Global Research

Imagine an arsonist lighting a building ablaze, then turning around, changing into a firefighter’s uniform, and running back toward it, not with a fire hose but instead, rolling a drum of gasoline in front of him. Would anyone believe that his intentions are to extinguish the blaze? Or would it be obvious that the goal is to compound the fire, so that no matter how much effort is organized against it, it can never be put out – not until everything is destroyed first?

Meet the Arsonists 

The United States has been illegally plying the airspace above Syria for over a year. It has been openly arming, funding, and training terrorists along Syria’s borders in Turkey and Jordan, admittedly, for much longer. And before the conflict began in 2011, the United States had conspired as early as 2007, revealed in interviews conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 9-page report “The Redirection,” to destabilize and overthrow the government of Syria through the use of sectarian extremists – more specifically, Al Qaeda – with arms and funds laundered through America’s oldest and stanchest regional ally, Saudi Arabia.

The rise of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL) itself, turns out also to be part of this premeditated “deconstruction” of Syria. A Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) report drafted in 2012 (.pdf) admitted:

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

To clarify just who these “supporting powers” were that sought the creation of a “Salafist principality,” the DIA report explains:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime. 

It is clear who the arsonists are.

Rolling in Drums of Gasoline to “Fight the Fire” 

Nothing about the US’ recent moves have been honest. US policymakers have openly conspired to commit to strategies not aimed at actually fighting ISIS or ending the destructive conflict in Syria they themselves have started, but instead to counter Russia’s attempts to do so, merely under the guise of fighting ISIS, or helping refugees, or virtually any excuse they believe the public might support.

The truth has begun to emerge even in the West’s own newspapers. The Washington Post in an article titled, “Obama has strategy for Syria, but it faces major obstacles.” states explicitly that:

[The US] will increase air operations in northern Syria, particularly in the Turkish border area to cut the flow of foreign fighters, money and materiel coming in to support the Islamic State.

Here, the Washington Post openly admits that support for the Islamic State is flowing out of NATO-member Turkey. It is clear that to stop this “flow,” efforts should be concentrated on the Turkish-Syrian border before supplies and reinforcements reach Syria. It is clear that ISIS is intentionally being allowed to resupply and reinforce its fighting capacity within Syria from NATO territory, specifically to serve as a pretext for wider and more direct Western intervention in Syria itself as was noted in June of 2014 when ISIS first appeared in Iraq.

ISIS represents the drums of gasoline, rolled in by the US intentionally not to extinguish the flames, but to compound them into an inferno greater still.

The Arsonists Seek an Inferno Greater Still 

The same Washington Post article would reveal the true intentions of the US and its “boots on the ground” in Syria. While they claim they seek to “fight ISIS,” the truth is far more sinister. Under the pretext of fighting ISIS, these US forces, backing militants armed, trained, and funded by the US and its regional allies, will take and hold territory, effectively fulfilling US policy papers that have long-expressed the desire to “deconstruct” Syria as a secondary means of destroying it as a functioning nation-state if direct regime change was unachievable.

The Washington Post states specifically:

Defeating the Islamic State in Syria, under Obama’s strategy, rests on enabling local Syrian forces not only to beat back Islamic State fighters but to hold freed territory until a new central government, established in Damascus, can take over.

Since there is already an established central government in Damascus, it is safe to assume these regions carved out by US-backed militants will never be relinquished until Damascus falls. If successful, it will mean the Balkanization of Syria, and its cessation as a unified nation.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/06/us-in-syria-stopping-the-arsonist-firefighter/

Comparing this recent admission by the Washington Post, predicated on “fighting ISIS,” with plans laid out before the rise of ISIS, reveals that ISIS itself is only one of many in a long line of pretexts used to implement US objectives that were laid out, clearly, before the first shot was even fired during the Syrian crisis.

In the March 2012 Brookings Institution”Middle East Memo #21″ “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is stated specifically that (emphasis added):

An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.

The plan to use US special forces to take and hold Syrian territory was also specifically laid out  in a June 2015 Brookings document literally titled, “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war.” In it, it stated that (emphasis added):

The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via the presence of special forces as well. The approach would benefit from Syria’s open desert terrain which could allow creation of buffer zones that could be monitored for possible signs of enemy attack through a combination of technologies, patrols, and other methods that outside special forces could help Syrian local fighters set up.

Were Assad foolish enough to challenge these zones, even if he somehow forced the withdrawal of the outside special forces, he would be likely to lose his air power in ensuing retaliatory strikes by outside forces, depriving his military of one of its few advantages over ISIL. Thus, he would be unlikely to do this.

 It is clear that America’s most recent scheme is simply a continuation of its long-standing criminal conspiracy arrayed against Syria and exposed as early as 2007 by Seymour Hersh.

To Stop Arsonists, Call Them Arsonists 

The United States clearly can stop ISIS, and without setting a single boot down on Syrian soil, or flying a single sortie in Syria’s skies.

For Russia, it only has the authorization of Syria’s legitimate government to operate within Syrian territory to confront ISIS. Ideally, Russia would want to interdict ISIS supplies and reinforcements before they reached Syrian territory, however, Moscow does not have the cooperation of nations harboring, aiding, and abetting the terrorist organization – namely Turkey and Jordan.

Additionally, Russia has limited leverage over other sponsors of ISIS, including Saudi Arabia whose entire existence is owed to billions in weapons sales from the United States, a ring of US military bases built around it throughout the Persian Gulf to protect it from its ever-increasing number of well-earned regional enemies, and the constant political legitimacy granted to it by the West’s diplomatic and media circles.

The United States however, is based in Turkey. It is based at Incirlik Air Base, and has for several years now, operated along the Turkish-Syrian border – its Central Intelligence Agency providing weapons to terrorists, its special forces carrying out cross-border operations, and its military’s administration of training camps to prepare terrorists before they enter Syrian territory, thus perpetuating the conflict. The United States also holds significant leverage over Saudi Arabia, its political and military support being essential for the regime in Riyadh’s continued existence.

At any moment, should the US truly be interested in extinguishing this fire, it can shut down the Turkish-Syrian border, end Saudi aid to terrorist groups operating in Syria, and end the conflict in weeks, if not days. That it refuses to do so, illustrates the key role it plays in creating and perpetuating it, and more specifically, the creation and perpetuation of the “Islamic State” itself.

Syria and its allies must recognize this fact and formulate a realistic strategy to counter it. Negotiating with state-sponsors of the most appalling terrorist organization to have walked the Earth in recent memory does not seem like a viable option. Instead, Syria and Russia should seek the expansion of their coalition inside Syria, and in particular, in the regions the US seeks to carve out. An initial and overwhelming sized commitment of “peacekeeping troops” from various nations placed along the Turkish-Syrian border would effectively block all efforts by the US to perpetuate this conflict further.

If that is not possible, Syria and Russia must attempt to expand their operations across all of Syria faster than the US can spread chaos.

For now, the US has a handful of special forces serving as tenuous “human shields” for terrorists targeted by Russian and Syrian military operations. These are still vulnerable, and still capable of being turned back. The US, however, will undoubtedly continue to expand its presence in Syria, to a point where it may not be possible to turn them back.

Calling the arsonists out, and removing them before the fire irreversibly takes over the entire structure that is the current nation-state of Syria, may be the only way to prevent Syria from becoming the Levant’s “Libya.” It will also stop a dangerous geopolitical “blitzkrieg” clearly aimed at Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing next.

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

A new whistleblower has joined the ranks of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou and other courageous individuals. The unnamed person, who chose to remain anonymous because of the Obama administration’s vigorous prosecution of whistleblowers, is a member of the intelligence community.

In the belief that the American public has the right to know about the “fundamentally” and “morally” flawed U.S. drone program, this source provided The Intercept with a treasure trove of secret military documents and slides that shine a critical light on the country’s killer drone program. These files confirm that the Obama administration’s policy and practice of assassination using armed drones and other methods violate the law.

The documents reveal the “kill chain” that decides who will be targeted. As the source said, “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting—of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences, without notice, on a worldwide battlefield—it was, from the very first instance, wrong.”

These secret documents demonstrate that the administration kills innumerable civilians due to its reliance on “signals intelligence” in undeclared war zones, following cellphones or computers that may or may not be carried by suspected terrorists. The documents show that more than half the intelligence used to locate potential targets in Somalia and Yemen was based on this method.

“It isn’t a surefire method,” the source observed. “You’re relying on the fact that you do have all these powerful machines, capable of collecting extraordinary amounts of data and intelligence,” which can cause those involved to think they possess “godlike powers.”

It’s stunning the number of instances when selectors are misattributed to certain people,” the source noted, characterizing a missile fired at a target in a group of people as a “leap of faith.

The Obama administration has never provided accurate civilian casualty counts. In fact, CIA director and former counterterrorism adviser John Brennan falsely claimed in 2011 that no civilians had been killed in drone strikes in nearly a year. In actuality, many people who are not the intended targets of the strikes are killed. “The Drone Papers” tell us the administration labels unidentified persons who are killed in a drone attack “enemies killed in action,” unless there is evidence posthumously proving them innocent. That “is insane,” the source said. “But [the intelligence community has] made ourselves comfortable with that.” The source added, “They made the numbers themselves so they can get away with writing off most of the kills as legitimate.”

The administration’s practice of minimizing the civilian casualties is “exaggerating at best, if not outright lies,” according to the source.

Since the U.S. is involved in armed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, international humanitarian law—namely, the Geneva Conventions—must be applied to assess the legality of targeted killing. The Geneva Conventions provide that only combatants may be targeted.

From January 2012 to February 2013, a campaign dubbed Operation Haymaker was carried out in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. According to “The Drone Papers,” during a five-month period almost 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. This campaign paralleled an increase in drone attacks and civilian casualties throughout Afghanistan. What’s more, the campaign did not significantly degrade al-Qaida’s operations there.

The U.S. is violating the right to life enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Because the U.S. ratified this treaty, it constitutes binding domestic law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which states, “Treaties shall be the supreme law of the land.”

Under international humanitarian law, an “armed conflict” requires the existence of organized armed groups engaged in fighting of certain intensity. The groups must have a command structure, be governed by rules, provide military training and have organized acquisition of weapons, as well as communications infrastructure. Legal scholars, including University of Cambridge professor Christine Gray, have concluded that “the ‘war against Al-Qaeda’ does not meet the threshold of intensity of a non-international armed conflict, and Al-Qaeda does not meet the threshold of an organized armed group.”

The U.S. is not involved in “armed conflict” in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Thus, the law enforcement model must be applied to assess the legality of actions in those countries. This model limits the use of lethal force to situations where there is an imminent threat to life and nonlethal measures would be inadequate.

In 2013, as President Obama gave a speech at the National Defense University, the administration released a fact sheet that said the target must pose a “continuing, imminent threat to US persons” before lethal force may be used. But Obama has waived the imminence requirement in Pakistan.

Although a spokesperson for the National Security Council told The Intercept that “those guidelines remain in effect today,” “The Drone Papers” state that the target need only present “a threat to US interest or personnel.” This is a far cry from an imminence requirement. And once the president signs off on a target, U.S. forces have 60 days to execute the strike. A 60-day period flies in the face of the imminence mandate for the use of lethal force off the battlefield.

Philip Alston, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, affirms that a targeted killing is lawful only if required to protect life and no other means—such as capture or nonlethal incapacitation—is available to protect life.

Besides being illegal, Obama’s preference for killing instead of apprehension prevents the administration from gathering crucial intelligence. Obama stated in 2013, “America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists; our preference is always to detain, interrogate, and prosecute.” But Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Intercept, “We don’t capture people anymore.” Slides provided by “The Drone Papers” source cite a 2013 study by the Pentagon’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force that said “kill operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and captured material.” The task force recommended capture and interrogation rather than killing in drone strikes.

The American public is largely unaware of the high number of civilian casualties from drone strikes. A study conducted by American University professor Jeff Bachman concluded that both The New York Times and The Washington Post “substantially underrepresented the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, failed to correct the public record when evidence emerged that their reporting was wrong and ignored the importance of international law.”

