con el fin de pagar la deuda, fue reducida en 1865 a 20 piastras.

|11| Ali ben Ghedahem, jefe de la tribu de los Majer de la región de Kasserine, es una de las figuras emblemáticas de la revuelta que surgió a partir de marzo-abril de 1864 contra el poder beilical. Después de haber negociado una suspensión de las hostilidades en julio de 1864 a cambio de importantes concesiones del Bey, Ghedahem retomó las armas en el otoño. Fue encarcelado en 1886 y murió, probablemente asesinado, en una mazmorra en La Goulette en 1867.

|12| El cónsul francés, Charles Beauval, plenipotenciario de Francia en Túnez, jugó a dos bandas. Mientras que oficialmente. Francia respaldaba al Bey, el cónsul negociaba con el principal líder de la revuelta, Ali ben Ghedahem, en caso de que se decidiera derrocar al Bey. La correspondencia fue puesta pública por Ali ben Ghedahem en agosto de 1864 y denunciada por el cónsul británico que protestó contra el doble juego de Francia. Véase Jean Ganiage, op.cit., pp. 212-213 y 222.

|13| Jean Ganiage, op. cit., pp. 227-228

|14| En realidad la suma efectivamente transferida al Tesoro tunecino fue inferior, y no superó los 18 millones de francos. Es lo que afirmaba Victor Villet, inspector de finanzas francés en un informe del 19 de mayo de 1872.

|15Semaine financière, 25 de marzo de 1865.

|16| Citado por Jean Ganiage, op. cit., p.248.

|17| Véase http://fathichamkhi.over-blog.com/a…

|18| En lo que concierna a Alphonse Pinard véase: http://www.persee.fr/doc/hes_0752-5…. Le Comptoir national d’escompte de París (CNEP), dirigido por Alphonse Pinard, es uno de los cuatro bancos que originan el BNP Paribas. Fundado en 1848, se llamó Comptoir d’escompte de Paris (CEP) desde 1853 hasta 1889. En ese año este banco estuvo involucrado en uno de los mayores escándalos financieros de l historia bancaria francesa: el escándalo de Panamá. A. Pinard también tuvo un papel activo en la creación de la Société Générale. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compt…’escompte_de_Paris

|19| Alexander Nahum Sack. 1927. Les effets des transformations des États sur leurs dettes publiques et autres obligations financières, Recueil Sirey, Paris. Véase el documento completo en descarga libre en la web del CADTM: http://cadtm.org/IMG/pdf/Alexander_… Para ejemplos concretos de la aplicación de la doctrina de la deuda odiosa, véase https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuda… y http://cadtm.org/La-posicion-del-CA…

|20| Para hacerse una idea de la magnitud de los desvíos: la fortuna del ministro tesorero del Bey, el caïdNessim, que huyó de la capital tunecina en plena revuelta, el 8 de junio de 1864, y se instaló en París viviendo con el mayor lujo, fue evaluada en cerca de 17 millones de francos, el equivalente a un año y medio de los ingresos del Estado tunecino. Véase J. Ganiage, op.cit., p.197. La fortuna amasada por Mustafá Khasnader era aún más grande.

|21http://global.britannica.com/biogra…

|22| Véase https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segun…. El autor volverá sobre este tema en un próximo artículo dedicado a la deuda de Latinoamérica. Véase Carlos Marichal, 1989, Historia de la deuda externa de América Latina, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1992.

|23| Jean Ganiage, op. cit., p. 240

|24| Jean Ganiage, op. cit., p. 260

|25| Jean Ganiage, op. cit., p. 313.

|26| Jean Ganiage, op. cit., pp. 319-320.

|27| Nicolas Stoskopf, «Alphonse Pinard et la révolution bancaire du Second Empire». Histoire, économie et société, 1998, 17º año, n°2. pp. 299-317. Disponible en:  http://www.persee.fr/doc/hes_0752-5… (Consultado el 22 de mayo de 2016).

|28| En 1879, la Agencia Havas fue comprada por el barón Émile d’Erlanger y transformada en sociedad anónima con un capital de 8,5 millones de francos. Véase https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havas

|29| Karl Marx, El Capital, Libro I, capítulo xxiv: La llamada acumulación originaria, sección 6: Génesis del capital industrial, consultado en http://aristobulo.psuv.org.ve/wp-co…

|30Idem.

|31https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terce…

|32| Carta del ministro francés Waddington a su embajador en Londres Georges d’Harcourt, el 21 de julio de 1878.

|33| Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine (1871-1900), IV, pp. 388-89.

|34| Véase Jean Ganigae, op. cit., pp.436-437

|35| Véase: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpho…

|36| Véase: Ministère de la Guerre, L’expédition militaire en Tunisie. 1881-1882, éditeur militaire Henri-Charles Lavauzelle, Paris, 1898, p. 10 y siguientes. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bp…

|37Journal officiel, 12 de abril de 1881, p.. 850.

|38| Véase su interesante biografía en: http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/…. Se debe señalar que este diputado también se opuso a la intervención de Francia en Tonkin algunos meses más tarde.

|39| Véase varias webs: https://www.google.es/#q=conquista+…

|40| Se encontrarán varios discursos de Jules Ferry pronunciados a partir de noviembre de 1881 e informes d debates parlamentarios relativos a la intervención en Túnez en: https://archive.org/stream/discours…

|41| Para hacerse una idea de la resistencia tunecina, véase la parte dedicada a la intervención militar francesa en https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conqu… y castellano se puede consultar la historia de Túnez en https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo…

|42| Véase la carta de intención enviada por el gobierno tunecino al FMI el 2 de mayo de 2016: http://www.imf.org/External/NP/LOI/…

Bibliografía:

CORM, Georges, 1982 «El endeudamiento de los países en vías de desarrollo: origen y mecanismo», en Sánchez Arnau, J.C., coord. 1982, Deuda externa y desarrollo, Editorial Tercer Mundo, Bogotá, 1982 y Sánchez Arnau J.C.; Corm Georges, Debt and development, Praeger Special Studies, Praeger Publishers inc. Santa Bárbara, California, 1982

GANIAGE, Jean, 1959 Les origines du Protectorat français en Tunisie, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1960 et Maison tunisienne de l’édition, Tunis, 1968, 580 p.

LUXEMBURGO, Rosa, 1913, La Acumulación de capital descargar en pdf en http://grupgerminal.org/?q=system/f… (Ediciones internacionales Sedov, Germinal)

MANDEL, Ernest, 1972, El capitalismo tardío, Ediciones ERA, México, 1979

MARICHAL, Carlos, 1989, Historia de la deuda externa de América Latina, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1992.

MARX, Karl, 1867, El Capital, Libro I, capítulo xxiv: La llamada acumulación originaria, sección 6: Génesis del capital industrial, consultado en http://aristobulo.psuv.org.ve/wp-co…

Ministère des affaires étrangères de la France. 1876. Décret d’institution de la caisse de la dette publique d’Egypte… et 6 autres décrets
relatifs au Trésor et à la dette, Paris, 1876. 30 pages. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bp… consultado el 14 de mayo de 2016

Ministère des affaires étrangères de la France. 1898. Arrangement financier avec la Grèce : travaux de la Commission internationale chargée
de la préparation du projet, Paris, 1898, 223 pages. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bp…

P.H.X. [Paul Henri d’Estournelles de Constant].La politique française en Tunisie : le Protectorat et ses origines (1854-1891). Paris: Plon, 1891. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bp… Reeditado en 2002: Paul d’Estournelles de Constant, La conquête de la Tunisie. Récit contemporain couronné par l’Académie française, éd. Sfar, Paris, 2002.

REINHARDT, Carmen y ROGOFF, Kenneth, Esta vez es distinto: Ocho siglos de necedad financiera, S. L. Fondo de Cultura Económica de España, Madrid, 2011

REINHARDT, Carmen M., y SBRANCIA, M. Belen. 2015. The Liquidation of Government Debt. Economic Policy30, nº. 82: p 291-333

SACK, Alexander Nahum. 1927. Les effets des transformations des États sur leurs dettes publiques et autres obligations financières, Recueil Sirey, Paris.

STOSKOPF, Nicolas. Alphonse Pinard et la révolution bancaire du Second Empire. Histoire, économie et société, 1998, 17º año, n°2. pp. 299-317 [en internet]. Disponible sur : http://www.persee.fr/doc/hes_0752-5… (Consultado el 21/05/2016).

Toussaint, Éric. 2002. La bolsa o la vida. La finanzas contra los pueblos, Tercera Prensa-Hirugarren Prentsa, S.L., Donosita-San Sebastián, 2002

TOUSSAINT, Éric. 2016. «Grecia nació con una deuda odiosa bajo el brazo», http://cadtm.org/Grece-nacio-con-un…

TOUSSAINT, Éric. 2016. «Grèce: La continuidad de la servidumbre mediante la deuda, desde finales del siglo XIX hasta la Segunda Guerra Mundial» http://cadtm.org/Grecia-La-continui…

TOUSSAINT, Éric. 2016 «La deuda como instrumento para la conquista colonial de Egipto» http://cadtm.org/La-deuda-como-inst…

Van KRIEKEN, G.S. 1976. Khayral-Dîn et la Tunisie (1850-1881), Leiden, E.J.Brill. 325 pages.

WESSELING, Henry L. Divide y vencerás: el reparto de África, 1880-1914, RBA Libros, Barcelona, 2010 (Primera edición en neerlandés en 1991)

Eric Toussaint es maître de conférence en la Universidad de Lieja, es el portavoz de CADTM Internacional y es miembro del Consejo Científico de ATTAC Francia. Es autor de diversos libros, entre ellos: Procès d’un homme exemplaire, Ediciones Al Dante, Marsella, 2013; Una mirada al retrovisor: el neoliberalismo desde sus orígenes hasta la actualidad, Icaria, 2010; La Deuda o la Vida (escrito junto con Damien Millet) Icaria, Barcelona, 2011; La crisis global, El Viejo Topo, Barcelona, 2010; La bolsa o la vida: las finanzas contra los pueblos, Gakoa, 2002. Es coautor junto con Damien Millet del libro AAA, Audit, Annulation, Autre politique, Le Seuil, París, 2012. Este último libro ha recibido el premio Prix du livre politique, otorgado por la Feria del libro político de Lieja.Ultimo livro : Bancocracia Icaria Editorial, Barcelona 2015. Es coordinador de las publicaciones
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The prospect of Hillary Clinton being President of the United States of America is one to fill our minds with dread concerning the likely posture of Washington in foreign affairs should she ever attain the Oval Office. There is no doubt she would continue or even increase the intensity of Washington’s military confrontations with China and Russia – and enjoy smacking the wrists of smaller countries whose actions might displease her. Indeed her castigation might go further, even to the extent of rejoicing in the murder of national leaders such as President Gaddafi of Libya, about whom she laughed «We came. We saw. He died».

There is no doubt that under her reign the US military presence around the world would expand and that there would not be closure of any of the armed forces’ bases surrounding China and Russia, or the slightest decrease in size or aggressive posture of the US nuclear-armed fleets that roam the seas and oceans.

Drone assassinations will continue and more innocent people like that poor taxi driver in Pakistan will be killed by US Hellfire missiles guided by gleeful techno-cretins who move control sticks and prod buttons to play barbaric video games from their comfortable killing couches in drone-control bases.

Killing Taxi Drivers for Freedom

To remind you: on May 21 a taxi driver called Mohammad Azam was earning his tiny daily wage by picking up passengers who crossed the Iranian border into Pakistan. Sometimes he would take them only to nearby villages, but that day he picked up a client who wanted to go to the city of Quetta, eight hours drive away. He drove off in his Toyota Corolla, and a few hours later, when he stopped for a rest, the Pentagon’s Hellfires struck and blasted the car to twisted shards of metal – and reduced Azam and his customer to smoking corpses.

Another case of «We came. We saw. They died».

Azam’s passenger was the brutal Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, travelling under a false identity. His sought-for anonymity didn’t do him much good, however, because while he was in Iran or – more likely – when he was going through border crossing examination on the Pakistan side, a US-paid agent planted a chip on him that could be tracked by the missile-shooting video-gamers.

Azam didn’t know Mullah Mansour and was not associated with the Taliban or any other such organisation. He was an entirely innocent man trying to earn enough money to feed his family – his wife, four children and a crippled brother who stayed with them.

But Azam was killed by the same US Hellfire missiles that killed Mullah Mansoor.

The Pentagon stated that «Mansur has been an obstacle to peace and reconciliation between the Government of Afghanistan and the Taliban, prohibiting Taliban leaders from participating in peace talks with the Afghan government that could lead to an end to the conflict». So they killed him. And they also killed the taxi driver Mohammad Azam.

If a person in a foreign country that can’t retaliate to drone strikes is declared an enemy of the United States there is no question of arrest, charge and trial. They are killed by a drone missile strike, personally authorised by the President.

In 2013 President Obama announced that «the United States will use lethal force only against a target that poses a continuing, imminent threat to US persons». He stressed that there must be «near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed», and that «the United States respects national sovereignty and international law».

But the US president officially assassinated two people in a country whose prime minister said bluntly that the drone attack was a gross violation of national sovereignty. The White House and the Pentagon might – just might – be able to convince a War Crimes Tribunal that their killing of Mullah Mansur was a boon and a blessing to men. But how could they claim that their murder of the taxi driver Azam was justified? When did it become «respectful of international law» to deliberately slaughter a taxi driver?

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, declared that the assassination of Mansoor «sends a clear message to the world that we will continue to stand with our Afghan partners as they work to build a more stable, united, secure and prosperous Afghanistan». Which was no doubt solace to the widow and three children of driver Azam when his hideously charred fragmented corpse was delivered next day.

People like Obama and Kerry and Clinton and countless millions of others could not care less about the smashing, flashing, hideously agonising death of the innocent taxi driver Azam. The video-gamers had killed yet another totally innocent non-combatant, but no doubt they slept soundly on the night that Azam’s children began to realise their terrible loss.

Three weeks after the drone murder of Azam the taxi driver there was a massacre of 49 people in the US city of Orlando. It was horrible. Much (but far from all) of the world was aghast, and there was emotion displayed in Europe and North America, with candle-lit vigils, solemn silences of respect in parliaments and other demonstrations of sympathy and solidarity.

The day before the Orlando killings it was reported that «at least 30 people were killed after Islamic State militants fired at civilians trying to flee the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Most of the casualties were women and children who were trying to escape to reach the Amiriyat Al-Fallujah refugee camp». The slaughter of innocent human beings also continues in Libya and Syria and Afghanistan. Countless thousands have died – and there hasn’t been a western candle lit in sorrowful commemoration of one single Iraqi, Libyan, Syrian or Afghan in wars that are entirely the fault of Western powers.

Western governments are highly selective in displaying disapproval and grief following killings, be they mass or individual. It could hardly be expected that the US assassination of a Pakistani taxi driver would attract the slightest sympathy or censure.

The murder-by-drone of taxi driver Azam by the Pentagon’s video-game missile managers could be well summed up by Hillary Clinton’s happy rejoicing about the murder of President Gaddafi during the US-NATO blitz on Libya, when she laughingly declared that «We came. We saw. He died».

And thinking about the future… Would you be surprised if in twenty years or so one of the children of taxi driver Azam were to take up a gun and kill Americans?

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Seddique Mateen, the father of the Orlando, Florida nightclub shooter Omar Mateen and self-styled leader of a pro-Taliban Afghan government-in-exile in Florida, is emblematic of the American policy that permits extremist propaganda operatives to be nurtured on US soil. Since the Cold War era, the US Central Intelligence Agency has exceled in finding the most extreme Cubans, Eastern Europeans, Afghanis, Uighurs, and others to concoct and broadcast incendiary propaganda on airwaves funded by the US government.

As the late ABC News and Christian Science Monitor journalist and pre-eminent Middle East expert John Cooley so correctly observed in his book, «Payback: America’s Long War in the Middle East», when the United States replaced Britain and France as the major Western power player in the Middle East, it was repeatedly paid back for «poor judgement and often disastrous policy errors». One of the most disastrous policy errors was the decision by the Jimmy Carter administration to provide weapons and other support to some of the most radical Islamist «holy warriors» in Afghanistan. Soon, these Afghan radicals were supplemented by «Arab Legion» jihadists cobbled together from terrorist cells in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations set the groundwork for radicalized veterans of the jihadist military campaign against the Soviet Union and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan to establish a foothold in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East. For an entire decade, the Central Intelligence Agency’s Operation Cyclone saw to it that extreme jihadists, whose only commonality with the United States was fervent anti-Communism, were ferried to staging areas in northwestern Pakistan and safe zones inside Afghanistan to take on the Soviet and Afghan forces. Funds from the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim countries were funneled to Osama Bin Laden’s and Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Maktab Khadamat al-Mujahidin al-‘Arab (Arab Afghan Services Bureau) or MAK to recruit their jihadist Arab Legion from the Middle East and North Africa.

US Propaganda Operations Attract Extremist Families

The radical Taliban established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996. The Taliban welcomed their old ally in the war against the Soviets, Bin Laden, to move his al-Qaeda organization to Afghanistan. The Taliban, al-Qaeda, and various radical jihadist factions in Afghanistan had all benefited from the short-sighted policy of Washington to arm these groups to the teeth without having to worry about the «blowback» that experts like Cooley, but very few others, found so problematic.

Seddique Mateen arrived in the United States during a time when Ronald Reagan considered the Afghan mujahidin to be «freedom fighters» who were fighting «oppression» in the same spirit that George Washington fought British colonizers. Reagan’s complete ignorance permitted individuals like Mateen to find political sanctuary and support in the United States, a country from which he and his fellow travelers could promulgate their radical and antiquated views.

The jihadist attacks on the Boston MarathonFort Hood, Texas; a military recruiting station in Tennessee; a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California; and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando can all be laid at the feet of America’s insane dalliances with jihadists in wars beginning with the Afghan campaign and extending to the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, the destabilization of Libya and Syria, and aiding and abetting jihadist forces fighting Russia in the Caucasus region, including Chechnya. It is «blowback» in the truest sense of the word.

The uncle of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Ruslan Tsarni (aka Tsarnaev), is linked to the CIA. Tsarni was married to the daughter of Graham Fuller, one of the chief CIA architects of the radicalization of Muslims to act as radical foot soldiers for the United States, whether in Afghanistan against the Soviets or in the Caucasus against Russia. Mir Seddique, aka Mir Seddique Mateen, is a self-styled leader of a government-in-exile of Afghanistan that is based in Port St. Lucie, Florida. He has called for the overthrow of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and trials for him and his predecessor, Hamid Karzai.

America’s commitment to the «propaganda war» has also enabled jihadists to spread their radical message, often via US government-subsidized airwaves and satellite feeds. Seddique Mateen operated a Florida not-for-profit company called «The Durand Jirga, Inc». For years, the CIA subsidized Cuban radio and television stations in Florida, for example, Radio and TV Marti, which have done nothing but ratchet up ill will toward the government and people of Cuba. These efforts sometimes resulted in acts of terror committed by expatriate right-wing Cubans in the United States against Cuban and other targets. The template for Afghan and other Muslim expatriates in the United States who are involved in CIA and VOA propaganda is no different from that involving the Cubans, and, in the more distant past, Eastern European refugees and defectors. Radical messages are «de rigueur» for such elements of society.

US propaganda institutions have been rife with fraud, waste, and abuse. As pointed out by columnist Fulton Lewis, Jr. in 1958, Radio Free Europe had well in excess of 2000 employees, who, when not belching forth unverified news copy directed at Eastern Europe, were lolling around their offices waiting for their next paychecks. Lewis wrote, Radio Free Europe «is a ridiculous, wasteful, juvenile exhibition of futility to provide jobs for what is mainly a horde of free-loaders». The free-loaders of the Cold War have today morphed into the likes of Seddique Mateen and his band of radicals busy blathering their incoherent messages in Dari, Urdu, Pashto, Farsi, Uighur, Chechen, Arabic, and Kurdish, all at the American taxpayers’ expense.

The elder Mateen also hosted a television program called the «Durand Jirga Show». The show is broadcast on the Afghan satellite network «Payam-e-Afghan», which is headquartered in Los Angeles and broadcasts in Pashto and Persian. Los Angeles is the home to a number of CIA- and VOA-subsidized satellite broadcasts in Arabic to the Middle East and in Farsi to Iran.

Seddique Mateen’s own operations are clearly part of a pro-Taliban network of Afghan and Pakistani propagandists who have used television and radio networks funded by the CIA-influenced Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to spread their messages to audiences throughout the world.

Mateen claimed he runs his own intelligence network. However, this network appears to consist of his colleagues who are involved in South Asia’s propaganda war using satellite programs broadcast in Pashto – major languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan – Mateen’s own broadcast language-of-choice Dari, and Urdu. The BBG’s attempts at winning over the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan are considered major failures and a waste of taxpayers’ funds.

Even after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States, the VOA’s Pashto service gave a propaganda platform to the Afghan Taliban.

After the September 11 attack, Spozhmai Maiwandi, the director of the Voice of America’s Pashtun service, jokingly nicknamed «Kandahar Rose» by her colleagues, aired favorable reports on the Taliban, including a controversial interview with Taliban leader Mullah Omar. It should not be surprising, therefore, that Seddique Mir Mateen’s own views side with those of the Taliban. The presence of a number of pro-Taliban Afghan-Americans in the United States was facilitated by the CIA’s support for the mujahidin cause in the Afghan jihadist war with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Even Afghan-American diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations, served as a key interlocutor between the Taliban government of Afghanistan and the UNOCAL oil company in Houston in the late 1990s. Today, those links serve Khalilzad and the CIA well at the CIA-linked Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, where Khalilzad serves as a counselor.

Some 60 percent of the comments on the VOA’s Pashto language service’s Ashna TV website praised Omar Mateen and his actions in Orlando. And the American taxpayers fund this activity through their financial support for the VOA and the BBG. And, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton championed the expansion of these broadcast services. In 2011, Clinton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that her department needed additional funds for the propaganda war. She said,

 «During the Cold War we did a great job in getting America’s message out. After the Berlin Wall fell we said, ‘Okay, fine, enough of that, we are done,’ and unfortunately we are paying a big price for it… Our private media cannot fill that gap».

The radical messages broadcast by Payame Afghan and Ashna TV are the results of Mrs Clinton’s efforts to expand US propaganda broadcasting. For the CIA, keeping expatriates like Seddique Mir Mateen and his pro-Taliban colleagues at the VOA on the government dole is to ensure a ready supply of interlocutors and agents-of-influence are maintained inside radical circles.

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Late Thursday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported, 51 State Department officials signed a statement condemning U.S. policy in Syria in which they repeatedly call for “targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat the Islamic State.”

“In other words,” as Zero Hedge summarized,

“over 50 top ‘diplomats’ are urging to eliminate [Syrian Pres. Bashar al] Assad in order to ‘defeat ISIS’, the same ISIS which top US ‘diplomats’ had unleashed previously in order to … eliminate Assad.”

This gordian knot created by United States foreign policy — and intensified by that same policy — means not only could war with Syria be on the horizon, but if that happens, the U.S. could be facing a far more serious threat.

While discontented officials used what’s known as the “Dissent Channel” — “an official forum that allows employees to express opposing views,” State Department spokesman John Kirby explained in the WSJ — Saudi government officials employed more direct means to press their interests with the U.S. in Syria.

In a meeting with President Obama on Friday, Saudi foreign minister Adel al Jubair asserted, “Saudi Arabia supports a more aggressive military approach in Syria to get Assad to agree to a political solution,” as CBS’ Mark Knoller tweeted.

Of course, this meeting and the push for increased military force couldn’t be more timely to drum up public support, as a heated national debate has ensued following the deadly attack on an Orlando nightclub purportedly carried out by Omar Mateen — who pledged loyalty to ISIS as he killed 49 people and wounded over 50 others.

Despite the CIA’s report acknowledging it found no tangible connectionsbetween Mateen and the so-called Islamic state — also released on Friday — the narrative concerning his ISIS ties saturated mainstream headlinesfor days, almost certainly cementing the link in the public’s mind.

Disgruntled politicians eager to overthrow Assad — thus also carrying out Saudi goals — can now facilely flip the script to assert deposing the Syrian government is necessary in the fight against everyone’s enemy, the Islamic State.

“Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh [ISIS, etc.], even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the WSJ reported the dissenting cable stated.

But concerns about bloating ISIS’ following borders on comical, except for the potential waterfall of repercussions from carrying out targeted strikes on the Syrian government, considering the U.S. government, itself, once expressed the desire for the rise of an Islamic State to aid in the overthrow of — you guessed it — Assad.

According to declassified documents obtained by Judicial Watch last year:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

Former Director of National Intelligence and retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, however, spoke to Al Jazeera about this ill-fated, notorious strategical blunder.

“You’re on record as saying that the handling of Syria by this administration has been a mistake. Many people would argue that the U.S. actually saw the rise of ISIL coming and turned a blind eye, or even encouraged as a counterpoint to Assad,” journalist Mehdi Hasan prefaced his query, adding,“The U.S. saw the ISIL caliphate coming and did nothing.”

Flynn responded, “Yeah, I think that we — where we missed the point. I mean, where we totally blew it, I think, was in the very beginning.”

Besides backing and blessings from the Saudi government for aggression on the Syrian front, dissent among U.S. officials couldn’t be more imperative in their eyes, because, as the WSJ reported:

The internal cable may be an attempt to shape the foreign policy outlook for the next administration, the official familiar with the document said. President Barack Obama has balked at taking military action against Mr. Assad, while the Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton has promised a more hawkish stance against the Syrian leader. Republican candidate Donald Trump has said he would hit Islamic State hard but has also said he would be prepared to work with Russia and Syria.

In fact, as Zero Hedge also noted, an albeit contested report from earlier this week claimed Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made comments including “a claim that Riyadh has provided 20 percent of the total funding to” Clinton’s campaign.

Politicians and officials, in other words, are fast aligning a narrative touting the need to wage war with Syria in order to have it carried out by the candidate they assume will next take the White House.

And despite being a risky move in its own right — not to mention a potentially superficial, if not muddying, solution to an almost solely U.S.-created problem — ramping up military airstrikes in Syria could quite literally spark war with Russia.

“The Russian Air Force bombed U.S.-trained rebels in southern Syria not once, but twice Thursday, and the second wave of attacks came after the U.S. military called Russia on an emergency hotline to demand that it stop,” an unnamed defense official with knowledge of the situation told Fox News.

Russia has repeatedly warned against U.S. moves to oust Assad, which President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, reiterated following the tense situation Thursday and the report calling for increased military targeting of the Syrian government saying, it “wouldn’t help a successful fight against terrorism and could plunge the region into total chaos.”

As recently as February, Saudi Arabia proposed sending its own troops to join the fight against ISIS — which Russia wholly condemned. As head of the State Duma committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov, warned“Syria has to give official consent, to invite, otherwise it will be a war.”

Now, it appears, that war might be closer than ever.

Syria doesn’t constitute the only arena of contention between the U.S. and Russia. As Anti-Media reported this week, continued buildup of NATO forces along the old Cold War foe’s borders in the Balkans and Poland — and particularly also in the Black Sea — has provoked Russia sufficiently enough for officials to caution the move might amount to aggression.

“This is not NATO’s maritime space and it has no relation to the alliance,”Russia’s director of European affairs told Interfax.

Nonetheless, the U.S. and E.U. have proffered a policy whereby defense of its installations on foreign soil is being carried out under the cloak of the NATO alliance — possibly with the intent of posturing dominance in the region to create a buffer zone for operations in Syria.

Pipelines through Syria would specifically allow oil and natural gas to flow to the European Union, which currently sources that fuel primarily from Russia. In other words, if Russia wants to defend its profitable relationship with the E.U., it must defend against the U.S.-led, Saudi-supported overthrow of its Syrian ally, Assad.

Meanwhile, civilians in Syria have been treated like cannon fodder and are fleeing for their lives — but the intensifying geopolitical maneuvers appear more likely than ever to have brought us all to the brink of a third world war.

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Against the backdrop of the numerous discussions of the political agenda, appearance, and vocabulary of the candidates running in the American presidential election, there is practically no demand for one topic: what is the class nature and mass social base of each politician?

This approach seems quite natural for the right-wing and liberal media, but why is this topic completely alien to the left? The reason seems to be that the answers we would get if we consider this issue seriously will not be palatable for everyone on the left. For many American intellectuals, the provocative and politically incorrect statements by Donald Trump have become another ideological excuse allowing these intellectuals to express a “critical support” for the existing order, embodied in Hillary Clinton.

The fact that Hillary is the candidate of financial capital and that she intends to carry out an extremely aggressive foreign policy is not a secret to anyone. But all this is much less important than political correctness. After all, Hillary never allows herself to make statements insulting any minority, or rather, not in the past two decades, when political correctness became a norm of conduct in Washington.

Against this backdrop, the accusations of Donald Trump of “fascism” have become a constant refrain of the Clinton campaign. Paradoxically, these accusations are not directed against Trump himself, but rather against Bernie Sanders and his supporters. Since Trump is the “absolute evil”, everyone should unite around the “lesser evil” represented by Hillary, while the senator from Vermont, who stands in the way of this consolidation, has to leave the scene.

It is telling that such sentiment is expressed not only by the well-known economist Paul Krugman, who suddenly forgot all of his harsh statements condemning the neo-liberal policies, put in place by Democrats, but also by Noam Chomsky, who is undoubtedly a moral authority for the left. The difference between Krugman and Chomsky is, of course, enormous. The first is clearly hoping for a post in the new administration. His aggressive attack on Sanders’ campaign and its supporters have already caused a scandal and undermined the reputation of the economist. Chomsky, on the contrary, constantly expresses his respect and sympathy for Sanders, but reiterates that in the name of the fight against Trump will have to support Clinton, no matter how disgusting her policies are, and no matter how horrible would be the consequences of such choice.

In fact, the discussion is about how to maintain and increase current dominant evil for the sake of preventing certain, hypothetical evil, about which we do not know anything other than we ourselves have declared it to be something obviously worse.

The point is not only the moral side of the issue. Critically-minded intellectuals have largely turned into hostages of the existing system, and not just institutionally, since they are part of the system one way or another, but what is far worse, intellectually. While proclaiming the utopias and “alternatives”, they are not able to think in terms of practical politics, and realize that breaking with the established order of things involves risk, drama and challenges that require a significant courage. The intellectual and moral comfort is guaranteed by practical conservatism that people hide from themselves, repeating meaningless “progressive” mantras.

Source Al Jazeera 

At the time when the intellectual elite left is confused and divided, the sectarian groups on the left just try to ignore what is happening, proclaiming there is no difference between the two candidates running in the Democratic primary. However, it is not by chance that the Democratic Party leadership is doing everything possible to block the Bernie Sanders’ campaign despite the fact that according to the polls he looks much more attractive as a candidate in the fight against Trump. And the Republican machine also actively fought against Trump, though with less success: they were unable or unwilling to apply the methods of “foul play”  to which their colleagues and rivals from the Democratic Party resorted.

It is impossible to explain what is happening solely by the machinations conducted by Hillary who is doing whatever it takes to become a US president. The story with the “mysterious” transcripts of remarks made by Mrs. Clinton to the leadership of Goldman Sachs gives us some clues which help to understand what is going on. Despite the fact that the refusal to publish the text of the speech inflicts a serious blow to her reputation, and is constantly used by her opponents, she steadfastly refused to do so. Obviously, the content of the transcripts is so compromising, that it is better to lose votes because of the refusal to disclose the document, than to lose any chance of victory in the event of publication.

However, information about the contents of the transcript gradually seeps into the press. Employees of Goldman Sachs, who were present at the presentation, say that the former first lady actually discussed with the bankers, how they will divide the national budget together. Although Goldman Sachs has long been engaged in this directly or indirectly by receiving considerable public funds (regardless of who is in power – Democrats or Republicans), public recognition of such collusion, especially held in advance, can not only ruin the reputation of candidate, but also harm the bank. It seems Clinton is worried about it, no less than about her own political future.

