Global Research

For the most part, “everyday people” empathize with other everyday people.

In a world in which a real-time “global conflict tracker” exists, politicians and the news media seem intent on telling their voters and viewers where to focus their full attention.

By some estimates, there are approximately 30 multiple wars and civil wars taking place on the planet right at this very moment.

This brings us to Libya…

There was a time in Libya before the Arab Spring had sprung, and before North American Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 2011 intervention turned the nation into a hotbed for violent extremism. It seems like it was all so long ago. And indeed, it’s been five years since NATO’s so-called ‘kinetic military action’ in Libya, otherwise known as Operation Unified Protector (OUP), an operation that lasted 222 days, requiring some 8,000 personnel and 26,000 sorties that degraded or destroyed some 6,000 targets.

‘WAR IS WAR’ – A school bombed by NATO forces in August 2011. (Photo link aangirfan)

What was the purpose of the 2011 Western-backed military campaign in Libya?

According to American President Barrack Obama, in his own words, “I authorized the Armed Forces of the United States to begin a limited military action in Libya in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians.”

NATO states the following about Operation Unified Protector back in August of 2011:

“Foreign ministers from NATO Allies and non-NATO partners agreed to continue OUP until all attacks on civilians and civilian populated areas ended, the Qadhafi regime withdrew all military and para-military forces to bases, and the regime permitted immediate, full, safe and unhindered access to humanitarian aid for the Libyan people.”

It bears repeating–NATO and Western actions in Libya were conducted “until all attacks on civilians and civilian populated areas ended” in order permit “immediate, full, safe and unhindered access to humanitarian aid for the Libyan people.”

All of the above Western-backed goals to help the people of Libya, could only be achieved by taking out the nation’s leader pictured below…

‘REGIME CHANGE’ – Muammar Gaddafi, deposed Libyan leader. (Photo Time)

Ironically, five years later, the only thing really achieved by Western nations with regard to Libya, is the removal Muammar Gaddafi. The plight of the Libyan people, allegedly the reason for military intervention, appears to be worse than ever.

No one is alleging Muammar Gaddafi was a model human being, but when he was in power, there was not, literally, city-sized waves of Libyan refugees, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, fleeing Libya for Tunisia, Egypt,  Europe and beyond, as seen below.

‘REFUGEE RACE’ – It’s so great after Muammar Gaddafi we can’t wait to get out of here alive. (Photo link blog.livedoor) 

The Libyan refugees simply did not wake up one morning and flee the country by the hundreds of thousands for the first time in the nation’s history. This all happened after Muammar Gaddafi was rendered useless and ultimately killed, thanks to the Western and NATO military backed campaign in 2011.

What about the people? NATO and the President of the United States said that military action was for the oppressed Libyans right?

Let’s take a detour to Syria before returning to Libya…

Libya: By Way of Contrast and Detour into Syria.

Syria, just as Libya, was part of the Arab Spring.  However, Syrian leader, Bashir al Assad, is still in power and there have been increased reports of the Syrian government stabilizing and regaining lost territory.

You can read a recent 21WIRE report on Russian and Syrian success against ISIS HERE.

The effectiveness of the recent Russian-assisted gains made by the Syrian Army in their fight against ISIS seem to be a source of frustration for the American government.

The New York Times writes, that if “a cease-fire is negotiated here [Syria], it will probably come at a moment when Mr. Assad holds more territory, and more sway, than since the outbreak of the uprisings in 2011.” Adding that it may “force Mr. Kerry and President Obama, once again, to consider their Plan B: a far larger military effort, directed at Mr. Assad.”

We see the frustration of the government echoed within Western media – as seen in the CNN video report below…

Note the spin and disappointment of the reporter talking about recent gains made by the Syrian government, as well as the lack of chaos and fleeing refugees within the government controlled areas of Syria he’s broadcasting from.

Finally, Newsweek reports that, “Russia’s commitment to fighting islamist [sic] militants in Syria has been questioned by NATO, U.S , U.K. and France who have cast suspicion that Moscow may be using the airstrikes to help Assad consolidate power.”

You still have to wonder – is unseating Syria’s President Assad the true objective for Western allies and other transnational partners or eradicating ISIS?

Are both a means to destabilize the area for an expensive war and rebuilding process with NATO-approved “good neighbors” and compliant business partners?

President Obama’s declaration that defeating ISIS is the top priority is even a sketchy premise within his own administration. President Obama’s former Defense Intelligence Agency Director, and now retired, Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn stated, “You have to really ask the President, what is it that he actually is doing with the [Syrian] policy that is in place, because it is very very confusing.”

All the while, the public has a front row seat screening the fight between Assad and ISIS, through the myopic lens of Western media. One might think that the real reason is financial, as there appears to zero regard for human suffering within the region. (Doesn’t this feel a lot like Saddam Hussein’s reign, the Iraq War, and the lead up to not finding Weapons of Mass Destruction?)

Unlike the American led campaign against ISIS, where the United States’ Department of Defense states there has been an “average daily cost is $11.4 million for 511 days of operations,” against a staggering 21,000 targets through 2015, the Russian assisted Syrian Army has had more success in stabilizing the region against ISIS.

Speaking of ISIS as a priority, let’s return to the discussion about the current state of affairs in Libya…

Is it really a surprise that ISIS has been building up a presence in Libya, when you consider the fact that Russian air power assisted the Syrian government around the same time?

With Gaddafi out of the equation for several years now and the refugee exodus spiraling even further out of control – there’s no doubt that Libya is worse off.

If “seeing is believing,” then watch the video below where BBC reporter Felas Kilani eloquently opens with, “Bengahzi, the city united in revolution, is now at war with itself.”

Approaching a year from the above report, it is of note that it mentions various jihadist groups being fought against were pledging allegiance to “IS” or Islamic State, commonly referred to as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).

The above video demonstrates that tensions in Libya have been on the rise but for the most part, out of the mainstream media’s focus. Furthermore, any future and seemingly inevitable actions within Libya, as well as the requisite and sensationalized news reports that go along with it, should not be taken out of context, nor should they surprise anyone.

This is how the media controls both sides of a story – through a muddy maze of synthetic reality…

Since ISIS took the global stage in 2014, the media has been prepping the public that the group would spread abroad, beyond the borders of both Syria and Iraq.

It’s as if ISIS is ‘diversifying’ their portfolio of terror. If ISIS ‘terror stocks’ are down in Syria, invest in Libya.

Now the group is alleged to be a global threat stretching from San Bernardino, California, in the United States, to the jungles of the Philippines and beyond.

‘FILIPINO TERROR? – The Filipino group seen above, is said to have recently pledged to ISIS. (Photo link yahoo)

Remaining in Syria though, let’s not forget Obama and NATO’s desire to help the Libyans during their deeply troubling humanitarian crisis back in 2011. In fact, as a result of the Western-backed NATO campaign in 2011 used to oust Gaddafi – the instability has only grown.

So any future reports of a sudden humanitarian need, or desire for security, will be presented as if the situation in Libya spontaneously happened. At best, reports will speak of a security vacuum left after the death of Gaddafi.

One thing is nearly certain however, and that is that ISIS will likely be the reason to go into Libya, to secure it, with the end objective being to rebuild it and stabilize it on Western terms, not unlike Iraq.

If the ISIS “terror threat” to the Western nations, or the “on-again off-again” humanitarian crisis are a little too transparent for you, then the reason to go into Libya could very simply be economic.  Staying with the familiar theme of Foreign Interest in The Middle East, the oil and natural resources could be “the reason,” or among the reasons, for outside intervention.

Why not combine terror, the refugee crisis, and any humanitarian issues into one and invoke the scourge and face of terror know as ISIS?  U.S. News and World Report states, the “Islamic State group now looks to expand its de facto caliphate, actively working to take control of the country’s estimated 48 billion barrels of oil and establish a stronghold just 350 miles south of Italy.”

Future ISIS attacks within NATO countries and their allies, any potential “boiling over” of the refugee crisis, and the potential stabilization or defeat of ISIS in Syria, are all just some of the reasons—and perhaps all that is needed—for the media push for military intervention with troops on the ground and the highly desired backing of at least most of the public.

The NATO and Western interest in Libya is nothing new, as seen in this detailed article by James Petras.  In fact, Libya, once a colony of the Italian Empire, was intended to be made into three separate portions. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya writes:

“During the Second World War the Libyans allowed Britain to enter their country to fight the Italians and the Germans. Benghazi fell to British military control on November 20, 1942, and Tripoli on January 23, 1943.  …  London intended to administer the two Libyan provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica separately as colonies, while Paris was given control over the region of Fezzan.”

The plan to divide Libya into three was known as the Bevin-Sfora Plan; although it never passed the United Nations assembly (missing by one vote), the possibility of multiple states where Libya once existed, is as possible now as it ever was.

Over sixty years ago, Libya was nearly divided up as depicted below, as administered by France and Britain.

‘DIVIDE & RULE’ – Bevin-Sfora Plan (Photo link globalresearch)

Today, Libya faces a distinct possibility of going back to the future and something closer to the 1951 Bevin-Sfora Plan.

As of this article, Libya is effectively two governments with a huge ungoverned populace between both of them. One is led by Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni, centered in Bayda, Libya. Khalifa al-Gwell is the other Prime Minister, based Tripoli, who runs the other Libyan Government. 

Both men and their respective Libyan Governments are fighting for control of —surprise — the 800,000 barrels of daily oil production. The two governments are also brokering and positioning for a potential “Unity Government,” as brokered by the United Nations.

It is as if everyone outside of Libya is planning for the Libyans future, and ISIS is becoming a large part of that equation. The Rand Corporation, in their February 3rd, 2016 article entitled “The Three Challenges of Countering ISIS in Libya,” declared the following:

“To take the fight beyond Iraq and Syria, globally, the United States and its allies will need a clear strategy and resources. Lacking this, defeating ISIS in Libya could just displace the group elsewhere in the region — or the world.”

Meanwhile, the mainstream media as reposted here by Yahoo!, points out that the ISIS numbers are down in Syria but have increased to around 5000 in Libya.

Any government in Libya, or “both” governments in Libya, are likely to want outside assistance in their fight for control and against ISIS.

In fact, Pentagon Spokesperson Peter Cook, states there are Special Forces within Libya assessing the situation in what appears to be a “fact finding” exercise prior to any commitments.

Many oil and resource rich nations of the region have been both friends and devils. Whether it is a CEO, a mafia boss, or a politician, it’s not personal — it’s just business.

Like with business, sometimes there are agreements between nations. Other times there are under-handed public relations campaigns, or even literal hostile takeovers that play out over days or even decades.

If you “felt like you’ve seen this game before” it is because you have.

Comply, step down, or else…

‘DEVIL’S DEAL’ – Donald Rumsfeld, “company man” for the Reagan and both Bush administrations, and special envoy to Iraq in this 1983 video still, meets with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. (Photo link twitter)

Dr. Ramzy Baroud writes in August of 2015:

It is becoming clearer that Libya, once a sovereign and relatively wealthy nation, is becoming a mere playground for a massive geopolitical game and large economic interests and ambitions. Sadly, Libyans themselves are the very enablers behind the division of their own country, with Arab and Western powers scheming to ensure a larger share of Libya’s economic wealth and strategic value.

‘TURNING THE SCREW’ – Muammar Gaddafi seen with Barack Obama. (Photo link twitter)

The ‘economic wealth and strategic value’ of Libya, stated above, were not so easy to acquire with Libyan leader Gaddafi still in power.

In the end, Gaddafi appears to have been a mere detour for the West, no matter how many governments and sub-divisions of people and land it takes to get there.

Editorial Comment

Has Haiti’s 38-square-mile offshore island, Ile de La Gonâve been sold outright to foreign interests or transformed into a tax haven where Haiti maintains ownership only of the territory?

Neither of these. Not if we fight. On January 7, 2016 Michel Martelly published a decree to cede this island with about 80,000 residents to a poorly defined entity called the “Gonave Island Financial Center.” It is possible that Michel Martelly, a fraudulently installed occupation president, signed this decree while his son was being threatened with actions related to alleged charges that have apparently been sealed. Whether or not this is so, given the contents of the decree, Martelly and any other signatory deserve to be prosecuted by Haitian justice for treason.

To the United States and France, which are certainly behind this deal, I ask: what do you call former slave-owners that connive to rip off the so-called “poorest country in the western hemisphere?” Let this become part of your names in perpetuity.

All is not lost. Haiti is not its president’s fiefdom, and Martelly never had the authority to sell part of the country. Any contract involving the Haitian State must be presented to the population, and it must be discussed, amended as required for its legality and other aspects, and ratified by the parliament.

It therefore behooves the Haitian population, now more than ever, to remain firm in its insistence that the August 9 and October 25, 2015 legislative election results must be verified. The parliament, which is being qualified as a den of rogues by Haitian rights organizations, should be rid of the criminals who are currently hiding in it because of the immunity it confers on them against criminal prosecution.

For a credible story about La Gonâve, I contacted Professor Beguens Theus, a political scientist and socio-demographer who was La Gonâve’s Representative to Haiti’s Lower House from 2011 to 2015. Mr. Theus was born and raised in Ile de la Gonâve, where he currently resides. He provided me with the following text of a lecture that he recently gave to a group of law students of the Bar Association of the city of Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti.*

Dadi Chery

Haiti Must Invalidate Decree to Cede La Gonave

Professor Beguens Theus

La Gonâve, with its geo-economic-touristic configuration, insularity, hospitable people, healthy climate, beautiful sea, appetizing seafood, delicious coconuts, beautiful sands and attractive shores, offers enormous endogenous potential for its development and that of Haiti. One has only to add the necessary infrastructure that it lacks for it to become the jewel of Haiti and the eco-touristic center of the world. With respect to its investment needs, however, should we accept everything even if it robs us of our rights and freedoms? Let us briefly examine the main points of the January 7, 2016 Decree with 111 articles, some of which are like poisoned candy and others of which are unconstitutional.

1. Land ownership

The decree to establish the Gonave Island Financial Center, in its Article 4, stipulates that “To achieve its mission, the Center may acquire all property, movable and immovable; execute all works or major works that it needs and act as the owner… pledge, give as security, mortgage, give as a guarantee its properties with the permission of the Board of Directors. “And,” on the territory available to the Center, it will be free to subdivide or parcel out, grant farming and rental rights to its residents, receive dues and provide for its needs…” according to Article 6. “Companies or other entities established by the Center may be fully owned by persons or entities who are not nationals or residents of Haiti,” declares Article 56.

Articles 4, 6 and 56 give to foreigners of the Center ownership of all the property of the land area in question for free and without compensation to the local population.

Further, Article 55 says, “Money and other property belonging to entities of the Center or the entire company, persons established or residents in the Center and/or the Financial District are not subject to nationalization procedures, expropriation and/or other restrictions with regard to personal property.”

So this is a perpetual contract granting to the said Center the local land, which in the future may not be nationalized, expropriated or subjected to any form of restriction by the State.

2. Petroleum exploitation

The Center can, not only dispose of movable and immovable property of the terrain, but also eventually of petroleum products of the subsoil via facilities and oil refineries. “The entities of the Center… will not do or allow anything that would be likely to affect the scope of the Financial District, be it installations or oil refineries, toxic residues or wastes,” says Article 57.

Thus, any 5-year-old child understands that the wealth belongs only to the owner and that it can dispose of this wealth without any restriction, as previously wanted by the preceding Articles 4, 6, 55 and 56.

3. Tax exemption

The entities and employees of the Center are exempt from taxes, fees and customs duties. “The entities and employees of the Center are not subject to the payment of taxes, customs duties or other taxes or duties relating to their activities at the Center and the Financial District. However, Haitian personnel who reside in Haiti and work in the Center are subject to payment of income tax in Haiti,” says Article 54. “International Financial Companies (SFI #1) are exempt from all taxes on the structure of their capital and can choose the most appropriate structure…” says Article 96. “The International Financial Company (SFI # 1) is not subject to capital gains tax or withholding taxes on dividend distribution or payment of interest on loans granted to third parties or subsidiaries,” concludes Article 98.

This latest scandal here wants that only the Haitian staff pay taxes. Not even any compensation is provided to the victims of expropriation in this poisoned treaty that grants to the new foreign owners the wealth of the soil and subsoil of the island under the guise of a project that will bring happiness to all.

To summarize the treaty: everything for them, nothing for us.

4. Unconstitutionality

First, all languages are made official by this decree. “The languages used by the Center are the official languages of the Republic of Haiti, meaning Haitian Creole and French, and the language of the international financial community, that is to say English and any other language that may be necessary for the proper development of business” (Article 7).

When all languages are accepted here, then we can accept and drink the poison as the remedy. Even in the United Nations with more than 190 States, all languages are not allowed.

Second, contrary to the Constitution, which reserves to the State the ownership of the wealth from the subsoil, the decree grants to the foreign owners of the Center, for an unlimited period, the movable and immovable wealth from the soil (Articles 4, 6, 55, 56) and subsoil (oil) wealth of La Gonâve (Article 57), simultaneously undermining the national territorial integrity.

Recall that only one fuzzy section of the Guantanamo lease of February 23, 1903 was enough for the United States to take ownership of this Cuban territory in perpetuity. This article says that the Cuban-American treaty (lease) can only be terminated with the consent of the US or both contracting parties. Contrary to simpletons who believe that from the January 7, 2016 Decree will come the happiness of the island, one should keep in mind that now the wealth of the soil and subsoil would belong in perpetuity to the owners of the Center and may not thereafter be nationalized or expropriated or become the objects of any restriction (Article 55).

5. Recommendations

It is up to the Haitian parliament to clean up the said decree by deleting the poisoned-candy Articles 4, 6, 7, 54, 55, 56, 57, 96, 98 before entering into, if possible and still viable, the implementation of the ambitious project therein, on one hand; and adding a renewable maturity period into the “lease” and a more meaningful integration of the local population, on the other hand.

Sources: Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free. | Beguens Theus is the author of a three-volume work on Haitian history titled État de l’État. | Photos one by Sam H. Sloan; two, four, seven, and eight by baturricodeviaje; three from US Naval Surface Warriors; five by C. Bertel; and six by Ben Waldman. | The above lecture is available in French from RFI.

Translated from the French by Dady Chery

Abandoned houses, shelled vehicles, and ruins everywhere were the desolate remains of cities and towns that an RT crew witnessed while flying over areas ravaged in the war with Islamic State militants in Iraq.

The first place RT’s crew viewed by helicopter was the city and suburbs of Fallujah in Anbar province. Once a prosperous place called “a city of mosques,” it now appears to be completely deserted. Cars caught in shelling and dilapidated buildings where people once lived and prayed now look like scenes from a post-apocalyptic movie.

The main battles have been taking place to the northwest of Fallujah, reports RT Arabic correspondent Ashraf Al Azzawi.

Watch exclusive video footage here

The crew also came to the city of Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province, 50 kilometers from Fallujah. The city was seized by IS militants in May of 2015 after about a week of fighting with governmental forces, but the Iraqi military managed to partially liberate it in December

RT’s camera managed to capture the houses – or what was left of them – blasted by Islamic State terrorists. Some of the buildings are still mined, and thus very dangerous.

In Al-Madiq, a Ramadi suburb that also experienced bloodshed during fighting with Islamic State militants, not a stone had been left unturned. RT’s crew took video showing the positions and tunnels built by the jihadi extremists, which they had to abandon after fierce battles with Iraqi security forces.

Islamic State emerged in Iraq in 2013 as an Al-Qaeda affiliate. In 2014, the terror cell attacked Kurdish-held territory in the northern part of Iraq and seized territories in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, including the cities of Mosul and Tikrit. By August of 2014, IS controlled nearly a third of Iraq.

However, Iraqi security forces have been making gains recently with the help of the US-led coalition’s air support.

On February 12, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi claimed that Iraq had won back half of the IS-controlled territory.

This is an updated and amended piece originally published in 2015 which includes new information and new links to journal articles

Despite what many people might think, small farms actually produce most of the world’s food: a lower estimate is 53% for the world as a whole, but others have put the figure at 75%.

The UN Environment Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food all estimate that small farmers produce up to 80% of the food in non-industrialised countries.

The importance of smallholder/family farms can also be viewed from the perspective that they meet between 34% and 114% of domestic calorific requirements across the globe.

These figures are all the more impressive when we consider that existing policy frameworks are often not supportive of small farms and are even outright hostile towards them (for example, see this by the Oakland Institute). Facilitated by an appropriate policy framework, it is therefore reasonable to assume that smallholders could feed the global population.

Throughout the world, however, there is a concerted effort to remove smallholder farmers from the land. They are being squeezed onto less and less land (25 percent, according to GRAIN, but 53 percent, according to this paper), and the world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of big agribusiness, institutional investors and the powerful moneyed classes. If nothing is done to reverse this trend, the world could lose its capacity to feed itself.

In India, small farms account for around 92% of all farms and occupy around 40% of all agricultural land (see this report by GRAIN). They form the bedrock of food production. Yet, as in many other places, the policy framework within which they operate is making farming financially non-viable for them to carry on.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers have taken their lives since 1997, and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops and economic ‘liberalisation’. Facilitated by the WTO and the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, there is a deliberate strategy to make agriculture financially non-viable for India’s small farms, to get most farmers out of farming and to impose a World Bank sanctioned model of agriculture.

The aim is to displace the current model and replace it with a system of chemical-intensive industrial (GMO) agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns That system will determine what is grown, who grows it, how it is grown, who processes it, how it is processed and who sells it.

From seed to plate, transnational agribusiness and retailers will determine everything. This is the pay-off for India’s nuclear agreement with the US and is the impetus behind the Knowledge Agreement on Agriculture.

If you want to see the kind of impact this could have, look no further than what has happened in Mexico on the back of NAFTA, in terms of rising food insecurity, bad food and health and poisoned agriculture (not to mention a devastated economy with former workers driven into the arms of drug cartels to make a living).

It’s not difficult to see where policy makers’ priorities lie in India, as trade and food policy analyst Devinder Sharma highlights:

“Agriculture has been systematically killed over the last few decades… because the World Bank and big business have given the message that this is the only way to grow economically… 60 percent of the population lives in the villages or in the rural areas and is involved in agriculture, and less than two percent of the annual budget goes to agriculture… When you are not investing in agriculture… You are not wanting it to perform…”

The great Indian con-trick

There is a huge con-trick taking place in India: support given to agriculture is portrayed as a drain on the economy and is reduced, while the genuinely massive drain of tax breaks, bail outs, sops, tax avoidance and evasion that benefit industry and the rich are afforded scant attention. Despite these advantages, industry has failed to deliver. And yet regardless of the gross under-investment in agriculture, it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year.

Devinder Sharma continues:

“In the last 10 years, we had 36 lakh crore going to the corporates by way of tax exemptions. Where are the jobs? They just created 1.5 crore (15 million) jobs in the last ten years. Where are the exports? … The only sector that has performed very well in this country is agriculture. Year after year we are having a bumper harvest. Why can’t we strengthen that sector and stop the population shift from the villages…?” (36 lakh crore is 36 trillion rupees: 68 rupees = 1 USD)

What we are witnessing is an illogical, ongoing attack on the smallholder farmer.

It is illogical not least because there is consistent evidence from peer-reviewed papers that small-scale farms are often more productive per unit area, generate more jobs and money within local economies than large-scale industrialsed farms and contain more agrobiodiversity and are more resilient and contribute better to dietary diversity. Dietary diversity is a key indicator of overall food security.

It therefore comes as little surprise that the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report stated that smallholder, traditional farming can deliver food security in low-income countries through sustainable agri-ecological systems.

So why eradicate this model of farming?

This is an issue that the FAO raises.

In 2013, the FAO’s High Level Panel of Experts (2013) stated:

“the fact that smallholder agriculture is able in some cases to outperform large-scale agriculture in terms of yield should be reason enough to concentrate on the question of overcoming the problem of limited or restricted access to factors and inputs to production, rather than to focus on the change of model/scale.”

Yet, regardless of the clear advantages of small-scale farms, India’s policy makers are intent on changing the model. There seems to be a blind rush towards displacing farmers and a belief that the corporate-industrial sector to can pave the way to a brighter future.

Corporate-industrial India has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs, despite the massive hand outs and tax exemptions given to it [see this and this]. The number of jobs created in India between 2005 and 2010 was 2.7 million (the years of high GDP growth). According to International Business Times, 15 million enter the workforce every year.

With GDP growth slowing and automation replacing human labour the world over in order to decrease labour costs and boost profit, there are no jobs to cater for the hundreds of millions of agricultural workers who are to be displaced from the land or those whose livelihoods will be destroyed as transnational corporations move in and seek to capitalise food-related sectors that currently employ tens of millions.

While there is no logic to what is taking place, it is clear to many why it is happening. India’s development is being hijacked by the country’s wealthy ruling elite and multinational corporations. Farmers are being sold out to corporate interests whose only concern is to how secure profits: Monsanto has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars from small farmers in India, who live on a knife edge.

Thanks to its political and commercial influence, Monsanto has already captured the cotton industry in India with its GMOs. It is increasingly shaping agri-policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the ‘contemporary East India Company‘, and regulatory bodies are now severely compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest where decision-making over GMOs are concerned.

The Monsanto enterprise in India is a corrupt one, something that the pro-GMO lobby conveniently ignores. Just like it chooses to ignore the fraudulent way by which GMOs were placed onto the commercial market in the US. Vandana Shiva notes that on a global level Monsanto imposed the false idea of ‘manufacturing’ and ‘inventing’ seeds in order to slap patents on them or in India’s case extract massive royalties. Its collection of these royalties as ‘trait value’ or as a ‘fee for technology traits’ is an intellectual property rights category that does not exist in any legal framework. It was concocted by Monsanto lawyers to work outside of the laws of the land and is thus illegal. Furthermore, the introduction of GMOs without approvals, and thus Monsanto’s original entry into India, was a violation and subversion of India’s biosafety regulations.

To compound the deceptions, transnational agribusiness forwards the myth that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. Its claims are always hidden behind a flimsy and cynical veil of humanitarian intent (helping the poor and hungry), which is easily torn away to expose the hypocrisy and self-interest that lies beneath. The world does not need GM to feed itself. These humanitarian sentiments are little more than a Trojan horse aimed at securing greater control of food and agriculture.

The roots of hunger and food poverty result from structural factors, including trade, distribution problems, lack of personal income and the increasingly globalised system of industrialised agriculture and food production (for instance, see this and this). The companies behind the GM project are part of that system: they fuel it and profit from it. Through patents and royalties, GM is little more that a strategy to secure greater profits and greater control over food and agriculture.

India’s Standing Committee on Agriculture unequivocally concluded that GM seeds and foods are dangerous to human, animal and environmental health and directed the former Government of Manmohan Singh to ban GMOs.  Despite this and the recommendations to put a hold on open field GM trials by the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee, such trials have been green-lighted.

The GM biotech sector should not be trusted. As the sector’s largest player, Monsanto is responsible for knowingly damaging people’s health and polluting the environment and is guilty of a catalogue of decades-long deceptive, duplicitous and criminal practices.

The sector attempts to control the ‘science’ around its product, places restrictions on any independent research into its products, censors findings that indicate the deleterious impacts of its products and attacks scientists who reach conclusions not to its liking.

It cannot demonstrate that yields are better, nutritional values are improved, health is not damaged or that harm to the environment does not occur with the adoption of GMOs. Independent studies and evidence, not inadequate industry funded or back ones, have indicated yields are often worse and pesticide use has increased, health is negatively impacted, soil is damaged and biodiversity is undermined, among other things (this report with links to numerous official reports and peer-reviewed papers supports these claims).

Transnational Agribusiness and US strategy

The US has for many decades used agriculture as a means of subjugating other nations. The oil-rich Rockefeller family set out to control and profit from global agriculture via the petrochemical-dependent ‘green revolution’. Along with other players, such as Cargill Grain Company, Rockefeller interests set out to destroy family farms in the US and the indigenous agriculture and food security of other countries. This hegemonic export-oriented, dollar strengthening strategy was actively supported by their stooges in the US government (for a brief summary of what occurred, see this) and facilitated globally through ‘free’ trade agreements, the IMF, World Bank and WTO. Thanks to the agritech corporations, GMOs now represent the ultimate stranglehold of US interests over food via seed patenting and intellectual property rights.

Of course, GM is phase two of the green revolution. The mainstream narrative about the green revolution is that it was a hugely successful humanitarian venture that saves tens of millions of lives. We are now hearing the same rhetoric to promote GM. Recently deceased farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save outlines here why the green revolution was a disaster for India and any speculative assessments or rhetoric about its successes must be placed within a suitable context and contested.

Despite compliant politicians and officials in high places in India who seem hell-bent on capitulating to transnational agribusiness interests, many recognise the dangers and are actively campaigning in favour of traditional agriculture. However, they are attacked and accused of slowing down growth. Certain activists and civil organisations are also accused of working against the national interest by colluding with foreign interests to undermine‘development’. The hypocrisy is obvious: the state itself has for a long time been colluding with foreign interests to undermine the basis of traditional agriculture.

This is similar to the type of cynical attack we see all over the world. Taking the case of GMOs, any resistance to their introduction is portrayed as robbing food from the bellies of the poor and as ‘anti-human’. While espousing fake concern for the poor in order to help line the pockets of big agribusiness, the pro-GMO lobby says nothing about the structural violence waged on rural communities thanks to agri-business-backed IMF/World Bank/WTO policies or the devastating effects of GMOs in places like South America.

While dodging these issues, that lobby sets out to denigrate opponents and to portray the real solutions (as opposed to the bogus GM solution) its critics offer for hunger and poverty as being ideologically driven. This lobby has been unable to win the debate on GM, so slick PR, dirty tricks and smears have become the order of the day. Its twisted logic effectively attempts to side-line reality. For example, GM is being cynically offered as a solution to reduce edible oil imports, which India was virtually self-sufficient in prior to trade rules decimating indigenous production: a case of running down a sector and then offering a bogus solution as the remedy to reduce the reliance on imports.

The political backing for GMOs by the US State Department, the strategic position of the US GM biotech sector in international trade agreements (from TTIP to the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture) and at the WTO and the push to get GMOs into India does not bode well.

The GMO onslaught in India is ultimately part of a US-led neoliberal invasion (and part of a global war on working people – whether they are smallholders in India or workers in Greece or the US), resulting in the selling off to private concerns of seeds, retail, water, airports, land, industry, energy, telecommunications, etc.

If the beneficiaries are not always India’s ruling elite, then they are its senior associates in the interlocking directorate of state-corporate interests in the West who have plundered their own economies and are now plundering the rest of the planet under the guise of ‘globalisation’. Those behind this project regard the folk whose lands are taken, wealth appropriated and livelihoods stripped away as ‘collateral damage’.

Part of the strategy is a massive PR campaign that involves trying to convince the public that all of this is necessary and represents progress.

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,

I write this letter to you with a heavy heart as it pains me deeply to see the beautiful dream of a strong and proud Israel, the country that was expected to embrace what is virtuous, moral, and just, now losing its reason for being—as a free and secure Jewish state living in peace and harmony with its neighbors.

The state’s social fabric is being torn apart by political divisiveness and economic injustice. The country is increasingly isolated, degenerating into a garrison state surrounding itself with walls and fences, vilified by friends and reviled by enemies.

As the Prime Minister who served longest in this position, the country is virtually crumbling under your watch. The question is, where are you leading the people, and what will be in store for them tomorrow as Israel is now at a fateful cross-road and facing an uncertain future?

Certainly you and those who follow you in good faith will disagree with my analysis, but I urge you to look carefully into the dire issues I am raising here as they unfold, for which you are now more responsible than any of your predecessors.

You conveniently surround yourself with a corrupt political elite—ministers with no morals, no compunction, and nothing but an insatiable lust for power. They are consumed by their personal political agendas and absorbed in domestic corruption and intrigues.

You have several such ministers—among them a Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, who endorsed the idea that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” which is nothing short of a call for indiscriminate killing that will include “its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its properties and its infrastructure”; an Education Minister, Naftali Bennett, who wants to annex most of the West Bank without giving a single thought to the ominous danger that such an ill-fated scheme would inflict on Israel; and a Cultural Minister, Miri Regev, who is out to stifle freedom of the arts and expression—who make a mockery of Israel’s democratic foundation and institutions.

You backed three draconian bills: one would suspend Knesset members who deny Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; the second would withdraw funding from cultural institutions deemed “not loyal” to Israel; and the third would require leftwing NGOs who receive foreign funding to label themselves as such in any publication (while exempting privately-funded right-wing NGOs). You are enveloped in an ideological siege with a ghetto mentality and selective religious precepts, supported by a blind chorus of parliamentarians that only echoes your distorted tune.

You manipulate the public with national security concerns and falsely connect security to borders, only to usurp more Palestinian land and defend the ruinous settlement policy.

You delight in facing an inept political opposition—relegated to a permanent state of suspension—and are thrilled to see them decaying with no political plans to challenge you to find a solution to the endemic Palestinian conflict on which you politically thrive. With these lame opposition parties sitting on the fringes of political despair, they have now become easy to co-opt in support of your misguided domestic, foreign, and Palestinian-targeted policies, all in the name of national unity.

You still boast about Israel’s economic prowess, when in fact the economy as a whole is in a state of stagnation and labor productivity is the lowest among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and a handful of billionaires control the financial heart of the state while tens of thousands of families are scrambling to survive.

More than 1.7 million Israelis are living in poverty—775,000 of whom are children—while hundreds of millions of dollars are siphoned off to spend on illegal settlements and hundreds of millions more are spent to protect the settlers, leaving Arab villages and towns with mostly Middle Eastern Jews to rot.

The gulf between the rich and poor is widening. The top 10 percent of the population earns 15 times that of the bottom 10 percent, making Israel one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. Tourism is diving, foreign investments are plunging, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is gaining momentum.

The corruption and criminality among top officials is staggering; more than 10 ministers and at least 12 members of the Knesset have been convicted of crimes over the past 20 years alone. Former President Moshe Katsav and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were sentenced to seven years and 19 months in prison, respectively. Scores more were indicted, but escaped punishment through various legal loopholes often accorded to top officials.

You discriminate against Israeli Arabs (who constitute 20 percent of the population) with your government’s policy of unequal treatment, and then question their loyalty to the state.

Radical Zionists like you claim that a multi-culturist Israel cannot survive – that apartheid, or something like it, is the only viable alternative – essentially repeating the argument which was used in earlier European history against the Jews themselves.

I might add with deep sorrow that discrimination is not confined to the Israeli Arabs, but extends to Middle Eastern and Ethiopian Jews four generations after the establishment of the State of Israel. The May 2015 violent clashes between police and Jews of Ethiopian origin only reveal the depth of Israel’s social disparity.

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, from your own Likud Party, could not have made the reality more painfully clear than when he stated, “Protesters in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv revealed an open and bloody wound in the heart of Israeli society. This is a wound of a community sounding the alarm at what they feel is discrimination, racism and disregard of their needs. We must take a good hard look at this wound.”

Demographically, the country is facing a grave danger. The number of Israelis emigrating from Israel is roughly equal to the number of those who immigrate to Israel. Nearly one million Israelis, representing 13 percent of the population, emigrated from Israel in the past 20 years. Several polls consistently show that given the opportunity, 30 percent of Israelis would consider leaving the country, mainly for economic reasons and the lack of a prospect of ending the debilitating conflict with the Palestinians.

In particular, the immigration of young American and European Jews to Israel is consistently trending downward. Many of them have lost the sense of pioneering spirit and excitement that gripped their earlier counterparts who wanted to be a part of a historic enterprise unmatched by any in contemporary human experience.

The PalestiniansYou treat the Palestinians in the territories like objects, to be used and abused contingent on the call of the hour. You violate their human rights with brazen impunity and never came to grips with the debilitating and dreadful impact of nearly 50 years of occupation.

You scornfully claim, “The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.”  You never wanted to understand the meaning of being utterly overpowered by another, of having one’s house raided in the middle of the night, terrifying women and children, one’s village arbitrarily divided by the building of fences, one’s home destroyed, and of losing the sense of having any control over one’s life.

Invoking memories of the Holocaust as if to justify the mistreatment of the Palestinians only debases the historical relevance of this unprecedented human tragedy. One would think that those who suffered as much as the Jews would treat others with care and sensitivity. That the victim can become a victimizer is painful to face, but it is a reality nonetheless. Having suffered so much does not give you the license to oppress and persecute others.

US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, no less, put it succinctly when he said, “…too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities…Too much vigilantism [in the West Bank] goes unchecked, and at times there seems to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law, one for Israelis, and another for Palestinians.”

Not that I exempt Palestinians of their role, but by you and your ministers’ own actions and policy toward the Palestinians, you are inciting hostility and ultimately fostering violent extremism. You use national security to justify your prejudicial policies, including the mistreatment of the Palestinians and the expansion of settlements that became the mantra of Israel’s domestic policy, using old and tired talking points about national security which are dismissed as empty, self-convincing gospel.

You speak in support of a two-state solution, but you have never lifted a finger to advance it; your actions only point to the opposite direction. Yes, although the Palestinians have made scores of mistakes and are likely to make many others that will severely undermine their own national interests, they are here to stay.

Israel must determine its own destiny and not leave it to the Palestinians’ whims. You claim that the Palestinians do not want peace, but by being the far more powerful party, you can take a calculated risk, and assume the responsibility to pave the way for eventually reaching a peace agreement instead of further entrenching Israel in the occupied territories. This will make the conflict ever more intractable when coexistence is inevitable under any circumstance.

Time is not on Israel’s side, and even though they are suffering, the Palestinians can wait. You cannot freeze the status quo, and given the regional turmoil, violent extremism targeting Israel will only increase.

Without a carefully thought-out plan to gradually disengage from the occupied territories, there will likely be a million settlers within a few years. This will amount to a de facto annexation of the West Bank, from which Israel will be unable to extract itself without perpetual violent confrontations with the Palestinians and risking a civil war, should a decision be made to evacuate a substantial number of settlers.

Ending the occupation is not a charitable gift to the Palestinians. Only by accepting their right to a state of their own will Israel remain a Jewish and democratic state enjoying peace and security, instead of being drawn toward an abyss from which there is no salvation.

Israel is the only country in the modern era that has maintained, in defiance of the international community, a military occupation for nearly five decades. The Israelis’ complacency about the occupation is adversely affecting Jews all over the world, and as long as the occupation lingers, anti-Semitism will continue to rise.

What has added potency to the substantial rise in anti-Semitism in recent years is your disregard of the international consensus about the illegality of the ettlements, the policy of the continuing occupation, and your disregard of the Palestinians’ suffering and right to self-determination.

Did you consider what would be the ramifications of what you said during the last election, which I believe reflects your true position, that there would be no Palestinian state under your watch? There will be no peace with the Arab states, Jordan and Egypt (regardless of how they feel toward the Palestinians) may well abrogate their peace treaties with Israel under mounting regional and public pressure, the wrath of the EU will be immeasurable, the US will lose patience (if it hasn’t already) and no longer provide Israel with automatic political cover, and the world will blame Israel for feeding into the region’s instability; much of this is already happening.

Israel will constantly live in a state of violence and insecurity, but perhaps this is precisely what you want—to spread fear and use scare tactics to foment public anxiety by painting every Palestinian as a terrorist, as if the occupation has nothing to do with Palestinian extremism.

On foreign policy a sound and constructive foreign policy is foreign to you, which is consequently alienating Israel’s allies and bewildering its friends.

You wantonly discard diplomatic conventions and protocol; you willfully undercut President Obama by addressing a joint session of US Congress, challenging him on the Iran deal only to fail miserably, baffling Democratic and Republican leaders alike.

You clashed with US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro for criticizing Israel’s policy in the West Bank, and condescendingly

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

We are witnessing a major development in the United States as a consequence of the enormous financial, economic, and political crises that have been hurting this country. Wages, the most important variable in determining the standard of living of the popular classes, have been declining for quite some time, as a consequence of the deterioration of the working conditions in the labor market. Good jobs have become very scarce. And the employment sector that has increased the most is for low-paid jobs.

This deterioration, while affecting with special intensity the working class—which, remember, constitutes the majority of the US population—has also affected the middle class, in a process some of us defined some time ago as the “proletarianization of the middle class.” As a consequence, the standard of living of the large majority of the population has been declining, recently reaching its lowest levels in what is known as the “Great Recession.”

Why have the quality of life and well-being of the popular classes declined?

The Great Recession, which for large segments of our population was the Great Depression, had been building up for many years. It did not happen suddenly. If you look at income distribution in the US, you can see that while income derived from capital (property that generates income) has increased since the 1980s (as a percentage of all income), income derived from labor has declined. This is the root of the problem we are facing. The income of the first—a minority—has been increasing enormously at the cost of the second—the majority. Let me add that some of us warned that in the growth of these class inequalities, the seeds of the crisis were planted. I am terribly sorry that we were right. Much suffering has occurred that could have been prevented.

But we have to ask ourselves why this happened. And the answer is easy to see, even though the establishment of this country works forty hours a day to hide and obscure the causes of that enormous harm. Look at the data and you will see. It started with President Reagan in the US and with Prime Minister Thatcher in the UK. They started public interventions to weaken the institutions that historically defended the labor, social, and political rights of the working population. Outside the US, these public interventions are known as “neoliberal policies.” They have included labor market reforms (aimed at lowering wages) and reductions of public social expenditures, with the goal of diminishing the already limited US welfare state. These policies, referred to as “austerity policies” in Europe, have caused enormous harm to the popular classes, awakening movements of opposition on both sides of the North Atlantic. In Spain, we have seen a party—Podemos—that did not exist one year ago become a major force in that country. In the UK, we have seen a large movement of protest against the British establishment, which led the uprising of the grassroots of the Labor Party against its leadership, forcing their ouster and electing the most progressive general secretary the British Labour Party has ever had, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn.

We are indeed witnessing a major protest on both sides of the North Atlantic, against the damage created by public policies that systematically favor capital at the cost of labor, causing enormous harm to people’s health, quality of life, and social well-being. The changes in income distribution that I mentioned are a result of those policies. Popular rebellions have started in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Great Britain, among other countries. Now, the rebellions appear in the US. It started with the Occupy Wall Street movement, clearly inspired by the “Indignados movement” in Spain. The political movement of Occupy Wall Street is the pro-Bernie Sanders campaign.

Popular Rebellions in the US

In the US, there has been, for some time, anger and frustration about the limited democracy that exists in representative political institutions. The splendid slogan that the Indignados movement used in Spain, “no nos representan” (“they do not represent us”), referring to Spanish democratic institutions, also applies to US representative institutions. In the US, these institutions are widely perceived to be controlled by business interests, of what Occupy Wall Street called the top 1% of the population—that is, very small sectors of the population that derive their income from ownership and management of capital. This used to be called the capitalist class or, in the US, the corporate class. Bernie Sanders calls it the billionaire class.

This class holds enormous power in this country that appears in many forms. One is through the privately funded electoral process. In no other country in the Western Hemisphere does the 1% have as much political power as in the US. That class has bought the political process by financing the electoral process. The splendid and inspiring beginning of the US Constitution states that in this country, “We the people decide…” But the power of the billionaire class has changed that sentence, adding an enormous footnote that says, “and the corporate class…” that by its own weight has erased the word “people” from that original sentence. The fact that we, in the US, do not have a national health program that guarantees the basic human right of access to medical care in a time of need is rooted in this reality.

This popular anger and frustration have significantly increased during these years of the Great Recession, which to a large degree was caused by the enormous dominion that financial capital (banks and insurance) have over both branches of the US federal state. And it is this anger toward the political establishment in Washington, DC, that explains what is happening in the Democratic and Republican primaries. The most successful candidates—Donald Trump on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders on the Democrat side—are indicators of this anti-establishment mood of the electorate. Their success has surprised and alarmed the political and media establishments.

The Polarization of Political Life

Trump is, incidentally, the US version of the Le Pen party of France. His movement has characteristics of the ultra-right wing anti-immigrant chauvinist movements (with clear tones of Nazism) that are appearing throughout Europe. It has strong nationalism, with imperialist overtones, led by a man presented as almost superhuman, who uses his success in real estate business (one of the more corrupt speculative sectors of the US economy) as proof of his ability to run the country. Trump indeed represents what a “successful entrepreneur” is supposed to be in the US. Another characteristic of Trump’s candidacy is his authoritarianism and insensitivity to democracy. And, like the French Le Pen party, he claims to have a pro-worker program. Let’s remember that the Nazis and the Fascists called themselves national-socialists. Trump strongly defends Medicare and Social Security in the US. He explicitly runs against the political-media establishments and frequently attacks corporate America, including its media. He is also running against the Republican Party establishment and its media outlets, including Fox. His objective is to attain the vote of the angry, white working class, and the polls show that he is successful. And predict he will continue to be successful.

Socialism in the US?

On the other side of the political spectrum is the socialist Bernie Sanders, who explicitly calls for a political revolution against the “billionaire class” (what used to be called the capitalist class), a class that practically controls the major political institutions such as the US Congress and the major media. His program is similar to what used to be the programs of the social-democratic parties, before social democracy stopped being social democracy (as has happened in Europe). It is true that Sanders is not asking for nationalization of the main means of production, but it calls for a significant redistribution of the country’s resources, increasing the income derived from labor by reducing the amount going to capital. It especially speaks of class struggle, redefined in terms of pitting the majority of the people (what Sanders defines as “middle class and working families”) against the capitalist class, redefined as the “billionaire class.”

The novelty of Bernie Sanders is not only his discourse but also his coherence, matching his discourse with his own biography. He has been fighting for the working class throughout his political life. His speech now is the same as the speech and work he has always practiced. It has, therefore, credibility. It attracts the white working class and the young. The sizes of his audiences are beating records. And it has opened a debate about socialism in America, to a point where, according to recent polls, more Democrats favor socialism than capitalism. He is attracting the white working class and young people, a powerful combination indeed. The exception, however, is limited support from the African American and Latino communities. Why?

Why are African American and women’s organizations not supporting the socialist candidate?

Before answering this question, we have to understand the other candidate, Hillary Clinton, who has the support of the Democratic Party establishment, including the leadership of major organizations in the African American community. The same is occurring, incidentally, with the majority of feminist organizations (like NOW) who support Hilary Clinton, hoping to see, for the first time in history, a woman as president of the US. The support of these two groups (African Americans and women) could play the determining role in the election primaries, making it possible for Hillary Clinton to win over Bernie Sanders.

African American support for Hillary Clinton is due, in part, to sympathy and support for the Clintons, which is surprising, since President Clinton was the major force behind approval of the welfare (means tested) reforms that diminished federal support for poor people. This affected the most vulnerable of the African American population. Professor Kathryn J. Edin of Hopkins University and H. Luke Shaefer of the University of Michigan, in their book $2.00 a Day, showed how the 1996 welfare reform legislation signed by President Clinton reduced federal support for the poor with a devastating impact among the very poor, imposing lifetime limits in cash assistance and increasing the supply of unskilled labor that benefited employers. Hillary Clinton has not criticized or denounced such reforms. Needless to say, her candidacy in the primaries is significantly different and more progressive than any Republican candidacy, all of them profoundly reactionary. But the point is that, without a doubt, the program of Bernie Sanders would benefit the African American community far more than the program of any other candidate, including Hillary Clinton. The evidence is overwhelming. Why then is the African American community supporting Hillary Clinton?

Race and Gender: Power Without Class Power

A similar situation appears among women. Let me stress that the US has some of the largest feminist organizations in the Western world. I should also add that it has the largest organization for the elderly, the AARP. In spite of this, the US is the country where African Americans, women, and the elderly have fewer political, civil, and social rights. African Americans, women, and the elderly have the least health benefits among their equivalents in other developed countries. Women, for example, have the least maternity leave in the Western world (5 weeks without pay). The average in the European Union (EU-15) is 9 months with pay. The elderly have the least coverage of their Social Security and Medicare bills. Almost 40 percent of people in terminal conditions worry about how they or their families are going to pay for their medical bills.

The primary reason for this underdevelopment of human rights is the absence of powerful socialist forces and parties, rooted historically in the working class. This reality, however, is rarely mentioned in the US. It is presented as too “ideological” or antiquated. The scientific evidence that supports this observation, however, is overwhelming. There is no doubt that implementation of Sanders’s proposals would be far more beneficial for the majority of blacks, women, and the elderly than Hillary Clinton’s proposals. No question Hillary Clinton has the best intentions. But, like President Obama, she is a creature of the establishment and a key part of that establishment. That considerably limits what they think, what they want, and what they will be able to do. The solutions for this country will not come from the establishment. You cannot receive significant money and support from corporate America and then promote policies that will curtail its benefits. This is why the socialist candidate is critical of the private funding of US elections. It is a travesty that corrupts the meaning of democracy. It is most unlikely that the president or candidate who receives money from financial capital (that is, from banks and insurance companies) will support the single-payer position that curtails the benefits of those financial institutions. President Obama and candidate Clinton are an example of this.

Why do blacks and women have so few rights in the US?

In the US, one reason for the enormous weakness of blacks, women, and the elderly is that their movements are not based on class but on primarily or only race, gender, or age. Class is what could unite all of them. But class and class policies are basically repressed in the US. This is an indicator of the enormous power of the corporate class. The dominant class does everything possible to have groups that could potentially rebel against the system divided and separated. It allows race and gender discourse, but not class discourse. Needless to say, African Americans and women are divided by class. The objective of the “billionaire class” is to co-opt African Americans and women into the system so they are closer and more aligned to the dominant class. The fact that so little is spoken about class in the US is because the billionaire class does not want people to speak or think in class terms. The politician who saw this reality best was Jesse Jackson, Sr. (I had the privilege of advising him), when he established the Rainbow Coalition. In 1984 he ran as the voice of the minorities. His slogan, “Our time has come,” said it all. The New York Times wrote an extremely supportive editorial that year. Not even Jesse Jackson’s mother would have written such a nice editorial. But in 1988 he presented himself as the voice of the working class. In Baltimore, a working class city par excellence, when he was asked, “How you are going to get the support of the white steelworker?” he replied, “By making him aware he has more in common with the black steel workers by being a worker, than with the boss by being white.” He obtained almost 50 percent of the Democratic delegates in the Atlanta convention. Never before has the left been so powerful in the US (The New York Times incidentally wrote an extremely hostile editorial in 1988).

What about the Latinos (also called Hispanics in the US)?

The reader may have noticed that I, a Hispanic, have not spoken about the Latinos, known also as Hispanics in the US. Yet I have left speaking about Latinos for the end. But last does not mean least. Let me start by making some clarifications. First, while the majority of Hispanics are working class in low-paid sectors, others (primarily those from Cuba) tend to be middle-class exiles from Cuba and Republicans. There are more class differences among Hispanics than among African Americans. This explains their different political behavior. Today, two of the most reactionary Republican candidates are Hispanics, Cruz and Rubio, both originally from Cuba.

But the overwhelming majority of Latinos are indeed working-class individuals from Puerto Rico, Central America, and Mexico. Hispanic people are distinguished by their names (e.g., Navarro) and by their accents, many when they are immigrants, like myself. I was born in Catalonia and Spain, but in the US census category, I am Hispanic (and I am proud of being defined as such). This trait appears even more markedly via my heavy accent (you should know that at Hopkins, in 1968 the students gave me an award for offering the “best course given in a foreign language”). I know what it is to be Hispanic (of the upper middle class, however). But, while I am not insensitive (quite the contrary) to the plight of the majority of Hispanics, my work has focused on class rather than race or ethnicity, fully aware that the best measure to improve the well-being of Latinos and the majority of the working population is to focus on class issues than only on race or ethnic issues.

To do so implies, however, a personal cost. If I had focused on Hispanics primarily, today I might have had (besides a lot of research money) a building named after me. By focusing on class, however, I have had enormous difficulties in doing research on what I wanted to study, because there is little support for researching how to strengthen the working class of the US (including the whites, blacks, yellows, and greens among the population). That is the reality we are living in the US and that you should be aware of. But the new development we are witnessing is that blacks, blues, yellows, greens, and whites may be starting a new movement that could confront the enormous power of the “billionaire class.”

The establishment, including the Democratic Party establishment, keeps enforcing what divides people rather than what unites people. And here is where the leadership of major African American organizations, and the feminist movement, with close links to the establishment, are stressing their own cause without realizing they are harming their own constituencies by not linking their cause with the causes of other groups, with class as the strongest link among them. Please notice that I am not saying “emphasizing class rather than race and gender…” but rather “emphasizing class in addition to race and gender…” For all of these groups, emphasizing class-based policies will get more for their constituents than limiting themselves to their own groups. The evidence in Europe is overwhelming.

Let me finish by stressing what should be obvious: women, the elderly, and ethnic and minority groups have more civil, social, and political rights in Western Europe than in the US. The overwhelming scientific evidence that I show in my teaching and in my books shows this reality. The primary reason is that in Europe, class has played a major role in the guidance of political mobilization, much more than in the US. In other words, socialism has been far more powerful in Europe, and incidentally in Canada, than in the US. This is why the US working population has so few human rights. It is very important and urgent that in your work you show the commonality of class interest that the major components of the popular class in the US have. Let me thus conclude by taking as my point of reference none other than Martin Luther King, Jr., a self-declared socialist, when he said, a few weeks before being assassinated, that “class struggle is the key struggle in the US.”

As with many of his positions, I also agree with this one. It is your responsibility in that conflict that you, as a scientist, working on improving the health and wellbeing of your people, put yourself at the service of the majority of the population, and not at the service of the minority, the billionaire class, which controls or exercises excessive influence on the political, and increasingly the academic, institutions of this country. You will not get many awards or recognition from the establishment and their institutions. But you will feel the satisfaction of having done what needs to be done—many times at even a large personal cost—to oppose so much exploitation and oppression that exist in the US. I hope you agree.

Canadian company TransCanada wants to sue the US for over US$15 billion in damages – because President Obama rejected the contested Keystone XL oil pipeline. A warning sign for extreme corporate rights in EU trade deals such as TTIP and CETA.

Countries around the world have reached a critical moment in the fight against climate change. Last year, hundreds of thousands of people marched in the streets demanding climate action, and renewable energy became more affordable and accessible to communities across the globe. Meanwhile, in sharp contradiction to that, countries negotiated new trade deals that would empower fossil fuel corporations to undermine the exact climate and conservation policies that are needed to tackle the climate crisis.

In January, the Canadian company TransCanada announced its plan to sue the U.S. government for more than US$15 billion under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The company claimed that it deserved this amount as compensation for the Obama Administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline: one of the world’s most notorious and reviled proposed fossil fuel projects, which the Obama Administration rejected amidst widespread concerns of its threat to communities, the environment, and a stable climate. If the environmental community needed a reminder of how trade policies threaten climate progress, it had arrived.

Rather than learning lessons from trade agreements like NAFTA, governments in the United States, the European Union, Canada, and many other countries are now pushing for even more trade and investment agreements that would expand the very tool that TransCanada is using to challenge the rejection of the Keystone KL pipeline: the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system which empowers corporations to sue governments for up to billions of dollars in private trade tribunals.

Corporations have already brought nearly 700 ISDS cases against more than 100 governments.1 Yet governments are seeking to expand these corporate privileges to tens of thousands of additional corporations, including major polluters, in the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the U.S-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

In order to tackle the climate crisis, the U.S., EU, Canada and other countries need to reject “VIP” treatment for corporations and say no to any trade agreement that includes special rights for foreign investors. Doing so is critical in the fight to protect our communities, our democracy, and our climate.

Reading the full briefing (PDF) – How investors use trade agreements to undermine climate action

This morning I was stuck in front of a Fox “News” broadcast for a short period and then with a NPR news program. It was enough to convince me that Nazi propaganda during Hitler’s Third Reich was very mild compared to the constant stream of dangerous lies that are pumped out constantly by the American media.

The New York Times, Washington Post, and a couple of think-tank types were represented on NPR. They delivered the most crude propaganda imaginable and questioned no US government statement.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (image right)

Did you know that all the trouble in Syria is due to the Russians and Assad?

The US has no blame whatsoever. The US is trying to fight ISIS (which the US created, aids and abets), but the evil Russians and Assad are fighting the innocent “democratic rebels” who are trying to bring democracy to Syria as a replacement for a “brutal dictator” (elected by a large majority vote).

The Russians are also bombing schools and hospitals, “collateral damage” when the US does it but war crimes when the Russians are accused of doing it.

The accusers had no evidence for their accusations against Russia beyond the unverified claims of the US government. Despite nonexistent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction,” nonexistent Iranian nukes, and nonexistent use of chemical weapons by Assad “against his own people,” the talking heads continue to accept without question whatever the US government says. I was especially disappointed in Karen DeYoung. As a young reporter she aggressively covered the neoconservatives’ misadventures in Nicaragua. However, to become the Washington Post’s senior foreign affairs reporter she had to give up and join the presstitutes.

Did you know that China was militarizing the South China Sea by building up atolls to accommodate runways and by placing weapons on the site?

It is not militarization when the “exceptional country” allocates 60% of its large fleet to the Pacific, declares the South China Sea, which is thousands of miles from America, to be an area of “American national interest,” and sends warships to patrol the sea. That’s simply “countering the Chinese threat.”

Did you know that the clamor by the British people for UK exit from the European Union has nothing to do with preserving UK national sovereignty and the legal protections of British civil liberty? It is all to do with rejecting refugees, a sign of racism.

Fox “News” informed us that due to his great service to our nation, Justice Antonin Scalia was lying in state in the Supreme Court to be paid homage by both the government representatives and public victims of the police state of which he was an architect. Under Republican leadership the Supreme Court has helped the executive branch elevate its authority above that of the US Constitution, refusing to even hear challenges to indefinite detention. Among Scalia’s accomplishments are:

— Stopping the Florida vote recount in order to install George W. Bush as President

— Kentucky v. King: police should have greater leeway to break into homes without a warrant

— Florence v. Burlington: allowing jail officials freedom of action is more important
than protecting American citizens from debasing strip searches.

Like the Supreme Court the presstitutes have aligned themselves with the rich and powerful. Fox “News” reported that Marco Rubio, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, declared that to make the poor rich requires making the rich poor and we shouldn’t make the rich poor. Apparently, Fox “News” believes that aligning Rubio with the One Percent is helpful to his political career. Fox showed Rubio’s audience cheering and applauding his defense of the One Percent.

This is “democratic America” where the people have no representation.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

Video: Vladimir Putin on the Ceasefire in Syria: “I Have Just held a Phone Conversation with President Barack Obama”

By President Vladimir Putin, February 23 2016

Featured image: In this Feb. 17, 2014 photo, Rene Gonzalez, of the “Cuban Five,” poses for a portrait under a framed picture of Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)

“That conscience is ingrained in our internationalism, and is at the essence of our policies of international solidarity. It won’t change just because we establish a normal relationship with the U.S. or any other government,” the Cuban Five’s René González tells MintPress News.

The December 2014 announcement that Cuba and the United States would be normalizing relations was met with both eagerness and suspicion. The diplomatic negotiations which led to the release of the remaining three members of the Cuban Five being held in the U.S. in exchange for USAID subcontractor Alan Gross and an unidentified U.S. spy, also provided the foundations upon which both countries agreed to embark on a new series of diplomatic discussions.

Following a State Department review in April 2015, Cuba was removed from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list — a scheme concocted by the U.S. against Cuba due to the island’s support for revolutionary resistance in South America and Africa. Iran, Sudan and Syria remain on the list.

In August 2015 the U.S. opened an embassy in Havana, ending the historical diplomatic rupture which escalated to U.S. covert and overt actions against Cuba, including over 630 attempts to assassinate former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In his address at the flag raising ceremony at the embassy, Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to the perpetual rhetoric of “democratic transition” in Cuba. Noting that “Cuba’s future is for Cubans to shake,” he continued:

“But the leaders in Havana – and the Cuban people – should also know that the United States will always remain a champion of democratic principles and reforms. Like many other governments in and outside this hemisphere, we will continue to urge the Cuban Government to fulfill its obligations under the UN and inter-American human rights covenants – obligations shared by the United States and every other country in the Americas.”

Yet Kerry failed to acknowledge the United States’ historical and current in role in shaping international dissonance under the guise of democracy.

Meanwhile, as the U.S. wielded its soft power with regard to Cuba, it was also striking against Venezuela with aggressive attempts to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution. The U.S. took part in attempts to sabotage Venezuela, aided in orchestrating a coup against President Nicolás Maduro, and provided political and financial support to the Venezuelan opposition.

The United States’ different attitudes toward these two countries can be viewed as subjugation tactics. The imperialist aggression in Venezuela is reminiscent of the tactics used in Chile, which led to the downfall of democratically-elected socialist President Salvador Allende and the backing of Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship. Cuba, on the other hand, has endured over 50 years of persistent U.S. aggression.

Following terror attacks against Cuba planned by former CIA agents Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, exiled right-wing dissidents embarked upon a series of terror activities targeting tourist sites in Cuba. The Cuban Five were sent to Miami in order to monitor and prevent terror attacks from materializing on the island. Evidence gathered by the Five was eventually passed on to the U.S., which retaliated by arresting and imprisoning the Cuban counter-terror agents in 1998.

On Oct. 7, 2011, René González was the first of the Five to be released. However, additional punitive measures were imposed upon him, with the court mandating a three-year probationary period to be served in the U.S. He was finally granted permission to remain in Cuba after a court-approved visit to attend his father’s memorial service in 2013.

Given the dangerous yet futile attempts of the U.S. to sabotage the socialist movement in Cuba, the alternative option for the U.S. is to infiltrate diplomatically and establish a presence that would facilitate any hypothetical erosion of the Cuban Revolution.

Speaking to MintPress News, González outlines where the U.S. and Cuba diverge politically and in terms of their respective goals for the island nation. Now, González says, the Cuban struggle revolves around questions of how to hold onto the values of the revolution, maintain ties with an imperialist power that is hostile to Cuba, and ensure the survival of socialism in the country.

MintPress News (MPN): Now that the [remaining three members of the] Cuban Five have been released upon diplomatic negotiations between Cuba and the U.S., in what manner will you be continuing the anti-imperialist struggle? Will any future activity — particularly in relation to internationalist solidarity — be hindered by the agreement?

René González (RG): First of all, we have to remember that the agreement between the U.S. and Cuba on December 17, as well as any other step taken by one or both parties after that, has never implied a concession by the Cuban government. The Cuban government has made it crystal clear that our sovereignty and policies are not on the table, in the same way that we don’t impose on the U.S. our views regarding their sovereignty and policies.

International solidarity is a two-way relationship, in which we give solidarity and receive solidarity in return. The struggle for the Five, to give an example, in great part is the result of the answer by millions of people expressing their solidarity with the Cuban people. Most of the peoples of the world share the common destiny of being subjected to exploitation. All of them will be [among] the victims as long as somebody else is being victimized, even if at any given time they are not subjected to direct aggression. As long as somebody is victimized by imperialism, all of us are victims.

That conscience is ingrained in our internationalism, and is at the essence of our policies of international solidarity. It won’t change just because we establish a normal relationship with the U.S. or any other government.

MPN: There have been a lot of conflicting opinions with regard to normalizing ties with the U.S. How does this step fit in with the values of the Cuban Revolution?