Gregory McNeal, an expert on national security and drones at Pepperdine School of Law, wrote that in Afghanistan and Iraq, “when collateral damage [civilian casualties] did occur, 70 percent of the time it was attributable to failed—that is, mistaken—identification.”

“Anyone caught in the vicinity is guilty by association,” “The Drone Papers” source notes. If “a drone attack kills more than one person, there is no guarantee that those persons deserved their fate. … So it’s a phenomenal gamble.”

Drones are Obama’s weapon of choice because they don’t result in U.S. casualties. “It is the politically advantageous thing to do—low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness,” according to former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. “It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.” Part of the damage, as Flynn pointed out, is that drones make the fallen into martyrs. They create “a new reason to fight us even harder,” he said.

The United Nations charter’s mandate for peaceful resolution of disputes and prohibition of military force except in self-defense is not a pipe dream. A study by the Rand Corp.concluded that between 1968 and 2006, 43 percent of incidents involving terrorist groups ended by a “peaceful political resolution with their government,” 40 percent “were penetrated and eliminated by local police and intelligence agencies,” and only 7 percent were ended by the use of military force.

Nevertheless, The Wall Street Journal reported that the military plans to increase drone flights by 50 percent by 2019.

In describing how the special operations community views the prospective targets for assassination by drone, “The Drone Papers” source said, “They have no rights. They have no dignity. They have no humanity to themselves. They’re just a ‘selector’ to an analyst. You eventually get to a point in the target’s life cycle that you are following them, you don’t even refer to them by their actual name.” This results in “dehumanizing the people before you’ve even encountered the moral question of ‘is this a legitimate kill or not?’ ”

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed three lawsuits seeking information about the government’s use of lethal drones. Rep. Keith Ellison, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is calling for increased transparency and congressional oversight of the drone program. “The report makes it clear,” he noted, that “the U.S. drone program operates on highly questionable legal ground and offends our principles of justice.”

Drone pilots operate thousands of miles from their targets. But many of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Some are refusing to fly the drones. In September, the Air Force Times ran a historic ad—paid for by 54 U.S. veterans and vets’ organizations—urging Air Force drone operators and other military personnel to refuse orders to fly drone surveillance and attack missions.

“The Drone Papers” source implores us to take action to stop this travesty. “We’re allowing this to happen,” the source said. “And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.”

The newly released documents are a clarion call to us all to demand that our government stop the killing. It is illegal, it is immoral, and it makes us more vulnerable to terrorism.

All anti-Assad forces are US-trained, armed, funded, and directed terrorists, taught the fine art of killing, committing atrocities and using chemical weapons – including ISIS, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and various splinter groups.

The so-called Free Syrian Army and other alleged “moderates” exist only in US and go-along media propaganda reports, willful misinformation to deceive an uninformed public.

Wars depend on lies to gain popular support, or at least no significant opposition. ISIS et al represent proxy US foot soldiers, imported abroad from scores of countries.

Putin is effectively contesting Obama’s dirty game. Washington has no effective counter-strategy, increasingly transparent propaganda and dubious military moves alone, along with continued Russia bashing and fear-mongering.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, two State Department officials repeated tired old Big Lies.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Anne Patterson and her European and Eurasian Affairs counterpart Victoria Nuland committed perjury – claiming Russian air strikes hit 85 to 90% “moderate” rebels and civilians in areas with no ISIS presence.

“Russia’s military intervention has dangerously exacerbated an already complex environment,” Patterson blustered.

“(T)his has not been a Russian fight against terrorism so much as an effort to preserve the Assad regime,” she duplicitously claimed.

Nuland remains infamous for orchestrating the coup against Ukraine’s sitting government.  Her testimony was a litany of Big Lies, saying Assad “continues to barrel bomb its own citizens with impunity, perhaps even emboldened by Moscow’s help.”

“The vast majority of Russian air strikes are targeted in areas where the Assad regime has lost territory to forces led by the moderate opposition.”

“We are accelerating the work we are doing to support the moderate Syrian opposition and to protect Syria’s neighbors” – code language of US supporting ISIS and other takfiri terrorists.

“(W)e are awaiting further evidence that Russia is sincere in its claims to want to fight ISIL and save Syria for the Syrian people, rather than simply protecting the dictator who bears direct responsibility for the country’s destruction…The quality of our cooperation with Russia in Syria depends on the choices Moscow makes.”

It’s hard imagining anyone believes Nuland’s utter disregard for the truth.

“What would positive cooperation by Russia look like,” she asked? Cease its military campaign, “insist” Assad pull back, work with Washington and its (rogue) partners for resolving things diplomatically.

Who are the so-called “moderate” rebels Washington consistently touts? Where are they? Last month, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia can’t identify them. Washington provides no information.

“From the very beginning of the operation in Syria, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have expressed the readiness to interact with the so-called moderate opposition,” Peskov explained.

“At the same time, it had to be stated that attempts to identify the so-called moderate opposition remained unsuccessful all the way.”

“(N)o moderate forces can be spotted in the patchy mass of terrorist and extremist organizations that pose a threat to Syria’s territorial and political integrity.”

“Regrettably, neither the US nor European partners, nor somebody else has been able to help us with this identification. Other countries are unable to point to some moderate forces capable of taking care of a settlement in Syria. Regrettably, there have been no tangible results.”

State Department spokesman Admiral John Kirby claims some (nonexistent) “moderate” rebels switched sides. Hot war success depends heavily on winning the propaganda one.

Putin’s effective war on terrorism shows America is losing on both fronts. He’s the preeminent leader for world peace and stability.

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.

Here’s a key story we [21st Century Wire] ran previously, and it’s even more relevant today.

Back in late 2013, an independent investigation revealed that at least 22 defense industry stakeholders were used by the likes of CNN, FOX News and others – as ‘experts’ and ‘correspondents’ in order to help sell another war in Syria (or anywhere else for that matter).

Just remember the following when you see the usual corporate media operatives on TV trying to sell you another next war…

Before the White House’s Syrian War flop, networks like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV wheeled out at least 22 different men who they claimed were “pundits” and “commentators”, but in actuality were merely bomb and missile salesmen – who held director, board and shareholding positions with military giants like Raytheon, DC Capital Partners and BAE Systems.

Yes, you heard that right.

Watchdog organisation, the Public Accountability Initiative, a non-profit research group, details this and many more disclosures in its recent and damning report on US media coverage to hype a war in Syria.

Should CNN, MSNBC, FOX lose their broadcasting licenses in the US for this gross breach of ethics, particularly when it’s used to sell something as violent and abhorrent as war? We say YES. Will that happen in the US? Well, no, because the media in the US is far from bias and is tightly linked in ownership and sponsorship to the war industry. Start with General Electric and work your way around the table from there.

Add to this, another long line of “experts” deployed by Rupert Murdoch’s perennially pro-war media shop FOX, and now the Wall Street Journal. Most notably here is John Kerry and John McCain’s belle de jour, pro-war spokesmodel, Elizabeth O’Bagy, who aside from being a key operative in helping to pad Washington and Israel’s militarised policy regarding Syria by constructing the “moderate rebel” myth, was dumped by Kimberly Kagan and William Kristol’s neoconservative and pro-Israeli think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) after it was discovered O’Bagy had claimed a nonexistent PhD from Georgetown University. In addition to this media darling and ‘Syria expert’ O’Bagy is policy director for a suspected CIA operation front and money-raising machine called the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF).

Below is a rather educational map, showing the relationships and the pay lines of the ISW crowd, which, in addition to the disgraced O’Bagy, it features war ‘expert’ and director at Raytheon, Stephen Hadley:


Once again, remember all of this each time they media come with a full court press of “experts” – who are nothing less than military salesman hyping their stock portfolios.

RT reports…

US media failed to cite pundits’ ties to defense industry in Syria strike debate.

Nearly two dozen of the commentators who appeared on major media outlets to discuss a possible US military strike on Syria had relationships with contractors and other organizations with a vested interest in the conflict, according to a new report.

The Public Accountability Initiative, a non-profit research group dedicated to “investigating power and corruption at the heights of business and government,” determined that 22 of the pundits who spoke to the media during the public debate over whether the US should bomb Syria appeared to have conflicts of interest. Seven think tanks with murky affiliations were also involved in the debate.

Some analysts held board positions or held stock in companies that produce weapons for the US military, while others conducted work for private firms with the relationships not disclosed to the public.

Perhaps the most notable example is that of [Raytheon director] Stephen Hadley (pictured right), a former national security advisor to President George Bush who argued in favor of striking Syria in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV. He also wrote an editorial in The Washington Post with the headline, “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.”

Nowhere in those appearances was it disclosed, according to the report, that Hadley is a director with Raytheon, a weapons manufacturer that produces the Tomahawk cruise missiles the US almost certainly would have used had it intervened in Syria. Hadley earns an annual salary of $128,5000 from Raytheon and owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock. His holdings were worth $891,189 as of August 23.

“We found lots of industry ties. Some of them are stronger than others. Some really rise to the level of clear conflicts of interest,” Kevin Connor, co-author of the report, told The Washington Post. “These networks and these commentators should err on the side of disclosure.”

The report found that, out of 37 appearances of the pundits named, CNN attempted to disclose that individual’s ties a mere seven times. In 23 appearances on Fox News there was not a single attempt to disclose industry ties. And in 16 appearances on NBC or its umbrella networks, attempts at disclosure were made five times.

Retired General Anthony Zinni, former Commander-in-Chief of US Central Command, made multiple appearances on CNN and CBS. He is an outside director at BAE Systems, which is among the largest military service companies in the world and one that received $6.1 billion in federal contracts in 2012, serves on the Advisory Board of DC Capital Partners, a private equity firm that invests in defense contractors, and a Distinguished Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Zinni advocated a strike not just on Syria, but told CNN’s Candy Crowley that American hesitation in the Middle East has pushed US adversaries to act.

“Knowing the Iranians, they see everything as a potential opportunity to exploit,” he said. “And I’m sure they are calculating much how they could take advantage of this and maybe push the edge of the envelope.”

The retired general, speaking to the Post via email, said his membership is publicly available online.

“The media who contact me for comment should post any relevant info re my background including my board positions if they desire,” he wrote.

This report comes after Syria researcher Elizabeth O’Bagy was fired from the Institute for the Study of War think-tank for lying about her credentials. Multiple US lawmakers, most notably Secretary of State John Kerry [and Senator John McCain], cited an opinion piece O’Bagy wrote in the Wall Street Journal when calling for a military intervention. It was soon revealed that O’Bagy did not disclose her ties to a lobby group advocating for Syrian opposition forces when penning the column for the Journal.

The most-liked U.S. Presidential candidate Ben Carson believes that it’s okay to be born poor, but that anyone who stays poor is remaining poor because he or she is lazy. He also says that those poor people are trying to find excuses for their own laziness when they blame their adversities on other causes than themselves, such as the prejudices of others, or wrong governmental policies, or bad luck; and he is especially opposed to governmental policies that aim to provide special advantages to poor people: he believes that this liberalism only encourages the laziness of those people. He was born dirt-poor and now draws tens of millions of dollars in annual income; and he thinks that the reason he’s successful is that he’s terrific — and he wants all Americans to try to be terrific like he feels that he is; so, he’s on a campaign to make it happen by his becoming America’s President. And he’s turning out to be remarkably successful at this campaign, too.

Among the entire U.S. electorate including both political parties and also independents, candidate Ben Carson’s “Net favorable” rating is +21%. The second-most-popular candidate is Carly Fiorina, at +6%. The third-most-popular is Marco Rubio, at +5%. The fourth-most-popular, and the only Democrat whose net-favorable rating is positive rather than negative — i.e., who is more popular than he’s unpopular — is Bernie Sanders, at +4%. Based on the crucial predictive factor of net-favorability (or more-commonly refered to as “popularity”), the 2016 general-election campaign will thus likely be between Ben Carson and Bernie Sanders. That will probably be the ultimate contest.

This is the latest poll, issued on November 5th by Gallup; which says, “Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 19-Nov. 1, 2015, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 7,121 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.” So: this is more than just the typical national survey, which samples only 1,000 respondents.