Transcripts of remarks to Goldman Sachs represent the real political program of, not only Clinton, but also all the current Washington establishment regardless of the party differences. However, both Clinton opponents are not related to the financial capital, and, in case of victory, undoubtedly will try to limit, if not stop the “distribution” of national funds due to which major banks flourish amid the economic crisis. Sanders became famous a few years ago when he organized an audit of the Federal Reserve System, to find out how almost 13 trillion dollars of unaccounted money went through the “gray” schemes to the interested American banks.

Trump, who expresses the interests of the construction business and industrial capital, is interested to force the bankers to lend to the domestic production at a low interest rate, and for this it is necessary to put an end to the current policy when the money given to the banks by the state end up in the speculative markets. The class meaning of the struggle is clear. If Sanders could, perhaps for the first time in US history, form a Socialist-Democratic Bloc of employees, uniting the working class with the angry young middle class, Trump headed a rebellion of the industrial bourgeoisie against the financial capital, also with the support of a large section of the workers. The only difference is that in the case of Sanders, we see movement based on class (horizontal) solidarity, while Trump offers corporate solidarity (vertical).

This situation is quite natural for the working class, which not only has common social interests, but is embedded in the system of vocational and industrial relations, which makes it, in certain situations, support certain groups of the bourgeoisie, related to the working class by virtue of corporate production and market logic. From the standpoint of the left ideology, the first option of solidarity is progressive, while the second reactionary. But both of these uprisings are still dangerous in the eyes of the financial capital. We are talking about blocking of cash flow of billions of dollars, which allows banks and their bribed politicians to exist parasitically at the expense of the real economy.

Clinton’s policy is a classic example of splitting society into numerous interest groups, preventing the horizontal integration. It is not a coincidence that the crisis of the labor movement and class politics which is currently happening in the Western world is going along celebration of multiculturalism and political correctness. And the spread of political correctness, in turn, historically coincide with the “financialization” of the economy, in other words a massive redistribution of resources in favor of the banking sector. On the one hand, the capital triumphed over the labor, robbed it of a significant part of the social gains of the twentieth century.  But on the other hand, the capitalist class had its own redistribution of wealth, and the financial elite have appropriated nearly all the fruits of this victory.

It is not surprising that in this situation we see a rise of not only the working class, but also a part of the bourgeoisie. And Trump attacks against political correctness are by no means a manifestation of his personal feelings, his unrestraint and rudeness; it’s a conscious strategy to consolidate those social groups that have suffered under the dictatorship of political correctness. They were hit practically and financially; they lost their income, jobs and revenues. Trump’s propaganda is quite rational, and it is effective not because it, as the intellectuals think, resonates with the feelings and prejudices of the people, but because it reflects their real interests, even if expressed in a distorted form. The billionaire only bullies the groups which will not vote for him anyway. But it consolidates the voices of millions of white (and actually not just white) working class people, who are mortally tired of political correctness.

And even those Trump statements, which seem to many quite ridiculous and anecdotal, such as the promise to build a wall to fence off Mexico, in fact, are not. After all, if building the wall will really start, it will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, not only in the US but also on the opposite side of the border. In fact, this is another Keynesian project, albeit fairly absurd from the standpoint of ordinary logic. And therefore Trump statement that Mexico will finance the wall is not unfounded. For the economy of its northern states such a project will not be just profitable, but saving. It will not stop the illegal migration from the other side of the border, of course, but it will create incentives for the development of production in the region, whose livelihood is currently dependent mainly on drug trafficking and illegal migration.

The story is more complicated with the offensive remarks regarding women. On the one hand, it really causes indignation among educated white Americans, who are used to a completely different attitude. But on the other hand, the question arises: would these women vote for him, even if Donald showed more tact? At the same time, despite these statements (or even possibly because of them), bully Trump is gaining a reputation of a “real man”,  rough, but sincere, the one you can rely on and the one you can be attracted to, among the women belonging to the less educated part of society. Of course, there is nothing progressive in Trump’s ideology. But this is not about ideology, which today serves not so much as a factor of social mobilization, but as a tool for manipulation. The defeat of financial capital, no matter who brings it about, opens a new era in the development of the Western society, and would inevitably create conditions for strengthening the position of the working class and the revival of its organizations. In other words, it is Hillary who embodies the most reactionary project in the framework of modern capitalist development. And the unwillingness of Bernie supporters to vote for it, if the Socialist candidate quits, is not just emotional, but is entirely rational – politically, socially and morally. In the context of the current political situation the attempt to turn Trump into “an absolute evil” is nothing more than an attempt to mobilize people to protect the status quo for the sake of preventing any change.

But change is underway, not only because of the political and social logic, but also due to the fact that the possibility of maintaining the current neoliberal model of capitalism is objectively exhausted.

And if the left does not want and cannot fight it, it will be the right-wing populists like Donald Trump in the USA or Marine Le Pen in France who will strike the fatal blow to this order. In this case, it will be possible, of course, to get outraged at the “prejudice” and ” irresponsibility” of the working class , but the real moral responsibility still lies on the leftist intellectuals themselves, who, in times of crisis, have demonstrated their class position, by acting, in fact, as advocates of ideas and defenders the interests of the financial capital.

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Brazil’s current Minister of Education is the latest public official in the Michel Temer administration to be implicated in the country’s political corruption scandal. 

Brazil’s coup imposed Education Minister Mendonca Filho is being investigated for allegedly receiving an illegal bribe of US$29,000 for the purpose of financing his 2014 re-election campaign, Brazil’s General Prosecutor Rodrigo Janot announced Friday, making him the latest official in Temer’s administration who could be forced to stand down.

During a Supreme Court hearing Friday, General Prosecutor Janot argued that “evidence of possible bribes for his [Mendonca Filho’s] political campaign” would result in the court having jurisdiction to investigate potential criminal practices.

Brazil

Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer and other newly-appointed officials pose for photographers during a meeting at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia. | Photo: Reuters

The allegations stem from records and documents obtained by Brazilian authorities belonging to the former financial director of UTC, Walmir Pinheiro, who last year agreed to a plea bargain testimony.

The owner of UTC, Ricardo Pessoa, was also arrested last November after previously admitting to acts of corruption.

The new evidence made public Friday to the Supreme Court reveals that Education Minister Filho was the recipient of a US$29,000 donation from the UTC financial group in 2014, according to UTC company bank account records.

Thus far, Filho has denied the allegations, telling authorities that when approached by UTC representatives he refused the money and suggested that the funds be allocated to his political party, the Democrats (DEM).

According to the court documents, the DEM party received two donations of US$29,000 from UTC in August and September of 2014.

The prosecutors’ statement Friday also announced that an investigation may been opened up into the potential involvement of other construction companies such as Odebrecht and Queiroz Galvão, which is alleged to have deposited two “suspicious” sums of US$29,000 into the bank account of Mendonca Filho’s political campaign.

If convicted the Minister of Education would probably be pressured to resign from his current post, making him the fourth public official to resign or quit since the Temer administration came to power earlier this year.

Minister of Education and Culture Mendonca Filho is also implicated in Operation Car Wash, which lies at the core of the country’s corruption probes and involves accusations of money laundering and fraud involving the state oil company Petrobras. The newly-merged ministry sees the culture and education ministries joining together for the first time since the officers were separated in 1985 after the fall of the dictatorship.

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BREXIT vs. GREXIT – The True Face of Europe

June 19th, 2016 by Peter Koenig

With every day, the true face of Europe mirrors ever so clearer the abject inhumane colonial power that raped and usurped Asia, Africa and South America for hundreds of years, as so well depicted in numerous articles and essays by my friend, philosopher, historian and war journalist, Andre Vltchek. Every day this neo-colonial continent spits out new atrocities. And it’s getting worse. Jean Paul Sartre was right, when he said the US is but a Super-European-Monstrosity. The colonial Europeans, mostly Anglo-French Europeans, are at the helm of this monster-octopus, self-declared empire. They are behind the mysterious and Machiavellian eye on top of the pyramid on the US-dollar bill, the symbol of the Freemasons, the forefathers of today’s United States of America – and the driving force towards the New and One World Order.

They pull the strings via such semi-secret organizations like the Bilderbergers, Trilaterals, CFRs (Council on Foreign Relations), Chatham Houses, WEFs (World Economic Forum) – you name it.  Spineless individuals, like Bush, Obama, Clinton, Merkel, Hollande, Cameron – are mere vassals commandeering vassals; a construct that has grown so sophisticated and so evil – I’m sadly afraid, only eradication by war can stop it.

And that is exactly what the Monster is preparing, by provoking Russia and China, encircling Russia with NATO planes, bombs and tanks, and encroaching on Chinese territories with war ships in the South China Sea – and with slander propaganda day-in-day-out against any sovereign nation that refuses to bend to the US super power. Then again, there is Hope, the life blood of our lives – that this evil tower of greed will collapse in itself by the weight of its sheer maliciousness, thereby reducing violence to a minimum. But collapse it must this criminal beast. It’s as clear as the pristine water that still flows from distant, uncontaminated springs, the hope for human survival. – It may take more than our lifetime to happen, but happen it will. It has happened many times before.

Exit or No Exit From the European Union 

May it suffice to watch the gradual decay of Europe by observing the current spectacle over Brexit – the Brits in the limelight for exit or no exit from the European Union. With all the fake theories and invented projections, the UK and European elite spreads around the globe, nobody really knows what they are talking about. The people of an ancient-new empire is daring to take a step, a step towards freedom and self-determination, a step which the Lucifer eye on top of the pyramid won’t let it take. It’s a mere show, but people believe in it, hence the hype about the UK exit – or not – from a diabolical construct, its possible consequences of suffering, its possible losses or gains… versus an almost forgotten and down-trodden Greece, destroyed by the same vile Machiavellian forces that sit behind the clandestine eye. Greece, also a European country, but not at par with the Great, Great Britain, the very lauded, praised and literally prayed-to by the cream of the crop of the rest of the western world — Greece, today is almost totally destroyed and what’s left is in the process and programmed to be devastated and looted by the same admirers of the ancient-new Anglo colonialists – murderers, exploiters, looters, rapists – which Greece never was.

There is no term properly describing this still ongoing, perfected and legalized crime against Greece – and potentially against any other ‘misbehaving’ EU country. The people of the west are blinded by the massive killer propaganda funded by limitless billions of dollars made of thin air by the western liberated and too-big-to-fail predatory banking system.

The top-notch politicians of France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal are no better. Against public will, they follow the orders of Washington and Brussels to the letter, enslaving and impoverishing tens of thousands of people by imposing austerity, producing poverty, disease and death. Spain, according to official statistics, is recording 11 suicides per day, of which at least half are directly related to the economic crisis, unemployment, desperation. Cancer rates have drastically increased since 2008.

A study published in the British Lancet concludes that between 2008 and 2010 an additional 260,000 cancer deaths in OECD countries can be attributed to the effects of unemployment; 160,000 of them in the EU. Depression, loss of self-esteem and hopelessness are known to lead not only to suicide, but frequently affecting the immune system, thereby provoking cancer. This figure does not account for all the premature deaths due to malnutrition and lack of medical care and adequate shelter.

New generations of peoples of neo-colonialist nations are being brainwashed into believing they are floating on the crest of the world, they are part of the elite, and, thus, are to perpetuate this killer system. These same elitists and their new generation ‘students’ lambast Greece for being corrupt and lazy, deserving what she is getting, when indeed corruption originates in colonialism. A country weakened and injured by financial guns, tanks and bombs, is being stomped into the ground. It’s the victim’s fault anyway. These are the values we have grown up with in our western world, the values we are passing on to future generations.

Slamming Greece into oblivion is unimportant. But a possible Brexit – the Great British Empire leaving the corrupt EU – that would be a calamity. This fabricated event fills all the mainstream media – and takes Europe’s breath away. What a distorted and derailed world we are living in.

What Greece has done for civilization, not just for the west but for the world – the invaluable intellectual wealth she gave us, is forgotten. Nobody thinks about it anymore. Democracy, grown out of the Oracle of Delphi, the epitome of a think tank for peace, if there ever was one – democracy, the voice of the people for justice and equality, is today meaningless. The term is used to cheat and deceive the people – the ‘We, The People’ – into believing they have a saying in what their governments are doing.

In reality, we have a new world philosophy: Globalized neoliberalism, where peoples’ opinions don’t count. People are used as peons and cheap labor. Naked fascism in new shiny clothes. And like the sexual taboos of our monotheistic Christian culture, we are not allowed to see and recognize and talk about this new fascism’s nakedness.

Solidarity is Gone

Solidarity is gone – long gone. Though, we are born with it. That’s for sure. But as soon as we push out of the sheltering womb, the evil fist of a greed-struck and greed-driven society grabs us and makes sure we never look back – back to the realm that we are all coming from – the realm of solidarity and love.

The debate over Brexit by an elite that still adores the British Empire’s supremacy, while the same elite despises their southern neighbor, Greece, kicked and beaten into poverty, into horrendous suffering, but never, never into submission.

Greece is vulnerable, Greece can be smashed. Its unimportant. It consists of un-people. Germany and the troika are doing the right thing – putting Greece and the Greek into oblivion. That seems to be the going opinion of many European leaders (sic). Many of these spineless politicians perceive sub-consciously that what they are doing may be back-firing one day. So, why are they not standing up, screaming ‘stop it!’ to the monsters of Brussels and Washington?

Instead, the cowards who know about the wrong that is being done in their little remaining shred of consciousness, they allow the continuing looting and devastating of Greece. It is good ‘politics’. It is what’s called ‘political correctness’; and to belong to the elite, you have to behave as politically correct.

What the Greek have worked for in millenniums of their history – a significant part of the life-capital of the world – is being pillaged and annihilated by self-proclaimed emperors of the universe – the corporate leaders of the New World Order, headquartered in Washington, Tel Aviv and London, with asuccursale overseeing the vassals in Brussels.

This is how Greece and the UK compare on the eve of the ‘crucial’ show-referendum, only a few days from now: Remain or Exit. The elite abides by the elite; debates the fate of the elite, as they want to be part of the elite – by association of intellect (sic-sic). Greece is not on their radar screen. – Who cares whether the UK Remains or Leaves? – well, leaving could be the straw that brings the EU down. And that would be a good thing.

But does anyone really believe that Britain, the US mole in the European Union, is allowed to leave the EU? – To put it into context: The creators of the EU, who were not the Europeans, but America, the self-proclaimed winner of WWII – they will allow a Brexit only if they deem that now the artificial construct of usurpation, the constitution-less European Union and its artificial currency, the Euro – has lived its time and may now pass into the next phase, a feudal group of high-tech nations with low cost labor – with always the right number of unemployed – to be sustained by refugees of nearby wars and conflicts; the new serfs of the Washington-Tel Aviv based empire.

When the Greek leaders on 5 July 2015 put the question of accepting or not the ‘troika’s’ financial sledgehammer, the Greek people decided overwhelmingly against the suffocating austerity. Then, somebody at Lucifer’s bidding put the gun to the head of the leaders and they, gutless as they are, disobeyed the decision of the people, the very people who democratically elected them six months earlier. Saying no to the austerity strangulation, would have meant exit from the Euro and possibly exit from the EU. It would have meant the salvation of Greece.

But the masters of the universe – Washington, Berlin, Paris and London – couldn’t allow the southern, beautiful and proud Greece, the forefathers of our civilization, to become independent, autonomous and sovereign again. Greece, a strategic NATO position – no way can she get away.

Few people seem to recognize the insulting threats against Greece of expulsion from the Euro and the EU by Germany’s Lord of Finance as the bluff they are. Greece is not allowed to leave the Eurozone, not as long as there are still public assets to be stolen; and less so to leave the EU. The Greek territory and strategic position is needed by NATO, the vassal-EU’s military command center for the protection of the global corporate empire.

Brexit vs. Grexit; the elite vs. the un-people. One just wonders who is who? 

Hey – we are in the 21st Century Roman Empire of Bread and Blood – and are enjoying it too.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, Chinese 4th Media, TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author ofImplosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance

 

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Children’s Rights: The “UN List of Shame” a Sham

June 19th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

The UN’s annual List of Shame is supposed to blacklist countries and groups “engage(d) in the recruitment and use of children, sexual violence against children, the killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and/or hospitals and attacks or threats of attacks against protected personnel, and the abduction of children.”

It consistently fails the test of fairness. Syria’s freedom-fighting military was disgracefully blacklisted – courageously combating US-supported terrorists, imported from scores of foreign countries.

No nations more demand blacklisting than America, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, along with their rogue allies.

Endless US direct and proxy wars continue slaughtering children indiscriminately, devastating the lives of countless millions in numerous countries. Yet it isn’t included on the UN List of Shame.

Israel wages wars of aggression at its discretion. It collectively punishes millions of Palestinians daily, treating young children as viciously as adults, brutalizing, wrongfully imprisoning or murdering them in cold blood. Yet it’s not blacklisted.

Turkey is waging genocidal war on its Kurdish population, as well as against Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, slaughtering children indiscriminately, committing some of the region’s most serious human rights abuses overall. Its high crimes didn’t warrant blacklisting by UN standards.

Yemen is Obama’s war, partnered with Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States and Israel, orchestrating terror-bombing, choosing targets to strike, committing slow-motion genocide against millions of desperate Yemenis – an entire population at risk.

On June 2, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon included the so-called Saudi-led coalition on the UN’s blacklist – citing “(g)rave violations against children,” including “killing and maiming” them, along with “attacks on schools and hospitals.”

Days later, he reversed policy, absolving Saudi killers – claiming he was pressured, saying it was “one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make.”

Again he proved his loyal imperial tool credentials, blaming victims, absolving predators waging naked aggression. Throughout his tenure as secretary-general, he failed to hold Washington and its rogue partners responsible for the highest of high crimes against peace.

NYT editors support his actions, complicit criminality, absurdly calling his position “thankless,” saying “to accuse Mr. Ban of caving in to Saudi intimidation…is not fair…(He) had no real choice.”

False! Claiming loss of Saudi financing, if withheld, would cause millions of children to “suffer grievously” ignores unspeakable horrors they face in all war theaters (largely US instigated ones).

Ban is responsible for his actions. Money won’t solve the problem of high crimes committed against children.

Stopping US wars of aggression complicit with NATO, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other rogue partners, along with holding culpable parties accountable, is the only way to end their suffering.

Countless millions of noncombatant men and women in harm’s way are affected the same way.

America and its rogue partners should head every annual UN List of Shame – its secretary-general demanding they be held accountable.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

 

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The U.S. is moving towards war against Eritrea, a fiercely independent African nation of only six million people. Washington has deployed its UN “human rights” proxies to justify another “humanitarian” military intervention, remarkably like the UN-sanctioned aggression against Libya, in 2011. The UN panel charges Eritrea with “enslaving” and murdering its own people – a pack of imperial lies. Obama is set to add another war to his bloody legacy.

“Eritrea’s fierce independence has put it in imperialism’s crosshairs.”

The United States is methodically setting the stage for a so-called “humanitarian” military intervention against the small northeast African nation of Eritrea, under legal pretexts much like those used to justify NATO’s war of regime change against Libya, in 2011. As in Libya, the U.S. has hijacked the United Nations human rights apparatus to claim a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) Eritrea’s citizens from alleged abuses by their own government. War and regime change are the intended result.

Washington engineered UN sanctions against Eritrea, beginning in 2009, on the patently bogus charge that Eritrea’s determinedly secular government provided “political, financial and logistical support” to Islamist Shabaab fighters in Somalia. Islamic jihadism is anathema to Eritrea, whose population of six million on the shores of the Red Sea is about evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. But few people in the United States knew Eritrea existed, much less its secular revolutionary history and politics. The lies stuck, as did the sanctions, even after the UN Human Rights Council conceded there was no further evidence of Eritrean aid to the Shabaab.

A three-person UN panel now alleges that Eritrea is a lawless state that has committed “crimes against humanity,” enslaving up to 400,000 people and engaging in murder, forced disappearances, rape and torture. Mark Smith, the Australian chairman of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, demands that Eritrea be put on trial before the International Criminal Court, a body that has indicted only Africans – and only those that were on the wrong side of U.S. foreign policy – since its creation in 2002. Smith laid the legal groundwork for the overthrow of the Eritrean government:

There is no genuine prospect of the Eritrean judicial system holding perpetrators to account in a fair and transparent manner. The perpetrators of these crimes must face justice and the victims’ voices must be heard. The international community should now take steps, including using the International Criminal Court [ICC], national courts and other available mechanisms, to ensure there is accountability for the atrocities being committed in Eritrea.

The UN commission demands that Eritrea be put on trial before the International Criminal Court, a body that has indicted only Africans.

In February of 2011, the United Nations Security Council, led by the U.S., Britain and France, referred the case against Libya to the ICC, to provide a criminal justice rationale for the military assault that was already underway against Muammar Gaddafi’s government. This time, Washington has instructed its UN proxies to give “humanitarian” legal cover in advance for an attack on Eritrea. The demonization campaign is built around two Big Lies: one, that Eritrea’s system of national service – a form of draft, which is the right of all nations – amounts to “slavery”; and two, that domestic oppression in Eritrea is a prime source of African refugees to Europe, with the tiny nation allegedly accounting for more cross-continental emigration than every other country except war-ravaged Syria.

National service in Eritrea, as in many other countries, includes not only military duty on the front lines with Ethiopia – which still occupies parts of Eritrea in clear violation of an international arbitration agreement – but also labor in public works projects as well as service in health and education infrastructures. (Most teachers in Eritrea, for example, are national service workers.) Lots of folks would call that socialism or nation-building – which is how the Eritreans see it.

The Eritreans defend extended national service on grounds of necessity, citing an existential threat from the Ethiopian military, backed to the hilt by Washington. Economic sanctions have also necessitated that Eritrea mobilize the population to develop its own national resources. However, self-reliance is also a cornerstone of Eritrean domestic development policy, and seen as central to maintaining true national sovereignty and independence. Eritrea rejects foreign “aid” and entanglements with structures of international capital, and is one of only two nations in Africa that has no relationship with AFRICOM, the U.S. military command on the continent (Zimbabwe is the other).

It is insane to believe that little Eritrea, with only six million people, has set more people to flight than neighboring Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, with a population 15 times greater.

Eritrea’s fierce independence has put it in imperialism’s crosshairs. Eritrea is “Africa’s Cuba” – and the United States treats it as such in a striking variety of ways. Indeed, the other Big Lie against Eritrea – that it is the second largest contributor to the waves of refugees risking life and limb to reach Europe – is directly related to European immigration policies, urged on them by the U.S., that put Eritrea in much the same bind as U.S. policy towards Cuba.

It is insane to believe that little Eritrea, with only six million people, has set more people to flight than neighboring Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, now in the throes of a devastating drought, with a population 15 times greater; or neighboring Sudan, also desperately poor and afflicted by multiple wars, with 40 million people; or nearby Somalia, a nation without a state, inhabited by 10 million people. Indeed, economic, political and war refugees from all across Africa claim to be Eritrean because, unlike citizens of any other African country, Eritrean refugees are afforded special status on arrival in Europe as presumptive political refugees who might face torture if returned home. As with U.S. Cuba policy, the Eritrean exception was designed to weaken and destabilize the country through a brain and human resource drain. Inevitably, however, the policy has made Eritrean identification papers the hottest selling documents on the streets of Khartoum and other refugee gathering points. Europe is awash, as is Israel, with fake Eritreans fleeing various military, political and economic catastrophes – most of them rooted in Euro-American foreign destabilization policies and the global capitalist Race to the Bottom.

If Latin Americans could pass for Cubans, the populations of U.S. “Little Havanas” would number in the tens of millions, full of Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Mexicans.

“Economic, political and war refugees from all across Africa claim to be Eritrean.”

Ethiopians pass most easily as Eritreans, since millions of them share the same ethnic background. About half of Eritreans are Tigrayan, the ethnic group that is the fourth largest in Ethiopia and dominates the ruling party in Addis Ababa. The Austrian Ambassador to Ethiopia, Andreas Melan, last year estimated that “among the thousands of Eritrean migrants in Europe, 30 to 40 percent are Ethiopians.” That may be an underestimate. And many more “Eritreans” actually hail from as far away as West Africa.

The Eritrean ambassador to Israel believes that Ethiopians account for half of the purported Eritreans seeking refugee status in that country. “They know the Eritreans automatically receive a six-month visa, so they pretend to be Eritrean,” said the ambassador.

The Eritrean refugee scam is an open secret all across Europe, and is well known to the American and European governments. The Big Lie is maintained to serve imperial purposes, and will now be deployed to justify an armed assault on Eritrea as an alleged mass enslaver and rogue nation. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea will submit its manufactured findings to the Human Rights Council on June 21, setting the imperial lynch mob in motion.

They know the Eritreans automatically receive a six-month visa, so they pretend to be Eritrean.”

Eritrea cannot expect a fair hearing from a UN apparatus that is puppeteered from Washington. As the Eritrean government stated in its preliminary response to the UN commission’s charges:

The purposes of national service in Eritrea are clearly stated in a legal proclamation of 1994 and are three-fold: national defense, economic and social development and national integration.  The service is not indefinite although for a time and in certain cases it has been prolonged due the already explained existential threat of war.

The commission based its findings on the testimony of about 800 (alleged) Eritreans interviewed in various foreign cities, while ignoring the 42,000 Eritrean expatriates that have petitioned the world body to lift sanctions against their home country.

The UN panel is ignoring what is “effectively a continuing state of war with Ethiopia, the illegal occupation of Eritrean territory which constitutes a flagrant violation of human rights, repeated armed aggression, sanctions and mistaken policies that consider almost all Eritreans asylum-seekers,” said Eritrean government spokesperson Yemane Gebreab. That’s a diplomatic way of putting it. By referring the case to the International Criminal Court, and implicitly threatening military action against Eritrea, the commission has become a warmonger.

On Monday, the New York Times reported that thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean troops were rushing towards the disputed border, the site of heavy artillery duels. The Times quoted an Eritrean dissident living in Sweden as their expert of the moment. “If there is a war, or the rumor of a war, it could be a way for the Eritrean government to get support and divert attention,” said the dissident. The newspaper also relayed a Twitter message from an Eritrean American in his homeland’s capital. “Here in Asmara, it’s peaceful despite #EthiopianAttacks against #Eritrea on the Tsorona front. And you wonder why there’s national service?”

President Obama seems intent on adding War #8 to his imperial legacy.

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The U.S. is unwilling to stop the war on Syria and to settle the case at the negotiation table. It wants a 100% of its demands fulfilled, the dissolution of the Syrian government and state and the inauguration of a U.S. proxy administration in Syria.

After the ceasefire in Syria started in late February Obama broke his pledge to separate the U.S. supported “moderate rebels” from al-Qaeda. In April U.S. supported rebels, the Taliban like Ahrar al Sham and al-Qaeda joined to attack the Syrian government in south Aleppo. The U.S.proxies broke the ceasefire.

Two UN resolutions demand that al-Qaeda in Syria be fought no matter what. But the U.S. has at least twice asked Russia not to bomb al-Qaeda. It insists, falsely, that it can not separate its “moderates” from al-Qaeda and that al-Qaeda can not be attacked because that would also hit its “moderate” friends.

The Russian foreign minster Lavrov has talked wit Kerry many times about the issue. But the only response he received were requests to further withhold bombing. Meanwhile al-Qaeda and the “moderates” continued to break the ceasefire and to attack the Syrian government forces.

After nearly four month Kerry still insists that the U.S. needs even more time for the requested separation of its proxy forces from al-Qaeda. Foreign Minister Lavrov recently expressed the Russian consternation:

The Americans are now saying that they are unable to remove the ‘good’ opposition members from the positions held by al-Nusra Front, and that they will need another two-three months. I am under the impression that there is a game here and they may want to keep al-Nusra Front in some form and later use it to overthrow the [Assad] regime,” Lavrov said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The bucket was full and Kerry’s latest request for another three month pause of attacking al-Qaeda was the drop that let it overflow. Russia now responded by hitting the U.S. where it did not expect to be hit:

Russian warplanes hit Pentagon-backed Syrian fighters with a barrage of airstrikes earlier this week, disregarding several warnings from U.S. commanders in what American military officials called the most provocative act since Moscow’s air campaign in Syria began last year.The strikes hit a base near the Jordanian border, far from areas where the Russians were previously active, and targeted U.S.-backed forces battling the Islamic State militants.

These latest strikes occurred on the other side of the country from the usual Russian operations, around Tanf, a town near where the borders of Jordan, Iraq, and Syria meet.

The Russian strike hit a small rebel base for staging forces and equipment in a desolate, unpopulated area near the border. About 180 rebels were there as part of the Pentagon’s program to train and equip fighters against Islamic State.

When the first strikes hit, the rebels called a U.S. command center in Qatar, where the Pentagon orchestrates the daily air war against Islamic State.

U.S. jets came and the Russian jets went away. The U.S. jets left to refuel, the Russian jets came back and hit again. Allegedly two U.S. proxy fighters were killed and 18 were wounded.

Earlier today another such attack hit the same target.

This was no accident but a well planned operation and the Russian spokesperson’s response makes the intend clear:

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to confirm the attack Friday, telling reporters it was difficult to distinguish different rebel groups from the air.

Translation: “If you can not separate your forces from al-Qaeda and differentiate and designate exclusively “moderate” zones we can not do so either.”

The forces near Tanf are supported by U.S. artillery from Jordan and air power via Iraq. British and Jordan special operations forces are part of the ground component (and probably the majority of the “Syrian” fighters.) There is no al-Qaeda there. The Russians know that well. But they wanted to make the point that it is either separation everywhere or separation nowhere. From now on until the U.S. clearly separates them from AQ all U.S. supported forces will be hit indiscriminately anywhere and anytime. (The Syrian Kurds fighting the Islamic State with U.S. support are for now a different story.)

The Pentagon does not want any further engagement against the Syrian government or against Russia. It wants to fight the Islamic State and its hates the CIA for its cooperation with al-Qaeda and other Jihadi elements. But John Brennan, the Saudi operative and head of the CIA, still seems to have Obama’s ear. But what can Obama do now? Shoot down a Russian jet and thereby endanger any U.S. pilot flying in Syria or near the Russian border? Risk a war with Russia? Really?

The Russian hit near Tanf was clearly a surprise. The Russians again caught Washington on the wrong foot. The message to the Obama administration is clear. “No more delays and obfuscations. You will separate your moderates NOW or all your assets in Syria will be juicy targets for the Russian air force.

The Russian hits at Tanf and the U.S. proxies there has an additional benefit. The U.S. had planned to let those forces move north towards Deir Ezzor and to defeat the Islamic State in that city. Eventually a “Sunni entity” would be established in south east Syria and west Iraq under U.S. control. Syria would be split apart.

The Syrian government and its allies will not allow that. There is a large operation planned to free Deir Ezzor from the Islamic State occupation. Several hundred Syrian government forces have held an isolated airport in Deir Ezzor against many unsuccessful Islamic State attacks. These troops get currently reinforced by additional Syrian army contingents and Hizbullah commandos.A big battle is coming. Deir Ezzor may be freed within the next few month. Any U.S. plans for some eastern Syrian entity are completely unrealistic if the Syrian government can take and hold its largest eastern city.

The Obama administration’s delaying tactic will now have to end. Russia will no longer stand back and watch while the U.S. sabotages the ceasefire and supports al-Qaeda.

What then is the next move the U.S. will make?

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The council of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on Friday retained its earlier suspension of the Russian Federation’s track and field body on the basis of charges that Russian government and sports authorities oversaw the doping of athletes with performance enhancing drugs at the 2012 London Olympics and other international competitions.

The decision means that the Russian track and field team is banned from the Summer Olympics to be held in August in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The action, barring an entire national team from competing in the games on grounds of cheating, is unprecedented.

At a press conference in Vienna following a meeting of the 27-member council, IAAF President Sebastian Coe, a British lord, said, “Although good progress has been made, the IAAF council was unanimous that RUSAF (Russian Athletic Federation) had not met the reinstatement conditions.”

The IAAF suspended the Russian track and field federation from international competition last November following the release of a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) alleging that Russia had carried out systematic doping of its athletes at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Russian sports authorities at that time agreed to enforce enhanced anti-doping standards and submit to outside testing of its athletes by British officials.