RG: We should acknowledge that the normalization of ties with the U.S. is a real conflicting event, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it brings about conflicting opinions.

As a matter of fact, the goals of both parties — the U.S. versus the Cuban government — are by nature in conflict. They see this approach as a better way to restore capitalism and their hegemonic relationship with Cuba, having failed after more than five decades of aggressive policies. We see it as an opportunity to overcome a blockade and policies of aggression which have hindered our capacity to build our socialism.

But when it comes to the values of the Cuban Revolution, one of those values is the principle of having normal relations with the rest of the world, with acceptance of every nation’s system of government and their sovereignty. It wasn’t Cuba that imposed this estrangement between the two countries, but the U.S. government. We would have chosen the path of peaceful coexistence to solve our differences if it was up to us.

So, having a normal relationship with a country which differs from our political system is in agreement with our values. As a matter of fact, Cuba has diplomatic relations with almost every country in the world, regardless of their political system.

That said, we cannot ignore the fact that a relationship with such a big power committed to subverting our socialism, will incur risks regarding our value system. They will try to impose their system of values on us, and for that goal they rely upon lots of resources. It will undoubtedly become a challenge to protect our values under such economical, political and ideological pressures. Awareness of the risks involved is the first defense, but we will have to be clever to transform these events into opportunities and avoid the risks involved, including the erosion of our value system.

MPN: To what extent do you think the US government will cooperate with Cuban requests — particularly an end to the [U.S.] military occupation of Guantánamo?

RG: The two countries have engaged in a long process which will take time to unfold. The U.S. government will try to use any resource as a bargaining chip on this process, and it includes any of the tools now in place as part of the policies of the last half-century. The occupation of Guantánamo, being one of those tools, will be part of that give and take.

I don’t believe that the U.S. government will make any concession out of goodwill. The process of dismantling the policies of the last 57 years will be conditioned by their pragmatic approach to international relations, which has a lot to do with a costs versus benefits analysis. What I hope is that as the process advances, the political costs of keeping in place those instruments of aggression will eventually increase, pushing them in the only direction which is historically right: the lifting of any barrier to the normalization of relations with Cuba, which includes giving back the territory illegally occupied in Guantánamo.

So, when it comes to those issues, our most valuable asset is history itself. We will have to be patient and approach them with a long-term vision. The U.S. base at Guantánamo has little or no practical military use on the age of aircraft carriers. It is kept in place only as part of putting salt on the wounds they have been inflicting upon the Cuban people. Eventually it will be more costly for them, both politically and economically, to keep it in place. Of course, our prerogative is to do everything possible to increase their political costs for keeping that occupation.

MPN: What is the general reaction of Cubans to rapprochement with the U.S.?

RG: I would describe it as cautious optimism. Most of the Cuban population was born and has lived under the blockade and we want it lifted. We want to be allowed to prove that socialism in Cuba is a viable option and the answer to our future. We have fought for that right for 57 years, and view a thaw in the conflict with the U.S. as a triumph of our resistance and determination. We have reasons to celebrate that rapprochement.

On the other hand, we understand the risks and are aware of the U.S. government’s intentions. We know that if things are not done right they might come up with their goal of restoring capitalism in Cuba. We now have to face two challenges as never before: the new imperialist policies, now more subtle and sophisticated, and our own weaknesses and limitations. We look at the future with hope, but at the same time understand that there are big risks associated with our shortcomings, on one hand, and with the policies by the U.S. government, on the other. It is up to us to overcome our shortcomings to prevent their policies from prevailing.

MPN: The U.S. is seeking to establish relations with Cuba and at the same time interfering in Venezuela. How does Cuban internationalism view this contradiction? 

RG: I don’t see it as a contradiction at all. It is consistent with the nature and ways of imperialism. Both policies seek the same outcome that the U.S. government has sought on his dysfunctional relationship with Latin America: to prevent the materialization of the common destiny envisioned by Bolivar and Martí, Fidel and Chavez.

The Cuban Revolution represents the moral compass to the path to that destiny, and the policies of the U.S. government toward Cuba aim to divert that compass from its course. By engaging the Cuban society they seek to subvert our values, and with it kill the example and inspiration that the internationalism and solidarity of the Cuban Revolution embodies for the peoples of Latin America. This approach implies a more soft relation with Cuba.

By contrast, the relationship with Venezuela aims to the destruction of the economic sustenance of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, by launching a war of attrition against the Venezuelan people, which relies heavily on an economic war which cannot be embedded in subtleties. There are no pretensions here. Imperialism relies upon its power to impose hardships on the Venezuelans, as they did before regarding the Cubans.

As for us, again, our solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution is not negotiable. We welcome better relations with the U.S., but it won’t happen if it means turning our backs on those who, during our worst period, were friends with the Cuban people.

The latest report by RealClearPolitics, which includes all polls this month on hypothetical Presidential match-ups in the November general election, indicates that of all the major-Party candidates in the U.S. Presidential contest (Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich), generally the strongest candidate in match-ups against each one of the leading candidates of the opposite Party is Democrat Bernie Sanders. The strongest Republican is John Kasich.

Democrat Hillary Clinton loses by 7.4% to John Kasich, by 4.7% to Marco Rubio, and by 0.8% to Ted Cruz, and she wins by 2.8% over Donald Trump.

Democrat Bernie Sanders wins by 6.0% over Trump, by 4.7% over Cruz, by 0.5% over Kasich, and ties with Rubio.

Consequently, the strongest of all of the candidates, at this point in the contest, is clearly Democrat Sanders (who beats-or-ties all Republicans), but the next-strongest candidate is Republican John Kasich (who easily beats Clinton and virtually ties Sanders).

At this stage in the contest, rational voters whose main concern is to beat the opposite Party will be voting for Sanders if they are Democrats, and for Kasich if they are Republicans.

The most-detailed of the latest polls is the one taken February 10-15 February by Quinnipiac. They summarize it at the opening of their report:

American voters back Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont over Republican candidates by margins of 4 to 10 percentage points in head to head presidential match-ups, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today. The closest Republican contender is Ohio Gov. John Kasich who trails Sanders 45 – 41 percent.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trails or ties leading Republicans in the November face-off.

However, the Fox News Poll that RealClearPolitics includes as being one of this month’s “General Election “ polls wasn’t that, but was instead a survey taken only of South Carolinians. It shouldn’t have been included in this tabulation of “General Election” polls. So, the latest two general-election polls are actually Quinnipiac’s and Suffolk University’s (for USA Today). That USA Today Poll, taken February 11-15, was summarized by USA Today by noting that Hillary Clinton is still the likely winner of the Democratic nomination because of her huge lead in the southern states — the early states, where almost all Democrats are Blacks and intend to vote for Clinton and against Sanders; consequently those southern Democrats might win the Democratic primaries and the nomination for Clinton, despite her being the weaker candidate against the Republican candidates and thus the likelier Democratic candidate to produce a Republican Presidency after November. USA Today also said: “Sanders does slightly better in match-ups against leading Republican candidates,” but noted that Clinton gets 50% of likely Democratic primary and caucus voters while Sanders gets only 40%. Furthermore, in the primaries and caucuses voting within the next two weeks, almost all of the states are southern, so Clinton will probably sweep nearly all of them, which would likely convince Democrats in other states that she’d be the strongest candidate to run against the ultimate Republican choice. This is the reason why bettors have odds favoring Clinton to become the nominee.

According to those two recent general-election polls, there is also an overwhelming likelihood that Trump will win the nomination though Kasich would likely be the far-stronger candidate against the Democratic nominee, regardless of whether that turns out to be Clinton or Sanders.

So, it seems probable that both Parties will reject their strongest candidate — Sanders for the Democratic Party, and Kasich for the Republican Party — because the earliest states to vote will be in the deep south, where racial conflicts have generally been the strongest. Both Party-organizations — Democratic and Republican — made that choice, and it gives the advantage, in both Parties, to the candidates who have exploited racial conflicts the most effectively for their own benefits.

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.

Featured image: President Bill Clinton Laughs It Up as He Signs the Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, November 12, 1999

Thanks to the Presidential debates, most Americans have heard of the Glass-Steagall Act which kept the country’s banking system safe for 66 years until it was repealed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, allowing the risky activities of Wall Street trading firms to merge with insured-deposit banks, setting the stage for the Wall Street collapse in 2008. But few Americans have ever heard of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which Bill Clinton signed into law less than two years after taking office. The Riegle-Neal legislation allowed bank holding companies to acquire banks anywhere in the nation and invalidated the laws of 36 states which had allowed interstate banking only on a reciprocal or regional basis.

Put these two pieces of legislation together with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, also signed into law by Bill Clinton, which allowed trillions of dollars of OTC derivatives on Wall Street to escape regulation, and you have just defined America’s current banking system from hell.

In 1934, there were 14,146 commercial banks with FDIC insurance in the United States. By 1985, that number had barely budged – we had a total of 14,417. But as of this month, we have 6,172 FDIC-insured commercial banks, a decline of 57 percent, with the annual declines accelerating after the passage of Riegle-Neal in 1994.

Making the banking system decidedly grim in terms of both competition and the potential for more taxpayer bailouts, of the current 6,172 banks holding a total of $15.9 trillion in assets, just four banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank, a unit of Citigroup, hold 41 percent of those assets – rendering them too-big-to-fail and an albatross around the neck of the country’s economic prospects and the taxpayers’ pocketbook. (All four of the banks took billions of dollars under the Troubled Assets Relief Program during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and Citigroup received the largest bank bailout in U.S. history: $45 billion in equity infusions, over $300 billion in asset guarantees, and more than $2 trillion in cumulative, below-market rate loans from the Federal Reserve — loans that were initially kept secret from the taxpayer.)

(…)

Read the full article here

The Australian government has little time for the huddled masses who seek to transit to the shores of its continent girt by sea.  Its entrenched gulag system spanning centres at Manus Island and Nauru continues to throw up a host of nasty instances of maltreatment, the latest being a case involving an infant by the name of “Asha”.

Baby Asha was being treated in Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Hospital for burns suffered while in detention on Nauru.  The hospital staff insisted that she would not be released until a suitable home environment had been located.

Australia’s reactionary press smelt blood, and duly exhibited its investigative worth by questioning the mother’s motivations.  The Courier Mail on Tuesday suggested that the baby’s mother had admitted on being interviewed by police that the child was purposely burnt as a means to get to Australia.  She proceeded to refute the claims when interviewed in hospital last Friday as the Queensland police finalised their investigations.

The records from the hospital itself contradicted any such claims.  For one, the harm occasioned by the scalding water showed “no evidence that the burn injury is non-accidental”.  The account from the staff goes on to observe that, “The injury occurred when [the child] pulled a bowl containing recently boiled water off a table onto herself.”[1]  The situation had been exacerbated in the absence of running water and poor accommodation facilities on the island, comprising meagre accommodation tents.

There is much ghoulish precedent on the subject. Asylum seekers, Australians were told by officials of the Howard government, could not be trusted as they made their way across treacherous, life-threatening waters.  Their suffering, distorting in its pain, could only be evaluated by the vague, middle class standards of “Australian values”.

The scandal of the “children overboard” affair revealed the truth denying complex that had taken hold of the Australian immigration and naval authorities.  When it comes to describing the fate of asylum children, governments down under have some form.

On October 7, 2001, as a scrapping Howard government began readying itself for a polarising election, political officials from the Prime Minister’s office, to that of the Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, and Defence Minister Peter Reith, suggested that cowardly, calculating asylum seekers had attempted to cast their children from the Olong into sea.  The exercise was supposedly meant to get them swift passage to Australia.

The vessel, deemed a Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel (SIEV) 4, was carrying 223 asylum seekers and intercepted 190km north of Christmas Island by the HMAS Adelaide on October 6, 2001.  This only happened after the Australian vessel had fired shots across the bows of the Olong. The delicate vessel subsequently sunk as it was being towed by the Adelaide.  Waiting orders from Canberra, Commander Norman Banks, in the sharp words of David Marr, “aimlessly towed them around the Indian Ocean.”[2]

The subsequent Australian Senate Select Committee charged with investigating “a certain maritime incident” found that no children had been put at risk, a fact known by the government prior to heading to the polls.[3]  Pictures taken of the incident, supposedly featuring children being cast into the water, were actually of two sailors attempting to assist stranded asylum seekers.

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, despite admitting that that no children had been thrown from the deck of the Olong in October 2001 would continue to claim that he “did think that if somebody had done that, it was a pretty bad thing to have done – and they did after all sink the boat, didn’t they?”[4] The world of vicious hypotheticals ever so often deters reality.

The case of Asha is no different, the child’s fate exploited and writ large against the cold hand of Australian refugee policy.  Australian doctors themselves, such as Steve Stankevicius, argue that letting an infant injured in an offshore detention centre onto Australian soil “sets a risky precedent,” a sort of green light for empathy seekers. This vapid suggestion is only given credence because, as always, we must be careful about those mendacious asylum seekers locked up with nowhere else to go. The default position is, as ever, a lack of trust.

For Stankevicius, writing in The Age, “Though the public’s intentions [in protesting for Asha] have been noble, the precedent that has been set is a concern.”  The reason being that people, including parents, take risks, often co-opting their children in the process.  “While Asha’s injury was accidental, this decision may motivate others to exploit illness or injury to replicate the outcome.”

Having taken a tactical dump on the case of exploitation, Stankevicius suggested that children were the most notable conduits for heart stirring exploitation.  Take, he considers, those child-beggars operating in impoverished surrounds.  “Though one’s dollars may prevent the hungry child in front of you from being beaten that day, the success of that enterprise ensures the industry will continue on.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has voiced concern on several occasions on how Australia’s refugee policy tends to demonise, rather than evaluate, those seeking asylum in Australia.  In 2011, it urged Australia’s political parties “to take a principled and courageous stand to break this ingrained political habit of demonising asylum seekers.”[5]  But demonisation has not merely become the rationalised condition of Australian policy; it has become its driving, fetishized rationale.  To deny it, to buck it, to attempt to defeat it, is to endure defeat itself.

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

Notes:

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-dutton-accused-of-dirty-politics-after-report-suggested-mother-deliberately-burnt-baby-asha-20160222-gn0wif.html

[2] http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/truth-overboard–the-story-that-wont-go-away/2006/02/27/1141020023654.html?page=fullpage

[3]http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Former_Committees/scrafton/report/c02

[4] http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/truth-overboard–the-story-that-wont-go-away/2006/02/27/1141020023654.html?page=fullpage

By discrediting and disenfranchising Palestinian parliament members, Israel’s democracy is being exposed as a facade.

GR Editor’s Note: This speech by Vladimir Putin was barely covered and commented by the Western mainstream media

Video with English subtitles,

Our thanks to Eurasia Daily for this video:

Translation from Russian by Inessa Sinchougova.

“Dear friends, I have just held a phone conversation with the President of the United States, Barack Obama. The conversation was initiated by Russia, however interest toward dialogue was undoubtedly mutual.

We have agreed on common grounds of understanding for a ceasefire in Syria. Preceding this discussion was the intensive work of Russian and American experts. We were able draw upon previous experience, such as our combined efforts in eradicating chemical weapons from Syria.

Previously, our negotiators held a number of closed consultations. As a result, we were able to reach a concrete decision. We have agreed on ceasefire to take place from midnight of 27th February 2016, Damascus time.

https://www.facebook.com/eurasiadaily.nz/videos/vb.1534348620189458/1576727795951540

The requirements are as follows. Until midday on the 26th of February 2016, all warring parties in Syria must show either to ourselves or to our American partners their dedication to stopping the war. Russian and American personnel can together pinpoint on a map where exactly such groups are operating.

The Syrian Arab Army, the armed forces of the Russian Federation, as well as the US-led coalition, will not carry out military operations against these opposition groups. In response, oppositioners must cease all military activity against the Syrian Arab Army, and parties supporting them.

As for ISIL, Jabhat al-Nusra, and other terrorist groups (as confirmed by the United Nations Security Council) these parties are excluded from the agreement. Military operations against terrorists will continue.

It is critical that the US and Russia put into practice a mechanism for the realisation of this ceasefire, ensuring that military activity from the Syrian government, as well as its opposition, stops. We will set up a “hotline” and a working group, as required, for the exchange of information between parties. Russia will work closely with Damascus – with the legitimate president of Syria. We consider, that the United States will do the same with the groups that they support.

I am assured that our cooperation with the United States can radically change the critical situation in Syria. Finally, we have a chance to stop this ongoing bloodshed and torture. All routes and avenues for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Syria must be freed up.

Very importantly, we are launching a long-term, political consultation process for pan-Syrian discussions in Geneva, to be overseen by the United Nations. Recent history has shown that one-sided actions, that are carried out without a UN resolution, and geared at short term political benefits, lead to tragic results. These examples are on everybody’s tongues; Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Yemen.

It is with this background that we approach the current situation. Russian-American negotiations and efforts to coordinate between all parties, have the potential to become a leading international precedent. This ceasefire is based on principles of international law and the guidelines of the United Nations. It reflects the efforts of the international community in the fight against international terrorism.

I would like to hope that the Syrian government, our partners in the region and further abroad, will all support the given plan of action.”

Joint Statement of the United States and the Russian Federation, as Co-Chairs of the ISSG, on Cessation of Hostilities in Syria

… Consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and the statements of the ISSG, the cessation of hostilities does not apply to “Daesh”, “Jabhat al-Nusra”, or other terrorist organizations designated by the UN Security Council.

There is a word missing in the above when compared to the relevant part of UNSC Res 2254:

… specifically by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), Al-Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL, and other terrorist groups, …

The “associated” with Al Qaeda are not mentioned in the cessation document. In Idleb and other parts on north Syria Jaish al Fatah is the major terrorist alliance:

The Army of Conquest (“Arabic: جيش الفتح‎) or Jaish al-Fatah, abbreviated JaF, is a joint operations room of Islamist Syrian rebel factions participating in the Syrian Civil War.
…
At its founding, Jaish al-Fatah contained seven members, three of them — al-Nusra, Ahrar ash-Sham, and Jund al-Aqsa are directly connected to Al-Qaeda or have a similar ideology. With Ahrar ash-Sham being the largest group, al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham together were reported to represent 90 percent of the troops. Another prominent Islamist faction in the operations room included the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria linked Sham Legion (Faylaq Al-Sham). Jaish al-Fatah collaborated with more moderate Free Syrian Army factions such as Knights of Justice Brigade.

Leaving out the “associated” in the cessation of hostilities declaration gives room for Ahrar al-Sham and a few others, which are clearly “associated” with al-Nusra/al-Qaeda in their Jaish al-Fatah alliance, to take part in it.

There are conditions to that. From the “Terms For Cessation Of Hostilities In Syria attached to the Joint Statement linked above:

The nationwide cessation of hostilities is to apply to any party currently engaged in military or paramilitary hostilities against any other parties other than “Daesh”, “Jabhat al-Nusra”, or other terrorist organizations designated by the UN Security Council.
…
To take part in the cessation of hostilities, armed opposition groups will confirm – to the United States of America or the Russian Federation, who will attest such confirmations to one another as co-chairs of the ISSG by no later than 12:00 (Damascus time) on February 26 2016 – their commitment to and acceptance of the following terms:

• To full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254, adopted unanimously on December 18, 2015, ‑ including the readiness to participate in the UN-facilitated political negotiation process;
• To cease attacks with any weapons, including rockets, mortars, and anti-tank guided missiles, against Armed Forces of the Syrian Arab Republic, and any associated forces;
• To refrain from acquiring or seeking to acquire territory from other parties to the ceasefire;
• To allow humanitarian agencies, rapid, safe, unhindered and sustained access throughout areas under their operational control and allow immediate humanitarian assistance to reach all people in need;
• To proportionate use of force (i.e., no greater than required to address an immediate threat) if and when responding in self-defense.

The same condition plus a cessation of aerial bombing apply to the Syrian government side.

It is “proposed”(?) that the cessation of hostilities commence at 00:00 (Damascus time) on February 27, 2016.

The immediate estimates of various observers of the war on Syria on how long a cessation of hostilities under these conditions would hold varied between 30 seconds and 4 weeks.

The big problem is of course that al-Qaeda is so intermingled with the “moderate rebels” that the U.S. even tried, contrary to UNSC Res 2254, to get the cessation of hostilities applied to it.

Let us assume that Ahrar al-Sham agrees to the cessation of hostilities and follows its terms. The Syrian and Russian intelligence suddenly get good information about the location of the joint operations room of al-Nusra, Ahrar ash-Sham and Jund al-Aqsa.

Now would that joint operations room or headquarter be a legitimate bombing target under the cessation of hostilities agreement? In my view bombing it would obviously be allowed because al-Nusra/al-Qaeda is there. But the “moderate” terrorists, the U.S. and their other sponsors would scream bloody murder about such bombing.

That is why I believe that this cessation of hostilities, should it come in force at all, will hold no longer than one week.

Failure to condemn terrorist attacks in Damascus’ southern Sayeda Zeinab district and Homs last Sunday, killing scores, injuring hundreds, causing enormous damage shows US/Russia negotiated cessation of hostility terms won’t stop future incidents.

In letters to Ban Ki-moon and Security Council president (Venezuelan UN envoy) Raphael Ramirez, Syria’s Foreign Ministry condemned the body’s silence, its failure to denounce flagrant terrorism, encouraging future incidents by irresponsible inaction – especially encouraging Ankara and Riyadh to continue supporting ISIS and likeminded groups waging war on Syria.

The letters demanded action, punitive measures imposed on state-sponsors of terrorism – not forthcoming.

Washington, Britain and France block it, partnering with Ankara and Riyadh, continuing support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, assuring endless conflict – foiling US/Russia announced cessation of hostilities terms before their implementation.

Expect no meaningful change for the better on the ground ahead.  Obama’s war on Syria continues, its objective unchanged – destroying Syrian sovereignty, replacing it with another US vassal state, looting its resources, exploiting its people, eliminating an Israeli rival, isolating Iran ahead of targeting its independence the same way.

Washington deplores peace and stability. Achieving them defeats its imperial objectives. All its post-9/11 wars since October 2001 continue raging – with no resolution in sight, a key indication of what to expect in Syria going forward.

On Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest was less than optimistic, saying ceasefire “is going to be difficult to implement. We know that there are a lot of obstacles, and there are sure to be some setbacks.”

Moscow and Damascus vow to continue combating terrorists responsible for gruesome atrocities, wanting Syrian sovereignty destroyed, caliphate authority replacing it.

They’re irresponsibly blamed for doing the right thing – UK Foreign Minister Phillip Hammond, speaking for Britain, America and their rogue allies lied, saying:

Cessation of hostilities “will only succeed if there is a major change of behavior by the Syrian regime and its backers.”

“Russia, in particular, must honor this agreement by ending its attacks on Syrian civilians and moderate opposition groups, and by using its influence to ensure the Syrian regime does the same.”

Moscow and Washington will work with pro-Western UN envoy to Syria Steffan de Mistura, a US-appointed stooge, aiming to assure all parties abide by ceasefire terms.

So far, no meaningful mechanism was established to mediate reported violations, no enforcement procedure, nothing to hold violators accountable.

Putin expressed optimism after years of failure to end violence, bloodshed and chaos – at the same time stressing “(s)trikes will continue to be carried out against” terrorist groups. They’re excluded from terms agreed on.

The deal calls for opposing parties to decide by Friday whether they’ll comply with cessation of hostility terms – terminology short of a formal, more binding, durable ceasefire.

A White House statement released after Obama and Putin spoke on Monday was guarded, welcoming the agreement with no assurance of success – maintaining the pretense of phony US war on ISIS.

Reality on the ground belies hope for achieving a breakthrough toward conflict resolution after years of failure.

It bears repeating what other articles stressed. Washington wants war, not peace. Obama didn’t launch it to quit.

Resolving it requires calling off his dogs, ending support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, cutting them off entirely, reigning in Ankara and Riyadh, deciding his Syria policy failed and moving on.

Realpolitik has no Hollywood endings. War in Syria rages with no end in sight.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

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

Note from the editor of Tom Dispatch: In October 2001, the U.S. launched its invasion of Afghanistan largely through proxy Afghan fighters with the help of Special Operations forces, American air power, and CIA dollars.  The results were swift and stunning. The Taliban was whipped, a new government headed by Hamid Karzai soon installed in Kabul, and the country declared “liberated.”

More than 14 years later, how’d it go? What’s “liberated” Afghanistan like and, if you were making a list, what would be the accomplishments of Washington all these years later?  Hmm… at this very moment, according to the latest reports, the Taliban control more territory than at any moment since December 2001.  Meanwhile, the Afghan security forces that the U.S. built up and funded to the tune of more than $65 billion are experiencing “unsustainable” casualties, their ranks evidently filled with “ghost” soldiers and policemen — up to 40% in some places — whose salaries, often paid by the U.S., are being pocketed by their commanders and other officials.  In 2015, according to the U.N., Afghan civilian casualties were, for the seventh year in a row, at record levels.  Add to all this the fact that American soldiers, their “combat mission” officially concluded in 2014, are now being sent by the hundreds back into the fray (along with the U.S. Air Force) to support hard-pressed Afghan troops in a situation which seems to be fast “deteriorating.”

Oh, and economically speaking, how did the “reconstruction” of the country work out, given that Washington pumped more money (in real dollars) into Afghanistan in these years than it did into the rebuilding of Western Europe after World War II?  Leaving aside the pit of official corruption into which many of those dollars disappeared, the country is today hemorrhaging desperate young people who can’t find jobs or make a living and now constitute what may be the second largest contingent of refugees heading for Europe.

As for that list of Washington’s accomplishments, it might be accurate to say that only one thing was “liberated” in Afghanistan over the last 14-plus years and that was, as TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy points out today, the opium poppy.  It might also be said that, with the opium trade now fully embedded in both the operations of the Afghan government and of the Taliban, Washington’s single and singular accomplishment in all its years there has been to oversee the country’s transformation into the planet’s number one narco-state.  McCoy, who began his career in the Vietnam War era by writing The Politics of Heroin, a now-classic book on the CIA and the heroin trade (that the Agency tried to suppress) and who has written on the subject of drugs and Afghanistan before for this site, now offers a truly monumental look at opium and the U.S. from the moment this country’s first Afghan War began in 1979 to late last night. Tom

*      *      *

How a Pink Flower Defeated the World’s Sole Superpower

America’s Opium War in Afghanistan

By Alfred W. McCoy

After fighting the longest war in its history, the United States stands at the brink of defeat in Afghanistan. How can this be possible? How could the world’s sole superpower have battled continuously for 15 years, deploying 100,000 of its finest troops, sacrificing the lives of 2,200 of those soldiers, spending more than a trillion dollars on its military operations, lavishing a record hundred billion more on “nation-building” and “reconstruction,” helping raise, fund, equip, and train an army of 350,000 Afghan allies, and still not be able to pacify one of the world’s most impoverished nations? So dismal is the prospect for stability in Afghanistan in 2016 that the Obama White House has recently cancelled a planned further withdrawal of its forces and will leave an estimated 10,000 troops in the country indefinitely.

Were you to cut through the Gordian knot of complexity that is the Afghan War, you would find that in the American failure there lies the greatest policy paradox of the century: Washington’s massive military juggernaut has been stopped dead in its steel tracks by a pink flower, the opium poppy.

For more than three decades in Afghanistan, Washington’s military operations have succeeded only when they fit reasonably comfortably into Central Asia’s illicit traffic in opium, and suffered when they failed to complement it. The first U.S. intervention there began in 1979. It succeeded in part because the surrogate war the CIA launched to expel the Soviets from that country coincided with the way its Afghan allies used the country’s swelling drug traffic to sustain their decade-long struggle.

On the other hand, in the almost 15 years of continuous combat since the U.S. invasion of 2001, pacification efforts have failed to curtail the Taliban insurgency largely because the U.S. could not control the swelling surplus from the county’s heroin trade. As opium production surged from a minimal 180 tons to a monumental 8,200 in the first five years of U.S. occupation, Afghanistan’s soil seemed to have been sown with the dragon’s teeth of ancient Greek myth. Every poppy harvest yielded a new crop of teenaged fighters for the Taliban’s growing guerrilla army.

At each stage in Afghanistan’s tragic, tumultuous history over the past 40 years — the covert war of the 1980s, the civil war of the 1990s, and the U.S. occupation since 2001 — opium played a surprisingly significant role in shaping the country’s destiny. In one of history’s bitter twists of fate, the way Afghanistan’s unique ecology converged with American military technology transformed this remote, landlocked nation into the world’s first true narco-state — a country where illicit drugs dominate the economy, define political choices, and determine the fate of foreign interventions.

Covert Warfare (1979-1992)

The CIA’s secret war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s helped transform the lawless Afghan-Pakistani borderlands into the seedbed for a sustained expansion of the global heroin trade. “In the tribal area,” the State Department would report in 1986, “there is no police force. There are no courts. There is no taxation. No weapon is illegal… Hashish and opium are often on display.” By then, the process had long been underway.  Instead of forming its own coalition of resistance leaders, the Agency relied on Pakistan’s crucial Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and its Afghan clients who soon became principals in the burgeoning cross-border opium traffic.

Not surprisingly, the Agency looked the other way while Afghanistan’s opium production grew unchecked from about 100 tons annually in the 1970s to 2,000 tons by 1991. In 1979 and 1980, just as the CIA effort was beginning to ramp up, a network of heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.  That region soon became the world’s largest heroin producer. By 1984, it supplied a staggering 60% of the U.S. market and 80% of the European one. Inside Pakistan, the number of heroin addicts went from near zero (yes, zero) in 1979 to 5,000 in 1980 and 1,300,000 by 1985 — a rate of addiction so high the U.N. called it “particularly shocking.”

According to the 1986 State Department report, opium “is an ideal crop in a war-torn country since it requires little capital investment, is fast growing, and is easily transported and traded.” Moreover, Afghanistan’s climate was well suited to this temperate crop, with average yields two to three times higher than in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region, the previous capital of the opium trade. As relentless warfare between CIA and Soviet surrogates generated at least three million refugees and disrupted food production, Afghan farmers began to turn to opium “in desperation” since it produced such easy “high profits” which could cover rising food prices. At the same time, resistance elements, according to the State Department, engaged in opium production and trafficking “to provide staples for [the] population under their control and to fund weapons purchases.”

As the mujahedeen resistance gained strength and began to create liberated zones inside Afghanistan in the early 1980s, it helped fund its operations by collecting taxes from peasants producing lucrative opium poppies, particularly in the fertile Helmand Valley, once the breadbasket of southern Afghanistan. Caravans carrying CIA arms into that region for the resistance often returned to Pakistan loaded down with opium — sometimes, the New York Times reported, “with the assent of Pakistani or American intelligence officers who supported the resistance.”

Once the mujahedeen fighters brought the opium across the border, they sold it to Pakistani heroin refiners operating in the country’s North-West Frontier Province, a covert-war zone administered by the CIA’s close ally General Fazle Haq. By 1988, there were an estimated 100 to 200 heroin refineries in the province’s Khyber district alone. Further south in the Koh-i-Soltan district of Baluchistan Province, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the CIA’s favored Afghan asset, controlled six refineries that processed much of the opium harvest from the Helmand Valley into heroin. Trucks of the Pakistani army’s National Logistics Cell, arriving in these borderlands from the port of Karachi with crates of weaponry from the CIA, left with cargos of heroin for ports and airports where it would be exported to world markets.

In May 1990, as this covert operation was ending, the Washington Post reported that the CIA’s chief asset Hekmatyar was also the rebels’ leading heroin trafficker. American officials, the Post claimed, had long refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by Hekmatyar, as well as Pakistan’s ISI, largely “because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.”

Indeed, Charles Cogan, former director of the CIA’s Afghan operation, later spoke frankly about his Agency’s choices. “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets,” he told Australian television in 1995. “We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade. I don’t think that we need to apologize for this… There was fallout in term of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”

The Afghan Civil War and the Rise of the Taliban (1989-2001)

Over the longer term, such a “clandestine” intervention (so openly written and bragged about) produced a black hole of geopolitical instability never sealed or healed thereafter.

Lying at the northern reaches of the seasonal monsoon, where rain clouds arrive already squeezed dry, arid Afghanistan never recovered from the unprecedented devastation it suffered in the years of the first American intervention. Other than irrigated areas like the Helmand Valley, the country’s semi-arid highlands were already a fragile ecosystem straining to sustain sizeable populations when war first broke out in 1979. As that war wound down between 1989 and 1992, the Washington-led alliance essentially abandoned the country, failing either to sponsor a peace settlement or finance reconstruction.

Washington simply turned elsewhere as a vicious civil war broke out in a country with 1.5 million dead, three million refugees, a ravaged economy, and a bevy of well-armed warlords primed to fight for power. During the years of vicious civil strife that followed, Afghan farmers raised the only crop that ensured instant profits, the opium poppy.  The opium harvest, having multiplied twentyfold to 2,000 tons during the covert-war era of the 1980s, would double during the civil war of the 1990s.

In this period of turmoil, opium’s ascent should be seen as a response to the severe damage two decades of warfare had inflicted. With the return of those three million refugees to a war-ravaged land, the opium fields were an employment godsend, since they required nine times as many laborers to cultivate as wheat, the country’s traditional staple. In addition, opium merchants alone were capable of accumulating capital rapidly enough to be able to provide much-needed cash advances to poor poppy farmers that equaled more than half their annual income. That credit would prove critical to the survival of many poor villagers.

In the civil war’s first phase from 1992 to 1994, ruthless local warlords combined arms and opium in a countrywide struggle for power. Determined to install its Pashtun allies in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Pakistan worked through the ISI to deliver arms and funds to its chief client Hekmatyar.  By now, he was the nominal prime minister of a fractious coalition whose troops would spend two years shelling and rocketing Kabul in fighting that left the city in ruins and some 50,000 more Afghans dead. When he nonetheless failed to take the capital, Pakistan threw its backing behind a newly arisen Pashtun force, the Taliban, a fundamentalist movement that had emerged from militant Islamic schools.

After seizing Kabul in 1996 and taking control of much of the country, the Taliban regime encouraged local opium cultivation, offering government protection to the export trade and collecting much needed taxes on both the opium produced and the heroin manufactured from it. U.N. opium surveys showed that, during their first three years in power, the Taliban raised the country’s opium crop to 4,600 tons, or 75% percent of world production at that moment.

In July 2000, however, as a devastating drought entered its second year and mass starvation spread across Afghanistan, the Taliban government suddenly ordered a ban on all opium cultivation in an apparent appeal for international recognition and aid. A subsequent U.N. crop survey of 10,030 villages found that this prohibition had reduced the harvest by 94% to a mere 185 tons.

Three months later, the Taliban sent a delegation headed by its deputy foreign minister, Abdur Rahman Zahid, to U.N. headquarters in New York to barter a continuing drug prohibition for diplomatic recognition. That body instead imposed new sanctions on the regime for protecting Osama bin Laden. The U.S., on the other hand, actually rewarded the Taliban with $43 million in humanitarian aid, even as it seconded U.N. criticism over bin Laden. Announcing this aid in May 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised “the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome” and urged the regime to “act on a number of fundamental issues that separate us: their support for terrorism; their violation of internationally recognized human rights standards, especially their treatment of women and girls.”

The War on Terror (2001-2016)

After a decade of ignoring Afghanistan, Washington rediscovered the place with a vengeance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Only weeks later, in October 2001, the U.S. began bombing the country and then launched an “invasion” spearheaded by local warlords. The Taliban regime collapsed, in the words of veteran New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, with a speed “so sudden and so unexpected that government officials and commentators on strategy… are finding it hard to explain.” Although the U.S. air attacks did considerable physical and psychological damage, many other societies have withstood far more massive bombardments without collapsing in this fashion. In retrospect, it seems likely that the opium prohibition had economically eviscerated the Taliban, leaving its theocracy a hollow shell that shattered with the first American bombs.

To an extent not generally appreciated, for the previous two decades Afghanistan had devoted a growing share of its resources — capital, land, water, and labor — to the production of opium and heroin. By the time the Taliban outlawed cultivation, the country had become, agriculturally, little more than an opium monocrop. The drug trade accounted for most of its tax revenues, almost all its export income, and much of its employment. In this context, opium eradication proved to be an act of economic suicide that brought an already weakened society to the brink of collapse. Indeed, a 2001 U.N. survey found that the ban had “resulted in a severe loss of income for an estimated 3.3 million people,” 15% of the population, including 80,000 farmers, 480,000 itinerant laborers, and their millions of dependents.

While the U.S. bombing campaign raged throughout October 2001, the CIA spent $70 million “in direct cash outlays on the ground” to mobilize its old coalition of tribal warlords to take down the Taliban, an expenditure President George W. Bush would later hail as one of history’s biggest “bargains.” To capture Kabul and other key cities, the CIA put its money behind the leaders of the Northern Alliance, which the Taliban had never fully defeated. They, in turn, had long dominated the drug traffic in the area of northeastern Afghanistan they controlled in the Taliban years. In the meantime, the CIA also turned to a group of rising Pashtun warlords who had been active as drug smugglers in the southeastern part of the country.  As a result, when the Taliban went down, the groundwork had already been laid for the resumption of opium cultivation and the drug trade on a major scale.

Once Kabul and the provincial capitals were taken, the CIA quickly ceded operational control to uniformed allied forces and civilian officials whose inept drug suppression programs in the years to come would, in the end, leave the heroin traffic’s growing profits first to those warlords and, in later years, largely to the Taliban guerrillas. In the first year of U.S. occupation, before that movement had even reconstituted itself, the opium harvest surged to 3,400 tons. In a development without historical precedent, illicit drugs would be responsible for an extraordinary 62% percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2003. For the first few years of the U.S. occupation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “dismissed growing signs that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban,” while the CIA and the U.S. military “turned a blind eye to drug-related activities by prominent warlords.”

In late 2004, after nearly two years in which it showed next to no interest in the subject, outsourcing opium control to its British allies and police training to the Germans, the White House was suddenly confronted with troubling CIA intelligence suggesting that the escalating drug trade was fueling a revival of the Taliban. Backed by President Bush, Secretary of State Powell then urged an aggressive counter-narcotics strategy, including a Vietnam-style aerial defoliation of parts of rural Afghanistan. But U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad resisted this approach, seconded by his local ally Ashraf Ghani, then the country’s finance minister (and now its president), who warned that such an eradication program would mean “widespread impoverishment” in the country without $20 billion in foreign aid to create “genuine alternative livelihood[s].”

As a compromise, Washington came to rely on private contractors like DynCorp to train Afghan manual eradication teams. However, by 2005, according to New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall, that approach had already become “something of a joke.” Two years later, as the Taliban insurgency and opium cultivation both spread in what seemed to be a synergistic fashion, the U.S. Embassy again pressed Kabul to accept the kind of aerial defoliation the U.S. had sponsored in Colombia. President Hamid Karzai refused, leaving this critical problem unresolved.

The U.N.’s Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007 found that the annual harvest was up 24% to a record 8,200 tons, which translated into 53% of the country’s GDP and 93% of the world’s illicit heroin supply. Significantly, the U.N. stated that Taliban guerrillas had “started to extract from the drug economy resources for arms, logistics, and militia pay.” A study for the U.S. Institute of Peace concluded that, by 2008, the movement had 50 heroin labs in its territory and controlled 98% of the country’s poppy fields.  That year, it reportedly collected $425 million in “taxes” levied on opium traffic, and with every harvest, it gained the necessary funds to recruit a new crop of young fighters from the villages. Each of those prospective guerrillas could count on monthly payments of $300, far above the wages they would have made as agricultural laborers.

In mid-2008, to contain the spreading insurgency, Washington decided to commit 40,000 more American combat troops to the country, raising allied forces to 70,000. Recognizing the crucial role of opium revenues in Taliban recruitment practices, the U.S. Treasury also formed the Afghan Threat Finance Cell and embedded 60 of its analysts in combat units charged with launching strategic strikes against the drug trade.

Using quantitative methods of “social network analysis” and “influence network modeling,” those instant civilian experts would often, according to one veteran analyst, “point to hawala brokers [rural creditors] as critical nodes within an insurgent group’s network,” prompting U.S. combat soldiers to take “kinetic courses of action — quite literally, kicking down the door of the hawala office and shutting down the operation.” Such “highly controversial” acts might “temporarily degrade the financial network of an insurgent group,” but those gains came “at the cost of upsetting an entire village” dependent on the lender for legitimate credit that was the “vast majority of the hawalador’s business.” In this way, once again, support for the Taliban grew.

By 2009, the guerrillas were expanding so rapidly that the new Obama administration opted for a “surge” in U.S. troop strength to 102,000 in a bid to cripple the Taliban. After months of rising troop deployments, President Obama’s new war strategy was officially launched on February 13, 2010, in Marja, a remote market town in Helmand Province. As waves of helicopters descended on its outskirts spitting up clouds of dust, hundreds of Marines sprinted through fields of sprouting opium poppies toward the town’s mud-walled compounds. Though their target was the local Taliban guerrillas, the Marines were in fact occupying the capital of the global heroin trade. Forty percent of the world’s illicit opium supply was grown in the surrounding districts and much of that crop was traded in Marja.

A week later, U.S. Commander General Stanley McChrystal choppered into town with Karim Khalili, Afghanistan’s vice president, for the media rollout of a new-look counterinsurgency strategy that, he told reporters, was rock-solid certain to pacify villages like Marja. Only it would never be so because the opium trade would spoil the party. “If they come with tractors,” one Afghan widow announced to a chorus of supportive shouts from her fellow farmers, “they will have to roll over me and kill me before they can kill my poppy.” Speaking by satellite telephone from the region’s opium fields, a U.S. Embassy official told me: “You can’t win this war without taking on drug production in Helmand Province.”

Watching these events unfold nearly six years ago, I wrote an essay for TomDispatch warning of a defeat foretold. “So the choice is clear enough,” I said at the time. “We can continue to fertilize this deadly soil with yet more blood in a brutal war with an uncertain outcome… or we can help renew this ancient, arid land by re-planting the orchards, replenishing the flocks, and rebuilding the farming destroyed in decades of war… until food crops become a viable alternative to opium. To put it simply, so simply that even Washington might understand, we can only pacify a narco-state when it is no longer a narco-state.”

By attacking the guerrillas but ignoring the opium harvest that funded new insurgents every spring, Obama’s surge soon suffered that defeat foretold. As 2012 ended, the Taliban guerrillas had, according to the New York Times, “weathered the biggest push the American-led coalition is going to make against them.” Amid the rapid drawdown of allied forces to meet President Obama’s December 2014 deadline for “ending” U.S. combat operations, reduced air operations allowed the Taliban to launch mass-formation attacks in the north, northeast, and south, killing record numbers of Afghan army troops and police.

At the time, John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector for Afghanistan, offered a telling explanation for the Taliban’s survival. Despite the expenditure of a staggering $7.6 billion on “drug eradication” programs during the previous decade, he concluded that, “by every conceivable metric, we’ve failed. Production and cultivation are up, interdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is up, and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, the 2013 opium crop covered a record 209,000 hectares, raising the harvest by 50% to 5,500 tons. That massive harvest generated some $3 billion in illicit income, of which the Taliban’s tax took an estimated $320 million, well over half its revenues. The U.S. Embassy corroborated this dismal assessment, calling the illicit income “a windfall for the insurgency, which profits from the drug trade at almost every level.”

As the 2014 opium crop was harvested, fresh U.N. figures suggested that the dismal trend only continued, with the areas under cultivation rising to a record 224,000 hectares and production at 6,400 tons remaining near historic highs. In May 2015, having watched this flood of drugs enter the global market as U.S. counter-narcotics spending climbed to $8.4 billion, Sopko tried to translate what was happening into a single all-American image. “Afghanistan,” he said, “has roughly 500,000 acres, or about 780 square miles, devoted to growing opium poppy. That’s equivalent to more than 400,000 U.S. football fields — including the end zones.”

In the fighting season of 2015, the Taliban decisively seized the combat initiative and opium seemed ever more deeply embedded in its operations. The New York Times reported that the movement’s new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was “among the first major Taliban officials to be linked to the drug trade… and later became the Taliban’s main tax collector for the narcotics trade — creating immense profits.” After months of relentless pressure on government forces in three northern provinces, the group’s first major operation under his command was the two-week seizure of the strategic city of Kunduz, which just happened to be located on “the country’s most lucrative drug routes… moving opium from the poppy prolific provinces in the south to Tajikistan… and to Russia and Europe.” Washington felt forced to slam down the brakes on planned further withdrawals of its combat forces.

Amid a rushed evacuation of its regional offices in the threatened northern provinces, the U.N. released a map in October showing that the Taliban had “high” or “extreme” control in more than half the country’s rural districts, including many where they had not previously been a significant presence. Within a month, the Taliban unleashed offensives countrywide that aimed at seizing and holding territory, threatening military bases in northern Faryab Province and encircling entire districts in western Herat.

Not surprisingly, the strongest attacks came in the poppy heartland of Helmand Province, where half the country’s opium crop was then grown and, said the New York Times, “the lucrative opium trade made it crucial to the insurgents’ economic designs.” By mid-December, after overrunning checkpoints, winning back much of the province, and setting government security forces back on their heels, the guerrillas came close to capturing that heart of the heroin trade, Marja, the very site of President Obama’s media-saturated surge rollout in 2010.  Had U.S. Special Operations forces and the U.S. Air Force not intervened to relieve “demoralized” Afghan forces, the town and the province would undoubtedly have fallen. By early 2016, 14-plus years after Afghanistan was “liberated” by a U.S. invasion, and in a significant reversal of Obama administration drawdown policies, the U.S. was reportedly dispatching “hundreds” of new U.S. troops in a mini-surge into Helmand Province to shore up the government’s faltering forces and deny the insurgents the “economic prize” of the world’s most productive poppy fields.

After a disastrous 2015 fighting season that inflicted what U.S. officials have termed “unsustainable” casualties on the Afghan army and what the UN called the “real horror” of record civilian losses, the long, harsh winter that has settled across the country is offering no respite. As cold and snow slowed combat in the countryside, the Taliban shifted operations to the cities, with five massive bombings in Kabul and other key urban areas in the first week of January, followed by a suicide attack on a police complex in the capital that killed 20 officers.

Meanwhile, as the 2015 harvest ended, the country’s opium cultivation, after six years of sustained growth, slipped by 18% to 183,000 hectares and the crop yield dropped steeply to 3,300 tons. While U.N. officials attributed much of the decline to drought and the spread of a poppy fungus, conditions that might not continue into 2016, long-term trends are still an unclear mix of positive and negative news. Buried in the mass of data published in the U.N.’s drug reports is one significant statistic: as Afghanistan’s economy grew from years of international aid, opium’s share of GDP dropped steadily from a daunting 63% in 2003 to a far more manageable 13% in 2014. Even so, the U.N. says, “dependency on the opiate economy at the farmer level in many rural communities is still high.”

At that local level in Helmand Province, “Afghan government officials have also become directly involved in the opium trade,” the New York Times recently reported. In doing so, they expanded “their competition with the Taliban… into a struggle for control of the drug traffic,” while imposing “a tax on farmers practically identical to the one the Taliban uses,” and kicking a portion of their illicit profits “up the chain, all the way to officials in Kabul… ensuring that the local authorities maintain support from higher-ups and keeping the opium growing.”

Simultaneously, a recent U.N. Security Council investigation found that the Taliban has systematically tapped “into the supply chain at each stage of the narcotics trade,” collecting a 10% user tax on opium cultivation in Helmand, fighting for control of heroin laboratories, and acting as “the major guarantors for the trafficking of raw opium and heroin out of Afghanistan.” No longer simply taxing the traffic, the Taliban is now so deeply and directly involved that, adds the Times, it “has become difficult to distinguish the group from a dedicated drug cartel.” Whatever the long-term trends might be, for the foreseeable future opium remains deeply entangled with the rural economy, the Taliban insurgency, and government corruption whose sum is the Afghan conundrum.

With ample revenues from past bumper crops, the Taliban will undoubtedly be ready for the new fighting season that will come with the start of spring. As snow melts from the mountain slopes and poppy shoots spring from the soil, there will be, as in the past 40 years, a new crop of teenaged recruits ready to fight for the rebel forces.

Cutting the Afghan Gordian Knot

For most people globally, economic activity, the production and exchange of goods, is the prime point of contact with government, as is manifest in the coins and currency stamped by the state that everyone carries in their pockets.  But when a country’s most significant commodity is illegal, then political loyalties naturally shift to the clandestine networks that move that product safely from fields to foreign markets, providing finance, loans, and employment every step of the way. “The narcotics trade poisons the Afghan financial sector and fuels a growing illicit economy,” John Sopko explains. “This, in turn, undermines the Afghan state’s legitimacy by stoking corruption, nourishing criminal networks, and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurgent groups.”

After 15 years of continuous warfare in Afghanistan, Washington is faced with the same choice it had five years ago when Obama’s generals heli-lifted those Marines into Marja to start its surge. Just as it has been over the past decade and a half, the U.S. can remain trapped in the same endless cycle, fighting each new crop of village warriors who annually seem to spring fully armed from that country’s poppy fields. At this point, history tells us one thing: in this land sown with dragon’s teeth, there will be a new crop of guerrillas this year, next year, and the year after that.

Even in troubled Afghanistan, however, there are alternatives whose sum could potentially slice through this Gordian knot of a policy problem. As a first and fundamental step, maybe it’s time to stop talking about the next sets of boots on the ground and for President Obama to complete his planned troop withdrawal.

Next, investing even a small portion of all that misspent military funding in rural Afghanistan could produce economic alternatives for the millions of farmers who depend upon the opium crop for employment. Such money could help rebuild that land’s ruined orchards, ravaged flocks, wasted seed stocks, and wrecked snowmelt irrigation systems that, before these decades of war, sustained a diverse agriculture. If the international community can continue to nudge the country’s dependence on illicit opium down from the current 13% of GDP through such sustained rural development, then perhaps Afghanistan will cease to be the planet’s leading narco-state and just maybe that annual cycle can at long last be broken.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years. His more recent books include Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.

Note from the editor of Tom Dispatch: In October 2001, the U.S. launched its invasion of Afghanistan largely through proxy Afghan fighters with the help of Special Operations forces, American air power, and CIA dollars.  The results were swift and stunning. The Taliban was whipped, a new government headed by Hamid Karzai soon installed in Kabul, and the country declared “liberated.”

More than 14 years later, how’d it go? What’s “liberated” Afghanistan like and, if you were making a list, what would be the accomplishments of Washington all these years later?  Hmm… at this very moment, according to the latest reports, the Taliban control more territory than at any moment since December 2001.  Meanwhile, the Afghan security forces that the U.S. built up and funded to the tune of more than $65 billion are experiencing “unsustainable” casualties, their ranks evidently filled with “ghost” soldiers and policemen — up to 40% in some places — whose salaries, often paid by the U.S., are being pocketed by their commanders and other officials.  In 2015, according to the U.N., Afghan civilian casualties were, for the seventh year in a row, at record levels.  Add to all this the fact that American soldiers, their “combat mission” officially concluded in 2014, are now being sent by the hundreds back into the fray (along with the U.S. Air Force) to support hard-pressed Afghan troops in a situation which seems to be fast “deteriorating.”

Oh, and economically speaking, how did the “reconstruction” of the country work out, given that Washington pumped more money (in real dollars) into Afghanistan in these years than it did into the rebuilding of Western Europe after World War II?  Leaving aside the pit of official corruption into which many of those dollars disappeared, the country is today hemorrhaging desperate young people who can’t find jobs or make a living and now constitute what may be the second largest contingent of refugees heading for Europe.

As for that list of Washington’s accomplishments, it might be accurate to say that only one thing was “liberated” in Afghanistan over the last 14-plus years and that was, as TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy points out today, the opium poppy.  It might also be said that, with the opium trade now fully embedded in both the operations of the Afghan government and of the Taliban, Washington’s single and singular accomplishment in all its years there has been to oversee the country’s transformation into the planet’s number one narco-state.  McCoy, who began his career in the Vietnam War era by writing The Politics of Heroin, a now-classic book on the CIA and the heroin trade (that the Agency tried to suppress) and who has written on the subject of drugs and Afghanistan before for this site, now offers a truly monumental look at opium and the U.S. from the moment this country’s first Afghan War began in 1979 to late last night. Tom

*      *      *

How a Pink Flower Defeated the World’s Sole Superpower

America’s Opium War in Afghanistan

By Alfred W. McCoy

After fighting the longest war in its history, the United States stands at the brink of defeat in Afghanistan. How can this be possible? How could the world’s sole superpower have battled continuously for 15 years, deploying 100,000 of its finest troops, sacrificing the lives of 2,200 of those soldiers, spending more than a trillion dollars on its military operations, lavishing a record hundred billion more on “nation-building” and “reconstruction,” helping raise, fund, equip, and train an army of 350,000 Afghan allies, and still not be able to pacify one of the world’s most impoverished nations? So dismal is the prospect for stability in Afghanistan in 2016 that the Obama White House has recently cancelled a planned further withdrawal of its forces and will leave an estimated 10,000 troops in the country indefinitely.

Were you to cut through the Gordian knot of complexity that is the Afghan War, you would find that in the American failure there lies the greatest policy paradox of the century: Washington’s massive military juggernaut has been stopped dead in its steel tracks by a pink flower, the opium poppy.

For more than three decades in Afghanistan, Washington’s military operations have succeeded only when they fit reasonably comfortably into Central Asia’s illicit traffic in opium, and suffered when they failed to complement it. The first U.S. intervention there began in 1979. It succeeded in part because the surrogate war the CIA launched to expel the Soviets from that country coincided with the way its Afghan allies used the country’s swelling drug traffic to sustain their decade-long struggle.

On the other hand, in the almost 15 years of continuous combat since the U.S. invasion of 2001, pacification efforts have failed to curtail the Taliban insurgency largely because the U.S. could not control the swelling surplus from the county’s heroin trade. As opium production surged from a minimal 180 tons to a monumental 8,200 in the first five years of U.S. occupation, Afghanistan’s soil seemed to have been sown with the dragon’s teeth of ancient Greek myth. Every poppy harvest yielded a new crop of teenaged fighters for the Taliban’s growing guerrilla army.

At each stage in Afghanistan’s tragic, tumultuous history over the past 40 years — the covert war of the 1980s, the civil war of the 1990s, and the U.S. occupation since 2001 — opium played a surprisingly significant role in shaping the country’s destiny. In one of history’s bitter twists of fate, the way Afghanistan’s unique ecology converged with American military technology transformed this remote, landlocked nation into the world’s first true narco-state — a country where illicit drugs dominate the economy, define political choices, and determine the fate of foreign interventions.

Covert Warfare (1979-1992)

The CIA’s secret war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s helped transform the lawless Afghan-Pakistani borderlands into the seedbed for a sustained expansion of the global heroin trade. “In the tribal area,” the State Department would report in 1986, “there is no police force. There are no courts. There is no taxation. No weapon is illegal… Hashish and opium are often on display.” By then, the process had long been underway.  Instead of forming its own coalition of resistance leaders, the Agency relied on Pakistan’s crucial Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and its Afghan clients who soon became principals in the burgeoning cross-border opium traffic.

Not surprisingly, the Agency looked the other way while Afghanistan’s opium production grew unchecked from about 100 tons annually in the 1970s to 2,000 tons by 1991. In 1979 and 1980, just as the CIA effort was beginning to ramp up, a network of heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.  That region soon became the world’s largest heroin producer. By 1984, it supplied a staggering 60% of the U.S. market and 80% of the European one. Inside Pakistan, the number of heroin addicts went from near zero (yes, zero) in 1979 to 5,000 in 1980 and 1,300,000 by 1985 — a rate of addiction so high the U.N. called it “particularly shocking.”

According to the 1986 State Department report, opium “is an ideal crop in a war-torn country since it requires little capital investment, is fast growing, and is easily transported and traded.” Moreover, Afghanistan’s climate was well suited to this temperate crop, with average yields two to three times higher than in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region, the previous capital of the opium trade. As relentless warfare between CIA and Soviet surrogates generated at least three million refugees and disrupted food production, Afghan farmers began to turn to opium “in desperation” since it produced such easy “high profits” which could cover rising food prices. At the same time, resistance elements, according to the State Department, engaged in opium production and trafficking “to provide staples for [the] population under their control and to fund weapons purchases.”

As the mujahedeen resistance gained strength and began to create liberated zones inside Afghanistan in the early 1980s, it helped fund its operations by collecting taxes from peasants producing lucrative opium poppies, particularly in the fertile Helmand Valley, once the breadbasket of southern Afghanistan. Caravans carrying CIA arms into that region for the resistance often returned to Pakistan loaded down with opium — sometimes, the New York Times reported, “with the assent of Pakistani or American intelligence officers who supported the resistance.”

Once the mujahedeen fighters brought the opium across the border, they sold it to Pakistani heroin refiners operating in the country’s North-West Frontier Province, a covert-war zone administered by the CIA’s close ally General Fazle Haq. By 1988, there were an estimated 100 to 200 heroin refineries in the province’s Khyber district alone. Further south in the Koh-i-Soltan district of Baluchistan Province, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the CIA’s favored Afghan asset, controlled six refineries that processed much of the opium harvest from the Helmand Valley into heroin. Trucks of the Pakistani army’s National Logistics Cell, arriving in these borderlands from the port of Karachi with crates of weaponry from the CIA, left with cargos of heroin for ports and airports where it would be exported to world markets.

In May 1990, as this covert operation was ending, the Washington Post reported that the CIA’s chief asset Hekmatyar was also the rebels’ leading heroin trafficker. American officials, the Post claimed, had long refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by Hekmatyar, as well as Pakistan’s ISI, largely “because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.”

Indeed, Charles Cogan, former director of the CIA’s Afghan operation, later spoke frankly about his Agency’s choices. “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets,” he told Australian television in 1995. “We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade. I don’t think that we need to apologize for this… There was fallout in term of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”

The Afghan Civil War and the Rise of the Taliban (1989-2001)

Over the longer term, such a “clandestine” intervention (so openly written and bragged about) produced a black hole of geopolitical instability never sealed or healed thereafter.

Lying at the northern reaches of the seasonal monsoon, where rain clouds arrive already squeezed dry, arid Afghanistan never recovered from the unprecedented devastation it suffered in the years of the first American intervention. Other than irrigated areas like the Helmand Valley, the country’s semi-arid highlands were already a fragile ecosystem straining to sustain sizeable populations when war first broke out in 1979. As that war wound down between 1989 and 1992, the Washington-led alliance essentially abandoned the country, failing either to sponsor a peace settlement or finance reconstruction.

Washington simply turned elsewhere as a vicious civil war broke out in a country with 1.5 million dead, three million refugees, a ravaged economy, and a bevy of well-armed warlords primed to fight for power. During the years of vicious civil strife that followed, Afghan farmers raised the only crop that ensured instant profits, the opium poppy.  The opium harvest, having multiplied twentyfold to 2,000 tons during the covert-war era of the 1980s, would double during the civil war of the 1990s.

In this period of turmoil, opium’s ascent should be seen as a response to the severe damage two decades of warfare had inflicted. With the return of those three million refugees to a war-ravaged land, the opium fields were an employment godsend, since they required nine times as many laborers to cultivate as wheat, the country’s traditional staple. In addition, opium merchants alone were capable of accumulating capital rapidly enough to be able to provide much-needed cash advances to poor poppy farmers that equaled more than half their annual income. That credit would prove critical to the survival of many poor villagers.

In the civil war’s first phase from 1992 to 1994, ruthless local warlords combined arms and opium in a countrywide struggle for power. Determined to install its Pashtun allies in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Pakistan worked through the ISI to deliver arms and funds to its chief client Hekmatyar.  By now, he was the nominal prime minister of a fractious coalition whose troops would spend two years shelling and rocketing Kabul in fighting that left the city in ruins and some 50,000 more Afghans dead. When he nonetheless failed to take the capital, Pakistan threw its backing behind a newly arisen Pashtun force, the Taliban, a fundamentalist movement that had emerged from militant Islamic schools.

After seizing Kabul in 1996 and taking control of much of the country, the Taliban regime encouraged local opium cultivation, offering government protection to the export trade and collecting much needed taxes on both the opium produced and the heroin manufactured from it. U.N. opium surveys showed that, during their first three years in power, the Taliban raised the country’s opium crop to 4,600 tons, or 75% percent of world production at that moment.

In July 2000, however, as a devastating drought entered its second year and mass starvation spread across Afghanistan, the Taliban government suddenly ordered a ban on all opium cultivation in an apparent appeal for international recognition and aid. A subsequent U.N. crop survey of 10,030 villages found that this prohibition had reduced the harvest by 94% to a mere 185 tons.

Three months later, the Taliban sent a delegation headed by its deputy foreign minister, Abdur Rahman Zahid, to U.N. headquarters in New York to barter a continuing drug prohibition for diplomatic recognition. That body instead imposed new sanctions on the regime for protecting Osama bin Laden. The U.S., on the other hand, actually rewarded the Taliban with $43 million in humanitarian aid, even as it seconded U.N. criticism over bin Laden. Announcing this aid in May 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised “the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome” and urged the regime to “act on a number of fundamental issues that separate us: their support for terrorism; their violation of internationally recognized human rights standards, especially their treatment of women and girls.”

The War on Terror (2001-2016)

After a decade of ignoring Afghanistan, Washington rediscovered the place with a vengeance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Only weeks later, in October 2001, the U.S. began bombing the country and then launched an “invasion” spearheaded by local warlords. The Taliban regime collapsed, in the words of veteran New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, with a speed “so sudden and so unexpected that government officials and commentators on strategy… are finding it hard to explain.” Although the U.S. air attacks did considerable physical and psychological damage, many other societies have withstood far more massive bombardments without collapsing in this fashion. In retrospect, it seems likely that the opium prohibition had economically eviscerated the Taliban, leaving its theocracy a hollow shell that shattered with the first American bombs.

To an extent not generally appreciated, for the previous two decades Afghanistan had devoted a growing share of its resources — capital, land, water, and labor — to the production of opium and heroin. By the time the Taliban outlawed cultivation, the country had become, agriculturally, little more than an opium monocrop. The drug trade accounted for most of its tax revenues, almost all its export income, and much of its employment. In this context, opium eradication proved to be an act of economic suicide that brought an already weakened society to the brink of collapse. Indeed, a 2001 U.N. survey found that the ban had “resulted in a severe loss of income for an estimated 3.3 million people,” 15% of the population, including 80,000 farmers, 480,000 itinerant laborers, and their millions of dependents.

While the U.S. bombing campaign raged throughout October 2001, the CIA spent $70 million “in direct cash outlays on the ground” to mobilize its old coalition of tribal warlords to take down the Taliban, an expenditure President George W. Bush would later hail as one of history’s biggest “bargains.” To capture Kabul and other key cities, the CIA put its money behind the leaders of the Northern Alliance, which the Taliban had never fully defeated. They, in turn, had long dominated the drug traffic in the area of northeastern Afghanistan they controlled in the Taliban years. In the meantime, the CIA also turned to a group of rising Pashtun warlords who had been active as drug smugglers in the southeastern part of the country.  As a result, when the Taliban went down, the groundwork had already been laid for the resumption of opium cultivation and the drug trade on a major scale.