The overwhelmingly most-popular candidate, Dr. Carson, says (8:30- here): “I hated poverty; I couldn’t stand it.” He said in that video there (at 18:00) “My role model is Jesus” and he then went into the “moral problem” of “the national debt,” and he continued, “Here’s the [Jesus] parable. A family falls on hard times” and the father in the parable says he’ll cut the allowance for some of his children but not for others. Carson concluded there: “How do you think that will go down? Not too well. Enough said.” In other words, Carson was asserting that governmental policies must not help the poor or disabled or otherwise disadvantaged, any more than they help the rich and successful and otherwise advantaged (including heirs to huge fortunes).

The rich must receive as much government-assistance as the poor, he says, because otherwise it wouldn’t be “proportional,” as he sees it. Carson immediately cited the biblical 10% tithing system as providing the fundamental solution, the type of values-based approach that he would push as America’s President: (19:40-) “[God] has given us this system. It’s called tithe. Now, we don’t necessarily have to do it 10% [as in the Bible]. But it’s the principle. He [God] didn’t say, if your crop fails, don’t give me any tithe. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithe. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality.”

Carson thus endorses a flat-tax system that taxes billionaires at the identical, or “proportional,” rate that even the poorest person will be taxed to pay — ignoring the fact that the poor have more needs than desires, and that the rich have more desires than needs: he’s assuming that a dollar to the poor does the same amount of good (benefit to the person) as a dollar to the rich does. (Scientific studies — such as this— show that that’s not actually true, it’s drastically untrue; and that income above around $75,000 per year provides no additional happiness to a person — none at all — and that its only motivation above that income-level is a purely competitive one to become king-of-the-hill, richer than other people are, sort of like an addiction to money instead of any healthy desire for income or for additional economic security.)

So, Carson, with his biblical beliefs, continued: (20:00-) “You make ten billion dollars, you put in a billion. You make ten dollars, you put in one.” (The existing U.S. system violates that biblical principle: The income-tax rate for the very poor is zero in the U.S., just as it is in every other country. Using the tithing-system as the basis for a nation’s taxation-system would be to introduce a sharp break away from the system in all modern nations, not only in the United States. It’s biblical, like the hijab is quranic.)

Carson’s basic assumption there is that everyone has the same obligation to fund the government: the homeless or disabled who sell something on the street must pay the same percentage “tithe” from that person’s meager income to the government as does a billionaire who flits from one mansion to another and who maybe inherited most of his wealth and all of the opportunities for growing it but whose stock dividends and interest-income pay for all of his or her consumption and then some.

Carson’s is a one-size-fits-all system, because “He [God] didn’t say, if your crop fails, don’t give me any tithe. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithe.” For Carson, if your crop fails and you can’t make your mortgage-payment, and you get thrown out onto the street, it’s just God’s way of punishing you, and there is no government that ought to interfere with that. To interfere with it woudn’t be “proportional,” unless billionaire gentleman-farmers get the same government-benefits. To interfere with it would violate “this system. It’s called tithe.” Any poor person who doesn’t like it should just lump it and be forced to do the right thing and be “proportional” instead of (as conservatives might put it) ’envy’ the rich person. If Bill Gates should pay 10% (or whatever the figure will be), then so should someone in a homeless shelter. (Any ‘charity,’ such as from Gates or from Carson, would be magnanimous but never obligatory; government is only the obligatory part. And if there is no charity to fill a particular person’s need, then: it’s just tough luck — that’s God’s will, too.)

Dr. Carson’s government would be — in terms of the interests served and the obligations demanded from those interests — one-dollar one-vote, not really one-person-one-vote. He is basically advocating for the idea that property should control the government, individuals (persons) should not control it except to the extent that they represent property. He believes in God, and he interprets a person’s wealth as reflecting God’s reward to that person; and he interprets a person’s poverty as reflecting God’s punishment. (Humans are not supposed to question God’s judgments.) Benjamin Carson doesn’t want any government that would try to undo the choices, the decisions, that are made by God. To a religious person, that would be ‘evil.’

Carson believes that God has rewarded him because he deserves it; and Carson doesn’t want any government that seeks to violate God’s system: (19:40-) “[God] has given us this system. It’s called tithe. Now, we don’t necessarily have to do it 10% [as in the Bible]. But it’s the principle. He [God] didn’t say, if your crop fails, don’t give me any tithe. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithe. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality.”

Evangelicals — fundamentalist Christians — have been flocking to Carson’s banner.Their sky-high favorability-ratings of him are a significant reason why he tops the overall list. But it’s not the only reason: many other Americans are not consciously shaped by biblical values, or else they’re shaped by biblical values that contradict the biblical values that conservatives focus on — by liberal biblical values — and many of those voters are also drawn to candidate Carson because they, too, admire a man who takes the Bible seriously, even if the parts of it that have shaped Carson contradict the parts of it that have shaped those liberals. Any religious Scripture (not just the Bible) can be cited to support drastically mutually-contradictory values; no religion provides any internally consistent value-system, other than the essential belief for any religion: that The Almighty defines what is good or bad; that might makes right. The fundamental religious belief alone is sufficient to propel Carson to the top, in America’s popularity-contest. Religion is basically conservative; and Carson is clearly the leading religious candidate, at the present time.

Carson might find inspiration from Matthew 13:12, where ‘Jesus’ directly instructs his disciples, “The person who has something will be given still more, until he possesses more than enough; but the person who has nothing will find even that taken away from him.” It might be the hypothetical farmer that Carson referred to as having experienced a bad crop-year (perhaps even at the wrong time), but whom Carson would nonetheless require to pay tax at the same percentage as a billionaire. However, many liberals might instead find inspiration in Matthew 19:24, where ‘Jesus’ says:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Though that fictional ‘Jesus’ ‘spoke’ out of both sides of ‘His’ mouth, both of them were appealing to the same fundamental authoritarian principle behind worship of The Almighty: Might makes right; God alone determines what is good, and what is bad.

In this deeper sense, Carson represents even religious people who disagree with him, people who draw their inspiration from liberal passages in their Scriptures. Perhaps this is the basis for his current wave of success — the wave that might carry Carson all the way into the White House. In the final analysis the billionaires who fund the Republican Party might collectively decide that he is their champion too.

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.

Wednesday brought a veritable smorgasbord of “new” information about the Russian passenger jet which fell out of the sky above the Sinai Peninsula last weekend. 

First there was an audio recording from ISIS’ Egyptian affiliate reiterating that they did indeed “down” the plane. Next, the ISIS home office in Raqqa (or Langley or Hollywood) released a video of five guys sitting in the front yard congratulating their Egyptian “brothers” on the accomplishment.

Then the UK grounded air traffic from Sharm el-Sheikh noting that the plane “may well” have had an “explosive device” on board.

Finally, US media lit up with reports that according to American “intelligence” sources, ISIS was probably responsible for the crash.

Over the course of the investigation, one question that’s continually come up is whether militants could have shot the plane down. Generally speaking, the contention that ISIS (or at least IS Sinai) has the technology and/or the expertise to shoot down a passenger jet flying at 31,000 feet has been discredited by “experts” and infrared satelliteimagery.

But that’s nothing the CIA can’t fix.

With the Pentagon now set to deploy US ground troops to Syria (and indeed they may already be there, operating near Latakia no less), Washington is reportedly bolstering the supply lines to “moderate” anti-regime forces at the urging of (guess who) the Saudis and Erdogan.

Incredibly, some of the weapons being passed out may be shoulder-fire man-portable air-defense systems, or Manpads, capable of hitting civilian aircraft. 

But don’t worry, those will only be given to “select rebels.” Here’s more from WSJ:

The U.S. and its regional allies agreed to increase shipments of weapons and other supplies to help moderate Syrian rebels hold their ground and challenge the intervention of Russia and Iran on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials and their counterparts in the region said.

The deliveries from the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Arabia and other allied spy services deepen the fight between the forces battling in Syria, despite President Barack Obama’s public pledge to not let the conflict become a U.S.-Russia proxy war.

Saudi officials not only pushed for the White House to keep the arms pipeline open, but also warned the administration against backing away from a longstanding demand that Mr. Assad must leave office.

In the past month of intensifying Russian airstrikes, the CIA and its partners have increased the flow of military supplies to rebels in northern Syria, including of U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles, these officials said. Those supplies will continue to increase in coming weeks, replenishing stocks depleted by the regime’s expanded military offensive.

An Obama administration official said the military pressure is needed to push Mr. Assad from power. 

“Assad is not going to feel any pressure to make concessions if there is no viable opposition that has the capacity, through the support of its partners, to put pressure on his regime,” the official said.

In addition to the arms the U.S. has agreed to provide, Saudi and Turkish officials have renewed talks with their American counterparts about allowing limited supplies of shoulder-fire man-portable air-defense systems, or Manpads, to select rebels. Those weapons could help target regime aircraft, in particular those responsible for dropping barrel bombs, and could also help keep Russian air power at bay, the officials said.

Mr. Obama has long rebuffed such proposals, citing the risk to civilian aircraft and fears they could end up in the hands of terrorists. To reduce those dangers, U.S. allies have proposed retrofitting the equipment to add so-called kill switches and specialized software that would prevent the operator from using the weapon outside a designated area, said officials in the region briefed on the option.

U.S. intelligence agencies are concerned that a few older Manpads may already have been smuggled into Syria through supply channels the CIA doesn’t control.

If that sounds insane to you, that’s because it is. Even as US intelligence (which we can only assume emanates from the CIA) indicates that IS Sinai likely brought down a Russian passenger jet with 224 people on board, the same CIA is working with the Saudis to supply “select rebels” with weapons capable of shooting down commercial airliners.

In order to make sure no one ends up blowing a 747 out of the sky, Washington will “retrofit” the weapons with “special” software that makes sure they can only be used in certain areas.

Make no mistake, this has gone beyond absurd and is now bordering on the bizarre. It’s apparently not enough that the US is supplying anti-tank missiles to rebels shooting at the very same Iran-backed militias that the US implicitly supports across the border in Iraq so now, the CIA and Saudi Arabia will give these rebels the firepower to shoot down planes, meaning that in the “best” case scenario they’ll be firing at Russian fighter jets, and in the worst case scenario these weapons will end up in the “wrong” hands and be used to down commercial flights. 

It’s difficult to see how John Kerry can attend “peace” talks in Vienna and keep a straight face while chatting with Sergei Lavrov. That’s not to say that Russia bears no responsibility for its role in the conflict (sure, Moscow is supporting a “legitimate” government in Syria but they’re still dropping bombs on populated areas), but the US and the Saudis are arming Sunni extremist groups and encouraging them to shoot at Russian and Iranian forces. For Obama to suggest this isn’t a proxy war is absurd.

Putting this all together, it now appears possible that the US is, i) sending anti-tank weapons to rebels who are shooting at Iranian soldiers, ii) embedding ground troops near Latakia which means they’ll almost certainly be engaging Hezbollah directly, and iii) passing weapons capable of downing a commercial airliner to “select” militants days after a Russian passenger jet exploded in the skies above the Sinai Peninsula.

This is all in conjunction with the Saudis and Erodgan, who just rigged an election in Turkey on the way to rewriting his country’s constitution.

And the Western media reports this with a straight face as though it all makes some measure of sense…

In two recent articles in the Los Angeles Times and the academic studies that inspired them, the authors investigate the question of which war veterans are most likely to commit suicide or violent crimes. Remarkably, the subject of war, their role in war, their thoughts about the supposed justifications (or lack thereof) of a war, never come up.

The factors that take the blame are — apart from the unbearably obvious “prior suicidality,” “prior crime,” “weapons possession,” and “mental disorder treatment” — the following breakthrough discoveries: maleness, poverty, and “late age of enlistment.” In other words, the very same factors that would be found in the (less-suicidal and less-murderous) population at large. That is, men are more violent than women, both among veterans and non-veterans; the poor are more violent (or at least more likely to get busted for it) among veterans and non-veterans; and the same goes for “unemployed” or “dissatisfied with career” or other near-equivalents of “joined the military at a relatively old age.”

In other words, these reports tell us virtually nothing. Perhaps their goal isn’t to tell us something factual so much as to shift the conversation away from why war causes murder and suicide, to the question of what was wrong with these soldiers before they enlisted.