The IAAF set up a task force to determine whether Russian sports authorities had reformed their system and set July 17 as the date for the council to review the report of the task force and decide whether to lift the suspension. On Friday, Rune Andersen, the chairman of the task force, told the press that “the deep-seated culture of tolerance, or worse, for doping that got Russian athletics suspended appears not to have changed.” He added that no track and field athlete would “compete in Rio under a Russian flag.”

Russian officials, who had lobbied intensively for the IAAF to lift the suspension, denounced the decision and said they would appeal it to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the highest body overseeing the games, which meets Tuesday in Lausanne, Switzerland. Russian officials also indicated they might lodge an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking Friday in St. Petersburg, denied that the Russian government had condoned or facilitated doping by Russian athletes.

The Russian sports ministry issued a statement declaring, “We have done everything possible since the ban was first imposed to regain the trust of the international community. We now appeal to the members of the International Olympic Committee to not only consider the impact that our athletes’ exclusion will have on their dreams and the people of Russia, but also that the Olympics themselves will be diminished by their absence.”

WADA largely based its November 2015 report on alleged Russian doping on a series of documentaries broadcast last year by the German public television channel ARD. Those documentaries relied heavily on allegations by Russian sprinter Yulia Stepanova and her husband, Vitaly Stepanov, a one-time Russian anti-doping official.

The statement released by the IAAF on Friday indicated that it would be prepared to allow Stepanova and other Russian athletes who provided evidence against Russian authorities or who had trained outside of Russia and been subject to drug testing by Western authorities to seek exemption from the ban, on the condition that they compete, if accepted, for a “neutral” team.

It is entirely possible that Russian government and sports officials were involved in the doping of athletes and the cover-up of their use of steroids and other banned substances. There is a long history of such practices in Russia dating back to the Soviet period. The Putin government, the political instrument of right-wing and semi-criminal capitalist oligarchs, largely bases its rule on the promotion of Russian nationalism and has a strong interest in using Russian sporting achievements toward that end.

That being said, there is no doubt that the virtually exclusive focus of international sporting authorities on Russian violations and the decision to ban the Russian track and field team—and threats that other Russian Olympic teams could also be banned—are driven by political interests. There is a large degree of coordination between major imperialist media outlets and Olympic and anti-doping agencies in the campaign to exclude Russia from the Rio games.

Just last week, on the eve of the IAAF council meeting, ARD broadcast a further documentary on alleged Russian doping charging that Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko covered up a positive drug test by a football player from Russia’s top league. ARD also claims to have videos of banned coaches training Russian athletes.

Mutko denied the accusations and denounced the airing of the documentary as an “information attack.” He charged, “The aim of this and other publications is clear to me. It is to influence the athletics committee on the eve of the meeting.”

The ARD film was followed by the release of a new WADA report on Wednesday alleging a pattern of interference and resistance by Russian Olympic athletes and officials to British efforts to oversee testing for doping.

On Thursday, the day before the IAAF council meeting, the New York Times, which has spearheaded the media campaign in the US for a ban on Russian athletes at the summer games, ran a story that began as the page-one lead and filled two entire inside pages criticizing WADA for being insufficiently aggressive in going after Russia. The story cited the ARD films, the whistle-blowing claims of the Stepanovs, and interviews given to the Times by Grigory Rodchenkov, a former head of Russia’s anti-doping lab.

Rodchenkov was fired from his position by the Russian government after the publication of WADA’s exposé of doping violations last November. He fled to the US and is collaborating with an American writer in Los Angeles who is preparing a book on Russian sports doping. Last May, the Times ran another extensive front-page article laying out Rodchenkov’s claims to have supervised the systematic doping of Russian athletes and falsification of their drug tests during the 2014 Winter Olympic games at the Russian Black Sea report of Sochi.

The article was accompanied by a separate piece by one of its authors, “Sports of the Times” columnist Juliet Macur, calling for Russian to be banned from the Rio games and the 2018 Winter games as well. Macur was also a co-author of the article published on Thursday.

That Times article from last May prompted a WADA investigation of Russian practices at the Sochi games, the findings of which are slated to be released next month.

The political agenda here is clear. The campaign to bar Russia from the Olympics is part and parcel of the economic, diplomatic and military offensive being led by the United States and involving its NATO allies to isolate and encircle Russia and prepare for a military attack. The aim is to remove Russia as an obstacle to Washington’s drive to establish hegemonic control over the Eurasian continent, reduce Russia to neo-colonial status and dismember it.

This campaign was massively escalated beginning in February 2014 with the US- and German-orchestrated right-wing coup that overthrew a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and installed an ultra-nationalist, anti-Russian regime in Kiev. The ensuing revolt by Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine and the secession of Crimea, which subsequently voted to join the Russian Federation, became the occasion for a massive NATO militarization of Eastern and Central Europe, which continues to escalate and threaten a war between nuclear powers.

In the pursuit of this bellicose policy, the US is seeking to criminalize Russia and cast it as a rogue state.

More generally, the pretense that Russia is some kind of outlier and affront to the “Olympic spirit” is an absurd and cynical fraud. The Olympics have long been an exemplar of the money-grubbing corruption and national chauvinist politics of the professional sports racket. Doping is rampant and practiced by virtually every country.

Since 1986, when the International Olympic Committee changed the rules to allow professional athletes to compete in every phase of Olympics competition, any lingering connection to the principle of amateur sports has been repudiated. The Olympics have become a crass spectacle of corporate commercialism and flag-waving patriotism. In the process, the pressure on athletes to win at any cost—and the pecuniary reward for winning a gold medal—have immensely intensified.

Bribery scandals have become routine. One of the worst was the payoff by US officials and boosters to members of the International Olympic Committee for voting to locate the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. An ensuing investigation found the IOC members accepted bribes as well during the bidding for the 1998 Winter Olympics and 2000 Summer games.

The Americans are past masters in using the Olympics for political purposes, going back to the US-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow games over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—an invasion that was deliberately provoked by the Carter administration’s funding and arming of Islamist opponents of the pro-Soviet government in Kabul.

As for doping, there is nothing that compares to the decade-long fraud carried out by Lance Armstrong, who rode for the team of the US Postal Service, a government-sponsored corporation. In October 2012, the US Anti-Doping Agency released a report declaring that the US Postal Service cycling team had run “the most sophisticated, professional and successful doping program the sport has ever seen.”

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A new report claims a U.S.-led coalition is bombing civilians to death and covering it up.

The United States-led coalition that is bombing Iraq and Syria may be underreporting the civilian toll of that war by as much as 95 percent, according to a new report released Friday by the monitoring group Airwars.

The U.S.-led coalition, which includes nations such as Britain, France and the Netherlands, has been bombing Islamic State group targets in Iraq and Syria since 2014, carrying out more than 13,121 airstrikes, or just over 19 a day. The vast majority of the strikes are carried out by the U.S., according to Airwars—68 percent in Iraq and and 82.5 percent in Syria—with an estimated civilian death toll of at least 1,312 people.

Over the past six months it’s gotten worse, according to Airwars. “Between December and May, in both Iraq and Syria, there was a marked increase in the number of alleged casualty incidents and civilian death attributed to coalition actions,” it says. In Iraq, the group reports that between 297 and 518 civilians were killed by coalition airstrikes in this time. In Syria, between 197 and 274 civilians were killed, “a 38 percent increase in likely civilian deaths above the previous six months.”

 The U.S. has admitted to killing just 20 civilians. Its allies have admitted to none. “If correct, Airwars data suggests the coalition may be underreporting civilian deaths by more than 95 percent,” the report says.

The worst incident for civilians occurred on March 19 in the Islamic State-occupied city of Mosul, when at least 25 innocents were killed when coalition airstrikes hit Mosul University in the middle of the day. As teleSUR reported at the time, such a strike on a civilian institution—confirmed by the U.S. Department of Defense—may constitute a breach of international law.

The U.S. and its coalition allies are not the only foreign governments reportedly killing civilians in the region. Of 630 alleged incidents where civilians died in Syria as a result of international airpower, 91 percent have been attributed to Russia, according to Airwars, killing between 2,792 and 3,451 civilians between December 2015 and May 2016, largely as the result of airstrikes targeting non-Islamic State forces and civilian areas, “particularly in and around Aleppo.

The Russian government says its airstrikes have not killed any civilians since they began in Sept. 2015.

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When the democratically elected President of Ukraine was violently overthrown in February 2014 and replaced by a rabidly anti-Russian regime, not only the residents in the areas of Ukraine that had voted heavily for him (Crimea having voted 75% for him, and Donbass having voted 90% for him) were terrified by what they viewed to be a bloodthirsty new regime, but Russians were, too, because the dictators who were installed made clear their hatred of Russians and even of speakers of the Russian language – one of their first legislative initiatives was to outlaw the Russian language, but the blatant hatred there made the proposal die in Ukraine’s parliament because this new regime needed outside support, and outlawing a language spoken by around half of the nation’s population would have sparked international condemnation.

Shortly after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly on 16 March 2014 to separate from Ukraine and to rejoin Russia, of which Crimea had been a part until the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, the top military commander at NATO, US General Philip Breedlove, said that because Russia had protected Crimeans from invasion by the newly installed Ukrainian regime, which was threatening Crimeans if they were to hold a referendum to separate from Ukraine, «now it is very clear that Russia is acting much more like an adversary than a partner», and he speculated sarcastically about the «next place where Russian-speaking people may need to be incorporated» into Russia – as if the people of Crimea didn’t have a good reason to fear the new regime, and as if speakers of the Russian language in all countries were in the same situation and needed the same protection; and as if NATO itself had any right to comment about this matter at all, since Ukraine isn’t even a member-nation of NATO anyway. Ukraine is a nation that shares a long border with Russia, but does this give NATO a right to ‘defend’ Ukraine from ‘Russian aggression’? Is NATO trying to provoke a Russian invasion in order for NATO to have a pretext to launch a full-scale nuclear war?

DANGER: Obama Ignores Russia’s Valid National Security Worries

Why was the top military commander of NATO commenting on this at all? He was representing the US President, not the people of Ukraine, and certainly not the people of Crimea. The people of Crimea had good reason to be terrified by the new regime, but Obama’s general who was running NATO’s military operations, didn’t care about that at all.

And the threat that the United States and its allies were posing to Russian-speaking populations in other countries that border Russia was also being ignored by the US and its allies.

Alexander Lukin wrote about this matter in Foreign Affairs on 17 June 2014:

Today, the West’s continued advance is tearing apart the countries on Russia’s borders. It has already led to territorial splits in Moldova and Georgia, and Ukraine is now splintering before our very eyes. Divisive cultural boundaries cut through the hearts of these countries, such that their leaders can maintain unity only by accommodating the interests of both those citizens attracted to Europe and those wanting to maintain their traditional ties to Russia. The West’s lopsided support for pro-Western nationalists in the former Soviet republics has encouraged these states to oppress their Russian-speaking populations – a problem to which Russia could not remain indifferent. Even now, more than two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than six percent of the population in Estonia and more than 12 percent of the population in Latvia, most of them ethnic Russians, do not have the full rights and privileges of citizenship. They cannot vote in national elections, enroll in Russian schools, or, for the most part, access Russian media. The EU, despite its emphasis on human rights outside its borders, has turned a blind eye to this clear violation of basic rights within them.

Why does the US government not care about the rights of ethnic Russians in countries which border on Russia, and which treat like dirt people whose families had moved there from Russia? Is the US government trying to goad Russia into protecting those people, too?

Why was General Breedlove (who hardly breeds love for oppressed people of Russian descent) mocking Russian President Vladimir Putin about the «next place where Russian-speaking people may need to be incorporated»?

Is Obama trying to force Putin to either lose face at home, or else to ‘provoke’ a NATO invasion, in order to provide NATO an ‘excuse’ to attack?

On 4 May 2016, Breedlove’s successor, US General Curtis M. Scaparrotti, took over from Breedlove, and he condemned «an aggressive Russia… a resurgent Russia trying to project itself as a world power». If the US government has a right to «project itself as a world power», then why doesn’t the Russian government possess the same right – especially in order to defend itself? The headline of that news report from the US Department of ‘Defense’ was «‘Resurgent Russia’ Poses Threat to NATO, New Commander Says», but precisely what ‘threat’ Russia poses to NATO wasn’t even suggested there, other than the vague charge of a «resurgent Russia striving to project itself as a world power».

Is General Scaparrotti trying to goad Putin to either lose face at home, or else to ‘provoke’ a NATO invasion?

But now NATO is staging Operation Atlantic Resolve, their biggest-ever military maneuvers on Russia’s borders. This includes nuclear weapons.

When the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev tried to plant Soviet missiles 90 miles from the US in 1962, the American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was ready to go to a nuclear attack against the Soviet dictatorship; this was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Will Russian President Vladimir Putin soon be ready to go to a nuclear attack against the new American dictatorship, which is moving much farther against Russia’s democracy now, than the Soviet dictatorship ever did against America’s democracy then?

Does Obama think he’s playing some kind of game here? Khrushchev didn’t think it was any game; nor did Kennedy. Khrushchev backed down, in a deal in which the previous US President’s, Dwight Eisenhower’s, initiation of installation of US missiles in Turkey against the Soviet Union were also removed. Kennedy negotiated an elimination of both Eisenhower’s and Khrushchev’s provocative and dangerous acts, in a nuclear-armed world. Putin has been careful not to do anything that threatens the US, except to protect Russia from what by now is clearly US aggression. But the fact that a democratic Russia has not violated a now dictatorial US, constitutes no excuse for US Presidents continuing the aggression that US President George Herbert Walker Bush started against democratic Russia.

Meanwhile, we have blatant NATO propaganda spread on German public television, asking «Is NATO expansion to blame for Crimean crisis?» and answering: not only no, but «just change NATO’s name» and we all should ignore Russia’s worries about the hostile US military alliance that has spread right up to Russia’s borders and that’s intent upon posting nuclear missiles minutes from Moscow.

Do Western leaders really think that Western publics are stupid and callous enough to believe that? Is the leaders’ presumption, about this, correct? Is this the reason why nuclear war is getting perilously close while Western publics are worried about it little if at all?

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This article was first published on May 19th, 2016. In recent developments Russia has been excluded from the Olympics in a dirty tricks operation.

This morning the New York Times sported these headlines “Justice Department Opens Investigation into Russian Doping Scandal” – proudly describing how US Justice (sic-sic) is going to investigate Russian doping. Any opportunity is good for denigrating Russia, foremost Vladimir Putin. It’s his fault, since Sochi is ‘his’ town anyway – Sochi, where the alleged doping took place, of course, among many other sports events, where Russians participate.

It borders on the ridiculous – no, it is abjectly stupid, what the western presstitute media, led by the US is capable of doing.

Does it ever occur to anyone with a half-brain left that US athletes have been caught en masse doping in sports events; that the US is the ‘pivot’ of all dope, as it is the trading place of drugs, where official government agencies, like the CIA and DEA are making some ‘extra cash’ – hundreds of millions a year – by smuggling and clandestinely dealing with heroin and cocaine under the guise of, for example the Plan Colombia.

Unmarked CIA planes have been observed coming from Afghanistan to Qatar or Saudi Arabia, unloading their poppy-bootie for on-shipment to the drug centers of Europe, Asia and, of course, the biggest market place of all – the Unites States of America.

I couldn’t help writing an open letter to the NYT Editor – which, of course, he will not publish. But, it is my hunch that it should be read, just for the record. Here it is.
—–

Dear NYT Editor,

You Americans! [Government and Media]- who think you are on top of the world – on top of the world of murderers and human rights abusers alright – to take every opportunity to attack Russia; now it’s for doping.

Who has ever investigated US doping – the US, the kings of drug trading throughout the world?

Would anybody dare to investigate US sportspeople? For fear of ‘sanctions’?

Give the world a break and step back!

If and when your empire falls, there will be days-and-days of Fiesta throughout the world – streets will be filled with people, hugging and kissing in solidarity – getting rid of the terror of fear Washington is planting throughout the world, the forced ‘regime changes’ – and now doping, attacking Russia, since everything is good for denigrating someone who shows resistance to the self-declared US hegemon.

Americans – think about it – wake up!

Will you print this, dear NYT Editor?

Peter Koenig


Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, Chinese 4th Media, TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

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First published by Global Research in November 2015. Of significance in relation to the IAAF’s recent decision to ban Russia from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro

When the International Olympic Committee gets judgmental about a country, we know the moral ride ahead is going to be an odd one.  Strange sight, indeed, to have such remarks that Russia deserves special sanction in allegations of mass doping violations in their athletics.  Why the conspicuous absentees?

The anti-doping agency got cracking after the beavering efforts of a German documentary alleging mass instances of doping in Russian sport.  The point of Hajo Seppelt’s work, however, was not to saddle exclusive blame on any one country, even if the Russian case study proved ominous.  It showed, among other things, that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had failed to chase up suspicious tests.  Target the doping phenomenon, Seppelt seemed to be saying.  Excluding the athletics of a particular state?  Distinctly not.

Instead, the IAAF’s president, Sebastian Coe, responded with volcanic fury when the documentary aired in 2014, suggesting that the allegations were nothing short of a declaration of war on his sport.  After 11 months, the tune had changed.

The 325-page report by former Wada (World Anti-Doping Agency) president Dick Pound did anything but admit to a universal problem, limiting itself to Russian athletics which supposedly “sabotaged” the London 2012 Olympics.  Two years later, at the Sochi Winter Olympics, there were suggestions of FSB involvement working undercover with lab technicians. In Pound’s own words, it was “hard to imagine what the Russian state interest in athlete’s urine would be.”

Published on Monday, the report “identified systemic failures within the IAAF and Russia” in fulfilling effective anti-doping programs.  Specific athletes were also pointed out as being violators, including the 800m Olympic champion Mariya Savinova.  Life-bans were also suggested for four other athletes.  It further recommended a ban on all Russian athletes taking part in IAAF-backed events, including the European and World championships, and the Olympics themselves.

Pound did admit at the press conference to there being a broader problem, while heaping praise upon Seppelt’s efforts and those of Russian whistleblowers behind the unearthing of extortion, bribery and cover-ups.For all of that, a good deal of hand washing was also taking place.  For one, it betrayed deep structural problems in the administration of world athletics.  Pointing hefty fingers at Russia did not get away from the fact that Wada itself has proven to be a miserable policing agent in this regard. National governments and the IOC must also be drawn in.

Coe certainly does not come out well in this. He had been Lamine Diack’s deputy, a person he expressed “great admiration” for.  Could Coe have been truly ignorant about various payments to Diack for purportedly coving up doping violations?  The scandals right at the heart of the IAAF establishment certainly suggest a cover-up of enormous proportions.

The Russian case is certainly not pretty.  The celebrated Wada-accredited Moscow laboratory supposedly behind combating doping measures seemed to have done its best to frustrate them.  The head of the lab, Grigory Rodchenko, admitted to destroying 1,417 samples in December last year prior to the visit of Wada officials.  This destruction was accompanied by cash payments for concealment.

The Russian Sports Ministry late on November 9 did issue a statement in response to the report, admitting to a lack of surprise at “most of the points”.  “We are fully aware of the problems in the All-Russia Athletic Federation (ARAF) and we have undertaken measures to remedy the situation: there is a new president in ARAF, a new head coach, and they are currently rejuvenating the coaching staff.”

The white as snow indignation has been nothing short of righteous, and the specifics of naming Russia over any other country smacks of a particularly pungent political flavour.  One need only go through a slew of statements to that effect.  Ever at the forefront are Australian sporting bodies, which still see the betrayals of the Cold War of the Eastern bloc countries in limiting their medal tallies.

The theme of being robbed of medals is certainly exemplified by such figures as Australian Olympic walker Jared Tallent.  “It has been hard to go to training every day knowing that you have been robbed of an Olympic medal.”

Athletics Australia chief executive, Phil Jones, is fairly typical of this sentiment.  “I think given the time between now and the Rio Olympics, it’s very difficult to see that their house is going to be demonstrably in order by the middle of next year” (ABC, Nov 10).  To Jones’ credit, however, he did concede that, “It would be very surprising if Russia was an island in this regard [of doping incidents].”

Getting stroppy over one state in this regard is not only missing the point but invalidating the premise of control altogether. The athletics sporting establishment has been crudely revealed to be sponsor, colluder and bumbler on the subject of corruption and drugs in the sport.  The lure of victory and prestige in the sporting arena remains so powerful it is bound to degrade the very premise of clean competition.  Success, at all costs.

Wada’s own statistics from 2013 show extensive doping cases in Turkey (188), France (108), India (95) and Belgium (94).  They are certainly not set for the chop.  Much of this remains a dirty rotten business, but settling old scores with what Pound sees as a residual “Soviet” mentality hardly deals with the issue of global mass doping, the greatest symptom of professional sports.

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

 

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Video: The Battle for the Syrian-Turkish Border

June 18th, 2016 by Brian Betts

Combat on June 16, 2016 in Syria opened with a dawn raid comprised of Iraqi and Iranian troops against Jabhat al-Nusra positions in Maarata, southern Aleppo. The attack failed, with dozens of casualties reported, with one Iranian and three Iraqi service members being held as prisoner. A Jaysh al-Fatah offensive has succeeded in seizing over 90% of the territory around Khalasah in southern Aleppo.

In Huways, in the Hama province, rebels filmed the destruction of a government tractor with a BGM-71 TOW missile.

Further to the north, Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces report gains in the Jabl al-Turkman mountain region, which borders Turkey. The SAA report taking the town of Kellaz near Latakia as well .

ISIS captured the “Panorama” barrier in Deiz ez-Zor , while an attempted car bomb detonation by the same group on the Dudiyan front, in northern Aleppo, was foiled by militants from Faylaq al-Sham.

Towards the evening, an IED placed near the home of journalist Hadi Abdallah and his cameraman Khalid Alissa detonated, reportedly injuring both men . Meanwhile, an aid convoy reached al-Waer delivering international aid to the stricken area outside of Homs.

In the early hours of June 17, 2016 the Russian Air Force attacked a key Jabhat al-Nusra ammunition depot in norther Aleppo, destroying it completely. The depot was adjacent to a command-and-control center in the village of Babis.

Pro-government forces, supported by Russian warplanes, retook more ground at the Syrian-Turkish border in the northern part of Latakia province. By June 17, the loyalists have liberated the villages of al-Shahrourah, Ain Issa and Hasam, the Tal al-Hayat hill, 3 high points (502, 559 and 469). Clashes are ongoing in the al-Rowaisi mountains.

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 A proposed law in Brazil would replace the word “pesticide” on food labels with “plant health protection.”

Around 70 percent of food consumed by Brazilians is contaminated by agrochemicals, researcher Karen Friederich of the Brazilian Association of Collective Health said Thursday.

Friederich delivered the findings of her research during a lecture at the Health Movement Forum, revealing that Brazilians consume nearly 7.5 liters of agropesticides per year—the highest per capita consumption rate in the world.

She went on to point out that at least one-third of agrochemicals used in the Brazil have been banned in the European Union and the United States due to their impacts on human health and the environment.

A worker sprays chemicals at a farm in Brazil

A worker sprays chemicals at a farm in Brazil’s Ceara state. The WHO released a report recently which found that Monsanto chemicals “probably cause cancer.” | Photo: Reuters

“The cases of contamination are not well documented, but they affect a large portion of the population, generating reproductive changes, birth defects and effects on the immune system,” Friederich stated.

Her comments come after the World Health Organization, WHO, released a report last year finding that glyphosate, a key ingredient used in many herbicides and pesticides, “probably causes cancer.”

Since 2007, when Brazil’s Health Ministry began keeping records, the number of reported cases of human intoxication by pesticides has more than doubled, from 2,178 that year to 4,537 in 2013.

Meanwhile, the annual number of deaths linked to pesticide poisoning climbed from 132 to 206. Public health specialists say the actual figures are higher because tracking is incomplete.

While speaking at the conference on Thursday, professor and scientist Leonardo Melgarejo argued that efforts to curb the use of agro-chemicals have been undermined by Brazilian lawmakers who support the interests of powerful agriculture lobby groups.

The Brazilian Congress is currently reviewing a bill that would replace the word “pesticide” with “plant health protection” on package labels, which Melgarejo argued “would increase the risks regarding the use of these substances.”

In 2014, Brazilian health agency ANVISA, which is in charge of evaluating pesticide residues in food, found that of 1,665 samples collected, ranging from rice to apples to peppers, 29 percent showed residues that either exceeded allowed levels or contained unapproved chemicals.

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Clinton: Destroy Syria for Israel

June 18th, 2016 by The New Observer

A newly-released Hilary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately provoked the civil war in Syria as the “best way to help Israel.”

Clinton also wrote that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death.

In the email, released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Clinton says that the “best way to help Israel” is to “use force” in Syria to overthrow the government.

The document was one of many unclassified by the US Department of State under case number F-2014-20439, Doc No. C05794498, following the uproar over Clinton’s private email server kept at her house while she served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

Although the Wikileaks transcript dates the email as December 31, 2000, this is an error on their part, as the contents of the email (in particular the reference to May 2012 talks between Iran and the west over its nuclear program in Istanbul) show that the email was in fact sent on December 31, 2012.

The email makes it clear that it has been US policy from the very beginning to violently overthrow the Syrian government—and specifically to do this because it is in Israel’s interests.

C05794498-1

“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad,” Clinton forthrightly starts off by saying.

Even though all US intelligence reports had long dismissed Iran’s “atom bomb” program as a hoax (a conclusion supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Clinton continues to use these lies to “justify” destroying Syria in the name of Israel.

She specifically links Iran’s mythical atom bomb program to Syria because, she says, Iran’s “atom bomb” program threatens Israel’s “monopoly” on nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

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If Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, Clinton asserts, this would allow Syria (and other “adversaries of Israel” such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt) to “go nuclear as well,” all of which would threaten Israel’s interests.

Therefore, Clinton, says, Syria has to be destroyed.

It is, Clinton continues, the “strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria” that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security.

This would not come about through a “direct attack,” Clinton admits, because “in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel” this has never occurred, but through its alleged “proxies.”

Clinton goes on to asset that directly threatening Bashar Assad “and his family” with violence is the “right thing” to do:

The email proves—as if any more proof was needed—that the US government has been the main sponsor of the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, and all in order to “protect” Israel.

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It is also a sobering thought to consider that the “refugee” crisis which currently threatens to destroy Europe, was directly sparked off by this US government action as well, insofar as there are any genuine refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria.

In addition, over 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which has spread to Iraq—all thanks to Clinton and the Obama administration backing the “rebels” and stoking the fires of war in Syria.

The real and disturbing possibility that a psychopath like Clinton—whose policy has inflicted death and misery upon millions of people—could become the next president of America is the most deeply shocking thought of all.

Clinton’s public assertion that, if elected president, she would “take the relationship with Israel to the next level,” would definitively mark her, and Israel, as the enemy of not just some Arab states in the Middle East, but of all peace-loving people on earth.

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Decoding the Orlando Shooting, Cui Bono? Who Benefits?

By Mark Taliano, June 17 2016

The shooting in Orlando, Florida, is not about homosexuals, or Muslims, or assault rifles. It is about waging aggressive warfare overseas, empowering the domestic police state, and electing a warmongering President. Dr. Graeme McQueen, founding member of the Centre for…

omar-mateen

Orlando Killer Omar Mateen Harbored by G4S, the World’s Largest Private Security Company

By Peter Phillips, June 15 2016

The Orlando mass murderer, Omar Mateen, worked for G4S, one of the largest private security employers in the world. G4S has some 625,000 employees spanning five continents in more than 120 countries.

Chossudovsky

Global Warfare: Is US-NATO Going to Attack Russia?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Bonnie Faulkner, June 16 2016

image: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky The world is at a dangerous crossroads.  “The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the…

European_flag_in_Karlskrona_2011

UK – The European Union Referendum and the Parliamentary Dirty Tricks Brigade

By Felicity Arbuthnot, June 15 2016

The referendum on whether the Britain leaves or stays in the European Union is just 8 days away. A glossy leaflet dropped through my letterbox headed: “Vote Leave – The European Union and Your Family: The Facts.”

Donald_Trump_by_Gage_Skidmore_2

Is Trump a New Kind of Fascist?

By Sam Ben-Meir, June 17 2016

Donald Trump’s obscene demagoguery; his contemptuous regard for the first amendment, his desire to expand the authorities of the presidency (the awesome power of which has never been equal to what it is now), his belligerent and threatening attitude towards…

Hillary_Clinton_Testimony_to_House_Select_Committee_on_Benghazi

Clinton’s National Security Strategy: Military Escalation with Hillary

By Stephen Lendman, June 16 2016

Her record speaks for itself, publicly supporting all US wars of choice, aggression against nonbelligerent states, responsible for mass slaughter, destruction and appalling human misery.  Don’t let her deceptive rhetoric fool you. Urging escalated war on ISIS ignores its US…

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Author’s Note

The US has already special forces inside Syria. Their “official” mandate under the “Global War on Terrorism” is to confront the ISIS which happens to be supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia in laison with Washington.

The deployment of US ground forces inside Syria is now contemplated against Syrian government forces following an initiative of US State Department officials.

Some 51 State Department “diplomats” signed a memo distributed through the official “dissent channel,” seeking military strikes against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad whose forces have been leading the pushback against Islamist extremists who are seeking control of this important Mideast nation. (Robert Parry, Consortium News, June 17, 2016) 

The agenda is no longer to confront the ISIS under a bogus counterterrorism mandate. Quite the opposite. It consists in coming to the rescue of al Qaeda affiliated opposition forces (Moderate Terrorists) who are being decimated by Syrian government forces with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

Were US-NATO troops to be deployed in an outright invasion, the West’s coalition forces would not only be fighting Syrian government forces, they would also be  clashing with Iranian and Russian forces, which in turn could lead the World into a broader war scenario.

The following article was first published by Global Research in early May, 2016.

Michel Chossudovsky, June 18, 2016

*       *       *

US-NATO is not prepared to let go in Syria.

While the US sponsored Al Qaeda and ISIS rebels have largely been defeated, with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the Obama administration is now intent upon replenishing so to speak its “moderate opposition” brigades inside Syria with a new influx of jihadist fighters. 

Following the decimation of Daesh-al Nusrah positions throughout the country,  thousands of Islamic militants have fled amidst the outflow of refugees. 

The Western military alliance has responded to this defeat of “moderate” rebel positions by replenishing its proxy army, –ie. recruiting and training a new horde of mercenaries and jihadists with the support of  Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In this regard, the ongoing Battle for Aleppo is absolutely crucial. “Thousands of terrorists” were reported to have crossed the Turkey-Syria border in early May. No doubt, they will be deployed against government forces in Aleppo:

” Syrian Prime Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi also warned that more than 5,000 fresh militants crossed the border into the Northwestern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib from Turkey, stressing that the ceasefire agreement was being violated by certain parties.”

The ongoing border crossing of terrorists into Syria is facilitated by the Turkish authorities.

The Syrian government accused the West of “aiding in the escalation of terrorist activity and arming terrorists.”

This inflow of thousands of Al Qaeda Mujahideen was carefully planned. It was preceded by the deployment of US special forces in Syria to oversea and supervise the newly recruited  “moderate opposition rebels” aka Al Qaeda terrorists, most of whom have already undergone paramilitary training.

Of significance, these new foreign jihadist “freedom fighters” will de facto (not officially) be under US-NATO Command with US and allied forces deployed on the ground in permanent liaison with NATO and the US military.

In October 2015, the Obama administration confirmed that the deployment of US Special Forces would “involve fewer than 50 Special Operations advisers, who will work with resistance forces battling the Islamic State in northern Syria but will not engage in direct combat” (WP, October 30, 2015)

In recent developments, however, Washington confirmed that another 250 special forces were to be deployed. This took place in April alongside the influx of thousands of new rebel recruits.

250 US Special Forces? These official numbers are meaningless. They do not include those sent in by Britain and France. Moreover, among the new 5000 jihadists who have entered Syria, a large number are in fact highly trained mercenaries (recruited by private companies on contract to US-NATO) operating within rebel ranks. It is worth recalling that last August  Britain’s Sunday Express confirmed that British “SAS dress as ISIS fighters in undercover war on jihadis,” 

“More than 120 members belonging to the elite regiment are currently in the war-torn country” covertly “dressed in black and flying ISIS flags,”

The influx of jihadists coupled with the deployment of US and allied special forces was carefully coordinated. The US special forces will integrate the ranks of  the newly deployed Al Qaeda brigades in Northern Syria which will replace those which were defeated by SAA forces and their allies.