Once Kabul and the provincial capitals were taken, the CIA quickly ceded operational control to uniformed allied forces and civilian officials whose inept drug suppression programs in the years to come would, in the end, leave the heroin traffic’s growing profits first to those warlords and, in later years, largely to the Taliban guerrillas. In the first year of U.S. occupation, before that movement had even reconstituted itself, the opium harvest surged to 3,400 tons. In a development without historical precedent, illicit drugs would be responsible for an extraordinary 62% percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2003. For the first few years of the U.S. occupation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “dismissed growing signs that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban,” while the CIA and the U.S. military “turned a blind eye to drug-related activities by prominent warlords.”

In late 2004, after nearly two years in which it showed next to no interest in the subject, outsourcing opium control to its British allies and police training to the Germans, the White House was suddenly confronted with troubling CIA intelligence suggesting that the escalating drug trade was fueling a revival of the Taliban. Backed by President Bush, Secretary of State Powell then urged an aggressive counter-narcotics strategy, including a Vietnam-style aerial defoliation of parts of rural Afghanistan. But U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad resisted this approach, seconded by his local ally Ashraf Ghani, then the country’s finance minister (and now its president), who warned that such an eradication program would mean “widespread impoverishment” in the country without $20 billion in foreign aid to create “genuine alternative livelihood[s].”

As a compromise, Washington came to rely on private contractors like DynCorp to train Afghan manual eradication teams. However, by 2005, according to New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall, that approach had already become “something of a joke.” Two years later, as the Taliban insurgency and opium cultivation both spread in what seemed to be a synergistic fashion, the U.S. Embassy again pressed Kabul to accept the kind of aerial defoliation the U.S. had sponsored in Colombia. President Hamid Karzai refused, leaving this critical problem unresolved.

The U.N.’s Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007 found that the annual harvest was up 24% to a record 8,200 tons, which translated into 53% of the country’s GDP and 93% of the world’s illicit heroin supply. Significantly, the U.N. stated that Taliban guerrillas had “started to extract from the drug economy resources for arms, logistics, and militia pay.” A study for the U.S. Institute of Peace concluded that, by 2008, the movement had 50 heroin labs in its territory and controlled 98% of the country’s poppy fields.  That year, it reportedly collected $425 million in “taxes” levied on opium traffic, and with every harvest, it gained the necessary funds to recruit a new crop of young fighters from the villages. Each of those prospective guerrillas could count on monthly payments of $300, far above the wages they would have made as agricultural laborers.

In mid-2008, to contain the spreading insurgency, Washington decided to commit 40,000 more American combat troops to the country, raising allied forces to 70,000. Recognizing the crucial role of opium revenues in Taliban recruitment practices, the U.S. Treasury also formed the Afghan Threat Finance Cell and embedded 60 of its analysts in combat units charged with launching strategic strikes against the drug trade.

Using quantitative methods of “social network analysis” and “influence network modeling,” those instant civilian experts would often, according to one veteran analyst, “point to hawala brokers [rural creditors] as critical nodes within an insurgent group’s network,” prompting U.S. combat soldiers to take “kinetic courses of action — quite literally, kicking down the door of the hawala office and shutting down the operation.” Such “highly controversial” acts might “temporarily degrade the financial network of an insurgent group,” but those gains came “at the cost of upsetting an entire village” dependent on the lender for legitimate credit that was the “vast majority of the hawalador’s business.” In this way, once again, support for the Taliban grew.

By 2009, the guerrillas were expanding so rapidly that the new Obama administration opted for a “surge” in U.S. troop strength to 102,000 in a bid to cripple the Taliban. After months of rising troop deployments, President Obama’s new war strategy was officially launched on February 13, 2010, in Marja, a remote market town in Helmand Province. As waves of helicopters descended on its outskirts spitting up clouds of dust, hundreds of Marines sprinted through fields of sprouting opium poppies toward the town’s mud-walled compounds. Though their target was the local Taliban guerrillas, the Marines were in fact occupying the capital of the global heroin trade. Forty percent of the world’s illicit opium supply was grown in the surrounding districts and much of that crop was traded in Marja.

A week later, U.S. Commander General Stanley McChrystal choppered into town with Karim Khalili, Afghanistan’s vice president, for the media rollout of a new-look counterinsurgency strategy that, he told reporters, was rock-solid certain to pacify villages like Marja. Only it would never be so because the opium trade would spoil the party. “If they come with tractors,” one Afghan widow announced to a chorus of supportive shouts from her fellow farmers, “they will have to roll over me and kill me before they can kill my poppy.” Speaking by satellite telephone from the region’s opium fields, a U.S. Embassy official told me: “You can’t win this war without taking on drug production in Helmand Province.”

Watching these events unfold nearly six years ago, I wrote an essay for TomDispatch warning of a defeat foretold. “So the choice is clear enough,” I said at the time. “We can continue to fertilize this deadly soil with yet more blood in a brutal war with an uncertain outcome… or we can help renew this ancient, arid land by re-planting the orchards, replenishing the flocks, and rebuilding the farming destroyed in decades of war… until food crops become a viable alternative to opium. To put it simply, so simply that even Washington might understand, we can only pacify a narco-state when it is no longer a narco-state.”

By attacking the guerrillas but ignoring the opium harvest that funded new insurgents every spring, Obama’s surge soon suffered that defeat foretold. As 2012 ended, the Taliban guerrillas had, according to the New York Times, “weathered the biggest push the American-led coalition is going to make against them.” Amid the rapid drawdown of allied forces to meet President Obama’s December 2014 deadline for “ending” U.S. combat operations, reduced air operations allowed the Taliban to launch mass-formation attacks in the north, northeast, and south, killing record numbers of Afghan army troops and police.

At the time, John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector for Afghanistan, offered a telling explanation for the Taliban’s survival. Despite the expenditure of a staggering $7.6 billion on “drug eradication” programs during the previous decade, he concluded that, “by every conceivable metric, we’ve failed. Production and cultivation are up, interdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is up, and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, the 2013 opium crop covered a record 209,000 hectares, raising the harvest by 50% to 5,500 tons. That massive harvest generated some $3 billion in illicit income, of which the Taliban’s tax took an estimated $320 million, well over half its revenues. The U.S. Embassy corroborated this dismal assessment, calling the illicit income “a windfall for the insurgency, which profits from the drug trade at almost every level.”

As the 2014 opium crop was harvested, fresh U.N. figures suggested that the dismal trend only continued, with the areas under cultivation rising to a record 224,000 hectares and production at 6,400 tons remaining near historic highs. In May 2015, having watched this flood of drugs enter the global market as U.S. counter-narcotics spending climbed to $8.4 billion, Sopko tried to translate what was happening into a single all-American image. “Afghanistan,” he said, “has roughly 500,000 acres, or about 780 square miles, devoted to growing opium poppy. That’s equivalent to more than 400,000 U.S. football fields — including the end zones.”

In the fighting season of 2015, the Taliban decisively seized the combat initiative and opium seemed ever more deeply embedded in its operations. The New York Times reported that the movement’s new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was “among the first major Taliban officials to be linked to the drug trade… and later became the Taliban’s main tax collector for the narcotics trade — creating immense profits.” After months of relentless pressure on government forces in three northern provinces, the group’s first major operation under his command was the two-week seizure of the strategic city of Kunduz, which just happened to be located on “the country’s most lucrative drug routes… moving opium from the poppy prolific provinces in the south to Tajikistan… and to Russia and Europe.” Washington felt forced to slam down the brakes on planned further withdrawals of its combat forces.

Amid a rushed evacuation of its regional offices in the threatened northern provinces, the U.N. released a map in October showing that the Taliban had “high” or “extreme” control in more than half the country’s rural districts, including many where they had not previously been a significant presence. Within a month, the Taliban unleashed offensives countrywide that aimed at seizing and holding territory, threatening military bases in northern Faryab Province and encircling entire districts in western Herat.

Not surprisingly, the strongest attacks came in the poppy heartland of Helmand Province, where half the country’s opium crop was then grown and, said the New York Times, “the lucrative opium trade made it crucial to the insurgents’ economic designs.” By mid-December, after overrunning checkpoints, winning back much of the province, and setting government security forces back on their heels, the guerrillas came close to capturing that heart of the heroin trade, Marja, the very site of President Obama’s media-saturated surge rollout in 2010.  Had U.S. Special Operations forces and the U.S. Air Force not intervened to relieve “demoralized” Afghan forces, the town and the province would undoubtedly have fallen. By early 2016, 14-plus years after Afghanistan was “liberated” by a U.S. invasion, and in a significant reversal of Obama administration drawdown policies, the U.S. was reportedly dispatching “hundreds” of new U.S. troops in a mini-surge into Helmand Province to shore up the government’s faltering forces and deny the insurgents the “economic prize” of the world’s most productive poppy fields.

After a disastrous 2015 fighting season that inflicted what U.S. officials have termed “unsustainable” casualties on the Afghan army and what the UN called the “real horror” of record civilian losses, the long, harsh winter that has settled across the country is offering no respite. As cold and snow slowed combat in the countryside, the Taliban shifted operations to the cities, with five massive bombings in Kabul and other key urban areas in the first week of January, followed by a suicide attack on a police complex in the capital that killed 20 officers.

Meanwhile, as the 2015 harvest ended, the country’s opium cultivation, after six years of sustained growth, slipped by 18% to 183,000 hectares and the crop yield dropped steeply to 3,300 tons. While U.N. officials attributed much of the decline to drought and the spread of a poppy fungus, conditions that might not continue into 2016, long-term trends are still an unclear mix of positive and negative news. Buried in the mass of data published in the U.N.’s drug reports is one significant statistic: as Afghanistan’s economy grew from years of international aid, opium’s share of GDP dropped steadily from a daunting 63% in 2003 to a far more manageable 13% in 2014. Even so, the U.N. says, “dependency on the opiate economy at the farmer level in many rural communities is still high.”

At that local level in Helmand Province, “Afghan government officials have also become directly involved in the opium trade,” the New York Times recently reported. In doing so, they expanded “their competition with the Taliban… into a struggle for control of the drug traffic,” while imposing “a tax on farmers practically identical to the one the Taliban uses,” and kicking a portion of their illicit profits “up the chain, all the way to officials in Kabul… ensuring that the local authorities maintain support from higher-ups and keeping the opium growing.”

Simultaneously, a recent U.N. Security Council investigation found that the Taliban has systematically tapped “into the supply chain at each stage of the narcotics trade,” collecting a 10% user tax on opium cultivation in Helmand, fighting for control of heroin laboratories, and acting as “the major guarantors for the trafficking of raw opium and heroin out of Afghanistan.” No longer simply taxing the traffic, the Taliban is now so deeply and directly involved that, adds the Times, it “has become difficult to distinguish the group from a dedicated drug cartel.” Whatever the long-term trends might be, for the foreseeable future opium remains deeply entangled with the rural economy, the Taliban insurgency, and government corruption whose sum is the Afghan conundrum.

With ample revenues from past bumper crops, the Taliban will undoubtedly be ready for the new fighting season that will come with the start of spring. As snow melts from the mountain slopes and poppy shoots spring from the soil, there will be, as in the past 40 years, a new crop of teenaged recruits ready to fight for the rebel forces.

Cutting the Afghan Gordian Knot

For most people globally, economic activity, the production and exchange of goods, is the prime point of contact with government, as is manifest in the coins and currency stamped by the state that everyone carries in their pockets.  But when a country’s most significant commodity is illegal, then political loyalties naturally shift to the clandestine networks that move that product safely from fields to foreign markets, providing finance, loans, and employment every step of the way. “The narcotics trade poisons the Afghan financial sector and fuels a growing illicit economy,” John Sopko explains. “This, in turn, undermines the Afghan state’s legitimacy by stoking corruption, nourishing criminal networks, and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurgent groups.”

After 15 years of continuous warfare in Afghanistan, Washington is faced with the same choice it had five years ago when Obama’s generals heli-lifted those Marines into Marja to start its surge. Just as it has been over the past decade and a half, the U.S. can remain trapped in the same endless cycle, fighting each new crop of village warriors who annually seem to spring fully armed from that country’s poppy fields. At this point, history tells us one thing: in this land sown with dragon’s teeth, there will be a new crop of guerrillas this year, next year, and the year after that.

Even in troubled Afghanistan, however, there are alternatives whose sum could potentially slice through this Gordian knot of a policy problem. As a first and fundamental step, maybe it’s time to stop talking about the next sets of boots on the ground and for President Obama to complete his planned troop withdrawal.

Next, investing even a small portion of all that misspent military funding in rural Afghanistan could produce economic alternatives for the millions of farmers who depend upon the opium crop for employment. Such money could help rebuild that land’s ruined orchards, ravaged flocks, wasted seed stocks, and wrecked snowmelt irrigation systems that, before these decades of war, sustained a diverse agriculture. If the international community can continue to nudge the country’s dependence on illicit opium down from the current 13% of GDP through such sustained rural development, then perhaps Afghanistan will cease to be the planet’s leading narco-state and just maybe that annual cycle can at long last be broken.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years. His more recent books include Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.

I noticed an attack on this letter (below) in the comments at third party media basically smearing Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) by association with Bernard Kouchner, a man that departed the organization over 35 years ago over philosophical differences. I had supported Doctors Without Borders because they had been apolitical, and largely neutral in conflicts. This neutrality had begun a process of erosion in Syria. Unlike the attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, where there was no question of which belligerent controlled the air power responsible (NATO’s USA), and where the organization called for an independent, third party investigation, those actors responsible for the attacks concerning the MSF aligned clinics in Syria are not as convincing and clear, arguably creating even more pressing demand for impartial, third party investigation.

Following these most recent attacks on clinics aligned with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Syria, Mego Terzian, President of MSF France, immediately blamed Russia and Assad. MSF International President has gone on record also blaming Russian aligned forces, stating “It was probably carried out by the Syrian-government-led coalition that is predominantly active in the region.”  This statement of Dr Liu is disingenuous. Turkey is a major player in its support for jihadi militia in that very area and has a vested interest in information operations intended to undermine the coalition supporting the Assad regime. This is the purpose of false flag attacks.  Recent history demands if the finger of superficial appearance had pointed to the NATO aligned nations, there would be calls for impartial investigation rather than immediate trial and conviction by propaganda operations perpetrated in western media.

Relevant to this preceding, it is a fairly safe presumption all high profile international non-governmental organizations will be targets of intelligence agencies for diverse purpose. However there is a large qualitative difference between that organization and the organization which, on the whole, has been tipped by intelligence to a point of co-option; where the organization itself has become the intelligence asset. Médecins Sans Frontières would appear to pointed towards co-option. Here is my response:

Dear MSF,

A monthly donor of many years, I feel an explanation is in order for my cancellation and further refusal to participate as a MSF “Field Partner.” I am a former military special operations intelligence professional and anti-corruption investigator of many years. Based on my expertise in open source intelligence analysis and closely following several of the ongoing conflicts, including Ukraine and SYRIA, it has become clear MSF is becoming a tool for geopolitical ends. Either you’ve been penetrated by intelligence agencies for this purpose of promoting false flag information operations or your organization is being manipulated to same effect. I cannot, with clear conscious, be a party to this with further contributions.

The several NATO intelligence agencies are in full force pursuing anti-Russian propaganda operations, which likely include the recent attacks on MSF aligned Syrian clinics; purposeful and professional operations intended to smear Russia and President Putin for purposes of generating political capital for pursuit of geopolitical manipulations. Your organization immediately pointing the finger at Assad and/or the Russians, without time taken to properly investigate, is unethical.

NATO aligned intelligence agency false flag examples provided:

NATO’s Turkey suppressing investigation into their intelligence agency, MIT, providing sarin gas to al Nusra (al Qaida) that killed 1,400 Syrians at Ghouta, blamed on the Assad regime, in August, 2013. Turkish parliamentarians complain of the suppressed facts:

Noteworthy state sponsored crimes committed to demonize Putin include but are not limited to:

– The Litvinenko report by the British

– The Maidan snipers in Kiev trained by the CIA according to Member of European Parliament, backed by a leaked phone call between the EU foreign policy chief and the Estonian Foreign minister revealing the snipers were aligned with the new regime in Kiev. This crime had been blamed on the Russian aligned preceding government.

and…

The crimes in Syria against MSF aligned facilities serve the same propaganda purposes and the Erdogan government cannot be ruled out as committing them, whereas it is NOT in the Russian interest to perpetrate these attacks. Here is a list of Turkish support for bad actors in Syria compiled by Jihad Watch:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/11/report-turkey-collaborating-with-the-islamic-state

It is sad to see MSF go the route of some other organizations and become a pawn of dirty players in geopolitics. I suggest your organization pursue a professional investigation to determine how, and by who, you’ve become manipulated to both a stooge and minion of evil.

Regards,

Ron West

http://ronaldthomaswest.com

“The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than a history of crime” -Voltaire

*

According to the official information provided by the media of the United States, Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran are villains: thus the American media urges support for the actions of the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to achieve peace in the region. This point of view is absolutely contrary to what is happening in Syria, in fact, it will lead to the continuation of the war and civilian casualties. This was stated by journalist Stephen Kinzer, who called the coverage of events in Syria a “shameful page in the history of the American press”.

American journalists, following the official line of the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, present the head of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and also Russia and Iran as villains. They support, according to U.S. media,  Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This position, which is due to the deliberate distortion of what is actually happening in Syria, will lead to the prolonging of the war and an even greater number of civilian casualties, writes the journalist of the newspaper the Boston Globe – Stephen Kinzer. According to him, coverage of the conflict in Syria will be one of the most shameful pages in the history of the media of the United States.

As the main example, Kinser gives the siege of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Within three years the town was ruled by militants, who have imposed cruel orders such as the ban on children attending school under the threat of death, the journalist notes. Terrorists destroyed factories in the hope that workers will go to them in search of work, and sold the seized equipment to Turkey. In February, the army of Syria with the support of the Russian airforce started pushing the militants out of the city, according to Kinzer.

The retreating militants in response shelled residential areas of Aleppo, with rockets and canisters of gas. This picture, said the journalist, does not match the official line of Washington. As a result, U.S. media reported that Aleppo was besieged by the governmental army of Syria with the support of Iran and Russia, writes Kinzer.

“This is nonsense, but do not blame the Americans for believing it. We do not have any information about the parties to the conflict, their goals or methods of action. The blame belongs to the American media,” — emphasizes Kinser on the pages of the Boston Globe.

Correspondents covering the war in Syria get information from the Pentagon, State Department, White House and their “experts”, believing they represent a lot of opinions on this issue. This type of activity that passes for news journalism, can only be described as shorthand, says Kinser.

“The official picture of events shockingly contradicts what is really going on, and maintaining this position will lead to the continuation of the conflict and condemn the innocent civilians of Syria to an even longer war and painful death,” concludes the columnist of the Boston Globe.

The Russian/American bilateral agreement announced Monday was dead-on-arrival, much as Syrians and anti-war supporters wish otherwise.

The US-led Western supported Riyadh-based so-called High Negotiations Committee (HNC) comprised of anti-Syrian terrorist groups threw a spanner in the works straightaway – consenting to ceasefire terms with unacceptable preconditions, including:

• halting Russian/Syrian bombing, falsely claiming it targets nonexistent moderate rebels, civilians and nonmilitary targets;

• releasing prisoners responsible for gruesome atrocities;

• ending the blockade of areas held by terrorists, reopening their supply lines to Turkey if agreed to;

• Syrian forces to halt advancing into territories held by terrorist groups agreeing to ceasefire terms; and

• delivering humanitarian aid – ISIS and other terrorist groups steal it for their own use or sale to desperate people at unaffordable prices.

Demanding these conditions constitutes an automatic deal-breaker before it’s officially announced by all warring parties.

Expect Moscow and Damascus to be wrongfully blamed when things break down – when proposed terms are flagrantly breached by US supported terrorists.

Chances for resolving Syria’s conflict diplomatically are virtually nil. Putin and Assad have no peace partners in Washington, London, Paris, Ankara, Riyadh, Doha, Tel Aviv or other rogue state capitals.

Russia and America jointly proposed a February 27 ceasefire date, effective midnight Damascus time – “applied to those parties to the Syrian conflict that have indicated their commitment” to observe it.

ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other Security Council designated terrorist organizations are excluded.

Moscow and Washington agreed to “exchange pertinent information,” distinguishing territories held by ISIS and other terrorist groups from others agreeing to accept ceasefire terms.

A so-called International Syria Support Group (ISSG) ceasefire task force will be established under US-controlled UN auspices – a sham arrangement, letting America have final say on who’s in-or-out-of-compliance, using the world body to do its finger-pointing.

Assad supported ceasefire long before the current initiative. At the same time, he vows unrelenting resistance against terrorist invaders until their scourge is eliminated.

So does Russia, knowing foreign-supported terrorist groups must be defeated to have any chance for a durable peace.

Sergey Lavrov and his diplomatic team worked tirelessly for conflict resolution since at least 2012. Washington undermined their best efforts.

Is this time different? Do rogue state hegemons ever reinvent themselves as peacemakers?

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

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

References:

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, was once used only sparingly. It had to be, as the herbicide kills basically any plant it touches.

This meant that although it killed many weeds, farmers couldn’t safely apply it near their crops, lest they risk killing off their crops as well. It was only used where farmers wanted to kill all vegetation, such as between the rows in orchards or in industrial yards.

This all changed in 1996, when Monsanto’s so-called “Roundup Ready,” genetically engineered (GE) glyphosate-tolerant crops (soy, corn and cotton) were introduced.

The GE crops are impervious to glyphosate’s toxic effects, which allows farmers to spray the chemical onto their crops with abandon.  And spray they did.

Glyphosate Is the Most Used Agricultural Chemical in History

Since 1996, the use of glyphosate has risen nearly 15-fold, according to a new study published in Environmental Sciences Europe.1 Since glyphosate was introduced in 1974, 1.8 million tons have been applied to U.S. fields, and two-thirds of that volume has been sprayed in the last 10 years.

Worldwide, 9.4 million tons have been sprayed from 1974 to 2014. The chemical has now earned the ominous title of the most heavily used agricultural chemical of all time.2

In fact, the analysis showed that farmers sprayed enough glyphosate in 2014 to apply 0.8 pounds of the chemical to every acre of cultivated cropland in the U.S. and nearly 0.5 a pound of glyphosate to all cropland worldwide.

GE herbicide-tolerant crops account for more than half (56 percent) of global glyphosate use. The researchers stated:3

In the U.S., no pesticide has come remotely close to such intensive and widespread use. This is likely the case globally, but published global pesticide use data are sparse.

Glyphosate will likely remain the most widely applied pesticide worldwide for years to come, and interest will grow in quantifying ecological and human health impacts.

Does Glyphosate Cause Cancer? 

In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is the research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), determined glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, to be a “probable carcinogen” (Class 2A).

This determination was based on evidence showing the popular weed killer can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and lung cancer in humans, along with “convincing evidence” it can also cause cancer in animals.

Monsanto has maintained that the classification as a carcinogen is wrong and continues to tout glyphosate (and Roundup) as one of the safest pesticides on the planet.4

However, they’ve now been slapped with a growing number of lawsuits alleging they long knew that Roundup’s glyphosate could harm human health. California resident Brenda Huerta and her husband James filed one such lawsuit in January 2016.

The couple lived on a commercial sod farm for several years, which exposed them to the chemical. Brenda was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2013.5

It’s probably no coincidence that California has both the highest level of glyphosate usage and the most cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the type of cancer linked to Roundup, in the U.S.6

California environmental officials intend to add glyphosate to their Proposition 65 list of cancer-causing chemicals. Established in California in 1986, Proposition 65 requires consumer products with potential cancer-causing ingredients to bear warning labels.

Rather than label their products sold in California as likely carcinogenic, most companies reformulated their product ingredients so as to avoid warning labels altogether, and they did this on a national scale, not just in California.

Monsanto, however, is trying a different strategy. They filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block California from listing glyphosate as a known carcinogen.

Why Isn’t the U.S. Government Testing Your Food for Glyphosate Residues?

In December 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released data from the 2014 Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual Summary.

More than 10,000 food samples were tested, and 0.36 percent contained pesticide levels that were above the tolerance levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This means more than 99 percent of foods should contain pesticide residues that fall within “safe” limits.

This isn’t as reassuring as it sounds for a couple of key reasons. First, one of the EPA’s regular responsibilities is to set a tolerance, or maximum residue limit, for pesticide residues on food, which are designed to protect you from harmful levels of pesticides.

But these tolerance levels are regularly challenged by the pesticide industry, including the likes of Monsanto and Syngenta. These companies know how many pesticides are being sprayed (or applied otherwise) on your food, hence their petitions to increase the allowable limits.

Second, the USDA does not test for residues of glyphosate in your food. As forwhy the USDA continues to avoid testing for glyphosate residues in your food, perhaps that’s a question we should be posing to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack — a former Monsanto lawyer and advocate. As reported by Reuters in 2015:7

A USDA spokesman who asked not to be quoted said that the test measures required for glyphosate are ‘extremely expensive… to do on an regular basis …’

In response to growing public concern about the toxicity of glyphosate, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that U.S. regulators may start testing for glyphosate residues on food in the near future.

But keep in mind that current allowable limits may be set too far high to protect your health, so unless that’s revised as well, you may be lulled into a false sense of security.

Global Environmental Contaminants 

It’s not surprising that Monsanto is trying to keep people in the dark about the health risks associated with glyphosate. Not only has the company been steadfastly fighting against GMO labeling, but they also feigned ignorance on the dangers of PCBs for several decades.

Monsanto (and Monsanto-related entities) is now facing at least 700 lawsuits on behalf of people who claim their exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which Monsanto manufactured until the 1970s, caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.8 The company claimed the PCBs it produced were “singularly free of difficulties,” yet the U.S. government banned PCBs in 1976 due to their carcinogenic potential.9

In 2002, Monsanto was found guilty of decades of “outrageous acts of pollution” in the town of Anniston, Alabama, where it dumped PCBs into the local river and secretly buried the toxic chemical in a landfill.10 Internal documents revealed Monsanto had full knowledge of the severity of the pollution problem it caused for at least three decades, and decided to ignore it.

San Diego has sued Monsanto for polluting the Coronado Bay with PCBs,11 and Seattle recently became the sixth city to file a lawsuit against the company for PCB pollution.

The City of Seattle wants Monsanto to pay to help clean up pollution it caused in the Duwamish River and also wants to hold Monsanto responsible for making the river’s fish too contaminated to eat. The city alleges that Monsanto knew all along that PCBs were toxic but continued to market them anyway. According to Seattle Weekly:12

The lawsuit details internal documents that show Monsanto knew its chemicals were harmful to human health, but continued to market it — all but assuring that PCBs would eventually end up in waterways across the world.

The company formed internal committees on the subject acknowledging that PCBs were ‘global environmental contaminants leading to contamination of human food (particularly fish).’ But discontinuing production was not an option, one memo reads: ‘There is too much customer/market need and selfishly too much Monsanto profit to go out.’

In addition to Seattle and San Diego, San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley, California and Spokane, Washington have also filed lawsuits against Monsanto for continuing to produce and promote PCBs despite knowing their hazards.13

Monsanto Has Long Fought to Keep You in the Dark About GMO Foods

Monsanto has spent millions to defeat GMO labeling initiatives. In 2013, the company donated nearly $5 million to the anti-labeling campaign in Washington State, and in 2012 they donated more than $7 million to help defeat California’s Proposition 37. Curiously enough, Monsanto is more than willing to “support” GMO labeling once they run out of options.

They even ran an ad in the U.K. letting British consumers know how much the company supports the mandatory labeling of their goods — even urging Britons to seek such labels out — ostensibly because Monsanto believes “you should be aware of all the facts before making a decision.”

They may feel defeat is near in the U.S. as well, as they’ve announced in the U.S. that they support GMO labeling. It’s a ridiculous statement considering the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), whose 300-plus members include Monsanto, Coca-Cola, and General Mills, is pushing a Congressional bill called the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014.”

The bill, dubbed the “DARK” (Denying Americans the Right to Know) Act, would actually preempt all states from passing GMO labeling laws. It would also bar states from enacting laws that make it illegal for food companies to misrepresent their products by labeling GE ingredients as “natural.” Last but not least, the DARK Act would also limit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) power to force food companies to disclose GE ingredients.

They are trying to HIDE the presence of genetically engineered ingredients and are pulling out ALL the stops to do so. Monsanto can say they support GMO labeling because they want to pass a federal bill to ensure “voluntary” labeling, which already exists today, while banning any state from passing a mandatory labeling law.

The GMA is another organization with a sordid past. In 2013, Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit against the GMA, alleging the association violated the state’s campaign disclosure laws. Ferguson alleged the GMA illegally collected and spent more than $7 million on the “No On Initiative 522” GMO labeling campaign, while hiding the identity of its contributors in order to shield them from consumer backlash.

According to the Washington State Office of the Attorney General:14

Attorney General Bob Ferguson today announced that his office has asked a court to grant summary judgment and penalize the Grocery Manufacturers Association for GMA’s intentional subterfuge in an effort to elude state campaign-finance laws. Ferguson also asked the court to unseal “confidential” GMA documents in the landmark case.

To date, Campbell Soup Co. is the only major U.S. food company to respond to consumer demand and announce that it will label its products with GE ingredients. Ironically, PepsiCo., which spent $8.8 million in 2015 to overturn state labeling initiatives, requested a non-GMO Project label for their Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice.15

Monsanto Loses Syngenta Merger

Monsanto pursued Syngenta, the world’s largest pesticide producer, for four years, hoping to take over the company. Monsanto has made at least three takeover offers, but now has lost out on the merger for good.

China National Chemical Corporation has agreed to buy Syngenta for about $43 billion, a move that has Food & Water Watch calling for antitrust authorities to block the takeover, noting such a merger “would accelerate the hyper-consolidation in the global seed and agrochemical market.”16

When you factor in the 2015 merger between DuPont and Dow Chemical, this latest merger would put just three companies in control of more than 75 percent of corn and 80 percent of soybean seeds in the U.S. Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter voiced concerns to Corporate Crime Reporter:17

The Department of Justice and antitrust authorities of governments across the world must act to block these seed megamergers … The rapid concentration of economic power and seed patents in the hands of a tiny and diminishing number of global agribusiness giants harms farmers and eaters worldwide. Farmers will undoubtedly be forced to pay more for a reduced selection of options controlled by the gargantuan seed monopoly.

The companies use the patented seed varieties — overwhelmingly biotech crops with accompanying pesticides and agrochemicals — to control not only the selection of what farmers plant, but how they cultivate their crops, what chemicals they use on their fields and how they can manage their farms. The merger has far reaching impacts on the food supply, the environment and consumers …

There is a growing demand by consumers to know what they are eating, how it is grown and how it impacts their communities. Global agribusiness mega-mergers like the proposed ChemChina-Syngenta deal give a corporate cabal a stranglehold on the world’s farmers and the world’s eaters. When fewer firms control more of the seed and agrochemical market, both farmers and consumers lose out.

Academics Selling Out to Monsanto

Last year, a New York Times article highlighted the lengths Monsanto will go to seem credible, including enlisting prominent members of academia to push their own self-serving agendas.18 One of the most talked-about scandals involved University of Florida professor Kevin Folta, a vocal advocate of GMOs who vehemently denied ever receiving any money from Monsanto.

However, he was caught having been less than forthright about his connections to the company when his email correspondence was released in response to a freedom of information (FOIA) request by U.S. Right to Know. In August of 2014, Folta did in fact receive a $25,000 unrestricted grant from Monsanto, and Folta wrote back to a Monsanto executive saying: “I am grateful for this opportunity and promise a solid return on the investment.”

The most flagrant piece of evidence against Folta showed that not only did he solicit these funds from Monsanto, but he also appeared to do so with intent to hide the financial connection between them. Folta even went so far as to create a bizarre alter ego, Vern Blazek, a supposed radio personality in Tillamook, Oregon, who held podcasts to sort through “the shills and charlatans to distill the scientific truth.”

Another example involves former University of Illinois Food Science professor Bruce Chassy, Ph.D. a respected “expert” researcher who often writes about food safety issues and worked as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health.

E-mails revealed through an FOIA request showed Chassy was part of a group of U.S. academics who were, according to Alternet, “quietly collaborating with Monsanto on strategies aimed at not just promoting biotech crop products, but also rolling back regulation of these products and fending off industry critics.”19

The e-mails show money flowing into the university from Monsanto as Chassy collaborated on multiple projects with Monsanto to counter public concerns about genetically modified crops (GMOs) — all while representing himself as an independent academic for a public institution. 20

At least one email exchange between Chassy and the biotech industry involved how to “spin” a government study that revealed high levels of glyphosate in air and water samples. Carey Gillam, research director at U.S. Right to Know, explained:21

The revelations in the emails about Chassy, Folta and other assorted academics, leave many questions about who to trust, and how to trust, information critical to understanding our evolving food system. With food labeling issues at the forefront of debate, it’s time for more transparency.

GMOs Fuel CAFOs, Which Also Want to Hide Behind a Cloak of Secrecy

Monsanto’s glyphosate-laden GMO crops are a staple food for the millions of animals raised on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)  — another industry that is trying to keep the public in the dark about what really goes on behind their closed doors.

So-called “ag-gag” laws, which legally prevent people from filming or photographing conditions on factory farms, are being heavily promoted by lobbyists for the meat, egg, and dairy industries to essentially prevent anyone from exposing animal cruelty and food-safety issues at CAFOs. Montano, Utah, North Dakota, Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa already have such laws in place preventing people from taking photos or videos of CAFOs.

On January 1, 2016, a law took effect in North Carolina that not only makes secret filming on CAFOs illegal but also secret videos or photos at nursing homes, day care centers and veterans’ facilities, among others. Anyone who violates the law can be sued by the business owners for bad publicity!22

Do You Want to Avoid Pesticides in Your Food?

Glyphosate has a number of devastating biological effects beyond being a probable carcinogen, including the following:

Your best bet for minimizing health risks from pesticide exposure (even those the government claim are “safe”) is to avoid them in the first place by eating organic as much as possible and investing in a good water filtration system for your home or apartment. If you know you have been exposed to pesticides, the lactic acid bacteria formed during the fermentation of kimchi may also help your body break down pesticides.

So including fermented foods like kimchi in your diet may also be a wise strategy to help detox the pesticides that do enter your body. One of the benefits of eating organic is that the foods will be free of GM ingredients — and this is key to avoiding exposure to toxic glyphosate. Following are some great resources to obtain wholesome organic food.

Eating locally produced organic food will not only support your family’s health, it will also protect the environment from harmful chemical pollutants and the inadvertent spread of genetically engineered seeds and chemical-resistant weeds and pests.

What You Need to Know About GMOs

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or genetically “engineered” (GE) foods, are live organisms whose genetic components have been artificially manipulated in a laboratory setting through creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacteria, and even viral genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods.

GMO proponents claim that genetic engineering is “safe and beneficial,” and that it advances the agricultural industry. They also say that GMOs help ensure the global food supply and sustainability. But is there any truth to these claims? I believe not. For years, I’ve stated the belief that GMOs pose one of the greatest threats to life on the planet. Genetic engineering is NOT the safe and beneficial technology that it is touted to be.

The FDA cleared the way for GE (Genetically Engineered) Atlantic salmon to be farmed for human consumption. Thanks to added language in the federal spending bill, the product will require special labeling so at least consumers will have the ability to identify the GE salmon in stores. However, it’s imperative ALL GE foods be labeled, which is currently still being denied.

The FDA is threatening the existence of our food supply. We have to start taking action now. I urge you to share this article with friends and family. If we act together, we can make a difference and put an end to the absurdity.

QR Codes Are NOT an Adequate Substitute for Package Labels

The biotech industry is trying to push the QR code as an answer for consumer concerns about GE foods. QR stands for Quick Response, and the code can be scanned and read by smart phones and other QR readers.

The code brings you to a product website that provides further details about the product. The video below shows you why this is not an ideal solution. There’s nothing forcing companies to declare GMOs on their website. On the contrary, GE foods are allowed to be promoted as “natural,” which further adds to the confusion.

These so-called “Smart Labels” hardly improve access to information. Instead, by making finding the truth time-consuming and cumbersome, food makers can be assured that most Americans will remain ignorant about the presence of GMOs in their products. Besides, everyone has a right to know what’s in the food. You shouldn’t have to own a smartphone to obtain this information.

Non-GMO Food Resources by Country

If you are searching for non-GMO foods here is a list of trusted sites you can visit.

• Organic Food Directory (Australia)
• Eat Wild (Canada)
• Organic Explorer (New Zealand)
• Eat Well Guide (United States & Canada)
• Farm Match (United States)
• Local Harvest (United States)
• Weston A. Price Foundation (United States)

In my archives there is a column or two that introduces the reader to John Perkins’ important book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. An EHM is an operative who sells the leadership of a developing country on an economic plan or massive development project. The Hit Man convinces a country’s government that borrowing large sums of money from US financial institutions in order to finance the project will raise the country’s living standards. The borrower is assured that the project will increase Gross Domestic Product and tax revenues and that these increases will allow the loan to be repaid.

However, the plan is designed to over-estimate the benefits so that the indebted country cannot pay the principal and interest. As Perkins’ puts it, the plans are based on “distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting,” and if the deception doesn’t work, “threats and bribes” are used to close the deal.

The next step in the deception is the appearance of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF tells the indebted country that the IMF will save its credit rating by lending the money with which to repay the country’s creditors. The IMF loan is not a form of aid. It merely replaces the country’s indebtedness to banks with indebtedness to the IMF.

To repay the IMF, the country has to accept an austerity plan and agree to sell national assets to private investors. Austerity means cuts in social pensions, social services, employment and wages, and the budget savings are used to repay the IMF. Privatization means selling oil, mineral and public infrastructure in order to repay the IMF. The deal usually imposes an agreement to vote with the US in the UN and to accept US military bases.

Occasionally a country’s leader refuses the plan or the austerity and privatization. If bribes don’t work, the US sends in the jackals—assassins who remove the obstacle to the looting process.

Perkins’ book caused a sensation. It showed that the United States’ attitude of helpfulness toward poorer countries was only a pretext for schemes to loot the countries. Perkins’ book sold more than a million copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 73 weeks.

Now the book has been reissued with the addition of 14 new chapters and a 30-page listing of Hit Man activity during the years 2004-2015.

Perkins shows that despite his revelations, the situation is worse than ever and has spread into the West itself. The populations of Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the United States itself are now being looted by Hit Man activity.

Perkins’ book shows that the US is “exceptional” only in the unbridled violence it applies to others who get in its way. One of the new chapters tells the story of France-Albert Rene, president of Seychelles, who threatened to reveal the illegal and inhumane eviction of the residents of Diego Garcia by Britain and Washington so that the island could be converted into an air base from which Washington could bomb noncompliant countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Washington sent in a team of jackels to murder the president of Seychelles, but the assassins were foiled. All but one were captured, tried and sentenced to execution or prison, but a multi-million dollar bribe to Rene freed them. Rene got the message and became compliant.

In the original printing of his book, Perkins tells the stories of how jackals arranged airplane crashes to get rid of Panama’s non-compliant president, Omar Torrijos, and Ecuador’s non-compliant president, Jaime Roldos. When Rafael Correa became president of Ecuador, he refused to pay some of the illegitimate debts that had been piled on Ecuador, closed the United States’ largest military base in Latin America, forced the renegotiation of exploitative oil contracts, ordered the central bank to use funds deposited in US banks for domestic projects, and consistently opposed Washington’s hegemonic control over Latin America.

Correa had marked himself for overthrow or assassination. However, Washington had just overthrown in a military coup the democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, whose policies favored the people of Honduras over those of foreign interests. Concerned that two military coups in succession against reformist presidents would be noticed, to get rid of Correa the CIA turned to the Ecuadoran police. Led by a graduate of Washington’s School of the Americas, the police moved to overthrow Correa but were overpowered by the Ecuadoran military. However, Correa got the message. He reversed his policies toward American oil companies and announced that he would auction off huge blocks of Eucador’s rain forests to the oil companies. He closed down, Fundacion Pachamama, an organization with which a reformed Perkins was associated that worked to preserve Ecuador’s rain forests and indigenous populations.

Western banks backed up by the World Bank are even worse looters than the oil and timber companies. Perkins writes: “Over the past three decades, sixty of the world’s poorest countries have paid $550 billion in principal and interest on loans of $540 billion, yet they still owe a whopping $523 billion on those same loans. The cost of servicing that debt is more than these countries spend on health or education and is twenty times the amount they receive annually in foreign aid. In addition, World Bank projects have brought untold suffering to some of the planet’s poorest people. In the past ten years alone, such projects have forced an estimated 3.4 million people out of their homes; the governments in these countries have beaten, tortured, and killed opponents of World Bank projects.”

Perkins describes how Boeing plundered Washington state taxpayers. Using lobbyists, bribes, and blackmail threats to move production facilities to another state, Boeing succeeded in having the Washington state legislature give the corporation a tax break that diverted $8.7 billion into Boeings’ coffers from health care, education and other social services. The massive subsidies legislated for the benefit of corporations are another form of rent extraction and Hit Man activity.

Perkins has a guilty conscience and still suffers from his role as a Hit Man for the evil empire, which has now turned to the plunder of American citizens. He has done everything he can to make amends, but he reports that the system of exploitation has multiplied many times and is now so commonplace that it no longer has to be hidden. Perkins writes:

“A major change is that this EHM system, today, is also at work in the United States and other economically developed countries. It is everywhere. And there are many more variations on each of these tools. There are hundreds of thousands more EHMs spread around the world. They have created a truly global empire. They are working in the open as well as in the shadows. This system has become so widely and deeply entrenched that it is the normal way of doing business and therefore is not alarming to most people.”

People have been so badly plundered by jobs offshoring and indebtedness that consumer demand cannot support profits. Consequently, capitalism has turned to exploiting the West itself. Faced with rising resistance, the EHM system has armed itself with “the PATRIOT Act, the militarization of police forces, a vast array of new surveillance technologies, the infiltration and sabotage of the Occupy movement, and the dramatic expansion of privatized prisons.” The democratic process has been subverted by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other court decisions, by corporate-funded political action committees, and by organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council financed by the One Percent. Cadres of lawyers, lobbyists, and strategists are hired to legalize corruption, and presstitutes work overtime to convince gullible Americans that elections are real and represent the workings of democracy.

In a February 19, 2016 article in OpEdNews, Matt Peppe reports that the American colony of Puerto Rico is being driven into the ground in order to satisfy foreign creditors.

The airport has been privatized, and the main highways have been privatized in a 40-year lease owned by a consortium formed by a Goldman Sachs infrastructure investment fund. Puerto Ricans now pay private corporations for the use of infrastructure that tax dollars built. Recently Puerto Rico’s sales tax was raised 64% to 11.5%. A sales tax increase is equivalent to a rise in inflation and results in a decline in real incomes.

Today the only difference between capitalism and gangsterism is that capitalism has succeeded in legalizing its gangsterism and, thus, can strike a harder bargain than can the Mafia.

Perkins shows that the evil empire has the world in the grip of a “death economy.” He concludes that “we need a revolution” in order “to bury the death economy and birth the life economy.” Don’t look to politicians, neoliberal economists, and presstitutes for any help.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

A long delayed investigation into the assassination of African-Caribbean historian Walter Rodney (1942-1980, pictured left) has revealed that former President Forbes Burnham was behind his murder.

Although this was the assumption after Rodney was killed when a communication device exploded in his brother’s car on June 13, 1980, the government of Burnham claimed that the historian, who was the leader of the opposition Working People’s Alliance (WPA), was engaged in an attempt to bomb a prison near where the incident took place.

The Commission of Inquiry (COI) was convened in 2014 some 34 years after the assassination of Dr. Rodney who was a leading figure in the intellectual and political affairs of both Guyana and the African world as a whole. Since 1980 when he was killed, his comrades within the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), the Rodney family, along with colleagues throughout the internationally community, have demanded a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death.

It would take two years for the completion of a 155-page report outlining the Commission’s findings. However, the struggle for full disclosure is ongoing within Guyana where tremendous opposition has existed for decades in regard to a probe into the assassination.

Although the Guyana government under the previous administration of President Donald Ramotar of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) embarked on the controversial inquiry, the-then (1980) ruling People’s National Congress (PNC) has been resistant to fully cooperate with the investigation. Forbes Burnham, who held power in Guyana from 1964-1985 when he died while undergoing surgery, was said to have felt threatened by Rodney and his organization of an opposition party, the WPA, which sought to bridge the political gap between the majority East Indian and African populations.

The three major political parties in Guyana during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the ruling PNC, the opposition PPP led by Cheddi Jagan and the WPA headed by Rodney, all claimed to socialist. The approaches of the two opposition parties, the PPP and the WPA, were quite different.

Efforts by the WPA were clearly aimed at the removal of the Burnham government and therefore viewed as the principal threat against the PNC. Prior to Rodney’s assassination in 1979, the historian and politician was charged along with other WPA members of an arson attack against a government facility.

Rodney was facing prosecution on these charges nonetheless he continued to organize and speak out against the PNC administration. Those close to Rodney say he believed that there was a plot underway to take his life.

Obstacles to Making the Report Public

There was a delay in the printing of the Commission report and it has still not been made fully public or presented to the legislative body of the country.

Current Guyana President David Granger is the former Commander of the Guyana Defense Forces (GDF) and held that position at the time of Rodney’s assassination. Granger has been a leading figure in the PNC party for years.

He contested the presidential elections against the PPP on behalf of the PNC-Reform party and lost to Ramotar in 2011. Nonetheless, he ran again in May 2015 representing the opposition coalition APNU-AFC winning a majority of the votes.

According to the COI report

“Further, given the manner in which the country was run coupled with the threats issued by Prime Minister Burnham to the members of the WPA and the evidence of Mr. Robert Allan Gates, we conclude that Prime Minister Burnham knew of the plan and was part of the conspiracy to assassinate Dr. Walter Rodney…..  Given all the relevant facts, events and circumstances set out in the report, we unhesitatingly conclude that Gregory Smith was not acting alone but had the active and full support, participation and encouragement of, and/or was aided and abetted by the GPF (Guyana Police Force), the GDF (Guyana Defense Force), agencies of the State and the political directorate in the killing of Dr. Walter Rodney.” (Quoted from Demerara Waves, Feb. 20)

The COI concluded that an operative of the GDF, Gregory Smith, carried out the assassination of Rodney. Smith was then sent out of the country to French Guiana, a colony of Paris. Smith is said to have died in 2002.

An article published by Denis Chabrol on the COI report says:

“Former GDF pilot, Gerry Gouveia testified before the three-member commission, saying that he recalled flying a man, who closely resembled Smith, a woman and children to Kwakwani aboard an army plane. GDF officers, who testified before the commission, had said they could not have found any records about how Smith left the army and the aircraft logs at that time.” (Demerara Waves, Feb. 20)

This same article continues noting:

“Shortly after the incident, the GDF had denied having any Gregory Smith enlisted but only admitted after the privately-owned Catholic Standard newspaper published a photo of Smith clad in a GDF uniform.”

A section of the COI report released concludes that:

“We accept that Gregory Smith, renamed Cyril Milton Johnson, received State assistance in going to French Guiana. The choice of country was deliberate and was no doubt informed by the fact that (the) French government, of which French Guiana was a Department had a policy opposed to the death penalty. In short, it would have been difficult, virtually impossible, to secure the extradition of Smith/Johnson from French Guiana.”

The independent Justice for Walter Rodney Committee called for the full report to be submitted to the Guyana National Assembly as well as the family and supporters of the martyred historian.

In a statement from the Justice for Walter Rodney Committee the group demands that:

“The President… must recognize the historical significance of this inquiry, not only as a means of bringing closure to an aspect of Guyana’s sad history over the last 50 years but as a measure that if dealt with properly, can aid the beginnings of the long awaited and lofty ideal of reconciliation, and the expectations of Guyanese at home and abroad for a new beginning.” (Demerara Waves, Feb. 20)

Rodney Made Significant Contributions to Socialist Thought

Rodney was a well-known and influential Pan-Africanist and Marxist historian as well as a political activist who studied at the University of the West Indies, the University of London and held a faculty position for years at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

After working for several years in Tanzania and as a visiting scholar in several higher educational institutions such as the University of Michigan in 1972, Rodney was invited by the University of Guyana to take a faculty position. However, the government of Burnham blocked the appointment in an effort to prevent Rodney from remaining in his country of birth.

Rodney remained and later organized the WPA bringing together several Left and Pan-African organizations. His presence in Guyana politically challenged the image of the Burnham government which sought to portray itself as a supporter of African liberation movements and socialism.

At the time of his assassination, Rodney was writing a seminal “History of the Guyanese Working People” which was published in its incomplete form after his death. His study entitled “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, initially published by the government of Tanzania in 1972, remains a signature text on the role of imperialism in the continuing struggle for genuine liberation and socialism in Africa and internationally.

Ben Rhodes, Assistant to Obama and Deputy National Security Advisor, provides crucial input into the new tactical road map for Cuba policy regarding Cuba–US relations. Rhodes, who is also officially the speechwriter for Obama, is to be commended, along with the President himself, for the new Cuba policy, including the decision concerning the President’s visit to Cuba.

One of the most important documents serving as the basis of this visit is the February 18, 2016 transcript of a Press Briefing by Rhodes and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Unfortunately, it has not been widely disseminated. During the course of the briefing, Rhodes had to answer questions from journalists, which forced him to elaborate on the plan for the President’s visit to Cuba as part of Cuba–US relations.

The briefing indicates that the US is on the offensive with regard to Latin America and the Caribbean; the Cuban visit constitutes part of this road map. However, in answering questions, Rhodes had to candidly admit and partially recognize that Cuba has its principled stand. Actually, it is more than that. The Cuban government, far from letting its guard down, is also on the offensive regarding Cuba–US relations.

Although many issues were raised during the briefing, only some of them are dealt with here.

Dissidents

After a summary of the visit to Cuba with a short mention of a second leg of that trip to Argentina, Rhodes entertained questions from correspondents. The first question concerned dissidents:

“Q: Will the President meet with dissidents when he’s in Cuba? And would you negotiate that with the Cuban government?

MR. RHODES: Yes, he’ll be meeting with dissidents, with members of civil society, including those who certainly oppose the Cuban government’s policies.”

The issue came up again. In response to another reporter’s question, “Who determines which dissidents the President will meet with?,” Rhodes answered, “We determine… and we’ve certainly indicated to the Cubans…” In yet another query on the same theme that compared Cuba to other countries where the US works with an established opposition, Rhodes had to admit, “you have a one-party system [in Cuba], and then you have elements of opposition but it’s not analogous [to other countries].” Later on, in defending the administration’s decision to reopen the US Embassy in Havana, he said that the “embassy allows us to better represent our interests, to better engage civil society.”

Blockade

One of the correspondents mentioned that:

“The trade minister [Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca], earlier this week, prescribed things that he thinks the White House can do without the lifting of the embargo – allowing the dollar to be used in a third country, and permitting U.S. import of rum and cigars.”

It should be noted that only the legislature (Congress) can fully lift the blockade, because it is codified into legislation; however, important aspects of the blockade can indeed be mitigated by White House executive orders. Regarding the journalist’s appropriate question on the international use of the dollar, one also has to take into account the Cuban demand: the Cuban government wants to be able to use the dollar for international transactions not only in countries other than the US, but also in trade and commerce with the US itself. The Cuban delegation headed by Malmierca visited Washington in mid-February for several days. He went much further than mildly “prescribing things,” as Rhodes seems to imply. Malmierca strongly stressed the Cuban government’s position while right in middle of his US political and business counterparts. He dared to go on the offensive against the blockade as well on the need for the Obama administration to use all the executive powers at his disposal to effectively gut it. Rather than responding to the examples provided by the questioning, such as allowing the dollar to be used, Rhodes said:

“[O]ur judgment is that the embargo should be lifted. Short of that, we want to look at what are the areas where we can open up space that can promote the greatest travel and commercial activity that ultimately benefits the Cuban people.”

In response to persistent questions about the embargo (blockade), Rhodes said:

“[T]his is a government that was very comfortable for over five decades with the embargo in place and with the United States as essentially the source of legitimacy that they drew upon because of what we were trying to do to Cuba.”

How can the Cuban government be described as “comfortable” when in fact it has fought courageously against the blockade for five decades? In the 2015 United Nations General Assembly, it won the support of the entire international community with the exceptions of the US and Israel. However, Rhodes’s last words indicate that his road map is still quite convoluted when it comes to the use of executive powers to render much of the blockade ineffective. The Cuban government is forced to be in assault mode with regard to this executive option comfortably in the hands of Obama. Will Obama’s visit to Cuba make a decisive dent in the blockade?

Travel Ban

A journalist asked if the Obama administration will use an “executive order to lift the travel ban to the extent that [he] can.” Rhodes response seemed to be evasive: “[W]hat we’ve aimed to do is promote additional travel, commerce and economic activity in Cuba that, again, we believe benefits the Cuban people.” In response to another question on the blockade and in that context lifting the travel ban, once again travel is circumscribed by Rhodes. He said that the administration is continuing to allow travel only for “Americans who want to travel to Cuba to engage the Cuban people, or American businesses that want to engage in Cuba, but also, frankly, in helping ordinary Cubans.” One can ask, then, are Americans who want to visit Canada or the UK beholden to “engage” Canadians or the British? Or if they wish to travel to other countries in the Third World, are they restricted to “helping ordinary people” there? Why is there a double standard? The use of an executive order to lift the travel ban as much as possible, in the words of the correspondent, is definitely a step that can be taken in the period leading up to the Obama visit.

Guantanamo

In response to a query on Guantanamo, Rhodes stated:

“I’m sure that will be part of the discussion. I know that because I’ve had that discussion many times with my Cuban counterparts. They are insisting, obviously, that our presence there is not legitimate and that the facility be returned to them. But again, that is not on the table as a part of our discussions. We’re focused on the range of issues that I discussed. But I’m sure that they will raise it. It continues to be an issue of concern to them.”

Actually, to say that the Cubans are “insisting” that it be returned is somewhat of an understatement. The Cubans have been – and are – fighting tooth and nail on all international tribunes for return of the territory to Cuba. This demand is a mark of national pride and dignity for the Cuban people, and it constitutes a major roadblock to normalizing Cuba–US relations. As far as US–Cuba policy, why is this thorny issue that can be solved by a stroke of the presidential pen not “on the table”?

Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot Policy

On August 19, 1994, President Bill Clinton announced his “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy: Cubans who land on US soil (“dry–foot”) could remain in the US, even if they did not enter the country through the standard legal immigration channels. However, migrants who were intercepted by the US Coast Guard at sea (“wet–foot”) would be returned to Cuba. This policy applies only to Cubans, thus encouraging illegal emigration and a pool of people to be usedas a political tool against the Cuban economic/social/political system. The change of this Cuba policy is something that the executive branch can do in the same way that President Bill Clinton initiated it.

A question went right to the point. While in Cuba, is the “wet-foot, dry-foot policy … something that the President is going to address?” Rhodes response was disappointing, but clear: “We are not planning to institute change with respect to wet-foot, dry-foot… Our focus is on how can conditions improve in Cuba so that over time there’s more economic opportunity and less of a need, frankly, for Cubans to have to pursue opportunity elsewhere.”

The Argentine Leg of the Obama Visit

In the November 2014 Argentine presidential elections, after more than a decade of left-wing governments, the right-wing won the vote. During his electoral campaign, the new president Mauricio Macri promised, among other policies, to realign Argentina’s foreign policy away from Venezuela and closer to the US.

Even though the subject of the Rhodes press briefing was the Cuba trip, he also said in his opening remarks:

“Following the trip to Cuba, I’d just note the President will be traveling to Argentina. The Cuba opening also has to be seen as part of an effort by the United States to significantly increase our engagement in the hemisphere. This is a region that had long rejected our Cuba policy. Our Cuba policy had, in fact, isolated the United States more than it had isolated Cuba in the hemisphere. Argentina is a country that, until recently, had a President who had, I’ll say, problematic relations with the United States. The new President there has indicated his interest in beginning and restoring and renewing U.S.–Argentina relations.”

Rhodes is very frank about the new Cuba policy being linked to the US reputation and prestige in Latin America. In fact, the White House indicated its adoption of this orientation in various statements and documents released around the December 17, 2014 Obama speech to announce the new chapter in Cuba–US relations.

Even though the Argentine sojourn was relegated to a very secondary position in the opening briefing, it did provoke two questions. The responses further flesh out the road map leading to the Argentine visit. The first question concerned “…whether they [new Argentine First Family] can be an ally. And what kind of reception do you expect the President to get, especially considering the one that President Bush received when he went down there?” The Bush reception refers to the November 4–5, 2005 Fourth Summit of the Americas that was held at Mar del Plata, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of Buenos Aires in Argentina. This summit gathered the leaders of all the countries of the American continent, except Cuba. President George W. Bush’s plan to push though the Free Trade Area of the America’s plan (FTAA) was a debacle. The charge against it was led by the host, President Néstor Kirchner of Argentina; President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela; and President Lula da Silva of Brazil.

The response by Rhodes to the query is perhaps indicative of where his road plan is intended to lead:

“With respect to Argentina, we definitely anticipate that they’ll be a closer partner on a range of issues… He’s [new president Mauricio Macri] signaled that he’d like to have closer economic and diplomatic cooperation with the United States. So we believe this is really a new beginning and a new era in our relationship with Argentina, and it mirrors the sentiment we see across the region, particularly since our Cuba opening, where there’s much more receptivity to working with the United States.”

The latter part of this citation indicates that, according to Rhodes, the US is, as planned, already reaping the fruit of the Cuba opening in Latin America.

In response to the second question requesting further elaboration on the Argentine visit, Rhodes said that the goal of the Obama administration is to “demonstrate that a cornerstone of the President’s legacy is his approach to Latin America [that] involves the Cuba opening…”

Cuba Sticks to Its Principles

By playing the Cuba card, the US offensive in Latin America seeks to drive a wedge between Argentina and countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. The US game plan would also like to force differences between Cuba and the other left-wing countries. However, the Cuban revolutionary government carries out its own push to fully support the revolutionary processes in these countries. Cuba is also one of the main stalwarts of regional integration through the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, for its Spanish initials). It includes all countries in the Americas except the US and Canada.

The US is using its Cuba policy to make tracks along the path of diplomacy, such as with the Obama visit to Argentina. However, the US has not limited its approach to just this relatively peaceful road: it is simultaneously interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador in order to bring about regime change.

Thus, the situation in Cuba and Latin America is complex. We will see how it develops in the period leading up to Obama’s visits to Cuba and Argentina, as well as in their aftermath throughout 2016.

Arnold August, a Canadian journalist and lecturer, is the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections and, more recently, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion. Cuba’s neighbours under consideration are the US, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Arnold can be followed on Twitter @Arnold_August.

Are we entering a new era where cash is outlawed and a cashless society is becoming an Orwellian reality? The European Central Bank President Mario Draghi recently said that the bank is “considering action” to drop 500 euro notes because of its links to criminal activities. The former treasury secretary and director of the National Economic Council in the White House, Lawrence H. Summers is also calling for the elimination of the 500 euro notes and the $100 bill in a Washington Post article where he referred to Harvard’s ‘Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government’ which he is the current director, published a paper by senior fellow Peter Sands and current students for making “a compelling case for stopping the issuance of high denomination notes like the 500 euro note and $100 bill or even withdrawing them from circulation.”

Summers even went as far to mentions a “global agreement” to eventually “stop issuing notes worth more than say $50 or $100.” The main reason Summers is calling for the elimination of the $100 bill is to deter crime or even terrorism. Summers says that the 500 euro note is called the “Bin Laden” within “certain circles”

[But there is a hidden agenda which purports to sustain the hegemony of the US dollar, Summers was Secretary of the Treasury during the last year of Clinton administration, he was one of the architects of the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act implying the de facto repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, M.Chossudovsky, GR Editor]:

The fact that — as Sands points out — in certain circles the 500 euro note is known as the “Bin Laden” confirms the arguments against it. Sands’ extensive analysis is totally convincing on the linkage between high denomination notes and crime

In an interesting turn of world events, ISIS declared that the US dollar is their preferred currency of choice in recent days (I am not saying that it is a conspiracy between Summers and ISIS to ban cash because ISIS can use US dollars to finance terrorism). In the African continent, MasterCard is making its moves toward a cashless society in Nigeria using Egypt (who collaborated with MasterCard) as an example.  MasterCard’s Press Release earlier this month ‘Cashless Africa Achievable through Partnerships’ quotes division President for sub-Saharan Africa, MasterCard, Daniel Monehin, clarified the importance of the public-private partnership meeting called the ‘African Mobile Phone Financial Services Policy Initiative’ (AMPI) meeting recently held in Dakar, Senegal:

Advancing financial inclusion requires a broad collaboration between the private and public sector, in essence, a cooperation between multinational companies and local players.  An example of this can be seen in Egypt, where MasterCard collaborates with the Egyptian Government to extend financial inclusion to 54 million citizens.  Through a digital National ID (NID) program, which links citizens’ NID to existing national mobile money platforms and allows Egyptians to participate in the formal electronic economy through a single, easy-to-use cashless program.

“In order for financial inclusion initiatives to be both sustainable and scalable we need to develop fully functional payment ecosystems, as seen in Egypt. Approaching the project holistically, we wanted to ensure the payment technology introduced was interoperable and that all stakeholders across the spectrum were involved,” said Monehin.

In 2013, MasterCard has partnered with various companies and banks including the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and Etisalat to launch a mobile banking system which allows Egyptian subscribers to visit any of the NBE or Etisalat locations for its banking options without an account. They can exchange physical cash for credits transferred to the subscribers’ mobile phone app where they can transfer funds and even withdraw cash. According to The National, based in the United Arab Emirates who reported in 2015 that the mobile phone can advance “cashless” payments:

Despite more than half of the population being without access to any form of traditional banking, nearly 98 per cent of Egyptians have a mobile phone – a ripe climate for mobile banking. This has resulted in various payment methods being offered.

“The mobile phone has emerged as an extremely effective tool to drive financial inclusion and advance cashless transactions in Egypt,” says Raghu Malhotra, the division president of the Mena region for MasterCard. For nearly two years, MasterCard has been reaching out to local vendors and the Egyptian government to incorporate cashless payments through mobiles

The call for banning cash across the globe will accelerate as major banking institutions continue to impose “negative interest rates” on depositors.  Zero Hedge has been reporting extensively on the issue and has published several articles, most recently ‘This Is the Real Reason for the War on Cash’ which explains the purpose of “negative interest rates”:

Negative rates are a tax on deposits with banks, with the goal of prodding depositors to remove their cash and spend it to increase economic demand. But that goal will be undermined if citizens hoard cash. And hoarding cash is easier if you can take your deposits out in large-denomination bills you can stick in a safe. It’s harder to keep cash if you can only hold small bills.

Negative interest rate means a tax on deposits for the banks. According to the political and banking establishments, people can easily spend smaller denomination bills which can add a boost to the economy rather than the use of large denomination bills (500 euro notes or $100 bills) which can easily be stored outside of the bank. If cash is withdrawn in larger denomination bills, it becomes easier to store under your mattress or a safety deposit box.