The reason for studying the violence of veterans, after all, is that violence, as well as PTSD, are higher than among non-veterans, and the two (PTSD and violence) are linked. They are higher (or at least most studies over many years have said so; there are exceptions) for those who’ve been in combat than for those who’ve been in the military without combat. They are even higher for those who’ve been in even more combat. They are higher for ground troops than for pilots. There are mixed reports on whether they are higher for drone pilots or traditional pilots.

The fact that war participation, which itself consists of committing murder in a manner sanctioned by authorities, increases criminal violence afterwards, in a setting where it is no longer sanctioned, ought of course to direct our attention to the problem of war, not the problem of which fraction of returning warriors to offer some modicum of reorientation into nonviolent life. But if you accept that war is necessary, and that most of the funding for it must go into profitable weaponry, then you’re going to want to both identify which troops to help and shift the blame to those troops.

The same reporter of the above linked articles also wrote one that documents what war participation does to suicide. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says that out of 100,000 male veterans 32.1 commit suicide in a year, compared to 28.7 female veterans. But out of 100,000 male non-veterans, 20.9 commit suicide, compared to only 5.2 female non-veterans. And “for women ages 18 to 29, veterans kill themselves at nearly 12 times the rate of nonveterans.” Here’s how the article begins:

“New government research shows that female military veterans commit suicide at nearly six times the rate of other women, a startling finding that experts say poses disturbing questions about the backgrounds and experiences of women who serve in the armed forces.”

Does it really? Is their background really the problem? It’s not a totally crazy idea. It could be that men and women inclined toward violence are more likely to join the military as well as more likely to engage in violence afterward, and more likely to be armed when they do so. But these reports don’t focus primarily on that question. They try to distinguish which of the men and women are the (unacceptable, back home-) violence-prone ones. Yet something causes the figure for male suicides to jump from 20.9 to 32.1. Whatever it is gets absolutely disregarded, as differences between male and female military experiences are examined (specifically, the increased frequency of female troops being raped).

Suppose for a moment that what is at work in the leap in the male statistic has something to do with war. Sexism and sexual violence may indeed be an enormous factor for female (and some male) troops, and it may be far more widespread than the military says or knows. But those women who do not suffer it, probably have experiences much more like men’s in the military, than the two groups’ experiences out of the military are alike. And the word for their shared experience is war.

Looking at the youngest age group, “among men 18 to 29 years old, the annual number of suicides per 100,000 people were 83.3 for veterans and 17.6 for nonveterans. The numbers for women in that age group: 39.6 and 3.4.” Women who’ve been in the military are, in that age group, 12 times more likely to kill themselves, while men are five times more likely. But that can also be looked at this way: among non-veterans, men are 5 times as likely to kill themselves as women, while among veterans men are only 2 times as likely to kill themselves as women. When their experience is the same one — organized approved violence — men’s and women’s rates of suicide are more similar.

The same LA Times reporter also has an article simply on the fact that veteran suicides are higher than non-veteran. But he manages to brush aside the idea that war has anything to do with this:

“‘People’s natural instinct is to explain military suicide by the war-is-hell theory of the world,’ said Michael Schoenbaum, an epidemiologist and military suicide expert at the National Institute of Mental Health who was not involved in the study. ‘But it’s more complicated.'”

Judging by that article it’s not more complicated, it’s entirely something else. The impact of war on mental state is never discussed. Instead, we get this sort of enlightening finding:

“Veterans who had been enlisted in the rank-and-file committed suicide at nearly twice the rate of former officers. Keeping with patterns in the general population, being white, unmarried and male were also risk factors.”

Yes, but among veterans the rates are higher than in the general population. Why?

The answer is, I think, the same as the answer to the question of why the topic is so studiously avoided. The answer is summed up in the recent term: moral injury. You can’t kill and face death and return unchanged to a world in which you are expected to refrain from all violence and relax.

And returning to a world kept carefully oblivious to what you’re going through, and eager to blame your demographic characteristics, must make it all the more difficult.

The “war on terror” was a hoax. Americans were deceived by policymakers, who are pursuing a hegemonic agenda. The American people were too trusting and too gullible and, consequently, Americans were easily betrayed by Washington and by the presstitute media.

The consequences of the deceit, gullibility, and betrayal are horrendous for Americans, for millions of peoples in the Middle East, Africa, Ukraine, and for Washington’s European vassals.

The consequences for Americans are an aborted Constitution, a police/spy state and rising resentment and hatred of America around the world.

The consequences for peoples in Somolia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Palestine, and Ukraine have been massive deaths and dislocations, infrastructure destruction, internal conflicts, birth defects, invasions, bombings, drones. Millions of peoples have been murdered by Washington’s pursuit of hegemony, and millions have been turned into refugees.

The consequences for Washington’s European vassals is that the millions of refugees from Washington’s wars are now overrunning Europe, causing social and political discord and threatening the European political parties that enabled, and participated in, Washington’s massive war crimes in eight countries.

The populations of the eight countries and Washington’s vassals are stuck with the consequences of Washington’s evil, vicious, and illegal actions. And Americans are stuck with the police/spy state and militarized police who murder three Americans each day and brutalize countless others.

The countries we have destroyed have no recourse to restitution.

Our European vassals will have to provide from their own pockets for the refugees that Washington’s wars are sending to them.

As for Americans, they seem to have settled into acquiescence to the brutal police/spy state that has crowded out freedom and democracy.

But Americans could do something about it.

It is a proven fact that the police/spy state rests on a foundation of lies and deceptions, and these lies and deceptions are now known. Even George W. Bush has admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Thousands of independent experts consisting of physicists, nanochemists, structural engineers, highrise architects, fire fighters and first responders, and military and civilian pilots have provided the detailed explanations of September 11, 2001, that Washington failed to provide. Today not even an idiot believes the official explanation. The corrupt neoconservative Bush regime created a false reality and sold it to a trusting population that was anxious to prove its patriotism.

The American electorate knew that the Bush/Cheney regime had deceived them about many things, and the people, believing Obama’s promises of change, put him in office to rectify the situation. Instead, Obama protected the criminal Bush/Cheney regime and continued with the neoconservatives agenda.

We don’t have to stand for this. We can turn off Fox “News,” CNN, NPR and all the rest of the presstitutes who lie for a living. We can cease purchasing the useless newspapers. We can demand that the police/spy state that was created entirely on the basis of lies and deceptions be rolled back.

Who can possibly believe that the massive PATRIOT Act was written so quickly in the aftermath of 9/11? It is not possible that every member of Congress and the staff does not know that such a massive document was sitting on the shelf waiting its opportunity.

Who can possibly believe that a handful of Saudi Arabians acting without the support of any state and any intelligence service could outwit the entire apparatus of the American National Security State and inflict a humiliating defeat on the world’s only superpower?

9/11 is the worst national security failure in world history. Who can possibly believe that not a single one of the national security officials who so totally failed in their responsibilities was held accountable for their failures that brought total humiliation to the proud United States?

Who can possibly believe that the Bush regime’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a response to 9/11 when Bush’s Treasury Secretary publicly stated that the invasion of Iraq was the topic of the Bush regime’s first cabinet meeting long prior to 9/11?

Are the American people really such washed-up sheeple, such cowards, that they acquiesce to a police/spy state, the foundation of which consists of nothing but lies told by criminals and repeated endlessly by whores pretending to be journalists?

If so, the American people are not a people who any longer matter, and they will continue to be treated by Washington and by their local police as people who do not matter.

Release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership text confirms concerns about environmental risks, runaway corporate power, and weakened democracy.

The text of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership was released Thursday after a negotiating process shrouded in secrecy.

The release of the much-guarded text has renewed calls for action to stop the TPP as a “toxic deal” and “disaster for democracy.”

The 12-country transnational trade deal has been widely condemned for privileging corporate profits over international public interests. The secrecy around the deal and the negotiating process, which gave access to large corporations but largely locked out civil society, has been criticized as an assault on democracy.

“The TPP is a disaster for jobs, and environment and our democracy. It is the latest stage in the corporate capture of our society,” said Global Justice Now Director Nick Dearden in response to the release of the text.

For Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, the fact that the text of the deal doesn’t even include the words “climate change” hints at the kind of corporate sell-off the deal promotes and is “a dead giveaway that this isn’t a 21st-century trade deal.”

The TPP is widely seen by critics as a climate disaster, with lack of protections and “toothless” provisions in the deal’s environmental chapter that could threaten to undermine decades of struggle for the environment, according to Brune.

Campaigners and activists raise particular alarm over the investor-state arbitration mechanism that allows corporations to sue governments for enacting policies that infringe on the company’s potential future profits.

Trade unions criticize the corporate dispute settlement mechanism for promoting the outsourcing and offshoring of local jobs and negatively impacting working conditions. Others warn that the “corporate court” poses serious threats to the climate by discouraging strong environmental regulations since corporations will be able to take legal action against governments for public policies such as limiting mining or fossil fuel extraction.

In fact, the text of the deal reveals new and expanded rights for corporations to take such legal action against governments. Analysts say the rules will empower fossil fuel companies and other corporate giants to challenge environmental and other regulations, and ultimately worsen climate change.

Cases like Oceana Gold versus El Salvador, in which the mining giant is suing the Central American country for impacting profits by putting a moratorium on mining activity, offer a glimpse into the kind of corporate power-play that can be expected under the TPP. In the past, there have been over 600 such corporate challenges to over 100 government policies through similar mechanisms in other trade deals, such as NAFTA.

According to Global Justice Now’s Dearden, the TPP is a “turbo-charged NAFTA,” referring to the 1994 trade deal between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that resulted in more inequality and major job losses in the U.S.

“TPP has less to do with selling more goods, than with rewriting the rules of the global economy is favor of big business,” said Dearden. “Like the North American Free Trade Agreement, 20 years ago, it will be very good for the very richest, and a disaster for everything and everyone else.”

What’s more, Wikileaks has shown that the TPP will crack down on whistleblowing and make investigative journalism even more difficult. According to Wikileaks, the TPP text also reveals a “NSA-friendly” provision regarding telecommunications.

Countries in the deal now have a window to ratify or block the TPP. While U.S. multinational corporations will be eager to get the deal past lawmakers, activists around the world are looking to seize the opportunity to increase pressure on governments to put an end to the TPP once and for all.

Unions, environmental activists, consumer rights groups, and other campaigners will be ramping up their organizing to fight the TPP in coming months.

The 12-country trade agreement includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

After five years of secret negotiations, the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has finally come up to open air.[1] Kept secret, watched over carefully by delegates all too distant from their own constituencies, the TPP did not disappoint in its disappointments.

The statement by US Trade Representative Michael Froman on the release of the text is bound to make the citizens from anyone of the 12 signatory states cringe. He starts by first claiming that a “commitment to transparency” was an ongoing process that culminated in the release of the text, complementing “a number of additional resources that we have made available on the same website, including state-by-state fact sheets, issue briefs, and chapter summaries.”

Froman has evidently been busying himself with a different diplomatic process altogether. Fact sheets barely cut the mustard, and he can hardly resort to the term transparency in this, given that Congress insisted in its Trade Priorities and Accountability Act that the President make the proposed text public for at least 60 days before signing the agreement.

Then, Froman comes out with the robust language of competition. He claims that the agreement “will position Americans to compete and win in tomorrow’s global economy.” Much of this piffle involves extolling that grand apparition called middle America, a reiteration of the Obama line that involves “middle-class economics – the idea that the country does best when everybody has got a fair shot, everybody is doing their fair share, everybody is playing by the same rules.”

This damning nonsense suggests that Froman and his colleagues are dangling a very different agreement in the sale than what they are in practice. The usual magical numbers are paraded – the elimination of 18,000 individual taxes on US products, the obsession with “made-in-USA”. This says nothing about translating the matter into actual, direct employment to US employees, nor does it bode well for the other signatory states.

From the start, it looked like various key areas would be in for a good battering. The environment, for one, was set for a commercially violent whack. “The agreement,” observes Matthew Rimmer of Queensland University of Technology, “confirms some of the worst nightmares of environmental groups and climate activists.”