Of strategic significance, the influx of special forces and new jihadist troops is changing the composition and identity of  “Syrian opposition” combat forces, most of which are now made up of foreign fighters, including a significantly larger contingent of US-NATO military personnel.

When does a “civil war” become an “invasion”?  The fiction of a civil war and “opposition forces” can no longer be sustained when a large number of those forces are US and allied troops operating within Syria.

Sofar, officially it’s a “counterterrorism operation” but there are no terrorists to fight because they have been defeated by SAA forces. Hence the new influx of terrorists.

A Proxy War against Russia? 

The strategy now appears to be evolving towards US-NATO boots on the ground: a war theater with the deployment of special forces and eventually regular ground troops in larger numbers, with the danger that Western forces could enter into  direct confrontation with Russian as well as Iranian forces and military advisers.

In October, US officials accused Russia of aggression directed against US forces inside Syria:

‘Putin is deliberately targeting our forces. Our guys are fighting for their lives.’

Moscow is “deliberately targeting” U.S.-backed forces in Syria as part of a military campaign that has killed up to 150 CIA-trained rebels, a U.S. official told Fox News

The claims state that Russia’s apparent mission to destroy ISIS is really a facade, and that their real mission is to kill American assets. (Fox New  14, 2015).

The “Our Guys” category (“fighting for their lives”) not only includes bona fide “moderate terrorists” trained by the Western military alliance, it also includes an increasingly large number of  Western military advisers, intelligence agents and mercenaries deployed inside Syria.

The increased influx of foreign forces into Syria leads towards a scenario of escalation and confrontation with Russia.

 

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Syria: Repelling Advances of Al Nusra Front

June 18th, 2016 by South Front

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces, has been repelling advances of the Al Nusra Front terrorist group and its allies in southern Aleppo. Jeish al-Fatah, Al-Nusra and some Turkoman units launched an offensive in the direction of the villages of Zaytoun and al-Khalasa and clashes with SAA troops near al-Zarbeh. The joint militant forces have not been able to breach the SAA’s defense lines, yet. Accoring to pro-government sources, up to 70 militants, including an Al-Nusra commander, Ammar al-Khaled, have been killed in the clashes since yesterday.

Russian warplanes conducted air strikes against ISIS militants near the besieged city of Deir Ezzor and the nearby areas: al-Baghaliyah, the Thurdah mountai, the Al-Rashdiyah district and the Al-Ummal neighbourhood. In a separate development, Russian aircraft has dropped 18 tons of UN humanitarian cargos – food products and grains – on Deir Ezzor.

SAA units, supported by Russian warplanes, have been clashing with ISIS militants on the way to Tabaqa military airport in western Raqqa. 37 SAA soldiers and more than 100 ISIS militants have been killed in action since the SAA launched the advance in the direction of Raqqa.

The US-led coalition said in a press statement on Wednesday that on June 13, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), mostly Kurdish YPG units, completed the first phase of the operation to free Manbij, dividing ISIS forces in the provinces of Raqqa and Aleppo. The coalition air power has reportedly conducted some 190 airstrikes near Manbij since the start of the operation. Now, the second phase to liberate the city will start. The Pentagon believes that the Arab part of the SDF, doubbed “Syrian Arab Coalition”, will play a crucial role in the operation.

Sniper fire by ISIS militants has killed a senior Iraqi commander near the city of Mosul in the province of Nineveh, Iraq’s Defense Ministry said late Tuesday. Brig. Ahmed Badr al-Luhaibi was the commander of Brigade 71st of Division 15 of the Iraqi Army. Recently, Iraqi forces have liberated the villages of Hajj Ali and Khirbat Shammām in the area. US Apache helicopter gunships have supported the recent advane of the Iraqi military.

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More than 50 U.S. State Department “diplomats” sent a “dissent” memo urging President Obama to launch military strikes against the Syrian army, another sign that Foggy Bottom has collectively gone nuts, writes Robert Parry.

Over the past several decades, the U.S. State Department has deteriorated from a reasonably professional home for diplomacy and realism into a den of armchair warriors possessed of imperial delusions, a dangerous phenomenon underscored by the recent mass“dissent” in favor of blowing up more people in Syria.

Some 51 State Department “diplomats” signed a memo distributed through the official “dissent channel,” seeking military strikes against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad whose forces have been leading the pushback against Islamist extremists who are seeking control of this important Mideast nation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on Jan. 23, 2013, about the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. 2012. (Photo from C-SPAN coverage)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on Jan. 23, 2013, about the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. 2012. (Photo from C-SPAN coverage)

The fact that such a large contingent of State Department officials would openly advocate for an expanded aggressive war in line with the neoconservative agenda, which put Syria on a hit list some two decades ago, reveals how crazy the State Department has become.

The State Department now seems to be a combination of true-believing neocons along with their liberal-interventionist followers and some careerists who realize that the smart play is to behave toward the world as global proconsuls dictating solutions or seeking “regime change” rather than as diplomats engaging foreigners respectfully and seeking genuine compromise.

Even some State Department officials, whom I personally know and who are not neocons/liberal-hawks per se, act as if they have fully swallowed the Kool-Aid. They talk tough and behave arrogantly toward inhabitants of countries under their supervision. Foreigners are treated as mindless objects to be coerced or bribed.

So, it’s not entirely surprising that several dozen U.S. “diplomats” would attack President Barack Obama’s more temperate position on Syria while positioning themselves favorably in anticipation of a Hillary Clinton administration, which is expected to authorize an illegal invasion of Syria — under the guise of establishing “no-fly zones” and “safe zones” — which will mean the slaughter of young Syrian soldiers. The “diplomats” urge the use of “stand-off and air weapons.”

These hawks are so eager for more war that they don’t mind risking a direct conflict with Russia, breezily dismissing the possibility of a clash with the nuclear power by saying they are not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia.” That’s reassuring to hear.

Risking a Jihadist Victory

There’s also the danger that a direct U.S. military intervention could collapse the Syrian army and clear the way for victory by Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front or the Islamic State. The memo did not make clear how the delicate calibration of doing just enough damage to Syria’s military while avoiding an outright jihadist victory and averting a clash with Russia would be accomplished.

Video of the Russian SU-24 exploding in flames inside Syrian territory after it was shot down by Turkish air-to-air missiles on Nov. 24, 2015.

Video of the Russian SU-24 exploding in flames inside Syrian territory after it was shot down by Turkish air-to-air missiles on Nov. 24, 2015.

 

Presumably, whatever messes are created, the U.S. military would be left to clean up, assuming that shooting down some Russian warplanes and killing Russian military personnel wouldn’t escalate into a full-scale thermonuclear conflagration.

In short, it appears that the State Department has become a collective insane asylum where the inmates are in control. But this madness isn’t some short-term aberration that can be easily reversed. It has been a long time coming and would require a root-to-branch ripping out of today’s “diplomatic” corps to restore the State Department to its traditional role of avoiding wars rather than demanding them.

Though there have always been crazies in the State Department – usually found in the senior political ranks – the phenomenon of an institutional insanity has only evolved over the past several decades. And I have seen the change.

I have covered U.S. foreign policy since the late 1970s when there was appreciably more sanity in the diplomatic corps. There were people like Robert White and Patricia Derian (both now deceased) who stood up for justice and human rights, representing the best of America.

But the descent of the U.S. State Department into little more than well-dressed, well-spoken but thuggish enforcers of U.S. hegemony began with the Reagan administration. President Ronald Reagan and his team possessed a pathological hatred of Central American social movements seeking freedom from oppressive oligarchies and their brutal security forces.

During the 1980s, American diplomats with integrity were systematically marginalized, hounded or removed. (Human rights coordinator Derian left at the end of the Carter administration and was replaced by neocon Elliott Abrams; White was fired as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, explaining: “I refused a demand by the secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig Jr., that I use official channels to cover up the Salvadoran military’s responsibility for the murders of four American churchwomen.”)

The Neocons Rise

As the old-guard professionals left, a new breed of aggressive neoconservatives was brought in, the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Robert McFarlane, Robert Kagan and Abrams. After eight years of Reagan and four years of George H.W. Bush, the State Department was reshaped into a home for neocons, but some pockets of professionalism survived the onslaughts.

Former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, who was a leading neocon inside President George W. Bush's National Security Council.

Former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, a leading neocon.

While one might have expected the Democrats of the Clinton administration to reverse those trends, they didn’t. Instead, Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” applied to U.S. foreign policy as much as to domestic programs. He was always searching for that politically safe “middle.”

As the 1990s wore on, the decimation of foreign policy experts in the mold of White and Derian left few on the Democratic side who had the courage or skills to challenge the deeply entrenched neocons. Many Clinton-era Democrats accommodated to the neocon dominance by reinventing themselves as “liberal interventionists,” sharing the neocons’ love for military force but justifying the killing on “humanitarian” grounds.

This approach was a way for “liberals” to protect themselves against right-wing charges that they were “weak,” a charge that had scarred Democrats deeply during the Reagan/Bush-41 years, but this Democratic “tough-guy/gal-ism” further sidelined serious diplomats favoring traditional give-and-take with foreign leaders and their people.

So, you had Democrats like then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and later Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright justifying Bill Clinton’s brutal sanctions policies toward Iraq, which the U.N. blamed for killing 500,000 Iraqi children, as “a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

Bill Clinton’s eight years of “triangulation,” which included the brutal air war against Serbia, was followed by eight years of George W. Bush, which further ensconced the neocons as the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

By then, what was left of the old Republican “realists,” the likes of Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, was aging out or had been so thoroughly compromised that the neocons faced no significant opposition within Republican circles. And, Official Washington’s foreign-policy Democrats had become almost indistinguishable from the neocons, except for their use of “humanitarian” arguments to justify aggressive wars.

Media Capitulation

Before George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, much of the “liberal” media establishment – from The New York Times to The New Yorker – fell in line behind the war, asking few tough questions and presenting almost no obstacles. Favoring war had become the “safe” career play.

At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as "shock and awe."

At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”

At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”

But a nascent anti-war movement among rank-and-file Democrats did emerge, propelling Barack Obama, an anti-Iraq War Democrat, to the 2008 presidential nomination over Iraq War supporter Hillary Clinton. But those peaceful sentiments among the Democratic “base” did not reach very deeply into the ranks of Democratic foreign policy mavens.

So, when Obama entered the White House, he faced a difficult challenge. The State Department needed a thorough purging of the neocons and the liberal hawks, but there were few Democratic foreign policy experts who hadn’t sold out to the neocons. An entire generation of Democratic policy-makers had been raised in the world of neocon-dominated conferences, meetings, op-eds and think tanks, where tough talk made you sound good while talk of traditional diplomacy made you sound soft.

By contrast, more of the U.S. military and even the CIA favored less belligerent approaches to the world, in part, because they had actually fought Bush’s hopeless “global war on terror.” But Bush’s hand-picked, neocon-oriented high command – the likes of General David Petraeus – remained in place and favored expanded wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama then made one of the most fateful decisions of his presidency. Instead of cleaning house at State and at the Pentagon, he listened to some advisers who came up with the clever P.R. theme “Team of Rivals” – a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s first Civil War cabinet – and Obama kept in place Bush’s military leadership, including Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, and reached out to hawkish Sen. Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State.

In other words, Obama not only didn’t take control of the foreign-policy apparatus, he strengthened the power of the neocons and liberal hawks. He then let this powerful bloc of Clinton-Gates-Petraeus steer him into a foolhardy counterinsurgency “surge” in Afghanistan that did little more than get 1,000 more U.S. soldiers killed along with many more Afghans.

Obama also let Clinton sabotage his attempted outreach to Iran in 2010 seeking constraints on its nuclear program and he succumbed to her pressure in 2011 to invade Libya under the false pretense of establishing a “no-fly zone” to protect civilians, what became a “regime change” disaster that Obama has ranked as his biggest foreign policy mistake.

The Syrian Conflict

Obama did resist Secretary Clinton’s calls for another military intervention in Syria although he authorized some limited military support to the allegedly “moderate” rebels and allowed Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to do much more in supporting jihadists connected to Al Qaeda and even the Islamic State.

Syrian women and children refugees at Budapest railway station. (Photo from Wikipedia)

Syrian women and children refugees at Budapest railway station. (Photo from Wikipedia)

Under Secretary Clinton, the neocon/liberal-hawk bloc consolidated its control of the State Department diplomatic corps. Under neocon domination, the State Department moved from one “group think” to the next. Having learned nothing from the Iraq War, the conformity continued to apply toward Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, China, Venezuela, etc.

Everywhere the goal was same: to impose U.S. hegemony, to force the locals to bow to American dictates, to steer them into neo-liberal “free market” solutions which were often equated with “democracy” even if most of the people of the affected countries disagreed.

Double-talk and double-think replaced reality-driven policies. “Strategic communications,” i.e., the aggressive use of propaganda to advance U.S. interests, was one watchword. “Smart power,” i.e., the application of financial sanctions, threats of arrests, limited military strikes and other forms of intimidation, was another.

Every propaganda opportunity, such as the Syrian sarin attack in 2013 or the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down over eastern Ukraine, was exploited to the hilt to throw adversaries on the defensive even if U.S. intelligence analysts doubted that evidence supported the accusations.

Lying at the highest levels of the U.S. government – but especially among the State Department’s senior officials – became epidemic. Perhaps even worse, U.S. “diplomats” seemed to believe their own propaganda.

Meanwhile, the mainstream U.S. news media experienced a similar drift into the gravity pull of neocon dominance and professional careerism, eliminating major news outlets as any kind of check on official falsehoods.

The Up-and-Comers

The new State Department star – expected to receive a high-level appointment from President Clinton-45 – is neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who orchestrated the 2014 putsch in Ukraine, toppling an elected, Russia-friendly president and replacing him with a hard-line Ukrainian nationalist regime that then launched violent military attacks against ethnic Russians in the east who resisted the coup leadership.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

When Russia came to the assistance of these embattled Ukrainian citizens, including agreeing to Crimea’s request to rejoin Russia, the State Department and U.S. mass media spoke as one in decrying a “Russian invasion” and supporting NATO military maneuvers on Russia’s borders to deter “Russian aggression.”

Anyone who dares question this latest “group think” – as it plunges the world into a dangerous new Cold War – is dismissed as a “Kremlin apologist” or “Moscow stooge” just as skeptics about the Iraq War were derided as “Saddam apologists.” Virtually everyone important in Official Washington marches in lock step toward war and more war. (Victoria Nuland is married to Robert Kagan, making them one of Washington’s supreme power couples.)

So, that is the context of the latest State Department rebellion against Obama’s more tempered policies on Syria. Looking forward to a likely Hillary Clinton administration, these 51 “diplomats” have signed their name to a “dissent” that advocates bombing the Syrian military to protect Syria’s “moderate” rebels who – to the degree they even exist – fight mostly under the umbrella of Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham.

The muddled thinking in this “dissent” is that by bombing the Syrian military, the U.S. government can enhance the power of the rebels and supposedly force Assad to negotiate his own removal. But there is no reason to think that this plan would work.

In early 2014, when the rebels held a relatively strong position, U.S.-arranged peace talks amounted to a rebel-dominated conference that made Assad’s departure a pre-condition and excluded Syria’s Iranian allies from attending. Not surprisingly, Assad’s representative went home and the talks collapsed.

Now, with Assad holding a relatively strong hand, backed by Russian air power and Iranian ground forces, the “dissenting” U.S. diplomats say peace is impossible because the rebels are in no position to compel Assad’s departure. Thus, the “dissenters” recommend that the U.S. expand its role in the war to again lift the rebels, but that would only mean more maximalist demands from the rebels.

Serious Risks

This proposed wider war, however, would carry some very serious risks, including the possibility that the Syrian army could collapse, opening the gates of Damascus to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front (and its allies) or the Islamic State – a scenario that, as The New York Times noted, the “memo doesn’t address.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Secretary of State John Kerry before meetings at the Kremlin on Dec. 15, 2015. (State Department photo)

Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Secretary of State John Kerry before meetings at the Kremlin on Dec. 15, 2015. (State Department photo)

Currently, the Islamic State and – to a lesser degree – the Nusra Front are in retreat, chased by the Syrian army with Russian air support and by some Kurdish forces with U.S. backing. But those gains could easily be reversed. There is also the risk of sparking a wider war with Iran and/or Russia.

But such cavalier waving aside of grave dangers is nothing new for the neocons and liberal hawks. They have consistently dreamt up schemes that may sound good at a think-tank conference or read well in an op-ed article, but fail in the face of ground truth where usually U.S. soldiers are expected to fix the mess.

We have seen this wishful thinking go awry in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and even Syria, where Obama’s acquiescence to provide arms and training for the so-called “unicorns” – the hard-to-detect “moderate” rebels – saw those combatants and their weapons absorbed into Al Qaeda’s or Islamic State’s ranks.

Yet, the neocons and liberal hawks who control the State Department – and are eagerly looking forward to a Hillary Clinton presidency – will never stop coming up with these crazy notions until a concerted effort is made to assess accountability for all the failures that that they have inflicted on U.S. foreign policy.

As long as there is no accountability – as long as the U.S. president won’t rein in these warmongers – the madness will continue and only grow more dangerous.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party” and “Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?’]

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 andbarnesandnoble.com).

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The following statement was presented by Arabian Rights Watch Association to the UNHRC [UN Human Rights Commission] during their 32nd session.  In this statement US-Yemeni lawyer, Mohammed Al Wazir outlines the ongoing human rights violations being carried out by the US and UK armed Saudi coalition whose collective punishment of 27 million Yemeni people is being cynically endorsed by the UN via their resolution 2216 that is being imposed under the false pretext of the legitimacy of the fugitive, twice resigned ex President Mansour Hadi. 

The UN complicity with the Saudi Coalition genocidal war of aggression is explored in this 21st Century Wire article: UN Whitewashing Saudi Coalition War Crimes and International Human Rights Violations.  (Vanessa Beeley, 21st Century Wire)

Saudi Coalition Airstrikes & Blockade Against the People of Yemen Cause a Humanitarian Disaster

IDO, together with Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain, and Arabian Rights Watch Association, express our utmost concern over the Saudi Arabian led Coalition’s (the “Coalition”) a) ongoing serious and systematic rights violations in Yemen, including political, economic, human, and humanitarian rights. These ongoing and systematic violations come in the form of: i) a comprehensive indiscriminate land, air, and sea blockade under the pretense of UN Security Council Resolutions 2140 and 2216 and ii) airstrikes on civilian targets that include the use of internationally banned cluster munitions. We also express our deep concern with the Saudi-led Coalition’s iii) forced expulsion of Yemenis from Aden to Taiz and other northern provinces as well as the iv) lack of neutrality, authority, or political will of Hadi’s National Commission to investigate crimes committed in Yemen.

a) Ongoing Violations of the Laws of War, Human Rights Law & Humanitarian Law

i) Imposition of a comprehensive land, air and sea blockade by the Saudi-led Coalition

The Saudi-led Coalition’s implementation of Resolutions 2140 and 2216 has contributed to food insecurity for an estimated 14.4 million Yemenis, 7.4 million of whom are severely food insecure. Moreover, hundreds of hospitals and clinics have shut down due to the Saudi-led Coalition’s airstrikes and blockade. The blocking of critical fuel and medical supplies effectively denies an estimated 15 million Yemeni people access to basic healthcare needs.

Allowing the free flow of commercial imports and facilitating their distribution to all locations are essential in stemming further increases in humanitarian needs. According to the 2016 Humanitarian Needs Overview, since the crisis began, the Coalition’s blockade – as well as damage to port infrastructure due to air strikes – have added to the humanitarian burden by preventing or discouraging commercial imports into the country:

Over 90 per cent of staple food (such as cereals) in Yemen was imported prior to the crisis, and the country was using an estimated 544,000 metric tons of fuel per month before the crisis. Fuel is essential to distribute food, pump water and run hospital generators, among other critical activities. In September, OCHA estimated that commercial fuel imports fell to just 1 per cent of monthly requirements, and food imports hit their second-lowest level since the crisis began. These restrictions constitute a major driver of shortages and rising prices of basic commodities, which have in turn contributed to crippling the economy. Health facilities continue to close at alarming rates due to shortages of fuel and other basic supplies. Without critical commodities, needs across sectors are rising, and response efforts are being hampered.

According to Ahmed Alshami, the Executive Director at Arabian Rights Watch Association, the mechanism used during the past 14 months to search ships for weapons has been abused to block commercial goods and humanitarian aid. Ships are stopped by the Saudi Coalition, delayed from entry for days, weeks or months at a time under the pretext of ongoing weapons searches before being allowed to continue. Some sources report extortion is also used to restrict shipping into Yemen. Some ships are simply denied entry altogether.

We further call attention to the text of the UNSC Resolutions which involve an arms embargo, asset freeze and travel ban on 5 named individuals. These UNSC resolutions do not sanction war, nor do they enact a comprehensive land, air, and sea blockade to police and sanction regular trade, both import and export, in commercial goods, including food, medical and fuel supplies, and humanitarian aid.

We appreciate the efforts announced by the UN Secretary-General to institute a United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNVIM) for the facilitation of commercial imports to 3 out of the 5 main ports in Yemen however express concern at the level of awareness regarding the new program. Given the website and forms are still only offered in English, we recommend translating the website and hosted documents into Arabic and launching a corresponding awareness campaign to increase registration participation and compliance.

ii) Airstrikes on civilian targets that include the use of internationally banned cluster munitions

According to the Legal Center for Rights and Development, in the first 12 months of the war, a total of 9136 civilians were documented to have been killed by Saudi-led Coalition airstrikes. 5,271 were men (58%), 1,654 were women (18%), and 2,211 were children (24%). The total number of civilians wounded due to the indiscriminate airstrikes exceeds 16,000. 622 bridges and roads were destroyed along with 135 power plants, 188 water stations, 195 telecom stations, 14 airports, 11 sea ports and harbors, 325,000 residential homes, 250 hospitals and clinics, 43 colleges and universities, 630 schools and causing 3,750 others to close down.

In addition to the indiscriminate use of air power to attack civilian populations, the Saudi-led coalition has also been documented to have used internationally banned cluster munitions on civilian populations in violation of the principles of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity. According to many local and international NGOs, young children have been killed and maimed by unexploded toy-like sub-munitions that can detonate upon touch. A 10 day research trip to Saada, Hajjah and Sanaa by Amnesty International revealed that US, UK, and Brazilian cluster munitions were used by the Saudi Coalition resulting in the death or injury of 16 civilians including nine children, two of whom were killed. According to the report, these casualties took place days, weeks, and sometimes months after the bombs were dropped by coalition forces in Yemen.

iii) Forced Expulsion of Yemenis from Aden by Saudi led Coalition and Hadi government-in-exile

We further raise our continued concern with the Coalition and the Hadi government-in-exile’s ongoing rights violations in Yemen. Particularly, the measure by the government-appointed security forces to expel from Aden over 800 Yemenis with links to the Taiz governorate. This policy is worrisome as it employs discrimination and provincial bigotry threatening the right to life, employment and mobility for thousands of Yemenis. The expulsion which was ordered at the behest of security officers appointed by the Hadi government-in-exile without his express order indicates his lack of control in Aden and raises further questions about his government’s legitimacy. Despite the Hadi government-in-exile’s subsequent disapproval of the expulsion of Yemenis from Aden, it has not managed to end the policy nor remedy those affected. Instead we remain concerned that hundreds more Yemenis are threatened by expulsion to northern governorates.

iv) Inability of Hadi’s national commission to investigate the crimes being committed in Yemen

In the 31st Session of the Human Rights Council, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kate Gilmore, reported that over 55% of the casualties in Yemen were due to Coalition airstrikes and demanded the beginning of investigations. In response, the Hadi government-in-exile appointed Minister of Human Rights, Izz Aldin Alasbahi, requested a review of the statements made by OHCHR regarding the casualties that occurred in Yemen, disputing the impartiality and accuracy of the Deputy High Commissioner’s assessment. This posture will not lend itself to an impartial investigation into the crimes committed in Yemen.

Taken together, the airstrikes and blockade are measures deliberately inflicted on the whole of the Yemeni people that create conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, the extent of which appear to constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. As a belligerent in this multifaceted conflict, neither the National Commission, nor the Saudi Coalition may be reasonably expected to impartially investigate its own role in such crimes. Only through the establishment of an independent, international commission with a mandate to document abuses on all sides, and make impartial recommendations to the UN Security Council for referral to the International Criminal Court, can true accountability be accomplished.

Recommendation

At the 32nd Session of the Human Rights Council, IDO together with Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain, and Arabian Rights Watch Association, urge UN Member States to renew their calls to:

  • Call for an end to the war in Yemen, including the ongoing airstrikes and blockade, and the full withdrawal of all foreign forces from the territory of Yemen;
  • Establish an independent international commission of inquiry into the crimes being committed by all parties to the war in Yemen, with a mandate to make recommendations to the UN Security Council to transfer cases to International Criminal Court.
  • Extend the arms embargo to include members of the Saudi-led Coalition for their role in perpetuating violations of humanitarian law and the laws of war in Yemen;
  • Facilitate humanitarian access to all areas in need of assistance;
  • Provide support to Yemen in its struggle to combat violent extremism; and
  • Facilitate Yemeni to Yemeni dialogue without the intervention of regional powers.
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previous article discussed dozens of unnamed State Department staffers urging “targeted military strikes” on Assad’s government – signing an internal memo posted on the agency’s dissent channel.

Obama already is at war to transform Syria into another US vassal state, using ISIS and other imported terrorist groups as imperial foot soldiers – supplemented by air strikes on infrastructure and government targets, along with US, UK, French and now German special forces on the ground, aiding the scourge their political leaders claim to oppose.

The State Department acknowledged the internal memo without comment. It’s more evidence of neocons infesting Washington, in this case the agency most responsible for US foreign policy.

It’s unclear if notorious hawk Victoria Nuland was one of the memo’s signatories. She’s militantly anti-Assad – earlier turning truth on its head, calling him “evil…inhumane,” unfit to rule, adding:

He certainly should leave power. He is beyond brutal. It is inhumane what he has done to his own people.

I don’t think anybody who has is guilty of the kinds of crimes against your own people…can be considered rational by any human sense of the word.

When Washington wants a sovereign leader toppled, politicized demonization precedes more forceful action.

Assad is overwhelmingly popular, reelected in June 2014, a process independent observers called open, free and fair. Syrians want no one else leading them. They alone have the right to choose, free from foreign meddling.

International law is clear. No nation may interfere in the internal affairs of others except in self-defense. Russia is legally aiding Syria combat US-supported terrorists at the behest of its government.

US military action flagrantly breaches international laws, norms and standards. Neocon State Department staffers want things escalated, Assad forcefully ousted, pro-Western puppet rule replacing him.

On Wednesday, John Kerry hinted at possible more robust US action, saying “Russia needs to understand that our patience is not infinite. (It’s) very limited now with respect to whether or not Assad is going to be held accountable.”

The United States is not going to sit there and be used as an instrument that permits a so-called ceasefire to be in place while one principal party is trying to take advantage of it to the detriment of the entire process. We’re not going to allow that to continue.

Fact: Assad is responsibly defending his nation and people against US-supported terrorist invaders.

Fact: They’re virtually entirely responsible for ceasefire violations.

With half a year left before stepping down, Obama is unlikely to undertake a major policy shift on Syria. At the same time, US war on its sovereignty won’t end with a new administration. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton orchestrated it. She’ll likely escalate it if elected in November.

Trump showed he’s hawkish, earlier saying “I’m gonna build a military that’s gonna be much stronger than it is right now. It’s gonna be so strong, nobody’s gonna mess with us” – implying heavy-handed saber rattling, likely freely using it.

Dozens of State Department staffers wanting US military strikes on Assad’s government is more evidence of America’s rage for war, neocons infesting Washington exerting influence on policy, disregard for rule of law principles, and likelihood of extremist/lawless governance continuing no matter who succeeds Obama.

Escalating war on Syria heightens the danger of direct confrontation with Russia, risking the possibility of extinguishing life on earth.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

 

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India or China: Has Nepal A Realistic Choice?

June 18th, 2016 by Barbara Nimri Aziz

I was crossing the airstrip to a small aircraft that would take me to Nepal’s interior. We had left the disarray of the departure hall in Kathmandu airport with its melee of early morning hopefuls anxious to escape the polluted city and fly to a trailhead in search of fresh mountain streams and clean air. Planes are in short supply here and cancellations of domestic flights are common. Although those waiting foreigners seemed remarkably patient with the delays, perhaps attributing the disorder to high altitude. Politics wouldn’t figure into any charming anecdote sent from their holidays in the Himalayas. Neither was I thinking about Nepal’s political troubles at that moment. Not until my colleague directed my attention to a medium sized plane parked on the edge of the tarmac.

“That Turbo Prop M16 is Chinese-made; it was bought by Nepal. Another of the same model, a gift, is expected: two-for-the-price-of-one, you can say.” Nepal could use more aircraft, with not infrequent crashes and regular over-bookings on domestic flights. As for the undelivered Chinese turbo prop, “It’s being held up”, my companion replied. He exhibited the lighthearted cynicism that Nepalese now apply to all public announcements, especially when officials are involved.

I recalled seeing a recent front page article where a minister announced that irregularities in the registration of a Chinese aircraft would delay its arrival. “Too much aid from China is not welcome.” Was this another case of India blocking Nepal’s economic exchanges with China?

Maybe. Or maybe Boeing, American. Or Airbus. Europeans and Americans may be unhappy with China’s overtures in Nepal. India too; Delhi influences everything that happens here.

India and Nepal are bound together in a myriad of ways with India being the overwhelmingly dominant partner. Nepalese were painfully reminded of this when India supported a severe and sustained economic blockade on its land-locked northern neighbor. With Nepal’s dependence on India for heating fuel and petrol for transport— two of many essential commodities ranging from paper and wood to rice and fruit, also manufactured items and packaged/processed food and beverages—life across much of Nepal came to a halt. It was the heating gas and transport fuel embargo that caused unprecedented hardships in population centers, especially the capital. It left people embittered and reassessing their relation with India.

The boycott was launched by the Mahdesi people, unhappy at what they considered marginalization, when last July after years of delays, Nepal’s new constitution was signed. Mahdesi-Nepalese, inhabiting a wide belt of land along their shared border, maintain close ties with India. They decided to utilize this strategic position to express their discontent with the constitution and press for better representation; thus the blockade of goods (from India) entering Nepal through their region.

That internal Nepal crisis took on greater significance when the Indian government was seen as reinforcing Mahdesi demands. Indeed India instructed Nepal to amend its constitution in line with Mahdesi requests. Nepal’s leaders were neither able to secure India’s co-operation nor to negotiate a solution with the steadfast Mahdesi.

As the blockade wore on (lasting for seven months, including winter, although it began to ease somewhat earlier) Nepalese began to seek an alternative. Not easy, since its northern border cuts through the almost impenetrable Himalayan mountain range. Tibet to the north is vast and undeveloped but is nevertheless Nepal’s best access to China. It would be years before a viable route through there could bring essentials like fuel on the scale needed. Although during the blockade China began sending limited supplies to its stricken neighbor.

Even with end of the blockade, anti-Indian sentiment in Nepal remains high. Over my many decades observing Nepal at close hand, I’d not seen Nepalese so angry and disappointed with their neighbor, a place where many of them have studied and where they seek medical treatment, with a culture close to their own, the source of their evening television entertainment. Those millions of children who experienced hardships created by the blockade may well remember that injury for years to come.

Enter China: ties between it and Nepal have moved far beyond a few specialized items produced in Tibet. Today Chinese travelers are a common sight in the capital and on trekking trails. Chinese retailers operate shops in the tourist quarter of Thamel, selling curios and garments and managing hotels and restaurants. Chinese-made household items, electrical goods (in competition with Indian manufactured goods) are for sale across Nepal. China also provides significant development aid to Nepal. An indication of envisioned future growth is the offering of classes in Mandarin at least one major Kathmandu language institute (www.ulci.com.np).