Governments and banks want to force individuals and businesses to convert currencies into bank deposits to create a tax base and allow them to track peoples spending habits. What would be the consequences of such actions enforced by the political and banking establishment? Zero Hedge published an in-depth article titled ‘What a Cashless Society Would Look Like’ and made a few important points to consider on the unintended consequences of a cashless society. One important point to consider is the following:

The government loses an important alternative to pay for its debts, namely by printing true-to-the-letter paper money. This is why Greece may have to leave the euro, since its inability or unwillingness to adopt more austerity measures, a precondition to secure more euro loans, will force it to print drachma bills to pay for its debts

Another point Zero Hedge makes concerning the administrative hassle “of handling millions of very small cash transactions and related customer queries” and “Of course enforcing a government mandate to ban cash transactions must carry penalties. This in turns means more regulations, disclosure requirements and compliance costs, potentially exorbitant fees and even jail time”. But one very important factor Zero Hedge makes clear is the following:

Banning cash transactions might even propel the demise of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The share of US dollar bills held abroad has been estimated to be as high as 70% (according to a 1996 report by the US Federal Reserve). One thing is to limit the choices of your own citizens; another is trying to force this policy onto others, which is much harder. Foreigners would probably dump US dollar bills in a hurry and flock to whichever paper currency that can offer comparable liquidity

People will move to other paper currencies including the Russian Ruble and the Chinese Yuan which eventually can be backed by gold.  The article makes clear that “replacing the US in offshore cash transactions would create substantial demand for the Chinese yuan, at that stage without any real competition from other major economies as presumably none would be using paper.” One last important factor to consider is that “The guys and gals who generate real wealth and employment need encouragement and support, not more penalties on how they choose to go about their business.”

Money Metals Exchange published an interview with economist Marc Faber, who is also the publisher of the ‘Gloom, Boom and Doom Report’ titled ‘Marc Faber on Cashless Society Insanity and Why Wall Street Hates Gold.’ Here is part of the interview:

Mike Gleason: Furthering the point there, let’s talk about the war on cash for a moment. We have negative interest rates coming into the picture, as you just mentioned, with our own Fed telling U.S. banks to start thinking about how they would handle negative rates. Meanwhile, we’re seeing people who want to deal in cash, withdraw their cash, even deposit cash, getting hassled in various ways. Why do you personally think that cash and cash holders are increasingly disfavored by the financial establishment?

Marc Faber: Well, it’s clear to me. If you look at the world over the last 100 years, you have a group of people that want to have more and more control over you and me. They want to know where you are, what you do, what you’re looking at. Basically, we’re moving into an Orwellian society where they can check everything. And cash will still be one of the means where you could go somewhere and buy something and nobody would really know about it. Now they want to abolish it. Of course, if you have negative interest rates, you want to essentially prevent people from hoarding bank notes in their safes at no cost. So you want to deprive them of that privilege, of that freedom, so you introduce a cashless society. In my opinion, it will not work, and let me explain to you why.

Let’s say you and I live in a small town of a thousand people and suddenly the government says, “No more cash.” Say, I’m the baker and you’re the butcher, and a friend of ours is the pharmacist. We can then barter among each other and effect the balances every month or every 3 months and so forth.  Then, some kind of paper money comes back up. These are vouchers. So the war on cash would have the exact opposite effect. You will have a voucher system in every small city, and even in big cities, some smart people will develop the voucher system. So instead of having just one currency, paper currency, you’ll have hundreds of paper currencies. Number two; if they want to really launch a cashless society, they would have to take your gold away. That, in some countries, will simply not fly. In other countries, a cashless society is simply not practical because 80% of the population doesn’t have a bank account and doesn’t have cash to start with. So in my view, this cashless business is going to fail very badly. The argument is, of course, “Oh, we want to move into a cashless society because we want to prevent criminality.” This is all nonsense. They want to move into cashless society so they can control you.

So will small and even big cities and communities resort to alternative communities? Can it happen? There are a few examples that are currently taking place around the world. In 2011, The Guardian published an interesting article titled ‘Local currencies the German way: the chiemgauer’ explaining how a local currency in Germany is taking hold:

The chiemgauer has managed to bring on board local co-operative banks and credit organisations, and it’s even possible to pay in chiemgauer using a debit card, run by Regios, an association of co-operative banks.

What makes the chiemgauer different to conventional currency is that it automatically loses value if you don’t spend it. Unlike traditional money that can be saved, the chiemgauer is only valid for three months – the idea being that it must be spent, thereby boosting the local economy. If the notes aren’t spent, they can be renewed by buying a stamp that costs 2% of the note’s face value – so over a year, the currency depreciates 8%. Notes can be renewed up to seven times

The article interviewed a local by the name of Angela Hamberger:

That might sound off-putting, but users are happy with the system. Angela Hamberger from the small town of Trostberg, explains how it works: “You can use the chiemgauer in all sorts of shops – from the hairdresser’s to the baker’s. You just have to register in the scheme and go to a participating bank to change your euro into chiemgauer. It’s worth it to support the community.” When registering, users nominate one of 230 local charities and organisations to receive 3% of their chiemgauer transactions. And the depreciation? “Ah, I only paid that once, and what’s 2% after all?” she says

Here is a video by RT News which reports on a Washington D.C. based local currency which is also used in the suburbs of Northern Virginia and Maryland called “Potomacs”:

There is another interesting concept based in Ithaca, New York. The Ithaca HOUR is considered a $10.00 bill because $10 per hour is the average wage one can earn. The HOUR notes comes in five denominations which can buy a variety of goods and services including carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, nursing, child care, car repairs, food, firewood, gifts, etc. According to their website www.ithacahours.com “while dollars make us increasingly dependent on transnational corporations and bankers, HOURS reinforce community trading and expand commerce which is more accountable to our concerns for ecology and social justice.” Ithaca HOUR even has a credit union that “accepts them for mortgage and loan fees. People pay rent with HOURS.”

There is also the idea of the TEM, an alternative currency in the created through a grass-roots movement in the Greek Port City of Volos during the start of the Greek debt crisis. The TEM is based on an exchange system that gives credit to those who offer goods and services. One TEM is equal to one Euro.

Marc Faber makes a valid point when he said that a completely cashless society will “fail very badly” because we as human beings always find ways to resist any form of tyranny including financial tyranny and that is what Western governments fear. Maintaining “Full Spectrum Dominance” through financial control is one aspect and that is absolutely essential to have complete power over society. A cashless society will be a disaster on many levels especially for the Western banking elites.

An analysis of Federal Election Commission records, by TIME, which was published on 23 October 2015, showed that the 2012 donors to Romney’s campaign were already donating more to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign than they had been donating to any one of the 2016 campaigns of — listed here in declining order below  Clinton — Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, or Jim Gilmore. Those major Romney donors also gave a little to two Democrats (other than to Hillary — who, as mentioned, received a lot of donations from these Republican donors): Martin O’Malley, Jim Web, and Lawrence Lessig. (Romney’s donors gave nothing to Bernie Sanders, and nothing to Elizabeth Warren. They don’t want either of those people to become President.)

Clinton is the only Democratic candidate who is even moderately attractive to big Republican donors.

In ascending order above  Clinton, Romney’s donors were donating to: John Kasich, Scott Walker, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush. The top trio — of Bush, Cruz, and Rubio — together, received around 60% of all the money donated for the 2016 race by the people who had funded Mitt Romney’s 2012 drive for the White House.

 

So: the Democrat Hillary Clinton scored above 14 candidates, and below 6 candidates. She was below 6 Republican candidates, and she was above 11 Republican candidates (Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore). The 6 candidates she scored below were: Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, and John Kasich.

This means that, in the entire 17-candidate Republican  field, she drew more Republican money than did any one of 11 of the Republican candidates, but less Republican money than did any one of 6 of them. So, if she were a Republican (in what would then have been an 18-candidate Republican field for 2016), she would have been the 7th-from-the-top recipient of Romney-donor money.

Therefore, to Republican donors, Hillary Clinton is a more attractive prospect for the U.S. Presidency than was 64% of the then-current  17-member Republican field of candidates.

Another way to view this is that, to Republican donors, a President Hillary Clinton was approximately as attractive a Presidential prospect to lead the nation as was a President Graham, or a President Kasich — and was a more attractive prospective President than a President Lindsey Graham, a President Rand Paul, a President Carly Fiorina, a President Chris Christie, a President Rick Perry, a President Mike Huckabee, a President Donald Trump, a President Bobby Jindal, a President Rick Santorum, or a President George Pataki.

To judge from Clinton’s actual record of policy-decisions, and excluding any consideration of her current campaign-rhetoric (which is directed only at Democratic voters), all three of those candidates who were in Clinton’s Republican-donor league — Graham, Clinton, and Kasich — would, indeed, be quite similar, from the perceived self-interest standpoint of the major Republican donors.

As to whether any one of those three candidates as President would be substantially worse for Republican donors than would any one of the Republican big-three — Bush, Cruz, and Rubio — a person can only speculate.

However, the main difference between Clinton and the Republican candidates is certainly the rhetoric, not  the reality. The reason for that Democratic rhetoric is that Ms. Clinton is competing right now only  for Democratic votes, while each one of the Republican candidates is competing right now only  for Republican votes.

Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric is liberal, but her actual actions in politics have been conservative, except for her nominal support for liberal initiatives that attracted even some Republican support, or else that the Senate vote-counts (at the time when she was in the Senate) indicated in-advance had no real chance of becoming passed into law. In other words: her record was one of rhetoric and pretense on a great many issues, and of meaningful action on only issues that wouldn’t embarrass her in a Democratic primary campaign, to attract Democratic voters.

In terms of her actual record in U.S. public office, it’s indistinguishable from that of Republican politicians in terms of corruption, and it’s indistinguishable from Republican politicians in terms of the policies that she carried out as the U.S. Secretary of State for four years. Her record shows her to be clearly a Republican on both matters (notwithstanding that her rhetoric has been to the exact contrary on both matters).

In a general-election contest against the Republican nominee, Clinton would move more toward the ideological center, and so also would any one of the Republican candidates, who would be nominated by Republican primaries and so running against her in the general election, to draw votes from the center as well as from the right. The rhetorical contest would be between a center-right Clinton and a slightly farther-right Republican; but, at present, the rhetorical contest is starkly  different on the Democratic side than it is on the Republican side, simply because the candidates are trying right now to appeal to their own Party’s electorate (Democrats=left; Republicans=right) during the primary phase of the campaign, not addressing themselves now to the entire electorate (as during the general-election campaign).

Only in the general-election contest do all of the major candidates’ rhetoric tend more toward the center. The strategic challenge in the general election is to retain enough appeal to the given nominee’s Party-base so as to draw them to the polls on Election Day, while, at the same time, being close enough to the political center so as to attract independent voters and crossover voters from the other side.

A good example of the fudging that typically occurs during the general-election phase would be the 2012 contest itself. Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney drew closer to the rhetorical center during the general-election matchup; but they were actually much more similar to each other than their rhetoric ever  was. (After all, Obamacare is patterned upon Romneycare.) During the general-election Romney-Obama contest, Romney famously said that Russia “is without question our number one geopolitical foe, they fight for every cause for the world’s worst actors.”

Then, Obama criticized that statement, by saying, “you don’t call Russia our No. 1 enemy — not Al-Qaida, Russia — unless you’re still stuck in a Cold War mind warp.” But, now, as President, Obama’s own National Security Strategy 2015  refers to Russia on 17 of the 18 occasions where it employs the term “aggression,” and he doesn’t refer even once to Saudi Arabia that way, even though the Saudi royal family (who control that country) have been the major funders of Al Qaeda, and though 15 of the 19 perpetrators on 9/11 were Saudis — none of them was Russian — and though 92% of the citizenry in the nation that the Saud family owns and whose ‘news’ media and clerics drum into those people’s heads the holiness of jihad, approve of ISIS (which the Saud family prohibit inside Saudi Arabiua even while supporting and funding the jihadists in Syria and elsewhere), and though the Sauds as the country’s leaders are using American weapons and training to bomb and starve-to-death Yemenis.

Instead of calling the Saudi regime “aggressors,” we supply arms to them, and cooperate with them against their major oil-competitor, Russia. (For example, we arm the Saudi-funded jihadists that Russia is bombing in Syria, because Syria is a key potential pipeline route into Europe for Saudi oil and Qatari gas, to replace Russian oil and gas in Europe. So, we support the jihadists, even though Obama’s rhetoric opposes them — and even though Obama killed Osama bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda was funded mainly by the Saud family and their friends. Hillary Clinton is even more hawkish against Russia than is Obama. She would be even better for Republican donors than Obama has been.)

Also regarding such fudging: on 27 March 2009, President Obama in secret told the assembled chieftains of Wall Street, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks. … I’m protecting you.”

Romney could have said the same, if he had been elected. And President Obama’s record has now made clear that he indeed has fulfilled on that promise he made secretly to them. The reality turned out to be far more like Romney, than like Obama’s campaign rhetoric had ever been. Similarly, on Obama’s trade-deals (TPP, TTIP, and TISA), he has been very much what would have been expected from Romney, though Obama in the 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries had campaigned against Hillary Clinton for her having supported and helped to pass NAFTA. Obama’s trade-deals go even beyond NAFTA, to benefit international mega-corporations, at the general public’s expense.

What Hillary’s fairly strong appeal to Romney’s financial backers shows is that the wealthy, because of their access to leaders in government, know and recognize the difference between what a candidate says in public, versus what the winning public official has said to them (in private) and actually does  while serving in office. They know that she keeps her promises to them, not  her promises to the electorate.

Hillary Clinton is a good investment for a billionaire — even  for the 70% of them who are Republicans. And, based on those 2015 donation-figures, it seems that they would prefer a President Hillary Clinton, over a President Donald Trump. However, their three favorite candidates, in order, were: Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. But, in a Clinton-versus-Trump contest, Hillary Clinton would likely draw more money from Republican mega-donors than Trump would, and, of course, she would draw virtually all of the money from Democratic mega-donors. In such an instance, Hillary Clinton would probably draw a larger campaign-chest (especially considering super-pacs) than any candidate for any political office in U.S. (or global) history. Hillary Clinton would almost certainly be the most-heavily-marketed political product in history, if she becomes nominated and ends up running against Trump.

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.

In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis discusses the launch of his new ‘Democracy in Europe’ movement (DiEM25), the UK’s upcoming referendum on EU membership, and why a surge of democracy is needed to prevent the EU from sliding toward disintegration.

You have just launched a new political movement, DiEM25, which has the aim of democratising Europe. Your manifesto states that ‘the EU will either be democratised or it will disintegrate’ and calls for a constitutional assembly to be convened to decide on a future democratic constitution that will replace all existing European treaties within a decade. Why does Europe need DiEM25?

For a very simple reason. In 20 years’ time, if we don’t do something like what we’re proposing, the next generation will look us in the eye and say, where were you? Why didn’t you stop this slide into the abyss? In exactly the same way that in the 1950s young people asked their parents’ generation why they didn’t stop what was going on in the 1930s: a period that culminated in such a catastrophe in the shape of the Second World War.

We are now in a similar situation. We’re witnessing the disintegration of the European Union. Schengen is being suspended. The Eurozone is in an advanced state of deconstruction. Eastern European governments are openly stating their opposition to the principle of solidarity. The British electorate has become alienated from Brussels and might only vote to stay in out of fear of what would happen if it left. The only thing that can put an end to this inexorable slide toward catastrophe is a surge of democracy that gives hope and stabilises Europe.

What would you say to those who might argue that Europe has tried to establish a democratic constitution before and it essentially ended in disaster?

Of course the constitutional treaty was a disaster. A failed President of France took it upon himself to write a charter of the rights of capital. This is not how you write a constitution. All proper constitutions, like the constitution of the United States, are concerned with the rights of men and women.

What we need is to have a constitutional assembly, where the peoples of Europe are empowered through their representatives to author this document. Otherwise we’re going to end up with another kind of debacle. But in order to get to that point we first need to stabilise Europe. The Europe of today is not in the position that it was in ten years ago. It’s in a slide toward disintegration and we need to stabilise it.

We need to do this through transparency and a rational reconfiguration of policies within the next one or two years – this is all the time we have left in my estimation. And once we do that we will see to the constitutional assembly. This is what DiEM25 stands for.

Following David Cameron’s renegotiation, the UK has set the date for its referendum on EU membership as the 23^rd of June. How should British voters who are dissatisfied with the EU view the referendum?

We should reject wholeheartedly the fudge that David Cameron came back from Brussels with. He is asking the public to support staying within a reformed Europe, but he has deformed Europe in the process of creating this fudge.

Yet at the same time we should also reject the Eurosceptic view that Britain should leave the EU, but stay within the single market. I have a lot of respect for Tory Eurosceptics with a Burkean view of the sovereignty of national parliaments. The problem is that they also support staying in the single market. This is an incoherent proposition: it’s impossible to stay in the single market and keep your sovereignty.

Neither withdrawing into the safe cocoon of the nation state, nor giving in to the disintegrating and anti-democratic EU, represent good options for Britain. So instead of seeing the referendum as a vote between these two options, and these two options alone, the UK needs a third option: to vote to stay in the European Union so that it can fight tooth and nail against the EU’s anti-democratic institutions.

Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist and the former finance minister of Greece

Many commentators have mentioned (such as here and here and here and here) that Hillary Clinton left behind no major achievement as U.S. Secretary of State; but, actually, she did. Unfortunately, all of her major achievements were bad, and some were catastrophic. Six countries were especially involved: Honduras, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. The harm she did to each country was not in the interest of the American people, and it was disastrous for the residents there.

Hillary Clinton at every campaign debate says “I have a better track-record,” and that she’s “a progressive who gets things done.” Here’s what she has actually done, when she was Secretary of State; here’s her track-record when she actually had executive responsibility for U.S. foreign-affairs. This will display her real values, not just her claimed values:

SUMMARY OF THE CASE TO BE PRESENTED

The central-American nation of Honduras is ruled today by an extremist far-right government, a fascist junta-imposed government, because of what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did in 2009. The lives of all but the top 0.001% of the population there are hell because of this.

The matter in Haiti was similar but less dramatic, and so it received even less attention from the U.S. Press.

Furthermore, under Secretary of State Clinton, failures at the U.S. Department of State also caused the basis for a hatred of the United States to soar in Afghanistan after the U.S. has drawn down its troops there. This failure, too, has received little coverage in the U.S. press, but our nation will be paying heavily for it long-term.

Hillary Clinton was the Administration’s leading proponent of regime-change, overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. That worked out disastrously.

Clinton was also the Secretary of State when the 2006-2010 drought was causing massive relocations of population in Syria and U.S. State Department cables passed along up the chain of command the Assad government’s urgent request for aid from foreign governments to help farmers stave off starvation. The Clinton State Department ignored the requests and treated this as an opportunity to foment revolution there. It wasn’t only the Arab Spring, in Syria, that led to the demonstrations against Assad there. Sunni jihadist fighters streamed into Syria, backed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. The U.S. was, in effect, assisting jihadists to oust the non-sectarian, secular Shiite leader of Syria and replace him with a fundamentalist Sunni dictator.

The groundwork for a coup d’etat in Ukraine was laid by Hillary Clinton, when she made her State Department’s official spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who had been the chief foreign-affairs advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Nuland then became the organizer of the 20 February 2014 coup in Ukraine, which replaced a neutralist leader of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, with a rabidly anti-Russian U.S. puppet, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and a bloody civil war. Nuland is obsessed with hatred of Russia.

On top of all that, Hillary Clinton is incredibly corrupt. And she treats subordinates like trash.

No well-informed Democrat will vote for her in the Democratic Party primaries. Here is what voters in the Democratic primaries need to know before they vote:

HONDURAS

On 28 June 2009, the Honduran military grabbed their nation’s popular democratically elected progressive President, Manuel Zelaya, and flew him into exile.

The AP headlined from Tegucigalpa the next day, “World Leaders Pressure Honduras to Reverse Coup,” and reported: “Leaders from Hugo Chavez to Barack Obama called for reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested in his pajamas Sunday morning by soldiers who stormed his residence and flew him into exile.”

Secretary Clinton, in the press conference the day after the coup, “Remarks at the Top of the Daily Press Briefing”, refused to commit the United States to restoration of the democratically elected President of Honduras. She refused even to commit the U.S. to using the enormous leverage it had over the Honduran Government to bring that about. Here was the relevant Q&A:

Mary Beth Sheridan. QUESTION: Madam Secretary, sorry, if I could just return for a second to Honduras, just to clarify Arshad’s point – so, I mean, the U.S. provides aid both under the Foreign Assistance Act and the Millennium challenge. So even though there are triggers in those; that countries have to behave – not have coups, you’re not going to cut off that aid?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Mary Beth, we’re assessing what the final outcome of these actions will be. This has been a fast-moving set of circumstances over the last several days, and we’re looking at that question now. Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome. So we’re looking at all of this. We’re considering the implications of it. But our priority is to try to work with our partners in restoring the constitutional order in Honduras.

QUESTION: And does that mean returning Zelaya himself? You would insist on that in order to –

SECRETARY CLINTON: We are working with our partners.

She refused to answer the question, even though Zelaya had been an ally of the U.S., a progressive democrat. (Though Republicans decried Zelaya for pushing land-reform, the fact is that Honduras is virtually owned by two dozen families, and drastically needs to drag itself out of its feudal system. Doing that isn’t anti-American; it’s pro-American. It’s what Zelaya was trying to do, peacefully and democratically.

Our nation’s Founders fought a Revolution to overthrow feudalism – British – in our own country. Hillary was thus being anti-American, not just anti-democratic, here.) This is stunning. The U.S had even been outright bombed by fascists, on the “day that will live in infamy,” December 7, 1941; and, then, we spilled lots of blood to beat those fascists in WWII. What was that war all about, if not about opposing fascism and fascists, and standing up for democracy and democrats? A peaceful democratic U.S. ally had now been overthrown by a fascist coup in Honduras, and yet Hillary Clinton’s response was – noncommittal?

The coup government made no bones about its being anti-democratic. On July 4th of 2009, Al Giordano at Narcosphere Narconews bannered “Honduras Coup Chooses Path of Rogue Narco-State,” and he reported that,

“Last night, around 10 p.m. Tegucigalpa time, CNN Español interrupted its sports news programming for a live press conference announcement (‘no questions, please’) by coup ‘president’ Micheletti. There, he announced that his coup ‘government’ of Honduras is withdrawing from the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States. … The Honduras coup’s behavior virtually assures that come Monday, the US government will define it as a ‘military coup,’ triggering a cut-off of US aid, joining the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, PetroCaribe, the UN and the rest of the world in withdrawing economic support for the coup regime.”

But that didn’t happen. The U.S. just remained silent. Why was our Secretary of State silent, even now?

It certainly couldn’t have been so on account of her agent on the ground in Honduras, the U.S. Ambassador to that country: he was anything but noncommittal. He was fully American, not at all neutral or pro-fascist.

Here was his cable from the U.S. Embassy, reviewing the situation, for Washington, after almost a month’s silence from the Administration:

From: Ambassador Hugo Llorens, U.S. Embassy, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 24 July 2009.

To: Secretary of State, White House, and National Security Council.

“SUBJECT: TFHO1: OPEN AND SHUT: THE CASE OF THE HONDURAN COUP”

This lengthy message from the Ambassador closed:

The actions of June 28 can only be considered a coup d’etat by the legislative branch, with the support of the judicial branch and the military, against the executive branch. It bears mentioning that, whereas the resolution adopted June 28 refers only to Zelaya, its effect was to remove the entire executive branch. Both of these actions clearly exceeded Congress’s authority. … No matter what the merits of the case against Zelaya, his forced removal by the military was clearly illegal, and [puppett-leader Roberto] Micheletti’s ascendance as ‘interim president’ was totally illegitimate.

On the same day when the Ambassador sent that cable, AFP headlined “Zelaya ‘Reckless’ to Return to Honduras: Clinton,” and reported that our Secretary of State criticized Zelaya that day for trying to get back into his own country. “‘President Zelaya’s effort to reach the border is reckless,’ Clinton said during a press conference with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. … Washington supports ‘a negotiated peaceful solution to the Honduran crisis,’ Clinton said.” It wasn’t “the Honduran coup” – she wouldn’t call it a “coup” – it was “the Honduran crisis”; so, she accepted the junta’s framing of the issue, not the framing of it by Zelaya and everyone other than the fascists. She wanted “a negotiated peaceful solution” to the forced removal at gunpoint of Honduras’s popular democratically elected President. Furthermore, Hillary’s statement here was undiplomatic: if she had advice for what the elected President of Honduras ought to be doing, that ought to have been communicated to him privately, not publicly, and said to him by suggesting what he ought to do, not by insulting what he already was doing, publicly calling it “reckless.” Such a statement from her was clearly not meant as advice to help Zelaya; it was meant to – and did – humiliate him; and diplomats around the world could see this. Manifestly now, Hillary Clinton supported the fascists. However, her boss, the U.S. President, stayed silent.

During the crucial next two weeks, Obama considered what to do. Then, on 6 August 2009, McClatchy newspapers bannered “U.S. Drops Call to Restore Ousted Honduran Leader,” and Tyler Bridges reported that Zelaya wouldn’t receive U.S. backing in his bid to be restored to power. Though all international organizations called the Honduran coup illegitimate, and refused to recognize the leader chosen by its junta, the Obama Administration, after more than a month of indecision on this matter, finally came out for Honduras’s fascists. According to James Rosen of McClatchy Newspapers three days later, the far-right Republican U.S. Senator Jim DeMint had “placed a hold on two nominees to senior State Department posts to protest Obama’s pushing for ousted Honduran President Manuel Zalaya’s return to power, which the administration backed away from last week.” Obama, after a month of silence, caved silently. Instead of his using the bully pulpit to smear the fascist DeMint publicly with his fascism, Obama just joined him in it, silently. Why?

Perhaps it was because the chief lobbyist hired in the U.S. by the Honduran aristocracy (whose thugs had installed this new Honduran government), was Hillary’s old friend, Lanny Davis. As slate.com had said on 27 August 2008, headlining “A Day in the Life of Hillary’s Biggest Fan”: “When it comes to defending Hillary Clinton, Lanny Davis has no rival.” He was the fascists’ fixer, inside the Obama Administration. On 9 July 2009, The Hillbannered “Hondurans Lobby Against Deposed Leader,” and reported that Honduras’s equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which was controlled by those two-dozen families) had hired “Lanny Davis, the former special counsel to President Bill Clinton,” and that, “The lobbying blitz began [6 July] Monday, one day before Zelaya met with Clinton as part of his push to be reinstated.” Lanny Davis had had his input to Hillary even before President Zelaya did. Moreover, The Hill reported that, “17 Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) [and DeMint] wrote Secretary Clinton and asked her to meet with officials from the interim government of Honduras.” America’s Republican leadership were immediately and strongly supporting Honduras’s fascists. This Republican Senators’ letter attacked “the rush to label the events of June 28th a coup d’etat,” and said that it instead reflected “‘the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders.’ In a 125-3 vote, the Honduran Congress approved of the actions taken to remove Mr. Zelaya from office and install Mr. Micheletti.” (The article “2009 Honduran coup d’état” at wikipedia says that after the military seized the President on June 28th, “Later that day, the Honduran Congress, in an extraordinary session, voted to remove Zelaya from office, after reading a false resignation letter attributed to President Zelaya.” A link to the forged letter was provided. To Republicans, that is how democracy is supposed to operate, not a “coup.” Just masked men with machine guns, and then forged documents and well-connected foreign lobbyists.)

So, the Honduran aristocracy (mainly the Facussé, Ferrari, Canahuati, Atala, Lamas, Nasser, Kattan, Lippman, and Flores, clans) had purchased a line straight to the U.S. Secretary of State, via Mr. Davis. And Obama caved. On 13 August 2009, Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research headlined a Sacramento Bee op-ed “Obama Tacitly Backs Military’s Takeover of Honduran Democracy” and he reported that the Administration’s recent “statements were widely publicized in the Honduran media and helped to bolster the dictatorship. Perhaps more ominously, the Obama administration has not said one word about the atrocities and human rights abuses perpetrated by the coup government. Political activists have been murdered, independent TV and radio stations have been shut down, journalists have been detained and intimidated, and hundreds of people arrested.” There was now, again as under Bush, widespread revulsion against the U.S. throughout Latin America. Also on the 13th, Dick Emanuelson, at the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, headlined “Military Forces Sow Terror and Fear in Honduras,” and he described in Honduras a situation very much like that which had occurred in Argentina when the generals there took over in 1976 and rounded up and “disappeared” leaders who constituted a threat to the aristocracy’s continued rule in that country.

The U.S. was now the only power sustaining the Honduran junta’s government. Hillary had said “We are working with our partners,” but she lied. It turned out that the U.S. was instead working against “our partners” – against virtually all of the world’s democratic nations. Brazil Magazine headlined on August 13th, “Brazil Urges Obama to Tighten the Vise on Honduras to Get Zelaya Back,” and reported that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had urged President Obama to come out publicly for the “immediate and unconditional” restoration of Zelaya to office. It didn’t happen, however; and on Friday, August 21st, Mark Weisbrot thus bannered in Britain’sGuardian, “Obama’s Deafening Silence on Honduras: Seven weeks after the coup in Honduras, the US is hindering efforts to restore President Manuel Zelaya to power.” Weisbrot documented lies from the Obama Administration regarding the coup; and he noted, “The one thing we can be pretty sure of is that no major US media outlet will look further into this matter.” He was assuming that the U.S. had a controlled press, and it seems that he was correct, except for the McClatchy Newspaper chain, which courageously reported on the Honduran horrors.

Obama was lying – not even acknowledging that the coup was a coup – even though (as Weisbrot pointed out) “on Wednesday, Amnesty International issued a report documenting widespread police beatings and brutality against peaceful demonstrations, mass arbitrary arrests and other human rights abuses under the dictatorship. The Obama administration has remained silent about these abuses — as well as the killings of activists and press censorship and intimidation. To date, no major [U.S.] media outlet has bothered to pursue them.” America’s aristocracy were clearly supporting Honduras’s.

Nearly a hundred scholars signed a public letter saying that if only the U.S. were to come out clearly against the coup, “the coup could easily be overturned,” because only the U.S. was keeping the coup regime in power (via banking and other crucial cooperation with the coup government). The U.S. was key, and it chose to turn the lock on the Honduran prison, and leave its victims to be murdered.

During the following months, as the shamefulness of America’s position on this became increasingly untenable, Obama seemed to be gradually tilting back away from the coup in Honduras. However, Senator DeMint and some other Republicans travelled to Honduras and spoke publicly there against the U.S. Government, and endorsed the coup-installed Honduran leadership. DeMint headlined in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, on 10 October 2009, “What I Heard in Honduras,” and he wrote:

“In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military ‘coup’ that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it created. After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders, … I can report there is no chaos there. … As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.”

All governments in the hemisphere except the U.S. labeled the coup a “coup,” but DeMint and other top Republicans such as Mitch McConnell simply denied that it was. DeMint received ovations in Washington, at the far-right Heritage Foundation, which he now heads. This U.S. Senator condemned Zelaya there as “a deposed would-be Marxist dictator,” and he referred to the junta as “friends of freedom.” He condemned Obama by indirection, as being the enemy, who led “an American foreign policy unmoored from our commitment to human rights and human freedom and tied instead to the President’s personal ambition,” perhaps communist. Obama remained silent, in the face of these lies against both Zelaya and himself.

The assertion by Republicans that the coup was not a “coup” was a blatant lie. Everyone worldwide except America’s Republicans referred to it as a “coup.” Furthermore, Ambassador Llorens in Tegucigalpa was constantly speaking with leaders (but only leaders) of business, religious, civic, and other organizations throughout Honduras, and everyone he spoke with stated his position in regards to the “coup.” For example (from the Embassy cables), “Monsignor Juan Jose Pineda, the Auxiliary Bishop of Tegucigalpa … stated that the Church had not taken sides in relation to the coup d’etat,” but “vociferously condemned the poor treatment of the Church by what he believed to be elements of the anti-coup movement.” And the leaders of two conservative political parties “argued that anti-coup protests have not been peaceful.” Only America’s Republicans lied that it hadn’t been a “coup.” Not even Republicans’ friends in Honduras, the fascists there, did. It was a coup. Republicans simply lied, as usual. (This is why Fox “News” has been found in every study to have the most-misinformed audience of any major news medium – they’re being lied to constantly.)

On 5 October 2009, Jason Beaubien of NPR headlined “Rich vs. Poor at Root of Honduran Political Crisis,” and he reported that, though Honduran conservatives were charging that Zelaya secretly intended to make Honduras into a communist dictatorship, the actual situation in Honduras was, as explained by an economics professor there, that “power in Honduras is in the hands of about 100 people from roughly 25 families. Others estimate that Honduran elite to be slightly larger, but still it is a tiny group.” This professor “says the country’s elite have always selected the nation’s president. They initially helped Zelaya get into office, and then they orchestrated his removal” when President Zelaya pressed land- and other- reforms. If communists would ever come to power in Honduras, it will be because of fascists’ intransigence there, not because of progressives’ attempts to end the hammer-lock of the local feudal lords.

Adolf Hitler similarly used a popular fear of communism to persuade conservative fools to vote for himself and for other fascists; but fascists and communists are alike: enemies of democracy. This hasn’t changed. Nor has The Big Lie technique that fascists still use.

Then, on 6 October 2009, The New York Times bannered “Honduran Security Forces Accused of Abuse.” (“Abuse” had also been the term that the Times and other major media employed for torture when George W. Bush did it, but now they applied this euphemism to the outright murders perpetrated by Honduras’s junta.) Such “abuse” was “news” to people inside the United States, but not to the people in other nations around the world, where the horrors in Honduras were widely publicized. Also on October 6th, narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield headlined “Poll: Wide Majority of Hondurans Oppose Coup d’Etat, Want Zelaya Back,” and Al Giordano reported “the first survey to be made public since a July Gallup poll showed a plurality of Hondurans opposed the coup d’etat.” This poll of 1,470 randomly chosen Honduran adults found 17.4% favored the coup, 52.7% opposed it. 33% opposed Zelaya’s return to power; 51.6% favored it. 22.2% wanted the coup-installed leader to stay in power; 60.1% wanted him to be removed. 21.8% said the National Police were not “engaging in repression”; 54.5% said they were repressing. Furthermore, the survey found that “the two national TV and radio stations shut down by the coup regime happen to be the most trusted news sources in the entire country.” Finally, approval ratings were tabulated for the twenty most prominent political figures in the country, and Zelaya and his wife were rated overwhelmingly above all others, as, respectively, #1 and #2, the two most highly respected public figures in Honduran politics.

An American visitor to Honduras posted online photos of the country prior to Zelaya’s Presidency, and he described them: “It took me awhile to get used to the sight of heavily armed guards and policemen everywhere. … Every supermarket we visited had an armed guard, carrying a shotgun, patrolling the parking lot. Most restaurants or fast food establishments we visited, such as Pizza Hut, had an armed guard in the parking lot. … Only 30% of the people have wealth. The other 70% are poor. Being rich in Honduras can be dangerous. That is why most rich people live in walled or fenced compounds. … And they all have armed guards on the grounds.” This is the type of society that Wayne LaPierre and other officials of the NRA describe as the ideal – every man for himself, armed to the teeth. Republicans, like Honduras’s aristocrats, want to keep such a Paradise the way it is; but the vast majority of Hondurans do not – they want progress.

Naturally, therefore, the U.S.’s Republican Party was overwhelmingly opposed to Zelaya, and were thus opposed to the Honduran public, who didn’t like their feudal Paradise. Obama remained remarkably silent on the matter. The Obama Administration brokered a supposed power-sharing deal between Zelaya and the coup government, but it fell apart when Zelaya learned that Obama actually stood with the fascists in letting the coup government oversee the imminent election of Honduras’s next President – which would give the “election” to the fascists’ stooge. On 5 November 2009, the Los Angeles Times headlined an editorial “Obama Must Stand Firm on Honduran Crisis: A U.S.-brokered deal to return Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to office is unraveling, and the Obama administration seems to be wavering.” They closed by saying:

“If the Obama administration chooses to recognize the [winner of the upcoming] election without Zelaya first being reinstated [with powers to participate in overseeing the vote-counting], it will find itself at odds with the rest of Latin America. That would be a setback for democracy and for the United States.”

But it’s exactly what Obama did. On 9 November 2009, McClatchy Newspapers bannered “Honduran Deal Collapses, and Zelaya’s Backers Blame U.S.” Tyler Bridges reported that Senator DeMint now dropped his objections to a key State Department appointment, when the appointee, Thomas Shannon (and also Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself), made clear that the Obama Administration agreed with DeMint. Thus, “Zelaya’s supporters, who’ve been organizing street protests against the [coup-installed] Micheletti regime, are down to their final card: calling on Hondurans to boycott the elections.”

On 12 November 2009, the Washington Post bannered “Honduras Accord Is on Verge of Collapse,” and quoted a spokesperson for U.S. Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying: “The State Department’s abrupt change in policy last week — recognizing the elections scheduled for November 29th even if the coup regime does not meet its commitments under the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord — caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate.” (Let’s hope that Kerry will turn out to be a better Secretary of State than his predecessor was.)

A week later, on November 19th, the Latin American Working Group bannered “Honduras: Things Fall Apart,” and summarized the joint culpability of the Obama Administration, and of the Honduran fascists.

On 29 November 2009, the Heritage Foundation bannered “Heritage in Honduras: ‘I Believe in Democracy’,” and Big Brother propagandized: “Today the Honduran people are voting in an historic election with consequences for the entire region. Heritage’s Izzy Ortega is on the ground as an official election observer speaking with Hondurans practicing their right to vote. Watch his first interview below.” A typical reader-comment posted there was “I want WE THE PEOPLE back in the United States. For once in my life I’am jealous of another country!” Conservatives wanted fascism in the U.S.A. – not only in Honduras. Of course, the aristocracy’s stooge was “elected” in Honduras. (Zelaya wasn’t even a candidate in this “election.” Most democratic countries throughout the world did not recognize the results of this “election.” However, the U.S. did; and so did Israel, Italy, Germany, Japan, Peru, Costa Rica, and Panama.)

By contrast, on the same day, Costa Rico’s Tico Times headlined “Peaceful March Faces ‘Brutal Repression’ in San Pedro Sula” Honduras. Mike Faulk reported that, “About 500 people marching peacefully in the northwestern city of San Pedro Sula were repressed by tear gas and water cannons on Election Day today.” The next day, Agence France Presse headlined “Conservatives Win Honduran Election,” and reported that “Conservative Porfirio Lobo has claimed a solid win. … The United States was quick to underline its support.” Barack Obama was the leading (virtually the only) head-of-state supporting the Honduran fascist transfer of power to their new “elected” Honduran President. The major “news” media in the U.S. deep-sixed what was happening in Honduras, but the Honduran situation was widely reported elsewhere. Typical of the slight coverage that it did receive in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal bannered on November 26th, “Honduras Lurches Toward Crisis Over Election,” and their “reporter,” Jose de Cordoba, opened, “Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s push to rewrite the constitution, and pave the way for his potential re-election, has plunged one of Latin America’s poorest countries into a potentially violent political crisis.” Rupert Murdoch’s rag never reported the gangster-government’s violence.

Moreover, Zelaya had never pushed “to rewrite the constitution”; he had wanted to hold a plebiscite on whether there should be a constitutional convention held to rewrite the nation’s existing Constitution, which everyone but the Honduran aristocracy said contained profound defects that made democracy dysfunctional there. The editors of the former U.S.S.R.’s newspaper Pravda would have chuckled at Murdoch’s “reporting.” By contrast, for example, blog.AFLCIO.org had headlined on 16 November 2009, “Trumka: Free Elections Not Possible Now in Honduras.” The American labor movement was reporting on events in Honduras, but had been defeated by the U.S. aristocracy increasingly since 40 years earlier (Reagan), and therefore no longer constituted a major source of news for the American people. Richard Trumka was the AFL-CIO President, but was by now just a marginal character in the new fascist Amerika.

On 9 January 2010, the Honduras Coup 2009 blog translated from a Honduran newspaper published that day, and headlined “Honduras Is Broke.” Honduras’s Finance Minister, Gabriela Nuñez, was quoted as saying that international aid must keep coming in order for the nation to continue paying its bills, and that avoiding default is “a work from week to week.”

A few months later, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs headlined on 5 March 2010, “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Does Latin America,” and reported that, “While in Buenos Aires, she carelessly stated,

‘The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion … It was done without violence.’ This is being labeled as a misguided statement considering the physical violence including murders, beatings, torture that the coup government used in order to repress the opposition. Many of these tactics are still being used. This diplomatic stumble is expected to draw significant attention to the multiple errors in the U.S. approach.”

Moreover, while there, she was “announcing that the Obama administration will restore aid that had been previously suspended.” The commentator said that this drew attention to “a political decision that once again may have served to isolate the U.S. from much of Latin America.” Furthermore, “While in Costa Rica, … Clinton said the post-coup [Honduran] government … was, in fact, democratically elected,” which made a mockery of the term “democracy.” That election was perhaps even less democratic than the “elections” in Iran have recently been, but it was remarkably similar, with the main difference being that in Honduras the aristocracy controlled the “election,” whereas in Iran the theocracy did. Anyway, Hillary approved.

On 1 May 2010, Britain’s Guardian headlined regarding Honduras, “Cocaine Trade Turns Backwater into Hideout for Brutal Assassins: The Central American nation is on the brink of becoming a fully-fledged narco-state,” and reported that, “Corrupt police and drug gangs are blamed, with the government unable or unwilling to crack down on them.”

The Herald of Tegucigalpa, El Heraldo, headlined on 26 January 2011, “Presidente Asigna Medalla de Honor al Mérito a J. J. Rendón,” and reported that President Porfirio Lobo had decorated with the Order of Merit the master-propagandist who had deceived enough Honduran voters to “elect” Lobo (with the assistance of vote-rigging and terror). That was the same “John Rendon” (or actually Juan José Rendón) who had been hired by the George W. Bush Administration to deceive the American public into invading Iraq in 2003. This time, he was working for Barack Obama, instead of for George W. Bush, but it was fascism just the same.

Without Obama, Honduras’s fascists would have been defeated. Obama’s refusal to employ either his financial and banking power or his bully pulpit, and Hillary’s outright support of the fascist junta, together sealed the deaths of many thousands of Hondurans. The U.S. thus, single-handedly among all nations, kept Honduras’s newly-installed fascist regime in power. A U.S. professor who specialized in Honduras, Orlando Perez, said that Obama did this probably because he concluded “that Honduras’ political, military and economic elite wouldn’t accept Zelaya’s return”; in other words, that Obama wanted to serve Honduras’s aristocracy, regardless of the Honduran public, and even regardless of the increased contempt that Latin Americans would inevitably feel toward the U.S. from this matter.

The results for Hondurans were hellish. On 11 April 2011, McClatchy Newspapers bannered “Honduran Police Ignore Rise in Attacks on Journalists, Gays,” and reported that within just those almost-two years, Honduras had become “the deadliest country in the hemisphere,” because of the soaring crime-rate, especially against homosexuals and against journalists. The new fascist government tacitly “sends a message to the criminals, the paramilitaries and the hit men that they can do as they please.” Hondurans were by then five times likelier to be murdered than Mexicans were. Honduras’s aristocrats, however, were safe, because they hired their own private security forces, and also because the government’s security-apparatus was controlled by the aristocracy. Only the public were unprotected.

Fox “News” Latina bannered, on 7 October 2011, “Honduras Led World in Homicides in 2010,” and (since Rupert Murdoch’s Fox is a Republican front) pretended that this had happened because Latin America was violent – not because Fox’s Republican friends had had their way in policy on Honduras, and had thus caused the Honduran murder-rate to soar. (During the latest year, whereas homicides had declined in all of the other high-homicide nations, homicides had skyrocketed 22% in Honduras – and that’s why Honduras now led the world in homicides, but Fox “News” didn’t mention any of these facts.)

The actual problem was that the U.S. had a Republican government under nominal “Democratic” leadership, both at the White House and at the State Department (not to mention at Treasury, Justice, and Education). Obama not only gave Rupert Murdoch a nice foil to gin-up his hate-machine; he also gave Murdoch the most politically gifted Republican in the country: Obama, a Republican in “Democratic” clothing. It certainly was so with regard to Honduran policy, in which Obama seemed to be following Hillary Clinton’s lead to the right.

On 21 October 2011, the Nation bannered “Wikileaks Honduras: US Linked to Brutal Businessman,” and Dana Frank reported that, “Miguel Facussé Barjum, in the embassy’s words, is ‘the wealthiest, most powerful businessman in the country,’ one of the country’s ‘political heavyweights.’”

He owned a 22,000-acre palm-oil plantation, including lots of vacant land that thousands of peasants or “campesinos” wanted to farm and make their homes. “The campesinos’ efforts have been met with swift and brutal retaliation,” hired killers – a cost of doing business (like exterminators). Furthermore, wikileaks cables from during George W. Bush’s Presidency indicated that

“a known drug trafficking flight with a 1,000 kilo cocaine shipment from Colombia … successfully landed … on the private property of Miguel Facusse. … Its cargo was off-loaded onto a convoy of vehicles that was guarded by about 30 heavily armed men.”

The plane was burned and bulldozed into the ground, and the U.S. Ambassador said that this probably couldn’t have happened without Facussé’s participation. But now, the U.S. was actually on the side of such people. Not only was the U.S. continuing as before in Honduras, but “The US has allocated $45 million in new funds for military construction,” including expansion of the U.S. air base that had participated in the 2009 coup. Other wikileaks cables indicated that someone from the U.S. Embassy met with Facussé on 7 September 2009. Furthermore, “A new US ambassador, Lisa Kubiske, arrived in Honduras this August. She is an expert on biofuels – the center of Miguel Facussé’s African palm empire.”

Moreover, on 13 August 2009, hondurascoup2009.blogspot had headlined “Get to Know the 10 Families that Financed the Coup,”and cited a study by Leticia Salomón of the Autonomous University of Honduras, which said that, “A fundamental person in the conspiracy was the magnate Miguel Facussé, decorated by the Colombian Senate in 2004 with the Orden Mérito a la Democracia, and who today monopolizes the business of palm oil and in 1992 supported the purchase of land from campesinos at less than 10% of its actual value.”

Furthermore, the coup “was planned by a business group lead [led] by Carlos Flores Facussé, ex-president of Honduras (1998-2002) and owner of the newspaper La Tribuna, which together with La Prensa, El Heraldo, TV channels 2, 3, 5 and 9 were the fundamental pillar of the coup.” Moreover, on 10 February 2010, the Honduras Culture and Politics blog headlined “Mario Canahuati Goes to Washington,” and reported that Honduras’s new Foreign Minister, Mario, was related to Jorge Canahuati, “owner of La Prensa and El Heraldo,” and also to Jesus Canahuati, who was the VP of the Honduran chamber-of-commerce organization that hired Lanny Davis. Meanwhile, Mario’s father, Juan Canahuati, owned textile factories that assembled clothing for major U.S. labels, and which would thus benefit greatly from the fascists’ roll-back of Zelaya’s increase in the minimum wage. (Other articles were also posted to the web, listing mainly the same families behind the coup.)

So, as such examples show, the aristocracy were greatly enriched by the Honduran coup, even though the non-criminal (or “legitimate”) Honduran economy shriveled. By supporting this new Honduran regime, Obama and Hillary assisted the outsourcing of clothes-manufacturing jobs, etc., to such police-states. International corporations would be more profitable, and their top executives and controlling stockholders would reap higher stock-values and capital gains and bigger executive bonuses, because of such fascist operations as the 2009 coup. If workers or campesinos didn’t like it, they could leave – for the U.S., where they would be competing directly against the poorest of our own country’s poor.

An article quoted Jose Luis Galdamez, a journalist for Radio Globo (a Honduran station briefly shut down by the junta) explaining how that nation’s elite impunity functions: “The rich simply send you out to kill … and then kill with impunity. They never investigate into who killed who, because the groups in power control the media, control the judiciary, and now control the government [the Executive Branch] again.” This is to say: In Honduras, hired killers are safe. The Government represents the aristocracy, not the public; so, aristocrats are free to kill. America’s congressional Republicans like this “Freedom.” It’s maximum liberty – for aristocrats: the people these “Representatives” actually serve.

On 18 November 2011, Mark Weisbrot in Britain’s Guardian headlined “Honduras: America’s Great Foreign Policy Disgrace,” and he reported that, when the junta’s man

“Porfirio Lobo took office in January 2020, … most of the hemisphere refused to recognize the government because his election took place under conditions of serious human rights violations. In May 2011, an agreement was finally brokered in Cartagena, Colombia, which allowed Honduras back into the Organization of American States. But the Lobo government has not complied with its part of the Cartagena accords, which included human rights guarantees for the political opposition.”

The frequent murders of non-fascist political and labor union leaders “in broad daylight” (so as to terrorize anyone who might consider to replace them) had continued, despite the accords. Weisbrot noted that, “when President Porfirio Lobo of Honduras came to Washington last month, President Obama Greeted him warmly” and Obama said, “What we’ve been seeing is a restoration of democratic practices and a commitment to reconciliation.” How nice. However, Lobo did comply with one aspect of the Cartagena agreement: he let Manuel Zelaya and his wife back into Honduras.

Honduras was now (even more than before Zelaya) under a “libertarian” government – a government that respected only property-rights of approved people, no personal or other rights for anyone (such as Facussé’s propertyless campesinos). Paul Romer, the husband of Obama’s former chief economist Christina Romer, was joining with other libertarians to promote the idea of a totally “free market” model city in Honduras. On 10 December 2011, Britain’s libertarian ECONOMIST magazine bannered “Hong Kong in Honduras,” and “Honduras Shrugged [a play on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged]: Two Start-Ups Want to Try Out Libertarian Ideas in the Country’s New Special Development Regions.” Then, on 6 September 2012, Britain’s Guardian bannered “Honduras to Build New City with Its Own Laws and Tax System.” However, the entrepreneur aiming to develop this new Honduran city freed from the law, the grandson of the far-right economist Milton Friedman, Patri Friedman, headlined at his Future Cities Development Inc., on 19 October 2012, “Closing Statement From Future Cities Development, Inc.” and he announced that though “passing with a vote of 126-1” in the Honduran legislature, his project was ruled unconstitutional by a judge, because it would remove that land from the Honduran legal system. Patri had been fundraising for this project ever since he had publicly announced at the libertarian Koch brothers’ Cato Institute, on 6 April 2009, “Democracy Is Not The Answer,” and he then said, “Democracy is rigged against libertarians.” He ended his statement by announcing “my proposal,” which was to “build new city-states,” where there would be no democracy, and only the investors would have any rights at all – an extreme gated community. Just months later, the new Honduran President, a libertarian like Patri, invited him to do it, but this judge killed the idea.

Inasmuch as Honduras was becoming too dangerous for Americans, the AP headlined on 19 January 2012, “Peace Corps Pullout a New Blow to Honduras,” and reported that, “The U.S. government’s decision to pull out all its Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras for safety reasons is yet another blow to a nation still battered by a coup and recently labeled [by the U.N. as] the world’s most deadly country.” Three days later, on the 22nd, Frances Robles of the Miami Herald, headlined “Graft, Greed, Mayhem Turn Honduras into Murder Capital of World,” and reported the details of a nation where aristocrats were protected by their own private guards, the public were on their own, and all new entrants into the aristocracy were drug traffickers and the soldiers and police who worked for those traffickers. Narcotics were now by far the most booming industry in Honduras, if not the only booming industry there post-coup. Robles reported, “Everybody has been bought,” in this paradise of anarchism, or libertarianism (i.e.: in this aristocratically controlled country).

On 12 February 2012, NPR headlined “Who Rules in Honduras? Coup’s Legacy of Violence.” The ruling families weren’t even noted here, much less mentioned, in this supposed news-report on the subject of “Who Rules in Honduras?” However, this story did note that, “Many experts say things got markedly worse after the 2009 coup.” (That was a severe understatement.)

Jim DeMint, who has since left the Senate, and who recently took over as the head of the far-right Heritage Foundation where he had formerly been a star, got everything he wanted in Honduras, and so did Hillary Clinton’s friend Lanny Davis – the aristocrats’ paid hand in the affair, on the “Democratic” side. (The aristocrats had many other agents lobbying their friends on the Republican side.) Honduras’s public got only hell. Four days later, on February 16th, Reuters headlined “Honduras Under Fire After Huge Prison Blaze,” and reported: “Survivors of a Honduran jailhouse fire that killed more than 350 inmates [some not yet tried, much less convicted], accused guards of leaving prisoners to die trapped inside their cells and even firing on others when they tried to escape.”

This was how law operated, in a supremely fascist nation. Dwight Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers had done a similar thing to the Iranians in 1953, and then to the Guatemalans in 1954; Obama now, though passively, did it to the Hondurans. When Ike did it in Iran, who would have guessed at the whirlwind that would result there 26 years later, in 1979? (Ironically, when Ike did it, the mullahs were delighted that the elected Iranian President, Mossadegh, whom they hated, had been overthrown. America now reaps their whirlwind.)

This is the type of hypocritical leadership that has caused the United States to decline in public approval throughout the world under Obama – ironic after his Nobel Peace Prize awarded within just months of his becoming President. On 10 December 2010, Gallup bannered “U.S. Leadership Ratings Suffer in Latin America,” and reported that approval of “the job performance of the leadership of the United States” had declined since 2009 in 14 of 18 nations in the Western Hemisphere. It had declined steepest in Mexico, Argentina, Honduras, and Venezuela. Honduras, however, was the only country where approval of the U.S. was now even lower than it had been under George W. Bush in 2008. This Honduran plunge since the 2009 coup had been that steep. Then, on 19 April 2012, Gallup headlined “U.S. Leadership Losing Some Status,” and reported that across 136 countries, approval of the U.S. had peaked in 2009 when George W. Bush was replaced by Obama, but that “the U.S. has lost some of its status” since 2009, and that the “U.S. Image Sinks in the Americas,” down one-quarter from its 2009 high, though still not yet quite as low in most countries as it had been under Bush. Then, three months later, on June 13th, the PewResearch Global Attitudes Project headlined “Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted,” and reported that favorable opinion of the U.S. had sunk during Obama’s first term. It declined 7% in Europe, 10% in Muslim countries, 13% in Mexico, and 4% in China. However, it increased 8% in Russia, and 13% in Japan. It went down in eight countries, and up in two, and changed only 2% or less in three nations.

The global fascist push to eliminate Zelaya’s Presidency had first been well outlined by Greg Grandin in the Nation on 28 July 2009, headlining “Waiting for Zelaya.” He wrote:

“The business community didn’t like Zelaya because he raised the minimum wage. Conservative evangelicals and Catholics – including Opus Dei, a formidable presence in Honduras – detested him because he refused to ban the ‘morning after’ pill. The mining, hydroelectric and biofuel sector didn’t like him because he didn’t put state funds and land at their disposal. The law-and-order crowd hated him because he apologized on behalf of the state for a program of ‘social cleansing’ that took place in the 1990s. … Zelaya likewise moved to draw down Washington’s military presence; Honduras, alone among Central American countries, hosts a permanent detachment of US troops.”

Later that same year (2009), John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, came out with his new Hoodwinked, in which he said (p. 213): “I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president who wanted to remain anonymous, ‘Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly [minimum-wage] rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom.’” The increase in Honduras’s minimum wage was widely cited as having probably been the coup’s chief source.

Zelaya offered an explanation as to why the U.S. helped the fascists. On 31 May 2011, “Democracy Now” radio headlined “Exclusive Interview with Manuel Zelaya on the U.S. Role in Honduran Coup,” and Zelaya revealed that when he was abducted from his house, “We landed in the U.S. military base of Palmerola,” before being flown from there out of the country, and that “Otto Reich started this.” Reich had been the fanatical far-right Cuban-American who ran U.S. Latin-American policy for the Republican Reagan and both the father and son Bush Administrations, including Iran-Contra against Nicaragua (which helped Iran’s mullahs), and the fascist 2002 coup against Venezuela’s popular elected President Hugo Chavez, which coup was then peacefully overturned and reversed, due to worldwide repudiation of the junta everywhere except the U.S. Government. Zelaya said that the coup against himself had been organized via both Reich and the previous, George W. Bush-appointed, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Charles Ford, who had subsequently been appointed to “the U.S. Southern Command … in order to prepare for the coup d’etat” in Honduras. Zelaya didn’t personally blame Obama. “Even though Obama would be against the coup, the process toward the coup was already moving forward. … They are even able to bend the arm of the President of the United States, President Obama, and the State Department.” Zelaya portrayed a weak President Obama, not a complicit one. If this was true, then Lanny Davis was pushing against a weak leader, not against strong resistance within the then-new Democratic U.S. Administration. Hillary Clinton’s press conference the day after the coup reflected unconcern regarding democracy, not (like with Republicans such as Sen. DeMint) outright support of fascism. The situation that was portrayed by Zelaya was a U.S. Government that was heavily infiltrated by fascists throughout the bureacracy, and a new Democratic President and Secretary of State who had no stomach to oppose fascists – an Administration who were mere figureheads.

On 15 March 2012, Laura Carlson, at Foreign Policy In Focus, bannered “Honduras: When Engagement Becomes Complicity,” and she opened: “U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Honduras on March 6 with a double mission: to quell talk of drug legalization and reinforce the U.S.-sponsored drug war in Central America, and to bolster the presidency of Porfirio Lobo. The Honduran government issued a statement that during the one-hour closed-door conversation between Biden and Lobo, the vice president ‘reiterated the U.S. commitment to intensify aid to the government and people of Honduras, and exalted the efforts undertaken and implemented over the past two years by President Lobo.’ In a March 1 press briefing, U.S. National Security Advisor Tony Blinken cited ‘the tremendous leadership President Lobo has displayed in advancing national reconciliation and democratic and constitutional order.’ You’d think they were talking about a different country from the one we visited just weeks before on a fact-finding mission on violence against women. What we found was a nation submerged in violence and lawlessness, a president incapable or unwilling to do much about it, and a justice system in shambles.”

Carlson went on to note: “Land grabs to transfer land and resources from small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, and poor urban residents into the hands of large-scale developers and megaprojects have generated violence throughout the country. Many of the testimonies of violence and sexual abuse that we heard from Honduran women regarded conflicts over land, where the regime actively supports wealthy interests against poor people in illegal land occupations for tourism, mining, and infrastructure projects, such as palm oil magnate Miguel Facusse’s actions.” She noted: “The United States helped deliver a serious blow to the Honduran political system and society. The United States has a tremendous responsibility for the disastrous situation.” And she closed: “There’s no excuse for spending U.S. taxpayer dollars on security assistance to Honduras as human rights violations pile up.” She called this “A Coup for Criminals.”

What Iran and Guatemala became to the historical record of Eisenhower’s Presidency, Honduras will be to that of Obama. Sometimes even a small country, even a banana republic, can leave a big black mark on a President’s record. Though Czechoslovakia was just a small and weak country, it’s even what Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is primarily remembered for nowadays – his yielding it to the fascists in 1938.

In November 2013, the Center for Economic Policy Research bannered a study, “Honduras Since the Coup,” and among the highlights they reported were:

Economic growth has slowed since the 2009 coup. From 2006-2008 average annual GDP growth was 5.7 percent. In 2009 Honduras’ GDP, as with most countries in Central America, contracted due to the world recession. From 2010-2013, average annual growth has been only 3.5 percent.

Economic inequality, which decreased for four consecutive years starting in 2006, began trending upward in 2010. Honduras now has the most unequal distribution of income in Latin America.

In the two years after the coup, over 100 percent of all real income gains went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Hondurans.

Poverty and extreme poverty rates decreased by 7.7 and 20.9 percent respectively during the Zelaya administration. From 2010-2012, the poverty rate increased by 13.2 percent while the extreme poverty rate increased by 26.3 percent.

The unemployment situation has worsened from 2010-2012.

Crime rates and other non-economic factors were unfortunately ignored in this study, but it indicated clearly that, from at least the economic standpoint, the public in Honduras suffered while the elite did not. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had done to Honduras something rather similar to what George W. Bush and his team did to Iraq, but with this major difference: Zelaya was a good and democratic leader of Honduras, whereas Saddam was a tyrant (though Iraq was even worse after his reign than during it). This “Democratic” U.S. Administration turned out to support fascism, much as its Republican predecessor had done.

The soaring murder-rate after the U.S.-supported coup caused a soaring number of escapees from the violence; they’re flooding into the U.S. now as illegal immigrants.

HAITI

In Haiti, the situation is similar as an example of the U.S. backing aristocrats, so as to keep the masses in poverty and for American aristocrats to profit from doing so. On 1 June 2011, the Nation headlined “WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day,” and Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives reported that, “Contractors for Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked in close concert with the US Embassy when they aggressively moved to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest-paid in the hemisphere, according to secret State Department cables. … The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 9-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica. But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.” Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed hard to reverse the new law. “A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum ‘did not take economic reality into account’ but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to ‘the unemployed and underpaid masses.'” An “Editor’s Note” from the Nation added: “In keeping with the industry’s usual practice, the brand name US companies kept their own hands clean, letting their contractors do the work of making Haiti safe for the sweatshops from which they derive their profits — with help from US officials.” Those “officials” were ultimately Clinton and Obama. On 3 June 2011, Ryan Chittum at Columbia Journalism Review headlined “A Pulled Scoop Shows U.S. Fought to Keep Haitian Wages Down,” and he added some perspective to the story: “Hanesbrands CEO Richard Noll … could pay for the raises for those 3,200 t-shirt makers with just one-sixth of the $10 million in salary and bonus he raked in last year.” And then, when the U.S. turns away “boat people,” trying to escape the “voluntary” slavery of the Haitian masses, the standard excuse is that it’s done so as to “protect American jobs.” But is that really where Hillary Clinton gets her campaign funds?

AFGHANISTAN

On 26 July 2009, Marisa Taylor bannered at McClatchy Newspapers, “Why Are U.S.-Allied Refugees Still Branded as ‘Terrorists?’,” and she reported that “DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is working with other agencies, such as the State Department, to come up with a solution” to the routine refusal of the United States to grant U.S. visas to translators and other local employees of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan who wanted to move to the U.S. and who had overwhelming reason to fear retaliation from anti-Americans in their home countries after we left. The State Department did nothing. Then, Human Rights First headlined on 13 August 2009, “Senator Leahy on ‘Material Support’ Bars,” and reported that, “In a powerful statement submitted for the Congressional Record on August 5, 2009, Senator Leahy (D-VT) reaffirmed his commitment to ‘restore common sense’ to the bars to refugee and asylum status based on associations with what the Immigration and Nationality Act defines as terrorism,” which was “written so broadly” that it applied even to “children who were recruited against their will and forced to undergo military training, doctors (acting in accordance with the Hippocratic oath) … and those who fought against the armies of repressive governments in their home countries.”