As they should. There is minimal attention in the agreement paid to environmental factors, which demonstrates that the trade deal would entail a genuine trade off on matters of climate and degradation. There are mere mutterings on the issue of conservation more broadly speaking, biodiversity and trade in environmental services. And the most conspicuous omission of all is that of the term “climate change” itself.

In the case of the US, it is simply not clear whether the TPP Environment Chapter actually rolls back the May 2007 environmental standards Democrats in Congress impressed upon the Bush administration in making trade agreements. In the haggling, it was clear that several negotiating states, Malaysia foremost amongst them, were not happy to deal with the presence of various Multilateral Environmental Agreements that would have to be enforced. Watering down was inevitable.

As was already revealed in the various chapters released by WikiLeaks, the overwhelming emphasis in the agreement is the vesting of power, or should we say more power, in global corporate agents. Froman is certainly right in terms of enforceability in one sense. Corporate interests can well prevail over those of the state. These particular entities, being profit maximisers, have been granted the means in a more global sense to sue governments for diminished profits if facing policies pernicious to their trading interests.  Again, environmental policy, in this regard, is set for a pounding.

The same can be said for general public interest issues – health, for instance, or standards of employment. The former makes no suggestion that domestic medical systems have been immunised from the reach of big pharmaceutical interests. Other industries as well, notably those which have detrimental effects on health, such as tobacco, have reasons to celebrate as well, given the latent ambiguity on profit protection.

These areas all entail standards that do not bode well with vast money making ventures. The same goes for human rights standards more generally, which have seemingly vanished, or at the very least been demoted, in the discussions. The text certainly says nothing about those in violation of human rights conventions. Will there be any wrist slapping for offenders?

The release of the text, with its provisions foreshadowed in previous leaked drafts, now enables the various parliaments of the twelve states to debate the matter with varying degrees of thoroughness. Most are more likely to take the sauce offered them and vote for it, fearing such labels as protectionism and isolationism. The US Congress is unlikely to refuse it, but there are still voices of discontent over the lack of enforceable currency rules, and the issue of dispensations being made to various countries in specific areas.

There is also a manifest unevenness that will prove telling in the event of implementation. States such as Vietnam have a five-year pass on the issue of implementing complimentary labour standards. Given that there are also vast differences in the basic minimum wage in Vietnam, the notion that US, Australian or Canadian workers would be in an equal position of competition is patent nonsense. Companies will do the rest, exerting a downward pressure on wages on other parts of the zone. There is no reason why off shoring will continue with greater enthusiasm than ever. Welcome, in other words, to a rather grizzly future touched up in Orwellian dress.

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

Note

[1] https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text

 

Source: The full text was published on the website of the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT)

The text of the Agreement was released by TPP Parties on 5 November 2015 and can be accessed by chapter below.

The text will continue to undergo legal review and will be translated into French and Spanish language versions prior to signature.

 

• Preamble [PDF, 21KB]
• 1. Initial Provisions and General Definitions [PDF, 61KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annex:
    • Annex 1-A: Party-Specific Definitions
• 2. National Treatment and Market Access for Goods [PDF, 520KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 2-A: National Treatment and Import and Export Restrictions
    • Annex 2-B: Remanufactured Goods
    • Annex 2-C: Export Duties, Taxes or Other Charges
    • Annex 2-D: Tariff Elimination
  • Party-specific Annexes to the Chapter:
    • • 2-D: Australia General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 21KB]
      • 2-D: Australia Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 4.8MB]
      • 2-D: Brunei General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 21KB]
      • 2-D: Brunei Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 5.1MB]
      • 2-D: Canada General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 35KB]
      • 2-D: Canada Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 2.9MB]
      • 2-D: Canada Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 142KB]
      • 2-D: Canada Appendix B Appendix between Japan and Canada on Motor Vehicle Trade [PDF, 81KB]
      • 2-D: Chile General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 25KB]
      • 2-D: Chile Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 4.1MB]
      • 2-D: Japan General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 98KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 1.6MB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 305KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix B-1 Agricultural Safeguard Measures [PDF, 118KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix B-2 Forest Good Safeguard Measure [PDF, 39KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix C Tariff Differentials [PDF, 24KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix D Appendix between Japan and the United States on Motor Vehicle Trade [PDF, 128KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix E Appendix between Japan and Canada on Motor Vehicle Trade [PDF, 67KB]
      • 2-D: Malaysia General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 18KB]
      • 2-D. Malaysia Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 4.9MB]
      • 2-D: Malaysia Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 48KB]
      • 2-D: Mexico General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 30KB]
      • 2-D. Mexico Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 3.6MB]
      • 2-D: Mexico Appendix A, B and C Tariff Rate Quotas and Tariff Differentials [PDF, 88KB]
      • 2-D: New Zealand General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 17KB]
      • 2-D. New Zealand Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 3.9MB]
      • 2-D: Peru General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 18KB]
      • 2-D: Peru Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 2.7MB]
      • 2-D: Singapore General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 10KB]
      • 2-D: Singapore Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 2MB]
      • 2-D: United States General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 35KB]
      • 2-D: United States Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 6.5MB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 278KB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix B Agricultural Safeguard Measures [PDF, 68KB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix C Tariff Differentials [PDF, 144KB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix D Motor Vehicle Trade [PDF, 133KB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix E Earned Import Allowance Program [PDF, 20KB]
      • 2-D: Viet Nam General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 34KB]
      • 2-D. Viet Nam Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 2.4MB]
      • 2-D: Viet Nam Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 32KB]
• 3. Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures [PDF, 155KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 3-A: Other Arrangements
    • Annex 3-B: Minimum Data Requirements
    • Annex 3-C: Exceptions to Article 3.11 (De Minimis)
  • Annex to the Chapter:
    • Annex 3-D: Product Specific Rules of Origin [PDF, 702KB]
    • Appendix 1 to Annex: 3-D: Provisions related to the Product-Specific Rules of Origin for certain vehicles and parts of vehicles [PDF, 28KB]
• 4. Textiles and Apparel [PDF, 70KB]
  • Annexes to the Chapter:
    • Annex 4-A: Textiles and Apparel Product-Specific Rules of Origin [PDF, 84KB]
    • Appendix 1 to Annex 4-A: Short Supply List of Products [PDF, 172KB]
• 5. Customs Administration and Trade Facilitation [PDF, 59KB]
• 6. Trade Remedies [PDF, 52KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annex:
    • Annex 6-A: Practices Relating to Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings
• 7. Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures [PDF, 92KB]
• 8. Technical Barriers to Trade [PDF, 198KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 8-A: Wine and Distilled Spirits
    • Annex 8-B: Information and Communications Technology Products
    • Annex 8-C: Pharmaceuticals
    • Annex 8-D: Cosmetics
    • Annex 8-E: Medical Devices
    • Annex 8-F: Proprietary Formulas for Pre-packaged Foods and Food Additives
    • Annex 8-G: Organic Products
• 9. Investment [PDF, 262KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 9-A: Customary International Law
    • Annex 9-B: Expropriation
    • Annex 9-C: Expropriation Relating to Land
    • Annex 9-D: Service of Documents on a Party Under Section B (Investor State Dispute Settlement)
    • Annex 9-E: Transfers
    • Annex 9-F: DL-600
    • Annex 9-G: Public Debt
    • Annex 9-H
    • Annex 9-I: Non-Conforming Measures Ratchet Mechanism
    • Annex 9-J: Submission of a Claim to Arbitration
    • Annex 9-K: Submission of Certain Claims for Three Years After Entry into Force
    • Annex 9-L: Investment Agreements
  • Drafters’ Note on Interpretation of In Like Circumstances [PDF, 43KB]
  • See country-specific Annexes to the Agreement
• 10. Cross-Border Trade in Services [PDF, 126KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 10-A: Professional Services
    • Annex 10-B: Express Delivery Services
    • Annex 10-C: Non-Conforming Measures Ratchet Mechanism
  • See the country-specific Annexes to the Agreement
• 11. Financial Services [PDF, 251KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 11-A: Cross-Border Trade
    • Annex 11-B: Specific Commitments
    • Annex 11-C: Non-Conforming Measures Ratchet Mechanism
    • Annex 11-D: Authorities Responsible For Financial Services
    • Annex 11-E
  • See the country-specific Annexes to the Agreement
• 12. Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 43KB]
  • Party-specific Annexes to the Chapter:
    • Annex 12-A. Temporary Entry for Business Persons
      • 12-A. Australia Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 39KB]
      • 12-A. Brunei Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 48KB]
      • 12-A. Canada Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 97KB]
      • 12-A. Chile Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 48KB]
      • 12-A. Japan Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 69KB]
      • 12-A. Malaysia Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 53KB]
      • 12-A. Mexico Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 57KB]
      • 12-A. New Zealand Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 42KB]
      • 12-A. Peru Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 55KB]
      • 12-A. Singapore Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 19KB]
      • 12-A. Viet Nam Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 39KB]
• 13. Telecommunications [PDF, 125KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 13-A: Rural Telephone Suppliers – United States
    • Annex 13-B: Rural Telephone Suppliers – Peru
• 14. Electronic Commerce [PDF, 60KB]
• 15. Government Procurement [PDF, 130KB]
  • Party-specific Annexes to the Chapter:
    • Annex 15-A. Government Procurement
      • 15-A. Australia Government Procurement [PDF, 102KB]
      • 15-A. Brunei Government Procurement [PDF, 52KB]
      • 15-A. Canada Government Procurement [PDF, 117KB]
      • 15-A. Chile Government Procurement [PDF, 45KB]
      • 15-A. Japan Government Procurement [PDF, 122KB]
      • 15-A. Malaysia Government Procurement [PDF, 120KB]
      • 15-A. Mexico Government Procurement [PDF, 114KB]
      • 15-A. New Zealand Government Procurement [PDF, 61KB]
      • 15-A. Peru Government Procurement [PDF, 157KB]
      • 15-A. Singapore Government Procurement [PDF, 53KB]
      • 15-A. United States Government Procurement [PDF, 72KB]
      • 15-A. Viet Nam Government Procurement [PDF, 244KB]
• 16. Competition Policy [PDF, 44KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annex:
    • Annex 16-A: Application of Article 16.2, Article 16.3 and Article 16.4 to Brunei Darussalam
• 17. State-Owned Enterprises and Designated Monopolies [PDF, 221KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 17-A: Threshold Calculation
    • Annex 17-B: Process for Developing Information Concerning State-Owned Enterprises and Designated Monopolies
    • Annex 17-C: Further Negotiations
    • Annex 17-D: Application to Sub-Central State-Owned Enterprises
    • Annex 17-E: Singapore
    • Annex 17-F: Malaysia
    • Annex IV: Non-Conforming Activities
  • See country-specific Annexes to the Agreement
• 18. Intellectual Property [PDF, 411KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 18-A: Annex to Article 18.7.2 (International Agreements)
    • Annex 18-B: Annex to Article 18.50 (Protection of Undisclosed Test or Other Data) and Article 18.52 (Biologics)
    • Annex 18-C: Annex to Article 18.50 (Protection of Undisclosed Test or Other Data) and Article 18.52 (Biologics)
    • Annex 18-D: Annex to Article 18.46 (Patent Term Adjustments for Patent Office Delays), Article 18.48 (Patent Term Adjustment for Unreasonable Curtailment), Article 18.50 (Protection of Undisclosed Test or Other Data) and Article 18.52 (Biologics)
    • Annex 18-E: Annex to Section J (Internet Service Providers)
    • Annex 18-F: Annex to Section J (Internet Service Providers)
• 19. Labour [PDF, 73KB]
• 20. Environment [PDF, 170KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 20-A
    • Annex 20-B
• 21. Cooperation and Capacity Building [PDF, 27KB]
• 22. Competitiveness and Business Facilitation [PDF, 20KB]
• 23. Development [PDF, 33KB]
• 24. Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises [PDF, 21KB]
• 25. Regulatory Coherence [PDF, 39KB]
• 26. Transparency and Anti-Corruption [PDF, 88KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annex:
    • Annex 26-A Transparency and Procedural Fairness for Pharmaceutical Products and Medical Devices
• 27. Administrative and Institutional Provisions [PDF, 34KB]
• 28. Dispute Settlement [PDF, 105KB]
• 29. Exceptions and General Provisions [PDF, 62KB]
• 30. Final Provisions [PDF, 29KB]

Zip file of all 30 Chapters (excluding Annexes) [ZIP, 3.15MB]

The Government of China promotes the internationalization of «the people’s currency» (‘renminbi’) through a policy of alliances that does not take ideological barriers into account. In an initial stage the diplomatic forces of the yuan were concentrated in the Asia Pacific region,  but in a second stage, it became necessary to gain the support of the West. After the President Xi Jinping visited London, between the 19th and the 23rd of October, the bases of the «golden age» between China and the United Kingdom were established. 