When the earthquake struck Nepal last year, China was seen through a new and favorable prism as it competed with India to provide disaster relief. Both neighbors rushed to Nepal’s assistance and they’ve matched each other in terms of pledges for reconstruction. On the ground at that critical time, I myself witnessed the efficiency with which Chinese aid workers operated; one heard frequent complimentary remarks by recipients of that assistance. Urgent supplies arrived from China by air while Chinese bulldozers opened the blocked roads along the quake-damaged Tibet-Nepal route. Contrasting with praise of Chinese relief efforts were complaints about India. (Rumors circulated that India’s military charged into Nepal when the quake struck without Nepal’s approval, also that Indian media exaggerated India’s relief contributions. Although it is acknowledged that huge quantities of needed supplies arrived from India, and India facilitated overland shipments sent from other parts of Asia.)

The Madhesi embargo was started before earthquake relief ended and long before collapsed homes and schools could be rebuilt, also just as winter was approaching. In Nepal’s desperate search for fuel at that time, China became to the fore. It would not be a simple solution since the quantities needed could only be provided by road through Tibet and across Himalayan passes. Supplies might be insufficient but the concept of expanding routes from the north was pursued. (By October, at the height of the blockade Nepal and China signed two treaties, one on trade and a second on fuel supplies). A viable rail link or a pipeline into Nepal from the north seems implausible; in the recent crisis the China option was of limited benefit.

Yet China’s reputation in infrastructure engineering is legend; having achieved a rail route across China into Tibet, an extension through the Himalayas, however fantastic, is possible. Indeed a month ago, China dispatched what appears to be a symbolic train delivery to Nepal . The international shipment departed from Lanzhou westward covering 2,431 kilometers of rail from to Shigatse (Tibet), then 564 kilometers by road from Shigatse to Kyirong (on Nepal’s border) and the final 160 kilometers by road to Kathmandu. Accompanying this news there’s talk of a tunnel through the Himalayan range from China into Nepal. Given what Chinese engineers have accomplished elsewhere, such a route is not unattainable.

What eventually happens depends more on Nepali politics, and China and India’s determination not to jeopardize their own growing co-operation. Internally Nepal’s leadership is weak and unstable, subject to factionalism and corruption. Leaders from across the political spectrum lack negotiating power, political support, and any vision to follow through with a substantive long-term Chinese policy. On its side, it’s doubtful if China would jeopardize a stable relationship with India to change the status quo in Nepal. Meanwhile India and Nepal are reportedly finalizing plans for an oil pipeline from the south.

Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. Find her work at www.RadioTahrir.org. She was a longtime producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY.

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In its Monetary Policy Report 2015-2016, the Bank of Greece highlights what many Greeks already know, EU austerity demands is pushing the country towards a healthcare disaster.

Economic insecurity, high unemployment, decreasing income and constant stress are the personal struggles that many Greeks now live with. Personal income belt tightening is causing many patients to cut out necessary health care treatments, while shortages in government funds is resulting in general healthcare system shortages across the country.

Keep Talking Greece summarises the BoG report and its startling findings…

– Suicides increased. “The risk of suicidal behavior increases when there are so-called primary risk factors (psychiatric-medical conditions), while the secondary factors (economic situation) and tertiary factors (age, gender) affects the risk of suicide, but only if primary risk factors pre-exist.

– Infant mortality increased by nearly 50%, mainly due to increase of deaths of infants younger than one year, and the decline of births by 22,1%. Infant mortality increase: 2.65% in 2008 and 3.75% in 2014

– Increase of parts of population with mental illness, especially with depression. Increase:  3.,3% in 2008 to 6.8% in 2009, to 8.2% in 2011 and to 12.3% in 2013. In 2014, a 4.7% of the population above 15 years old declared it suffered form depression – that was 2.6% in 2009.

– Increase of chronic diseases increased by approximately 24%.

The BoG notes that “the large cuts in public expenditure have not been accompanied by changes and improvement of the health system in order to limit the consequences for the weakest citizens and vulnerable groups of the society.”

The report of the Governor of the Bank of Greece reckons surveys conducted by Greek Statistic Authorities (ELSTAT) and according to which:

– a significant increase of 24.2% of people aged 15+ suffering from chronic health problem or chronic disease.
– increase of more than 15% of people who limited their activities due to health problems in 2014.
– percentage of low-weight (below 2.5 kg) births increased by 19% in 2008-2010, and that this is associated with long-term negative effects on the health and the development of children.

Citing OECD data of 2013, the BoG underlines that 79% of the population in Greece was not covered with insurance and therefore without medical and medicine due to long-term unemployment, while self-employed could not afford to pay their social contributions.

A survey conducted in 2014 by ELSTAT showed that part of population above 15 years old was in need of medical help but did not receive it due to lack of financial means:

13% of population did not receive medical care or treatment

15.4% of population did not receive dental care of treatment

4.3% of population did not receive mental health care services

11.2% did not take the prescription medicine prescribed by doctors.

The same survey shows a decrease in private hospital admissions and increase in public hospital with the effect that public hospitals are not able to cope with the increase demands due to austerity budget and personnel cuts. Public hospital admission in 2009 were 1.6 million, and 2.5 million in 2014.

According to the survey, percentage of population that needed to receive medical-nursing care and received it in delay or not at all was:

13.1% due to long waiting list

6.1% due to long distance or transportation problems

9.4% due to lack of specialized doctors and health personnel.

The BoG report warns that the economic crisis and the devaluation of the health sector threaten to shrink the life-expectancy.

Via:

www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2016/06/16/austerity-kills-bank-of-greece-reports-greeks-health-deteriorating-life-expectancy-shrinks/

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A Freedom of Information request by Drone Wars UK has revealed that only 5% of British air strikes in Iraq and Syria are pre-planned.

According to the FoI reponse from the Ministry of Defence out of 414 UK air strikes in Iraq and Syria during 2015, 395 were launched under dynamic targeting procedures while just 19 were pre-planned.  Dynamic targeting procedures are used when aircraft are already in the air and either ‘targets of opportunity’ are spotted or strikes are launched in defence of troops on the ground during direct combat.

As dynamically targeted strikes are launched in a short-time frame and without pre-planning it is generally recognised that such strikes are more likely to injure civilians than those that are pre-planned.  Pre-planning of strikes gives time to assess possible dangers to civilians and enable strikes to be launched in a way that can minimise such danger.  According to US doctrine documents “dynamic targeting occurs in a much compressed timeline… [which] may require that targeting be completed in minutes.”

drone target

The Ministry of Defence continues to insist that there is no evidence that any of the UK’s 845 air strikeslaunched since September 2014 in Iraq and Syria have killed or injured civilians. Casualty reporting organisations however report that hundreds of civilians have been killed in Coalition air strikes. Airwars, which tracks strikes in Iraq and Syria reported this week that more than 1,300 civilians have been killed in Coalition air strikes.

2015-table-category-fWhile there are likely to be a large number of dynamic strikes during a conventional ‘hot battlefield’ situation such as that taking place in Iraq and Syria, that fact that only 5% of UK strikes are pre-planned is extremely surprising. As if to pre-empt questions, in its response letter the MoD argues that

prioritisation of providing close air support to partner forces on the ground can result in a high proportion of strikes being dynamic. The UK has some of the most capable air assets, which can result in the allocation of dynamic targets to UK assets, freeing up other nations’ aircraft to prosecute pre-planned deliberate targets.

However our analysis of  UK strikes in Iraq and Syria (from the MoD’s regular updates) show that many of the strikes cannot be classified as close air support strikes.

Deaths from dynamic strike

An important investigation published in last week’s Washington Post illustrates clearly how dynamic strikes can kill civilians without those undertaking such strikes being aware of the impact on the ground. On 13 March 2015 US aircraft were sent to strike an Islamic checkpoint near Mosul, a  dynamic targeting mission, according to a subsequent Centcom report.

According to the Washington Post, the pilots were about to strike the checkpoint when two vehicles stopped and those inside begin talking to the guards.  The article goes on:

Running low on fuel and time, the pilots concluded that the people in the cars were allied with the militants and asked for permission to strike. After a brief discussion with their headquarters in Qatar, they got their reply: “You’re cleared to execute.”

The pilots later report that the guard shack was flattened, two vehicles destroyed and four enemy fighters killed.

Two weeks later however an email arrived at the US embassy from Raja’a Zidan al-Ekabee, an Iraqi woman who owned one of the cars, reporting civilian casualties and requesting compensation for her destroyed car. She had fled Mosul earlier and was paying a driver to undertake the dangerous job of bringing the car out of the area.  Apparently the driver brought fleeing civilians along in the car which was travelling with a second car also filled with escaping civilians.

The US military investigated the report and, according to the Washington Post identified a “communications error” during the hurried conversations between the pilots and their headquarters.  After reviewing the video, the US changed the final casualty count of the strike to “four enemy fighters and four civilians.”

However the four civilian casualties accepted by the US under counts the actual number of civilian deaths.  According to the Washington Post, which interviewed surviving family members (including a lieutenant colonel with the Iraqi police) and local officials, eleven civilians actually died in the strike, including five children, four women and two male civilian drivers.  It should be noted that no compensation was paid to Ekabee.  An email from the US military stated that she was not entitled to compensation as the car was destroyed in “combat activity.” Separately, family members of the civilian victims did not as yet claim compensation.

Here in the UK, the bullish tone around the precision of UK air strikes and the lack of civilian casualties from UK strikes appears to be being modified.  In his latest quarterly statement to parliament on the campaign, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon argued that while the UK takes “very good care” to minimise civilian casualties, “in the messiness of war it is not impossible that there may be civilian casualties at some point”.  Later in response to questions, he accepted that “it will be more and more difficult to ensure that we avoid civilian casualties” in areas of intense fighting, a reference no doubt to the coming heavy strikes on Mosul and Raqqa.

While some will accept such casualties as the price ‘we’ (sic) have to pay to tackle ISIS, a brief read through the hundreds of individual human stories of those killed in Coalition airstrikes compiled by Airwars should give all serious pause for thought.

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Distorting Fascism to Sanitize Capitalism

June 18th, 2016 by Prof. Ismael Hossein-Zadeh

The facile and indiscriminate use of the term fascism has led to a widespread misunderstanding and misuse of its meaning. Asked to define fascism, most people would respond in terms such as dictatorship, anti-Semitism, mass hysteria, efficient propaganda machine, mesmerizing oratory of a psychopathic leader, and the like.

Such a pervasive misconception of the meaning of the term fascism is not altogether fortuitous. It is largely because of a longstanding utilitarian misrepresentation of the term. Fascism is deliberately obfuscated in order to sanitize capitalism. Ideologues, theorists and opinion-makers of capitalism have systematically shifted the systemic sins of fascism from market/capitalist failures to individual or personal failures.

Thus, the origins, the rise and the ravages of the classic European fascism are blamed largely on Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, not the socio-economic circumstances that gave rise to those instrumentally “useful” characters. An obvious flaw of this interpretation of fascism is that it cannot explain recent manifestations of fascism: since the archetype European fascism is attributed to Hitler and Mussolini, their demise ought to have logically meant the end of fascism. Yet, manifestations of fascism has been a recurring phenomenon characteristic of periods of capitalist crisis, as evinced by today’s expressions of fascistic tendencies in most of the core capitalist countries.

These ominous developments are testament to the fact that the germs of fascism are intrinsic to capitalism, as periodic economic crises are intrinsic to capitalism. As such, it is bound to periodically resurface as long as capitalism continues to be the dominant mode of socio-economic production.

Just as the original European fascism was blamed on Hitler and Mussolini, so is today’s display of fascistic propensities blamed on characters such as Donald Trump (in the U.S.), Marine Le Pen (in France), Norbert Hofer (in Austria), Alexander Gauland (in Germany), and so on. The real culprit, however, has been market failure and economic insecurity, both now and then.

In addition to the intended absolution of capitalism from the sins of fascism, its utilitarian misrepresentation has the political advantage of conveniently demonizing any “unfriendly” politician or “rogue” state leader as fascist. As Jean Bricmont recently put it on this site: “New Hitlers spring up in the Western imagination like mushrooms in an autumn woods”: Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Assad, Milosevic, LePen, Putin, and Ahmadinejad have all been subjected to such characterizations. Indeed, a number of “unfavorable” nationalist leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi were first branded as fascist before they were overthrown and murdered.

Misrepresentation of fascism is intended to absolve capitalism from its responsibility in two major ways. First, it blames the executive agent of fascism (for example, Hitler) for the rise and the crimes of fascism. Second, the executive agent, in turn, shifts the blame from the system, or the socio-economic structure, to scapegoats such as migrants, ethnic, racial, or religious minorities.

Fascism cannot be defined capriciously. It cannot be reduced to the crimes of individual leaders of Nazi Germany, or the pathological problems of Hitler’s mind, or the “unfriendly” nationalist leaders who disobey the imperialist agenda of war and militarism. While obfuscationist judgments of this sort may succeed in dressing in the uniform of Adolf Hitler the horrific acts that the capitalist system can occasionally perform, such reductionist judgments would not be very useful for the purposes of averting social conditions that may lead to the recurrence of fascism.

Fascism is a specific historical category that evolves out of particular socio-economic circumstances. It grows out of conditions of severe economic distress and deep social discontent. As such circumstances tend to give rise to protest demonstrations and radical demands from labor and other grassroots on the Left, they also prompt counterbalancing social forces on the Right. In other words, fascism is essentially a counter-revolutionary strategy to preempt revolutionary developments.

This means that, at its core, fascism is a social-political strategy or tool that is employed by big business, or the ruling capitalist class, to simultaneously pacify the discontented public and fend off radical, socialistic developments. It also means that, while antithetical, both fascism and socialism are incidents that are latent in a relatively advanced capitalist structures—a case of the unity of opposites.

During cycles of economic expansion and relatively low levels of unemployment and poverty, such potential occurrences remain dormant. By contrast, during periods of deep and protracted cycles of economic contraction signs and symbols of both begin to re-emerge. In general, fascistic signs and symbols remain dormant as long as socialistic manifestations remain dormant, as former manifestations often emerge in reaction to the latter ones.

The development and brutality of fascism is proportionate with the degree of the severity of economic crisis, or the level of the gravity of class struggle. For example, the intensity of the 1930s socio-economic crisis in Europe and the strength of socialist movements and organizations, especially in Germany, played a critical role in catapulting the Nazi forces to power and precipitating the vicious rule of fascism there.

By contrast, as the bureaucratic labor leaders in the current (2016) US presidential elections chose to support the candidate of the status quo, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders’ campaign agenda stopped way short of a meaningful socialist program, fascistic manifestations of Donald Trump’s campaign remained largely sporadic and relatively mild. Had the class collaborationist big union leaders (the “labor lieutenants of capitalism,” as the late Leon Trotsky put it) charted an independent labor-grassroots campaign and demanded a substantive socio-economic revolution, instead of Sanders’ hollow “political revolution,” fascistic tendencies or displays of the Trump campaign would have escalated to dangerous levels.

It must be pointed out in passing that the capitalist ruling class (especially the “far-sighted,” non-partisan, big business establishment) would employ fascistic methods of control only as a means of last resort. As long as there is no serious grassroots threat to the status quo, it prefers to mitigate economic distress and social tensions by means of minimal reforms and usual “democratic” measures. Only when such measures fail to pacify the restless and rebellious masses of workers and other grassroots, that is, only when the ruling class finds itself unable to rule with the help of “democratic” machinery, would it employ fascistic means of control.

It must also be pointed out that a direct link can be detected between the recent rise of fascistic tendencies in most of the core capitalist countries, on the one hand, and the rise or reign of parasitic finance capital in these countries, on the other. As the unproductive, scrounging financial sector has systematically emaciated the productive, real sector of the economies of these countries, chronic stagnation has become a perennial feature of their markets.

Accordingly, high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality have also become prevailing features of these societies. As these ominous developments have given rise to public discontent and workers militancy in these countries, they have also given rise to expressions of fascism. And as economic crises tend to recur more frequently in the age of the dominance of parasitic finance capital, the specter of war and militarism abroad along with threats of repression and police state at home also tend to become more menacing.

It follows from this brief discussion that crisis situations present both opportunities and dangers, both revolutionary/socialistic occasions and counter-revolutionary/fascistic prospects. Such socio-economic periods of contradictory developments prompted the late German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg to declare: socialism or barbarism. Whether socialism or barbarism would prevail depends crucially on the balance of political power, or the outcome of class struggle.

Many radicals have dropped class politics at exactly the moment it is needed most. Rosa Luxemburg’s view that socialism is the only humane alternative to capitalist barbarism is as relevant today as when she expressed it (during the carnage of World War I). Barbarism stares us in the eye in many disguised forms. Yet, much of the left these days shy away from using words such as class struggle, organization, or the crucial role of labor for social and economic change.

While participation of all the layers of the grassroots is crucial to the success of the fight for a superior civilization to what is prevalent under capitalism, the role of labor in the attendant coalition of the masses would be most critical. Only labor—labor in the broadest sense of the term that would include both the so-called blue-collar and white-collar workers—can bring an end to the rule of capital, thereby to the constantly lurking threats of economic crises, of fascism, of poverty, and of police state at home, and of war and militarism abroad.

Transforming the world economy in the interests of the majority of the people is, of course, not easy. It certainly cannot be brought about in one jump or an overnight uprising. It can come about only as the cumulative outcome of many steps along the path of a long and difficult journey of continuous social and economic change. Nobody can tell a priori how long or what form such transitional steps or stages may take. It is clear, however, that to change the world economy in the interests of the majority of its inhabitants, labor would need new politics and new organizations to articulate the struggle for change.

This requires a new labor movement with independent politics and organization(s). Whatever the new labor organization is called, it has to be different not only from the U.S. business union model but also from the Social Democratic model of Europe, trade unions + party. This means that the new labor movement and/or organization has to represent the interests of the entire working class, not just organized industrial labor, nor only its singular economic interests. In addition, it must aim at defending the interests of all those who challenge the logic of the profit-driven market mechanism. The working class can influence, shape, and ultimately lead the world economy if it takes on the challenge (a) on an international level, and (b) in the context of broader coalitions and alliances with other social strata that also struggle for equity, environmental protection, and human rights.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

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China, Russia and The Multipolar World

June 18th, 2016 by Andrew Korybko

China is the only Great Power with the economic wherewithal to challenge the US all across the world, and as such, these qualities neatly complement Russia’s military capabilities in assisting both civilizational poles as they jointly forge a multipolar world order. The manifestation of their shared global vision and the framework through which they cooperate in achieving it is the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership, and because of Beijing’s intimate closeness with Moscow, it too has been targeted for full-scale proxy destabilization by the US. Washington’s strategy isn’t limited to solely obstructing multipolar transnational connective projects (as ambitious of a goal as that is already), but also in physically containing China in its own home region, similar in many respects to what it’s been attempting to do to Russia ever since the end of the Cold War.

These two strategies intersect to a large degree and have a major commonality between them in that they can both be furthered by American-driven Hybrid Wars. This part of the book explores the applicability of this method to ASEAN, the strategic ‘backyard’ and ‘soft underbelly’ of China. In many ways, ASEAN is to China just what Central Asia is to Russia, although it can be strongly argued that ASEAN is of much more critical economic importance to China than Central Asia ever will be for Russia (though both regions have equal strategic value as relative to each respective Great Power). The first part of the book mapped out the three ASEAN states most vulnerable to Hybrid Wars (Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand), but their geopolitical significance and the attractiveness that the US has in targeting these specific states can’t be fully understood if explained in isolation from the larger ASEAN region.

For that reason, it’s integral for the first parts of this geopolitical study to focus on ASEAN as a whole in explaining its strategic saliency in general and then in describing how the US plans to weaponize the bloc for macro-regional proxy rivalry against China. Along the same lines, it’s also relevant to detail China’s grand strategic plans in responding to this aggressive encirclement and the unipolar militarization of the international waterways through which so much of its economic growth depends. This naturally brings the research along to a thorough discussion about why China selected Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand as the host countries for its multipolar transnational connective projects and how these are envisioned as suitable countermeasures in evading the trap that the US is setting in the South China Sea. The socio-political vulnerabilities of all ASEAN countries will then be touched upon before the research goes fully in-depth investigating the Myanmar and Thai case studies, after which these two scenarios will be compared with one another in highlighting the difference between their respective likelihoods and overall strategic impact.

The Global Economic Crossroads

ASEAN’s solid growth in the past few decades has made it an enviable partner for many, and the economic bloc has entered into several high-profile free trade agreements (FTAs) in the past couple of years. As of the end of 2015, it has bilateral FTAs with Australia and New ZealandChinaIndia,Japan, and South Korea, essentially making it the formal economic crossroads between these leading world economies. Furthermore, it’s currently engaged in free trade negotiations with the EU and theEurasian Union, which if ultimately sealed, would give ASEAN free trade rights with almost the entirety of the supercontinent with the exception of the Mideast and a small handful of other countries. With the convergence of so many economic interests over ASEAN, it’s only a matter of time before this smattering of bilateral agreements is expanded into a multilateral framework that progressively includes each of the given parties.

da54c5be-7f48-4430-8912-1721b3b24432.imgSuch an arrangement would represent a major victory for Eurasia and the multipolar world because it would tie each of the Great Powers together and make them collectively more interdependent on one another than either of them individually would be with the US. This is obviously a long-term vision and isn’t something that can be actualized in the scope of just a few years, but the path is already being paved the closer that ASEAN comes to inking free trade deals with the EU and theEurasian Union. The increasingly intertwined FTAs that these respective economic partners reach with one another will inevitably bring them all closer together with time, despite existing political and structural differences between some of them such as the current American-dictated chill in the EU’s relations with the Eurasian Union.

TTIP Tramples Everything

If given the chance to behave freely, the EU would likely intensify bilateral ties with the Eurasian Union as evidenced by Junker’s late-November 2015 outreach to the bloc, but US grand strategy has always been based on keeping the two divided, hence the manufactured Ukrainian Crisis and subsequently planned New Cold War. Should a breakthrough in bilateral relations occur, perhaps due to the structural changes that Balkan Stream and the Balkan Silk Road would generate inside the EU if either of them is successfully completed, then it’s probable that their overlapping economic interests in ASEAN (independently negotiated up until that point) could represent the perfect catalyst for banding together and formalizing a larger and more inclusive economic framework between all actors. The reasoning behind this is because the current American-attributed deterioration of EU-Eurasian Union relations is the only ‘non-natural’ structural impediment preventing all of the supercontinent’s trade blocs from cooperating on the all-inclusive scale suggested above.

From the American strategic standpoint, however, this would represent the ultimate failure of its divide-and-rule policy in Eurasia, and it’s for this institutional reason why the US is so adamant about pursuing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the EU. In the event that this neo-imperialist proposal ever enters into force, then the US would have the dominant say in deciding whether its junior EU ‘partner’ is allowed to continue its existing free trade negotiations with Japanand India. More likely than not, it would indefinitely freeze these already-stalled processes in order to consolidate its economic control over the bloc, and only after it exercises indisputable control over it will Washington allow the talks to proceed. By that point, the goal would be to link TTIP and the TPP (which will be expanded upon shortly, but whose Asian component will be led by Japan) together to make the US the institutionally essential actor between them, and then complete the unipolar-dominated economic envelopment of Eurasia by bringing India into the mix to some capacity.

This strategy is contingent on the US using the New Cold War hype that it’s created to scare its partners into agreeing to the TTIP and TPP out of the manufactured perception that they need to contain Russia and China, respectively. In the scenario being describe above, if the US doesn’t succeed in pushing through TTIP and the EU independently aligns itself with either of those major Asian economies (let alone that it begins free trade negotiations with China), then the US could rapidly lose its present preeminence over the EU economy. In a short time, Brussels might finally come to the conclusion that everyone else in the world has already arrived at and realize that the future of the global economy rests in the East, not the West, and enter into wider and freer trading relations with the rest of its prospective partners. This would of course naturally include Russia and the Eurasian Union, and with the two economies already converging on their own as it would be (remembering that it’s only because of American-attributed political impediments that they aren’t doing so already), it’s foreseeable that they could coordinate their respective FTAs with ASEAN as a final stepping stone before engaging in a similar one amongst themselves.

Multilateral Backup Plans

As positive of a picture as the above section paints, it probably won’t happen for at least the coming decade, if at all, seeing how serious the US is in ‘playing for keeps’ within the New Cold War rivalry. Whether through the institutional workings of the TTIP or outside of it via more unscrupulous measures if the said agreement isn’t passed by that time, the US will do everything in its power to prevent the EU from expanding its independent economic relations with the Eurasian Union, China, and ASEAN. It might potentially be allowed to deepen its ties with Japan and India (per the unipolar grand strategy described previously), but even that is debatable unless the US feels assured enough that it can maintain control over the bloc after those prospective agreements are clinched. It probably wouldn’t have the confidence to do so unless it formally controlled the EU through TTIP, thus making these potential free trade areas unlikely, at least in the short- to medium-term timeframes, barring of course any unexpected geopolitical shifts. For the most part, then, the EU can be safely discounted from any serious discussions about intra-Eurasian free trade zones, but that doesn’t mean that such dreams should be discouraged simply because the bloc realistically can’t take part in them for a while (if at all).

RCEP And FTAAP:

To compensate for the expected non-participation of the EU inside the envisioned multipolar economic frameworks, a few modified proposals have been suggested. Two of the most talked about are theRegional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific(FTAAP), both of which are actively supported by China. The RCEP is the formalization of a multilateral FTA between ASEAN and each of its already-existing free trade partners (Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea), while the FTAAP takes things a lot further and proposes a grandiose free trade zone among all the countries that constitute the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, thereby including Russia, the US, and a few other Western Hemispheric countries but at the expense of a full free trade deal with ASEAN as a whole (Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia are not APEC members).

Nevertheless, it’s still significant that most of the countries within the bloc would be participants in that framework, highlighting just how important ASEAN economies are for transregional free trade deals nowadays. At the same time, however, the inclusion of the US would greatly erode the multipolar flexibility of the intended grouping and turn it into more of an apolitical economic organization that can’t be used in a relative way to weaken the US’ unipolar standing. It’s probable that Russia and China only support this idea so as to score political points of their own in contrasting it with the US’ exclusionary TPP plans that threaten to undermine both Great Powers’ existing trade connections and future opportunities with the involved states.

Chart

Source: Vietnam Briefing

Russia’s Vision For GEFTA:

The latest proposal to be brought up for creating a multilateral transregional trading bloc came from Russia and was pronounced during President Putin’s Address to the Federal Assembly on 4 December, 2015. The Russian leader announced his country’s intention to form an economic partnership between the Eurasian Union, ASEAN, and SCO states (including the two ascending members of India and Pakistan), arguing that the new organization would “make up nearly a third of the global economy in terms of purchasing power parity.” This is the most realistic of the three suggestions and the most likely to be implemented in practice. China already has a FTA with Pakistan(the ‘zipper’ of Eurasian integration), and the Eurasian Union is exploring the possibility of sealing similar deals with India and official SCO-prospect Iran. Of note, Russia and China are also engaged in a trilateral partnership with Mongolia that could predictably become a free trade area sometime in the future as well.

Assuming that Moscow will be successful in reaching these (and there’s no reason to doubt that at the moment), then joining the Eurasian Union and the SCO together in an economic partnership would be a natural fit, with ASEAN offering a perfect complementary touch that would economically excite all of the members. Furthermore, India and Pakistan’s inclusion into the discussed framework would likely lead to the rest of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC, and which has its own internal free trade area) joining in as well, which would then push the proposed organization’s ranks to also include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Taken together, Russia’s vision amounts to a Grand Eurasian Free Trade Area (GEFTA) that’s supposed to encompass the vast majority of Asia and one day merge with the EU, with the notable exclusions for now obviously being the European economies (both EU and non-EU-member states), the Mideast (except for perhaps Syria and Israel [an odd combination to be sure, but pursued for entirely separatereasons]), the Koreas, and Japan.

The Indian Impediment Opens Up An ASEAN Opportunity

Even assuming a minimum of external (American) interference in trying to offset Russia’s vision, it’s foreseeable that India will present a major challenge for GEFTA’s implementation. India and China are engaged in a very intense security dilemma at the moment that neither side publicly wants to acknowledge, and under such conditions, it’s not likely that either of them is serious about pursuing a FTA with the other. From New Delhi’s perspective, India has no motivation whatsoever to sacrifice what it feels to be its national economic interests by entering into a FTA with China, no matter if it’s in RCEP or GEFTA. Relating to RCEP, India already has FTAs with Japan and South Korea, and it doesn’t believe that including Australia and New Zealand into the proposed multilateral framework would compensate for the economic unbalancing that it thinks it would experience through the tariff-free trade with China that it would have to agree to as part of the deal. With respect to GEFTA, the concerns are very similar. India is currently in a free trade relationship with ASEAN and might eventually enter into one with Iran after the latter proposed such an idea in spring 2015. With progress looking quite positive in reaching a free trade deal with the Eurasian Union one day soon, India doesn’t see any need to jump into GEFTA when it’s already all but assured to receive every benefit that it would be seeking out of the arrangement minus the foreseen complications that would happen if it has to do so with China as well (and to which its leadership presently sees no benefit).

India’s expected absence from GEFTA doesn’t translate into the vision’s failure, but it does raise its dependency on ASEAN’s inclusion in order to be geopolitically broad-based enough to become a defining point in the global economy. By itself, the Eurasian Union and its bilateral free trade arrangements are positive developments in and of themselves, especially if they lead to a prospective Eurasian Union-China FTA that multilaterally incorporates the other deals reached prior to that point (such as with Iran), but multipolarity would be infinitely more enhanced through the addition of ASEAN to this accord. Vietnam is already party to such a deal with the Eurasian Union, and even though it’s a robust component of the bloc’s partnership portfolio, its mutual potential pales in comparison to if both economic groupings had their own inclusive bloc-to-bloc pact. One of the steps in advancing this possibility would be for Russia to make efficient use out of ASEAN’s SEZs in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia in order to reach individual FTAs with the rest of the organization’s mainland members (including Thailand, whom Medvedev offered the possibility to in spring 2015) so that they can collectively lobby their insular counterparts in this direction.

The TPP Strikes Back

The greatest threat to the multipolar world’s economic relations with ASEAN comes directly from the TPP. The US is pushing this exclusionary trade arrangement in order to obstruct the existing trade partnerships that non-allied countries (Russia and China) plan on enhancing with each of the bloc’s members. In a sense, it can be thought of as a preemptive declaration of economic war because the US is taking proactive steps in carving out a restricted market that will fall under its primary control. Washington is keenly aware of Moscow’s envisioned Pivot to Asia and understands that it must be diversified past China in order to achieve its full economic potential, and regarding Beijing, the US recognizes how obstructive a disturbance in bilateral Chinese-ASEAN economic relations could be for the New Silk Road plans that it hopes to complete in the coming years. The US would like to use the economic hegemony that it would acquire over each of the TPP’s ASEAN members in order to bully them away from these multipolar centers and firmly entrench them in the unipolar camp, and there are concrete reasons that this strategic threat should be taken seriously.

The AEC:

ASEAN reached an historic milestone during its 27th summit at the end of November 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, agreeing to form the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in order to coordinate the bloc’s economic relations with the outside world and strengthen social, cultural, and security cooperation among its members. It’s expected that the AEC will seek to enact bloc-wide trade agreements from this point on, striving to eventually expand the TPP to include the rest of the organization with time. The reasoning for this is quite simple, and it’s that ASEAN would like to standardize the trade deals that its members have with outside countries and blocs so as not to create an internal structural imbalance between its economies. If Malaysia is in the TPP but Vietnam has a FTA with the Eurasian Union, the thinking goes, then that creates a disadvantage for the Philippines which doesn’t have institutionalized ties with either, for example, and the mishmash of various external actors interacting with ASEAN on a member-to-member basis instead of dealing with the entire group creates an unnecessarily complex intra-bloc situation that makes it all the more difficult for the AEC’s diverse members to economically integrate with one another.