The State Department failed to act. On 2 February 2013, the Washington Post bannered “Alleged Terrorism Ties Foil Some Afghan Interpreters’ U.S. Visa Hopes,” and Kevin Sieff in Kabul reported that, “As the American military draws down its forces in Afghanistan and more than 6,000 Afghan interpreters seek U.S. visas, the problem is threatening to obstruct the applications of Afghans who risked their lives to serve the U.S. government.” What kind of lesson is this teaching to interpreters and other local employees of the U.S. missions in unstable foreign countries? Helping the U.S. could be terminally dangerous.

LIBYA

“We came, we saw, he died! (Chuckles)”

And what happened afterwards?

(And what happened before?)

But what happened afterwards is even worse than people know: as Wayne Madsen recently reported, Hillary’s success at overthrowing Gaddafi served brilliantly the purposes of the U.S. aristocracy and of the jihadists who are financed by the Saud family and the other fundamentalist Sunni royal faimilies in Arabia. Even if she doesn’t become President, she has already done enough favors for those royals so as to be able to fill to the brim the coffers of the Clinton Foundation.

SYRIA

A record drought in Syria during 2008-2010 produced results like this:

“Two years before the ‘Arab Spring’ even began:

In the past three years, 160 Syrian farming villages have been abandoned near Aleppo as crop failures have forced over 200,000 rural Syrians to leave for the cities. This news is distressing enough, but when put into a long-term perspective, its implications are staggering: many of these villages have been continuously farmed for 8000 years.

That source had been published on 16 January 2010.”

The drought continued on through 2010 and sporadically afterwards, and it intensified in Syria the already widespread ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations against the existing regimes.

Even before the ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations in 2011, the Syrian government was pleading with foreign governments for food aid, and these pleas were reported to Secretary of State Clinton, but she ignored them.

Obama grabbed this opportunity to dust off an old CIA 1957 plan to overthrow the Ba’athist Party that ruled Syria — the only secular, non-sectarian, party in Syria, and the only political force there that insisted upon separation between church and state. The Ba’athists were allied with Russia, and the U.S. aristocracy wanted to conquer Russia even after the end of communism there in 1990. Replacing a secular government by a fundamentalist Sunni Sharia law regime would end Syria’s alliance with Russia; so, Obama worked with other fundamentalist Sunni dictatorships in the region — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Turkey — toperpetrate a sarin gas attack in Syria that they’d all blame on Syria’s Ba’athist leader, Bashar al-Assad, even though the U.S. and its Arab partners had actually perpetrated it.

On 12 November 2011, Secretary of State Clinton said:

The failure of the Assad regime, once again, to heed the call of regional states and the international community underscores the fact that it has lost all credibility. The United States reiterates its calls for an immediate end to the violence, for free unfettered access for human rights monitors and journalists to deter and document grave human rights abuses and for Asad to step aside.

In other words: she was already demanding “regime change” in Syria. Back in 2002, she had similarly demanded “regime change in Iraq,” because the Ba’athist, Russia-allied, anti-sectarian, Saddam Hussein ruled there. She did it again in Syria — just as she had done it in Lybia in order to get rid of the non-sectarian Russia-allied dictator there, Muammar Gaddafi.

During the Democratic primary debate on 20 December 2015, her opponent Bernie Sanders said:

I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be.

Yes, we could get rid of Saddam Hussein, but that destabilized the entire region. Yes, we could get rid of Gadhafi, a terrible dictator, but that created a vacuum for ISIS. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS.

He said that defeating the jihadists in Syria should be completed before the issue of what to do about Assad is addressed. The questioner, David Muir, asked Clinton whether she agreed with that. She replied:

We are doing both at the same time.

MUIR: But that’s what he’s saying, we should put that aside for now and go after ISIS.

CLINTON: Well, I don’t agree with that.

She is obsessed with serving the desires of the U.S. aristocracy — even if that means the U.S. helps supply sarin gas to the rebels in Syria to be blamed on Assad, and even if it also means that the existing, Ba’athist, government in Syria will be replaced by a jihadist Sunni government that serves the Saud family and the other Arabic royal families.

UKRAINE

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose as being the State Department’s chief spokesperson Victoria Nuland who was previously the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to 2005, after having been appointed by President George W. Bush as the U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the anti-Russian military club NATO from 2000 until 2003. Her big passion, and her college-major, as a person who ever since childhood hated Russia, was Russian studies, and she “was twice a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations — as a ‘Next Generation’ Fellow looking at the effects of anti-Americanism on U.S. relations around the world, and as a State Department Fellow directing a task force on ‘Russia, its Neighbors and an Expanding NATO.’” Although her career started after the Soviet Union and its communism ended in 1990, it has nonetheless been obsessed with her hatred of Russia and with her passion for the U.S. aristocracy to take it over, as if communism hadn’t really been a factor in the “Cold War” — and she has been promoted in her career on that basis.

V.P. Cheney liked her “neo-conservatism,” which she shared with her husband, Robert Kagan, who had been one of the leading proponents for “regime change in Iraq.” (“Neo-conservatism” is the group of policy intellectuals who passionately argued for “regime change in Iraq” during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations, and who support every policy to overthrow the leaders of any nation that’s at all friendly toward Russia.)

When Hillary Clinton retired in 2013, Obama made Nuland the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and Nuland’s first assignment (she was already at work on it by no later than 1 March 2013, which was before the U.S. Senate had even confirmed her appointment) was to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine because Ukraine is next door to Russia and the U.S. aristocracy has, since communism ended in the Soviet Union in 1990, been trying to surround Russia by NATO missiles, most especially in Ukraine. President Obama hid from the public his hostility toward Russia until he became re-elected in 2012 (he even mocked his opponent, Mitt Romney, for saying, at 0:40 on this video, that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe”), but then, once he was safely re-elected, immediately set to work to take over Ukraine and to add it to NATO. Then, in his National Security Strategy 2015, he identified Russia as being by far the world’s most “aggressive” nation. Hillary Clinton is determined to carry this anti-Russian hostility through as President, even though she lies as Obama does and so, similarly, won’t say it during the Democratic primaries. But the takeover of Ukraine was an Obama operation in which she played an important role, to set it up.

Here is the recording of Nuland on 4 February 2014, telling the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, whom to place at the top of the Ukrainian government when the coup will be completed, which occurred 22 days later. It was to be the culmination of her efforts, which had started even prior to 1 March 2013.

Here is the broader video of that coup.

Here is the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor saying it was “the most blatant coup in history.”

Here is the electoral map showing the voting percentages in each region of Ukraine for the election that had chosen the President, “Janukovych,” whom Obama overthrew in that coup. The region in purple on that map had voted 90% for “Janukovych.” It’s called Donbass and consists of Donetsk and Luhansk. It refused to accept the coup-imposed leaders. Obama wanted the residents there bombed into submission. Here’s a video of that bombing-campaign. Here’s another — specifically of firebombings (which are illegal). The money for that bombing-campaign came from taxpayers in U.S. and EU, and also from the IMF, in the form of loans that saddled Ukraine with so much debt it went bankrupt on 4 October 2015, as determined by a unanimous vote of the 15 international banks that collectively make this decision. The infamously high corruption in Ukraine went even higher after the U.S.-EU takeover of Ukraine. After Ukraine’s bankrupttcy, the IMF changed its rules so that it could continue to lend money there, until the people in Donbass are either exterminated or expelled. The U.S. President controls the IMF. For the international aristocracy, the U.S. President is the most important servant there is. Hillary Clinton wants to become that servant. It’s why her top twenty financial backers represent the U.S. aristocracy.

OTHER MATTERS

Finally, it should also be noted that Hillary’s record as the chief administrator at the State Department was also poor. The State Department’s own Accountability Review Board Report on Benghazi Attack said: “In the months leading up to September 11, 2012, security in Benghazi was not recognized and implemented as a ‘shared responsibility’ in Washington, resulting in stove-piped discussions and decisions on policy and security. Key decisions … or non-decisions in Washington, such as the failure to establish standards for Benghazi and to meet them, or the lack of a cohesive staffing plan, essentially set up Benghazi.” That’s failure at the very top. It’s not in Libya. It’s not even in Africa. It’s in “Washington.”

Who, at the State Department in “Washington,” had “buck stops here” authority and power? Hillary Clinton.

Republicans are obsessed with the Benghazi failure, because it reflects negatively upon her but not on themselves. However, Hillary’s real and important failures reflected negatively upon Republicans also, because these failures (such as her supporting fascists in Honduras) culminated actually Republican foreign-policy objectives, and dashed Democratic (and democratic) policy-objectives. This is the real reason why Republicans focus instead upon Hillary’s Benghazi mess.

Hillary Clinton also was a notoriously poor administrator of her own 2007-2008 presidential primary campaign. Even coming into 2014, some leading Democrats were afraid that if she were to become the Party’s candidate, then the entire Party would get “Mark Penned,” which is the euphemism for her inability to select top-flight people for key posts. Obama had a far higher-skilled campaign-operation than she did, even though she started out with an enormous head-start against Obama in 2008.

Back in 2006, the encyclopedically brilliant Democrat Jack Beatty headlined in The Atlantic, “Run, Barack, Run,” and he contrasted the “enthralling” presence and speaking-style of Barack Obama to the presence and speaking-style of the Party’s presumptive 2008 nominee. He said of Clinton: “As she showed in her speech at the memorial service for Coretta Scott King, Hillary Clinton is a boring, flat-voiced, false-gesturing platform speaker. She shouts into the microphone; Obama talks into it. Her borrowed words inspire no trust – they remind us of her borrowed foundation – and her clenched personality inspires little affection. Money can’t buy her love, nor buzz protect her political glass jaw. The question for Democrats is, Who will break it first? Will it be one of her Democratic challengers – Obama, Joe Biden, John Edwards – or John McCain?” He was hoping that it would turn out to be one of the Democrats, especially Obama, so as to avoid a continuation of the Bush years. He got his wish, even if not his intended result. (Obama was so gifted a con-man that even the brightest Democrats, such as Beatty, couldn’t see through his con. Nobody could – so, the Republicans had to invent an ‘Obama’-demon that was almost diametrically opposite to the real one, in order to provide a punching-bag that their suckers would hate. Republicans ended up punching actually the most gifted Republican since the time of Ronald Reagan — a black and charismatic version of Mitt Romney, the man who lost to Obama in 2012 though having created the model both for Obamacare and for Obama’s policies toward Wall Street, and even toward Russia.)

At the start of the present campaign, it had seemed almost inevitable that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2016. A Quinnipiac poll released on 7 March 2013 was headlined “Clinton, Christie Lead The Pack In Early Look At 2016,” and reported that, “Former First Lady, and Secretary of State Clinton wins easily against any” opponent, from either Party.

Her public statements aren’t consistent, because she changes them whenever politically convenient to do so; but the statements of a liar are simply ignored by intelligent people, anyway. Her statements are ignored by intelligent voters. What matters is her actions, her actual record, which is lengthy, and ugly. Her record is, moreover, consistent. So, it leaves no doubt as to what her actual policies are: only fools will listen to anything that a liar such as she is, says on the stump, because she’s a con-person who is selling, essentially, a toxic dump, and trying to get top-dollar for it by describing the pretty land covering it over, and by crossing her fingers that not many people will smell any stench percolating up from down below. The only people who can intelligently trust her verbal commitments are her big donors, who hear those commitments in private, not in public, and who understand how to interpret them. Her voters are there merely to be conned, not to be served. She needs them to be the rug she walks upon in order to get back into the White House, where she intends to be serving real gold to her big donors, to make their bets, on her, profitable for them.

And here are her big donors — the people she seeks to serve there.

This presentation will now close with a brief update on the situation in Honduras, because that catastrophe was Hillary Clinton’s first one as the Secretary of State:

On 15 February 2016, Alexander Main, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, headlined an op-ed in The New York Times, “An Anti-Corruption Charade in Honduras,” and he wrote there:

In Honduras, protests erupted when a local journalist revealed that millions of dollars of public funds from the country’s health care system had been funneled to the ruling National Party and the election campaign of President Juan Orlando Hernández. A handful of administrators and business executives have been indicted for other corruption in the health system, but no charges have been brought against Mr. Hernández or other top party officials over the diversion of funds to the party. … The country’s security forces are heavily infiltrated by organized crime — ‘rotten to the core,’ a former police official told The Miami Herald. Two weeks later, the official was shot dead. Scores of journalists, lawyers, land rights activists, gay rights advocates and opposition figures have been assassinated, without consequence for their killers. …

Sadly, the American government is ill positioned to offer help. In 2009, the State Department under Secretary Hillary Clinton helped a military coup in Honduras succeed by blocking efforts to restore the left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya, to power. Since then, Washington’s diplomatic efforts have focused on shoring up a series of corrupt post-coup governments. More than 100 members of Congress have called on the Obama administration to condemn human rights violations by security forces, and have questioned America’s security assistance to Honduras.

Yet Washington continues to back Mr. Hernández.

Hillary Clinton did, indeed, have an impact as the Secretary of State, and it continues to this day, and will live on as a curse, probably for decades to come — especially in the lands that she played a principal role in helping to destroy.

She prides herself on her “experience,” as if having a title, “Secretary of State,” and performing miserably in that function, qualifies someone to be a good U.S. President. America’s press hasn’t challenged her on the claim, either. Thus, many people, who trust both her and the American press, think that there must be truth to her claim: that she has achieved a lot, and that what she has achieved was terrific for the American people, and for the world. They’ve been successfully deceived.

There is an alternative, within the Democratic Party: Bernie Sanders. Here is his experience. And here are his top donors.

CONCLUSION

Only fools vote for her. Her campaigns are targeting especially fools who are either female or black or Hispanic, but she (and her financial backers) will welcome any fool to vote for her, because clearly no non-fool (except those financial backers) will.

PostScript:

This article was submitted to the major print news-media, and major online news-media, with the question: “Would you want this as an exclusive?”

None replied even to say something like, “Maybe, give us a week to check out the linked sources.” None replied at all. Consequently, this article is now being provided free of charge to the public, and free of charge to all media to publish, but that’s the choice a journalist must make in order to present a truthful and reasonably comprehensive picture of Hillary Clinton’s record as the U.S. Secretary of State.

Republican ‘news’ media don’t want this article, because it shows her as being hardly different from the Republicans on international matters; and Democratic ‘news’ media don’t want it, because it shows her as being hardly different from the Republicans on international matters. So, only the few news-media that are neither Republican nor Democratic, and are dedicated only to honestly and truthfully informing the public about the candidates for the U.S. Presidency, will publish it, even if it’s offered free-of-charge. About foreign affairs, there’s no truth in any of the large U.S. ‘news’ media: they’re all controlled by the U.S. aristocracy, who agree in both Parties, and who are united against the interests of the publics in every nation.

Here below are the news-media that had received the article, submitted to them for consideration as an exclusive, and all of which media rejected this article, without comment, so that you can see that the editors there know the information that’s revealed here (they have read it here, even if they didn’t already know it before and simply hid it all along from their readership). The reason they don’t want their readers to know these facts is that they don’t want the public to know that (except on purely groupist issues concerning women, Blacks and Hispanics — her voting-base) Hillary Clinton is actually a Republican in ‘Democratic’ verbal garb. Neither Republican, nor Democratic, ‘news’ media, want their readers to know that she’s actually a Republican — even more than her husband was. Anyway: here, you’ll see that though the information that has been included in this article is ignored in the reporting by all of the big reporters and by the talking heads on TV ‘news,’ they’re not actually unaware of it; they’re simply not allowed to let the public know it.

Those media are: Vanity Fair, National Review, Rolling Stone, Harper’s, BusinessWeek and Bloomberg News, McClatchy newspapers, New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post, Mother Jones, Nation, Progressive, New Republic, New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Politico, Salon, Huffington Post, and Slate. (If any of your friends subscribe to or read those, why not pass this along to them, so that they’ll know what they don’t know about Hillary Clinton. Maybe they already know how bad the Republicans are, but do they know how bad the Clintons and Obama really are? Perhaps they don’t know it, from sources that want them not to know it.)

Any news-medium that wishes to publish this article without this “PS” is hereby welcomed to do so, because, at this particular moment, I am more concerned to get the truth out about Hillary Clinton, than about the U.S. press.

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.

 

On Feb.20, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), mainly the “Tiger Forces” and the Cheetah Forces “Team 3”, supported by Russian warplanes launched a successful advance west along the imperative Aleppo-Raqqa Highway in order to complete the encirclement of ISIS-controlled area in Eastern Aleppo.

Following heavy clashes, the SAA took control of Umm Turaykiyah in the Al-Safira Plains. It had been that last terrorist stronghold between the SAA positions aling the Aleppo-Raqqa Highway and the Jibreen district of the Aleppo city. At least 800 ISIS militants were encircled in the newly appeared pocket.

On Feb.21, the SAA continued the advance and imposed full control over the villages of Jubb al-Safa, Kabarah, Rayyan, Al-Halabiyah, Dakwanah, Tall Istabl, Ain Sabil and Tall Riman, smashing the terrorists encircled there. Al-Safira Plains are under the full control of the SAA.

In a separate development, ISIS cut the government’s supply route, the Ithriyah-Khanasser road, leading to the Aleppo province. According to reports, ISIS was able to do it by capturing Rasm Al-Nafal from the National Defense Forces (NDF).

The Ithriyah-Khanasser road is a vital supply route of the Syrian forces located in Aleppo and an integral roadway that gives the latter access to several regions in northern Syria. It’s the second time in the recent months ISIS cut this supply route. This shows how vulnerable the SAA’s logistics in the region. According to reports, the SAA are going to launch a military operation to recapture Rasm Al-Nafal.

The SAA is continuing military operartions aganist ISIS along the Salamiyah-Raqqa Highway. Last weekend, the SAA and its allies liberated Al-Massbah, Point 4, Point 5, and a number of other small hilltops near the Zakiyah Crossroad located at the Hama-Raqqa border.

ISIS is widely using roadside bombs in order to slow down the loyalist forces’ advances along the road. Moreover, the strategic town of Zakiyah near the crossroad is still under the terrorists’ control. The SAA’s mid term goal in the area is to reach the Strayef Crossroad and launch an operation to liberate the Tabaqa Military Airport.

Help South Front! PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via:https://www.patreon.com/southfront

“I want to go on record as saying that this is the stupidest, most irresponsible action a diplomatic mission like ours could get itself involved in, and that we’ve started a series of these things that will never end.” Dean Hinton, US State Department official pertaining  to planned CIA coup against Syria in 1949 (1)

The following is a timeline of US and allied interventions over the past 100 years. (1916-2016)

1916– Sykes-Picot Agreement, Syria ‘given’ to France, Iraq to Britain. (2)

1920– French defeat an independence movement in Syria. (3)

1925– France defeats a second independence movement in Syria, shells Damascus (3)

1936– France grants Syria independence, but French parliament refuses to ratify (3)

1941– Syria declares independence (3)

1944- Jewish irregular armed units operating independently of Jewish Agency control (but at times with its tacit approval) launch a campaign of terror against British personnel and Arab civilians in Palestine. (4)

1945– France tries to stop independence movement, shells Damascus, kills 400 (3)

1946– Independence from France, Syrian President is Shukri al-Quwatli (5)

1947– The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon—UN testimony by Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (6)

1948– Israel created out of Palestine, Arab-Israeli War

1948- Syria participates in Arab wars against Israel in 1948, 1967 & 1973, earning U.S. enmity. (7)

1949– CIA-sponsored coup under Truman over oil pipeline through Syria, see Deane Hinton quote (1)

1949– Two more coups, CIA man overthrown in the second, another returned in third

1954– Fourth coup, CIA-supported Adib Shiskali overthrown (5)

1955– Shukri al-Quwatli re-instated (see above, 1946). (5)

1956– CIA under Eisenhower tries to overthrow al-Quwatli with ‘Operation Straggle’ (8)

1957– Eisenhower implements ‘Operation Wappen,’ another coup attempt (5)

1957- Turkey masses 50,000 troops on Syrian border after the latter was claimed to be a ‘Soviet Satellite’ with ‘not more than 123 Russian MIGs’ (fighter planes). Reporter Kennett Love later said that “there were indeed ‘not more than 123 Migs’. There were none.” (8)

1960s– Frequent coups, military revolts, civil disorders and bloody riots

1970– Minister of Defense Hafez al-Assad (image left) seizes power in a bloodless coup

1979– Syria earns increased animosity of the U.S. government by supporting the Iranian revolution. (9)

1980– National Security Council urges President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to identify “possible alternative regimes to Syria’s Hafez al-Assad government. (10)

1982– “Israel must become an imperial regional power, and must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.” from ‘A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s’ (11)

1996– American Report: “Israel can shape its strategic environment by weakening Syria .”A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. The document proposed regime change in Iraq primarily as a “means” of “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria . As Pat Buchanan put it: “In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel ’s enemy remains Syria , but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad .” (12)

2003– Israel launches a missile attack on Syria , the first strike into Syrian territory in 30 years. President Bush immediately condoned the attack

2004-. Labeling Syria “an extraordinary threat, US Congress passed sanctions against the country. (13)

2006– Cable from William Roebuck, chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Damascus published later by Wikileaks. The cable outlines strategies for destabilizing the Syrian government. (14)

2007– We need to do everything possible to destabilize the Syrian regime. Cheney’s Middle East adviser David Wurmser. (15)

2009– US blocks Syrian efforts to join the World Trade Organization, which along with sanctions negatively impacts the Syrian economy.(16)

*     *     *

2011- March. Onslaught of terror attacks in the border city of Daraa, supported by US-NATO, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel 

2012– From Defense Intelligence Agency document: “The West, Gulf Countries and Turkey support the Syrian opposition…There is a possibility of establishing a Salfist Principality in Eastern Syria .”

2012– CIA known to be funneling weapons to Syrian opposition (17)

2016– 320,000 Syrians killed since open warfare began in 2011, with 12 million refugees (out of a total population of 22 million), and the human and ecological infrastructure of the country largely destroyed.

 

Dana Visalli is n biologist living in Washington State ; he has visited Iraq and Afghanistan often and is on his way to Syria. He has essays on Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam at www.methownaturalist.com

Notes

1. http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/washingtons-long-history-syria-8717

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement

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

4. http://www.coldwarstudies.com/2012/12/04/palestine-israel-timeline-1942-1948/

5. http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/washingtons-long-history-syria-8717

6. http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815

7. http://www.nmhtthornton.com/mehistorydatabase/arabisraeliwars.php

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Syria_relations

10. NSC (1980) ‘ Syria July 16, 1980’, National Security Council, 4203XX, Memorandum for Zbigniew Brzezinski, declassified document.

11. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1025.htm

12. http://scotthorton.org/fairuse/2014/01/27/a-clean-break-a-new-strategy-for-securing-the-realm-by-david-wurmser-1996/

13. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/11/us.syria/

14. US Embassy Damascus (2006) ‘Influencing the SARG in the end of 2006’, Cable to US State Department, Wikileaks, 13 December, online: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html

15. http://original.antiwar.com/dan_sanchez/2015/06/29/clean-break-to-dirty-wars/

16. Sadat, Mi H and Daniel B Jones (2009) ‘U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Syria: balancing ideology and national interests’, Middle East Policy Council, Summer, Volume XVI, Number 2, online:http://www.mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policyarchives/us-foreign-policy-toward-syria-balancing-ideology-and-national-interests?print

17. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=0

 

Dozens of people have been killed and injured in a double bombing attack in Homs, Syria. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs, said at least 34 people had been killed, but other sources say the death toll was even higher.

The explosions at a traffic light at al-Siteen Street in the al-Zahra neighborhood happened within minutes of each other, witnesses said. One of them may have been triggered by a suicide bomber.

Witnesses said at least one of the two blasts was triggered by a suicide bomber driving a car.

A follow-up bombing after an initial blast is a common terrorist tactic, which allows them to hit first responders, who rush to help victims.

Double bombings within less than a minute of each other targeting civilians in Zahra district #Homs pic.twitter.com/H4wLbpHQ8m

— The ‘Nimr’ Tiger (@Souria4Syrians) February 21, 2016

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said the bombing was aimed at derailing the ongoing peace talks between Damascus and rebel forces, and called on the UN Security Council to condemn the attack. The Syrian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to take responsibility for the preservation of international peace and security and take “immediate punitive and deterrent actions” against the sponsors of terrorists, particularly Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, in two letters addressed to the UN Secretary General and the Security Council’s Chairman, SANA reports.

VBIED explodes on 60th Street in Zahraa #Homs, reports of 2 explosions pic.twitter.com/NNcgi7YmTi

— Hassan Ridha (@sayed_ridha) February 21, 2016

In the letters, the ministry called the terrorist organizations acting in Syria tools of the Saudi and Turkish regimes adding that the Sunday attacks were Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s attempt to impede the diplomatic efforts aimed at finding a political solution to the Syrian crisis.

Bombings targeting civilians happen regularly in Syria, which has been riven by a five-year armed conflict. Islamic State claimed responsibility for a bombing in Homs last month, which killed at least 24 people. Another attack in December claimed 32 lives.

One year after the victory and six months after the coup, we shouldn’t fool ourselves: This was a defeat, of the Greek government. But it’s not only Syriza that has failed (for now). The whole left has failed in Greece – and in the rest of Europe, indeed. Europe is no longer what it was. It’s impossible to defend this project of European unification from the left without falling into pure illusions.

Ever since the last European Parliament elections, the minimal demand is: ‘No further transfer of powers from the national to this EU.’ This is certainly right, but then what?

Some hope that now they can score points with alternatives to the current EU. But already before the crisis there was the question: What’s the concrete strategy we could use to carry out these alternatives? The social union was our model for 20 years and it’s turned into an illusion. The greater the defeat – the submission of the Greek government – the more radical the left’s defiance becomes, whether this means that we support a ‘LExit’ (left exit), a radical democratization of the EU or for instance an unemployment insurance for all. None of this is realistic if it is disconnected from a strategy of how to get there. It’s all a politics that amounts to nothing more than proclamations and intellectual games far from the seats of power. There’s no subject for carrying it out. As a world view for organizing and a political orientation, these desperate attempts at self-assertion are good for nothing. I, for one, am uncertain about how we can go forward with a view to social transformation.

Shifting the Balance of Power?

The left in Europe, hasn’t been able to do anything to shift the balance of power. Our solidarity with Greece was symbolically important, but demonstrations for healthy food, for example, reach many more participants than demonstrations for solidarity and protests against the German government’s austerity policies.

And now a divisive debate has broken out that’s felt not just in Greece. It is, so to speak, Wolfgang Schäuble‘s second victory: the left has been split. In Germany it’s not so dramatic, but it’s serious enough to distract from our own problems and mistakes. But in France, for instance, there is a real danger of a split of the Front de Gauche about anti- or pro-European position, a possible split in times of an increasing radical right becoming the major force.

Lesson 1: Become More

What would a strategic position be – not only a programmatic one – that would actually change the relation of forces? This puts the question of organization back on the agenda. And here there is a lot to learn from the post-2011 experiences in Greece and Spain. With our solidarity we haven’t managed to make a difference because we are too small, have nowhere near enough anchoring among subaltern groups, and have not developed anywhere near enough connective praxis. This of course also goes for the left in Portugal, Ireland, France, Italy and elsewhere. Here’s where we could begin: a strategy that is more strongly oriented toward intervention in concrete everyday social relations through civil-society organizing. And with this a combination of building some kind of connective practices between different movements, parties and/or new platforms that link this to the changed practices within a left mosaic (see Candeias/Völpel 2014).

Let’s call it a change from the discursive (arguments transmitted by programs and by media) to the material (interventions in concrete social relations). This is how, in Spain and Greece, the base could be broadened far beyond the usual milieus of the left and the already active. Their constituent parts are local units in which members do not just talk about politics but also take part in everyday practice by preventing forced evictions, organizing tenants, supporting labour struggles, doing refugee work, etc. These are solidarity networks that draw more people into political organizing. In this way it was possible to also reach the precariat, often of immigrant background, that no longer expect anything from elections and democracy. What could be promising in the long term are pilot projects for Transformative Organizing in so-called social flash points. Solidarity practices in the ‘middle and bottom’ of society laid the bases for successes of Syriza, the Spanish municipal movements in Barcelona, Madrid (and we have figures on this), and many other cities (Podemos still has its litmus test ahead of it). To be able to ‘fail’ like Syriza, we might have to be as successful as it was, we would have to come as far as it did.

This is perhaps the first lesson to learn from the failure.

Lesson 2: Successful failure has to be organized

This also applies to those who see their politics as confirmed by Syriza’s defeat. Stathis Kouvelakis, a proponent of a left Grexit and former member of Syriza’s party executive and leading member of the Left Platform, which has split off under the name ‘Unity’, says:

“Our position is the typical ‘I always said it from the beginning’ strategy. But if no motivating force can be developed out of this position it means political failure – for if we are powerless and have proven incapable of translating our position into a course of action for the masses, then our position obviously has not been validated” (in: Marx21, 21 July 2015).

The discourse of ‘none of it meant anything in the end’ was already dominant after the dying down of Occupy and the indignad@s and turned out to be of little use, premature, and above all wrong. Admittedly, the defeat this time is especially heavy (at least for the short history of the left since the beginning of the recent major crisis). But defeats were always also important moments of reappraisal, learning, and reorganization. Viewed in this way, failure has always been the left’s most important form of motion.[1] Such learning effects are of course not automatic. In order for lost struggles not to lead to disorganization and splits, there also has to be a connective practice in evaluating and reorganizing – especially if the struggle has not even ended, as in the case of Greece and the European austerity regime. Reducing everything to the question of Grexit or not is detrimental to such a strategic reorientation.

A moment of catharsis – if it is used.

The decisive strategic questions are organized around the perspectives and the praxis of the left in Europe and especially Germany. But even then, we cannot duck down to formulate a solidary critique of the first Tsipras government as a point of crystallization of left aspirations. Such a balance must start from the real and concrete situation, not from left projections and exaggerated hopes (a problematic with every inspiring project like the movements and left governments in Latin America or Rifondazione Comunista in Italy). Greece was about finding a way out of crisis and austerity. “It was about reinventing reformism after the neoliberalization of the European social democracy and opening up space for new opportunities for movements, which could not be ‘represented’ by the government” (Mezzadra 2016). In any case, accusations of betrayal or anything else of the kind are out of the question.

In what follows there will, therefore, be no good advice ‘to the Greeks’. I will only formulate three more general problematics and conclusions for future left projects. We should keep in mind that civil-society solidarity structures and unifying practices (see Candeias/Völpel 2014) were what made it possible for Syriza to come to power and for us to even argue about it now. Whatever our differences about the first Tsipras government, none of us should ever fall back below the level of this experience of practice.

Lesson 3: Use the historical moment

We have repeatedly seen how important it is not to pause at the moment of an (electoral) victory. The enemy is weakened, and the momentum of mobilization is still at a high point. The carrying out of decisive projects is more probable at this point, as long as the political enemy has not yet recovered his strength, coordinated with others, and been able to develop a new strategy. Obama, who, whatever his faults, as still the first African-American president of the U.S., provides an example. After enormous mobilization, he was able to win amidst the most serious economic crisis since 1929. But instead of using the moment and curbing the power of Wall Street, taxing the rich, and carrying out a kind of public New Deal, he pursued the false idea of a ‘balanced policy’ and negotiated for a long time with the Republicans – until the Democratic Party lost its majority in the mid-term elections. The rest is history.

But Syriza, too, was unable to use the historical movement. Although before the election a clear immediate-action program and a strategy for the first steps definitely had been drawn up, some of the people closest to Tsipras feared it would lead to failure. The decision was made against the ratified program, and without any further consultation with the party, to negotiate with the creditors without preconditions. Confrontation with the creditors (which perhaps would have created a better starting point) was to be avoided.

The original plan was to declare insolvency right after taking office in order to make a new attempt at debt cancellation within the Eurozone. The insolvency was indeed real and not caused by Syriza. Declaring it unilaterally would have been a calculated breaking of the rules, including the introduction of capital controls. Greece could have credibly said to the European public that the preceding corrupt governments and the Troika’s policy had for years covered up, exacerbated, and protracted the country’s insolvency. Everyone who cared to know it knew that Greece had long been bankrupt. The Troika and the European ‘caste’ still had not agreed on a strategy for dealing with the newly elected left government. There were many within the power bloc – not just the IMF – who had long thought that Greece was bankrupt and that debts would have to be written off. Insolvency would have put the creditors under strong pressure to offer an immediate solution. Success would by no means have been certain. But the moment fizzled out without being used.

After months of the Greek government’s desperate negotiations, defeat was palpable. In this moment of hardship, the referendum was a good chess move for a possible exit from the messy situation. The party rank and file and civil society organizations mobilized in a showing of remarkable strength for the OXI vote against submission to a third Memorandum. The referendum was supposed to improve the negotiating position. Whether the moment was consciously unused is unknown.

On the other hand, what was successful to an extent was the notably rapid implementation of the measures to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Greece. Despite the lack of experience with administrative apparatuses, important measures were carried out in the areas of refugee policy, the reintroduction of the minimum wage, food stamps for the poorest, reconnection and free basic electricity provision, easements for over-indebtedness, reintroduction of basic pensions, reintroduction of unemployment and health insurance for low income earners, recruiting of doctors and free access to healthcare also for the non-insured, the recognition of same-sex partnerships, etc. (see Bussemer 2015).

Except for smaller reforms in the taxation of businesses and the slow-moving detection of tax evasion and money laundering, a direct attack on the Greek oligarchy and its corrupt connections within the state, the economy, and the media was avoided. “Outrageous is the fact, that is was not possible to pass our tax legislation through the parliament, providing us the exit to the resources necessary for survival in this struggle. Outrageous that we were not able to reintroduce collective bargaining laws, providing working people with the means for their struggle for democracy and dignity at their workplace” (Iliopoulos 2015).

“Schäuble is not to blame for not passing an institutional reform, able to contain police violence, to reform education… to shut down the gold mine at Skouries, to bring forward a solidarity economy… to tax the wealth of the church… This was what Syriza announced and what was not in the focus of the Troika. The government did not implement these reforms,” said Yannis Albanis (2015), member of the Syriza’s central committee.

A twofold strategy seemed too dangerous to the government. Still, perhaps it was exactly what would have been necessary. The propaganda in the creditor states said that the corrupt classes of the super-rich in Greece should not be called on to help service the debt because it was the fault of the Greeks themselves, which is hypocritical, but effective. “We did not fight the struggles, able to strengthen and encourage us, but those weakening us… Our biggest error was not committed in the negotiations” with an over-powerful combatant, “but not to push forward the social processes and struggles in the country,” sums up Tasos Koronakis (2015b), the former General Secretary of Syriza. But even less confrontative democratic changes were not resolutely advanced: “with regard to transparency, corruption, revaluation of municipal and regional governments, democratization of public administration” (Spourdalakis 2015).

Another reflection: “Our opponents took us seriously. They thought we were dangerous for the system, not economically, but in terms of politics. They took us as a threat for the hegemony of the neoliberal paradigm… We didn’t take ourselves so seriously. We never prepared for an actual battle” (Iliopoulos 2015).

Could have, should have, would have… What can we learn from all this? To never engage the struggle ‘below the level of the current relations of force’ (Luxemburg, GW 1.2, 433) and never let the brief moments of historical possibilities go unused.

Lesson 4: Hegemony in civil-society before taking office is not enough…

From Gramsci we learn that “there has to be ‘political hegemony’ already before taking office, and in exercising political leadership or hegemony one ought not to count solely on the power and material strength it confers.” This advice was heeded. Syriza was a point of condensation that translates civil-society self-organization and protest into the perspectives of taking governmental power.

But it is not enough to have won hegemony in civil society before taking office. Government and civil society have to be rethought:

“It was clear that the room for manoeuvre inside the given institutions was going to be ‘more than narrow: Neither the clutch of the Troika nor that of the international financial markets would be loosened – on the contrary. … A left government would be wedged between authoritarian European constitutionalism and a bureaucratic apparatus occupied clientelistically by PASOK and ND. It would also have to expect an economic crisis aggravated by measures taken on the capitalist side. Rejection and renegotiation of the Memorandums … will not be enough’” (Candeias 2013).

At any rate, it was equally clear that Syriza had no choice. After the electoral victory it would have been impossible to not take office and leave it to a ‘grand’ coalition of the corrupt ‘system parties’ that shared responsibility with the Troika for the country’s catastrophic condition. “There was a kind of mobilization from the lower classes, expecting Syriza to take government” (Spourdalakis 2015). Nevertheless, one should have been able to know – and many did know it – that the government’s expectation of being able to govern in the usual way was not viable. The initially swiftly implemented humanitarian emergency program needed to be accompanied “by a rupture that would involve large parts of the population in a process of collective reorganization and refounding of democracy” (Candeias 2013).

“Syriza originally started with a different approach. The party wanted to ‘put society back into the center’. She promised to realize this practically, to approach to and learn from the movements, without behaving like a paternalistic Avantgarde or typical representative… Her practice and program were designed to realize an active social participation in the institutions… From this practice she formulated a ‘right’ to govern and execute power” (Spourdalakis 2015).

A true transformation cannot be a transformation via the state. As Nicos Poulantzas said:

“A transformation of the state apparatus in the sense of a withering away of the state can only rest on an increased intervention of the masses in the state – certainly with the help of the trade-union and political representatives of the masses but also through the unfolding of their own initiatives within the state. … (it will) not be able to limit itself to a mere democratization of the state. … This transformation must be accompanied by the development of new forms of direct grassroots democracy and the spread of networks and centers of self-governance,” (1978, 289f).

Andreas Karitzis puts it like this:

“Escalation by the elites requires a counter strategy, empowering people to take over fundamental socio-economic functions in an alternative way… We cannot free ourselves from our oppressors as long as we do not develop the power to provide the necessary goods and practices independently” (Karitzis 2015).

And Hilary Wainwright observes: “Solidarity initiatives can be important points of departure for struggles around/for the welfare state.” In these struggles, as organizational nodes, “people’s self-conception of what they can achieve” can change, “Together with [these struggles] the sense of their own capacity for power” can develop (2012, 122). These initiatives are therefore potentially not only an effective remedy against (right-wing) populism but can also reduce dependency on (left) governments and prevent clientelism. They do not limit themselves to ‘civic engagement’ that compensates for the thinning out of the welfare state but aim, through civil disobedience and direct appropriation, at its reconstruction and its democratic remodelling. From this perspective, the expansion and democratization of the welfare state should redirect funds and decision-making power toward civil society. ‘In and against the state’, to recall an old slogan.

No one can be mobilized by asking five people to cross their fingers in negotiating with the Troika, just as no one can be mobilized to exit the euro. In both cases there is no role for movements or for individuals, no perspective for taking action. To concretely reclaim the state at the point where people experience it in their daily lives – in healthcare, education, media, in workplaces, and organizing the necessary financial means – that is what could have mobilized and connected with an existing praxis. “This requires rethinking governmental and administrative practices as well as movements… which have to overcome their narrow corporatist mentality,” insofar as state recourse and decision making is transferred to these new actors (Karitzis 2015).

An example: The movement of solidarity clinics with their knowledge and engagement of doctors, healthcare workers, patients, relatives, and activists could have been a basis for a reform of the public healthcare system that aims at participation and transparency and opens up the administrations to the masses, uses their knowledge, and anchors their power there. Some steps in this direction were made, but extremely carefully.

Councils could have been formed everywhere. This could push forward the reconstruction of the state more powerfully than a single left minister at the head of an apparatus shot through with clientelism and corruption (especially in the tax administration).

This twofold strategy of negotiations and rupture was not taken up. The wish was to avoid a ‘war on two fronts’ and so not risk a conflict with the Greek bourgeoisie within the country. And so there was no turning to the very mobilization that could have bolstered the government – not only at the European level but also in the struggle against corruption and tax evasion, for cutting the horrendous arms expenditures, and the introduction of a wealth tax. These were precisely the points used by the anti-Greek propaganda in the creditor countries to continually accuse the government – incredible hypocrisy as we know since the Troika itself prevented these measures from being taken.

Moreover, a mobilization of civil society could have also been an important corrective for the government (every trade-unionist knows how helpful such pressure can be for negotiations). Forgoing it tended to render civil society passive. “Syriza as a whole – despite the mass presence of single members in the movements – evoked mass participation more than really developing it. Contrary to their communiques the government did not ‘open‘ institutional procedures and did not even think about broader negotiations and participatory democracy” (Albanis 2015).

Incidentally, the Left Platform also had no such strategy and with its program focused on a Grexit pursued a purely parliamentary and etatist tactic. They seemed uninterested in mobilization. Panagiotis Sotiris, ex-Antarsya member and now member of Popular Unity sums up self-critically: “The forces building the new ‘Unity’, they “acted like a variation of Syriza, that credibly upheld its principles but not as a new front that organically grew out of the movements and social conflicts… Our party did not succeed in … opening itself to the experiences of the movement” (Sotiris 2015). “Unity as well as the government obviously did not share principles and experiences of the radical left: neither to be broadly anchored in class, nor thick ties to solidarity networks and social movements were considered as particularly important. They refused to actively take part in the latter” (Spourdalakis 2015).

That the movements had already waned by the time Syriza came to power, as we so often hear, is an erroneous analysis (Sablowski, JW 18 July 2015; Strohschneider ND 5 August 2015). What does one mean by ‘movement’? The relatively ineffective general strikes and other spectacular demonstrations? Or the spread of organizing through the solidary structures in the whole country and the development of a connective party (socially as well as through parliament)? The former had indeed long since died down. After the occupation of Syntagma Square there was the laborious everyday work of organizing in the neighborhoods and of a multi-faceted solidary economy (Candeias/Völpel 2014). The latter is less visible and involves enormous wear and tear but also continual engagement and effect. In fact, with the refugee crisis that has been coming to a head already for a long time, the solidary structures have lost nothing of their dynamic but have grown in terms of activists, engagement, and dynamic, as Eleni Chatzmichali of the Network of Solidarity Clinics reports.

And after the big defeat in July, it became clear for everyone, in this situation solidarity structures will not become dispensable, because even a left government is not able to reestablish and expand the welfare state. You can’t rely on the government for your everyday survival. So, for instance in cooperatives or “markets without middlemen” numbers and engagement of activist are growing. We have to do it ourselves. In doing so, “we have to care about not eroding the political kernel of solidarity structures,” to reduce them to mere structures of help. “Antagonistic movements like anti-privatization or anti-eviction initiatives however were demobilized much more, but not the solidarity structures” (ibid.).

The notion of the demobilization of civil society is also refuted by the OXI. The mobilization surprised the participants (especially the government) perhaps even more than the outcome of the referendum. Although months had been thrown away, the OXI could have been used. But “there was no careful consideration how to mobilize the social forces, which demonstrated their willingness with 61 per cent at the referendum, and there was no careful consideration either how to strengthen the solidarity and parallel structures, that emerged out of the crisis” (Panagiotakis 2015).

Although the indispensable role of movements is recognized widely in the left, there is a dominant understanding of a linear ascending process of political organization: in the beginning there are protests and movements, then follows the building up of new or rebuilding of old left party structures, then there is the electoral process and campaigning to win the majority and assume (governmental) power to implement the “right” policies. Movements have their – more or less – important role, but the understanding of taking power remains the same old stylish, office-seeking, and etatist one, centered around parliamentary and administrative procedures – “We do it for you.” But this traditional relation toward government “is not sound anymore. The state is not able to provide what people need” (Karitzis 2015). Instead, it should be clear, that the moment of seizing governmental power is not the moment of replacing the moment of movements and social mobilization. Taking office should be understood as the moment of strengthening mobilization and self-organization of the subaltern classes in all fields of society. New connective practices between the different functions – government, party, movement, social self-organization in the neighborhoods and on the shop floor – must be developed – instead of acting in the name of movements and voters or the invocation of movements as the cases arise to mobilize people for the government.

Repeated mobilization in individual cases – like for the referendum – without giving people a real voice, a real possibility to decide, however, leads to disillusion. Not only has the Left Platform split off; still more serious is the loss of the base, which is leaving the party in droves, with many of the most active liaison people in civil society and the movements among them. The “connective party” failed.

There is still no open break between movements and Syriza; people are still discussing what the right consistent approach should be. “Movement-oriented people left” the party, so it will become “difficult to negotiate politics to strengthen solidarity structures only with people orientated toward parliamentary procedures,” reassess Chatzimichali (2015). There is ongoing discussion of founding a new civil-society platform that would not exhaust itself working within the government but pursue its own agenda of social organizing and transformation – a platform able to either pressure on, or support of, Syriza, depending on the specific conditions. The relation between party and movements now has to be directed toward a relation of cooperation and conflict, consolidating the autonomy of movements, comparable less to a connective party then to the model of the Brazilian landless movement MST in the time of the Lula government.

Tsipras and Syriza won a second mandate. Learning from our own failures is the duty. Because it will not be enough to socially cushion the Memorandum measures. It became immediately obvious that the European institutions will not tolerate such a tactic. When the Greek government tried to cushion the hardship of the memorandum measures with a parallel program of social measures (health insurance for all, municipal centers of help for the poor, an end to the foreclosure sale of the land of the cooperative Vio.Me etc.), the vote in the parliament had to be suspended because of the pressure from the Eurogroup. Therefore the creditors’ shift from “fiscal blackmail to direct political control… They not only set the legal frame for Greek politics,” but they are binding “the next payments to political compliance of the government, permanently supervised. They will prevent Greece from wining any room for manoeuvre for a new offensive” (Blockupy goes Athens, 12.7.15). So, the strategy to cushion the measures of the Memorandum has failed too.

Indefensible is any strategy “that privileges the ‘representation’ of voters over the organization of the society, with the goal, to struggle against the measures of the Memorandum today, and to bear a new economic war tomorrow” (Albanis 2015).

Lesson 5: Autonomy of the party from the government and parliament

Syriza has undertaken far-reaching changes in the political structure of its own organization and developed close institutional, indeed organic, ties with the movements. Together with the movements if founded the Solidarity4all network in order to network and strengthen the structures of solidarity countrywide; every deputy gives a significant part of his or her salary to Solidarity4all’s solidarity fund; at least one of each deputy’s staff is made available for work in the movement, etc. And so there were very good connections from the party to the movements. The party provides an infrastructure for the construction of the solidarity movements, that was enormously important.

However, there was little ability to guarantee an opposite path of impulses from the movements to the party, as it was still possible in the period of the Syntagma Square occupation. “We did not build an active relation to the society,” in this sense of lacking openness “there was no real difference to ND and PASOK” (Koronakis 2015b).

Furthermore, from the very start Syriza was threatened by “the danger of being completely absorbed by government duties,” as Elena Papadopoulou put it (2015). Situations are repeatedly arising “in which party cadre are absorbed into the state apparatus” and a left party “only still exists as a government party,” or as a parliamentary party, which describes Syriza with some exceptions. Against this, Papadopoulou recommends, it is necessary to “hold on to our own presence in the social field and even to expand it.” This did not succeed. The party was marginalized in relation to the government and parliament. It no longer played an independent role. “And the members were never consulted about any question, not at any time” (Panagiotakis 2015). A classic mistake.

“Since 2012, action of the party was too strongly oriented toward ‘governing‘. …Syriza privileged the parliamentary game, social practices degenerated into compulsory exercise. They stopped making initiatives in society and lost ingenuity, they still had in 2010 and 2011. This became clear at the founding party convention of Syriza. The questions debated there were mostly of procedural nature, nearly exclusively on inner-organizational structures – with it the party seemed disconnected from the societal field. Without creativity, the organization was not able to correspond to its own strategy” (Spourdalakis 2015).

In contrast inner-party conflicts between the different political currents dominated the debate, without representing or organizing a majority in the party. No entity within the party was dedicated to connective practices, bridging the differences.

“The ‘federal‘ character of the currents, functioning as networks or even parties within the party, was not useful. It prevented a real connection between the currents… Connecting the pieces is hard work. And a working and lively party debate is a precondition, supporting the Syriza strategy in all its organs, representing the new. It hasn’t worked. Division is due to these deficits, and it costs strength, effectiveness and votes.”

Along with this, those who had been important in organizing the close connection between the party and the movements, who had built vital relationships in civil society and were, precisely, for the twofold strategy of negotiation with the creditors and rupture in the sense of mobilization within the country, were ground down or made invisible within the clash of the government and its negotiating strategy, on the one hand, and the Left Platform, with its never developed exit option, on the other. Among other groups, I am thinking here of the “Group of 53,” a group within Syriza that advocated Syriza’s cohesion, its democratic functioning, and its radical left, movement-oriented direction. Central figures, such as the party’s General Secretary, Tasos Koronakis, or Christos Giovanopoulos, the coordinator of Solidarity4all, have since left the party.

For the sake of future left projects we would have to ask: How can the relation of those in government, of the parliamentary group and the party be shaped so that the necessarily emerging contradictions can be cooperatively worked through? How can one guarantee that the party is neither subordinated to the government nor pitted against it? What concrete conflicts can be foreseen? How are conflicts to be managed and democratic inner-party decisions made? To develop a connective praxis that cross the fault lines within the party and the social left should be a task of all parts of the left but, at a minimum, of its leadership groups.

What Does Defeat Mean Now for Us in Europe?

It was more than clear and repeatedly said, also by Tsipras, that one country alone actually cannot carry it off. They tried the impossible, bought time, and politicized the question of democracy in Europe. But what does this mean for us?

As I said: we haven’t made a difference. The Left – parties and movements, intellectuals and trade unions – which altogether is not all that little – have at no point managed to create a common initiative in order, beyond all trench warfare, to come nearer to the shared goal of the end to austerity and of Europe’s authoritarian-neoliberal regime.

As in a burning glass, Greece and the politics of all of the left in Germany for instance shows that the forms of politics that have been pursued, whether movement, trade-union, or party politics, are not good enough. Therefore we need a different strategy of organizing and becoming more, as I said, based on organizing in the everyday struggles, in the neighborhoods, etc., bringing more people to take their interest into their own hands.

Even if we in Germany do not have a dynamic like that of Greece or Spain, what needs to be done now is to develop capacities, prepare things, reinforce organizing processes – in order both to be effective (despite the lack of a dynamic) and to be prepared for the coming dynamic. “To be active within a fundamental temporal discontinuity means, on the one hand, to gather forces and develop and, on the other, to be open for the unforeseen, for the ‘untimely’. In the language of the ‘politics of the event’ this means an attitude that is ready to ‘grasp the opportunity’, to intervene in those temporary openings that allow a leap forward and the creation of more favorable relations of forces” (Caccia/Mezzadra 2015).

Of course, alongside this priority of popular anchoring in solidarity praxis, there also needs to be a programmatic position and discursive strategies that can convey the connection of these everyday hardships to the European crisis – a left populism, so to say, that clearly names the perpetrator and addresses the anxiety – anxiety in the face of a feeling of ‘external’ threat (Greece and the euro crisis, Ukraine/Putin, refugees, surveillance/NSA, terrorism) – that is predominantly related to the situation here and couples it to solidarity praxis.

Lesson 6: A common ‘Oxi’ camp

Europe no longer represents hope. In fact, we should consider whether certain powers ought to be transferred ‘back’ from the European to other levels. This would involve a new connection of decentralization but with transnational mediations. In terms of municipal concerns, it is at this level that decisions should be made. On what has effects beyond one municipality and region should be decided on higher levels: on a supra-regional or national basis with the participation of those effected – and of course there are questions that can only be approached on a European level. Which matters these should be would be clarified within a constitutive process aimed at a fundamental refoundation of the European project.

The means and end of a refounding of Europe would have to be the strengthening of the sovereign, that is, of the population. In this way, the impulse toward re-nationalization could be remodelled into an impulse toward decentralization and Europeanization. For a broad political debate on the prospects, Europe-wide assemblies should be called – a constituent process of consultation and organizing of a European civil society. It should not involve an abstract Europe discourse but would be close to the everyday worries and desires of people. This is the perspective. How to get there is the issue.

With this aim, Varoufakis is proposing the founding of a new European platform. The initiatives around the so-called Plan B (Mélanchon, Lafontaine, et al.) are also pursuing a discussion of the new orientation of the process of European integration and not just a debate about Lexit (Owen Jones). Instead, movements are focusing on diverse processes of intervention in concrete everyday organizing in connection with transnational assemblies and civil disobedience, but they are still going through a process of strategy clarification.

Those forces that can be called movements of a new municipalism have a somewhat different strategic focus. They assume that far-reaching attempts at European organizing are hopeless if not based on the organizing within the everyday life of individuals, in the neighborhoods, at the workplace, and in the municipalities. Within the Spanish state, connective platforms were able to win majorities in most of the country’s large cities. Not only in Barcelona and Madrid can the new left municipal governments name the mayor; in the USA, too, the various successes after the defeat of the Occupy movement can mostly be seen at the local and municipal level (for instance, around the minimum wage). In Italy, there is a long left tradition of social centers as places of organizing. The municipality needs to be won back as a locus of politics, of (self-)organizing, and participation. With Syriza we have seen the limits left governments come up against in an authoritarian Europe. This of course, is also true, in another way, for a new municipalism. This also involves jumping scale to translate and connect such politics and organizing with the European level – for a network of cities and regions or, more emphatically, the perspective of a European Commune as the constitutive process for another Europe from below?

We have also seen that European campaigns can serve to establish a new political space from below in Europe. By now there have been several such campaigns: on water, ACTA, seaports, TTIP, and others. The start of a mutual European understanding from below could be an organizing campaign for a European citizens’ initiative that would name maybe three still to be defined central goals: perhaps an end of social cuts and privatization, a European debt conference, taxing the rich with a European property levy, investments in a Europe-wide social infrastructure (healthcare, education, housing, energy), and a solidary refugee policy. It can be formulated better and more concretely, not more than three points. That European campaigns can be successful has recently been shown by the anti-TTIP campaign. But this new campaign should be more sophisticated.

Anti-democratic hegemonism of the German government and the subjection and impoverishment of Greece also finds its critics even in Germany among a relevant minority of 20 to 30 per cent, up to now within the left-liberal, Green, and bourgeois centre spectrum represented by Jürgen Habermas, Gesine Schwan, Reinhard Bütikofer, and many others. The refugee drama is considerably aggravating this anxiety. “More than ever, we need to go beyond the current limits of protest and create a social bloc that says ‘OXI’ to the social cuts and destruction of democracy in Europe, that goes beyond the classic left milieus” (Riexinger, ND 11 August 2015). In the rest of Europe, resentment, especially of the German government, has grown enormously. It would not hurt if left parties, social movements, and critical trade-unionists could unite Europe-wide around a few minimal demands in order to get such a campaign started.

The European institutions would certainly reject such a European Citizens Initiative (ECI). However, as was the case with TTIP, this could have a mobilizing effect, if you will, for a bold referendum for a Europe from below, as the beginning of self-empowerment for a constituent process.

These and other strategies are going to be discussed at a European Strategy Conference organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) in June 2016 together with the most diverse social initiatives, groups, tendencies, and organizations. Along with the political content, the conference will also deal with what the right political forms could be and their linkages, as well as a strategy for connecting the most diverse levels – local/municipal, national, European – in view of the left’s scarce resources: in each case, where is the right level of political intervention and organizing? The aim – despite current differing positions and goals – is to find connective perspectives and praxis that make possible not a unified modus operandi but at least a synchronization of politics of resistance for another Europe. This time together!

We have to be aware that we are experiencing a great crisis – things can change rapidly. And when they do, it will be rapid in every direction. Maybe in ours, if we learn from our defeats.

Mario Candeias is the director of the Institute for Critical Social Analysis and editor of the review LuXemburg.

Notes:

1. “The history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmentary and episodic. In the history of the activity of these groups there is doubtless a tendency to unity, if only at provisional levels, but this tendency is continually broken by the initiative of the ruling groups” (Gramsci, Prison Notebook 9 [German edition p. 2191]).

References:

• Albanis, Yannis, 2015: “Neubeginn in der Sackgasse,” in: LuXemburg-online, September.
• Blockupy goes Athens, 2015: “Die Niederlage verstehen heisst den Sieg vorbereiten,” 12 July 2015.
• Bussemer, Johanna, 2015: “Aus Spesen nichts gewesen?,” in: #This is a Coup, Supplement edited by ND and RLS, August, 24-25.
• Caccia, Beppe, und Sandro Mezzadra, 2015: “Unterm Himmel des Interregnums Anmerkungen zur politischen Methode der Veränderung heute,” in: Luxemburg-online.
• Candeias, Mario, und Eva Völpel, 2014: Plätze sichern! ReOrganisierung der Linken in der Krise
• Zur Lernfähigkeit des Mosaiks in den USA, Spanien und Griechenland, VSA, Hamburg.
• Candeias, Mario, 2015: “Ein gemeinsames Lager des OXI” in: ND, 4.8.2015 bzw. LuXemburg-online.
• Candeias, Mario, 2013: Wo bitte geht’s zum Winterpalast? Transnationale Resonanzen und blockierte Transformation, in: LuXemburg, No.3.
• Candeias, Mario, 2010: Von der fragmentierten Linken zum Mosaik, in: LuXemburg, No. 1, 6-17.
• Chatzimichali, Eleni, 2015: Stand und Debatte in den Solidarbewegungen Griechenlands, Contribution on the 2nd Democracy Conference of RLS, “Zerfall der EU oder demokratische Reorganisation von links. Wie weiter mit Europa?,” 14.11.2015, Berlin.
• Chondros, Giorgios, 2016: “Der einzige Kommunist im Dorf,” taz, 19.1.
• Gramsci, Antonio, 1991 ff: Gefängnishefte (Gef.), Vol. 9, Hamburg-Berlin
• Iliopoulos, Nasos, 2015: “Die Bürde von Syriza,” in: LuXemburg-online, August. English version: “The burdens of Syriza.”
• Karitzis, Andreas, 2015: “The Dilemmas and Potentials of the Left: Learning from Syriza,” in: Socialist Register 2016, edited by L. Panitch et.al., via: The Bullet No. 1183, 6 Nov. 2015.
• Koronakis, Tasos, 2015a: “Wir haben es bis hierhin geschafft, weil die Einigkeit im Kern unseres Planes stand,” in: LuXemburg-online.
• Koronakis, Tasos, 2015b: Nach dem Coup. Partei und Bewegung – Ende der verbindenden Partei?, Contribution on the 2nd Democracy Conference of RLS, “Zerfall der EU oder demokratische Reorganisation von links. Wie weiter mit Europa?,” 13.11.2015, Berlin.
• Koronakis, Tasos, 2011: Linkspartei auf dem Syntagma-Platz, in: LuXemburg, No. 4, 36-41.
• Kouvelakis, Stathis, 2015: Griechenland: der Kampf geht weiter, in: Marx21, 21.7.2015.
• Luxemburg, Rosa, 1974ff: GW – Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 1.2, Berlin
• Mezzadra, Sandro, 2015: Die europäische Perspektive. Offene Lage, bleibende Chancen, in: ND, 2.1.2016.
• Panagiotakis, Michaelis, 2015: Humanitäres Management eines Protektorats?, in: LuXemburg-online, September 2015.
• Papadopoulou, Elena, und Michalis Spourdalakis 2015: Zwei Monate Syriza-Regierung: Schwierigkeiten und Herausforderungen, in: LuXemburg-online, April.
• Poulantzas, Nicos, 1978: Staatstheorie, Hamburg 2002.
• Riexinger, Bernd, 2015: Möglichst viele sammeln, in: ND, 11.8.2015.
• Sablowski, Thomas, 2015: Die Etappenschlappe, in: Junge Welt, 18.7.2015.
• Spourdalakis, Michaelis, 2015: Lasst uns den Faden wieder aufnehmen, in: LuXemburg-online, December.
• Sotiris, Panagiotis, 2015: “First Thought On the Greek Elections,” in: Jacobin, 22.9.2015.
• Strohschneider, Tom, 2015: Der griechische Katalysator, in: ND, 5.8.2015.
• Wainwright, Hilary, 2012: Griechenland: Syriza weckt Hoffnungen, in: LuXemburg, No. 3, 118–25
• Werner, Alban, 2015: Für ein wildes Referendum gegen Merkels Europa, in: ND, 13.8.2015.
• Wolf, Frieder Otto, 2016: Wie kann aus der gegenwärtigen Krise einkonstitutiver Moment erkämpft werden?, RLS-Berlin (to be published).

Twin car bomb hit Al-Zahra neighborhood in Homs, again and again, near to the heavily populated bus station.  Coward terrorists remotely detonated the cars filled with explosives. Since the very beginning of the so-called revolution in Syria, this district was the main target for the western backed moderate terrorists.

Today in the early hours of Sunday/ 21/ February/ 2016:  Two blasts hit this neighborhood, claimed the lives of more than 60 persons, and left hundreds wounded, in addition to the huge material damage to the buildings around.

This neighborhood has been attacked more than 60 times since the beginning of the Syrian crisis.   Most recently was 26 / January when another car filled with explosives was remotely detonated, after which the terrorist blew himself up to kill those who came to help.  Twenty-four Syrians were murdered on that day.

On this same Sunday /21/ February, however it was on the afternoon, three terrorists blasts hit the other target, which also the so called moderate rebels have been bombing since the year 2011, the year of the bloody “revolution” birth.

It is Sayyda Zainab district in Damascus,  a terrorist car bomb then followed by explosive belts [suicide bombers], as if blowing up the loaded explosive car is not enough! So when the people gather to help the injured, the terrorists start to detonate their explosive belts against those innocent people!

More than 86 martyrs and a hundreds of wounded most of them are kids and women, furthermore, the huge harm caused to the area, near to both a public hospital and a public school.* The scene looks like an earthquake hit the place!

The most recent previous massacre in Sayyda Zainab on 31/ January also involved remote detonation of a car near a bus station and with two suicide bombers to kill the helpers. Forty-five Syrians were murdered.

All this terrorists blasts are not new, it started with the color revolution brand, sponsored by CIA, Saudi, Israel, and Turkey, against the Syrian people’s lives. Moreover, now they blame on the so-called ISIS, as known as Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, just to make the so-called moderate rebels look in innocent shape, meanwhile they are two faces for one coin, and made in the same factory!

To read complete article click here

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir at the Westin Grand Hotel during the Munich Security Conference: “ISIS is as much an Islamic organization as the KKK in America is a Christian organization.”

Interview Conducted By Samiha Shafy and Bernhard Zand

In an interview, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir expresses his continued support for regime change in Syria and his desire for rebels to be supplied with anti-aircraft missiles that could shift the balance of power in the war.

The wait for the interview with the minister takes six hours, but then he greets the journalists in a large conference room in a grand hotel in Munich. Adel al-Jubeir, 54, a slim, amiable man, wears a traditional robe and looks a bit fatigued. He and his counterparts spent the previous evening negotiating a cease-fire in Syria well into the night. And since early this morning, they have been busily discussing current global events. Al-Jubeir is the embodiment of a new breed of top Saudi Arabian leaders: He went to school in Germany and college in the United States and then served as the Saudi ambassador to Washington. In contrast to his longtime predecessor

Prince Saud al-Faisal, who served as the country’s top diplomat for decades stretching from the oil crisis in the 1970s until early 2015, al-Jubeir is not a member of the royal family. At the time of his appointment as foreign minister last April, Saudi Arabia had just gone to war with neighboring Yemen and the situation in Syria was escalating.