The Government of China promotes the internationalization of «the people’s currency» (‘renminbi’) through a policy of alliances that does not take ideological barriers into account. In an initial stage the diplomatic forces of the yuan were concentrated in the Asia Pacific region,  but in a second stage, it became necessary to gain the support of the West. After the President Xi Jinping visited London, between the 19th and the 23rd of October, the bases of the «golden age» between China and the United Kingdom were established. 

A Canadian farmer that provides raw milk to his community was reportedly arrested and jailed for removing government surveillance cameras from his own property. The Canadian government is filing charges against the man for ‘theft.’

When Michael Schmidt found cameras on his land that had been spying on him and his friends, he simply removed them and contacted the local police department to find out who they might belong to. It was at this time that he was charged with theft after refusing to hand the cameras over to the police.

Only later did Schmidt find out that the cameras, which had no markings or identification, were placed there by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) to keep an eye on Glencolton Farms.

On September 30, 2015 Schmidt was slapped with a summons to appear for fingerprinting and a mug shot. He has been harassed by government food authorities before. He has been producing raw milk for over 21 years for a member’s food club.

In 2004, Schmidt underwent multiple raids. The Ontario government charged him with violating provincial prohibitions on raw milk sale, but later he was acquitted. The government appealed and Schmidt ended up having to sell his farm to the people in his club and could only continue business as a hired ‘manager’ for his own farm.

He is certain that the latest video camera intrusion is a form of revenge. His club members stood their ground and wouldn’t let government officials seize equipment or leave with product when a second raid occurred just weeks later.

Schmidt was released from an overnight stay in jail on October 20, 2015, but he feels the government is using the judicial system to harass a peaceful farmer. The Canadian Constitution Foundation is raising funds to help Schmidt with legal expenses.

Marta Bak, a co-owner of Glencolton Farms said:

“We will continue to peacefully procure the foods of our choice from the farmers of our choice. This food comes from our farm. We are now in the mode of total non-compliance to government harassment. We will peacefully resist in defense of our food–whatever it will take to demonstrate our inherent right to choose the food we wish to consume.”

Mass European Protest Against TTIP Corporate Takeover: EU Commission Sanctions “Revolution Against Law”

It’s way too early to know why Russian Kolavia Metrojet Flight 7K9268 crashed 23 minutes after takeoff from Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt en route to St. Petersburg, Russia – killing all passengers and crew members.

At least weeks are needed to examine the crash site and evaluate black box information, vital to understand what happened. A definitive assessment will likely take months, including reconstructing the aircraft from its shattered parts.

Comments now making headlines are pure speculation. Yet major media reports now circulating say US and UK sources claim information they have suggests a bomb planted aboard the aircraft downed it.

AP: “Bomb May Have Downed Russian Jet, US, UK Officials Say.”

The New York Times published the AP report.

Reuters: “Bomb by Islamic State likely caused Russian plane crash: security sources”

Washington Post: “Britain suspends flights from Sinai, citing bomb fears”

It’s a short leap to suspending flights to Russia or discouraging travelers from going there. Would fear-mongering follow a US airliner crash, whatever the possible cause? Normal activities always resume.

Wall Street Journal: “UK Suspends Flights from Sinai Airport, Saying ‘Explosive Device’ May Have Downed Russian Jet”

London Guardian: “Russian plane crash in Egypt may have been result of bomb, US and UK say…”

BBC: “Sinai plane crash: Bomb may have downed airliner, US and UK say”

These type fear-mongering headlines now circulate throughout the Western media – suggesting flights to Russia (on Russian or other airlines) may be hazardous.

According to UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Philip Hammond:

“We have concluded that there is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft…We are now advising against all but essential travel by air through Sharm el-Sheikh airport. That means that there will be no UK passenger flights out to Sharm el-Sheikh from now.”

A Number 10 spokesman said

“(t)he prime minister chaired a COBR (Cabinet Office Briefing Room) meeting this evening to agree what steps we should take to help ensure the safety of British citizens traveling to and from Sharm el-Sheikh.”

“The meeting considered the implications of a range of information, including some that has recently come to light, which has increased our concerns that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device.”

“Consequently, ministers agreed…to temporarily suspend flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh with immediate effect.” The Irish Aviation Authority also suspended operations from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh airport.

CNN headlined: “Russian plane crash: US intel suggests ISIS bomb brought down jet,” saying:

“(A) US intelligence analysis now suggests that the terror group or its affiliates planted a bomb on the plane…The latest US intelligence suggests that the crash was most likely caused by a bomb planted on the plane by ISIS or an affiliate, according to multiple (unnamed) US officials who spoke with CNN.”

Britain and America have no access to crash site forensic evidence, the only way to determine what happened. So-called intelligence (real or invented) is suspect based on communications chatter. Anything can be said by anyone for any purpose. Reliability is dubious at best.

Crash site forensic and black box evidence is definitive. Other assessments are hype, especially from Washington and close allies about Russia.

On Wednesday, Egypt’s Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper said black box information available so far indicates an engine blast, possibly powerful enough to render both aircraft engines inoperative.

“The investigation did not point yet have any links to terrorists,” the broadsheet said. Forensic evidence is being evaluated to learn if explosive materials were on the plane, or if engine blast failure was mechanical.

It’s unknown either way so far. Hyping terrorism is irresponsible. Let the evidence speak for itself once analyzed properly. So far no official announcements were made.

A Russian source said “(t)here were no signs of an explosion impact found during the preliminary examination.” An Egyptian expert added “there were no signs of external impact” found on recovered bodies.

Why the current Western hype? Russia bashing propaganda persists – part of longstanding US-led NATO policy, wanting Moscow co-opted, contained, isolated, destabilized, weakened and eventually made a US vassal state.

Timing is always significant. Moscow is successfully challenging Washington’s imperial agenda – waging real war on terror, changing the dynamic on the ground in Syria and the Middle East with potential global implications, a major geopolitical development.

US policymakers are desperate to counter it, so far with no success. Tactics include propaganda, sanctions, deploying more combat troops to Iraq,  dozens to Syria illegally, and now fear-mongering – efforts to scare travelers from visiting Russia.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

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

 

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations (UN) says the Tel Aviv regime is harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

Riyad Mansour said in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday that the bodies of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces are “returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.”

“A medical examination conducted on bodies of Palestinians returned after they were killed by the occupying power found that they were missing organs,” Mansour wrote in the letter.

The Palestinian envoy further protested Israel’s “persistent aggression against the Palestinian people” over the past month and the regime’s “insistence on use of violent force and oppressive measures.”

The issue of organ theft by Israel was first brought to the fore in a report published by Sweden’s most highly-circulated daily Aftonbladet in 2009.

US daily The New York Times also said in an August 2014 report that transplant brokers in Israel have pocketed enormous sums of money. Based on the Times analysis of major organ trafficking cases since 2000, Israelis have played a ‘disproportionate role’ in organ trafficking.

The Palestinians whom Mansour was referring to were killed amid tensions in the occupied territories, which have dramatically escalated in recent weeks.

The Israeli regime’s imposition of restrictions in August on the entry of Palestinian worshipers to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) has become the lightning rod for the surge of recent confrontations.

According to the latest figures by the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 74 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of October. At least 11 Israelis have also been killed during that period.

The bodies of the Palestinian victims are most often held in Israeli custody for long periods of time before they are returned to relatives.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. The use of glyphosate is widespread throughout Europe. However, on 20 March the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said that glyphosate was “classified as probably carcinogenic to humans.” This is just one step below the risk designation of “known carcinogen.”  

Glyphosate has been detected in human bodies, food, water and in the air. Its use has been strongly associated with various diseases (see this and this).

Following the WHO’s classification, the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) has been conducting an evaluation of glyphosate and will send its final conclusions to the European Commission (EC) for consideration within the next few days. The EC will then decide whether this herbicide should be included in the EU’s list of approved active substances.

The original sanctioning and testing of glyphosate for commercial use was seriously flawed: for example, see this, this, this, and this which highlight the non-transparent, secretive and seriously compromised processes that smack of regulatory delinquency at best and outright fraud at worst in order to protect and benefit the interests of rich agribusiness.

Sustainable Pulse has moreover discovered documents from 1991 that show how the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was fully aware of glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential. In 1985, the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate was first considered by an EPA panel. This committee went on to classify glyphosate as a Class C Carcinogen with “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential.”

This Class C classification was changed by the EPA six years later to a Class E category which suggests “evidence of non-carcinogenicity for humans.” The conclusion is that the US government is to blame for allowing glyphosate onto the commercial market because it wanted to push it as part of as global campaign to support the US biotech industry in its attempt to dominate global agriculture.

In other words, the health of the public was put before the need to protect company profits and foreign policy aims.

According to Dave Schubert, head of the cellular neurobiology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California:

“There are a number of independent, published manuscripts that clearly indicate that glyphosate… can promote cancer and tumor growth. It should be banned.”

New report: human guinea pigs

In their recent paper, ‘Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases IV: cancer and related pathologies’, Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff paper reviewed the research literature to evaluate the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate. The paper, published in the ‘Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry’ and to be made available online shortly, concludes that glyphosate has a large number of tumorigenic effects on biological systems, including direct damage to DNA in sensitive cells, disruption of glycine homeostasis, succinate dehydrogenase inhibition, chelation of manganese, modification to more carcinogenic molecules, such as N-nitrosoglyphosate and glyoxylate, disruption of fructose metabolism, etc.

Samsel and Seneff state that epidemiological evidence supports strong temporal correlations between glyphosate usage on crops and a multitude of cancers that are reaching epidemic proportions, including breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid cancer, liver cancer, bladder cancer and myeloid leukaemia.

The authors support these correlations through an examination of Monsanto’s early studies on glyphosate and explain how the biological effects of glyphosate could induce each of these cancers.

Samsel and Seneff conclude:

“We have reviewed the research literature on glyphosate and on the biological processes associated with cancer, and we have provided strong evidence that glyphosate is likely contributing to the increased prevalence of multiple types of cancer in humans. Monsanto’s own early studies revealed some trends in animal models that should not have been ignored. Forty years of glyphosate exposure have provided a living laboratory where humans are the guinea pigs and the outcomes are alarmingly apparent. We believe that the available evidence warrants a reconsideration of the risk/benefit trade-off with respect to glyphosate usage to control weeds, and we advocate much stricter regulation of glyphosate.”

They go on to state that multiple studies have shown that glyphosate damages DNA, a direct step towards tumorigenicity, and that epidemiological studies strongly support links between glyphosate and multiple cancers, with extremely well-matched upward trends in multiple forms of cancer in step with the increased use of glyphosate on corn and soy crops.

The authors state that while these strong correlations cannot prove causality, the biological evidence is strong to support mechanisms that are likely in play, which can explain the observed correlations through plausible scientific arguments.

They argue that glyphosate’s links to specific cancer types can often be explained through specific pathologies. For example, glyphosate’s action as an oestrogen mimetic explains increased breast cancer risk. Prostate cancer is linked to sarcosine, a by-product of glyphosate breakdown by gut microbes. Impaired fructose metabolism links to fatty liver disease, which is a risk factor for hepatic tumorigenesis. Impaired melanin synthesis by melanocytes due to deficiencies in the precursor, tyrosine, a product of the shikimate pathway, can explain increased incidence of skin melanoma. This is compounded by tryptophan deficiency, as tryptophan is also protective against UV exposure. Manganese deficiency stresses the pancreas and impairs insulin synthesis, and this could explain the recent epidemic in pancreatic cancer. Increased oxalate, due in part to the proprietary formulations, stresses the kidney and contributes to risk of renal tumours. Glyphosate’s accumulation in bone marrow can be expected to disrupt the maturation process of lymphocytes from stem cell precursors. Glycine forms conjugates with organic benzenederived carcinogenic agents, and glyphosate likely interferes with this process. Glyphosate’s interference with CYP enzyme function impairs detoxification of multiple other carcinogenic agents, increasing their carcinogenic potential.