Although it’s not the most accurate comparison in general, in this case it’s somewhat fitting to pair the AEC with the EU since both blocs want to control their members’ institutionalized economic relations with other states and organizations. Even though this objective hasn’t been formally proclaimed by the AEC as of yet, it’s functionally inevitable that it will move in this direction sooner or later once its members get more serious about their shared integration goal. This means that the AEC will one day have to make the decision over which non-bloc-including bilateral agreements it wants to expand to cover the entire organization and which ones its respective members must be forced to abandon. It’s significant to note at this point that most of the AEC seems to be moving in the direction of the TPP, judging at least by the statements coming out of the group’s top two economies, Indonesia and Thailand. President Joko Widodo told Obama during a White House meeting in late October that “Indonesia intends to join the TPP”, while one of Thailand’s deputy prime ministers proclaimed at the end of November that his country “is highly interested in joining TPP…chances are high that Thailand will seek to join TPP.”

CIR-38_1_AEC_at_a_Glance_Infographic

Thailand And Indonesia:

Thailand might be trying to publicly defer to the US for as long as possible in order to deflect some of the hostility that many in Washington harbor towards it ever since the multipolar coup ousted the pro-American leadership and the country largely reoriented towards China. It’s probable that Bangkok doesn’t sincerely intend to join the TPP, or at least at this point, because it would endanger the strategic partnership that it’s rapidly developed with Beijing over the past year and a half (and which will be addressed more in the research later), but the situation with Indonesia is a lot more straightforward. Unbeknownst to most observers, the West has been engaging in a mini-containment of sorts against the country in order to further pressure its leadership into making pro-unipolar decisions when the appropriate time comes. Widodo is already recognized as being Western-friendly as it is, but he’s still the steward of one of the largest economies in the world and has a tricky role to play in strategically hedging against China (as the Indonesian leadership sees it) while simultaneously preventing itself from falling under the US’ full supremacy as its latest proxy state.

Rewriting The Rules

Regretfully, however, it looks as though Indonesia is about to use its economic leadership role over the AEC to misguide the rest of the organization into moving along the path of unipolar servitude. If Jakarta commits to the TPP, then it’s foreseeable that this will be the deciding factor in whether the rest of the AEC accepts the US’ disadvantageous trade offer at the expense of upgrading its ties with the Eurasian Union. In fact, the implementation of the TPP might even result in the eventual nullification of ASEAN’s FTA with China, thereby dealing a double-whammy to the multipolar world’s institutional influence in Southeast Asia.

While scarcely any details are known about the TPP (the leaked text is around two million words in length and nearly impossible for a single individual to read through and totally comprehend on their own), it’s already been well-established that the “preferential” legal adjustments that it mandates each party abide by are nothing more than a smokescreen for major corporations to acquire decisive political rights. One of the controversies herein is that companies could sue national governments if the respective state enacts or enforces any “environmental, health or other regulatory objectives” that inhibit the said organization’s legally enshrined trade advantages or endanger its profits (it doesn’t even have to result in any actual decline, just the possible threat thereof).

Recalling that Vietnam is already in a FTA with the Eurasian Union and all of ASEAN has a similar arrangement with China, it’s definitely possible that the US would find a pretext within each of these existing agreements to argue that they violate the TPP and must be rewritten or outright abandoned. If they fail to rectify the problem within the given period of time, then the US’ supportive companies will take each of the ‘violating’ states to court on Washington’s behalf to squeeze a punitive settlement out of them and/or force them to make the dictated changes. US-ally Japan may also direct some of its major companies to do the same as part of a coordinated push to maximize the ‘legal’-economic pain being inflicted on the targeted state.

How It Could Be Stopped

As extreme as such a scenario may sound at the moment, if perfectly correlates to the US’ strategic objectives of pushing multipolar Great Power influences out of Southeast Asia and hoarding the region’s economic potential all to itself. Doing so also has very specific geostrategic underpinnings that will be described in the next chapter, thus adding another layer of motivation for the US to move forward in this direction. As much as Washington wants to carry out this strategy, however, it doesn’t mean that it’s guaranteed to be successful, and there’s still the very real possibility that its plan could be stopped in its tracks before it ever has the chance to come to full fruition.

china-high-speed-trainThe greatest obstacle to the US’ TPP-dominating dream for Southeast Asia is China’s ASEAN Silk Road, the high-speed rail line that’s expected to run from Kunming to Singapore and traverse through Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The first two transit states have the most to gain from this proposal and are thus anticipated to remain the most ‘loyal’ in safeguarding China’s FTA with ASEAN in the event that the AEC ever tries to revise it (perhaps under a TPP-influenced Indonesian initiative). There’s also the China-Myanmar Pipeline Corridor that was launched in early 2015 to transfer Mideast oil and gas to Yunnan Province via a more thought-to-be geostrategically secure route than the Strait of Malacca (which is questionable and will be explained later in the work), with the envisioned potential of evolving into a full-scale trade corridor with time. This theoretically gives Naypyidaw a stake in preserving the institutional FTA status quo with China, although this could (and probably will) change with Suu Kyi’s increased role over the state. Cambodia is also a close Chinese ally nowadays, but it’s not institutionally tied to any  major infrastructure projects, thereby meaning that it’s capable of being ‘bought off’ by the ‘highest bidder’ and isn’t fundamentally dependable. Therefore, the most reliable partners that China has to defend its economic interests in the AEC are Laos and Thailand.

It’s predicted that these two states have already made the conscientious choice among their top leaderships to economically tie themselves closer with China through their participation in the ASEAN Silk Road project. For this reason, they have vested interests in making sure that their TPP-adhering AEC counterparts don’t enforce their unipolar trade terms on the rest of the bloc and/or compel the others to restrict their established economic ties with China (at the behest of the US, of course). An intra-organizational split could easily occur under these conditions, with the TPP-affiliated states facing off against the non-TPP ones as the AEC struggles to streamline its institutional economic engagements in its quest for greater coordination and integration among its members. The anticipated friction that this will produce would lead to a likely deadlock in implementing any institutionally revisionist (or expansionist, as per the TPP) policies within the AEC and prevent the US from achieving its full unipolar objectives in the theater. Consequently, due to Laos, Thailand, and to an extent, Myanmar’s highly strategic economic relations with China (the first two being party to the ASEAN Silk Road and the latter being host to the China-Myanmar Pipeline Corridor) that are standing in the way of the US’ full-spectrum unipolar dominance over ASEAN, all three of these states are ‘valid’ targets for a Hybrid War sometime in the future.

The Global Perspective

The economic proxy war going on between the unipolar and multipolar camps over ASEAN is of immense significance in terms of its global impact, but in order to truly appreciate how it relates to the rest of the world, it’s essential for the reader to be reminded of certain elements of contemporary American grand strategy.

The US capitalized off of the end of the Cold War by exporting its neo-liberal economic practices all across the world, with the ultimate intent being to entrap Russia, China, and to an extent that’s ever more relevant nowadays, Iran, in an institutional net of Washington-dominated control from which there’d be no escape. It’s taken some time to advance, but right now the US is steadily moving forward with great speed in tying the four corners of Eurasia into its matrix of control, de-facto encircling these three Great Powers and making them disproportionately dependent on a shared center of economic-strategic gravity.

The TTIP, should it enter into force, would place the EU’s external economic relations under the control the US, thereby meaning that Brussels would be powerless to enter into any FTA or similarly privileged trading accord with other countries without the US’ explicit blessing. Moving along in a counterclockwise direction, the US and the GCC are working on intensifying their economic relationsto the point of an eventual FTA. This isn’t too important right now because of the lopsided dependence that the Gulf economies have on energy sales, but eventually they’ll have to transition to a more ‘normal’ economy based on material trade, and at that point, their hefty financial reserves that they’ve been saving will go towards purchasing products from the US and any other country that it’s likely to be in a FTA with by that time. The next object of American focus is ASEAN, which has just been comprehensively described, and the final part of the supercontinental strategy is South Korea and Japan. The US already has a FTA with the former, and it’s planning to use TPP to enter into the same arrangement with the latter.

US-FTA_mapAltogether, one can clearly see that most of the cardinal directions in Eurasia are covered by America’s FTA plans. To reexamine the US’ plans from this perspective, the EU represents West Eurasia, the GCC is Southwest Eurasia, ASEAN is Southeast Eurasia, and South Korea and Japan are Northeast Eurasia. The only missing link is South Eurasia, mostly India, which is being wooed by the US anyhow as it is, although it’s still a far time away from entering into a FTA with the US. Nonetheless, if TTIP and TPP are allowed to enter into practice, then it’s only a matter of time before an irresistible offer is made to New Delhi in coaxing India into this unipolar economic web. Even without India’s formal incorporation into the US’ global neo-liberal scheme, it’s already been argued that it’ll most likely remain outside of GEFTA because of concerns for its strategic sovereignty vis-à-vis neighboring rival China. In that case, Russia, China, and Iran would then share the same economic-strategic space in Central Asia, one of the last parts of the supercontinent to remain outside of the US’ formal institutionalized control. This would make Central Asia the unquestionable center of multipolar gravity between these three Great Powers, but conversely, it would also make them disproportionately vulnerable to American-engineered Hybrid Wars there.

In order to avoid a three-for-one ultra-dependency on Central Asia, it’s urgently imperative for the multipolar world to maintain and defend its inroads in the AEC, ergo the importance that goes into China’s counter-TPP efforts via the ASEAN Silk Road and the China-Myanmar Pipeline Corridor. A retreat from these fronts and the cession of Southeast Asia to America’s unipolar clutches will create a strategically dangerous situation for China, and by extension, the rest of the multipolar Great Powers, and resultantly push up the US’ timetable for corralling their shared economic interests into Central Asia. China also has very clearly defined geostrategic interests in sustaining its influence in ASEAN (or at least in part of its mainland component) in order to halt the advancement of the US’ ‘Chinese Containment Coalition’ (CCC) and maintain non-American-controlled outlets to the Indian Ocean that allow it to safely access the burgeoning African markets on which its future growth depends.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the post-graduate of the MGIMO University and author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Hybrid Wars 5. Breaking the Balkans

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“Lone Wolves”? Terror In Orlando, Birstall And Sydney

June 18th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

London: Much of Britain is recoiling in the wake of the death of Labour MP Jo Cox, who was shot and stabbed on Thursday in broad daylight outside the public library in Birstall to the shouts of “Britain first!” It was the first killing of a serving MP since Ian Gow, whose life was taken by Irish Republicans in 1990.

The suspect, Thomas Mair, was said to have carried what was an “old-fashioned” possibly homemade gun, and also brandished a knife in the attack. At around 1 pm, the shots and blows rained down upon Cox, who was declared dead less than an hour later.

Her husband, Brendan Cox, reiterated a theme that has been articulated all too often of late. There was hatred, and such hate had no “creed, race of religion – it is poisonous.”

The wells and soil of Britain, and indeed many a state, have been poisoned by the flipside of such hate, which is fear itself. The country has been embroiled in a debate about whether to leave the European Union, and the sensible ones guided by sobriety are nowhere in sight. Apocalyptic scenarios are being generated on an hourly basis by the campaigns of those who wish to remain and those who wish to exit. There have been suggestions of economic collapse, impoverishment and even war.

In this climate, the immediate rumours that were set alight by the killing of the MP for Batley and Spen was whether it was another ISIS inspired, as opposed to directed, move.

As the torrid air began to clear, it surfaced that Mair had been a former psychiatric patient with suggested links to ultra-patriotic right wing groups, a habitual “loner” with a subscription to the S. A. Patriot, a South African publication coming out of the offices of the pro-apartheid group, the White Rhino Club. It may be relevant in so far as Cox had spoken out against Britain First, a vociferously proud anti-Islamic group of the right.

Across the Atlantic, in Orlando, Florida, the death of Cox seemed miniature in comparison to the killing and injuring of over a hundred people on June 12. As with everything else, the United States does things to vast scale, supersizing everything from food to death.

In the case of the attack on the Pulse club in Orlando by Omar Mateen, there were the usual personality issues, be there a history of abuse, innate aggression and paranoia. The same characteristics as those with Mair were manifest here, though the medical arguments were fast obscured by a tissue of incoherent political explanations.

It was clear that the Orlando shooter had little sense about an ideological anchor, deeply troubled about the roots of his inspiration. As long as the alternative was sufficiently contrarian, violent and contrary to the status quo, it featured in his mental universe. It explained why he would express support for the dirty work of the al-Nusra front prior to his exultant embrace of Islamic State in his 911 calls. Shia and Sunni differences were of little consequence to him, or is reading.

To the addling wonder that was Mateen’s mind came a not so closeted homosexuality. While that side of the pudding has yet to be proven in detail, friends and locals suggested that he had been a user of gay dating apps and a regular of gay bars. Along with ideological confusion came a good deal of self-woe.

The Mateen blueprint – confusion and indifference to the dimensions of faith and a creative streak of fabrication – were very much present in yet another “lone wolf”, that grand fabulist and showman, Man Haron Monis.

In seizing the Lindt Café in Sydney on December 15, 2014, a standoff resulting in three deaths including Monis, the hostage taker was simply adding another confused chapter to a series of preposterous acts he had engaged in since arriving in Australia as an Iranian refugee.

As local security services realised, he giddily switched sides with a breezy disdain. He advocated support for both Shia and Sunni causes. He created the impression he was knee-deep in the Iranian security establishment, and a threat as result. He also attempted to join the Rebel motorcycle gang. Similarly to Mateen, he was a profoundly dedicated narcissist.

The nature of such outfits as the Islamic State is that any event that smells of murderous promise, done with sufficient dedication, is bound to get the seal of approval. News agencies were awash in the aftermath of the slaughter in Orlando with messages that Mateen had been “one of the soldiers of the caliphate in America.” Like Mateen, Islamic State issued a similar note of credit for Monis’s actions.

Never mind the actual profile of the killer, be he unstable, mentally fraught and desperate. It signals, if nothing else, a bone lazy disposition to putting in the hard yards, and hoping that ideas have wings that will find useful idiots. Mateen and Monis were convenient executors of that legacy. Britain First has, however denied having any influence over Mair’s actions, issuing a statement of disassociation.

In time, it may simply transpire that yet another individual of ill-health, bumbling along the crooked road of life, decided to ingest a poor morsel of politics, and kill. The coherence of the idea was irrelevant; such matters are often indigestible. As Mair’s brother Scott explained, “My brother was not violent and is not all that political. I don’t even know who he votes for.”

Sydney, Orlando, Birstall all reveal the difficulties of finding clarity of explanation in the world of the inscrutable. For the three assailants in question, the world must have seemed just as puzzling. They became useful fools in broader agendas. Other groups, be they the National Rifle Association on the one hand, or Islamic State on the other, will always be there to reap the bloody bounty.

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

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While the Press celebrates the Democratic Party victory of the first female billionaire in history, a somber legal battle is going on in the shadows.

The State Department report on Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the different legal proceedings which followed, establish that she is guilty of :

  • Obstruction of Justice by Mrs. Clinton and her advisors (Section 1410) ;
  • Obstruction of Criminal Enquiries (Section 1511) ;
  • Obstruction of the application of local and Federal laws (Section 1411) ;
  • Federal crime of negligence with classified information and documents (Section 1924) ;
  • Detention in her computer, at home and on a non-secure server, of 1,200 secret documents (Section 1924)
  • Felony – Mrs. Clinton declared under oath to a Federal judge that she had given all her emails to the State Department. However, the Inspector General of the State Department declared this week that this was a lie (Section 798) ;
  • Moreover, she declared under oath that the State Department had authorised her to use her personal computer to work at home. The Inspector General of the State Department declared this week that this was a lie (Section 798) ;
  • Mrs. Clinton did not alert the authorities, nor even her own Department, that her personal computer had been hacked several times. Yet she had asked her system administrator to try to protect her computer.
  • Misappropriation and Concealment. The Clinton Foundation and Mrs. Clinton were corrupted so that the State Department would close their eyes to various practices (Rico Law and Section 1503).

In principle, and since the facts and their gravity have been established by the FBI, the State Departement, and a Federal judge, Hillary Clinton should have been arrested this week.

Bernie Sanders, the other candidate for the Democratic nomination, was counting on Mrs. Clinton’s arrest before their party’s convention. He therefore decided to stay in the running, although he does not have enough delegates. But he was summoned to the White House, and informed that President Barack Obama would prevent his administration from applying the law. Obama then followed through by publicly announcing his support for the candidacy of Mrs. Clinton.

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Why is it that Vote Leave, trying to persuade the UK to vote to leave the European Union,  can get away with so many lies?  And why won’t the mainstream media really pick up on this?  For instance:

Vote Leave claims that if the UK leaves the EU we will:

Stop sending £350 million every week to Brussels.

Except that we don’t; the majority of the money doesn’t leave the country, and no matter how many times economists keep pointing out this is nonsense, they keep repeating it.  This is the only claim that has really made the news for being wrong.

Be free to trade with the whole world

Have they not been to their local supermarkets and seen how much wine and fruit we import from California?  Or South Africa?  Want out-of-season asparagus (and more wine)?  It comes from Chile.  Green beans and flowers?  Try Kenya.

We trade with all the Commonwealth countries.  Part of the deal when we joined the Common Market in the 1970s was that we had to be able to continue trading with the Commonwealth.  We trade with China (the sixth biggest importer of UK goods and services), India (which invests more in the UK than all the other EU countries combined), and in April this year we exported goods worth £1 billion more to the US than we imported.  We trade.

Former London mayor Boris Johnson, promised that “If we vote Leave we will be able to forge bold new trade deals with growing economies around the world.”  He wants us to ‘go global’.  Has he not noticed we already are?

We will take back control over our laws

They claim the EU controls our laws.  It doesn’t.  Many ‘EU’ laws are actually part of UK law.  Only 13 percent of our laws have anything to do with the EU, and that figure includes all UK laws where the text simply mentions the EU.  The truth is The House of Commons Library researched this issue and Richard Corbett MEP quoted their answer in 2008 – only 9% of our laws come from the EU.

They claim the European Court of Justice has control over UK laws.  No; it is ‘the highest court in the European Union in matters of European Union law.’  EU laws, not ours.

And the Court can and does rule in our favour – it has just ruledthat the UK does not have to pay welfare benefits to unemployed EU migrants who have been here for less than 5 years.

We will build a fairer immigration system.

They say the European Courts will be in charge of who we let in, and who we can remove.  No.  We control legal migrants coming to this country.  Nor will leaving the EU stop the illegal migrants from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere seeking asylum and what they believe will be a better life.  And international law says that we can legitimately return any illegal migrants to the last ‘safe’ country they passed through in order to reach the UK.

What they really want to get rid of is the free movement of Europeans coming here to work, while forgetting all the traffic going the other way.  Free movement across Europe is a boon to our young people.  Nor can we, as they claim, make a trade deal with Europe post-Exit without including free movement.  Norway and Switzerland have had to accept free movement as part of their trade deals.  And Norway pays per capita as much into the EU as the UK.

They say that recipients of EU funding would get the same money if the UK votes to leave.

They promise that EU funding projects for areas including farming, science, and culture would be continued until 2020.  But Brexit negotiations with the EU could go on beyond 2020.  Can we be sure the EU would still be willing to fund us during what could be acrimonious negotiations?  Nor does Vote leave mention that any trade deals with the EU post-Brexit would take many years more.  According to them, such deals would be set up in the twinkling of Boris Johnson’s eye.

And in their wild fantastical promises of what we could have if only we didn’t have to pay so much to the EU, they have theoretically spent several times over what they claim would be money going spare if we left the EU.  It brings up an image of children happily smashing a piggy bank and running off to the sweet shop, dropping half the money on the way.  And being sick afterwards when they realise that sweets aren’t food, don’t keep you warm or give you shelter.

But their dishonesty does not stop there.

They are now in trouble for using in their campaign material, the logos of international companies they imply support Brexit.  But those companies don’t support Vote Leave, and are quite rightly considering legal action.  As did the National Health Service back in March.

Vote Leave had a pop-up ad on websites and Facebook using a 23-year-old quote from Jeremy Corbyn when he was speaking against the Maastricht Treaty.  It asked people to ‘stand with Corbyn’: “if you agree with Jeremy, then Vote Leave”.  That has now disappeared, but it is still on their website.  They are also pulling the same trick with an old quote from Lord Peter Mandelson, once Tony Blair’s right-hand man.

The only campaign that even remotely equals this dishonest, crooked rubbish is that of Remain, headed by Prime Minister David Cameron.  And the sad and terrifying thing is that far too many people are willing to believe what they are told.  One side promises them an impossible economic nirvana if they vote to leave, while the other side terrifies them with an economic apocalypse – if they vote to leave.

 

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The terrorist attack in Magnanville by alleged Da’esh (Islamic State) operative, Larossi Aballa, on two police officers in Paris, serves one purpose: to remind the public that the war on terror is real and that the police and army are here to protect the population, not oppress it. As protests and strikes continue against the ruling class assault on worker’s security (rights won through a century of indefatigable struggle), phantom enemies are the oligarchic state’s best friends. Phantom enemies allow the oligarchic state to force hostile citizens to seek their protection from the ‘greater evil’.

In the Middle East where they were created by the United States and Israel, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (Da’esh) have attempted to do what former Western trained terrorists could not: to destroy Syria and Iraq through a large-scale military occupation of those countries. The French media portray the Islamic State as being a symptom of the nihilism and despair of our era; that is only partly the truth.

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What is overlooked is the deep complicity of the French state in terrorism – the obscenely Machiavellian determination to use the most brutal barbarians seen in the modern era to implement Western imperial policy in the Middle East and throughout the world. The Islamic State is a mercenary force of the Deep State, the imperial financial order, the hidden hand of military and financial corporations and lobbyists who steer the policies of Western governments behind the scenes. They do not oppose ‘Western civilisation’, they serve it, massacring people such as those of Syria who, imbued with patriotism, heroism and piety, refuse to kneel and worship at the alter of Mammon.

We are told by Le Monde that the terrorist/patsy in the police attack, Larossi Aballa, used the Facebook Live application during the attack to propagandise his crimes. He is also reported to have threatened journalists.

Two points here –

1. Anyone with enough curiosity and intelligence to visit a good bookshop knows that the role of journalists in the capitalist world order is to be stenographers to power. A daily perusal of the corporate press proves the proposition unfailingly. It helps restore public confidence in the credibility of corporate journalists if they are ‘threatened’ every now and then; especially by the terrorists whose crimes they ignore when they are committed on behalf of Western geopolitical interests in foreign lands such as Syria.

2. The dissemination of truth through social media and the emergence of citizen journalists all over the world exposing the lies of the corporate press are undermining the public’s confidence in authority. Hence, the use of pseudonyms and the freedom to diffuse information must be curtailed. Fear not! The government will protect you by limiting your ability to research and share information.

The murder of the two police officers comes just days after police were caught on camera vandalising shops in an effort to discredit legitimate and peaceful protests against undemocratic labour reforms. It sends a powerful message: police are there to protect us from terrorists not oppress us on behalf of the ruling class!

Protests are turning violent on the streets of Paris with several cars being set alight by ‘Black Box’ anarchist protesters. These Black Box hooligans sabotage worker’s struggles every time they threaten the established order. Their actions are criminalising legitimate protests. The recent attacks on the Necker Hospital in Paris are acts of sabotage which are providing the pretext for the government to interdict further protests. It is clear the protest movement is hurting the ruling class.

The murder of the two police officers in Paris is an outrage which should be condemned by all. But it must be borne in mind that thousands of working-class policemen and soldiers unwittingly defend an execrable class of people who would not hesitate in murdering if political expediency required it.

As the class struggle intensifies on our streets, the police will be increasingly mobilised against the public. The ‘terrorist threat’ is more important than ever to sustain the illusion of government legitimacy and bludgeon the masses into submission to the police state. But history shows that the weakness of tyranny is that it always relies on servile classes whose loyalty is based more on cynicism and personal advancement than moral conviction. Thus, the possibility always exists for police revolt against the oligarchs. Understanding the precariousness of policing in tyranny is vital in activism. We must not hurl rocks and stones at the police but seek to win them over to the cause of popular democracy and freedom.

Gearóid Ó Colmáin is an Irish journalist and political analyst based in Paris. His work focuses on globalisation, geopolitics and class struggle.

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Pedophilia and Sex Slavery and Violence in Cambodia

June 17th, 2016 by Emilia Dyech

Cambodia has been through a period of untold upheaval, which has resulted in the restructuring of its economy. Neoliberalism, or free market economics, has been introduced into Cambodia since the end of the Cold War, and more aggressively since the UNTAC began to administer the country in 1992. Subsequently, there have been dramatic consequences in the way Cambodia is administered, particularly in regard to government expenditure. As a result of neoliberal reforms, Cambodia’s government spending has remained extremely low, which has translated to insufficient investments in the education sector. Furthermore, neoliberal ideology promotes market based activities, meaning teachers in Cambodia, as a result of low spending in the education sector, receive an unsustainable wage and are forced into offering private tuition to their students. Inequalities in the quality of education that students can expect to receive, including levels of attainment, based on whether their households can afford private tutoring or not, have emerged as a result. This situation translates deeper into Cambodian society, where those who attain well in school are more likely to be able to demand better wages when in work. Significantly, income inequality has increased in Cambodia since the introduction of neoliberalism. 

1         Chapter One: Introduction

This dissertation seeks to understand the social consequences of neoliberal reforms in Cambodia. Given that the subject of neoliberalism is vast in any context, a literature review was completed in order to find an area which required further investigation within the framework of neoliberalism in Cambodia. Following the analysis of literature surrounding the social consequences of neoliberal reforms in Cambodia since the 1990s, a gap within the literature was identified. Subsequent to the review of the relevant literature, it is clear that there is a lack of research surrounding the neoliberalisation of Cambodia’s education system and whether this has impacted on inequalities within the country. This dissertation will answer the following question in order to gain a deeper understanding of the void found within the literature; How have neoliberal structural reforms affected the education system in Cambodia, and how has this impacted on inequalities within the country since the 1990s?

1.1       Aims of Research

This thesis aims to analyse how neoliberal reforms have impacted on Cambodia’s population, specifically to understand how inequalities in outcomes of children’s education has been affected. The project aims to understand how neoliberal structural reforms within the Cambodian economy have affected how children have been impacted in ways relating to their educational attainment. Moreover, the paper will seek to understand how impacts on children’s educational attainment effects their socio-economic status later in life based on data relating to income inequalities within Cambodia. Consequently, the project aims to understand how the neoliberalisation of the Cambodian economy has affected the country’s education system and whether this, as a result of the policies associated with such neoliberal reforms, has any bearing on the equity outcomes of those who depend on the state for their education.

In 1991, after many years of violent conflict within Cambodia and the surrounding region, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) established a transitional authority under the auspice of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), which effectively governed the country for two years beginning in 1992 (Gottesman, 2003, p.342-345). The UNTAC was mandated to control and administer many components of the Cambodian state and to deal with many of the issues associated with a country that had suffered from years of violent conflict, including; the Military, Police, Elections, Economy, Civil Administration, Rehabilitation, Human Rights and Repatriation (UNRISD, 1993, p.8). One of the main components of the UNTAC was to ‘ensure a neutral political environment conducive to free and fair general elections’ (Peace Accords Matrix, Article 6, 2015). Given that the United Nations (UN) has, since the beginning of the 1980s, subscribed to the ideology of neoliberalism (Free market economics, achieved through privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation) it is unsurprising that the Cambodian People’s Party (CCP), after winning the election organised by the UN were committed to following the same ideology (Gottesman, 2003, p. 345). In fact, Article 56 of the Cambodian Constitution (Cambodia, 2010) states that the country is committed to enabling a free market economy.

1.2       Theoretical Underpinnings

1.2.1       Neoliberalism

This paper will use different theoretical underpinnings in order to explain and understand the issues relating to matters of equity within the Cambodian education sector, providing an enhanced comprehension of how this translates in Cambodia’s society. The theory of neoliberalism will provide the focal point in this paper in order to understand how Cambodia’s education sector has been impacted since the early 1990s, and how this has played out in issues of equity within the country’s population. Neoliberalism is a theory which began to emerge in the 1970s as an alternative to variants of the Keynesian approach of development economics, according to Willis (2011, p.52). The Keynesian theory of economics advocated state intervention at a national level, rather than allowing market forces to determine outcomes, in order to more efficiently utilise resources, better providing for societies. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, came about as a result of a number of economists challenging Keynesian theory, suggesting that state intervention was creating inefficiencies, leading to slower economic growth. The key components of neoliberalism include reductions in government expenditure, privatisation of state owned assets, reduction of government regulation, increased significance of the free market and an emphasis on individualism, or individual responsibility, according to Payne and Phillips (2011, p,87). Harvey (2005, p.88) claims that Thatcher and Regan adopted the tenets of neoliberalism in the 1980s after both the UK and US experienced difficult economic times, but the policies adopted by both governments resulted in high unemployment mixed with, as a result of the cuts in social welfare, a reduction in the quality of life for many and increasing income inequality.

John Williamson coined the term ‘Washington Consensus’ is his writings concerned with economics at the end of the 1980s, according to Marangos (2009, p.350). The Washington Consensus refers to the situation when the world’s dominant international financial institutions (IFIs), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, which are located in Washington, USA, agreed upon a set of economic reforms, aimed at increasing economic growth, for Latin American countries which were experiencing economic strain in the 1980s. The Washington Consensus assumed that the Keynesian approach of development, which had influenced many South American country’s leaders, who had implemented protectionist policies such as Import Substitution Industrialisation (ISI), had come to an end (Willis, 2011, p. 77). The phrase has evolved over time, but is contemporarily understood to refer to the IMF and World Bank and their methodology (Serra, Spiegel & Stiglitz, 2004, p.3), who have adopted a neoliberal development approach aimed at privatising state owned assets, liberalising economies (opening up to foreign investment), emphasising the free market, and reducing the role of the state. Not only were the World Bank and IMF associated with the Washington consensus because of the geographical locations of their head offices, but because many argued that their aims are a reflection of the interests of the United States, according to Woods (2011, p.251). The IMF and World Bank were formed at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 with the aim of providing a framework for a stable post-war economy (Gore, 2000, p. 789). Since their formation the World Bank and IMF have adopted different economic development models but, since the beginning of the 1980s, have embraced the neoliberal development model.

1.2.2       Structural Adjustment Programmes

In order for the World Bank and IMF to implement neoliberal policies throughout the world they have used, since the end of the 1970s, Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPS). SAPs are often agreed upon by national governments in order to receive financial support or loans from the Bretton Woods Institutions, according to Willis (2011, p.57). SAPs reflect the neoliberal free market ideology of both the Ragan and Thatcher (Craig and Potter, 2006, p.55) governments of the 1980s, and their implementation have demonstrated how the Global North has been able to influence the economies of the Global South. SAPs arose as a result of many governments in the Global South becoming unable to keep up with interest rate payments on debt borrowed from commercial banks in the 1970s. In response to this situation the IMF and the World Bank offered loans to countries suffering from balance of payments problems. In order to secure loans from the IMF and World Bank recipient countries were required to ‘structurally adjust’ or accept ‘conditions’ set out by the two institutions, which were deeply rooted in neoliberal ideology, according to O’Brian and Williams (2010, p.193).

Governments that adopt SAPs are required to introduce a number of different policies in order to reduce the role of the state in the running of the economy. SAPs comprise of two main policy groups, as Stiglitz (2002, p.14) highlights; i) stabilization measures, and ii) adjustment measures. Stabilisation measures included freezing government spending on public-sector wages, reducing governments spending (including on health and education) and currency devaluation. These measures were supposed to stabilize recipient economies, which would then lead onto a number of structural measures being introduced. Structural measures include the opening up of the national economy to foreign direct investment (FDI), tax system reform, which often lead to reduced taxes for the wealthy and large multi-national corporations (MNCs) and privatization of state-owned assets, such as electricity production, postal services or transport networks. According to Stiglitz (2002, p.14) the Bretton Woods institutions took a simplistic view when implementing SAPs, assuming that all countries, regardless of their differing economic problems, all needed the same structural reforms. Thomas (2008, p.424) claims that the IMF and World Bank’s blanket treatment of different countries with different problems was inappropriate and resulted in an inability to deliver economic growth, while having detrimental environmental and social consequences.