Al-Jubeir is now responsible for representing his country’s controversial foreign policy. And he allowed himself plenty of time to do so in this interview with SPIEGEL. When his staff sought to end the interview after 45 minutes because he had a speech to give at the Munich Security Conference, al-Jubeir suggested we continue the discussion in his limousine — both on the way to his talk and back to the hotel afterward.

*

SPIEGEL:Mr. al-Jubeir, have you ever seen the Middle East in worse shape than it is in today?

Al-Jubeir: The Middle East has gone through periods of turmoil before. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were revolutions. When monarchies were collapsing in a number of countries, we had radicals and we had Nasserism. Today it’s a little bit more complicated.

SPIEGEL: The most complicated and dangerous situation, obviously, is the one in Syria. What does Saudi Arabia want to achieve in this conflict?

Al-Jubeir: I don’t think anyone can predict what the short term will look like. In the long term, it will be a Syria without Bashar Assad. The longer it takes, the worse it will get. We warned when the crisis began in 2011 that unless it was resolved quickly, the country would be destroyed. Unfortunately, our warnings are coming true.

SPIEGEL: What do you want to do now that the Assad regime has gained the upper hand?

Al-Jubeir: We have always said there are two ways to resolve Syria, and both will end up with the same result: a Syria without Bashar Assad. There is a political process which we are trying to achieve through what is called the Vienna Group. That involves the establishment of a governing council, which is to take power away from Bashar Assad, to write a constitution and to open the way for elections. It is important that Bashar leaves in the beginning, not at the end of the process. This will make the transition happen with less death and destruction.

SPIEGEL: And the other option?

Al-Jubeir: The other option is that the war will continue and Bashar Assad will be defeated. If, as we decided in Munich, there will be a cessation of hostilities and humanitarian assistance can flow into Syria — then this will open the door for the beginning of the political transition process. We are at a very delicate juncture, and it may not work, but we have to try it. Should the political process not work, there is always the other approach.

SPIEGEL: Assad has said he considers a short-term cease-fire in Syria to be impossible. Has the Munich agreement failed already?

Al-Jubeir: Bashar Assad has said many things. We will see in the near term whether he is serious about a political process.

SPIEGEL: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke of the danger of “World War III” at the Munich Security Conference.

Al-Jubeir: I think this is an over-dramatization. Let’s not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls. Their parents were told: “You will never see them again. If you want to have children, go to your wife and make new ones.” Assad’s people rebelled. He crushed them brutally. But his military could not protect him. So he asked the Iranians to come in and help. Iran sent its Revolutionary Guards into Syria, they brought in Shia militias, Hezbollah from Lebanon, militias from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, all Shia, and they couldn’t help. Then he brought in Russia, and Russia will not save him. At the same time, we have a war against Daesh (the Islamic State, or IS) in Syria. A coalition that was led by the United States, with Saudi Arabia being one of the first members of that coalition.

SPIEGEL: You’ve just named all the actors. Is that not already a world war of sorts?

Al-Jubeir: I will get to this in a second, if you allow me. The air campaign started, but it became very obvious that there may have to be a ground component. Saudi Arabia has said that if the US-led coalition against Daesh is prepared to engage in ground operations, we will be prepared to participate with special forces. The Russians say their objective is to defeat Daesh, too. If the deployment of ground troops helps in the fight against Daesh, why is that World War III? Is Russia worried that defeating Daesh will open the door for defeating Bashar Assad? That would be a different story. But I don’t think World War III is going to happen in Syria.

SPIEGEL: Would Saudi Arabian ground troops only battle Islamic State or would you also join the fight against Assad?

Al-Jubeir: We expressed our readiness to join the US-led, international coalition against Daesh with special forces. All of this, however, is still in the discussion phase and in the initial planning phase.

SPIEGEL: Is Saudi Arabia in favor of supplying anti-aircraft missiles to the rebels?

Al-Jubeir: Yes. We believe that introducing surface-to-air missiles in Syria is going to change the balance of power on the ground. It will allow the moderate opposition to be able to neutralize the helicopters and aircraft that are dropping chemicals and have been carpet-bombing them, just like surface-to-air missiles in Afghanistan were able to change the balance of power there. This has to be studied very carefully, however, because you don’t want such weapons to fall into the wrong hands.

SPIEGEL: Into the hands of Islamic State.

Al-Jubeir: This is a decision that the international coalition will have to make. This is not Saudi Arabia’s decision.

SPIEGEL: The Russian intervention has had a big impact on the situation in Syria. How would you describe Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Russia at this point?

Al-Jubeir: Other than our disagreement over Syria, I would say our relationship with Russia is very good and we are seeking to broaden and deepen it. Twenty million Russians are Muslims. Like Russia, we have an interest in fighting radicalism and extremism. We both have an interest in stable energy markets. Even the disagreement over Syria is more of a tactical one than a strategic one. We both want a unified Syria that is stable in which all Syrians enjoy equal rights.

SPIEGEL: That sounds well and good, but you are also providing support to the opposing camp in a war. Even more than your relationship with Russia, the world is worried about the deep schism between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Al-Jubeir : Iran has been a neighbor for millenia, and will continue to be a neighbor for millenia. We have no issue with seeking to develop the best terms we can with Iran. But after the revolution of 1979, Iran embarked on a policy of sectarianism. Iran began a policy of expanding its revolution, of interfering with the affairs of its neighbors, a policy of assassinating diplomats and of attacking embassies. Iran is responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in the Kingdom, it is responsible for smuggling explosives and drugs into Saudi Arabia. And Iran is responsible for setting up sectarian militias in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, whose objective is to destabilize those countries.

SPIEGEL: If all this is the case, then how can you possibly establish “the best terms you can” with Iran?

Al-Jubeir: Yes, we want to have good ties with the Iranians, but if they want good ties with us, then I tell them: Don’t keep attacking us as you have done for the last 35 years. As long as Iran’s aggressive policies continue, it’s going to be bad for the region. Iran has to decide whether it wants a revolution or a nation-state.

SPIEGEL: Are the Iranians the only ones to blame? What can Saudi Arabia offer to improve this vital relationship?

Al-Jubeir: Show me one Iranian diplomat we killed! I can show you many Saudi diplomats who were killed by Iran. Show me one Iranian embassy that was attacked by Saudi Arabia. Show me one terrorist cell that we planted in Iran. Show me one activity by Saudi Arabia to create problems among Iranian minorities.

SPIEGEL: Your Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, accused Saudi Arabia of provoking Iran by actively sponsoring violent extremist groups.

Al-Jubeir: What’s the provocation that he’s talking about?

SPIEGEL: Is Saudi Arabia not financing extremist groups? Zarif speaks of attacks by al-Qaida, the Syrian al-Nusra and other groups — of attacks on Shiite mosques from Iraq to Yemen.

Al-Jubeir: Yes, but that’s not us. We don’t tolerate terrorism. We go after the terrorists and those who support them and those who justify their actions. Our record has been very clear, contrary to their record. They harbor al-Qaida leaders. They facilitate al-Qaida operations. They complain about Daesh, but Iran is the only country around the negotiating table that has not been attacked by either al-Qaida or Daesh.

SPIEGEL: Can the West play a role in mediating between Saudi Arabia and Iran, following the example of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the organization which helped end the Cold War?

Al-Jubeir: The Iranians know what they need to do in order to become a responsible member of the international community and in order to become a good neighbor, and it’s really up to them to change their behavior.

SPIEGEL: So there is nothing that Saudi Arabia itself or the West could do to encourage this process?

Al-Jubeir: There is nothing to encourage. The Iranians should just stay away from us.

SPIEGEL: How do you explain the ideological closeness between the Wahhabi faith in Saudi Arabia and Islamic State’s ideology? How do you explain that Daesh applies, with slight differences, the same draconian punishments that the Saudi judiciary does?

Al-Jubeir: This is an oversimplification which doesn’t make sense. Daesh is attacking us. Their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, wants to destroy the Saudi state. These people are criminals. They’re psychopaths. Daesh members wear shoes. Does this mean everybody who wears shoes is Daesh?

SPIEGEL: Are you contesting the similarities between the extremely conservative interpretation of Islam in Saudi Arabia and Islamic State’s religious ideology?

Al-Jubeir: ISIS is as much an Islamic organization as the KKK in America is a Christian organization. They burned people of African descent on the cross, and they said they’re doing it in the name of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, in every religion there are people who pervert the faith. We should not take the actions of psychopaths and paint them as being representative of the whole religion.

SPIEGEL: Doesn’t Saudi Arabia have to do a lot more to distance itself from ISIS and its ideology?

Al-Jubeir: It seems people don’t read or listen. Our scholars and our media have been very outspoken. We were the first country in the world to hold a national public awareness campaign against extremism and terrorism. Why would we not want to fight an ideology whose objective is to kill us?

SPIEGEL: At the same time, your judges mete out sentences that shock the world. The blogger Raif Badawi has been sentenced to prison and 1,000 lashes. On Jan. 2, 47 men were beheaded, among them Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. His nephew Ali has been sentenced to death as well and his body is to be crucified after the execution.

Al-Jubeir: We have a legal system, and we have a penal code. We have the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and people should respect this. You don’t have the death penalty, and we respect that.

SPIEGEL: Should we respect the flogging of people?

Al-Jubeir: Just like we respect your legal system, you should respect our legal system. You cannot impose your values on us, otherwise the world will become the law of the jungle. Every society decides what its laws are, and it’s the people who make decisions with regards to these laws. You cannot lecture another people about what you think is right or wrong based on your value system unless you’re willing to accept others imposing their value system on you.

SPIEGEL: Is it even compatible with human rights to display the body of an executed person?

Al-Jubeir: This is a judgment call. We have a legal system, and this is not something that happens all the time. We have capital punishment. America has capital punishment. Iran has capital punishment. Iran hangs people and leaves their bodies hanging on cranes. Iran put to death more than a thousand people last year. I don’t see you reporting on it.

SPIEGEL: We have reported on it.

Al-Jubeir: Anyway, Nimr al-Nimr …

SPIEGEL: … who was executed on Jan. 2 and was the uncle of Ali al-Nimr …

Al-Jubeir: Nimr was a terrorist, he recruited, he plotted, he financed and as a consequence of his actions a number of Saudi Arabian police were killed. Are we supposed to put him on a pedestal? He was put on trial. His trial was reviewed at the appellate level. It went to the supreme court, and the sentence was death, like the other 46 people who were put to death.

SPIEGEL: Your foreign policy has become more aggressive as well. According to the United Nations, about 6,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the beginning of the Saudi Arabian offensive in March 2015. What do you want to achieve with this war?

Al-Jubeir: The war in Yemen is not a war that we wanted. We had no other option — there was a radical militia allied with Iran and Hezbollah that took over the country. It was in possession of heavy weapons, ballistic missiles and even an air force. Should we stand by idly while this happens at our doorstep, in one of the countries in which al-Qaida has a huge presence? So we responded, as part of a coalition, at the request of the legitimate government of Yemen, and we stepped in to support them. We have removed, to a large extent, the threat that these weapons posed to Saudi Arabia. Now 75 percent of Yemen has been liberated and is under the control of the government forces.

SPIEGEL:For how long is this supposed to continue? Half of the victims in this war have been civilians.

Al-Jubeir: We will continue the operation until the objective is achieved. We hope that the Houthis and Saleh will agree to a political settlement, and we are prepared, along with our Gulf allies, to put in place a very substantial reconstruction plan for Yemen. We have no interest in seeing an unstable Yemen or seeing a Yemen that is devastated.

SPIEGEL: With several interventions in Yemen, Syria and other countries in the region, it appears that Saudi Arabia is aspiring to become the Middle East’s hegemonial power. Isn’t your country punching above its weight?

Al-Jubeir: We are not seeking this role for Saudi Arabia. What we want is stability and security so we can focus on our own development. But we have these problems in our region, and nobody has been able to resolve them. The whole world was saying that the countries of the regions should step up and resolve their problems, so we stepped up. Now people are saying, “Oh my God, Saudi Arabia has changed.” It’s a contradiction. Do you want us to lead, or do you want us to play a supporting role? Because we can’t do both. If you want us to lead, don’t criticize us. And if you want us to play a supporting role, then tell us who is going to lead.

SPIEGEL: Does Saudi Arabia feel threatened by the Iranian nuclear deal, by a possible rapprochement between your hostile neighbor and your closest ally in the West, the United States?

Al-Jubeir: We support any deal that denies Iran nuclear weapons, that has a continuous and robust inspection mechanism and that has snap-back provisions in case Iran violates the agreement. Our concern is that Iran will use the income it receives as a result of the lifting of the nuclear sanctions in order to fund its nefarious activities in the region.

SPIEGEL: The United States’ foreign policy in the Middle East has become more restrained under President Obama. Is that a mistake?

Al-Jubeir: I don’t believe in the theory that the United States is reducing its presence in the Middle East. Quite the contrary, in the Gulf, we see an increase in American military presence, as well as an increase in American investments. The argument is more accurate when one says America is focusing more attention to the Far East. But I don’t believe it comes at the expense of the Middle East.

SPIEGEL: Your Excellency, we thank you for this interview.

Muhammad al-Qiq is a Palestinian journalist. Last November 21, Israeli authorities lawlessly arrested him. He committed no crimes.

On December 17, an administrative detention order was issued against him, used when Israel wants someone imprisoned without just cause.

It’s usually imposed for six months, renewable ad infinitum. Thousands of Palestinian political prisoners languish in its gulag.

Al-Qiq is dying for justice, hunger striking for an astonishing 90 days, enduring great pain and suffering, more than any human being should be forced to bear.

Last week, Israel’s High Court showed no mercy, refused his legitimate request for release, likely condemning him to death in the process.

He’s is too weak to function normally. He slips in and out of a coma. His vision, hearing and ability to speak are badly impaired. In whatever way he was able to communicate, he told friends, family and supporters to remain “steadfast.”

His body’s ability to sustain life could fail at any moment. Death remains imminent. Medical science can’t explain how he remains alive without sustenance after three months.

Last Monday, a video circulated online, showing him crying out in severe pain. Through his attorneys, he requested transfer to a Palestinian Ramallah hospital.

Israeli authorities refused, claiming outside their direct control he’d threaten national security. He’s helpless near death, virtually unable to stand, walk, see, hear or speak.

His wife, Fahya Shalash, and young children are prohibited from visiting him. On Sunday, Israel’s High Court denied her petition to enter Israel to be with her husband.

It refuses to grant al-Qiq’s request to be transferred to a Palestinian hospital. On February 18, B’Tselem’s executive director, Hagai Elad, addressed Netanyahu by letter, requesting al-Qiq’s immediate release, so far in vain, saying in part:

His detention uncharged “reflects a new low in the instrumentalist approach to human beings,” an appalling example of injustice.

“You bear responsibility for al-Qiq’s life. I urge you – I implore you – to order (his) immediate release before it is too late.”

Longtime Israeli collaborator/illegitimate Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has done nothing to help him – beyond meaningless lip service promises.

Throughout his excruciating ordeal, al-Qiq refused medical treatment, declining it as long as he’s lawlessly detained.

His condition deteriorated so badly, it may be too late to save him or restore functions he lost, regardless of what happens going forward.

His appalling treatment is one of countless examples of Israeli barbarism, victimizing millions of Palestinians for not being Jews – supported by billions of US taxpayer dollars annually.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

For now, Canada’s CF-18 fighter jets have flown their last mission in both Iraq and Syria. Canada is transitioning to bringing the jets home and instead dramatically increasing troop presence overseas. Canada is going to triple the number of special forces who are said to be tasked with the objective of training Iraqi forces for at least the next two years. The country has already allocated a budget of over $1 billion toward the effort. The military missions in Iraq and Syria are going to be extended for another year, until March, 31, 2017. There has also been over $800 million promised in humanitarian assistance over the next three years.

The fight in Syria has been going on for several years now and it’s claimed that Canada has conducted roughly 2.5 per cent of all the airstrikes that were conducted in Iraq and Syria. The majority of the strikes that were launched took place in Iraq. It’s alleged that the United States has launched over 9,000 airstrikes itself in the ongoing fight against ISIS. Several years of fighting, billions of dollars, and thousands of airstrikes later, the enemy seems to be still a threat now more than ever.

Trudeau has been criticized for pulling Canada’s jets out of the fight and a variety of political representatives have condemned the move for Canada to step back in any way from the fight. Trudeau’s government maintains that they want Canada to have a “broader role” in the fight, and they hope to see more effective results delivered on the ground. This is a fight that doesn’t appear to have any clear end objective in sight and thus far as already cost Canadians billions of dollars.

When it comes to the worsening and ongoing fight in Syria, the situation is certainly a confusing one. Especially when one considers the origins of the terror group itself.

Perhaps Canada should take a step in a different direction, look instead toward focusing on its own nation and citizenry, rather than allocating billions in a fight which many say violates international law. It is the battle that has no seeming end, because when the deadline arises, it simply gets extended. Never-ending war doesn’t offer any benefit to Canada or its citizens. If anything it is quite the detriment, as we can see by looking to the United States as an example, with the many lives that the conflict will endanger and cost overall, and with the amount of wealth that will be wasted on the endeavor.

Children that arrive alone to the UK are being returned once they turn 18 (Image: Shutterstock)

Removals to the country have now been temporarily halted as lawyers argue that the security situation in the country is now so unsafe that no-one should be returned.

However, last month lawyers for the Home Office argued in a court of appeal case that removals should continue. The judgment on the hearing, is expected imminently.

The latest figures also show 657 former child refugees have been returned to Iraq since 2007, including 22 last year and 38 in 2014 when IS began to take a grip on the region.

The peak for removals was in 2009, the year UK troops withdrew from operations, when 153 people were deported.

The Foreign and Commonwealth office advises against “all but essential travel” to half of Iraq, and against any travel to the north-westerly areas. The latest guidance from the Home Office notes serious conflict in the country but finds it is still safe to return people to Baghdad.

A Home Office spokesman said:

“All applications to remain in the UK are considered on their individual merits, including an applicant’s age, the length of time they have spent in the UK, their ability to reintegrate and any compelling or compassionate circumstances.”

But the effect on the young person can be devastating. Gillian Hughes, a child psychologist at London’s Tavistock centre and who works with asylum seeking children, has said. “These children come to the UK and start painfully rebuilding their lives, and often do incredibly well, but then to lose all of that a second time, it’s just unbearable.

“We hear people saying I just won’t go back, I’ll kill myself before doing that.”

MP Louise Haigh also questioned how seriously the Home Office was taking the problem after it supplied two vastly different sets of numbers to the same questions posed by her and the Bureau via a Freedom of Information request and an official Parliamentary Question.

In a Written Answer to the Commons in November, Brokenshire said just 1,040 former child refugees had been returned to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya since 2007.

The Bureau spotted this was different to a Freedom of Information request reply, so the Home Office then supplied a third set this week, showing an increase of 250% in deportation totals.

Haigh said this had implications for policymaking. She said: “The reality is that Ministers have been basing their confident assurances on protecting these extremely vulnerable young people on a calamitous guesstimate which seriously misjudged the numbers they were forcibly removing to war-torn countries.

“How can Ministers claim to protect vulnerable people in the immigration system when they don’t even know how many they were supposed to be protecting?”

James Brokenshire, the Minister for Immigration, wrote to Haigh to apologise and blamed the mistaken data on “an error during the extraction process”.

This was always going to be a mixed bag. Heading to Europe, receiving bruising, and then getting some concessions for his case, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to renegotiate his country’s arrangements with the EU was not going to win many favours.

It took the course of two days. Late on the evening of February 19^th, Cameron concluded his renegotiation, announcing in the process that a referendum would be conducted on June 23^rd on whether the UK should remain within or leave the EU.

There were several sticking points, not least from eastern European states to Cameron’s insistence to cut in-work and child benefits to EU migrants to Britain. This violated the fundamental principle of mobility, ever the cornerstone of the European arrangement.

As far as that was concerned, Cameron got approval for what is being termed an “emergency brake” that will allow the UK to stop in-work benefits for migrants for seven years, and cut child benefits for existing migrants from 2020. Whether this concession will be immune to legal challenge is quite another matter.

Others included the attempt to seek exemption from the ultimate EU treaty goal of “ever-closer union” (opposed with some determination by the Belgians) and an understanding that countries outside the Eurozone be protected from decisions made by those in it.[1]

Cameron did get, rather reluctantly, agreement to a “red card” mechanism which enables national parliaments to block various EU laws. The understanding here is that Britain not play the role of meddler in attempting to convince other states to not move towards the goal of ever closer union.

Commentary from various quarters – The Spectator and The Times, for instance, proved sceptical about his prancing in Brussels. It can hardly be deemed substantive in any true sense, and certainly not the dramatic renegotiation Cameron had been touting. In a leaked diplomatic document on the Brussels talks, Germany’s Angela Merkel expressed a general lack of concern about the British demands on amending the treaty, as “we do not know if we ever will have a change in them.”[2]

The Spectator, for one, has expressed views about the “crucial missing part of Cameron’s EU deal”: sovereign control of one’s laws. The false exceptionalism of British law makers (and their defenders) has seen them confront the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union with disdain. “Aside from eroding national sovereignty (which it does) the current situation also undermines legal certainly – which, in turn, undermines good governance.”[3]

The Economist preferred to see his approach as one of painful awakening. “The story of intervening years is that of his gradual recognition that alliance-building and compromise, not foot-stamping and unilateralism (or the ‘Cameron Show’, as Germany’s Spiegelexasperatedly calls it), is the way to get things done in Brussels.”[4]

Traditional progressive outlets also ran pieces about how Cameron’s deal was the “wrong one”. Jeremy Corbyn of Labour found the Prime Minister’s proposed changes “irrelevant” and a case of “overblown tinkering”. The standard line there was that Europe had “brought Britain investment, jobs and protection for workers, consumers and the environment.”[5]

The European super structure, however, remained unchanged, while big business would be getting its jab of immunity from genuine reform. “Cameron’s Tories,” insists Corbyn, “want a free-market Europe. We want a social Europe of decent jobs and equality for all.”

Boiled down to its elements, the risk for Cameron is, as it always tends to be in such matters, simplification. There will be no negotiations at the ballot box over basket case concessions or understandings. The issue to be decided will be distilled, often grotesquely, to the issue of whether Britons are better off within or without the EU. Cameron has already decided to launch the first volley, claiming that, “Leaving the European Union would threaten our economic and national security.”[6]

Those like Justice Secretary Michael Gove see the case for the Out campaign, having received something of a Eurosceptic baptism of fire. Gove’s point is more populist than constructive, arguing that EU policies were behind the reactionary spike in Europe. Brexit would be didactic for Brussels. “By leaving the EU we take control. Indeed, we can show the rest of Europe the way to flourish.”

The Tory London Mayor, Boris Johnson, has similarly gone for the simple route, despite agonising, in characteristic confusion, over which way to go. His argument is pegged to the idea that the vote will somehow spur genuine reform. It is not that he resents Europe, a continent of culture he admits to adoring. He resents, rather, “the political project of the European Union”.[7]

Not that all of Johnson’s points should be dismissed. The project in 28 years, he argued “has morphed and grown in such a way as to be unrecognisable”. The Qualified Majority Voting mechanism has been rendered less effective for Britain, a country that “can be overruled more and more often”. The result is “legal colonisation” that is unsanctioned by parliament. The Greeks, among others, would certainly agree with that one.

Ultimately, it is the simple, hand bag falseness of the debate that will count. The economy is certainly up there, reduced to the issue of whether Britain’s competitiveness will be affected by moving outside the EU framework.

An unreformed European bureaucracy, lack of coherent policy, drowning refugees, for one, and the general sense of migrants overall will also stir up various parts of the population. Not that Britain needs to have concerns – the so-called hordes in Britannia have finally allowed the rich to get their conservatories, the bathrooms to be finished on time, the plumbing to be tended to. There is a sense that Cameron’s gamble is one that emphasises minor change for maximum illusion.

The “In” campaign may have the legs to carry it come June, though stating it with such clarity, as The Economist does, is always a risky proposition. “The Out camp may have Mr Gove and perhaps Mr Johnson, but otherwise it is a bunch of cabinet no-names and fringe eccentrics.” Given the fortune-favouring the brave voice of Johnson, however, and the dangers for Cameron’s stance become all too apparent.

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

Notes

 [1] http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21693324-britains-out-referendum-will-be-held-june-23rd-david-cameron-strikes-european-union-deal

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-michael-gove-david-cameron-brexit-national-security-a6886711.html

[3] http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/the-crucial-missing-part-of-camerons-eu-deal/

[4] http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2016/02/and-theyre

[5] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/20/jeremy-corbyn-comment-britain-eu-reform

[6] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12166541/EU-referendum-David-Cameron-reveals-the-latest-threat-to-national-security…-the-voters.html

[7] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12167643/Boris-Johnson-there-is-only-one-way-to-get-the-change-we-want-vote-to-leave-the-EU.html

 

The territorial dispute between Japan and Russia has its origins in the closing stages of the Second World War. Specifically, after declaring war on Japan on the evening of 8 August 1945 (two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima), the Soviet Union launched large-scale offensives against Japanese positions in Manchuria, Korea, and Sakhalin. Even after the broadcast of Japan’s surrender on 15 August, the Soviet advance continued. The Soviet forces recovered southern Sakhalin, which had been ceded to Japan in 1905 after Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. They also reclaimed the islands of the Kuril chain from Urup northwards, which Russia had voluntarily transferred to Japan in the 1875 Treaty of St. Petersburg. Finally, and most controversially, between 28 August and 4 September, the Soviet military occupied the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai islets, territory that had never previously been Soviet or Russian.¹

Map of the disputed islands (Source:CartoGIS, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University

Although this action can be considered the initial cause, the territorial dispute did not take on its current status as enduring stalemate until the mid-1950s. Until this time the Soviet Union and Japan remained technically in a state of war since Moscow had refused to sign the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951. In order to normalise this situation, and hopefully conclude a peace treaty, negotiations were undertaken in 1955-56. It was at this time that the countries came closest to finalising the status of the four islands. In the course of the discussions, the Japanese side, led by chief negotiator Matsumoto Shun’ichi and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, came to accept the position of considering the return of Shikotan and Habomai to be sufficient for the conclusion of a peace treaty. In other words, Japan’s diplomats were prepared to accept the loss of southern Sakhalin and all of the Kuril chain, including Etorofu and Kunashiri (Hasegawa 1998a: 109; Mizoguchi 2014). This was consistent with the San Francisco Peace Treaty in which Japan renounced “all right, title and claim to the Kurile Islands, and to that portion of Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it over which Japan acquired sovereignty as a consequence of the Treaty of Portsmouth of September 5, 1905.” (United Nations 1952: 3).

An agreement on the transfer of Shikotan and Habomai could have provided the basis for a permanent resolution to the territorial dispute and enabled a peace treaty to be signed. During the course of the negotiations, however, the United States intervened. The State Department was particularly concerned that reconciliation between the Soviet Union and Japan would harm US interests by facilitating a broader rapprochement between Japan and the socialist bloc, including the People’s Republic of China. In addition, they were worried that any territorial concessions from the Soviet Union would increase pressure for the United States to return the Japanese territory that it continued to occupy (Hasegawa 1998a: 114-5; Mizoguchi 2014). Guided by such thinking, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles boldly declared to his Japanese counterpart that Japan had no right to grant Etorofu and Kunashiri to the Soviet Union since these islands had been renounced in the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

Moreover, if Japan were to cede this territory, the United States would demand comparable concessions and permanently annex Okinawa (Hasegawa 1998a: 124). Intimidated by this threat, the Japanese side strengthened its resolve and revived the demand for the return of Etorofu and Kunashiri as well. The Japanese authorities also altered their definition of the Kuril Islands. Having previously only considered Shikotan and Habomai to be distinct from the Kuril chain, Japan began to insist that Etorofu and Kunashiri were also part of a separate geographical entity, which later came to be called “the Northern Territories” (Hasegawa 1998a: 120).

Since the return of the two larger islands was entirely unacceptable to the Soviet side, the hardening of Japan’s position made it impossible for a peace treaty to be concluded. Instead, the governments agreed to sign a Joint Declaration in October 1956. This document formally ended the state of war, restored diplomatic ties, and cleared the way for Japan to join the United Nations. With regard to the territorial dispute, Moscow left the offer of the two smaller islands on the table. Specifically, article 9 states that

“the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, desiring to meet the wishes of Japan and taking into consideration the interests of the Japanese State, agrees to transfer to Japan the Habomai Islands and the island of Shikotan, the actual transfer of these islands to Japan to take place after the conclusion of a Peace Treaty between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan.” (Joint Declaration by the USSR and Japan 1956).

Signing of the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration by Prime Minister Hatoyama and Soviet Premier Bulganin, 19 Oct. 1956

There have been numerous diplomatic ups and downs over the subsequent six decades. Nonetheless, the gap that the sides ultimately failed to bridge in 1956 remains as wide as ever in 2016. That is, while Moscow considers the transfer of the two smaller islands after the signing of a peace treaty to be the maximum possible concession, Tokyo continues to insist on the restoration of sovereignty over all four.

Upon taking power, all Japanese prime ministers are expected to commit themselves to breaking this deadlock. Some have made particularly determined efforts, including Hashimoto Ryūtarō and Mori Yoshirō, while others have just paid lip service. However, irrespective of their level of commitment, none have been able to achieve a territorial resolution.

One might expect that this history of failure would discourage Japanese leaders from seriously taking on this issue. And yet, Abe Shinzō has devoted himself to resolving the territorial dispute with Russia with unusual enthusiasm. For instance, on several occasions Prime Minister Abe has repeated his commitment that “my mission as a politician, as prime minister, is to achieve this no matter what” (quoted in Naka 2014). What is more, this is not simply empty rhetoric to satisfy certain domestic constituencies. Rather, as will be seen, Abe has gone to great lengths and taken some political risks in his pursuit of closer relations with Russia. This has been a regular feature of his foreign policy during his second and third terms as prime minister and, as will be explained below, the purpose has been to lay the groundwork for achieving a territorial breakthrough before the end of his time in office. With much of this preparatory work considered complete and now in his fourth year as prime minister, all of the signs are that 2016 will be the year in which Abe redoubles his efforts and makes a final push to deliver a conclusive settlement.

In addressing this topic, this article has four main purposes. First, it provides an overview of Abe’s policy towards Russia during his second and third terms in office. Second, the paper sets out a detailed description of Abe’s apparent plan for 2016, including a review of what he will specifically offer Russia in return for a favourable outcome. Third, it presents a discussion of why Abe is especially determined to resolve this longstanding territorial problem and why he is optimistic about his chances of succeeding. And fourth, the article provides an assessment of Abe’s realistic chances of success. In this final section, emphasis is placed on how relations with Japan, and the territorial dispute in particular, are currently viewed within Russia.

Abe’s Russia Policy

Although it may have attracted less attention than some of his other diplomatic initiatives, Abe’s assiduous effort to strengthen relations with Russia has been one of the most prominent features of his foreign policy during his second spell in office. Indeed, on the very day of the 2012 election that returned him to power, Abe declared that this would be a priority of his administration (Naka 2012). True to his word, after taking office he immediately set about attempting to fulfill this ambition. The initial step was his trip to Moscow in April 2013, the first such official visit by a Japanese prime minister in over a decade. What is more, Abe has invested heavily in his relationship with President Putin, correctly discerning that the Russian leader is central to everything of importance that takes place in his country’s domestic and international politics. To this end, Abe has publicly reiterated his positive attitude towards Putin, saying “President Putin has a clear goal, to build a strong, flourishing Russia. My current goal is to build a strong Japan. In this way, the President and I share common values and ideals. I feel considerable affinity with him” (quoted in Gusman 2013). Abe has made it an explicit goal to hold “as many meetings as possible” with the Russian leader (quoted in Makarov 2014). Following through with this tactic, by early 2016 Abe had held 12 meetings with Putin. The most striking of these was Abe’s last minute decision to attend the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics in February 2014, an event that was boycotted by most Western leaders.

Putin and Abe meet in Sochi, February 2014

For more than a year, this attempted rapprochement progressed smoothly (Brown 2014). To begin with, the commitment to frequent one-on-one meetings appeared to have paid off as Abe was able to declare with satisfaction that “relations of personal trust and confidence have been established between President Putin and me” (Kremlin 2013). The Japanese leader was also rewarded for his decision to travel to Sochi where he received a friendly welcome from the Russian president and the two leaders moved to calling each other by their first names. More substantively, economic ties improved steadily and bilateral trade exceeded US$35bn for the first time in 2013; this represented an increase of 3.3% from 2012 (Minekonomrazvitiya 2013). In the security field too, relations reached an unprecedented level when the sides held their first “2+2” meeting in November 2013. This format, which brings together foreign and defence ministers, had previously been reserved for states with which Japan enjoys particularly close ties, specifically the United States and Australia. Further progress was also discernible in the entry into force of an agreement on the simplification of visa procedures, as well as in the formulation of plans on the exchange of cultural centres.

Most importantly for the Japanese side, this improvement in bilateral relations also appeared to be generating the intended progress on the territorial and treaty issues. At the Moscow summit in April 2013, the two leaders issued a joint statement to announce that “We have instructed our foreign ministries to step up contacts on working out mutually acceptable options [for a peace treaty]” (quoted in Clover 2013). It was later clarified that these negotiations would be conducted at the vice-ministerial level. An informal session took place in August 2013 and the following January the first round of talks began formally in Tokyo between Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Igor’ Morgulov and his Japanese counterpart Sugiyama Shinsuke. With the renewal of these long-stalled discussions, for the first time since 2001 there appeared to be a genuine opportunity for progress towards settling the territorial dispute.

Despite the sense of promise generated by these rapid steps forward during 2013 and early 2014, the relationship suffered a serious setback in March 2014. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the United States and the European Union imposed a series of increasingly punitive economic sanctions. Japan was initially reluctant to follow suit but eventually felt it had no option but to conform to the policy of the other G7 members. Japan’s sanctions on Russia were introduced later than those of the US and EU, and they were carefully crafted to avoid having any serious impact. For instance, although a visa ban was announced against 23 individuals, Japan refused to identify who had been targeted, leading to speculation that the list did not include any prominent Russian figures (Golovnin 2014).

In this way, the Abe administration signaled its commitment to continuing the rapprochement with Russia as soon as international conditions permitted. And yet, despite the fact that Japan’s sanctions were largely symbolic, their introduction has had a chilling effect on the atmosphere in bilateral relations. Trade volumes, having reached record levels in 2013, subsequently plummeted, falling around 30% in 2015 (Zakharchenko 2015). Moreover, there has been no further “2+2” meeting and the vice-ministerial discussions on the peace treaty were suspended. Perhaps most symbolic of the contemporary difficulties, however, has been the embarrassing situation pertaining to Putin’s official visit to Japan. Abe invited the Russian president to come to Tokyo as a follow-up to the Japanese prime minister’s successful trip to Moscow in April 2013.

The visit was expected to take place in the second half of 2014, but this proved impossible due to the Ukraine crisis. Throughout 2015 there was regular talk about continuing preparations for the visit, though no date was set. Finally, when Abe and Putin met on the sidelines of the G20 in Antalya in November 2015, the plans for the visit were shelved.

Much of Abe’s hard work therefore seemed to be have been undone by the downturn in relations during the second half of 2014 and in 2015. And yet, despite these difficulties, the Japanese prime minister did not give up on rapprochement with Russia. Indeed, now that the conflict in eastern Ukraine has entered a lull, and with the possibility emerging of increased cooperation between G7 countries and Russia in confronting Islamic terrorism and North Korea’s nuclear test, there are strong signs that Abe has decided that 2016 is the year to resume efforts to secure a conclusive territorial deal with Russia.

Abe’s Plan for 2016

The diplomatic process

As previously, the centrepiece of Abe’s strategy for dealing with Russia in 2016 will be his personal engagement with the Russian leader. He made this clear in his New Year press conference of 4 January when he emphasised his intention to “keep taking opportunities to continue having dialogue with President Putin” (Kantei 2016). Abe followed up by making the relationship with Russia the major focus of a subsequent interview with the Nikkei and Financial Times. He told the journalists, “I believe appropriate dialogue with Russia, appropriate dialogue with president Putin is very important”. He also stressed his willingness to travel to Russia in 2016 and to welcome the Russian leader to Japan (Barber and Harding 2016). Although such engagement was presented as being in the interests of the G7 as a whole, there is no doubt that Prime Minister Abe is primarily concerned with achieving a territorial breakthrough.

This he confirmed on 7 February 2016, Japan’s “Day of the Northern Territories”, when he promised to quickly resolve the territorial dispute with Russia (Kommersant 2016). In particular, Abe appears confident that, in a one-on-one meeting with Putin, he can persuade the Russian leader of the merits of making a deal. Interestingly, in taking the lead himself, Abe appears to have decided to minimise the involvement of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). This may be a reflection of the fact that, over the years, the ministry has gained the reputation for being unhelpfully dogmatic with regard to the territorial dispute with Russia (Mori 2013: 51).

The specific summit towards which Abe is directing his hopes is likely to take place in Russia in the spring of 2016, not long before Japan hosts the G7 summit in Mie prefecture on 26-27 May. The possibility of this meeting was raised in November 2015 when the leaders met at the G20. This summit will require Abe’s third trip to Russia in a row (after April 2013 and February 2014), with no reciprocal visits from the Russian leader in between. To minimise the awkward appearance of this situation, the suggestion is that the meeting will be described as an informal summit and will not be held in the Russian capital. Initially it was rumoured that the leaders would meet in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, or St. Petersburg (Ishimatsu and Watanabe 2016). On 16 February, however, it was reported in the Japanese media that the summit would likely take place on 6 May in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi (Nikkei 2016).

Although the informal status of the spring summit is a product of circumstance, it suits the Japanese prime minister’s purposes well. This is because, unlike an official summit, there will be less preceding pressure for a concrete result and less information will have to be made public about the nature of the negotiations. This will give Abe greater freedom to concentrate on his goal of privately convincing the Russian leader to accept a territorial deal. There is precedent for such informal meetings between Japanese and Russian leaders. In particular, two “no necktie” summits were held between President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Hashimoto at Krasnoyarsk in November 1997 and Kawana in April 1998. Although ultimately leading to no breakthrough, these informal meetings were seen at the time as useful in making progress on the territorial issue. In particular, the Krasnoyarsk summit led to a pledge to conclude a peace treaty by the year 2000.

In advance of Abe’s own “no necktie” summit, the Japanese side has been eager to prepare the groundwork and to ensure the best possible atmosphere in bilateral relations. To this end, Kōmura Masahiko, Vice President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was dispatched to Moscow on 10 January. During his four-day visit, Mr Kōmura held meetings with Foreign Minister Lavrov and Sergei Naryshkin, Speaker of the Russian Duma and close Putin associate. He was also tasked with delivering a personal letter from Abe to Putin, though his hopes of meeting the Russian leader himself were not realised. Following up on Kōmura’s visit, on 22 January phone discussions were held between the Japanese prime minister and Russian president. Organised at the request of the Japanese side, these talks touched on recent developments in Korea and Syria. The leaders also took the opportunity to express their mutual interest in deepening cooperation in the political, economic, and humanitarian fields. Most interesting, however, is that official reports of the phone conversation state that, “Agreement was reached on the continuation of personal contacts” (Kremlin 2016). This suggests that plans for the informal summit were discussed. What is more, in a significant move, on the same day the Abe administration announced the appointment of a special representative to oversee relations with Russia. This new post will be assigned to Harada Chikahito, a veteran diplomat and former Japanese ambassador to Moscow (Rossiiskaya Gazeta 2016). The creation of this position represents yet further confirmation of the seriousness of Abe’s ambition to achieve a breakthrough on the territorial dispute in 2016. Mr Harada had his first opportunity to make an impact in his new role on 15 February when he met with Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Morgulov in Tokyo. At this meeting, it was agreed that Foreign Minister Lavrov would visit Japan in mid-April to confirm the final details of the informal Putin-Abe summit to take place in early May (Lenin 2016).

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Morgulov and Japan’s special representative Harada meet in Tokyo, 15 February 2016

In addition to this preparatory work, the Abe administration needs to consider what it would do in the event of the successful completion of the summit. This is because, even if Abe were to secure an agreement with Putin behind closed doors, many obstacles would remain to its implementation. Above all, the Japanese side would be likely to encounter opposition from G7 members, principally the United States, who, as has been seen, has a record of intervening in this territorial dispute. In this case, the US would be concerned about a major rapprochement between Japan and Russia taking place at a time when the latter remains in possession of Crimea and continues to be controversially involved in developments in eastern Ukraine. For this reason it is helpful that the informal meeting be held in advance of the G7 summit. In this way, Japan will have the opportunity to explain its position to its Western partners and to justify the softening of its stance towards Russia. Abe attempted to do something similar at the G7 summit in Germany in June 2015 when he outlined his intention to maintain intensive dialogue with Russia, despite the continuation of sanctions (Lenin 2015). Finally, if all of these steps go well, a formal deal on resolving the territorial dispute and signing a peace treaty could be officially presented at a subsequent visit by President Putin to Japan during the second half of 2016.

The specifics of Abe’s offer

The above are likely stages of Abe’s plan to achieve a conclusive solution to the territorial problem with Russia in 2016. All of this is, however, entirely dependent on Abe’s ability to secure Putin’s agreement to a deal. What then does the Japanese leader intend to offer? This is clearly something that cannot be known with certainty. In order for such sensitive negotiations to have any chance of success, they must be conducted in private. Were the anticipated Japanese concessions to be leaked in advance in the media, the government would come under fierce attack from conservatives and it would become impossible to reach any agreement. Leaks to the press, including from within MOFA, have had this effect on the negotiations with Russia in the past (Hasegawa 1998b: 367).

Although we cannot therefore know the exact details of Japan’s negotiating position, we can nonetheless piece together its probable features. To begin with, Abe’s starting point will be an attempt to convince his Russian counterpart to recognise the legitimacy of Japan’s claims to sovereignty over all four of the islands. This hoped-for acknowledgement is prized by the Japanese side because it would validate its long-held claim that the islands are “inherent” Japanese territory and that Japan’s sovereignty was formally established by means of the 1855 Treaty of Shimoda. Not being seen to compromise on the principle of sovereignty is also valued as a way of sending a message to China and Korea that Japan will never give ground with regard to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and Takeshima/Dokdo.

It is, of course, all but unthinkable that Russia would readily agree to hand over all four of the islands. After all, it is Moscow’s steadfast refusal to consider any such thing that has prevented the settlement of this dispute for over 70 years. Prime Minister Abe, however, will not demand the immediate return of the four islands. Instead, he is likely to propose a compromise whereby, if Russia recognises Japan’s residual sovereignty over the four islands, Japan will accept maximum flexibility on the timing of the islands’ actual transfer.

This proposal has already long been public (MOFA 2011), though its precise terms are less apparent. The probability is that Abe will push for the rapid transfer of Shikotan and Habomai within five to ten years. With regard to Etorofu and Kunashiri, however, Abe is likely to propose that, as long as Russia recognises Japan’s residual sovereignty, these two islands can be left to be administered by the Russian authorities. This would allow the Russian residents – approximately 8,000 on Kunashiri and 6,400 on Etorofu – to continue to live on the islands (Argumenty Nedeli 2014). Following this agreement, Japan would also reverse its opposition to its own citizens visiting the islands and would instead actively encourage economic investment and joint projects. This arrangement could be guaranteed for a period of 50 years, after which a new agreement could be made either to transfer the islands to Japanese administration or to continue with the preceding arrangement. It should be noted that this is not actually a new suggestion. It has many similarities with the proposal made by Matsumoto Shun’ichi in 1956, after he had been forced to expand Japan’s minimum requirement for a peace treaty from two islands to four (Hasegawa 1998a: 121).

Prime Minister Abe will hope to persuade President Putin of the merits of a deal that would enable Russia to retain control over the two largest islands – constituting 93% of the total landmass – albeit on condition that the islands be demilitarised. Additionally, Abe is certain to offer some more immediate incentives. The most significant of these will be economic. To start with, Abe will offer to move quickly to end the economic sanctions that Japan introduced against Russia in 2014. This promise is likely to have to remain informal as the removal of sanctions is supposed to be conditional upon Russia’s constructive contribution to resolving the Ukraine crisis. There would be opposition within other G7 countries if Japan were to be too obvious in its use of the sanctions as political leverage for pursuing its own national interests.

More important than ending its essentially symbolic sanctions, Japan will commit to providing large-scale economic assistance to be directed towards the development of Siberia and the Russian Far East. The Japanese side will wish to avoid creating the impression that it is attempting to simply purchase the islands, something that would be expected to intensify opposition from the Russian public. Nonetheless, it will be made clear that, if the territorial dispute is resolved, Japan will be willing to provide generous funding for major infrastructure and industrial projects in Russia’s eastern regions. Additionally, the prospect of lucrative long-term energy deals will be raised.

In offering these incentives, Abe will be seeking to exploit the Russian leadership’s urgent desire to develop Siberia and the Far East, something that Putin has described as the “national priority for the entire 21^st century” (quoted in Zavrazhin 2013). The Japanese side will also be calculating that Russia may at present be especially willing to make sacrifices in exchange for financial assistance as a consequence of the country’s parlous economic situation. Added to this, Abe will be looking to make the most of any concerns on the Russian side about overdependence on China. In particular, as the growth engine of the Chinese economy continues to sputter at the start of 2016, there will be the hope that Russian decision makers will prioritise closer ties with other Asian partners. With regard to energy, Japan will argue that, by diversifying its customer base away from China, Russia will be able to demand higher prices in Asian markets.

The proposal for Russia to continue to administer Etorofu and Kunashiri (at least for the medium term) and the offer of economic incentives are therefore likely to constitute the central element of Abe’s plan. At the same time, however, Abe may seek to add a few further sweeteners. This could include an additional easing of visa requirements for Russian citizens to visit Japan, a reform in which Russian diplomats have recently shown strong interest (Zakharchenko 2016). More intriguingly, Abe also seems to have in mind the idea of offering Japan to serve as a diplomatic bridge between the West and Russia, thereby helping to reduce Russia’s recent isolation. It is far from clear that Washington would welcome Japan’s mediation, yet this proposal was aired during Kōmura’s January 2016 visit to Moscow. Specifically, the LDP Vice-President is reported to have told his hosts that Japan would be willing to speak up for Russia during the 2016 G7 summit and would demonstrate maximum consideration for Russia’s interests (Ishimatsu and Watanabe 2016). It is unlikely that Kōmura would have made so bold a suggestion about Japan’s conduct at the G7 summit unless directly instructed to do so by the Japanese prime minister. Subsequently, Former Prime Minister Mori, who has previously been used by Abe as an unofficial envoy to Russia, also publicly promoted the idea of the Japanese leader serving as a mediator between Russia and the West (Agafonov 2016).

By means of these incentives, Abe will hope to secure the Russian side’s recognition of the legitimacy of Japan’s claims to sovereignty over all four of the islands. If he fails in this ambition, however, what will be his fallback position? It is almost certain that Abe will have one or two further positions to which he will reluctantly retreat if his first proposal is resolutely refused. This is standard practice in negotiations. What is more, Abe will be aware of the difficulty of his task, yet, having invested so much in his personal diplomacy with Russia, he will be unwilling to come away with nothing. Abe may therefore seek to seize his chance of becoming the Japanese leader who finally ends the territorial dispute, even if this means settling for sovereignty over less than four islands.

One possible fallback option is for Japan to accept a 50-50 territorial split. This would entail Japan regaining sovereignty over Shikotan, Habomai, and Kunashiri, plus a portion of Etorofu. A new international border would be established approximately a third of the way up this last island. Such a deal would represent an equal division of landmass since Etorofu is so much larger than the other three islands. In implementing this deal, the offer of continued Russian administration over Kunashiri and the southern section of Etorofu for a fixed period of time could still apply. This would ease the process of eventual transfer to Japan. A yet further concession would be for Japan to give up its claims to Etorofu altogether and settle for sovereignty over only three islands. This would have the advantage of avoiding the creation of Japan’s first land border.

These fallback options would involve the abandonment of the Japanese government’s longstanding commitment to the principled position that Russia must simultaneously recognise Japan’s sovereignty over all four of the islands. The acceptance of either option would therefore constitute a major compromise from a Japanese leader. Despite this, it is not inconceivable that Abe would consider making such a deal. To begin with, Abe has previously demonstrated a pragmatic streak in his approach to foreign policy. This was most recently in evidence in the Japan-South Korea “Comfort Women” deal. It is well-known that Abe takes a skeptical view of the “Comfort Woman” issue. In 2007, he stated: “The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion,” (quoted in Mizoguchi and Dudden 2007: 2).

Moreover, in February 2014 the Abe administration let it be known that they were considering reviewing the apology offered in the 1993 Kōno statement (Ryall 2014). And yet, despite these personal beliefs, Abe agreed to put his name to the December 2015 “Comfort Women” deal, which included a formal expression of his own “most sincere apologies and remorse” (MOFA 2015). He did so because he evidently judged that a resolution to this dispute was in Japan’s broader national interests. As a relatively popular nationalist leader, Abe is also in a stronger position than most Japanese prime ministers to make concessions that will be unpopular with Japan’s right wing. Finally, with specific regard to the territorial dispute with Russia, it is worth noting that the idea of a 50-50 territorial split has previously been floated by Asō Tarō and Yachi Shōtarō, both prominent members of the Abe government (Mainichi Shinbun 2009; Sarkisov 2009: 45). On this basis, it is therefore not impossible to imagine Abe settling for a territorial resolution that resulted in the return to Japan of only three islands or three and one third.

Explanations for Abe’s Behaviour

Those familiar with the tortuous history of territorial negotiations between Japan and Russia will be surprised by Abe’s apparent optimism about being able to secure the return of more than the two smaller islands. In fact, some may be inclined to think that his efforts are not genuine and that he is just making a show of trying in order to garner public support. This would be a reasonable assumption, but it would not be correct.

The territorial dispute with Russia remains a priority for some small domestic groups, including the League of Chishima-Habomai Residents and certain far-right organisations. For the majority of Japanese citizens, however, this issue is not a political priority. For instance, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese Cabinet Office in 2013, only 40.5% of respondents had heard about the dispute and knew its details. A further 41% had heard about the dispute and knew its details to a certain degree. Meanwhile, only 20.6% were aware of the activities of the government and private groups to recover the islands and knew what these efforts entailed. Another 30.7% knew about these efforts to a certain extent. Strikingly, only 3.2% of respondents stated that they would be interested in actively participating in efforts to secure the return of the islands (Naikaku-fu 2013). Separate analysis also shows that public interest in the dispute with Korea over Takeshima/Dokdo now actually exceeds that in the Northern Territories (Bukh 2015: 60). On the basis of these statistics, Abe has little to gain in terms of public support by merely attempting to pursue a territorial resolution with Russia.

Additionally, if the Japanese prime minister’s activities were purely for show, he could have achieved this effect with much less effort and expenditure of political capital. Instead, as has been noted, since the beginning of his second term Abe has put extensive effort into courting Putin, even at the risk of creating some distance between Japan and the United States, something that Japanese leaders are usually loath to do. As a result, Washington has cautioned Japan about its accommodating stance towards Russia, a warning that the Japanese leader has evidently chosen to ignore (Asahi Shimbun 2015). Abe would not have engaged in such bold action if he did not believe that there was the genuine possibility of a breakthrough in the territorial dispute.

This determination to resolve the Northern Territories problem is consistent with other aspects of the prime minister’s political agenda. This is because Abe is an unusually ambitious Japanese prime minister and seems committed to sealing his legacy as a transformational leader. In this regard, he has been assisted by institutional changes since the late 1990s that have shifted power towards the prime minister’s office. He has also been encouraged by the lack of opposition since 2012, both from other parties and within the LDP (Burrett forthcoming). These developments have been empowering for the Japanese leader. The ambitious way in which he has sought to use this power, however, is specific to Abe.

Since returning to office in December 2012, Abe has hurriedly pursued a series of bold initiatives. These include the 2013 Secrecy Act, reinterpretation of the Constitution to permit collective self-defence, the economic programme dubbed “Abenomics”, and the “Comfort Women” deal with South Korea. This impatient attitude may owe something to Abe’s unexpected political rejuvenation. Having failed to leave a lasting impression during his first term as prime minister in 2006-07, Abe will be especially eager to make the most of his second opportunity in power. The Japanese leader is also in much better physical health than during his first term when he was debilitated by the effects of ulcerative colitis. Due to new medication, this illness is now under control and, according to one of his advisors, Abe is consequently enjoying “a psychological transformation that has made the prime minister more forward looking than in his first administration” (Burrett forthcoming).

These considerations may help to explain Abe’s political ambitions. There are, however, some factors that make him particularly keen to secure a peace treaty with Russia. First in this regard is his family history. It is often suggested that Abe’s determination to revise the Constitution is guided by his desire to fulfill the ambitions of his grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke, who was prime minister from 1957 to 1960. When it comes to Japan’s relations with Russia, however, it is his father who is the greater inspiration. Abe Shintarō was Japan’s foreign minister from 1982 to 1986 and was therefore in office during the positive period in Soviet-Japanese relations that followed Mikhail Gorbachev’s accession to general secretary in March 1985.

Encouraged by the optimistic atmosphere that accompanied the ending of the Cold War, Abe’s father succeeded in opening negotiations with the Soviet Union. He also developed an affection for the country and set the target of signing a peace treaty during the lifetime of the current generation. Abe Shinzō has openly expressed his determination to complete this unfulfilled goal of his father (Abe 2006: 34-7). Most nostalgically, when in Moscow in April 2013, the Japanese prime minister visited the sakura garden that had been inaugurated by his father in 1986. On that occasion, Abe stated: “In accordance with the will of my father, I wish to achieve such development in relations with Russia that the cherry trees enter a period of full bloom” (quoted in Gusman 2013).

A young Abe Shinzō with his father, Shintarō

 

Further to this emotional element, Abe’s foreign policy towards Russia is powerfully guided by his strategic vision for Japan. In this respect, the Japanese leader has two main priorities: first, to uphold Japanese security against the threat of an increasingly assertive China; and second, to return Japan to the status of a normal great power that is able to play a more independent role in international politics. Resolving the territorial dispute with Russia helps serve both goals.

To elaborate, by settling its northern border and signing a peace treaty, Japan would eliminate a major obstacle to closer relations with Russia. This would in turn open up the prospect of Japan beginning to draw Russia away from China. As is well known, in recent years the relationship between Russia and China has become increasingly close, especially in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis and consequent deterioration in Moscow’s relations with the West (Brown 2015a; 2015b). This is undoubtedly negative for Japan since cooperation between Russia and China in the political, military, and economic spheres has an emboldening effect on Beijing. In particular, confidence about the security of its vast northeastern land border enables China to commit more resources to its maritime activities in the East and South China Seas. What is more, if regional tensions continue to grow in the coming years, Japan could find itself facing the strategic nightmare of being surrounded by a hostile Sino-Russian bloc, while simultaneously growing ever more nervous about the dependability of the security guarantee of the United States. If, on the other hand, the territorial dispute can be resolved, Japan would be in a better position to entice Moscow to distance itself from what is beginning to look like a fledgling alliance with Beijing and instead to adopt a more flexible, balancing role within East Asia.

With regard to the second goal of enabling Japan to pursue a more independent foreign policy, it is certainly not Abe’s intention to abandon the alliance with the United States. Rather, the goal is to maintain this close relationship but to make it more of a partnership of equals. That is to say, to make Japan less dependent on the security guarantee of the United States and to make it possible for Japan to act more autonomously when necessary. To achieve this, Abe wishes to revise (rather than simply reinterpret) the Constitution’s article 9, which prevents Japan from maintaining armed forces and rules out the use of force as an instrument of foreign policy. In addition, Abe is seeking to develop stronger bilateral ties with other key powers. This is why he has been so active internationally since returning to office, visiting a quarter of the world’s countries in the first 20 months (Panda 2014). There are several important relationships in this regard, but that with Russia is one of the most significant. This is highlighted in the National Security Strategy of 2013, which notes that “it is critical for Japan to advance cooperation with Russia in all areas, including security and energy, thereby enhancing bilateral relations as a whole, in order to ensure its security” (Kantei 2013: 25). Interestingly, it was the same goal of enabling Japan to operate more autonomously that informed Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichirō’s original decision to press for a territorial resolution in 1955-56. As Hasegawa explains,

“Hatoyama, noted for his stronger nationalistic tendencies, took a position that Japan should seek a more independent foreign policy, not wholly faithfully following the American global strategy. This did not mean that Hatoyama was allied with the left-wing/progressive force since he also stood for the revision of the constitution and the rearmament of Japan. In forming his cabinet, Hatoyama considered the normalization of relations with the Soviet Union the first priority of his government.” (1998a: 107-8).

The above paragraphs provide a clear explanation as to why Abe is so determined to settle the territorial dispute with Russia. They do not, however, get to the bottom of why he is so confident about his chances of success. Only the Japanese prime minister himself can provide the full reasons for this optimism, but part of the explanation would again seem to lie in Abe’s own personality. In particular, the Japanese leader appears to have a strong sense of self-belief and this encourages him to concentrate on what he wants to achieve rather than on what might ordinarily be considered possible. This conclusion is encouraged by analysis of Abe’s well-known “Japan is back” speech of February 2013 in which he stated:

The time I spent – five long years since leaving office as Prime Minister was my time for reflection. First and foremost, I reflected upon where Japan should stand in the future. I didn’t consider WHETHER Japan could do this or that. I thought, more often, what Japan MUST continue to do (MOFA 2013).

Further to the conviction that the return of the Northern Territories is something that Japan must do, Abe’s optimism is likely enhanced by a strong belief in the legitimacy of Japan’s claims to the islands. Such a view, which is common in Japan, has been subjected to criticism by some academics. For instance, according to Hasegawa, “The petulance and tenacity with which the Japanese government clung to the return of the Northern Territories can be explained by their self-righteous belief that few people in Japan have questioned – a belief that all justice rested on their side.” (Hasegawa 1998a: 141). As will be seen below, this one-sided outlook owes much to a lack of understanding of Russian perceptions of the territorial dispute. It is also reinforced by a tendency to overestimate the extent of Japanese leverage over Russia.

Last of all, Abe’s optimistic belief that he can regain sovereignty over more than just Shikotan and Habomai has actually been encouraged by the Russian side. Most significant in this regard was Putin’s statement in March 2012 when he responded to a Japanese journalist’s question by saying “we really want to permanently close this territorial problem with Japan, and we want to do so in a way that is acceptable for both countries.” Going further, Putin described this desired outcome as a “hikiwake” (meaning “draw” in Japanese) (RIA Novosti 2012). Although not attracting much interest within Russia, this comment provoked great excitement within Japan. In particular, Suzuki Muneo, a former Diet member with a long history of involvement with Russia, interpreted the statement as being of historic importance, saying

“Putin made it public that he was considering more than the return of just two islands. It was extremely brave of Putin to make such in-depth statements about the Northern Territories dispute, which has to do with national sovereignty, at a conference days before the presidential election. Putin’s affection for Japan and his determination to resolve the territorial problem also come across. It is a very sincere attitude and you feel that he has the political toughness and the good judgment of a leader. That is why, without a doubt, we have a chance with Putin.” (Suzuki 2012: 198–9).

It is not clear if Abe was as impressed by Putin’s “hikiwake” statement as his former LDP colleague. Nonetheless, it is apparent that the Japanese leader shares the belief that there is a window of opportunity at present for Japan to secure a favourable settlement to the territorial dispute.

Will Abe Succeed?

Prime Minister Abe should be applauded for his determined efforts to resolve this territorial dispute and thereby put a conclusive end to the abnormal situation in which no peace treaty exists between two of the world’s major powers. While other Japanese leaders have simply gone through the motions of demanding the islands back, Abe has carefully sought to implement a plan that he genuinely believes to have a chance of achieving a lasting resolution. In so doing, he has taken some risk. Firstly, as noted, Abe’s strategy of seeking to induce concessions by taking a soft stance towards Russia is likely to irk the United States. Secondly, having involved himself so personally in the courtship of Putin over the last three years, Abe will be seen to have failed if his endeavour leads to nothing concrete.

So, having invested significant time and political capital in the relationship with Russia, can Abe repeat his apparent success of the recent “Comfort Women” deal by pulling another foreign policy rabbit out of his hat? It is difficult to be sure of anything in international politics, especially when we cannot be certain of what is being discussed by the parties behind closed doors. Nonetheless, in the case of Abe’s attempts to secure a territorial deal with Russia in 2016, we can be as confident as possible in the prediction that his efforts will prove to be in vain.

To begin with, the territorial dispute between Japan and Russia is considerably more intractable than the “Comfort Women” issue. This is because, for all the enormous sensitivities and symbolic importance of the subject of the “Comfort Women”, it is a problem to which the resolution may involve an outcome that can clearly benefit both sides. This is much more difficult to achieve with regard to a territorial dispute. Although those who wish to encourage concessions will talk of achieving a win-win situation, the reality is that territorial disputes are essentially zero-sum. In this case, this means that for Japan to secure a satisfactory result, it is necessary for the Russian side to resign itself to the permanent loss of territory. Added to this, in the case of the “Comfort Women” agreement, the United States was able to lean heavily on Seoul to accept a seemingly unpalatable deal. By contrast, Washington has no such leverage vis-à-vis Moscow over the Northern Territories.

This being so, the only way in which Abe can succeed in securing the return of sovereignty over the four islands (or at least three) is if there are sufficiently powerful incentives for the Russian leadership to decide that there is more to be gained from voluntarily giving up the islands than from retaining them. The Japanese leader evidently believes that he can present the Russian side with such a scenario. In this regard, he is clearly mistaken. In a straightforward cost-benefit analysis, no Russian leader would rationally opt to concede to Japan any sovereignty over Etorofu or Kunashiri and there is nothing that Prime Minister Abe can realistically offer to change this. I have outlined the reasons for this in detail elsewhere (Brown 2016). The main points, however, can be summarised as follows.

Conflicting historical memory

Firstly, there is the issue of fervent opposition to any territorial transfers from within the Russian political elite and broader populace. Due to Japanese confidence about the righteousness of its own position from a legal and historical perspective, there is a tendency to overlook the alternative narrative that prevails in Russia and to underestimate the intensity of feeling that this engenders. To briefly explain these two conflicting narratives, the Japanese side regards the four islands as “inherent” Japanese territory whose legal status was firmly established by means of the 1855 Shimoda Treaty. This land was then opportunistically seized at the end of World War II when the Soviet Union, “like a thief at a fire” (Kimura 2008: 51), exploited the circumstances of Japan’s imminent defeat to forcibly occupy this territory. To make matters worse, this action was preceded by Moscow’s violation of the countries’ Neutrality Pact, making this attack a “stab in the back” (Kimura 2008: 48).

In opposition to this account, it is commonly argued in Russia that, far from being “inherent” Japanese territory, the islands were only colonised by Japan during the 19^th century. What is more, this seizure of the territory by Japan is claimed to have been “accompanied by the same annihilation of local tribes that occurred in America with the Indians” (quoted in Sabov 2005). Japan is therefore considered to have no particularly strong historical or moral claim to the territory.