Samsel and Seneff conclude that, overall, the evidence of the carcinogenicity of glyphosate is compelling and multifactorial. Now we wait for the results and recommendations of the EFSA’s evaluation.

Given the overwhelming evidence to ban glyphosate, we can only hope that, this time, it doesn’t end up as a case of ‘move along, nothing to see‘, as the public interest and public health are again sacrificed on the altar of private commercial interests and corporate profit.

It came as no surprise, to those following the ongoing nuclear melt-downs at Fukushima, and the continuation of pouring seawater to cool the Corium masses, the T.E.P.C.O would “simply run out of room” for the highly radioactive waste water created and stored in the large tanks on the site.

“We knew they would have to eventually dump into the Ocean”, stated Ray Masalas, of the International Watch Group, Rainbow Warriors. “Not only were they illegally transferring waste into the ocean before seeking permission from affected groups, but they continue the practice now daily”

T.E.P.C.O have continually tried to allay Global concern over the illegal (by international treaties and definition) releases of radioactive cooling water into the Pacific Ocean.

A List of Failed T.E.P.C.O mitigation attempts.

1. Diversion channels for ground water around the reactors
2. Sea barrier in the harbor wall
3. ARRIVA filtration system
4. Ice wall around the reactors
5. On site storage tanks.

Since the failure of the above mentioned, TEPCO have no choice but to pour the cooling water straight back into the Pacific Ocean from whence it came, after assurances that this practice was never going to happen.

The implications and ramifications for the Pacific ocean, and food chains around the world, is a fact and an eventuality, no longer a possibility.

As this is a first time Global crisis phenomenon, there is no data, no science and no research to lead us on with a solution, nor guide us with any protective measures as to the ongoing crisis.

TEPCO released the following information on sheer volume of the highly toxic, deadly radiocative releases going on, on a daily basis from Fukushima.

The World’s Media is silent, and one has to conjecture that it is because of the enormity and scale of this crisis on a Global level, that they choose to remain so.

August 26th, 2014

TEPCO made the startling admission today at a press conference that the plant is leaking 8 billion bequerels per day. (8 gigabequerels)

5 billion bq of strontium 90
2 billion bq of cesium 137
1 billion bq of tritium * (later corrected to 150)

This is the ongoing daily release to the Pacific. These release numbers are also within the realm of what some oceanographers have been warning about since last year, that there was an ongoing and considerable leak to the sea. According to journalist Ryuichi Kino TEPCO said this may be due to failings of some sort within the “glass” wall at the sea front. This is an underground wall made in the soil by injecting a solidifying agent to block water flow.

This daily release would add up to 11,680,000,000,000 = 11 terabequerels over 4 years time in addition to the initial sea releases during the meltdowns.

A report by Al Jazeera (Al Jazeera Investigates – Genocide Agenda) shows the Yale University Law School’s Lowenstein Clinic in conjunction with Fortify Rights finding “strong evidence” of genocide currently being committed against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

It’s clear that preventive measures have failed, chiefly through the international community’s lack of awareness and concern. Nightslantern.ca called its initial genocide warnings for the Rohinghya in Myanmar, August 27, 2012 and October 29th, 2012 and November 2, 2012.

It’s possible that the historical persecution of Rohingya was advanced due to flooding in the south of Myanmar, threatening the nation ‘s food supply, possibly limiting the numbers of people the nation would be able to sustain. One is reminded of the effects of the U.S. B-52 bombing raids on Cambodia which intentionally destroyed Cambodia’s food resources, as the major contributory fact in the Cambodian genocide which followed – a kind of triage of Cambodia’s people allowing a majority to escape famine.

There is some parallel to a similar mechanism in the Ukraine’s Holodomur of 1932-33. This is a largely undiscussed aspect of the cause of genocides where genocide may be the result for minority groups when a country’s food supplies are endangered/destroyed.

The NATO press is reluctant to consider any causative link between the destruction of food resources and intentional destruction of a national group or its parts: this concept questions the legality of capitalism. In 2013 Nightslantern.ca posted several further genocide warnings since an organized, state-directed, killing was in motion without adequate international or domestic resistance. See 1 and 2.

In May 2013 Human Rights Watch issued a report on crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing of Rohingya; Physicians for Human Rights issued a similar report in August 2013; the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum noted the deteriorating situation and all these are currently mentioned on the Holocaust Museum’s web pages along with its own recent “eyewitness report”,They Want Us All to Go Away: Early Warning Signs of Genocide in Burma, of May 1, 2015. It is no longer early. The online report doesn’t carry a date, doesn’t credit its sources, and comes as a surprise, three years late amidst continuing U.S. support for the Thein Sein military government which is presiding over the crime. A U.S. refusal to note anything wrong with the start of the genocide in 2012 has powerful allies.

Finding herself unable to say anything to counter the program of criminal acts by her Buddhist supporters, the nobelist politician and presidential hopeful Aung San Suu Kyi received a Congressional gold medal in the U.S., September 2012, and an Amnesty International backed speaking tour. In this way the normal confrontation of a genocide is muted, back-burnered, and placed instead at the service of corporate and military tactical interests.

A new election due November 8th has been prepared by the disenfranchisement of possibly a 100,000 Rohingya voters. This affects Muslims primarily but also other minority groups such as the ethnic Kachins oppressed by current rule. In August 2015 Myanmar was devastated by flooding with 1.7 million people affected and 400,000 requiring UN food assistance. 89% of the rice crop was destroyed, half a million hectares of rice paddies were flooded. 250,000 livestock died. The military government facilitated international aid efforts. A genocide warning for Rohingya Muslims, extending as well to other minority groups in Myanmar, continues. In an election among parties where the genocide of Rohingya is not mentioned at all, the sanity or moral base of all the leaders is in question. In Myanmar the spirit of reason and freedom is kept alive by punk singers (some former prisoners) speaking out in performance to call the militarily primed Buddhist nationalist monks – “Buddhist Nazi skinheads.” For those who have any doubt that genocide is underway in Myanmar I recommend “Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar.”Penny Green, Thomas MacManus, Alicia de la Cour Venning, International State Crime Initiative.

 Notes:

Partial sources online: Al Jazeera Investigates: Genocide Agenda Oct. 26, 2015, Al Jazeera/ YouTube [access: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQRYrpp2cI&feature=youtu.be >] “Is Genocide Underway in Myanmar?” Shawn W. Crispin, Oct. 30, 2015, The Diplomat; “Exclusive: ‘Strong evidence’ of genocide in Myanmar: Al Jazeera investigation reveals government triggered deadly communal violence for political gain,” Al Jazeera Investigative Unit, Oct. 28, 2015, Al; Jazeera; “Aung San Suu Kyi rally draws thousands in Myanmar: Nobel Laureate promises change ahead of landmark election marred by claims minorities have been left out of the vote,” Nov. 1, 2015, Al Jazeera; “UN food relief now reaching more than 400,000 flood victims in Myanmar,” Aug. 26, 2015, United Nations News Centre; “Myanmar needs urgent help with livestock and rice losses after floods – U.N.,” Thomson Reuters Foundation, Oct. 20, 2015. Thomson Reuters Foundation; “Myanmar’s punk rockers challenge anti-Muslim rhetoric Ahead of crucial election, musicians rail against government-sanctioned repression of persecuted Rohingya minority,” Hanna Hindstrom, Nov. 3, 2015, Al Jazeera.

On Monday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Kazakhstan. It was the day after his meeting with the foreign ministers of five Central Asian countries in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. His visit to Kazakhstan kicked off a tour of each of the Central Asian countries — the first such tour conducted by a U.S. secretary of state. It marks the importance of Central Asia for the US synchronized with the negative tendencies for the US foreign policy in Afghanistan where the government set by the United States is losing a civil war to the Taliban movement and its allied militant groups.

At the Samarkand meeting, Kerry and the foreign ministers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan publicly discussed areas of cooperation as diverse as economics, water security and education. However, it was only the gambit for discussing additional issues during Kerry’s visits to individual countries. The easily forecasted goal will be to consider the topics related to Afghanistan and Russia.

Transcript

The borders between the Central Asian states and Afghanistan have become increasingly active in terms of militant, diplomatic and security activity. Militant activity has increased in northern Afghanistan in recent months, punctuated by Taliban forces’ capture of the town of Kunduz in late September and ISIS militants have been gathering momentum and concentrating there. ISIS militants see this region as a foothold for further expansion into Central Asia. The important fact is they don’t fight foreign or Afghan government troops. They conserve and gather strength. The threat is also growing in the South. Three months ago, we’ve already pointed out that the number of ISIS militants has been growing at the borders of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. We also noted serious domestic problems of the Central Asian states.

This situation conducts concerns not only for the Central Asian states but also for countries that are influential in security matters in the region — chiefly Russia, the United States and China interested in the region’s economics. At a recent Collective Security Treaty Organization summit, Russia announced plans to establish a joint border security initiative that reportedly would involve several Central Asian states.

According to our information, additional Russian and Kazakh armed forces have been deployed in the region under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) since June, 2015. The Chinese intelligence specialists have joined the Russian and Kazakh servicemen.

The current general structure of the deployed allied armed forces in Tajikistan includes:

• The border guards’ first line: Tajik border outposts, joint frontier posts and border control composed of troops from Russia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan; Russian and Kazakh military advisers present at the Tajikistan border outposts.

• Units of Tajik army have been bolstered by Russian and Kazakh military advisers, down to squad level in some rapid reaction and special units.

• There are Russian, Kazakh and Belarusian military formations (though Belarus’ contribution is a small) being based at the 201st Russian Military Base around Dushanbe, Kulyab and Kurgan-Tyube

• Other units and infrastructure of CSTO and the Regional Counter-Terrorist Structure of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (RCTS) include Russian, Kazakh and Chinese intelligence assets.

Not all countries are supporting the CSTO’s efforts. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are discussing their own border security operations outside of the Russian initiative. Indeed, these countries always preferred to avoid a close cooperation through CSTO. Experts point out that the ambitions of the countries’ leaders are a reason of such attitude. At the moment, Ashgabat and Tashkent are trying to set a bilateral partnership in the security sphere. SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence has information that Turkmenistan has pulled almost 70% of its military to the Afghani border and tries to block it what was hardly possible even in the times of the USSR.

This has drawn the United States’ attention. Washington, like Moscow, is concerned about the rise of militancy in Afghanistan. But Washington is interested in strengthening security cooperation with Central Asian states not only to prevent a spillover of militancy there, but also to challenge Moscow as a dominant military and security power in the region. Washington’s motives for cooperation in Central Asia are clear, but the details of how the United States intends to enhance security cooperation in the region are hazy. Nonetheless, there are several possible topics for the Kerry’s voyage in Central Asia.

Turkmenistan could grant the United States use of the Mary-2 air base located near the Turkmen border with Afghanistan, though Ashgabat has officially denied that the offer is on the table. Another possible plan is the potential U.S. support of a joint Uzbek-Turkmen border security initiative. Another topic is the rise of the US presence in Tajikistan. Tajikistan is considered one of Russia’s closest allies in Central Asia, but Washington would like to expand in the country.
None of these forms of cooperation are confirmed, and none of them are inevitable, but these attempts would certainly draw Russia’s attention. Separation of the efforts will establish breaches in the regional security system setting by Russia. The Afghani case has clearly shown that the US military force is hardly able to impact the regional security positively. At least, a division of the US Armed Force based there isn’t enough.

Experts believe that only the joined forces of Russia and Kazakhstan are able to counter the ISIS threat quickly and efficiently. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan military have lack equipment and suffer from low military effectiveness. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are trying to avoid joint CSTO efforts. In general, we could argue that Russia, China, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states estimate the threat properly and are making intense preparations to meet it.
In turn, the volatile border region between Central Asia and Afghanistan becomes a stake in the evolution of the standoff between the United States and Russia over the entire former Soviet periphery.