SAPS are now known to have had very negative outcomes in a great number of places where they have been implemented (Willis, 2011, p.58). Neoliberal policies introduced as part of SAPs, such as reducing the size of the state, removing barriers to foreign investment and currency devaluations, in many cases, have had serious consequences. Although, in some cases, SAPs may have had the desired economic stabilization outcomes, there have been severe consequences in terms of human welfare where they have been implemented. Thomas (2008, p.431) argues that IMF and World Bank SAPs implemented throughout the 1980s and 1990s reduced the availability of health care and education services as public expenditure was reduced. The privatization of public utilities meant that as well as reduced health care and education, user fees were introduced for necessities such as water. Bonal (2002, p. 7) states that SAPs have had very specific negative outcomes in countries where adjustments have taken place, explaining that reductions in per capita expenditure on education has had damaging consequences. Increases on student absenteeism, failing schools and reduced access to primary and secondary education are all symptomatic of reductions in education expenditure as a result of SAPs. The reductions in salaries or continuing low salaries for teachers are a particularly pertinent negative consequence of SAPs. Teachers who receive low salaries are often forced into supplementing their income by other means, for example, charging students for parts of their education which is essential if they are to pass their examinations (Bray and Bunly, 2005, p. 75).

Willis (2011, p.58) states that there was a growing awareness of the negative consequences associated with IMF and World Bank SAPs towards the end of the 1990s. In response to the this negative publicity the Bretton Woods institutions decided to remould the SAPs, which involved giving them new names and paying more attention to the needs of the poorest people where the policies were implemented. The new ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers’ (PRSPs) are, however, often thought to include the same damaging elements of SAPs and have resulted in limited improvements, according to Shah (2013).

1.2.3       Inequalities

This paper, which focusses on the social consequences of neoliberal reforms, will investigate how such reforms have impacted on inequalities within Cambodia’s education sector. Inequality within countries is often understood as the differing share of wealth or income that people living within a country experience, according to Greg, Hulme and Turner (2007, p.11). Inequality is not only relating to the share of wealth, but includes, among other things, the unequal level of access to education and health care services members of a society can expect to receive. Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), in their book The Spirit Level, argue that large inequalities within countries not only damage the ‘poor’ but have negative outcomes for everybody within a given society. However, on an individual level, rather than on a societal level, it is clearly the poorest people within a society who are burdened more severely by the effects of large inequalities rather than the most wealthy, as Platt (2011, p.132) explains.

Income Inequality has severe impacts on life expectancy, educational attainment, infant mortality, social mobility, violence within societies, levels of trust between different  socio-economic groups, obesity and imprisonment rates, according to Wilkinson and Pickett (2009, p 19). Therefore, poor people within societies which suffer from higher levels of inequality can expect to live shorter lives, receive a lower standard of education, be more likely to engage in illegal activities and be at risk of being subjected to, or involved in violent behaviour than more wealthy members of society.

Income inequality affects the ability of members of a society to access and take advantage of the services which lead to a more prosperous life. Education plays a significant role in a person’s ability to earn money. Those who are able to achieve the highest educational attainment are more likely to be able to demand a better standard of living and those who cannot are not. In their study, Wilson and Pickett (2009, p.161) conclude that levels of public expenditure on education impacts on inequalities within countries. Where public expenditure on education is high, compared with levels of private expenditure, there is a higher degree of social mobility. Consequently, there is a correlation between levels of public expenditure on education and levels of inequality within countries. This is particularly pertinent given that neoliberal policies favour the reduction in size of the state, which includes cutbacks in spending on social services, health care and, significantly, education. The Gini Coefficient measure of income inequality will be used in this paper to determine the effects of neoliberal reforms on income equity within Cambodia since 1993. Todaro (1997, p.145) explains that the Gini coefficients are cumulative measures of inequality which vary on a scale of 0 (absolute equality) to 100 (absolute inequality).

1.2.4       Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) consist of eight goals set out at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000. The second goal, to achieve universal primary education, is particularly pertinent in the context of this dissertation. This paper will analyse the effects of the goal to achieve universal primary education and how this has impacted on Cambodia’s society. Given that the United Nation’s (2014, p.16) target was to achieve this particular goal by the end of 2015; a perfect opportunity has arisen to assess the implications of this particular MDG in the context of the neoliberal agenda.

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) stance regarding government intervention within economies contradicts that of the IFIs, such as the World Bank and IMF. The UNDP recognises that neoliberal policies, such as privatisation of public services and reductions in government expenditure, can be detrimental to members of society who depend on social services. In the Human Development Report (UNDP, 2003, p. 114) the UNDP acknowledges that user fees for education discourage poor families from sending their children to school. Consequently, this is not conducive to realizing universal primary education and is a factor which is likely to result in the failure of this particular MGD. The UNDP (2014, p.85) argue that universal basic education diminishes the disparity in the quality of education children from wealthy and poor backgrounds receive. On the subject of user fees, such as children having to buy their education, the UNDP claims that access to universal basic education should be free to all and that the quality and quantity of education should not be linked to a person’s ability to pay. Therefore, governments have a responsibility to provide universal basic education to all without users being charged in the process, if universal basic education is to be achieved.

The United Nations Millennium Project (2005, p. 28) claims that for governments to rely solely on the market, avoiding public expenditure, will not lead to wealth ‘trickling down’ from top to bottom, as is often cited as an intended consequence of neoliberal development. Therefore, the United Nations Millennium Project encourages both marketand government in order for a society to achieve the MDGs. Furthermore, it states that it is misrepresentative to give emphasis to the importance of economic growth in the context of achieving the MDGs. Greig, Hulme and Turner (2007, p. 155) point to the experiences of many poorer countries who have had their economies structurally adjusted by the IFIs, as a condition of securing loans, as an example of policies which have relied on the market while overlooking the needs of populations. In such circumstances governments are required to redress deficits in their budgets, but rather than increase taxes on the wealthy, reductions in expenditure on health care and education are often seen as a priority. It is policies such as this, which reflect neoliberal ideology, that disproportionately impact on poor communities and hinder the chance of achieving the MDGs.

Regarding the MDGs, Unterhalter (2013, p.5) claims that although the MDGs have increased enrolment rates in many developing countries, which has contributed to the move towards universal primary education, there are a number of caveats which counter the claim that the MDGs are proving successful. Unterhalter claims that the focus on universal primary education has come at the expense of the quality of education. For example, although more children might be in school, they are often likely to be in classes which have dramatically increased numbers of students with the same amount of teaching staff, leading to a reduction in the quality of education. Furthermore, while many developing countries have been focused on providing universal primary education, attention has moved away from other educational sectors, at the expense of secondary, higher and adult education. Heyneman (2009) claims that the World Bank bears some responsibility for this due to moving donor focus towards primary education, while fostering an unwilling attitude towards assistance in other departments of education. Given that the IFIs neoliberal policies, implemented through SAPs, are often responsible for the reductions in education budgets in many developing countries who have adopted such restructuring measures, it is clear there has been a conflict between different UN agencies (Untehalter, 2013, p.16). Therefore, it is likely that a lack of consensus between the IFIs and other UN agencies, regarding the importance of providing quality education and increasing education budgets, has been a factor in the inability to meet the MDG so far.

2          Chapter Two: Reflective Discussion, Methodology and Dissertation Structure

2.1       Reflective Discussion

The author of this dissertation has selected the topic of study for a number of reasons. Firstly, the author has spent several years living in South-East Asia and has first-hand experience of the issues which this dissertation is seeking to understand; those being the impacts of neoliberal reforms and their resulting outcomes with regard to inequality. The effects of neoliberalism have been of particular interest throughout the author’s degree, prompting a desire to further investigate the impacts of such policies, in relation to inequality, within Cambodia.

This dissertation draws on a large amount of literature in order to make conclusions regarding the equity implications of neoliberal reforms in Cambodia. A number of key readings from different themes (neoliberalism, inequality, MDGs and Education in Cambodia), chosen due to their relevance to the selected topic, provide the backbone for this dissertation from which the final conclusions have be drawn. Springer (2010) provided a detailed understanding into the history of Cambodia’s neoliberalisation, describing how the country started to undertake neoliberal structural reforms, simultaneously with the end of the cold war and the subsequent involvement of the UNTAC. Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) and Greig, Hulme and Turner (2007) in their respective books provided the author with an insight into contemporary issues surrounding global and domestic inequalities related to market led neoliberal development. Furthermore, Greig, Hulme and Turner (2007) elaborate on the implications of the MDGs and the challenges faced by the countries adopting such goals. The MDGs are particularly pertinent in Cambodia’s case with regard to the education system, as they affect the quality of education provided by the state, as mentioned previously. Brehm and Silova (2014), Lall and Sakellariou (2010) and Bray and Bunly (2005) have provided invaluable information relating directly to Cambodia’s education sector. All of their writings use a combination of qualitative and quantitative, primary and secondary research relating to household financing of primary education, the evolution of private fees for tutoring after the UNTAC and equity implications of private tutoring in Cambodia. All of the above literature has shed light on the issues that they aim to highlight, although none are directly focussing on the neoliberalisation of Cambodia’s education system and the related equity implications. The author has used the mentioned literature, and multiple other relevant sources, in order to formulate an answer to the question posed above.

2.2       Methodology (Research Methods)

This paper has been compiled using a mixed methods approach, including both Qualitative and Quantitative data in order to draw conclusions. The data and information used has been drawn only from secondary sources relating to the research topic. The materials gathered for this research have come from a number of different sources. Literature relating to the subject has been utilised, all of which have provided relevant qualitative information in order to draw conclusions relating to the research. Reports from a number of international institutions have contributed to the research, providing both qualitative and quantitative data, helping to focus on the outcomes of neoliberal reforms within Cambodia. However, it must be noted that many international institutions, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) subscribe to the theory of neoliberalism. Governmental reports have made up a proportion of the quantitative data used in this research paper, drawing statistical data concerning the subject matter. Peer-reviewed journal articles have provided a significant amount of information included in this study, all of which have been accessed through the university library system, including platforms such as EBSCO Academic Search Complete, JSTOR and Taylor & Francis Journals Complete. The specific range of sources has been selected as a result of their relevance to this particular dissertation, and has enabled the author to present the following thesis.

2.3       Dissertation Structure

This paper will take the following structure. Chapter three will focus on giving a historical background of Cambodia and neoliberal structural reforms within the country. Firstly, an introduction to the historical background of Cambodia will be provided, endowing the reader with the necessary knowledge and understanding of the pertinent issues in the country’s history relating to the dissertation. Secondly, Cambodia’s neoliberal structural reforms will be examined, giving the reader an understanding of when and why such reforms have been implemented, and how this has impacted those living in the country. Moving on, chapter three will assess more closely how Cambodia has implemented neoliberal reforms. Firstly, the section will focus on the international financial institution’s (IFIs) involvement in restructuring the Cambodian economy. Secondly, IFI implemented Structural Adjustment lending and the associated conditionality will be examined, seeking to determine what bearing they have had on the Cambodian economy and how this has reflected on the education system.  Finally in chapter three, an analysis of Cambodia’s self-imposed adjustment will be conducted, with an emphasis on the extent to which the country was ready to open its economy regardless of involvement from the IFIs.

Chapter four will consist of the analysis of the implications of neoliberal reforms in Cambodia and how this has impacted on inequalities in the country. Firstly, an analysis of the effects that neoliberal policies have had on government expenditure will be undertaken, seeking to find how this has impacted on the population. Secondly, a closer look at reductions in government expenditure will focus on the repercussions for the education sector, where the impacts of Cambodia’s commitments to the MDGs, simultaneous with the impacts of neoliberal policies, will be examined. Next, the effects of neoliberal policies on education will be scrutinised, exploring whether informal fees and larger class sizes are impacting on inequalities in levels of attainment outcomes for students depending on socio-economic status. Moving on, Gini coefficient data will be used in order to gain a deeper understanding of the levels of income inequality within Cambodia since the introduction of neoliberal economic reforms in the early 1990s, and how this is related to the level of education members of Cambodian society have received.  Chapter four will finish by assessing the overall equity implications of neoliberal reforms on the Cambodian education sector. Finally, Chapter five will offer conclusions based on the findings of this dissertation.

3  Chapter Three: Historical Background of Cambodia and Neoliberal Reforms

This chapter will give an outline of Cambodia’s history since receiving independence from France in 1953 and will investigate how neoliberal structural reforms have been implemented. The first part of this chapter is dedicated to exploring Cambodia’s history and the first phase of the country’s economic reforms. The second part of this chapter is devoted to further understanding how Cambodia’s economy has been exposed to neoliberal reforms. The UNTAC’s impacts on the country will be analysed, giving an understanding of how the country undertook its second economic reform, which further imbedded neoliberal ideology within Cambodia.

3.1       Cambodia Before Adjustment

Since Cambodia received its independence from France in 1953 the country experienced untold upheaval. Cambodia has been involved in the Vietnam War, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths at the hands of United States (US) forces, according to Springer (2010, p. 1). Following this, between 1970 and 1975, Cambodia was ruled by a US-backed military Junta (Fergusson and Masson, 1997, p.91), which was played out in the backdrop of the Cold War, while the United States were trying to gain influence in the region. Cambodia’s people then suffered hugely at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, who introduced communism to the country, ruling between 1975 and 1979 where every aspect of the Cambodian people’s lives were controlled by the state . Guo (2006, p.49) claims that Pol Pot had set out to implement an ambitious economic experiment which attempted to achieve a self-reliant communist state dependent on agricultural production, which failed to provide enough food for the country’s population.  By the time the Khmer Rouge were overthrown in 1979 the regime had been responsible for the deaths of nearly two million people in what has been named the ‘killing fields’, according to Vannath (2002, p.303). Furthermore, the fall of the Khmer Rouge was brought about by the invasion of Vietnamese forces, which were responsible for the implementation of a Vietnam-backed government, bringing about more upheaval for Cambodia’s people. Fighting within the country continued between the new government forces and the Khmer Rouge.

In 1981 parliamentary elections resulted in the pro-Vietnamese Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party gaining power, which the international community refused to recognise, because of its commitment to communism.  Hen Sen became Prime Minister in in 1985, while intense fighting continued within the country, as a result of the bipolar tensions created by the Cold War, which Cambodia had become involved with. In 1989 Vietnamese troops left Cambodia and Hen Sen, in response to the collapsing communist world (East Germany), began taking small steps towards introducing market reforms (Kilmister, 2004, p.310), which resulted in the reversal of state controls. This issue was compounded with the loss of support from the Soviet Union who were themselves implementing market reforms (perestroika), according to Buszynski (2013, p.88) and were more interested in rebuilding their relationship with China than dealing with time and resource consuming issues in Southeast Asia (Gottesman, 2003, p.277). Following the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the loss of support that was received by from them, Cambodia began to experience severe financial difficulties by the end of 1989, as Gottesman (2003, p.316) explains, which promoted the rate at which the Cambodian government implemented economic reforms in the country, opening up the country to neoliberal ideology and a liberalised economy.

Cambodian authorities began to implement economic reforms throughout the 1980s under the guidance of Hen Sen, which had been prompted by structural changes taking place elsewhere in the socialist world, according to Gottesman (2003, p.276). This period, Hughes (2003, p.2) explains represented the first phase of Cambodia’s transition away from the communist experiment and towards a free market economy. The Soviet Union had begun a process of economic reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev, where state enterprises were beginning to be exposed to market forces after having been granted a limited level of autonomy, which highlights the transition of the Soviet economy away from communism and towards the free market, as Willis (2011, p. 90) explained. Given that the Soviet Union was withdrawing their support for many socialist countries, Cambodia was in effect being sent the message to stand on its own feet and Gorbachev encouraged the Cambodian government to improve relations with their capitalist neighbours in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, according to Hughes (2003, p.2) . This stance was echoed by Thailand’s Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhaven who encouraged Cambodia to ‘turn battlefields into market places’, as Szalontai (2011, p.155) highlights. Hughes (2003, p.40) identified that as a consequence of the departure of Soviet aid towards the end of the 1980s, Cambodia experienced a huge financial deficit, which contributed to leaders having to accept that a structural transition was inevitable. Furthermore, resources which the Cambodian government had relied on, such as oil, vehicles, building materials and medicines had ceased to be supplied from the Soviet Union. Of particular concern was Cambodia’s lack of fuel, which was needed in order to continue the ongoing military campaign. Subsequently, as Gottesman (2003, p.316) states, Hen Sen was forced to look at other areas for fuels and had little alternative but to turn to private Thai companies to supply fuels to the country, which further highlights Cambodia’s economic transition.

Many Cambodian students living in Moscow were being introduced to ideas of Perestroika (Restructuring) and were bringing these ideas back with them to Cambodia, which increased the rate at which the country adjusted towards a market based economy, Guo (2006, p.50) argues. Additionally, from the end of the 1970s, state cadres had been unofficially permitted to partake in market based wealth generating activities in order to supplement their incomes. As a consequence of this, state doctors and teachers, for example, began to provide private consultations and lessons in order to generate income. This situation increased calls for economic reforms within the country, as those who were enjoying supplemented incomes had an incentive to move towards a free market economy, according to Gottesman (2003, p.281). Significantly, these wealth generating activities conducted by state employees have had profound implications with regard to Cambodia’s education sector as the practice of teachers charging fees has continued until now (Bray and Bundy, 2005, p.40). However, currently teachers wages are so low within Cambodia that they are unable to sustain themselves or their families and are subsequently put in a position where they are required to charge fees to students in order to feed their families, as Bray and Bunly (2005, p.81) explain.

3.2       Historical Background of Neoliberal Reforms in Cambodia

On 23rd October 1991, in an attempt to bring peace and stability to Cambodia, the Paris Peace Agreements (PPA) were signed by 19 governments and the opposing factions within Cambodia, which represented the second phase of Cambodia’s transition towards a free market economy, suggests Hughes (2003, p.2). Upon signing the agreement it was decided that the United Nations would send a mission to the country which would oversee the proposed ceasefire, supervise the drafting of a new constitution and prepare Cambodia for democratic elections (OHCHR, 2011).

The stated aim of the UNTAC was to disarm the remnants of the conflict that had been ongoing for over two decades and to bring about a ceasefire with the intention of creating a neutral environment in order for political parties to contest “free and fair” elections. Once elected, the new government, as a condition of the PPA, was tasked with drafting a new constitution which enshrined human rights and basic freedoms, according to Hendrickson (1998, p. 44). Along with these specific aims of the UNTAC, it has also been noted by Springer (2010, p.5) that the mission furthered the free market neoliberal reforms which the government prior to the UN’s involvement had been adopting. Springer (2010) describes how these reforms have intensified social problems that had already existed within the country, such as low levels of education, poor health care and inequality. Given that the United Nations and its affiliated financial institutions, the World Bank and IMF, have adopted neoliberal reforms as the best means of achieving development aims, which have been achieved through the implementation of SAPs, it is unsurprising that such a situation has arisen. As Scholte (2005, p.11) suggested in a report for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, ‘Marketization through privatization, liberalization and deregulation has not fulfilled—and shows little sign of fulfilling—a panglossian dream of maximal well-being for all humankind.’

Prior to the arrival of the UNTAC in 1992 a separate mission was sent to Cambodia under the auspice of the United Nations Advanced Mission in Cambodia (UNAMIC) in 1991, which was put in place in order to preserve the ceasefire and prepare the country for the arrival of the UNTAC (Curtis, 1993, p. 7). On 15 March 1992 the UNTAC arrived in Cambodia and began its work while taking over the duties of the UNAMIC. The UNTAC, at its peak, consisted of more than 20,000 staff from around the globe, the vast majority of whom were military personnel, while a large numbers were also operating in the country in order to oversee the election process (UN, 2014). While the UNTAC was governing the country there was a distinct lack of investments or loans made available for the country’s rehabilitation, with many aid donors, including the World Bank and IMF, choosing to wait for the outcome of the election process before committing large sums into Cambodia (UNRISD, 1993, p.11). However, of the investments that were made in the country during the UNTAC mission many were committed to longer term infrastructure projects, while leaving the social sector, including education, severely underfunded. This pattern has consistently led to worsening social conditions in many of the countries where neoliberal reforms have been implemented (Scholte, 2005, p.11). The UNTAC’s mission culminated in an election being held in May 1993 (Duffy, 1994, p.2). Considering that Cambodia’s people had been subjected to such violence, and were still being intimidated by government and opposition forces, the turn out in the election was high. As Duffy (1994, p.2)  explains, of those registered to vote more than 90 percent made it to the ballot boxes and cast their vote.

3.3       International Financial Institutions involvement in Cambodian Reforms

Upon the completion of elections within Cambodia in 1993, when a coalition government was formed between the Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendent, Neutre, Pacifique et Coopératif (FUNCINPEC) and the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), international aid and loans became the responsibility of the newly elected government (Hughes, 2003, p.2). Although, in the election which took place a majority government was not formed and a formal power-sharing agreement was agreed, with two co-Prime Ministers running the country. Hen-Sen, who was one of those co-prime ministers, has, in effect, been Prime Minister of Cambodia since 1985 until today. Subsequent to elections being held in Cambodia in 1993 the government committed to implement neoliberal structural reforms, according to Springer (2010, p.5), which is consistent with the self-imposed structural reforms Hen-Sen had already started to implement as a response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist world. Consequently, Cambodia’s new government included in Article 56 (Cambodia, 2010) of its constitution that the country would commit to fostering a free market economy, essentially signing the country’s reforms into law.  Ojendal (2006, p.194) claims that although the stated aim of the UNTAC was to bring about elections and to create a peaceful society, but rather the key objective of the mission was to establish Cambodia as a liberal economic state, fully incorporated into the international economy. The IMF and World Bank appear to have convinced the country’s new government that, with the offer of conditional loans or Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), neoliberal policies would be the correct path for the country to take.

3.4       Structural Adjustment and Conditionality Implications in Cambodia

Given that the bipolar system the world experienced during the Cold War had come to a close, those countries which had relied on Soviet development assistance had little alternative but to accept assistance from the West’s now dominant IFIs, the World Bank and IMF, and the conditionality which came with it, according to Springer (2010, p.30). Effectively, Cambodia had no alternative but to accept World Bank and IMF SAPs, which were designed in order to liberalise economies. Such liberalisation, as mentioned above, involve reducing the state’s involvement in the working of the economy, reductions in government spending (including health and education), privatization of state owned assets, wage freezes, deregulation of industry and the removal of subsidies from, for example, public utilities and transport. Almost as soon as the UNTAC mission left Cambodia in 1993 the newly formed government adopted SAPs as a condition of loans secured from the World Bank and IMF in accordance with the country’s new constitution, explains Springer (2010, p.76). Soon after the adoption of SAPs, Cambodia was receiving so much foreign assistance from outside donors that it had been drawn into a pattern of dependency, which resulted in the country being less able to negotiate the conditions attached to loans (Hendrickson, 2011). The IMF and World Bank have continued to promote SAPs in Cambodia, sometimes under different names (Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, Structural Adjustment Credits), since the 1990s. Cambodia has experienced problems as a consequence of SAPs, which has stemmed from the associated conditions imposed in return for loans. Hughes (2003, p. 45) has highlighted the extent to which SAPs have negatively impacted on Cambodia through the marketization of the economy and deregulation of industry. Hughes explains how SAPs encouraged the exploitation of Cambodia’s natural resources by private companies who, operating under an unregulated system, were able to exploit vast areas of Cambodia’s rainforests, generating large amounts of income which has not benefitted Cambodian society.

The structural changes which have taken place since the end of the 1980s have resulted in a change in relationship between the Cambodian government and society, which has consolidated the position of the state elites and lead to increased inequality between the rich and poor, according to Hughes (2003, p.38). Bray and Bunly (2005, p.81) highlight that economic development has taken on a more significant position amongst the countries leaders when compared to government spending on welfare and, significantly, education. This situation, like in many developing countries around the world, is a result of the implementation of SAPs which require governments to prioritise economic growth over social matters. Although substantial public investments were made within Cambodia in the aftermath of the UNTAC organised elections, it has been discovered that these investments have been focussed on improving the country’s infrastructure, while ignoring other areas, according to Hughes (2003, p.38). Developments have occurred with enhancements to the electricity, transport and communications networks, but investments failed to reach both the education and healthcare sectors between 1996 and 2001. Springer (2010, p. 29) suggests that the introduction of the neoliberal style free market reforms within Cambodia, and elsewhere, are related to social and economic inequalities. Springer concludes that those members of society with greater access to economic resources are more able to influence government decision making. Therefore, the wealthy are able to demand policies which are disproportionately beneficial to them when compared with those who are less economically endowed. Such influence over the state leads to policies which have resulted in uneven access to education, with poor and vulnerable members of society being less able to access quality education.

3.5       Education Sector Reforms

Since the beginning of Hen Sen’s economic restructuring of the Cambodian economy in the 1980s, and simultaneous with the adoption of neoliberal reforms, Cambodia’s public education sector has taken on characteristics which are usually associated with the private sector; the requirement of students to pay fees for their education (Brehm and Silova, 2014). Although fees are informal and the Cambodian government have attempted to forbid the practice, many students are required to pay such fees to teachers in order to receive the education they need to progress from grade to grade. Teachers will often miss out important parts of the curriculum in normal lessons, while charging students to attend before and after school classes for the critical information they need to be able to pass exams and, consequently, progress to the next stage of their education, as Bray and Lykins (2012, p.43) describes. Teachers have found themselves in a position where their wages are not adequate to sustain their needs, especially those with families and children and have been forced into charging fees to students to supplement their incomes (Bray and Bunly, 2005, p.75). Informal fees have effectively become a necessary component of Cambodia’s underfunded education system. Given that the government has committed to neoliberal policies, the occurrence of Cambodia’s informal or unregulated education system reflects the overall mantra of neoliberalism; deregulation, privatization, reductions in government spending and the exposure of formerly public services to market mechanisms.

During the first decade of the 21st century Cambodia managed to increase its education enrolment rates significantly, in line with the MDG of providing universal primary education, however, dropout rates in primary schools are prevalent (Lall and Sakellariou, 2010, p.333). Significantly, Cambodia continues to perform among the worst countries in the world in terms of educational attainment and holds the unenviable position of having the worst literacy rates in the ASIAN region except for Laos. The most significant factor influencing whether a child can attend school is whether his/her family can afford it or not, which is resulting in the situation where the poorest families are more severely affected by the indirect costs of sending children to school, as Bray (2007, p.27). For example, a child who has been sent to school will not be earning money for the family. Therefore, a child attending school costs a family the upfront costs associated with schooling (uniform, transport), foregoes potential earnings while at school and may have to pay informal fees to their teachers. Bray and Bundy (2005) claim that both the direct and indirect costs act as an obstacle to the poorest members of society in Cambodia. Thus, the neoliberal policies implemented in Cambodia, which have resulted in the introduction of informal tutoring fees, are contributing to socio-economic inequalities within the country (Lall and Sakellariou, 2010 p.334).

BANGKOK — For years, it was a poorly kept secret. Thailand’s fishing industry — a key supplier to the US — is entangled in barbaric slavery.

Today, slave labor on Thai trawlers is no longer a secret. It’s a worldwide scandal.

Wave after wave of damning investigations — previously by GlobalPost, most recently by The Guardian — have helped reveal an underground trade in which men are press-ganged into toiling on the seas for zero pay.

Smuggled from poor villages in Myanmar or Cambodia, with promises of jobs on land, men and teen boys are instead forced onto Thai-owned boats plying distant waters. Quitting is forbidden. Disobedience is punished with beatings, dismemberment and worse.

Many of these migrants — and the Thai boatmen who lord over them — have told GlobalPost that murder on Thai trawlers is practically routine. As one Thai crewman explained: “I saw an entire foreign crew shot dead… The boss didn’t want to pay up so he lined them up on the side of the boat and shot them one by one.”

This practice’s horrors have become so well known that — after years of giving Thailand a pass — the US may announce sanctions against the Southeast Asian nation this week.

The implications could be huge for Thailand’s $7 billion global seafood industry. Thailand is America’s second-largest seafood supplier thanks in large part to Western appetites for cheap shrimp and fish sticks.

But there is one commodity churned out by this industry that’s notoriously reliant on forced labor. It’s called “trash fish” — and it’s as unpleasant as it sounds.

Trash fish doesn’t refer to a single species. It’s a catch-all term for two types of wild-caught seafood: species that are unpalatable (to human tongues, at least) and species that would grow into big, tasty fish if nets had not snared them so young.

Trash fish are only valuable once they’re ground to a mush used to produce livestock feed, pet chow, fish oil and cheap processed food

The link between trash fish and forced labor is clear. The accounts of escaped slaves indicate that victims invariably work on Thai-owned trawlers, small vessels that travel vast distances to dredge trash fish in giant nets.

Southeast Asia’s seas are so overfished that high-value species are increasingly rare. The scarcity of quality fish forces trawler captains to scour for loads and loads of trash fish — a grueling, labor-intensive chore.

“There is great pressure to drive down costs,” said Steve Trent, executive director of the London-based Environmental Justice Foundation, which has conducted extensive investigations into forced labor on Thai trawlers. “In some people’s minds, that’s practically legitimized the use of slave labor.”

“The fisheries are out of control,” Trent said. “There is no effective management. In a relatively short time, since the industrial trawlers were introduced to the region, you’ve had a more than 90 percent decline in catch. They’re crumbling beneath the weight of this mismanagement.”

Much of the supply chain from trawler net to supermarket is simply not monitored or properly policed. By the time slavery-tainted fish reaches the shore, the origins have been obscured by a series of fishmongers and middlemen. The system is so murky that seafood companies can’t honestly assert that their trash fish purchases are slavery free.

“They claimed they don’t know. Or they’re preferred to look the other way,” Trent said. “But now you have clear evidence of abuse in the production of trash fish … and you cannot be sure you don’t have something on your shelves that does not have slavery or forced labor in its production.”

Here are three items reliant on trash fish that you may find in your pantry or freezer:

Shrimp: Thailand is the world’s largest shrimp exporter and and America’s largest foreign shrimp supplier.

The shrimp aren’t directly farmed using forced labor. But shrimp are often fed the mushed-up sea life collected on slave boats. “That has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt,” Trent said. The Guardian has directly implicated the planet’s largest shrimp exporter — a massive Thailand-based conglomerate called CP Foods — in feeding slave-caught trash fish to shrimp.

CP Foods has long sold shrimp to Wal-Mart and Costco as well as Tesco, a UK-headquartered superstore chain, and France’s Carrefour. So far, only Carrefour has stopped buying shrimp from CP Foods following Guardian’s expose.

Dog and cat food: Ground-up trash fish are a common ingredient in pet food. No investigation has linked a particular pet chow factory to forced labor but “it’s wholly reasonable to expect that trash fish may be entering supply chains producing cat food and dog food,” Trent said.

Last year, $171 million worth of dog and cat food entered the US from Thailand, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. When it comes to dog and cat food in “sealed in airtight containers” — which typically means wet pet food — Thailand is America’s top foreign supplier.

Fish sauce: Trash fish is a key ingredient in fish sauce — a savory, amber-colored liquid. In many Asian kitchens, it’s an ingredient no less crucial than salt in Western kitchens.

In the US, Thai fish sauce rules 85 percent of the market. Last year, according the US government statistics, Americans consumed more than 35 million pounds of Thai-produced fish sauce. That’s enough to feed two ounces of fish sauce to every American man, woman and child.

Fish oil pills: A popular source of Omega 3 fatty acids, fish oil pills are sometimes produced with trash fish. Mackerel and sardines are common species used to make the pills. They’re also common species caught by slaves on Thai trawlers.

The Environmental Justice Foundation has looked into links between slave-caught fish and factories and will “examine them further,” Trent said. “I don’t think people in the major consumer markets want to be eating a health product produced by slaves.”

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In a large, windowless hall smelling of antiseptic and the sea, hundreds of white-clad men and women in masks line rows of metal tables.

To the tune of Thai pop songs blasting in the background, they make deft work of trays of cooked skipjack tuna, stripping skin and bones in a matter of minutes.

The resulting hunks of brown flesh are stuffed into 6kg bags, ready to be shipped more than 6,000km away to Israel.

This is the factory of Thai Union Group, the world’s largest canned tuna producer, which of late has been acquiring so many big-name seafood firms that it became embroiled in an anti-trust probe in the United States.