In terms of more modern history, within Russia it is generally believed that, rather than acting in the manner of an unprincipled looter, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan to uphold a solemn commitment it had made to its wartime allies, the United States and United Kingdom. Having joined this conflict, Soviet forces are regarded as having made a major contribution to the defeat of Japan. This opinion was expressed by Putin in 2014 when he declared, “we did battle on the hills of Manchuria and in the mountain passes of the Greater Khingan, crushing the Kwantung Army, and together we delivered a victorious end to the Second World War” (Kremlin 2014). On this basis, the islands are considered to have become Russian territory in legitimate recompense for the Soviet contribution to Allied victory. Although the four islands had never previously been Russian territory, this outcome is nonetheless seen as legitimate since it represented well-deserved payback for four decades of Japanese aggression, which included the Russo-Japanese War, the Siberian Intervention, and the battle of Nomonhan/Khalkhin Gol. Furthermore, with regard to legal issues, the Russian side frequently draws attention to the Yalta Protocol, which states that, “The Kurile Islands shall be handed over to the Soviet Union” (Protocol of Proceedings of Crimea Conference 1945). They also highlight the San Francisco Peace Treaty in which Japan renounced “all right, title and claim to the Kurile Islands” (United Nations 1952: 48). Lastly, emphasis is placed on article 107 of the UN Charter, which Russian leaders interpret as having finalised the post-war settlement (Dolgopolov and Shestakov 2015).

The most sensitive issue from the Russian perspective, however, is the memory of the approximately 12,000 Soviet soldiers killed in the course of fighting Japanese forces during August 1945 (Zubov 2011: 181). Only 539 of these losses were incurred on the Kuril chain (during the Battle of Shumshu) and no combat took place in the occupation of the four disputed islands (Myasnikov 2014). Despite this, in the Russian popular narrative, the islands were obtained through the sacrifice of Soviet lives. This view has been repeated by Dmitrii Rogozin, Russia’s outspoken deputy prime minister, who has claimed that “the four islands became Russian territory after a bloody struggle and have now assumed the status of sacred territory” (quoted in Kimura 2008: 145).

War memorial on the island of Kunashiri

 

The Japanese authorities would fiercely challenge many elements of this account. This matters little, however, when a successful resolution for Japan is dependent on the Russian government voluntarily making concessions. What is of significance is that, in the views of a majority of Russians, any substantial transfer of territory to Japan would not be regarded as a reasonable compromise to settle a longstanding problem in bilateral relations. Instead, it would be understood as a betrayal of those Soviet soldiers who gave their lives in their country’s struggle against fascism and militarism. Such views are particularly strong in the Sakhalin region, which administers the islands. Indeed, according to one poll, 80 percent of residents would demand the president’s resignation if the islands were to be returned. More alarmingly, as many as 17.8 percent stated that they would be willing to commit extreme acts, including taking up arms, if it were necessary to protect the status of the Southern Kurils as Russian territory (Williams 2007: 189). Although these are not new statistics, such attitudes are only likely to have been strengthened by the nationalist ferment stirred up by the Ukraine crisis and by the grandiose celebrations of the 70^th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. In this context, any Russian leader would have to be brave indeed to offer major territorial concessions to Japan.

Japan’s economic leverage?

Prime Minister Abe’s evident hope is that Putin can be induced to go against public opinion and to use his enormous political capital to force through a territorial deal. In formulating this strategy, however, the Japanese side has misjudged, not only the intensity of Russian popular opposition, but also the extent of Japanese leverage. As noted, the principal incentive that Abe plans to offer is Japanese economic investment in Russia, especially in Siberia and the Russian Far East. This is unquestionably something that the Russian authorities desire. And yet, if one looks more closely at the way in which this issue is seen in Russia, it immediately becomes clear that Russian enthusiasm for closer economic ties with Japan is not nearly strong enough to persuade the country’s leadership to make deeply unpopular territorial concessions.

To begin with, economic relations with Japan are not viewed as the prize they once were. Instead of being the number one Asian economy with which Russia would like to develop closer ties, as was the case during the 1990s, Japan is now considered just one of many Asia-Pacific countries with which Russia is interested in doing more business. This shift in attitude is the result of the enduring stagnation of the Japanese economy. While in 1999 Japanese gross domestic product was approximately 23 times larger than that of Russia, this had been reduced to just 2.3 times by 2013 (World Bank 2014). As a consequence, the allure of the Japanese economy has been diminished significantly and there is now a strikingly gloomy attitude within Russia towards Japan’s economic prospects. For instance, Dmitrii Strel’tsov, one of Russia’s leading Japan experts, describes the current economic situation in Japan as follows: “Against a background of prolonged recession, from which no exit is in sight, there is rooted amongst the public a sense of pessimism which borders on the feeling of a country that has capitulated after a long and exhausting war.” (2014: 78). Observations of Japan’s slow-motion population collapse only add to such negative perceptions. As such, unlike China in the 2000s to which Russia was willing to cede a small amount of territory²,Japan is not regarded as the sort of dynamic economy to which it would be worth making painful concessions in exchange for closer economic ties.

Added to this impression that Japan is economically past its best, there is a strong belief in Russia that economic leverage within the bilateral relationship is not all one way. That is, while Russia may want more of Japan’s high-tech investment, Japan also has a desire to import more energy resources from Russia. This is considered particularly pressing since Japan needs to protect its energy security by diversifying its oil and gas imports away from excessive dependence on the Middle East at a time when its nuclear power remains largely crippled (Brown 2013). Giving voice to this opinion, Valerii Golubev, Gazprom’s deputy chairman, has stated: “No, I don’t think Japan has an alternative [to Russian gas]. They don’t have their own energy resources, so they will need to buy. [. . .] For them, it is the shortest route. Therefore, in any case for them our gas will be the most advantageous” (RIA Novosti 2014). Increased economic exchange is therefore viewed as mutually beneficial, and not as some coveted gift to be bestowed on Russia by Japan in exchange for political concessions.

Another factor that seriously reduces Japanese economic leverage is the widespread understanding amongst Russian officials and business executives that the territorial dispute has already become almost completely decoupled from economic relations. In other words, attracting increased Japanese investment is not dependent on making progress on the territorial issue. This precise point is made by Viktor Ozerov, representative of Khabarovsk in the Federation Council.

“Beginning in 1994, I have been to Japan many times. At the time of my first trips, as soon as the Japanese asked, ‘Are you going to give up the islands?’ and I said, ‘No’, the negotiations immediately ended. However, during my last visit, a Japanese legislator told me that at a parliamentary level people have started to believe that economic development of our relations is a step towards resolution of the territorial problem and not the reverse.” (quoted in Sargin 2014).

On 26 January 2016, Foreign Minister Lavrov confirmed that this was also his understanding of the situation, stating:

“Some Japanese politicians say that if the peace treaty is concluded and the territorial issue resolved, Japanese business will become hugely involved in the Russian economy but it will play it safe if it doesn’t happen. We don’t feel that Japanese business is trying to play it safe. … For the most part, business is not waiting for any political stamp but is actively working” (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2016).

Based on observations like these, there is the not unreasonable belief in Russia that, if the authorities succeed in creating a more attractive environment for all investors, Japanese investment will also substantially increase, even if there is no progress whatsoever on the territorial dispute. Efforts in this direction are already underway, including the goal to reach 20^th place in the World Bank’s ease of doing business rankings by 2018 (Kremlin 2012), as well as the creation of the Vladivostok Free Port and several Territories of Priority Development in the Russian Far East (Markelov 2015).

Last of all, any Japanese financial inducements have to be weighed against the economic losses associated with surrendering sovereignty over the islands. This is an issue emphasised by Svetlana Goryacheva, a Duma deputy, who declares: “Of course, I would never give up the Southern Kurils! … these islands are especially rich in fish and mineral resources. That is, the Japanese have something to gain and we have something to lose. There are really valuable natural resources there!” (quoted in Sargin 2014). Added to the forfeiture of these natural assets, by transferring the territory to Japan the Russian government would be abandoning a number of its own recent investments. The islands were seriously neglected during the 1990s, resulting in much hardship for their resident population. Since the mid-2000s, however, the Russian federal and regional authorities have directed significant financial resources to the islands, including programmes of R30bn for 2007-15 and R20bn for 2016-25 (Interfax 2014). These funds have been directed towards building and renewing basic infrastructure on the disputed islands, including roads, power plants, and water treatment facilities. Most eye-catchingly, a new airport was opened on Etorofu in 2014 and a new hospital was unveiled on Shikotan in 2015. With a touch of hyperbole, one Russian newspaper proclaimed that “the islands are being transformed from a godforsaken frontier to a downright paradisiacal corner of Russia” (Argumenty Nedeli 2014). Now that this “paradise” is on its way to completion, the Russian government will surely be all the more reluctant to give it up.

New Russian airport on Etorofu

Russian security considerations

The final set of reasons that ensure that Abe will not succeed in his plan to resolve the territorial dispute in 2016 relate to Russia’s national security considerations. Firstly in this regard, the Russian military will oppose any transfer of sovereignty over the islands because of its desire to retain tight control over the Sea of Okhotsk. This is because of the Sea’s potential strategic value as a “last line of defense” (Haines 2014: 596). Specifically, in the event of a major conflict, Russia would have the option of mining the narrow straits that provide access to the Sea of Okhotsk and using the area as a sanctuary for its ballistic missile submarines. This contingency plan gives Russia added confidence about the security of its nuclear deterrent. Giving up Etorofu and Kunashiri would undermine this strategy as two of the most convenient channels for accessing the Sea are adjacent to the islands. It might be thought that such strategic planning for a nuclear confrontation was a relic of the Cold War. In fact, however, in recent times Moscow has come to place increasing emphasis on its nuclear arsenal in recognition of the fact that, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia’s conventional forces are no match for those of the United States and its allies.

 

The Sea of Okhotsk, Russia’s “last line of defense”

In addition to functioning as a side-door to the Sea of Okhotsk, the disputed islands are considered strategically important to Russia because of their location at the extreme end of the Northern Sea Route. The Russian government is eager to promote the commercial use of this alternative trade route between Europe and Asia. At the same time, however, the authorities are worried about the security implications of the Arctic waterways in proximity to Russia’s northern coastline becoming increasingly accessible as a result of climate change. It is to a considerable extent in response to these security concerns that Russia has recently sought to accelerate its programme of developing a total of 392 military installations on Etorofu and Kunashiri. As announced in January by Defence Minister Shoigu, all of this military infrastructure is now expected to be complete by the end of 2016 (Sankei Shinbun 2016).

There is therefore well-established opposition on security grounds to the transfer of the islands to Japan. While long-standing, this hostility has intensified in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis. In particular, Japan’s decision to follow the United States in introducing sanctions has encouraged the view in Russia that Tokyo simply functions as Washington’s puppet when it comes to major international issues and that it cannot be trusted to act in an autonomous fashion. This view underpins the comments made by Foreign Minister Lavrov during his 26 January press conference when he expressed Russia’s desire to “see a more independent Japan”. He also made the criticism that “When a country takes the same position as the United States, it doesn’t contribute much to the political process or adjust the balance in the drafting of decisions.” (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2016). Given these current attitudes, the prospect of a territorial transfer becomes even more distant since it would be regarded by many Russians as being, at least partly, a political concession to the United States. Whether justified or not, there is also the underlying fear that, if it regained the islands, Japan would permit the US to use the territory to deploy military, surveillance, or missile-defence capabilities in proximity to Russia’s eastern borders.

Lastly in terms of security, in recent times an increasingly salient feature of Russian foreign policy has been the Kremlin’s portrayal of itself in the role of defender of all Russian speakers and “compatriots” (sootechestvenniki), even if these individuals are not Russian citizens and are resident outside the borders of the Russian Federation. This concept has been present within Russian foreign policy thinking for some years, but it became particularly prominent following the Ukraine crisis when Moscow appealed to this idea in justifying the annexation of Crimea. As such, having fully embraced this role of protector of all Russians internationally, it is all but inconceivable that Putin would now agree to a territorial deal that would be seen by many in his country as the abandonment of nearly 17,000 Russians to be ruled by a foreign power.

Conclusion

In short, however strong his determination, how well-planned his negotiating strategy, and how friendly his personal relations with Putin, Prime Minister Abe will be unable to secure any deal in 2016 that entails Japan regaining the islands of Etorofu and Kunashiri, even if this were only in terms of a recognition of residual sovereignty. The only territory that could possibly be recovered is Shikotan and Habomai, in accordance with the 1956 Joint Declaration. As I have previously argued in this journal (Brown 2015c), there is growing opposition within Russia to even this concession. Nonetheless, as signalled by Lavrov’s reference to this agreement on 26 January (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2016), the Putin administration (at least for the time being) seems willing to honour this commitment. This is therefore most likely what Putin had in mind when raising the possibility of a “hikiwake” solution³.

The prospect of recovering only these two islands, which account for 7% of the total disputed landmass, will be unacceptable to most on the Japanese side. Arguing against such a resolution, there will be those who counsel that, even if a more favourable deal is impossible at present, Japan should remain patient and wait until its negotiating position further strengthens. This argument has been made previously by Kimura Hiroshi, who believes that “the international situation and the Russian domestic situation are moving in a direction favourable to Japan and therefore Japan should wait until the right opportunity, which will come in 2017 or later” (Kawauchi 2014). Such optimism is based on positive assessments of Japan’s economic and security position vis-à-vis Russia, but it is also encouraged by the assumption that a peace treaty is something “which Russia badly needs” (Kimura 2009: 29). Once again, this assessment derives from a serious misunderstanding of the Russian position.

Fundamentally, the Russian authorities feel little compulsion to sign a peace treaty with Japan. Such a document would be welcome as a way of ending the awkward legal situation that exists between the two countries, yet the Russian side sees no particular urgency to finalise such a treaty and is certainly not inclined to make concessions to achieve it. The reason is because, while there may not be a peace treaty, this does not mean that the countries are in a state of war. Instead, the Joint Declaration of 1956 formally established “peace, friendship and good-neighbourly relations” (Joint Declaration by the USSR and Japan 1956). As such, Russian officials frequently emphasise their broad satisfaction with the status quo. Most recently, this point was reiterated by Foreign Minister Lavrov who, on 26 January, told the press that “essentially we maintain peace and cooperation. In other words, we don’t feel the effects of the absence of the peace treaty” (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2016).

The Russian side is therefore in no hurry to reach a resolution to the peace treaty and related territorial issue. This tendency is further strengthened by the perception that time is on Russia’s side. Firstly, it will not be long before the last of the Japanese former residents of the islands passes away. This will deprive Japan of some of its most ardent campaigners for the islands’ return and will also break Japan’s most direct connection to its former territory. Furthermore, as the years pass, we begin to approach the date of 2035 when the islands shift to having been ruled directly for longer by Moscow than they ever were by Japan. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the demographic situation is not favorable to Japan. The Russian population of the islands has recently been growing at a rate of 2-3% a year (Argumenty Nedeli 2014), and the Russian government has introduced plans to attract further residents (Japan Times 2015). At the same time, Japan’s population will continue to decline. Specifically, by 2055 it is projected that Japan’s population will have plummeted to 91.93 million from 128.06 million in 2010 (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research 2012: 13). With this population decline affecting remote areas most strongly, this suggests that, even if the islands were somehow returned, Japan would be unable to repopulate them.

In conclusion, with the passage of time, Japan’s chances of regaining any territory become ever less and Russia’s position will become increasingly inflexible. This trend is reflected in Deputy Foreign Minister Morgulov’s statement of September 2015, in which he said, “We are not engaging in any form of dialogue with Japan on the ‘Kuril problem’. This question was solved 70 years ago” (Interfax 2015). A similarly hardline stance was also shown by Lavrov when he stated, “We do not consider the peace treaty to be synonymous with resolving the territorial issue” (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2016). This being so, if Abe is really committed to resolving the territorial dispute with Russia before the end of his time in office, he will need to consider settling for considerably less than a 50-50 territorial split or three islands. If not, Japan’s prospects of regaining any territory whatsoever are likely to soon vanish altogether.

Works cited

1. Abe, S. (2006) Utsukushii kuni he [Towards a Beautiful Country] (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju).
2. Agafonov, K. (2016) Sindzo Abe mog by stat’ sosrednikom mezhdu Rossiei i Zapadom, schitaet eks-prem’er Yaponii [Abe Shinzō could become a mediator between Russia and the West says former prime minister of Japan], TASS, January 26.
3. Argumenty Nedeli (2014) Na Kurilakh uzhe nikto ne khochet v Yaponiyu [On the Kurils already no-one wants the islands to go to Japan], 43(435), November 13.
4. Asahi Shimbun (2015) Japan pursues top-level talks with Russia despite U.S. concern, May 23.
5. Barber, L. and Harding, R. (2016). Japan’s Abe calls for Putin to be brought in from the cold, Financial Times, January 17.
6. Brown, J.D.J. (2013) The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Russian-Japanese Relations, Post-Soviet Affairs, 29(3): 197-236 (June).
7. Brown, J.D.J. (2014). Hajime! The causes and prospects of the new start in Russian-Japanese relations, Asia Policy, 18: 81-110 (July).
8. Brown, J.D.J. (2015a). Ukraine and the Russia-China Axis, The Diplomat, April 2, http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/ukraine-and-the-russia-china-axis/
9. Brown, J.D.J. (2015b). Towards an anti-Japanese territorial front? Russia and the Senkaku/ Diaoyu dispute, Europe-Asia Studies, 67(6): 893-915 (August).
10. Brown, J.D.J. (2015c). Not Even Two? New developments in the territorial dispute between Russia and Japan, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 13(38-3) (September).
11. Brown, J.D.J. (2016) Japan, Russia and their Territorial Dispute: The Northern Delusion (Oxon: Routledge).
12. Bukh, A. (2015) Shimane Prefecture, Tokyo and the territorial dispute over Dokdo/Takeshima: regional and national identities in Japan, The Pacific Review, 28(1): 47-70.
13. Burrett, T. (forthcoming) Abe road: Comparing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s leadership of his first and second governments, Parliamentary Affairs.
14. Clover, C. (2013). Russia and Japan Revive Talks over Disputed Islands, Financial Times, April 29.
15. Dolgopolov, N. and Shestakov, E. (2015) Minskie zagovorennosti: Sergey Lavrov o tom, kto i zachem iskazhaet Minskie dogovorennosti [Minsk enchantments: Sergey Lavrov about who and what distorts the Minsk agreements], Rossiiskaya Gazeta, May 19.
16. Golovnin, V. (2014) Yaponiya ob” yavila o novykh sanktsiyakh v otnoshenii Rossii [Japan announces new sanctions in relation to Russia], ITAR-TASS, April 29.
17. Gusman, M. (2013). Sakura nepremenno zatsvetet [The Sakura will bloom without fail], Rossiiskaya Gazeta, April 26.
18. Haines, J.R. (2014) ‘Ali Baba’s cave’: The sea of Okhotsk’s contentious triangle , Orbis, 58(4): 584–603.
19. Hasegawa, T. (1998a). The Northern Territories Dispute and Russo-Japanese Relations: Volume 1 – Between War and Peace, 1697-1985 (Berkeley: University of California Press).
20. Hasegawa, T. (1998b). The Northern Territories Dispute and Russo-Japanese Relations: Volume 2 – Neither War, Nor Peace, 1985–1998 (Berkeley: University of California Press).
21. Interfax (2014) Sakhalinskaya oblast’ vlozhit v razvitie Yuzhnykh Kuril 20 milliardov rublei [Sakhalin Oblast invests 20 billion in development of Southern Kurils], September 1.
22. Interfax (2015) V MID RF otkazalis’ vesti peregovory s Yaponiei po povodu Kuril [Russian Foreign Ministry refuses to hold negotiations with Japan regarding the Kurils].
23. Ishimatsu, H. and Watanabe, T. (2016). Hoppōryōdo, itoguchi saguru sokkin gaikō [Northern Territories: Inner circle diplomacy in search for starting point], Asahi Shinbun, January 14.
24. Japan Times (2015) Russia calls for immigration to islands disputed with Japan, August 14.
25. Joint Declaration by the USSR and Japan (1956), The World and Japan Database Project, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, ioc.utokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/docs/19561019.D1E.html
26. Kantei (2013) National Security Strategy, provisional translation, December 17, kantei.go.jp/foreign/96_abe/documents/2013/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2013/12/17/NSS.pdf
27. Kantei (2016). New Year’s Press Conference by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, January 4, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201601/1215413_10999.html
28. Kawauchi, Akiko (2014). Nichi ro kan no ryōdo kōshō [Territorial negotiations between Japan and Russia], National Diet Library, Reference, 3: 101–121.
29. Kimura, H. (2008) The Kurillian Knot: A History of Japanese-Russian Border Negotiations (Stanford: Stanford University Press).
30. Kimura, Hiroshi (2009) The Northern Territories issue: Japanese-Russian relations and domestic concerns in Japan, ch. 2 in Hara, K. and Jukes, G. (eds.) Northern Territories, Asia-Pacific Regional Conflicts and the Åland Experience (Abingdon: Routledge).
31. Kommersant (2016) Sindzo Abe poobeshchal skoro uladit’ territorial’nye spory s Rossiei [Abe Shinzō promises to quickly settle the territorial dispute with Russia], February 7.
32. Kremlin (2012) Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii: O dolgosrochnoi gosudarstvennoi ekonomicheskoi politike [Decree of the President of the Russian Federation: Regarding long-term state economic policy], decree no. 596, May 7, http://graph.document.kremlin.ru/page.aspx?1610833
33. Kremlin (2013) Zayavleniya dlya pressy i otvety na voprosy zhurnalistov po itogam Rossiisko-Yaponskikh peregovorov [Statements for the Press and Replies to Journalists’ Questions about the Results of Russian-Japanese Negotiations], April 29, http://news.kremlin.ru/transcripts/18000
34. Kremlin (2014) 75-letie pobedy na Khalkhin-Gole [75th anniversary of the victory at Khakhin Gol, September 3, kremlin.ru/news/46553
35. Kremlin (2016). Telefonnyi razgovor s Prem’er-ministrom Yaponii Sindzo Abe [Telephone conversation with Prime Minister of Japan Abe Shinzō], January 22, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51193.
36. Lenin, A. (2015). G7 otneslas’ s ponimaniem k zhelaniyu Yaponii prodolzhat’ dialog s RF [G7 reacts with understanding to Japan’s desire to continue dialogue with Russia], Rossiiskaya Gazeta, June 9.
37. Lenin, A. (2016) MID RF: Sergei Lavrov posetit Yaponiyu v seredine aprelya [Russian MFA: Sergei Lavrov will visit Japan in mid-April], February 15.
38. Mainichi Shinbun (2009). ‘3.5 jima’ henkan [The return of ‘3.5 islands’], April 18.
39. Makarov, Y. (2014) Prem’er-ministr Yaponii khotel by uskorit’ peregovory o territorial’noi problemy RF [The Japanese Prime Minister would like to accelerate negotiations about the territorial problem with Russia], ITAR-TASS, January 19.
40. Markelov, R. (2015) Zakon o TORakh vstupil v silu [Law on Territories of Priority Development enters into force], Rossiiskaya Gazeta, March 30.
41. Minekonomrazvitiya (2013) Zvaimovygodnoe sotrudnichestvo Rossii i Yaponii [Mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and Japan,” December 26, http://economy.gov.ru/minec/press/news/doc20131226_3
42. Mizoguchi, K. and Dudden, A. (2007). Abe’s Violent Denial: Japan’s Prime Minister and the ‘Comfort Women’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 5(3): 1-4.
43. Mizoguchi, S. (2014) Nisso kokkō seijō-ka kōshō ni taisuru Beikoku no seisaku no henka to renzoku-sei [Changes and continuities in US policy towards the Japan-Soviet normalisation talks], Kokusai Seiji, 176: 111-125.
44. MOFA (1993). Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono
45. on the result of the study on the issue of “comfort women”, August 4, http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html
46. MOFA (2011). Northern Territories Issue. March 1, http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/europe/russia/territory/overview.html
47. MOFA (2013). Japan is Back, February 22, http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/pm/abe/us_20130222en.html
48. MOFA (2015). Announcement by Foreign Ministers of Japan and the Republic of Korea at the Joint Press Occasion, December 28, http://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/na/kr/page4e_000364.html
49. Momoi, Y. (2016) Putin’s ‘draw’ not so even, Nikkei Asian Review, January 15.
50. Mori, Y. (2013) Nihon seiji no ura no ura [Deep behind the scenes of Japanese politics], (Tokyo: Kōdansha).
51. Myasnikov, V. (2014) Na Shumshu za yaponskimi tankami [On Shumshu beyond Japanese tanks], Nezavisimaya Gazeta, September 12.
52. Naka, K. (2012). Budushchii prem’yer Yaponii Abe nameren ukreplyat’ otnosheniya s Rossiei [Future Premier of Japan Abe Intends to Strengthen Relations with Russia], RIA Novosti, December 16.
53. Naka, K. (201 4). Yaponskii prem’er ser’ezno nameren podpisat’ mirnyi dogovor s Rossiei [Japanese prime minister seriously intends to sign a peace treaty with Russia], RIA Novosti, December 1.
54. Naikaku-fu (2013) Hoppōryōdo mondai ni kansuru tokubetsu seron chōsa [Special public opinion survey on the Northern Territories problem], http://survey.gov-online.go.jp/tokubetu/h25/h25-hoppou_chosahyo.pdf
55. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (2012). Population Projections for Japan (January 2012): 2011 to 2060, ipss.go.jp/site-ad/index_english/esuikei/ppfj2012.pdf
56. Nikkei (2016) Shushō go gatsu jōjun hōro de chōsei, sochi jiku ni: ryōdo kōshō no shinten mezasu [Prime Minister’s visit to Russia set for early May in Sochi: Progress targeted in territorial negotiations], February 16.
57. Panda, A. (2014) Shinzo Abe Has Visited a Quarter of the World’s Countries in 20 Months: Why?, The Diplomat, September 11.
58. Protocol of Proceedings of Crimea Conference (1945), February 11, The Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/yalta.asp
59. RIA Novosti (2012) Putin shchitaet vozmozhnym reshit’ territorial’nuyu problemu s Yaponiei [Putin Considers it Possible to Resolve the Territorial Problem with Japan], March 2.
60. RIA Novosti (2014) Realizatsiya proekta ‘Vladivostok SPG’ zavisit ot sprosa v Yaponii [Realisation of the project ‘Vladivostok LNG’ depends on Japanese demand], October 24.
61. Rossiiskaya Gazeta (2016). V Yaponii uchrezhden post spetspredstavitelya po otnosheniyam s Rossiei [New post of special representative for relations with Russia established in Japan], January 22.
62. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2016) Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to media questions at a news conference on Russia’s diplomacy performance in 2015, Moscow, January 26, http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2032328
63. Ryall, J. (2014) Japan may revise ‘comfort women’ apology, Deutsche Welle, February 25.
64. Sabov, A. (2005) Za Kurily. Istoriya ostrovov preduprezhdaet: Peregovory o ‘severnykh territoriyakh’ opasny dlya zdorov’ya natsii [For the Kurils. The history of the islands is a warning: Negotiations about the ‘Northern Territories’ is a danger to the health of the nation], Rossiiskaya Gazeta, October 28.
65. Sankei Shinbun (2016) Hoppōryōdo no Ro-gun shisetsu ‘nennai ni subete kansei o’ to shiji, Roshia kokubōsō [Russian Defence Ministry: Russian military installations on the Northern Territories ‘all to be completed within the year’], January 12.
66. Sargin, A. (2014) ‘Yapontsy nervnichayut, – tak eto u nikh takaya emotsiaonal’naya reaktsiya’ [‘The Japanese are nervous, that’s why they have such an emotional reaction’], Argumenty-Live, September 26.
67. Sarkisov, K. (2009) The territorial dispute between Japan and Russia: The ‘two island solution’ and Putin’s last years as President, ch. 3 in Hara, K. and Jukes, G. (eds.) Northern Territories, Asia-Pacific Regional Conflicts and the Åland Experience (Oxon: Routledge).
68. Strel’tsov, D. (2014) Ekonomicheskaya politika yaponskogo pravitel’stva S. Abe [The economic policies of the Japanese government of S. Abe], Vostochnaya Analitika, 4: 78– 86.
69. Suzuki, Muneo (2012) Seiji no Shuraba [Political Carnage] (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū).
70. United Nations (1952) Treaty of Peace with Japan, United Nations – Treaty Series, no.1832.
71. Weitz, R. (2008) Russia, China end decades-long border dispute, World Politics Review, August 1.
72. Williams, B. (2007) Resolving the Russo-Japanese Territorial Dispute: Hokkaido-Sakhalin Relations (Oxon: Routledge).
73. World Bank (2014) “Data: GDP (current US$),” http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD
74. Zakharchenko, I. (2015) Posol: Moskva ozhidaet padeniya tovarooborota s Tokio na 30% v etom godu [Ambassador: Moscow expects a fall in trade turnover with Tokyo of 30% this year], RIA Novosti, December 22.
75. Zakharchenko, I. (2016) Prem’er Yaponii otstaivaet neobkhodimost’ provedeniya sammita s Rossiei [Japanese premier upholds the necessity of conducting a summit with Russia], January 04.
76. Zavrazhin, K. (2013) Poslanie prezidenta RF Vladimira Putina Federal’nomu Sobraniyu [Message from President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly], December 13.
77. Zubov, A.B. (2011) Istoriya Rossii XX Vek, 1939–2007 [History of Russia of the 20^th Century, 1939–2007] (Moscow: Astrel’).

Notes

Accusations and denials continue to be traded between the West’s NGO, Doctors Without Borders or officially Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and the Russian and Syrian governments. Despite the gravity of the accusations by the West and MSF, which suggest “deliberate” and egregious war crimes, they have thus far produced no evidence. Not only have they produced no evidence, they openly admit that so far, they have none.

Reuters in their article, “MSF seeks independent probe into bombing of Syria hospital,” reveals as much by claiming (emphasis added):

 “This attack can only be considered deliberate. It was probably carried out by the Syrian government-led coalition that is predominantly active in the region,” she told a news briefing. 

Accounts from surviving hospital staff led MSF to believe that the government-led coalition had carried out the attack. 

“We say a probability because we don’t have more facts than the accounts from our staff,” Liu said, noting that it took time to collect forensic evidence. “The only thing predominantly in the region is the Syrian government-led coalition.”

For an international organization to accuse two nations of “war crimes” with admittedly nothing more than “accounts,” not from an MSF hospital and their staff, but from an alleged hospital “supported by” MSF and run by local staff, indicates self-serving political motivation, not impartial, selfless charity.  But beyond baseless accusations, this most recent incident reveals something far more sinister MSF may be guilty of.

MSF’s Use and Abuse of the Geneva Conventions 

When the United States inexplicably bombed MSF’s hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan last year, among the many statements released by MSF would include one published on their own website titled, “Afghanistan: Enough. Even war has rules.” In it, it claims that (emphasis added):

This was not just an attack on our hospital – it was an attack on the Geneva Conventions. This cannot be tolerated. These Conventions govern the rules of war and were established to protect civilians in conflicts – including patients, medical workers and facilities. They bring some humanity into what is otherwise an inhumane situation.

The Geneva Conventions are not just an abstract legal framework – they are the difference between life and death for medical teams on the frontline. They are what allow patients to access our health facilities safely and what allows us to provide healthcare without being targeted. 

It is precisely because attacking hospitals in war zones is prohibited that we expected to be protected. And yet, ten patients including 3 children, and 12 MSF staff were killed in the aerial raids.

In another entry on MSF’s website titled, “Kunduz Hospital Airstrike,” MSF clearly states that (emphasis added):

All parties to the conflict, including in Kabul and Washington, were clearly informed of the precise location (GPS Coordinates) of the MSF facilities – hospital, guest-house, office and an outreach stabilization unit in Chardara (to the north-west of Kunduz). As MSF does in all conflict contexts, these precise locations were communicated to all parties on multiple occasions over the past months, including most recently on 29 September.

It appears that not only is MSF very familiar with the Geneva Conventions, and more specifically, those articles and additional protocols that govern their work as medical care providers amid armed conflict, they also clearly understand how they apply in a modern context.

For instance, the Geneva Conventions, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) states clearly under, “Emblem: relevant articles of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols,” that (emphasis added):

Civilian hospitals shall be marked by means of the emblem provided for in Article 38 [red cross or red crescent] of the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field of August 12, 1949, but only if so authorized by the State. 

The Parties to the conflict shall, in so far as military considerations permit, take the necessary steps to make the distinctive emblems indicating civilian hospitals clearly visible to the enemy land, air and naval forces in order to obviate the possibility of any hostile action. 

In view of the dangers to which hospitals may be exposed by being close to military objectives, it is recommended that such hospitals be situated as far as possible from such objectives. 

MSF clearly understands the Geneva Conventions, and in a modern context, understands that to avoid violating the Conventions, making a hospital visible to military land, air, and naval forces requires that the GPS coordinates of the hospital be given to all parties of the conflict. They are thus, “marked,” satisfying the Geneva Conventions’ requirements.

However, in Syria, MSF is in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Unmarked Hospitals Violate the Geneva Conventions

In Reuters article, “MSF seeks independent probe into bombing of Syria hospital,” it would also admit (emphasis added):

MSF said it had not provided the hospital’s GPS coordinates to Syrian or Russian authorities, at the request of local staff.

Furthermore, MSF’s admission that its hospitals are unmarked directly contradict their assertion that the attacks on these unmarked hospitals were “deliberate.” Indeed, in the same Reuters article, MSF would paradoxically claim that:While MSF accuses Syria and Russia of violating the Geneva Conventions – accusations both Syria and Russia deny, MSF itself blatantly admits that it violated the Conventions itself.

“This attack can only be considered deliberate. It was probably carried out by the Syrian government-led coalition that is predominantly active in the region,” she [Dr. Joanne Liu] told a news briefing.

If the hospitals were unmarked and concealed in fear of being deliberately attacked, how then, were they still deliberately attacked? That will be yet another significant claim now incumbent upon MSF and their “independent inquiry” to answer adequately with accompanying evidence.

Undermining Humanitarianism While Hiding Behind It 

In reality, like a previous string of accusations leveled at both Syria and Russia, no evidence will be provided, no inquiry will be opened, and no truth will be arrived at.

MSF, in partaking in politically-motivated war propaganda, not only undermines its own alleged mission statement, but undermines all humanitarian charity undertaken during times of conflict. MSF poses as standing for humanitarianism while undermining and cynically taking advantage of every rule, regulation, and convention defined to truly uphold it.

For those honest volunteers among MSF who are not involved in rendering aid to terrorists, in terrorist-held territory, in unmarked hospitals in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, they may want to either search out another organization with more genuine means and methods, or better still, start one of their own.

Readers should recall that it was also MSF who played a pivotal role in attempting to frame the Syrian government for a large-scale chemical weapons attack near Damascus in 2013. It would later turn out that evidence implicated terrorists and their Turkish and Saudi sponsors. Even at that time, MSF would admit that its organization focused on providing “care” to those fighting the Syrian government – now all admittedly Al Qaeda-affiliates and/or “Islamic State” terrorists. It appears that in addition to medical aid, MSF is providing significant rhetorical aid to their cause as well.

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

The following article by Dr. Jack Rasmus (Telesur) summarizes the money behind the major candidates–including Rubio, Cruz, Trump, Bush and Clinton and the estimated $10 billion that will be spent on this year’s US national election.

Poll after public opinion poll in the US today consistently show that US voters overwhelmingly share the opinion that big money billionaires and their corporations were increasingly dominating US elections.

As the United States election cycle began to ramp up last summer, for example, the New York Times/NBC News poll showed no less than 84 percent of U.S. voters – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike – shared the common view that there was simply “too much money” flooding into U.S. elections today. While 85 percent of those in the poll further indicated that either major changes or a “complete rebuild” of the U.S. election system was needed to take money out of politics.

Forget minor tweaking reforms of campaign financing. The people of the U.S. now believe the entire process is rigged in favor of rich contributors and corporations who fill to over-flowing the campaign coffers of their chosen politicians.

War for the White House 2016

A related major concern expressed by those polled was that those billionaires writing the checks for candidates were “hiding behind the curtain” as never before. The electoral system itself was becoming increasingly opaque. Seventy-five percent of those polled thus demanded full disclosure of just who was providing all the money.

The current election cycle is just now getting underway with the primary season and nominating of candidates, so total spending won’t be known for at least mid-2017 at the earliest. But there are signs appearing in numerous places that this election year will break all records for money flowing from the billionaires, their banks, and their corporations to their “hat in hand” candidates, as they regularly stumble over themselves and trek one after the other attending private meetings with the Koch Brothers, the Sheldon Adelsons, the Paul Singers, Goldman Sachs and other bankers – and all the rest of the billionaire class who write checks for tens of millions of dollars at a single sitting – to fund whichever candidate bends his knee and bows his head the most in committing to their favorite economic interest or pet political cause. And bend and bow they do.

Marco Rubio

For example, there’s the Republican presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, who led the attack on Argentina in the U.S. Congress to pressure that country’s Kirchner government to concede to the blackmail by U.S. vulture funds led by multi-billionaire, hedge fund magnate, Paul Singer. A financial supporter of the expansion of Israeli settlements in the west bank of Palestine, Singer is an ardent advocate that “Israel can do no wrong.” As Singer’s boy in the U.S. Senate, Rubio consistently takes a hard line on every Israel debate and vote, effectively representing Singer’s views and interests. Not surprisingly, for that Rubio has been repaid well. Singer is Rubio’s second biggest campaign contributor, second only to Florida real estate billionaire, Norman Braman. Multi-billionaires, both have already contributed more than US$11 million in 2015 to Rubio’s campaign. Software billionaire, Larry Ellison, the world’s fifth richest person, worth $47 billion, has also already contributed millions to Rubio. All three no doubt appreciate Rubio’s pledge to eliminate all taxes on capital gains and dividends, which would mean $1 trillion tax free to them and their billionaire friends. Rubio’s election campaign committee and his “Conservative Solutions” super PAC have accumulated more than $60 million in 2015. Bush money is reportedly moving to Rubio recently as well.

Ted Cruz

Then there’s candidate Cruz. His billionaires include ultra-right wing, hedge fund owner Robert Mercer, who contributes to restoration of the death penalty, advocates return to the gold standard, funds pro-life and anti-gay causes, and collects machine-guns for a hobby; Toby Neugebauer, the billionaire Houston investment banker; and Farris and Staci Wilks, extreme bible-thumpers, who view the U.S. from a prism of the biblical old testament, and whose family has made their billions by fracking and poisoning land in the U.S. from Texas to Montana. All have all written checks to the Cruz campaign for more than $10 million each thus far, and contribute heavily to Cruz’s super PAC, “Keeping the Promise,” and his campaign committee, together worth at latest estimate more than $100 million. Cruz repeatedly pilgrimages to their respective billionaire compounds and retreats, that is, when he’s not getting loans from the big Investment bank, Goldman Sachs, where his wife worked as a managing director, and from which Cruz has been given low interest loans.

Jeb Bush

Jeb Bush got most of his money from his personal and family investment sources, from his super PAC, “Right to Rise,” to which wealthy friends have already contributed $118 million in “outside money,” from his election committee with a pot of more than $40 million more so far, from his 50+ per year public speeches for which he is paid an average of $40,000 each, and unknown amounts from his multi-billionaire Bush dynasty family. Another big billionaire contributor, writing a $10 million check recently, was the notorious Hank Greenberg, former Chairman of the American Insurance Group that the government and U.S. taxpayer bailed out to the tune of $180 billion in the 2008 crisis.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton’s money comes from all the above sources and then some. For example, there’s hedge fund billionaire, George Soros, who contributed $8.5 million just last year. And the media billionaires, Haim and Cheryl Saban, who have directly already contributed millions; and reportedly may have contributed an estimated $10-$25 million more indirectly from their own personal foundation to the Clinton’s foundation: a favorite way the rich contribute to each other. Both Hillary and Bill have also had multi-million dollar royalty book contracts, Hillary’s latest worth $5 million. She is also the biggest recipient of contributions from professional Lobbyists among all the candidates. Her campaign committee has amassed $115 million as of January 2016 and her super PAC, “Priorities USA,” more than $40 million.

The Clintons, however, have especially farmed the speech circuit for big money ever since Bill left office. That’s how former presidents and other big-name, high visibility politicians who have performed well for the rich are “paid off” in the U.S. when they leave office. Corruption is “post-hoc” in the U.S. system, a more sophisticated arrangement than crude graft or theft while in office practiced in other countries. Bill Clinton has earned more than $100 million in speeches alone since 2001. Hillary and Bill have earned another $25 million just since her announcement to run. And then there are Hillary’s “closed door talks,” off-the record, unrecorded, Q&A sessions of an hour or so, which Hillary has held with scores of financial institutions, banks, and big companies since announcing her candidacy.

Her speeches and talks average $225,000 to $275,000, according to her “schedule A” campaign finance statement that is public record. When challenged by Sanders why she has been accepting fees of $275,000 from scores of bankers and big corporations, including a recent 3 speech $675,000 fee from Goldman Sachs, her reply was “I don’t know, that’s just what they offered”. Yeah, out of the pure generosity of their banker hearts, expecting nothing in return no doubt.

The Clintons have given more than 50 speeches each in 2014 alone, according to public records. Adding it up, it’s more than $25 million in speeches and “talks” in 2014 alone. Their 2014 income was $28 million and net worth $110 million. At least $28 million, and likely far more will eventually be reported for 2015 later this summer. Even more for 2016.

Trump and Sanders

Trump claims his net worth is more than $10 billion, and receives $3 million per show just as host of the TV show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” providing ample cash for his campaign, that is, so far. His long list of investments generate millions more in cash every year.

Sanders relies on small donors, has no super PAC or outside money, while his campaign committee reportedly has accumulated $95 million. He owns no business and his net worth is reportedly $330,000.

Estimating the Totals

A proxy of just how much money is involved this year is perhaps estimated by how much in total was spent on the 2014 midterm Congressional elections, where no presidential candidate was running. No less than $3.77 billion was spent that year. And that was what was only official reported to the Federal Election Commission for donors contributing more than $200 – excluding as well all spending on state and local government races and excluding what is called “dark” money from nonprofit organizations – called 501( c) (4) shell groups-like Karl Rove’s notorious “Crossroads GPS,” which has reportedly raised $330 million in recent years. Spending by 501s is directed at attacking a candidate’s opponents instead of contributing to the favorite candidate via PACs, super PACs, campaign committees, party committees, and the like. But it is campaign spending on behalf of candidates, nonetheless. Super-PACs and 501s are projected to spend more than a $US billion each in the current year.

Totals for 2015 from all the above sources – i.e. corporate and special interest PACs, super PACs, leadership PACs, the 30,000 Washington, D.C. lobbyists, the 501s and their “Limited Liability Company” middlemen who raise money from the super-wealthy but can legally keep their names unreported, from House and Senate and political party fund raising committees, and so on – were likely more than $5 billion, at minimum. But public records for 2015 totals won’t be released by the government until June 30, 2016

For the entire 2015-2016 election, the cumulative totals will no doubt range from $10 to $15 billion. But the actual totals will have to wait even longer, until June 30, 2017. But even then will reflect only what is officially reported, as more “dark money” flows into elections in increasingly opaque system that grows progressively “darker” as the mountains of election money provided by billionaires, corporations, and bankers grow ever higher.

Dr. Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book about today’s unstable global economy, “Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy,” by Clarity Press, January 2016. For more on this book, click on the book icon on the front page. For free chapters, go to the author website:https://kyklosproductions.com/homewar.html

South African students shut down almost all of the country’s universities this October during unprecedented nationwide protests against a planned 10% hike in tuition fees. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets, and beat gathering students with truncheons, but were unable to suppress the movement. More than 10,000 people demonstrated in front of the nation’s parliament in Pretoria on October 23, forcing the African National Congress (ANC) government to concede that there would be no tuition fee increase for 2016. 

Emboldened by their victory, the students continued to press the government on related demands such as an end to contracting out of poorly paid janitorial, cafeteria and security work positions within the universities. From the beginning, student organizers insisted on linking their struggle to that of the working class. Universities have reopened, but the students remain committed to this and a third demand for free education and an end to tuition fees altogether.

“The demonstrations have grown to be a national movement of solidarity,” says Katlego Disemelo, a PhD candidate at Johannesburg’s University of Witwatersrand (Wits) where the protests began. “Far too long have we black and poor students languished under the yoke of perpetual struggle just to get an education. That is the chief impetus behind our struggle.”

Disemelo, who continues to participate in the student actions, tells me the #FeesMustFall and #InsourceOurWorkers movements, “have shone light on the heinous blight of institutional racism and exploitation in South African higher education. Students and workers are the backbone of these neoliberal ivory towers.”

At about 0.8% of GDP, the South African state spends much less on post-secondary education than the OECD average (about 1.6%) and less than it can probably afford. The proposed 10% increase in tuition fees would have transferred more of the cost of a university education onto students, bumping average fees to between $3,000 and $4,000 per year in a country where the median annual income is US$2,300, 53% of the population lives in poverty, and 40% is unemployed. South Africa also suffers one of the highest rates of inequality in the world.

The ANC, which has ruled South African for 21 years since Apartheid (in coalition with the Communist Party), portrays itself as leftist and has the backing of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the country’s largest labour federation. The liberation movement that thrust the ANC into power had high expectations of economic as well as political revolution, with hopes the nationalization of the country’s exhaustive natural resources would fuel social development.

This vision was swiftly exchanged in the early 1990s for IMF loans attached to neoliberal handcuffs on the new government. As a result, promises of free education and subsidized housing, medical care, electricity and water remain largely unfulfilled, compelling first workers and then students to strike against the state to demand economic rights.

The situation for the country’s miners is especially bleak. In August 2012, police cordoned off, then fired on a group of striking workers from a platinum mine operated by the U.K.-based Lonmin in the northeastern town of Marikana. The event and its political consequences are captured in graphic detail in the 2015 documentary, Miners Shot Down, which is available for free viewing on YouTube.

With a death toll of 34, the Marikana massacre was the worst act of violence by South African security forces since 1960, when police killed more than 60 people in a crowd of several thousand protesting the segregationist pass laws. For many, it exposed the failure of corporate-led resource development and the corruption it is causing within the ANC and government institutions.

About a fifth of South African GDP is directly or indirectly generated from mining, most of it by foreign-owned companies, and it is to protect these private investors that the ANC has insisted on maintaining a neoliberal regime that prioritizes competitive (low) wages, while ignoring growing demands for nationalization. Though the government insists its Black Empowerment Programs, with their local content and employment quotas for major projects, help capture more of the benefits of mining, targets for black ownership of resource companies have been missed, and the industry continues to lobby against having to meet them.

When mineral prices were high (between 2002 and 2011) and the economy was expanding, the availability of cheap credit limited social protests. But with the collapse of raw material prices globally, starting in 2011, annual growth in South Africa fell to 1.5%, stimulating an explosion of protests all over the country as the country’s leaders appeared to have no way of dealing with the severe economic crisis.

“The allegiance of the state’s economic decision-makers to international and domestic finance and mining capital is obvious enough. Until the mining sector crash, corporate profits were amongst the highest in the world, and last year PricewaterhouseCoopers named our corporate elites the world’s most corrupt,” says Patrick Bond, a professor of political economy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban and author of the book Looting Africa(2006).

The Marikana Massacre was a consciousness-raiser, as are repeated threats by the credit rating agencies to downgrade South Africa to junk status unless fiscal discipline and monetarist ideology are tightened.

Bond tells me President Jacob Zuma and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa (“the big business choice to be the next president”) make up South Africa’s “core neoliberal bloc.” Both have been implicated in corruption scandals, with the latter chairing a large cellphone company responsible for “many financial misdeeds.” Zuma is one of the 10 highest-paid national leaders in the world, yet he felt entitled to spend $17 million in public funds on his private house, supposedly for security improvements.

In one recent scandal—part of “a running joke,” according to Bond—the president tried to blame two army officers for a decision to allow the powerful Gupta family to land their private jet at an air force base so family members could attend a wedding. The Guptas own coal and uranium mines in South Africa, and are widely believed to hold too much influence over the appointment of government positions, including possibly that of Mosebenzi Zwane to mining minister in September.

For his part, Ramaphosa is worth an astounding $450 million, which makes him the 42^nd richest person in Africa in 2015, according to Forbes Magazine. He was chairman of Shanduka Group, an investment company that indirectly owned 9% of Lonmin’s shares at the time of the Marikana massacre. Though an independent commission of inquiry cleared Ramaphosa of wrongdoing in June 2015, he was promptly slapped with murder charges by the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party (EFF) in July. In November, families of the murdered miners filed a $95-million lawsuit against the man who could be South Africa’s next president.

Bond points out how the 2015 budget increases in government grants for the country’s poor do not keep up with inflation, resulting in an actual 3% drop in support. While much of the population has to deal with frequent blackouts, the government offers cheap power to the world’s biggest mining company, BHP Billiton. A prominent wealth manager declared the February budget was “a lovely budget for offshore investors,” with the country’s offshore allowance rising from 4 million rand (US$282,500) to R10 million (US$706,500). “The immigration allowance is now up to R20 million (US$1,413,000) and corporates can take a billion (over US$70 million) offshore,” said the Citadel director in February.

Disemelo is similarly outraged by the contrast between the ANC’s stated priorities and its obvious corruption, as well as the way it panders to the country’s industrial and financial elite. “There are countless scandals and exposés in the mainstream media every week about this or that cabinet minister misappropriating state funds or outright stealing from the government’s coffers,” he tells me.

But what is amazing is that most South Africans now know this and can see it with their own eyes. We are no longer willing to sit back and be exploited for the gain of only a few. We have been sold out by the ANC in exchange for their lavish houses, cars and clothing. Little do they realize that the global white imperialist capitalists who line their pockets, and whose financial interests they are so keen to protect, will give them nothing more than crumbs.

For Disemelo, the student movement is intimately connected to the broader social struggle for wealth redistribution and the reclamation of national resources from the clutches of a domestic and international elite.

“During decolonization, the first thing that people will demand is land. As such, we demand access to the land and its resources so that those who have been previously dispossessed can begin to reap the rewards and resources which come from that land, such that they can live decent human lives from and through it,” he says.

In this regard, I see no other way but to nationalize the mines of South Africa so that its citizens can ultimately reap the benefits therefrom. As long as white global capital (and its cronies) still greedily hold on to the resources of this land, poverty, inequality and exploitation will continue to hold the majority of South Africans in neocolonial and economic slavery. And one of the instruments of such slavery is the outright denial of basic and free education for all South Africans.

Nationalization is also the platform of the EFF, a breakaway faction from the ANC that is challenging the party from the left. The EFF won 6% of the vote in the last election, giving it 24 seats in parliament. Notably, EFF leader Julius Malema was expelled from the ANC Youth League in 2012 for sowing divisions within the party related to resource nationalization. The internal committee that upheld the decision was chaired by Ramaphosa. Malema has loudly criticized both the white and black power structures in South Africa, and the EFF strongly supported the students.

“But most importantly,” says Bond,

“I’m increasingly impressed with the EFF’s ground troops, not just the two dozen parliamentarians. In November, the leaders brought out 50,000 red-shirted supporters to march more than 20 km from central Johannesburg targets like the South Africa Reserve Bank and Chamber of Mines all the way to the Sandton stock market. Their numbers and their demands for nationalization scared the heck out of the bourgeoisie.”

Also launching large-scale demonstrations in Johannesburg has been the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA). With 350,000 members, it is the largest union in the country. And like the EFF, NUMSA has taken a radical left position, calling for nationalization of large companies and the mines.

NUMSA left COSATU in 2014 and demanded Zuma’s resignation. Since then, the labour start-up has been exploring the possibility of founding a new socialist party to contest the ANC in elections. The union is currently focusing on creating a labour federation to rival COSATU. The students movement, the EFF and NUMSA signify a revitalized South African left that may soon pose a serious challenge to the ANC’s neoliberal hold on the country.

“The period ahead is at least going to offer the prospect of a working class steeped in left ideology deciding between institutions inside the ANC tradition versus those led by metalworkers and left social movements outside,” says Bond.

“This is very welcome, because the prestige of the ANC, plus the forcefulness of official Communist manoeuvres in the labour movement, have kept the bulk of the working class loyal to a liberation movement that long ago had ditched their interests.”

Asad Ismi is the CCPA Monitor’s international affairs correspondent. He is author of the radio documentary “The Ravaging of Africa” which Black Agenda Report called “ground-breaking”. The documentary is based on his award-winning article of the same title and has been aired on 28 radio stations in the U.S. and Canada reaching an audience of 30 million people. For his publications visit www.asadismi.ws. 

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies. (Dorothy Allison, b. 1949.)

On 7th September 2002, speaking at a Press Conference flanked by Prime Minister, Tony “dodgy dossier” Blair, President George W. Bush stated that Saddam Hussein was just six months away from an Iraqi nuclear age. (1) The timeline, said Bush, had come from the International Atomic Energy Agency Report issued that morning.

Blair confirmed

“ . . . The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction … that threat is real. We only need to look at the Report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites to realize that.”

There was no Report from the IAEA “that morning.” The Report to which Bush and Blair were referring was from 1998 and included:

 . . . based on all credible information available to date . . . the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material.

The pair continued to stress the lie of the immediacy of the Report with Bush replying to a question from an AP journalist with the preamble: “We just heard the Prime Minister talk about the new Report …” (2)

When the story was further challenged a White House spokesperson even stated the Report might, in fact, have come from 1991. The chief IAEA spokesman denied any such 1991 Report.

THE IRRADIATION OF IRAQ.

Of course in 1991 every factory, including those making glass, cement, bricks, every military facility, chicken farm, agricultural processing unit, the whole industrial infrastructure, was erased by coalition bombs, with the US and UK liberally spreading radiation throughout the region with their depleted uranium missiles. Iraq had no nuclear capability but the country and the region would pay the price in cancers and birth deformities until the end of time, poisoned by up to 900 tonnes of residual radioactive and chemically toxic dust, also seeping in to water tables, earth, thus fauna flora – thus inhaled and ingested by the population. Black ironies do not come darker.

2003’s scorched earth onslaught, the invasion and subsequent years of bombings brought further radioactive pollution in orders of magnitude. The US is now bombing again.

Iraq’s French built Osirak nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha had been destroyed by Israel on 7^th June 1981, before it came on line. The warehouse in France housing the wherewithal for the reactor, awaiting shipment, was blown up. As the US, Israel calls its destructions by silly names, this one was called “Operation Opera.” The Tuwaitha complex was bombed again by the US in 1991.

Imad Khadduri, author of “Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage”, eminent Iraqi nuclear scientist is adamant that the nuclear programme was abandoned on the orders of Saddam Hussein after the 1991 war, with those involved directed to sign a commitment to that effect by President Saddam.

The relevance of the above is, of course, that Iraq was destroyed on a nuclear lie, whilst the nuclear reality is that the actions, primarily of the US and the UK, have poisoned the land, the people – and those of the region – with nuclear and chemical lethality for all time. The half life of depleted uranium is 4.5 Billion years. The soaring cancers and birth defects have been linked to this nuclear nightmare.

NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE.      

When the US invaded, the first mission of the troops was to secure the Oil Ministry, the oil fields and oil industrial infrastructure.

Weapons of mass destruction, the lie for the war, came a distand second in concerns. The Tuwaitha complex, developed as the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility in the early 1960s, an approximately 120 acre complex around eighteen km south of Baghdad was ignored. A decision of criminal negligence.

The large complex in which numerous buildings held decades worth of lethal nuclear materials from the abandoned nuclear programme had been sealed by the IAEA, was further protected by steel doors and over four hundred round-the-clock guards.

Five weeks after the invasion, The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman wrote (3):

Before the war began last month, the vast Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center held 3,896 pounds of partially enriched uranium, more than 94 tons of natural uranium and smaller quantities of cesium, cobalt and strontium, according to reports compiled through the 1990s by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Immensely valuable on the international black market, the uranium was in a form suitable for further enrichment to ‘weapons grade’, the core of a nuclear device.

The other substances, products of medical and industrial waste, emit intense radiation. They have been sought, officials said, by terrorists seeking to build a so-called dirty bomb, which uses conventional explosives to scatter dangerous radioactive particles.

Tuwaitha, with its at least 409 barrels of nuclear materials would be a terrorists dream.

Defense officials acknowledge that the U.S. government has no idea whether any of Tuwaitha’s potentially deadly contents have been stolen, because it has not dispatched investigators to appraise the site.

What it does know, according to officials at the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command, is that the sprawling campus … lay unguarded for days and that looters made their way inside.  (Emphasis added.)

As “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (OIL) engulfed Iraq, the guards had fled for their lives.

Incredibly:

“Disputes inside the U.S. Defense Department and with other government agencies have slowed the preparation of orders for a team of nuclear experts to assess Tuwaitha, officials said. Though it anticipated for months that war would leave it with responsibility for Iraq’s nuclear infrastructure, the Bush administration did not reach consensus on the role it would seek at those facilities.”

Corey Hinderstein, Deputy Director of the Institute for Science and International Security, found it “extremely surprising” when told that U.S. nuclear experts had not yet been to Tuwaitha.

“I would have hoped that they would try to assess as quickly as possible whether the site had been breached. If there is radiological material on the loose, with the chance that it may be transferred across borders, it would be extremely important to know that (in order) to prevent it from crossing a border or being transferred to a terrorist or another state.” (Emphasis added.)

In addition to their scarcely believable fecklessness with the most lethal of materials, the US and UK insurgents left the borders wide open – a situation remaining thirteen years on.

TERRIFYING FALLOUT.

Defence analyst Andy Oppenheimer, a specialist in counter-terrorism and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear weapons and explosives wrote a meticulously detailed, chilling document on the resultant tragedy published in October 2003. (4) Radiological material was certainly “on the loose in Iraq” and the results were locally catastrophic. What might have happened – or might still happen – further afield is seemingly unknown.

What is known is that hundreds of barrels were stolen from the abandoned plant, the radioactive and chemical content tipped out, and the barrels used to collect water for cooking,  to wash in, for storage. Water treatment plants, facilities, had been bombed and water was collected by any means from rivers, rain – the lethally contaminated barrels were a boon.

Oppenheimer wrote:

There has been growing concern over radiation poisoning in the neighbourhoods near al-Tuwaitha. Local doctors have reported cases of radiation sickness in nearby villages. There are also fears that local farms as well as the water supply may have been contaminated in the post-war chaos. According to local doctors, as many as 2,000 residents in the villages near the site have been showing the telltale symptoms of acute radiation sickness – nosebleeds, rashes, hair loss, respiratory distress, and vomiting. People have drunk water stored in plastic barrels stolen from the complex. One local fruit merchant’s children fell ill after drinking the water.

Doctors fear that hundreds could have been contaminated and may have ingested radioactive material. An Iraqi nuclear engineer and a founder of the al-Tuwaitha site, Dr. Hamid Al-Bah’ly, interviewed on Al-Jazeera TV, witnessed the spread of nuclear contamination firsthand. At one home, Al-Bah’ly discovered radioactive contamination in clothes and beds. In others, he recorded radiation levels 500 to 600 times higher than acceptable levels. Iraqi and foreign doctors are to conduct a major health survey in the affected areas near al-Tuwaitha; during June there was talk of evacuating villagers. Radiation sickness aside, the risk of Iraqis who have been contaminated contracting leukaemia and other cancers at a later date appears very high.

The paper highlights:

“the danger of radioactive materials falling into the hands of terrorists seeking to make radiological dispersion devices (RDDs – dubbed ‘dirty bombs’). There is clearly potential for looted materials to be sold on by looters to terrorist groups seeking to make RDDs.”

US intelligence had shown Al Qaeda’s interest in the use of radioactive weapons. Intelligence whose priority was non-existent in protecting the wherewithal to create such horrors – in a region where Al-Qaeda literally seemed to enter Iraq with the troops and whose offspring is now ISIS whose adherents regard death as a prize, not a fear and surely would not have a moment’s concern in irradiating entire regions, adding to the burden of what the the US has already done.

NOVEMBER 2015 – ANOTHER POTENTIAL NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE.

Now Iraq has a new nuclear threat. The theft has come to light: “of a highly dangerous radioactive source of Iridium -192 with highly radioactive activity from a depot…in the Rafidhia area of Basra province.” (5) Though the material went missing in November, the disappearance has only just come to light.

The material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive by the International Atomic Energy Agency – meaning it can be fatal to anyone in close proximity to it in a matter of days or even hours.

Moreover: “A security official said the initial investigation suggested the perpetrators had specific knowledge of how to handle the material and how to gain access to the facility” where it was stored. Army and police are working “day and night” to locate the stolen material, a spokesman for Basra Operations Command told Reuters. Nearly four months on it seems they are not doing too well.

Iridium-192 is used in industrial photography to locate flaws in metal components as well as in radiotherapy. It seemingly belonged to the giant Turkey based SGS group whose:

“ …  robust technology, knowledge-based approach and dedication to quality and safety allow us to provide innovative solutions to every part of the oil and gas industry” and was being used to test pipes at an oil field.”

It was reportedly being kept in a protective laptop-sized case in a depot belonging to US oilfield services company Weatherford. The isotope was apparently being used to check for flaws in oil piping etc., in Basra’s great oil industry, so speedily secured by the invaders.

However, both SGS and Weatherford deny responsibility for the disastrous loss, and according to Reuters are trading recriminations. (6)

Supremely ironically, under the decimating embargo years, Iraq was not even allowed chemotherapy for the rocketing cancers, X-rays or any therapeutic radiation. Saddam would somehow transform them into nuclear weapons US-UK Inc., fantasized.

Iraq now lives in an uncontrollable, nightmare nuclear age, delivered by Bush and Blair’s lies, bombs and actions.

Footnote: Extensive inquiries have so far failed to confirm whether an inventory of what went missing from Tuwaitha and other sites from the abandoned nuclear programme, was undertaken, or whether there were efforts to follow up on the ills from the affected areas or attempts to clean them. Inquiries will continue.

Notes

1. http://www.celticguitarmusic.com/MlandCampDavid.htm
2. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/07/bn.01.html
3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061200896.html
4. http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd73/73op03.htm
5. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-nuclear-dirty-bomb-iraq-oil-field-a6879481.html
6. http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-iraq-sgs-sa-idUKKCN0VR1IP?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

“Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags … we [enter] into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face ‘No admittance except on business’. Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making.” – Karl Marx, Capital, Vol 1, Chapter 6.

On February 21, 2016 a rare but much-needed Anti-Privatization Forum is being held in Toronto. The event not only continues a decades-long struggle by unions, activists, and concerned citizens to protect public services; it identifies areas of particular relevance in Ontario’s privatization saga today – namely in relation to healthcare, hydro, transit, and housing.

If Canada’s late 1980s and early 1990s privatization schemes largely favoured creating new sources of private profit making through the divestiture of state assets, by the late 1990s new avenues of privatization were being increasingly located within the state in the form of public-private partnerships (P3s).