Thai Union owns brands such as Chicken of the Sea, John West, King Oscar and Petit Navire. It also supplies processed seafood to other companies.

Its products can be found in major pet food brands as well as supermarket chains such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Woolworths and Safeway.

On Dec 4, it scrapped its plan to acquire US-based Bumble Bee Seafoods after the authorities there deemed the deal harmful to local competition.

With an eye on hitting its US$8 billion (S$11 billion) revenue target by 2020, it announced, just two weeks later, plans to buy a majority stake in Rugen Fisch, a leading German canned seafood firm.

With operations so big, the company has been the target of investigations over the use of coerced labour long alleged in the complex supply chains that make up Thailand’s seafood industry.

The kingdom is the world’s third largest exporter of seafood, selling about US$3.17 billion worth of fish products last year, according to statistics from the Thai Frozen Foods Association.

The trail of fish from sea to plate often involves low-wage boat hands from Cambodia and Myanmar and vulnerable migrant workers who process the seafood for suppliers of big exporters.

On Dec 10, just days before the release of an Associated Press report that exposed slave-like conditions on the premises of one of its suppliers of peeled shrimp, Thai Union announced that it would, from Jan 1, directly employ shrimp peelers so as to guarantee their welfare.

Nestle, one of its clients, admitted last month that seafood made with forced labour had found its way into its products.

In a recent interview with The Straits Times, Thai Union president and chief executive Thiraphong Chansiri said he welcomed the scrutiny. “Frankly, I don’t mind,” he said. “We accept the challenge. We accept that it’s our responsibility and we want to do the right thing.”

But he also said the firm became aware of the problem of coerced labour in seafood supply chains only recently.

“Frankly, before 2013, how could we know? First of all, we don’t buy much from the boats in Thailand.

“And then we buy fish delivered to the factory,” he said. “People talked about traceability not long ago.”

Just 4 per cent – or 14,000 tonnes – of the company’s seafood is sourced from Thailand.

But that may mean little in the face of growing calls for consumer boycotts of Thai seafood in Western countries.

The kingdom’s entire seafood export industry has been under threat since the EU issued a “yellow flag” in April for Thailand’s lax controls over illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

Since then, the military government has been scrambling to register fishing vessels, legislate the use of ecologically sensitive fishing equipment and weed out the use of forced labour on boats to avert the import ban should the EU follow up with a “red card”.

Thailand exported about US$700 million worth of seafood exports to the European Union last year.

“Certainly we are all concerned,” said Mr Thiraphong.

Technically, a ban would apply only to products sourced from Thailand, but “you don’t know” how each EU country might interpret the ruling, he said.

Thai Union has cut ties with some 2,000 boats over the past two years to ensure ethical labour practices.

Meanwhile, the Thai government last Monday refuted the AP report on rogue shrimp peeling sheds, arguing that it was unrepresentative of the entire industry.

“Don’t just base your judgment on one news article; that is not fair,” Vice-Admiral Chumpol Lumpiganon, a spokesman for the Command Centre for Combating Illegal Fishing, told The Straits Times.

“Anyone who finds a rogue factory can come to us and we will deal with it instantly.”

About 8,000 fishing vessels have lost their licences since the government began cleaning up the industry, leaving about 40,000 now subjected to tighter monitoring.

In a related move, new measures gazetted last month have put seafood factories that violate labour laws at risk of closure.

But migrant worker advocates fear that the application of the rules may remain lax in the domestic seafood market, where consumer pressure for traceable supply chains is not so strong.

“Conditions in the domestic seafood market are always worse than those for the export market,” said Mr Andy Hall, an international affairs adviser to Thailand’s Migrant Workers Rights Network.

Mr Thiraphong said Thai Union, as a market leader, has been “working closely with the Thai government” to support industry-wide reform.

Despite its global ambitions – and the flurry of recent reports about labour abuses in the Thai seafood industry – the company does not intend to loosen its association with its home country.

In September, the company, formerly known as Thai Union Frozen Products, chose to retain reference to the kingdom in a rebranding exercise.  “We are very proud to be Thai,” said Mr Thiraphong.

“We chose the name with ‘Thai’ (in it) so that we can represent Thailand in the global landscape.”

BANGKOK — Seafaring slave ships didn’t vanish in the 19th century. They still persist.

And there’s a good chance they’re catching your dinner.

Just a few years ago, the dark underworld of forced labor in Thailand’s fishing sector was little known. The dirty secrets of this $7.3 billion powerhouse industry have since been explored by the media and international watchdog groups.

But this international outcry has changed little on the lawless seas, where men still slave away on Thai-captained trawlers under savage conditions. Implications for the US are disturbing: Thailand is America’s second-largest seafood supplier behind China.

The men who haul these fish from the sea were typically suckered into working for zero pay. Almost all of the victims are smuggled from destitute villages in Myanmar or Cambodia under false promises of gigs in factories, farms or construction yards.

GlobalPost’s award winning 2012 investigation “Seafood Slavery” tells the grim saga of escaped slaves lorded over and tortured by Thai captains. Those who resist are often murdered.

“I once saw a captain grab a metal spike used to mend nets and stab a fisherman in the chest,” said Moeun Pich, a Cambodian ex-slave, recounting a fairly typical story shared by former victims.  “The crew pulled a sleeping bag over his corpse and rolled it overboard.” These conditions are confirmed by Thai boatmen, one of whom said that captives can toil “for 10 years just getting sold over and over.”

Following reports from Human Rights Watch, the International Labour Organization and others, the latest exposé into Thailand’s seafood industry comes from the London-based Environmental Justice Foundation. The investigation builds upon a mounting pile of evidence that this global trade is propped up by vicious practices.

But so far, there is little indication that this netherworld of slavery will disappear — despite its well-documented role in delivering fish to Western supermarkets. Here are five reasons Thailand’s seafood slavery problem will likely persist.

Dodgy Fishing Trawlers Operate in a Legal Abyss

Just as drug money is laundered of its illicit origins, so is slave-caught seafood. The captive workers toil on unregistered “ghost ships.” Their catch is transferred to colossal motherships far out at sea, where it is mixed with fish from other vessels before being offloaded to fishmongers at the docks.

These steps are practically impossible to trace. In fact, ghost ships need not dock for years on end. They’ll remain murky and inscrutable until either Thailand’s government or the seafood industry forces all fishing vessels to prove where and how they caught their fish.

More than 25,000 fishing vessels are legally registered by Thailand. Each one should be outfitted with a GPS-powered monitoring system, argued Steve Trent, the Environmental Justice Foundation’s director. “For just a couple of thousand dollars a year, an authority can monitor the exact locations of boats, which has benefits for both fisheries management and ensuring the safety of crews,” he said. “There is absolutely no excuse for a country as developed as Thailand … not to employ this very basic technology.”

The US Keeps Looking the Other Way and Giving Thailand a Pass

Thailand is America’s oldest Asian ally. The two nations have been buddies since the Vietnam War, when the US launched jets from Thailand to carpet-bomb suspected communist rebels. And with China now ascendant, America appears reluctant to take action that would threaten the friendship.

This helps explain why America takes pains to avoid sanctioning Thailand — even though the nation is clearly one of Asia’s major human trafficking hubs.

When it comes to human trafficking, the White House talks a good game. The State Department puts out an annual Trafficking In Persons report and vows to sanction nations ranked in its lowest tier. But Thailand has managed to hover just above the worst ranking for four years straight. Why? Because the Secretary of State repeatedly issues waivers to spare the government from a humiliating slide into the bottom ranks.

Thai Police Barely Pursue the Criminals Behind the Slavery

Thailand’s forced labor victims are believed to number in the thousands.

Guess how many traffickers were prosecuted in 2012? 27.

Thai police aren’t just apathetic when it comes to chasing down perpetrators of forced labor. They’re sometimes in cahoots. The State Department cites “credible reports that corrupt officials protected brothels … seafood and sweatshop facilities from raids and inspections” and even used “victim testimony to weaken cases.”

Thai police don’t aggressively pursue forced labor cases on land. They’re even less likely to hunt down Thai-captained ghost ships — which are compelled by overfishing to trawl deeper into international waters each year. One ship captain told GlobalPost his fleet had once ventured as far as Somalia, nearly 4,000 miles away.

Forced Labor Victims that Seek Justice are Isolated by the Authorities

Say you’re a sea slave who has defied the odds. You’ve managed to swim to Thailand’s shores, eluding capture. You wash ashore, filthy and fatigued and unable to speak the native language. And you somehow find an official willing to submit your case into the justice system.

Your nightmare is far from over.

Forced labor victims are typically quarantined in shelters as they pursue justice. They’re often forbidden from leaving or even communicating with family members. The rationale is well meaning; intel on their whereabouts is easily leaked to trafficking syndicates who can threaten relatives or otherwise sabotage the case.

But many victims prefer to drop cases so they can return home or get back to work. This is especially true of migrants who have ventured from their far-flung villages to shore up cash for their ailing families. They simply can’t afford to wait in confinement while the justice system drags on for years.

Seafood Consumers are Ignorant or Do Not Care

Unease over the origins of blood diamonds, non-fair trade coffee and even iPads has seeped into the American consciousness. The fact that seafood shipped to America is tangled in a slavery-tainted supply chain hasn’t.

Traffickers, cops and seafood moguls in Thailand are not on the verge of a collective moral epiphany that will rid the nation of forced labor. Impoverished Myanmar and Cambodia will be full of men desperate enough to fall prey to smugglers’ lies for years to come.

And Western buyers are, for now, too uninformed or unconcerned about the tragic lives of men trapped on distant trawlers to alter their shopping habits. As long as no one along the supply chain objects, trawler captains who help supply American supermarkets will continue to buy men like livestock, at $650 per head, and dispose of them at will.

 

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While Brexit versus the continuation of the European Union is a hot news topic, few know the secret who and why of the EU’s creation.

The lead financial writer at the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, wrote in 2000:

Declassified American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe.

***

The head of the Ford Foundation, ex-OSS officer Paul Hoffman, doubled as head of ACUE [below, we’ll explain who these players are] in the late Fifties. The State Department also played a role. A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to pursue monetary union by stealth.

It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which “adoption of such proposals would become virtually inescapable”.

In other words, the U.S. State Department recommended ramming through the creation of the EU before Europeans knew what was happening.

Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick Richard J. Aldrich reviewed available historical documents, and also concluded that the European Union was largely an American project:

US officials trying to rebuild and stabilize postwar Europe worked from the assumption that it required rapid unification, perhaps leading to a United States of Europe. The encouragement of European unification, one of the most consistent components of Harry S. Truman’s foreign policy, was even more strongly emphasized under his successor General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Moreover, under both Truman and Eisenhower, US policymakers conceived of European unification not only as an important end in itself, but also as a way to solve the German problem.’

***

One of the most interesting US covert operations in postwar Europe was the funding of the European Movement. The European Movement was an umbrella organization which led a prestigious, if disparate, group of organizations urging rapid unification in Europe, focusing their efforts upon the Council of Europe, and counting Winston Churchill, Paul-Henri Spaak, Konrad Adenauer, Leon Blum and Alcide de Gasperi as its five Presidents of Honour.

***

The discreet injection of over three million dollars between 1949 and 1960, mostly from US government sources, was central to efforts to drum up mass support for the Schuman Plan, the European Defence Community and a European Assembly with sovereign powers. This covert contribution never formed less than half the European Movement’s budget and, after 1952, probably two-thirds.

***

The conduit for American assistance was the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), directed by senior figures from the American intelligence community. This body was organized in the early Summer of 1948 by Allen Welsh Dulles, then heading a committee reviewing the organization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of the National Security Council (NSC), and also by William J. Donovan, former head of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) [predecessor to the CIA].

***

The International Organizations Division [a newly-established branch of the CIA] was also involved in the fourth type of US covert operation — provoking dissonance in the satellite states. This effort was channelled through the National Committee for a Free Europe, later known as the Free Europe Committee, which controlled Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Much of the work, done with the help of irascible exile groups under the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN), was coordinated by the CIA’s burgeoning Munich station, which also gave aid to resistance groups within eastern Europe.

***

The ACUE and its short-lived predecessor were only two of many `American’ and ‘Free’ committees established during 1948 and 1949. Well-documented examples include the National Committee for a Free Europe (later the Free Europe Committee) and the Free Asia Committee (later the Asia Foundation). The Free Europe Committee, formed in 1948 by the retired diplomat Joseph E. Grew at Kennan’s request, worked closely with the CIA to maintain contact between exile groups in the West and the Eastern bloc. Their campaign ‘to keep alive the hope of liberation in Eastern Europe’, was launched publicly in 1949 by the recently retired American military governor in Germany, General Lucius D. Clay.” The initial membership included many senior government figures such as the former Assistant Secretary of State, Adolphe Berle, Allen Dulles and ex-OSS personnel such as Frederic R. Dolbeare. The Free Europe Committee purported to draw its resources from private subscriptions and various foundations, but in reality the majority of its funds came from the US government through channels managed by the CIA.

***

The United States persuaded Britain and France to give the exile groups associate membership of the Council of Europe. A year later the White House endorsed State Department plans to accelerate these efforts. Outlining their proposals in a special guidance paper entitled ‘The Concept of Europe’, they admitted their concern that the main propaganda effort in the East lacked the `positive qualities which are necessary to arouse nations’. Several studies had been made in an attempt to find a positive concept and the themes of ‘European Unity’ and ‘Return to Europe’ might rectify this problem. Its ‘solely European’ nature ensured that it could not be `dismissed as another manoeuvre of “American imperialism”‘.

***

Unification was officially a central component of US policy — Congress had stipulated it as a condition of further Marshall Plan aid

***

The ACUE’s work in continental Europe during the early 1950s also focused increasingly upon propaganda and mass action

***

In 1951, the majority of ACUE funds for Europe were employed on a new venture — a unity campaign amongst European youth. Between 1951 and 1956 the European Movement organized over 2,000 rallies and festivals on the continent, particularly in Germany where they received the help of the US army. One of the additional advantages of deploying American funds on the large youth programmes was that it helped to disguise the extent to which the European Movement was dependent upon American funds. In May 1952 Spaak decided that funds from American sources that had previously been used in the ordinary budget of the European Movement would now be diverted for use in the ‘Special Budgets’ used to support their growing range of new programmes. This disguised their source and avoided any accusations of American dependency. Again, in November 1953, Baron Boel, the treasurer of the European Movement, explained that it was essential to avoid a situation where opponents of European unity could accuse them of being an American creation. For this reason ‘American money, quite acceptable for the European Youth Campaign and certain restricted activities, could not be used for the normal running of the Movement’. Through the use of `Special Budgets’, the large sums from American sources did not show up in the ordinary budget of the European Movement.”

***

As early as 1949, at the behest of Allen Dulles, the Ford Foundation was cooperating with the CIA on a number of European programmes.” By 1950, the ACUE and the Ford Foundation were coordinating their efforts to support federalism.” Moreover, by the mid-1950s, the senior figures who directed both overt and covert American support were increasingly synonymous. By 1953 both John J. McCloy and Shepard Stone, who had been instrumental in arranging for substantial covert government funds for the European Youth Campaign, were both on the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation. McCloy was also a director of the Rockefeller Foundation. By 1955, McCloy had become chairman of the Ford Foundation, while serving as chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. Simultaneously, the same circle, including Retinger, McCloy, Allen Dulles, Harriman, David Rockefeller, Jackson and Bedell Smith were busy creating the Bilderberg Group, yet another organization that bridged the narrowing gaps between government, private and public organizations and between overt and covert on both sides of the Atlantic.”

***

Most ACUE funds originated with the CIA.

***

Mutual Security Agency [an American agency created by Congress] funds were also used to support the European Movement, indeed the Mutual Security Act of 1951 explicitly stated that its resources were to be used ‘to further encourage the economic and political federation of Europe’.’

A North American Created the Euro

This guy – Robert Mundell – is the father of the Euro:

Mundell

Born in Canada, Mundell taught at the University of Chicago for 7 years, and has since taught at Columbia University in New York for more 42 years.*

But didn’t Mundell create the Euro to help Europe?

Not according to Guardian, Independent and BBC investigative journalist Greg Palast, who explained in his book Vulture’s Picnic:

Who spawned this cruel little bastard coin?

I called its parent, Professor Robert Mundell. Mundell is known as the Father of the Euro. The Euro is often spoken of as a means to unite post-war Europeans together emotionally and politically and to give this united Europe the economic power to compete with the U.S. economy.

That’s horseshit.

The Euro was invented in New York, New York, at Columbia University. Professor Mundell invented both the Euro and the guiding light of Thatcher-Reagan government: “Supply Side Economics” or, as George Bush Sr. accurately called it, “Voodoo Economics.” Reagan-Thatcher voodoo and the Euro are two sides of the same coin. (Ouch! Some puns hurt.)

Like the Iron Lady and President Gaga. the Euro is inflexible. That is, once you join the Euro, your nation cannot fight recession by using fiscal or monetary policy. That leaves “wage reduction, fiscal constraints (cutting government jobs and benefits) as the only recourse in crisis,” The Wall Street Journal explains with joy—and sell-offs of government property (privatizations).

Why the Euro, Professor? Dr. Mundell told me he was upset at zoning rules in Italy that did not allow him to put his commode where he wanted to in his villa there. “They’ve got rules that tell me I can’t have a toilet in this room. Can you imagine?”

I couldn’t really. I don’t have an Italian villa, so I cannot really imagine the burden of commode placement restriction.

The Euro will eventually allow you to put your toilet any damn place you want.

He meant that the only way the government can create jobs is to fire people, cut benefits, and, crucially, cut the rules and regulations that restrict business.

He told me: “Without fiscal policy, the only way nations can keep jobs is by the competitive reduction of rules on business.” Besides bowl location, he was talking about the labor laws, which raise the price of plumbers, environmental regulations, and, of course, taxes.

No, I am not making this up. And I am not saying the Euro was imposed on the Old Country just so the professor could place his toilet at a place of maximum pleasure. The Euro is fashioned as an anti-regulation straitjacket that would eliminate gallons-per-flush laws, flush away restrictive banking regulation, and all other government controls.

Now does the destruction of Greece’s sovereignty make a little more sense?

As Palast pointed out in the Guardian:

The idea that the euro has “failed” is dangerously naive. The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and planned for it to do.

***

For him, the euro wasn’t about turning Europe into a powerful, unified economic unit. It was about Reagan and Thatcher.

***

And when crises arise, economically disarmed nations have little to do but wipe away government regulations wholesale, privatize state industries en masse, slash taxes and send the European welfare state down the drain.

***

Far from failing, the euro, which was Mundell’s baby, has succeeded probably beyond its progenitor’s wildest dreams.

In other words, the Euro was intended to impose a Shock Doctrine straightjacket on Europe, where the big banks are stripping Greece and other countries of their public assetspillaging, plundering and lootingthem of their natural resources and wealth.

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Is Trump a New Kind of Fascist?

June 17th, 2016 by Prof. Sam Ben-Meir

Donald Trump’s obscene demagoguery; his contemptuous regard for the first amendment, his desire to expand the authorities of the presidency (the awesome power of which has never been equal to what it is now), his belligerent and threatening attitude towards the judiciary, his shameless blurring of private and public agendas, his cynical exploitation of the fears of millions of Americans concerning Muslims in the wake of the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in Orlando, his nationalist, anti-immigrant, racist politics, and finally, his endorsement of violent outbursts against dissenters, have all served to raise the specter of a new fascism on the political landscape.

But to what extent is fascism an appropriate name for what Trump represents?

By fascism, I simply mean a militaristic regime that is characteristically authoritarian, anti-immigrant, and extremely nationalistic. We must use the term carefully, as it is all too often a sign of intellectual laziness and a lack of conceptual clarity. To complicate matters, we are witnessing Trump’s political rise while at the same time extreme right-wing parties are making startling gains in many countries, including Austria, which had not seen such a development since the end of World War II. This is important because it indicates that Trump is not an isolated phenomenon. He should be thought of primarily as a symptom – a symptom of the decay of the democratic form of global capitalism.

Trump and his European counterparts are symptomatic of the fact that capitalism’s need for democratic institutions and processes has been steadily diminishing. The most efficient administrators of capitalism are arguably turning out to be non-democratic, authoritarian regimes, including nominally communist regimes such as China and Vietnam. When Trump says there is no democracy, that the whole system is rigged, what is most frightening is not that it may be true or that so many believe it to be true – in fact, his very ascendance demonstrates that there is still an irreducible element of contingency in politics.

We are witnessing all over the world the dissolution of the marriage between democracy and capitalism. It can be seen in the corrupt pseudo-communism of China, or the authoritarianism of Putin’s Russia and Erdogan’s Turkey, and it may take the form that we are seeing here: where the rule of law, integrity of our governing bodies, and voices of dissent are treated with contempt and mockery by the leader of a major political party.

Trump’s fascism is especially on display in his endless assurances that he intends for Mexico to finance a massive wall along the US-Mexican border. This promise – a fixture of each Trump rally – should not be answered by giving reasons as to why it is a bad idea, impractical, etc. Once you begin to provide arguments, you’ve already lost – this is because the proposal is not meant to be rational at all, but instead it is precisely meant to mock the use of reason in politics. Trump is treating his followers not as rational agents; rather, they are bundles of repressed, violent energy which Trump has expertly manipulated to his advantage.

Countless Americans are now more or less ready to deny the basic rights of millions of immigrants under the threat of forcible deportation, and to refuse hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking shelter and asylum. The way to address this xenophobic hysteria is certainly not through the liberal discourse of tolerance and respect for the other. On the contrary, the language of tolerance is totally misplaced here and counterproductive. More appropriate, rather, is a fidelity to human rights and an emphatic refusal to allow any group of people to be denied the fundamental conditions in which to live and thrive. Refugees don’t need sympathy and tolerance from us, and they don’t need us to open our hearts: they need us to open our borders and provide food, shelter, and work.

What Trump has effectively demonstrated is that political correctness, and the liberal insistence on rules of correctness, has served only to regulate hatred and racism while reproducing the subjective conditions that can give rise to violent racial outbursts. The miserable failure of political correctness lies in its attempt to impose what should be spontaneous; in mocking its inherent fakeness, Trump has managed to create the perception that he is somehow honest and authentic. The problem is that in place of political correctness, he’s given us a more or less open mixture of racism, misogyny, and nationalism.

Trump’s campaign has been a sustained attempt to obliterate the distinction between politics and mass entertainment; to stupefy the masses of uneducated lower-income whites who are transfixed by his apparent wealth and celebrity, his unabashed greed and contempt for anything that cannot be marketed and sold. So should we regard Trump as a kind of new fascist, using a mixture of kitsch, obscenity, and bombast to keep his followers rapt? Liberating the repressed, unconscious wishes of his supporters who are implicitly encouraged to enact symbolic and even physical violence against the perceived other?

The new fascism we are witnessing today should not be confused with the fascism of yesteryear. But perhaps it is no less dangerous in the long run, and conventional political wisdom is no more able to halt its progress. The antidote to the rise of populist politics based on distrust is in how we describe the disease itself. To view Trump simply as an aberration, a metaphysical monstrosity – which undoubtedly he is in some sense – is profoundly inadequate. We must see him as the symptom of a general disease; a disease which is global in nature, and which bears witness to the contradictions and antagonisms of the democratic capitalistic order.

Dr. Sam Ben-Meir, professor of philosophy at Eastern International College. His current research focuses on environmental and business ethics.

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Caracas.— Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called on the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba-TCP) to strengthen strategies to confront imperialist intervention and coup plots on the continent.

In his comments, during the Alba-TCP Political Council meeting to discuss common strategies to defend the region, Rodríguez likewise called on social movements to defend progressive governments facing attacks orchestrated by foreign powers, as is the case in Venezuela, which was subjected to an attempt by the Organization of American States (OAS) to justify intervention via the application of the bloc’s Inter-American Charter, as well as Brazil, where a parliamentary coup and media campaign are currently underway against the country’s legitimate President, Dilma Rousseff.

In his remarks, broadcast by teleSUR, the Cuban Foreign Minister emphasized the timeliness of Alba’s mobilization given the escalating right wing offensive taking place across the region.

He stressed that in these circumstances, it is the Alba-TCP Political Council’s responsibility to mobilize popular and political movements, revolutionary and progressive forces, trade unions, campesinos, and intellectuals to confront imperialist intervention, coups, and neo-liberalism.

The Cuban diplomat explained that to do so, regional unity and the gains achieved by the continent in international organizations such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) must be consolidated. He stressed:

Latin America and the Caribbean have changed, we are no longer, nor will we be, the backyard of the United States, we will not allow for the return of the carrot and the stick and I repeat that no one can beguile Cuba, which is still under blockade and whose territory in Guantánamo is still occupied, while attempts are made to isolate Venezuela.

In this regard, he added that the region is at present threatened by the U.S. government and national oligarchies, who, for lack of popular support, “Again resort to coups to reverse sovereignty over our natural resources, our policies of independence and social development.”

During his speech to the Council, Rodríguez noted that the continent’s history will be defined in the current battle of Venezuela against constant threats, and reaffirmed Cuba’s solidarity and the deep bonds between the two nations. He said:

The history of Latin America and the Caribbean is being decided in this battle, here in Venezuela, we will all defend, whatever the price, the legacy of (Hugo) Chávez and Venezuela will continue to have in Cuba a sister nation ready to share the same fate.

Saint Kitts and Nevis Senior Foreign Service Officer, Samuel Berridge, also stated his country’s support for the Bolivarian Republic and highlighted the progress made during the past 17 years, thanks to agreements such as Petrocaribe, and the services provided to the peoples through different social missions.

“We are encouraged by the model of social cohesion in Venezuela,” Berridge stated, while expressing support for dialogue initiatives promoted by the national government, accompanied by the support of UNASUR.

“Saint Kitts and Nevis is supportive of the government and people of Venezuela and is committed to ensuring the onset of a new era of economic growth and development in Venezuela. Venezuela is an important member in our hemisphere, the country is of no interest to us weakened and will be of no benefit to Alba or the rest of the hemisphere,” he emphasized.

Meanwhile the Foreign Minister of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, condemned the media campaigns against leftist governments in the region, which seek to set the stage for imperialist aggression. She pointed out:

The peoples do not want to go back to the dark decade of neoliberalism, they do not want to be politically, economically, financially suppressed and subjugated and handed over to the International Monetary Fund.

According to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the main topic of discussion at the meeting was the need to create a common strategy for the defense and freedom of our revolutionary processes.

Meanwhile, Ecuador’s Foreign Minister, Guillaume Long, highlighted that the union of the ALBA-TCP countries is necessary to address and counter the effects of the global right in their attacks against the region.

The Minister of the Presidency of Bolivia, Juan Ramón Quintana, also condemned any attack against Venezuelan democracy on behalf of his country.

 

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The majority of US airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2016 have been in support of ground troops including Afghan forces fighting the Taliban, rather than targeting suspected terrorists.

An investigation by the Bureau reveals that more than 200 strikes, the majority by drones, have been conducted to defend ground forces battling a rising insurgency, despite the fact that combat missions came to an end in 2014. These strikes represent more than 60% of all US airstrikes in the country.

Since the US ended combat operations against the Taliban at the end of 2014, leaving that to Kabul’s security forces, the American military presence in Afghanistan has been largely confined to a support role.

They are there to “train, advise and assist” Afghan soldiers and police as part of Nato’s US-led, non-combat mission. US rules of engagement do allow force to be used against the Taliban, but only in self-defence.

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Joseph McCullough, left, and Senior Airman Clarence Williams prepare to load two guided bombs on an F-16C Fighting Falcon aircraft at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, June 7, 2016. McCullough and Williams are weapons maintainers assigned to the 455th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Justyn M. Freeman

US Air Force technicians loading guided bombs onto an F-16 jet at Bagram Airbase in Kabul (Snr Airman Justyn Freeman/US Air Force)

US combat operations have continued in Afghanistan but only as part of a separate, smaller counter-terror mission targeting al Qaeda and Islamic State.

But the extent of US air attacks conducted outside the counter-terror remit, revealed by the Bureau today, suggests the US has been drawn quietly yet significantly into fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.

Last week Washington appeared to make its airwar against the Taliban official by relaxing its rules in Afghanistan. The military now has explicit permission to proactively support the stretched Afghan security forces on the battlefield.

Between January and May 2016 451 weapons were released compared to just 189 in 2015.

Under the new policy, the US commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, who took control in March, will be able to assign troops to accompany regular Afghan soldiers at key moments in their offensive campaign. Until now only Afghan special forces have had such close cooperation. US commanders will have greater discretion to carry out airstrikes against the Taliban as well.

There are currently around 15,700 international troops in Afghanistan with nearly 12,800 working on Resolute Support, Nato’s “train, advise, assist” mission. These soldiers are drawn from Nato members and non-Nato “partner countries”, such as Georgia and Ukraine.

The extra 2,900 are US soldiers in the country on offensive combat operations as part of a parallel counter-terror mission.

The US Air Force (USAF) carries out strikes for both Resolute Support and the counter-terrorism operations.

In January 2016 the rules governing the counter-terror operations were changed to allow the USAF to hunt out Islamic State fighters as well as al Qaeda fighters.

The US has been “aggressively pursuing these targets” from the air, according to Brigadier Charles Cleveland, Resolute Support’s deputy chief of staff for communication.

But of the 347 air strikes in the first five months of the year, 213, equivalent to 61%, were described as defensive, force protection strikes, according to the US press office in Kabul.

US officials generally describe these strikes as being used “to counter a threat to the force”. They do not elaborate on what threat or what force.

Data also shows that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of hits by the US Air Force. Between January and May 2016 451 weapons were released in these airstrikes compared to just 189 in the same period in 2015.

Working closely with Afghan partners puts Coalition troops into harm’s way and in such a situation the US can carry out airstrikes to protect ground forces under attack. The ground troops do not have to be “engaged in combat situations” for the US to strike, Cleveland added.

These defensive strikes can be conducted against the Taliban “if we identify that a threat to the force is developing,” he told the Bureau.

Kate Clark of the Afghan Analyst Network, a highly respected think tank said the rise in the proportion of airstrikes against the insurgency was a pragmatic response to a deteriorating situation. The contradiction between the reality and the political position in Washington that combat operations are over was “the result of having a conflict between military needs and political imperatives, having to say one thing and do another,” she added.

“From their mandate you would assume foreign forces would not be putting themselves in harm’s way as part of normal daily routine,” Clark told the Bureau. “But clearly last year as the conflict got worse and the Taliban got stronger and the weakness of government forces became apparent, there was an obvious need for American support.”

That support comes from intelligence, surveillance and help with logistics, as well as close mentoring by US forces, important for boosting moral of the Afghans they work with. However “airstrikes have been crucial,” Clark explained. “As soon as you have that threat from the sky, the Taliban’s fighting ability is reduced.”

Last month a US military drone killed the Taliban’s leader, Akhtar Mansour, for example. The strike was particularly controversial as US military operations crossed over the border into Pakistan where Mansour was based. All strikes in Pakistan before this point had been conducted as part of the US covert war on terror operated by the CIA.

The May 21 strike, which caused much outcry in Pakistan, was justified by the US as a defensive action. Obama commented on Mansour’s threat to American lives.

In September and October last year a team of Green Berets also took part in an operation to retake Kunduz, the first provincial centre to fall to the Taliban since 2001. The attack was widely reported after a US airstrike flattened a hospital operated by the international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Troops were operating with both mandates during the effort to retake Kunduz. US forces conducted 22 strikes in the city as the Green Berets and Afghan partners battled to liberate the city. Nine were conducted using counter-terrorism rules, 13 under a self-defence remit.

US troops in Afghanistan are due to be cut to just 5,500 by the start of next year. A White House press officer said the policy shift last week to widen the remit of US troops in Afghanistan was not a reflection of a change to this plan.

At a press conference last Friday the White House spokesman said: “The US combat role in Afghanistan ended at the end of 2014, and the President is not considering restarting it.

“But the question is, is it possible for us to be more proactive in supporting conventional Afghan security forces? And we anticipate that by offering them more support in the form of advice and assistance, and occasionally accompanying them on their operations, that they are likely to be more effective on the battlefield.”

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