While public-private collaboration may be nothing new in Canada, P3s for public infrastructure and services establish binding, multi-decade long contracts that bundle the private for-profit design, construction, finance, and management of public works that remain state responsibilities. With these partnerships, the state remains on the hook and the privatization dimension often flies under the radar. Seldom is any effort by P3 promoters put into making the public-at-large aware of what exactly P3s are, how they are produced, and how they work as a hidden abode of profit making within public sector operations. This despite many an Ontario P3 being a household name: Highway 407, the Brampton Civic Hospital, the Thunder Bay and Waterloo courthouses, and several up-and-coming LRT projects in Toronto, like Finch West and Eglinton Crosstown, just to name a few.

Opacity in P3 Proliferation

There are now well over 200 infrastructure P3s across Canada in nearly all jurisdictions, in some of the most sensitive areas of the public interest: healthcare, education, water, transportation, and incarceration. They turn public infrastructure and services into private commodities and financial assets with shockingly few details released except when admitted on business. Opacity results in P3 proliferation and normalization despite serious drawbacks like incursions on democratic processes, urban planning, social justice, environmental protection, and labour conditions.

Here I draw on recent research to shine some light on the hidden abode of P3s. I do so in the spirit of seeking to revoke Mr. P3 Moneybags’ privileged claim to “No admittance except on business.” (See bibliography below.)

Capitalizing on Public Infrastructure

“Infrastructure is ultra-low-risk because competition is limited by a host of forces that make it difficult to build, say, a rival toll road. With captive customers, the cash flows are virtually guaranteed. The only major variables are the initial prices paid, the amount of debt used for financing, and the pace and magnitude of toll hikes – easy things for Wall Street to model” (Emily Thornton, Businessweek, 2007).

Idiosyncrasies aside, a P3’s profit-oriented private partners are made up of two groups: equity investors who are signatories to the contract (typically the engineering, construction, and service providers), and debt holders who provide the bank or bond financing (which can include private commercial banks, wealthy individuals investing in infrastructure funds, and institutional investors like pension funds, life insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds and superannuation funds, and investment banks).

Privately financed public infrastructure offers investors two means of profit making: as projects and as assets. Physical infrastructure projects like bridges, highways, and water treatment facilities provide stable and predictable revenue since they monopolize the role of provider and deliverer of that service to particular communities. The monopoly position is then guaranteed by multi-decade government contracts that often contain anti-competition clauses. And as a financial asset, public infrastructure brings in high returns for low risk. Mark Florian, the head of North American infrastructure banking at Goldman Sachs, summarizes the eagerness of investors to have government set up and lock in P3 projects: “there’s a lot of value trapped in public assets” (quoted in Thornton 2007).

Though each project is unique, investors tend to expect real rates of return of at least 15-25%; if refinanced in the relatively low risk operational phase of the project, cheaper debt can mean significantly enhanced profitability for equity holders. In some jurisdictions (such as Ontario and BC) refinancing gains must be shared with public partners, in others this provision does not exist. Equity sales can also be quite lucrative. In the UK, for example, Whitfield (2011) estimates that 240 P3 equity transactions have taken place since 1992, valued at £10-billion, with average profit rates coming in at a whopping 51%. Equity sales without public input or permission are typical in Canada.

Getting the Story Straight

It is clear that one half of the P3 partnership gains substantially from privatization, but the implications are far less rosy for the public and public sector.

In December 2014, Ontario’s Auditor General concluded that 74 P3 projects had added an additional (and unnecessary) $8-billion to the province’s long run budget obligations when compared with what traditional ways of financing, building, and procuring infrastructure would have cost. Most often this comes down to the lower rates of interest paid by public borrowers (even/especially after 2008) but can also be chalked up to the higher transaction costs associated with P3s.

Despite the provincial interest rate favouring public borrowing, the province of Ontario defends its use of private financing on the basis that it cannot sustain a high amount of debt. This argument obscures the long run nature of the P3 commitment: whether direct borrowing or multi-decade payment obligations to a private partner, the least costly option is the public option.

Getting Their Story Straight

As opposed to cost savings, it is far more common that policy documents justify P3 use on the grounds that they deliver ‘value for money’ (VfM). Understanding what exactly VfM means in practice and in technical detail, however, requires deciphering what a Scottish Auditor once famously called “pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo.”

It turns out that for Ontario and the rest of Canada, in most cases the entire VfM basis of choosing a P3 over the traditional model rests on the claim that it uniquely provides for ‘risk transfer’. The argument is twofold: that P3s insulate the public from unnecessary and unexpected costs and that by linking private partner compensation to the acceptance of risk there will be an incentive to find project efficiencies and ensure quality delivery. In this sense, P3 is an insurance policy taken out (and paid for) by the public sector.

Arguments such as these ignore the longstanding practice of transferring risks through traditional forms of procurement. Auditors General in Ontario (2008) and Quebec (2009) have openly questioned P3 for this reason alone. Risk transfer justifications also privilege the P3 model without any basis in fact or systematic study of public sector performance. Infrastructure Ontario assumes that the risks associated with fully public projects are 5 times greater than with P3 but the provincial Auditor General argues “there is no empirical data supporting the key assumptions used by infrastructure Ontario to assign costs to specific risks” (2014, 198).

Nestling Everywhere, Settling Everywhere

For all their drawbacks, P3s work quite well in other ways, namely at accomplishing accumulation by dispossession. We now see not only the entrenchment of design-build-finance-operate infrastructure P3s in Canada but also its evolution and spread into new territory. The return of austerity after 2009 has only contributed to the shape-shifting nature of P3.

Looking at examples of cutting-edge trends in P3 from the U.S., UK, and Australia indicates what might be soon in store for Canadians.

Finale: Finding the Funds

Countering the P3 push has thus far proven difficult. Despite spectacular project failures, the demonstration effect has done little to reverse P3 use. Union resistance has been somewhat successful, in a limited way – in areas like Ontario’s health sector, P3 hospital service contracts are now narrower but P3 hospitals are more prevalent than ever. Planning and spending frameworks and oversight by auditors may be helpful at improving the process of P3 but cannot help intrinsic problems with the outcome of P3. If a solution is to be found which is of broad appeal – those tacit supporters of privatization included – it will be most successful if focused on the cost and financing dimensions. Calgary, for example, cancelled its P3 schools program in 2014 on the grounds that it was cheaper to use the traditional public route.

Arguments in favour of using private financing vary between it being a way to capture ‘extra’ money or a way to ‘replace’ public spending but the reality is that private financing through the P3 model must be paid back either through government-owed availability payments (taxpayer compensation sent to the private partner for its services, e.g., hospital cleaning) or by the public directly through user fees (collected at the time of use, e.g., highway tolls). Repayment schemes make P3 a mechanism of infrastructure financing, not funding – funds for public infrastructure ultimately come from taxpayers or service users one way or another.

Understanding the business of P3 reveals, rather ironically, a range of options for public alternatives that would tap into the same types of sources that private financing for public infrastructure draws on but jettison profit siphoning and private control. Examples include:

• Drawing on new or existing forms of pooled savings: pension and superannuation funds, employment insurance, sovereign wealth funds
• Income remitted through Crown corporations: commercial activities, dividends, and expansion into new revenue-generating markets (e.g., marijuana)
• Issuing debt in the form of federal bonds dedicated to vital infrastructure
• Establishing select user fees to ensure intergenerational repayment equity and leveraged as a source of funds for ‘revenue bond’ repayment
• Creating a more progressive taxation system to redistribute ‘dead money’ horded by wealthy individuals and institutions and/or allowing municipalities to collect new forms of tax revenue beyond the current reliance on property taxes
• Creating an infrastructure bank or trust to tap into more flexible accounting procedures related to the allocation and redistribution of intergovernmental fiscal transfers for infrastructure

Identifying and promoting viable alternatives to privately financed P3s will accomplish a number of goals, with broad appeal:

• Lower total project costs
• A reassertion of democratic control
• Design and delivery that is more responsive and tailored to local needs
• Flexibility for future policy, community, and technological changes
• Principles of sustainable development (ensuring that projects provide good jobs, are environmentally friendly, and economically sound) can be applied, re/assessed, and reapplied as needed
• Construction projects that bring in the expertise and strengths of the private sector as needed/desired: strengthening local contractors, favouring top quality designs, tapping into technological advancements
• Any/all cost savings or revenue generated can be kept within the community or reinvested in that project or sector

Alternatives to P3s are just one part of an anti-privatization strategy, success will also depend on developing common strategies to oppose privatization on other fronts. •

Heather Whiteside is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Other references:

• Justin Panos: The Ontario Liberals and Long-Term Care (18 February 2016).
• Ontario Health Coalition: Against Privatization (5 February 2016).
• John Lister interviewed by Robin Chang: Public Healthcare Against Privatization (21 August 2015).
• Brenda Thompson: Rapid Transit Rip-Off (28 January 2015).
• Herman Rosenfeld: The New Struggle for Public Transit (9 April 2014).
• Brenda Thompson: Privatization and Public Transit in Toronto (18 February 2013).
• Paul Kahnert and Sam Gindin: Tax Cuts, Privatization and Deregulation Disguised as Public Policy (20 January 2012).
• Doug Allan: The Coming Battle: Healthcare Privatization and the Ontario Election (5 October 2011).
• John Loxley: Global Crisis, Fiscal Restraint and Public-Private Partnerships (10 March 2011).
• Paul Kahnert: The Case For Keeping Our Hydro Utilities Public (2 March 2010).

First published in January 2015. John McCain’s links to the terrorists.

Poor John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Washington’s original first couple. They only want to arm the ‘moderate opposition’ in Syria. Three years on, how come their master plan isn’t working, while ISIS has grown so strong?

Despite what media lauded as, “the largest demonstration in France’s history – bigger than liberation at the end of WWII!” (can you rightly compare the two), the Paris Attacks are fading fast into the rear view mirror. The media went to great lengths to reinforce the scary prospect of the ‘ISIS in Europe’, even though there is spurious, if any, real evidence to support that claim. Nonetheless, a lack of evidence has never stopped the media from conjuring up a frightening new trend.

In the light of the recent Paris Attacks it’s more important than ever to take a sober look, and perhaps shine a light on the fact that there are no real ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria, no more than there are in Iraq.

On Tuesday during his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama touted great strides in “halting the advance of ISIS” with US-led airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. Today, US Ambassador Stuart Jones announced that “Coalition Airstrikes” (US airstrikes) have killed 6,000 ISIS byHow the US is able to conjure up such incredible Jack and the Beanstalk-style numbers (all but impossible to verify) is beyond anyone outside of Washington. You just have to take his word for it. Just like we just had to take US Ambassador to the Ukraine’s word for it – when Geoffrey Pyatt Tweeted a few random Digital Globe images claiming that the Russians invaded Ukraine, again.After six or so ‘Russian Invasion’ false starts, we’re still waiting for evidence beyond Twitter.

The lies and creative accounting have been palpable since the beginning of the US airstrikes in Syria. Early strikes weren’t actually against ISIS, but rather against a number of impressive empty buildings, and buildings which were curiously evacuated days before the US conducted the raids. How interesting.

This brings us to the issue of who ISIS really is, and how did ISIS build up to the level they are at today. It’s a particularly embarrassing thing to admit, because when you allow this fact out of the bag, then skeptics start asking more questions, and if there’s one thing that politicians hate more than anything, it’s facts and questions.

So, what happened to all of McCain’s “moderate opposition”? You know, the ones which President Obama, John Kerry, David Cameron and the rest of the ‘liberate Syria’ gang insist need our help with more weapons and cash? New Eastern Outlook geopolitical analysis and writer Tony Cartalucci explains:

Reported along the peripheries of the Western media, it was reported recently that some 3,000 so-called “moderate rebels” of the “Free Syrian Army” had defected to the “Islamic State” (ISIS).  While not the first time so-called “moderates” have crossed over openly to Al Qaeda or ISIS, it is one of the largest crossovers that has occurred. With them, these 3,000 fighters will bring weapons, cash, equipment, and training provided to them by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, the UK, and perhaps most ironic of all in the wake of the recent terror attack in Paris, France. Indeed, ISIS and Al Qaeda’s ranks continue to swell amid this insidious network of “terror laundering” that is only set to grow.

This means there’s no “moderate rebels” to speak of, so therefore ISIS is McCain’s Army. Washington’s nation-builders are banking on the fact that Americans are not smart enough, or too brain-dead to work this one out.

ISIS: CIA’s Twitter-friendly, “cut-out” mercenary army.

Since 2012, the war-obsessed Senator has dedicated a little too much of his valuable taxpayer-funded time to lobbying for more arms and more cash for his “freedom fighters” in Syria, fighters who are well-known outside of Washington to be all but ubiquitous with violent terrorist fighting groups al Qaeda, al Nusra, Front Victory and ISIS/ISIL/IS. Ten years of war theater in Iraq was time enough to cultivate and develop al Qaeda and Islamic State ‘death squads’ under US destabilization experts like John Negoponte and Robert Ford. Top ISIS fighting units grew directly out of Negoponte’s Death Squads from 2005 onwards. Death Suad recruits were hand-picked and drawn from the Shia, Kurdish, and some Sunni resistance militias, as well as foreign fighter insurgents and other ‘soldiers of fortune’ in Iraq. Death squads were designed to divide and disrupt communities and any remaining Sunnis and Shi’ite oppositions to the US occupation in Iraq. In addition, mythologies were erected, like the one surrounding actor-leaders like ‘al-Baghdadi’ (more on him below).

The first hint we had of Washington’s desert rat installment Operation Fast and Furious, came in September 2012, when a rented villa in Libya’s port city of Benghazi went up in flames. Later we find out that the makeshift ‘embassy’ was really part of a clandestine CIA complex where the US was organizing the shipment of ex-Gaddafi arms stocks over to Washington’s burgeoning new bloodbath in Syria.

Many Americans and other followers of this story may still be unaware that, Abdel Hakim-Belhadj (photo, left), the al Qaeda lieutenant who the US held at ‘Penny Lane’ in Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) and then subsequently turned (or debriefed) by the CIA, and released back into the field as a double agent, leading the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group on behalf of NATO in their effort to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2010-2011. WNDreported this week that The Citizen’s Commission on Benghazi’s interim report, revealed how “the U.S. was fully aware of and facilitating the delivery of weapons to the Al Qaeda-dominated rebel militias throughout the 2011 rebellion”, an illegal operation carried out behind the back of Congress, andunder management of then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After toppling the Gaddafi gov’t, Washington rewarded Hakim-Belhadj with the position of Governor of Tripoli, after which time, he played a key roll in the continual recruitment and further redeployment of battle-hardenedLibyan jihadist fighters over to Syria. There is also the issue of Muslim Brotherhood members and their al Qaeda affiliations, embedded in NATO-backed Transnational Council (TNC) government in Libya, during and after, the fall of Gaddafi, which was explained by Dr Jerome Corsi in the WND story. Along with the fighters, more weapons, comprised of ex-Gaddafi arms stocks, also had to be moved from Libya, through Turkey and into Syria.

To clarify, Libyan Islamic fighting groups who worked hand-in-hand with US, British and French, and NATO intelligence agencies to topple Gaddafi in 2011 – were openly flying the al Qaeda and ISIS ‘black flag’ after Gaddafi’s gov’t collapsed, before and during the time they were shipped on to fight in Syria against Bashar al Assad’s gov’t forces – on behalf of those very same NATO-allied agencies.

WND’s report continues:

In early 2011, before Gadhafi was deposed, Christopher Stevens came to Benghazi in a cargo ship, and his title at the time was envoy to the Libyan rebels,’ which basically means Christopher Stevens was America’s very first envoy to al-Qaida,” explained Clare Lopez, a member of the commission who served as a career operations officer with the CIA and currently is vice president for research at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy. At that time, Stevens was facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-related militia in Libya,” Lopez continued. “The weapons were produced at factories in Eastern Europe and shipped to a logistics hub in Qatar. The weapons were financed by the UAE and delivered via Qatar mostly on ships, with some possibly on airplanes, for delivery to Benghazi. The weapons were small arms, including Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and lots of ammunition.”

“This was about weapons going into Libya, and Stevens is coordinating with Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, other al-Qaida-affiliated militia leaders and leaders of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood that directed the rebellion against Qadhafi [Gaddafi] as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,” Lopez said. “Many of the individual members of the al-Qaida-related militias, including the LIFG, and the groups that would later become Ansar Al-Sharia, were Muslim Brotherhood members first.”

To call it a scandal would be an understatement. What’s worst though, is how these events provided the catalyst for the ‘ISIS Crisis’ the world is facing today. Highly trained, well-armed, ruthless Islamic fighters do not grow on trees, and to think that many of the top ISIS generals and fighters were hand-picked, transferred, and equipped by the US and its NATO and Gulf allies – should be cause for grave concern.

Later on, NATO allies opted for a more consolidated effort to first be staged in Europe, and then on to Syria. The first major arms shipment on record was organized by the US, Britain and France in March 2013, in what is known as the Great Croatian Weapons Airlift, which comprised of 75 airplanes, and an estimated 3,000 tons of military weaponry – bound for Jordan.

Then we learned on Sept 13, 2013, how the CIA had openly announced financial and military aid to the “moderate rebels” (now ISIS recruits). US politicians were brimming with excitement at the time, proudly coming out of the closet on their brilliant new program. Mark S. Ward, the State Department’s senior adviser on assistance to Syria boasted, “This doesn’t only lead to a more effective force, but it increases its ability to hold coalition groups together.” Indeed. Look how effective ISIS has become. Nice work Mark.

It’s a cheap ploy: the idea that there’s some sort of “moderate rebel army” waiting in Syria and the surrounding western collaborator nations, like Jordan and Turkey. The reality is simply horrific – armed Salafist militants, whose true nature and existence is being shielded by lies and endless propaganda in the West – in an effort to wear down the media and then the public on this issue. ISIS is one giant mercenary army and organized crime organ – one which I have already referred to as 21st century ‘Sand Pirates’. For extra beer money, these privateers are targeting civilians, running kidnapping and sex rings, protection, extortion, ‘taxes’ and black markets for anything they can put their thumbs on; food, fuel, retail, property, transport and of course narcotics. They’re even collecting “international aid” and UN/NGO funds on the streets of Northern Syria. The CIA’s go-between in Syria is General Salim ‘Sam’ Idriss, leader of the ‘Free Syria Army’, which is merely a shop-front for the US State Department to conduct over-the-counter business and gain access, delivering kinds of  aid to terrorist fighting groups and Death Squads in Syria and Iraq – in the exact same way that TNC-linked Libyan ‘Rebels’ were a shop-front which linked NATO to Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and al Qaeda (AQIM) paramilitaries in Libya.

According to a New York Times story published in 2007, the feared ISIS leader, Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, never existed, according to Brigadier General Kevin Bergner – the chief American military spokesman at the time. Yes, ‘al-Baghdadi’, is a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.

A large number of McCain’s ‘freedom-lovers’ have been trained by the best – US and British special forces and contractors based in Jordan and Turkey. Weapons and funding have been steadily supplied by the US and its Gulf monarchs – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and others, Moreover, Israel has been consistently giving the “moderate rebels” aid and air support.

What’s the master plan? That’s debatable, as the opportunists of instability line up on all sides to accumulate what they can in chaos. Essentially what we are looking at is a US-led effort to over-run the region with the ISIS and ISIS-related scourge, killing all stability and ability for Syria, Iraq and Iran to coordinate any meaningful military, economic or political enterprise, like a major oil or gas pipeline connecting the Asian and European markets, for instance. To achieve this, a regionalsectarian bloodbath is required. This suits Saudi Arabia, as well as the US and Israel. A happy Axis. But it’s a raw deal for the region, and the damage being inflicted by this proxy disaster is certain to poison generations upon generations, destroying cities, villages, families and whole cultures in the process. For more background on the underlying policy and practice, it’s worth reading Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article, “”The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?”.

If this all sounds too much for you, then  it’s imperative to take a moment, and better understand exactly how you’re being programmed in this global, mass media psycho-drama…

Four deafening blasts rocked today, Sunday, the Shia-populated district of Sayyidah Zaynab in the southern suburbs of Damascus, leaving more than 46 people dead, 100 injured in latest poll.

First published in October 2015 at the outset of the Russian bombing campaign

Russia in the few days it has been of fighting terrorism in Syria has achieved far more than the US coalition. According to the New York Times, Russia’s fighter jets are conducting nearly as many strikes in a typical day as the American-led coalition has been carrying out each month this year, a number which includes strikes conducted in Iraq – not just Syria.

Whilst the US has [allegedly] been bombing ISIS for over a year, ISIS has only grown and gained more ground in Syria. A few months ago ISIS took over the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, a UNESCO world heritage-listed site.

In spite of the fact that the US government acknowledged ISIS cannot be defeated without ground troops, they have refused to work with the Syrian military, the only force on the ground commanded by the only UN-recognized government in the country, and the only force capable and willing to fight ISIS.

On the other hand Russia is coordinating with the Syrian military on the ground, assisting Syrian troops in gaining ground against terrorism. The discrepancy shows a lack of honesty on the part of the US when it comes to its real agenda in Syria vs its proclaimed goal of fighting terrorism. The US is capable of more, the US military is the most powerful and technologically advanced force in the world. It is logical to conclude that they are willfully throwing the fight against terrorism in Syria and the reasons for that should be examined.

ISIS Serves US Geopolitical Interests, Threatens Russia’s

It has become clear that the US’s main objectives in Syria is not their expressed goal of ‘fighting ISIS’, but regime change, isolating Russian influence, the Balkanization and the creation of failed states. US presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself stated that ‘removing Assad is the top priority”.

The US sees the Syrian state as one of the last spheres of Russian influence beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union, and a threat to its Israeli ally in the region. The presence of ISIS and other terrorists groups serves these interests. The US has a history of using terrorism to topple governments friendly to Russia. Al Qaeda itself was borne of the US objective to topple the Soviet friendly government of Afghanistan. The dismemberment of Russian-friendly Serbia and the creation of Kosovo was done via the same means.

More recently ISIS was a direct result of the US’s intervention in Iraq, and have only arrived in Libya and Syria in the wake of overt US-backed regime change efforts there. Although Libya and Iraq did not have relations with Russia as strong as Syria’s, Russia was still their main weapons supplier. It is therefore not surprising that since Russia entered the war in Syria, Saudi clerics and the Muslim Brotherhood – both US state assets – declared ‘jihad’ on Russia.

The former Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) Chief Michael Flynn said in an interview that he believed the US had made a willful decision to allow ISIS to grow in Syria. A 2012 declassified DIA report, wrote if the US and its allies continued to destabilize Syria by arming extremist insurgents “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

The CIA had trained thousand of ‘rebels’, not to fight ISIS, but admittedly to fight the Assad government and Syrian military – showing once again that the real objective behind the US’ involvement is regime change. Media across the West has even admited this, including the Washington Post which would report:

Terrorism poses far greater risks to Russia’s national security than it does to the US. Not only is their proximity closer, but terrorists in Russia have the potential to cleave off part of the state and overrun entire Russian towns. This is not the case for the US, whose only risk to national security would be civilian deaths due to bombings, and that is not necessarily something that the US government would find a real ‘problem,’ and in fact, might even see as a possible opportunity.

The US Seeks Only to Contain ISIS

The US only wants to contain ISIS within Syria and Iraq’s borders indefinitely – not to defeat them. This was admitted to by a member of the current US government and party, Democratic Rep. Adam Smith to CNN who stated:

…we need to find partners that we can work with in Syria to help us contain ISIS. So it is a difficult problem to figure out the best strategy. I agree, they have safe haven there in parts of Syria and that will have to be part of the strategy for containing ISIS. 

Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes told CBS news:

 I think we are containing ISIS within the borders of Iraq and Syria. Outside of that we’re not doing much.

US President Barack Obama himself stated that he would like to like to:

…continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities to the point where it is a manageable problem.

This suggests that President Obama wants to maintain ISIS sphere power to a contained manageable circle, like a diseases that is treated but never cured. Obama perhaps got his policies on the advice of the Brooking Institute think-tank, which stated:

Should we defeat ISIS? Rather than defeat, containing their activities within failed or near-failing states is the best option for the foreseeable future.

The US is Not Actually Bombing ISIS

The US bombing of ISIS has been mostly nominal, an exercise in perception management. Although the US Defense Intelligence Agency makes regular claims to have bombed specific targets, rarely is video evidence of the bombing strikes published. On the other hand the Russian military regularly releases video of most of the strikes on Russia Today. It was also leaked that the US had forbade its fighter jets from targeting a long list of ISIS training camps, which turn out thousands of fighters a month.

Award winning journalist Robert Fisk told the Australian program Lateline that the US could have bombed a convoy of ISIS militants who were taking over Palmyra, but instead allowed them to take over a Syrian military post as well as the ancient City which they have now begun to destroy. When the US has dropped bombs on ISIS run territory they have used the opportunity to primarily destroy Syria’s oil infrastructure. Likewise the US has largely avoided bombing ISIS and Al Qaeda targets in the Syrian district of North Hama in an attempt to prevent Syrian troops from gaining ground.Russia is now striking these targets long the benefactors of US-granted impunity.

The US Has ‘Forgotten’ its War with al Qaeda, Now Protects It

Perhaps the most ironic development of Russia’s involvement in Syria’s fight against terror, is the anger expressed by the US government and its media at Russia’s bombing of Al Qaeda (Jabhat Al Nusra) targets.

EL PAÍS interviews the Syrian leader at a crucial juncture in the conflict in the country

El Pais Introduction

Next month marks five years since the uprisings that plunged Syria into one of the bloodiest wars that can be remembered in the history of the Middle East. At least 260,000 people have died in the conflict, according to the United Nations. Five million have sought refuge abroad. Europe has taken in a million of them, in what is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the last century. Three thousand people have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean in the past year.

Bashar al-Assad, who became president of the country following the death of his father in 2000, soon lost control of a good part of the country in the conflict, as large cities such as Homs and Aleppo fell into the hands of the rebel militias. He has recently managed to recover these opposition strongholds and his army has launched an offensive to cut off the rebels’ access and supply routes from Turkey, supported by Russian aerial bombardments, which have proved decisive since they began in September.

The embargo is not on the Syrian government, it is against the Syrian people”

The Syrian president tells the refugees that they can return to the country without fear of reprisals and accuses the Islamist governments of Qatar and Turkey of having promoted the war in Syria – a stage on which, he admits, not only the interests of a state are being measured, but also those of an entire region, with Saudi Arabia and Iran as powers in the conflict.

Question. This week you have allowed humanitarian aid to go into seven besieged areas. Some claim there are at least 486,000 people living in those areas, some for even more than three years. Why did this happen so late in the conflict?

Answer. Actually, it hasn’t happened recently; it’s been there since the beginning of the crisis. We never placed an embargo on any region in Syria. There’s a difference between an embargo and the army surrounding a certain area because of the militants, and that’s natural in such a security case or military case. But the problem with those areas is that the militants themselves took the food and the basic needs of those people, the people there, and gave it to their militants or sold it to the people at very high prices. As a government, we never prevented any area from having assistance, including the areas under the control of ISIS, like Raqqa in the north that’s been under their control, and before that the Al-Nusra Front [the local branch of Al Qaeda], for nearly three years now. We’ve been sending them all the salaries for the retired people, all the salaries for the employees today, and we send them vaccines for the children.

Q. So, food and salaries even still go into Raqqa and other ISIS strongholds?

A. Exactly. So, if we send it to Raqqa, which is under the control of ISIS, because we think as a government that we are responsible for every Syrian person, how can we not do it in other areas? That’s not realistic, that’s a contradiction. So, that’s why I said it’s not recently; we never stopped allowing the assistance or food.

Q. It will continue to happen?

A. Exactly.

Q. A truce was announced by Russia and the United States. Is the Syrian government willing to respect the cessation of military operations in Syria?

A. Definitely, and we announced that we’re ready, but it’s not only about announcing, because maybe the other party will announce the same. It’s about what you are going to do on the ground. A ceasefire is about – if you want to say ceasefire, it’s not the correct word, because a ceasefire is between two armies or two countries – it’s better to say cessation of hostility, or, let’s say, stopping the operations. It’s about, first of all, stopping the fire, but it’s also about other complimentary and more important factors, preventing the terrorists from using the ceasefire or the cessation of hostility to improve their position. It’s about preventing other countries, especially Turkey, from sending more recruits, more terrorists, more armaments, or any kind of logistical support to those terrorists. There is a United Nations resolution, or Security Council resolution, regarding this point that’s not implemented. If we don’t provide all these requirements for the ceasefire, it will be against the stability; it’s going to make more chaos in Syria, it may lead to a de facto division of the country. That’s why if we want to use the ceasefire, it is positive providing these factors.

Q. So, there will be still some fighting even though there’s this ceasefire, at least against some of the armed groups?

A. Yes, of course, like ISIS, like Al-Nusra, and other organizations or terrorist groups that belong to Al Qaeda. Now, Syria and Russia have announced four names: Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam [Army of Islam] and Al-Nusra and ISIS.

Q. Your forces have surrounded Aleppo. It’s one of the big strongholds of the opposition. When do you expect to fully regain control of that city?

A. Actually, we are in the middle of the city, so, yes, a large part of the city is under the control of the government, and most of the inhabitants of the other parts emigrated from the militants-controlled area to the government-controlled area, so it’s not about recapturing the city. Actually, it’s about closing the roads between Turkey and between the terrorist groups. That is the aim of the battles in Aleppo now, and we succeeded recently, we could close the main roads. Of course, it’s not a complete seal, let’s say, between Aleppo and Turkey, but it makes the relation between Turkey and the terrorists much more difficult. That’s why Turkey has been shelling the Kurds recently, for that reason.

Q. What comes after Aleppo? Is the Syrian Army even willing to go into Raqqa, the so-called capital of ISIS?

A. In principle, we should go everywhere, but now we are fighting on more than 10 fronts in Syria. Recently, we advanced towards Raqqa, but we’re still far from it. So, as a principle, yes, we are moving to Raqqa and other areas, but the timing depends on the results of different battles now, so we cannot tell the timing exactly.

Q. Russia has started an aggressive campaign of aerial bombings here in key opposition strongholds. This has been a turning point in the conflict. Some claim that you have the upper hand now. Do you think you could have made it without foreign help?

A. Definitely the Russian and the Iranian support were essential for our army to make this advancement. To say that we couldn’t have made it is a hypothetical question, because it’s an “if,” so nobody knows the real answer of the “if.” But we definitely need that help for a simple reason: because more than 80 countries supported those terrorists in different ways, some of them directly with money, with logistical support, with armaments, with recruitments. Some other countries supported them politically, in different international forums. Syria is a small country. We could fight, but in the end, there’s unlimited support and recruitment for those terrorists. You definitely need international support. But, again, this is a hypothetical question I cannot answer.

Q. Regarding these Russian aerial bombings, are you concerned about civilian casualties? On Monday, there was a bombing in a hospital and 50 people were killed. The United States has claimed that the Russians caused it.

A. Some other officials in the United States said they don’t know who did it, that’s what they said later. These contradictory statements are common in the United States, but no one has any proof about who did it and how it happened. But regarding the casualties, of course this is a problem in every war. Of course I feel very sad for every innocent civilian who dies in our conflict, but this is war. Every war is bad, you don’t have a good war, because you always have civilians, and you have innocent people who are going to pay the price.

Q. So, how do you explain to your people, to the Syrians, that there is a foreign army carrying out operations here that can cause civilian casualties?

A. No, no. We don’t have any evidence that the Russians attacked any civilian targets. They are very precise in their targets and they always attack, every day, the bases or the targets of the terrorists. Actually, it’s the Americans who did this, who killed many civilians in the northeastern part of Syria, not the Russians. Not a single incident has happened regarding the civilians so far, because they don’t attack in the cities; they attack mainly in the rural areas.

We expect Spain to convey our political point of view regarding our conflict to the EU

Q. Talking about foreign armies, how would you react if Turkey and Saudi Arabia follow through with their statements that they plan on sending troops here to allegedly fight the Islamic State?

A. As you said, allegedly. But if it happens, we’re going to deal with them like we deal with the terrorists. We’re going to defend our country. This is aggression. They don’t have any right to interfere, politically or militarily, in Syria. This is a breach of international law, and as Syrian citizens, the only option we have is to fight and defend.

Q. Turkey has started bombing from their territory into Syria.

A. Exactly, and before that bombing, Turkey was sending the terrorists, it’s the same, the same goal, the same effect, in different ways. So, Turkey has been involved in Syria since the very beginning.

Q. Saudi Arabia tried to unify the opposition in a conference in Riyadh. Some people linked to Al Qaeda were present in those meetings. Do you recognize any of the rebel groups as a legitimate party with whom you can negotiate in the whole opposition?

A. You mean the rebels who are fighting on the ground?

Q. Yes.

A. No. Legally and constitutionally, everyone who can hold machine guns against the people and against the government is a terrorist, in your country, in my country, in every country in the world. You cannot say they are legitimate. They could be legitimate when they give up their armaments and join the political process. This is the only way in every country to rebuild your country or to change whatever you want to change, whether the constitution or the laws or the government, everything, you can do it, but through political process, not through armaments.

Q. So, all those who are fighting, you deem them terrorists?

A. Unless they announce that they are ready to join the political process. Then we will not have any problem with them.

The refugees can come back without any action being taken against them by the government

Q. So those people who have been fighting, who take away their ideals or their intentions, if they lay down arms, can they come back?

A. We’ll give them amnesty, and that happened, it has happened during the last two years, and it’s accelerating recently. Many of them give up their arms and some of them have joined the Syrian Army now and they are fighting ISIS with the Syrian Army, and they get the support of the Syrian Army and the Russian airplanes.

Q. So if, as you just stated, those who have taken up arms against the government here are all terrorists, with whom are you exactly negotiating in Geneva?

A. I’m talking about the recent Geneva, Geneva III, that failed. It was supposed to be a mixture of the people who are trained in Saudi Arabia, a mixture of terrorists and extremists or their supporters, and some of them Al Qaeda, and the other, let’s say, independent or other opposition who live outside or inside Syria. So, we can negotiate with those Syrians, with those patriotic Syrians who are related to their country, but we cannot negotiate with the terrorists – that’s why it failed.

Q. What about those opposition activist leaders who have been imprisoned since before the conflict in 2011?

A. All of them left prison a long time ago, and most of them are in the opposition.

Q. All of them?

A. All of them. We don’t have any of them. Before 2010, all of them left. Including some of them who were terrorists, but they were sentenced for a few years, let’s say five or whatever, and when the crisis started, they joined the terrorist groups again.

Q. You have proof of that?

A. Yeah, of course. One of them was the one who was killed, Zahran Alloush; he was imprisoned for several years, because he was Al Qaeda-affiliated. When the crisis started, he formed his own terrorist group, and this group is one of those four that I mentioned that we consider terrorist groups.

I don’t care about being in power. For me, if the Syrian people want me to be in power, I will be

Q. Some claim that there are 35,000 foreign jihadists. Four thousand came from Europe. The Spanish government has stated that there are some 300 who hold a Spanish passport. What will happen to these people if the Syrian Army captures them?

A. The Spanish?

Q. In general, the foreign jihadists.

A. First of all, we are dealing with them like any other terrorist. When you deal with them as terrorists on a legal basis, there’s no distinguishing between the nationalities, but if you want to talk about, let’s say, sending them to their countries, or extraditing them to their governments, it should be through relations between the institutions in the two countries.

Q. Regarding this, what do you think attracts so many foreigners into Syria right now?

A. Mainly the support they’ve been sent. It’s active, not passive, it’s actually active from the outside. Saudi Arabia is the main financier of those terrorists. They put them in airplanes, send them to Turkey, and through Turkey to Syria. The other attractive factor is the chaos; when you have chaos, this is very fertile soil for the terrorists. The third factor, the ideology, because they belong to Al Qaeda, this area, in our religious culture, in the Islamic culture, has a special place after Mecca and the other holy places and Jerusalem. They think that this is where they can come and create their own state. Of course, they’re going to expand later to other places, but the thought is that they can come and fight and die for God and for Islam. For them, this is jihad.

Q. Regarding what would happen if the Syrian government claimed control of all the territory. Would you start a political process? Would you be willing to go to elections again?

A. The natural thing, first of all, is to form a government, a national unity government where every political party can join if they have the will. This government should prepare for the new constitution, because if you want to talk about the future of Syria, because if you want to discuss with different parties how to solve the problem, the internal problem – now I’m excluding the external support of terrorists – you need to discuss the constitution; you want to change it, you want to keep it, you want to change the whole political system, that depends on the constitution. Of course, the Syrian people should vote for that constitution. After the constitution, according to the new constitution, you should have early elections, I mean parliamentary elections. Some mention presidential elections. If the Syrian people or the different parties want to have elections, it will happen. Ultimately, solving the political aspect of the problem has nothing to do with my personal opinion.

Q. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

A. The most important thing is how I see my country, because I’m part of my country. So, in 10 years, if I can save Syria as president – but that doesn’t mean I’m still going to be president in 10 years. I’m just talking about my vision of the 10 years. If Syria is safe and sound, and I’m the one who saved his country – that’s my job now, that’s my duty. So that’s how I see myself regarding the position, I’m talking about myself as a Syrian citizen.

Q. Would you still like to be in power in 10 years?

A. That’s not my aim. I don’t care about being in power. For me, if the Syrian people want me to be in power, I will be. If they don’t want me, I can do nothing, I mean, I cannot help my country, so I have to leave right away.

Q. Let me read from a United Nations Human Rights Council report that was published on February 3, and it said “detainees held by the government were beaten to death or died as a result of injuries sustained due to torture.” They say war crimes have also been committed. What do you have to say to this?

A. That’s based on what the Qataris made about a year ago or more, when they forged a report made of unverified pictures of injured people and unverified sources and sent it to the United Nations, and this is part of the propaganda against Syria. That’s the problem with the West and propaganda; they use unverified information to accuse Syria and to blame it and then to take action against it.

Q. The whole world was shocked by the image of little Alan Kurdi, the Syrian refuge, three years old, who was washed ashore dead on a Turkish beach. How did you feel when you saw that?

A. This is one of the saddest parts of the Syrian conflict; to have people leaving their country for different reasons. But beside the feeling, the question for us as officials that has been asked by the Syrian people: what are we going to do? What action has been taken either to allow those refugees to come back to their country or not to leave at all? You have two reasons here. The first one that we have to deal with, of course, is the terrorism, because those terrorists not only threaten people, but those terrorists deprive the people of the basic needs of their lives. The second reason is the embargo that has been implemented on Syria by the West, mainly the United States, of course, that caused more difficulties for the people to live here, especially in the health sector. So, we need to deal with these reasons in order to prevent this tragedy from being dragged on for a long time.

Q. You mentioned that some of those refugees are running away from ISIS, but some of them also claim that they are running away from the government, or from the campaigns of the government in some areas in Syria.

A. I can give you the contradicting facts that you can see while you are in Syria: that the majority of the people who live in the area controlled by the terrorists have emigrated to the area under the control of the government. So, if they want to flee from the government, why do they come to the government? This is not real. But at the same time, whenever there is a battle, shooting, a fight between the government and the terrorists in a certain area, it is natural for the majority of the population to leave that area to go to another area, but that doesn’t mean they escaped from the government. Some of the families who emigrated to the government-controlled areas are the families of the fighters themselves.

We have advanced towards Raqqa, but we’re still far from it

Q. Almost five million refugees have fled Syria according to international counts. One million have crossed into Europe. What guarantees do those people have that they can come back freely without fear of any reprisals?

A. No, of course they can come. It is their right to come back, unless somebody is a terrorist or killer. Some of them, and I think a good number of them, are government supporters who didn’t leave because they’re afraid of the government, but, as I said, because of the standards of living that have deteriorated drastically during the last few years. So, of course they can come back without any action being taken against them by the government. We want people to come back to Syria.

Q. What can the Syrian government do to stop that flow of refugees that has caused so many people to drown in the Mediterranean Sea. What can be done?

A. As I said, it is not only about Syria, it’s about the rest of the world. First of all, Europe should lift the embargo on the Syrian people; they don’t have an embargo on the Syrian government, it is against the Syrian people. Second, Turkey should stop sending terrorists to Syria. Third, as a government, we have to fight the terrorists, definitely, and we have to keep the living moving forward by any means in order to allow the Syrians to stay in their country. This is the only way that we could bring those people back or convince them to come back to their country. And I’m sure the majority of them want to come back to Syria. But, as I said, in the end you need to have the basic or minimum requirements for living.

Q. When you came to power, you promised democratic reforms; those times came to be known as the Damascus Spring. Some people claim that if those reforms had come faster, a lot of lives would have been spared. Other people claim, mainly the opposition, and also the United States, that if you had stepped down, a lot of lives would have been saved. What do you have to say to that?

A. The question is: what is the relation between what you have mentioned and Qatar sending money and then sending armaments and supporting terrorists directly? What is the relation? What is the relation between that and the role of Turkey in supporting terrorists? What is the relation between that and the existence of ISIS and Al-Nusra coming to Syria? So, the link is not correct. If you want to change the president or the prime minister or any system in your country, in any other country, you only have the political process to move through. You cannot use armaments. It is not an excuse to have armaments to say that I want to change the system or I want democracy. Democracy wouldn’t happen through armaments. And the experience of the United States in Iraq is still telling. The same in Yemen. President Saleh left because of the same allegations. What happened in Yemen? Is it better? That is not correct. There is no relation. We can achieve democracy through dialogue, but at the same time through the upgrading of the society towards the democracy, because democracy is not only the constitution or the president or laws and so on. These are tools or means to achieve it. But the real democracy, as a base, should be based on the society itself. How can we accept each other? This is a melting pot area; you have different ethnicities, different sects, different religions. How can they accept each other? When they accept each other, they can accept each other politically and this is where you can have real democracy. So, it is not about the president. They tried to personalize the problem just to show that it is a very simple problem: remove the president and everything will be fine. No one can accept it.

We can negotiate with the patriotic Syrians, but we cannot negotiate with the terrorists

Q. In these five years since the conflict started, do you think as you see the country now, with many heritage sites destroyed, a lot of lives lost, that you would have done anything differently?

A. In general, if we want to talk about the principles, from the very beginning we said that we’re going to fight terrorism and we’re going to make dialogue. We open dialogue with everyone except the terrorist groups. And we allowed the terrorists at the same time, we opened the door for them, if they want to lay down their armaments to go back to their normal life to be offered with full amnesty. So, that’s the principle of the whole solution. Now, five years later, I cannot say that was proved to be wrong, and I do not think that we are going to change those principles. Implementing the policy is different sometimes, because it depends on different officials, different institutions, different people, individuals. Anyone could make mistakes, and that would happen. So, if you want to change something, if you can change those mistakes that have been made in different places, that’s what I could have done, if I turn back the clock.

Q. So, from your perspective, from the very beginning you labeled those protests that were in Daraa and Damascus as terrorism, as infiltrated by foreign powers. How do you view those first demonstrations against the government?

A. At the very beginning, you had a mixture of demonstrators. First of all, Qatar paid those demonstrators in order to put them on Al Jazeera and then to convince the international public opinion that people are revolting against the president. The highest number of those were 140,000 demonstrators all over Syria, which is nothing, as a number, that’s why we weren’t worried. So, they infiltrated them with militants to shoot at the police and to shoot at the demonstrators, so you have more revolts. When they failed, they moved to send the tools to support the terrorists. But do we have demonstrators who demonstrated honestly, who wanted change? Of course we have, of course, but not all of them, you cannot say all of them, and I cannot say all of them are terrorists.

Q. You visited Spain twice. Both Presidents José María Aznar and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero visited Syria while in office. How have the relations been with Spain ever since?

A. Spain is against any adventurist solution in Syria. This is something we appreciate. They didn’t support any military action against Syria, they said that’s going to make it more complicated. They didn’t talk about deposing the president or interfering in our national affairs. They said everything should happen through a political solution or political process. This is very good. But at the same time, Spain is part of the EU, of the European Union. That makes Spain restrained by the decision of that union. We expect Spain to play that role, to convey the same message and its political point of view regarding our conflict to the EU.

Q. And in Latin America, where have you had the most support, do you feel?

A. Generally, and that’s strange, and maybe sometimes unfortunately, that those countries very far away from Syria have a much more realistic vision about what is happening in Syria than the Europeans, who are much closer. We are considered the backyard of Europe. I’m talking about the formal and official level, and about the popular level. They know much more, and they support Syria politically in every international forum, and they haven’t changed their position since the very beginning of the crisis.

Q. Brazil has one of the biggest Syrian communities abroad. How have relations been with the government of Brazil?

A. We have natural relations with them, we have natural relations with Argentina, with Venezuela, with Cuba, with all those Latin countries we have normal relations. It hasn’t been affected by the crisis, and they understand more and more, and they support Syria more and more. This contradicts with the European position.

As I have found out myself, there is nothing media outlets like less than criticising other media publications or the “profession” of journalism. It’s not really surprising. The credibility of a corporate media depends precisely on their not breaking ranks and not highlighting the structural constraints a “free press” operates under.

So one has to commend the Boston Globe for publishing this piece by Stephen Kinzer, a former foreign correspondent, warning that the media is not telling us the truth about what is going on in Syria.

But those constraints are also why Kinzer glosses over deeper problems with the coverage of Syria.

This [most western reporting of Syria] is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media.

Under intense financial pressure, most American newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks have drastically reduced their corps of foreign correspondents. Much important news about the world now comes from reporters based in Washington. In that environment, access and credibility depend on acceptance of official paradigms. Reporters who cover Syria check with the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and think tank ‘experts.’ After a spin on that soiled carousel, they feel they have covered all sides of the story. This form of stenography produces the pabulum that passes for news about Syria.

This is more of the “cock-up, not conspiracy” justification for skewed reporting. If only there was more money, more space, more time, more reporters, the media would not simply spew the government’s official line. Guardian journalist Nick Davies wrote a whole book, Flat Earth News, making much the same claim – what he called “churnalism”. I reviewed it at length here. Journalists like this kind of argument because it shifts responsibility for their failure to report honestly on to faceless penny-pinchers in the accounting department.

And yet, there are journalists reporting from the ground in Syria – for example, Martin Chulov of the Guardian – who have been just as unreliable as those based in Washington. In fact, many of the points Kinzer raises about the reality in Syria echo recent articles by Seymour Hersh, who is writing from the US, not Damascus. But he, of course, has been shunted to the outer margins of media discourse, publishing in the London Review of Books.

Media coverage of Iraq was just as woefully misleading during the sanctions period in the 1990s, when I worked in the foreign department at the Guardian, and later in the build-up of the US-led attack on Iraq. In those days, when there was no shortage of resources being directed at foreign reporting, the coverage also closely hewed to the official view of the US and UK governments.

The problem is not just that foreign reporting is being stripped of financial resources as the media find it harder to make a profit from their core activities. It is, as Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky pointed out long ago in their book Manufacturing Consent, that the corporate media is designed to reflect the interests of power – and the corporations that control our media are power. They select journalists through a long filtering process (school, university, journalism training, apprenticeships) precisely designed to weed out dissidents and those who think too critically. Only journalists whose worldview aligns closely with those in power reach the top.

None of this is in Kinzer’s piece. It is doubtful that he, a member of the media elite himself, would recognise such an analysis of the journalist’s role. As Chomsky once told British journalist Andrew Marr, when Marr reacted with indignation at what he inferred to be an accusation from Chomsky that he was self-censoring:

I don’t say you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.

That understanding of journalism does not depend on conspiracy, but nor does it accept that it is all about cock-up. It posits a much more interesting, and plausible, scenario that journalists get into positions of influence to the extent that they are unlikely to rock the boat for elite interests. The closer they get to power, the more likely they are to reflect its values. Much like politicians, in fact.

That’s why extremely few senior journalists have read Manufacturing Consent. And why among the Guardian journalists I worked with, though none seemed familiar with his huge body of work, there were few intellectuals who were referred to in more derisive terms than Chomsky.

 

Rabbi Outcast. Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism, by Jack Ross. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2011, 233 pp.

Rabbi Elmer Berger was often seen as a heretic. A graduate of the Hebrew Union College and an enthusiastic adept of Classical Reform, he opposed Zionism naturally, as did, then, most of his peers. What distinguishes him from other Reform rabbis is that he remained loyal to his beliefs throughout his life.

A book about a heretic tells us just as much about those who condemned him as a heretic, as it does about him. After all, “we are what we hate”. But Berger’s kind of heresy is unusual: he is not a heretic who betrayed the basic tenets of his religion. Rather, he refused to join the majority as most Reform Jews gradually came to abandon these tenets and embrace Zionism. Berger tried to counter this trend, mainly through the American Council for Judaism, established during World War II to affirm the religious nature of Judaism. The Council went against the current at a moment when most American Jews were accepting the idea of establishing a separate Jewish state in Palestine. This is why this work is so valuable: it offers a broad view of the emergence of the centrality of Israel among American Jews in the last century.

Reform Judaism put emphasis on the spiritual component of Judaism and was thus very unlikely to abide Jewish nationalism. As early as 1841, at the dedication of the first permanent Reform congregation in North America, mostly German-born Jews proclaimed: “this house of worship is our Temple, this free city [Charleston, NC] our Jerusalem, this happy country our Palestine.” (p. 9) Almost a century later, an American Reform rabbi affirmed: “Jewish states may rise and fall, as they have risen and fallen in the past, but the people of Israel will continue to minister at the altar of the Most High God in all the lands in which they dwell” (p. 37).

Hardly an innovation, this idea has been a leitmotif of Jewish continuity for centuries. Similarly, Hasidic rebbes insisted “mach du eretz yisroel” (“make the Land of Israel here”), thus emphasizing the importance of pious thoughts and deeds wherever a Jew could be found. Traditionally Orthodox (Haredi) rabbis focused on living a Jewish life in their countries of residence, relating to Jerusalem as a spiritual, rather than a material, let alone a political, entity. Both Haredi and Classical Reform schools would teach Biblical and liturgical Hebrew and avoid the Israeli vernacular.

The author reminds us that the Reform movement almost instantly condemned the Balfour Declaration. In this rejection, it found itself in a solid and diverse majority of Jews. Edwin Montagu, the most prominent Jew in Britain’s governing circles at that time, attacked the declaration as an anti-Semitic act, denouncing Zionism as “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen”. Labour unions with preponderant Jewish majorities, such as Hat Makers and Ladies’ Garment Workers, opposed endorsing the Zionist declaration by the labour federations in the United States.

By the mid-1930s most American Jews had slowly moved to accept Zionism. This reflected the worsening situation of Jews in Europe and the growing influence of the nationalistically minded East European immigrants in Jewish life in America. Many immigrants from Imperial Russia had developed a proto-national identity, abandoning Jewish tradition but, unlike German or French Jews, forced to remain insulated in their shtetls from the larger society. While most Zionist activists could claim Russian ancestry, none stemmed from the capital cities with their cosmopolitan population and atmosphere.

Political Zionism implies the existence of a separate Jewish nation and separate Jewish political interests. This is why Jewish anti-Zionists affirmed individualism, arguing that their rights would be better protected by governments in liberal democracies than by parochial self-serving ethnic organizations, let alone an ethnocratic state.

Similarly, they opposed the establishment of the World Jewish Congress, seeing in it a sign of “indirect acceptance of the racial philosophy of the Hitler regime”, and warning that these separate Jewish political organizations would produce “leaders speaking for us as a single unit” (p. 34). Berger was right to predict “the Zionist takeover of essentially all American Jewish organizational life” (p. 183). The book surveys approaches used to inculcate Zionist attitudes among American Jews and operate a “transplantation of Israeli culture into American Jewish life” (p. 97). Berger and several of his rabbinical mentors refused to follow suit, wary of the power of Zionism to “corrupt” Jewish life, as quite a few insiders and outsiders, such as Hannah Arendt and Mahatma Gandhi (p. 33), were warning at the time.

To abstain from, let alone oppose, Zionism was becoming more and more difficult. Those Jews who entertained doubts about Zionism were promptly branded “sick”, “self-hating” and “enemies of the people”. Soon after the end of World War II, Zionist opinion makers declared anti-Zionism to be a form of anti-Semitism, and this conflation has become a powerful weapon to stifle public debate about Israel. This method of enforcing Jewish unity made some Reform rabbis in the interwar period openly associate Zionism with totalitarianism: “There is too dangerous a parallel between the insistence of some Zionist spokesmen upon nationality and race and blood, and similar pronouncements by Fascist leaders in European dictatorships” (p. 37). “The totalitarian impulse of Zionist ideology to brand any opposition as illegitimate and intolerable is alive and well” (p. 167). A gentile scholar close to Berger saw Zionism as “a totalitarian menace that could only lead to catastrophe” (p. 131).

Nowadays, quite a few Israelis decry the growth of fascist tendencies in their society as these manifest congenital, rather acquired, characteristics. To quote Vladimir Jabotinsky, an admirer of Mussolini, Jews must become a people of iron: “Iron, from which everything that the national machine requires should be made. Does it require a wheel? Here I am. A nail, a screw, a girder? Here I am. Police? Doctors? Actors? Water carriers? Here I am. I have no features, no feelings, no psychology, no name of my own. I am a servant of Zion, prepared for everything, bound to nothing”. Jabotinsky’s ideology has not only triumphed in Israeli society but has even produced more audacious offspring. Nobody recognized this congenital feature of Zionism better than Judah Magnes, an American Reform Jew who went to Israel to become one of the founders and leaders of the Hebrew University. Alongside with Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, he argued – in vain – in favour of establishing a binational democratic state. As Zionist ethnic cleansing proceeded in the wake of the 1947 UN Resolution to partition Palestine, he gave his last speech to the university with a heavy heart, observing that “myriads of Jews throughout the world, particularly in America” are led “to yield to that Zionist totalitarianism which seeks to subject to its discipline the entire Jewish people and every individual therein, and if necessary, by force and violence” (p. 81).

When British authorities later tipped off Magnes that his life was in danger he left for New York, mindful of previous acts of terror perpetrated by Zionist militias, starting with the assassination of Jacob De Haan, lawyer, poet and anti-Zionist activist, in 1924.

Magnes concluded that “the world was now irreversibly on an advance to barbarism, and in their assent to Zionism, the Jewish people would tragically prove themselves only the most eager to join” (p. 90). This eagerness and the resulting military prowess continue to earn Zionism and the state of Israel profound admiration on the part of ethnic nationalist and fascist circles currently mushrooming across Europe. Moreover, this meeting of the minds is not new: the author cites the case of a German-born American Jewish Zionist functionary who, in a treatise titled Wir Juden (We Jews) published in 1934, had celebrated Hitler’s ascent to power as “the death of liberalism”.

Ever since its embrace of Zionism, “the American Jewish leadership was far less critical of Israel than many important groups in Israel itself” (p. 122). When Forverts, originally a Socialist daily, was transformed into a pro-Israel voice, one of its former supporters bemoaned: “I have never read anything more crude and contrary to the principles of the freedom of the press” (p. 124). Fundraising for Israel came to be conducted in the spirit of responding to interminable “vital emergencies” and “existential threats”. The book graphically shows how constant the Zionist arsenal of rhetorical and political devices has been.

Rabbi Berger was open about his rejection of Jewish nationalism: “I oppose Zionism because I deny that Jews are a nation. … Jewish nationalism is a fabrication woven from the thinnest kind of threads and strengthened only in those areas of human history in which reaction has been dominant and anti-Semites in full cry” (p. 63). Later he wrote that “those who seek to identify political Zionism with religious Judaism work a profound and dangerous injustice to Americans of all faiths”, above all to American Jews (p. 89). A Reform rabbi supporting Berger argued in 1952: “Racism can never be a substitute for Judaism. … Nationalism is no substitute for Judaism. … ‘Jewish culture’ is no substitute to Judaism. Emptied of religious content, it is either a phrase or a fetish, dependent on kitchen recipes, musicians, painters, and story tellers, but not on God” (p. 103). In the wake of a trip to Israel, Berger acknowledged the industrial and agricultural progress of Israel but added that “this progress is not at issue” (p. 119).

It may appear illogical that Rabbi Berger, who would not associate American Jews with the Zionist project, tried to provide input to the Middle East policy-making in Washington. In fact, he was quite consistent since he opposed the Zionist nature of the state as an American citizen of Judaic faith. It is as part of his Jewish commitment to justice and equality that he expressed his concern about improving the lot of the Palestinians unfairly treated in his name. After a trip to the Middle East in 1959, Berger lamented that U.S. diplomats “run around the world talking about democracy an the right of people to self-determination, and consistently back off from the political decisions necessary to put legs under these ideas” (p. 133). His lament has since lost none of its poignancy.

The book reads well even though it would have gained in being more focused. For example, medical diagnoses of the protagonists seem superfluous and many names the author mentions beg to be explained and contextualized. In spite of these minor imperfections, the book certainly deserves attention. It is not hagiographic, and Rabbi Berger’s persona is presented in all its complexity. While his Judaic practices rooted in Classical Reform and those of members of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta who follow a strictly Orthodox tradition differ immensely, both vociferously claim that the essence of being Jewish is religious and that they are American, not Israelis. It is important to see Rabbi Berger’s anti-Zionism in a comparative Judaic perspective.

The book is a useful addition to the historiography of Jewish opposition to Zionism, a topic that acquires growing relevance as more and more Jews around the world, including Israel, become disaffected from Zionism. It is no less important for non-Jewish readers who all too often are fearful to subject Zionism to serious scrutiny, lest they be accused of anti-Semitism.

A Reform rabbi and an old friend of Berger’s exclaimed: “In the face of the brutalizing nationalism of our times, we must cry out the universal message of Israel. Not the blood cult, state cult, hate cult, war cult of nationalism, but one humanity on earth as there is one God in heaven” (p. 127). This cry would well summarize the world view to which Rabbi Elmer Berger remained loyal all his life. It takes courage to take this stand, and the book shows well the predicament of an active anti-Zionist in contemporary Jewish life.

Berger’s main concern was the future of the Jews. In 1972 he received a letter telling him that “within our lifetime we shall see the Jewish people recognize in you someone who stood between them and disaster” (p. 154). Rabbi Berger did not live to see this but, as this book shows, this prophecy may yet come true after all.

Nowadays, spirituality and a search for meaning, rather than political support for a state in Western Asia, attract young American Jews; many of them, brought up in a liberal tradition, cannot even relate to the concept of a Jewish state. The author quotes a prominent American Zionist writing in 1998: “After all these years, it seems to be the American Council for Judaism that has won the ideological argument that we are ‘members of the Mosaic persuasion’” (p. 178).

While Jews may give up on Zionism and Israel, the state of Israel need not worry: its main support base, Christian Zionists, grows by leaps and bounds. For the evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell, the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 has been the most crucial event in history since the ascension of Jesus to heaven, and proof that the second coming of Jesus Christ is nigh: “We are so pro-Zionist, pro-Jewish, we are the only thing, the only one driving force in America that will not allow Washington to lift her hand of support from Israel” (p. 169). The book shows why pro-Israel circles have a vested interest in seeing the United States act as an aggressive and self-righteous empire rather than a benevolent republic acting with humility. “What has bound America and Israel together is their shared need for another Hitler to destroy” (p. 180). The book sheds light on the transformation of former Marxists and other leftists, such as Norman Podhoretz, into ardent neo-conservative Zionists. It is no accident that the Israeli mainstream views the internationalist left as an enemy. Support for Israel among non-Jews has become a class issue: it usually increases with personal income.

Identification of Israel with the political right in the United States is now complete. In a televised address to the annual meeting of Christians United for Israel in July 2011, Prime Minister Netanyahu said: “When you support Israel, you don’t have to choose between your interests and your values; you get both. … Our enemies think that we are you, and that you are us. And you know something? They are absolutely right.” Rabbi Berger would have welcomed these words as an official confirmation of his belief that Zionism had nothing to do with Jews and Judaism to begin with.

The author is Professor of History at the Université de Montréal. His book, A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, has been nominated for Canada’s Governor General Award and Israel’s Hecht Prize for Studies of Zionism; it is currently available in twelve languages.

 

Months of Russian air power and rejuvenated Syrian ground forces making significant gains against ISIS and other terrorist groups got Washington to change strategy.

Wanting to avoid direct confrontation with Russia, it relies on deception – conning Moscow to cease bombing terrorist infested northern Syrian areas where US special forces are deployed, claiming  they’re supporting are “moderates.”

On the phony pretext of modestly increasing military-to-military communication and cooperation beyond last October’s “memorandum of understanding,” relating to safety protocols for Russian and US warplanes operating in Syrian airspace, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s spokesman Peter Cook said:

[The Pentagon] “provided a geographical area that we asked (Moscow) to stay out of because of the risk to US forces” on the ground – to protect their safety “in a dangerous situation.”

So far, Russia “honored this request,” he explained. It’s a thinly veiled con, a ruse,  Moscow will see through and reject.

Washington wants to give terrorist elements it supports (falsely called “moderates”) breathing space, a chance to rearm, regroup and add new fighters to their ranks.

Turkey provides them safe haven, aids their movement cross-border into Syria while continuing to shell northern Syrian-based anti-terrorist Kurdish YPG forces, OK’d by Washington.

Fact: US policymakers pretend to want peace. They intend endless war to accomplish their objective – eliminating sovereign Syria, replacing it with US-controlled puppet governance.

Fact: Diplomatically negotiating with Washington assures disaster. Terms agreed on are systematically breached, negotiating partners irresponsibly blamed.

Fact: US imperial aims are pure evil, wanting all independent governments eliminated, especially Russia and China.

Fact: Its aim for dominion over planet earth depends on it.

Fact: Its strategy relies on endless wars, raping and destroying one country after another – Syria in the eye of the storm.

If Putin goes along with the Pentagon’s request to cease bombing areas infested with US-supported terrorists, everything

Russian air power and Syrian ground forces accomplished so far will be jeopardized.

Washington will be in a stronger position to turn things around in its favor – perhaps able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Establishing a safe zone in northern Syria will become a platform for US-supported continued war while talking peace – strengthening terrorist forces, aiding their advance into other areas.

The most fundamental rule to follow in dealing with Washington is knowing it can’t be trusted – not ever. Hegemons yield nothing.

They want things entirely their way, letting nothing interfere with their imperial aims.

Hopefully Putin and other Russian officials are too smart to fall for America’s ruse. Continuing their anti-terrorism campaign nationwide is vital to have any hope for eventually liberating Syria.

Washington doesn’t negotiate. It demands. Hoping bilateral or multi-lateral talks will gain important concessions is a major mistake. A military solution alone can save Syria.

US rhetorical support for cessation of hostilities and resumption of peace talks is pure subterfuge – aiming solely to undermine Russia’s effective war on terrorism, essential to continue unobstructed.

Michel Chossudovsky explained Washington’s strategy, saying it’s “to protect remaining US sponsored terrorist positions in Northern Syria including those of the ISIS from Russian airstrikes.”

He cited a “Secret Pentagon document. (T)he ultimate objective ‘was’ (and likely remains) to create an Islamic State Caliphate (Salafist Principality) in Northern Syria.”

Defeating America’s objective depends on Russian air power and Syrian ground forces maintaining unrelenting pressure, continuing their effective campaign, rejecting the Pentagon’s thinly veiled scheme to undermine it.

Preserving Syrian sovereignty depends on it – along with foiling Washington’s Middle East agenda, part of its grand plan to rule the world unchallenged.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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