En una entrevista, el antiguo presidente francés hizo partícipe de su análisis sobre el conflicto entre Rusia y Ucrania. 

1. La anexión de Crimea por parte de Rusia constituye un acto de justicia histórica. Es “conforme a la Historia”.

2. Crimea “siempre estuvo poblada por rusos” desde su conquista en el siglo XVIII, la cual se hizo en detrimento de “un soberano local que dependía del poder turco”.

3. Durante la Guerra Fría, Nikita Kruchov quiso “aumentar el peso de la URSS en las Naciones Unidas”. Entonces creó Ucrania y Bielorrusia para tener “dos votos más” en el concierto de las naciones y entregó Crimea a la nueva Ucrania.

4. “En aquella época yo ya pensaba que esta dependencia artificial no duraría”. La anexión era entonces previsible.

5. “El regreso de Crimea a Rusia fue ampliamente aprobada por la población”.

6. “El método de Vladimir Putin habría podido ser diferente. Pero hoy la cuestión de Crimea debe ser puesta de lado”.

7. “Crimea […] tiene vocación de permanecer rusa”.

8. Ucrania fue rusa durante mucho tiempo y Kiev fue la capital de Rusia. “Cuando yo era ministro de Finanzas, fui a la Unión Soviética a petición del general de Gaulle y Kruchov me recibió en Kiev”.

9. “¿Cuál fue el papel de la CIA en la revolución del Maidán?”

10. “¿Cuál es el sentido de la política sistemáticamente antirrusa que lleva Barack Obama?”

11. “La transición ucraniana tiene un aspecto poco democrático. Son los clanes dirigidos por oligarcas quienes tienen el poder”.

12. Estados Unidos “probablemente alentó y apoyó al movimiento insurreccional”.

13. La política de sanciones contra Rusia viola el derecho internacional.

14. “¿Quién puede arrogarse en efecto el derecho de establecer una lista de ciudadanos a quienes se les aplica sanciones personales sin ni siquiera interrogarles, sin que tengan la posibilidad de defenderse o incluso tener abogados?”

15. Las sanciones contra Rusia atentan contra los intereses de Europa y de Occidente.

16. “Sería irresponsable desear el desmoronamiento de la economía rusa”.

17. “Para Europa, los rusos son socios y vecinos”.

18. “Ucrania tal como es no puede funcionar democráticamente”.

19. La solución a la crisis ucraniana debe pasar por la creación de una confederación multiétnica “sobre el modelo suizo de cantones, con una parte rusófona, una parte polaca y una parte central. Un sistema a la vez federal y confederal, patrocinado por los Europeos y apoyado por las Naciones Unidas”.

20. Resulta imposible que Ucrania entre en el sistema europeo.

21. “Las aspiraciones europeas de Kiev eran un sueño”.

22. “Como antigua parte de Rusia, Ucrania no puede estar en la Unión Europea”.

23. El lugar de Ucrania “está entre dos espacios, Rusia y la Unión Europea, con los cuales debe mantener relaciones normales”.

24. Está fuera de cuestión que Ucrania se adhiera a la OTAN y Francia tiene razón al oponerse a ello.

25. Ucrania corre el riesgo de la quiebra financiera y solicitará la ayuda del FMI pues Europa no podrá brindar su apoyo.

Salim Lamrani

 

Doctor en Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos de la Universidad Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV, Salim Lamrani es profesor titular de la Universidad de La Reunión y periodista, especialista de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. Su último libro se titula Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of Impartiality, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2014, con un prólogo de Eduardo Galeano.

http://monthlyreview.org/books/pb4710/

Contacto: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Página Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SalimLamraniOfficiel

Pictured left: Remains of the A321 Russian airliner one day after crash in Egypt (AFP photo)

US intelligence officials say a conventional explosive device had been planted in the Russian passenger plane in Egypt, causing the jet to break apart in mid-air last weekend.

Suggesting that ISIL Takfiri terrorists were behind the incident, the officials said the Egyptian airport, from which the Metrojet Airbus A321 took off Saturday, is known for “lax security,” CNN reported.

The airliner crashed crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.

“This airport has lax security. It is known for that,” CNN quoted an unnamed official as saying. “But there is intelligence suggesting an assist from someone at the airport.”

Another official said that Washington does not believe an explosive device could get past security procedures at the airport.

But he said that whoever was behind the incident took advantage of lax security or had a complicit at the airport.

Egyptian authorities have so far downplayed the possibility of a terrorist attack on the Russian plane. Daesh (ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the crash.

On Wednesday, American and foreign officials suggested that Daesh could have been behind the attack. They previously said the terrorist group could not have developed advanced bomb-making capabilities.

Daesh terrorists control parts of Syria and Iraq. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

A Russian airliner bound for St. Petersburg crashed while flying over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all on board. With the peninsula seeing fierce fighting recently as the presence of foreign-backed terrorist organizations has grown, immediate suspicion was raised regarding a potential terror attack involving either a bomb brought on board or a missile fired from below.

As Russia carries out its investigation of the disaster, the rest of the objective world waits for answers. For others, they have already begun drawing up narratives to use the disaster to serve their purposes. One such individual is John Bradley, a frequent contributor for The Economist, The Forward, Newsweek, The New Republic, The Daily Telegraph, Prospect, and The Independent.

He has also lectured at the Washington-based policy think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and for over 2 years, was given almost unlimited access across Saudi Arabia while writing his establishment-lauded book, “Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis.”

His most recent work is an unsavory op-ed for the UK Spectator titled, “The Russian plane crash could undermine Putin’s Syria strategy.” In it, Bradley conveniently answers the most important question that will be asked if investigators determine the plane’s destruction was an act of terrorism, “cui bono?”

Bradley describes not only how the disaster helps further undermine Egypt, (a nation struggling to balance between placating Western interests and and averting a “Libya-style” collapse within its own borders) but also how the incident would undermine Russia’s efforts in Syria.

Bradley states:

It now seems fairly likely that an explosion brought down the Russian passenger airline over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula over the weekend. One Metrojet official has already suggested that the ‘only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft’ and they have ruled out technical failure or human error. If the ongoing investigation proves that to be the case, it will obviously have an immediate and catastrophic impact on Egypt’s already decimated tourism industry.

Regarding Russia in particular, he states:

But it would also be the most unwelcome news possible for Vladimir Putin, who sold military intervention in Syria to the Russian people as a way of making them safer. In turn, opponents of Russian intervention – the US, Turkey and the Gulf Arab despots – would be privately elated. For does this not prove their argument that Russian intervention only complicates the situation on the ground while increasing the threat of terror attacks?

But should the downed airliner turn out to be the victim of terrorism, not only would “the US, Turkey and the Gulf Arab despots” be “privately elated,” it also appears that ISIS would have provided them a much needed card to play during future negotiations regarding the conflict in Syria. After noting that ISIS took credit for the downed airliner as it was closing in on a motorway used to resupply Syrian forces operating in Aleppo, Bradley explains:

All [at the negotiations], of course, realise that it is only worth negotiating from a position of strength. The anti-Assad allies will be hoping that Putin now fears a new Afghanistan, and will therefore be more flexible on the question of Assad’s departure. They will also be determined to ramp up support for the so-called ‘moderate rebels’, especially given that Washington has recently sent in Special Forces to ‘advise’ them (or, in other words, act as human shields against Russian bombs).

Bradley sums up his op-ed by almost celebrating the fact that those who assumed Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict would spell its quick conclusion were “sadly mistaken.”

Should it turn out that terrorists brought down the Russian airliner, it certainly would fulfill Bradley’s summary regarding “cui bono?” Bradley himself admits that US special forces are simply serving as “human shields” for Western backed militants against Russian strikes. These same militants have in recent days, been coordinating with ISIS openly in the advances mentioned by Bradley along the Syrian motorway. It is clear that ISIS is not a third team competing in this regional conflict, but rather a member of the very team that has been reaping the most benefits from its existence, “the US, Turkey and the Gulf Arab despots.”

Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On November 3rd, U.S. Defense Department spokesperson Laura Seal told The Daily Beast that twelve F-15C air-to-air combat planes are being sent to the Incirlik Turkey Air Base for deployment in Syria against Russia’s Su-30 air-to-air combat planes. Neither the F-15C nor the Su-30 can destroy ground-targets, only air-targets — enemy planes.

In other words: U.S. President Barack Obama is telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that unless Putin is willing to go to war against the United States, he must stop what he’s now doing in Syria. Obama is saying this in the only language whose meaning cannot be denied or misinterpreted: sending in counter-force to specifically what Russia has already sent into Syria.

If it were not the case that both the F-15C and the Su-30 are equipped only for air-to-air-combat, then the meaning of Obama’s move here wouldn’t be so clear and unambiguous. Ms. Seal made her point even clearer by volunteering to tell The Daily Beast’s reporter David Axe, “I didn’t say it wasn’t about Russia.” Axe then commented in his article, that this statement of hers “hinted at its [the deployment’s] true purpose.” But one would need to be a fool in order to deny it. The only real question here is why Obama has made this decision, which is quite likely to be fateful. So: that’s the subject: Why did he do this?

On 11 October 2015, CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a segment, “Steve Kroft questions President Obama on topics including Russia’s incursion in Syria”,  and the U.S. President was challenged there by Mr. Kroft regarding whether he’s “weak” on the Syria matter:

Steve Kroft: A year ago when we did this interview, there was some saber-rattling between the United States and Russia on the Ukrainian border. Now it’s also going on in Syria. You said a year ago that the United States — America leads. We’re the indispensible nation. Mr. Putin seems to be challenging that leadership. *

President Barack Obama: In what way? Let — let’s think about this — let — let — 

Steve Kroft: Well, he’s moved troops into Syria, for one. He’s got people on the ground. Two, the Russians are conducting military operations in the Middle East for the first time since World War II — 

President Barack Obama: So that’s — 

Steve Kroft: — bombing the people — that we are supporting.

President Barack Obama: So that’s leading, Steve? Let me ask you this question. When I came into office, Ukraine was governed by a corrupt ruler who was a stooge of Mr. Putin. Syria was Russia’s only ally in the region. And today, rather than being able to count on their support and maintain the base they had in Syria, which they’ve had for a long time, Mr. Putin now is devoting his own troops, his own military, just to barely hold together by a thread his sole ally. And in Ukraine — 

Steve Kroft: He’s challenging your leadership, Mr. President. He’s challenging your leadership — 

President Barack Obama: Well Steve, I got to tell you, if you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we’ve got a different definition of leadership. My definition of leadership would be leading on climate change, an international accord that potentially we’ll get in Paris. My definition of leadership is mobilizing the entire world community to make sure that Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon. And with respect to the Middle East, we’ve got a 60-country coalition that isn’t suddenly lining up around Russia’s strategy. To the contrary, they are arguing that, in fact, that strategy will not work.

Steve Kroft: My point is — was not that he was leading, my point is that he was challenging your leadership. And he has very much involved himself in the situation. Can you imagine anything happening in Syria of any significance at all without the Russians now being involved in it and having a part of it?

President Barack Obama: But that was true before. Keep in mind that for the last five years, the Russians have provided arms, provided financing, as have the Iranians, as has Hezbollah.

Steve Kroft: But they haven’t been bombing and they haven’t had troops on the ground — 

President Barack Obama: And the fact that they had to do this is not an indication of strength, it’s an indication that their strategy did not work.

Steve Kroft: You don’t think — 

President Barack Obama: You don’t think that Mr. Putin would’ve preferred having Mr. Assad be able to solve this problem without him having to send a bunch of pilots and money that they don’t have?

Steve Kroft: Did you know he was going to do all this when you met with him in New York?

President Barack Obama: Well, we had seen — we had pretty good intelligence. We watch — 

Steve Kroft: So you knew he was planning to do it.

President Barack Obama: We knew that he was planning to provide the military assistance that Assad was needing because they were nervous about a potential imminent collapse of the regime.

Steve Kroft: You say he’s doing this out of weakness. There is a perception in the Middle East among our adversaries, certainly and even among some of our allies that the United States is in retreat, that we pulled our troops out of Iraq and ISIS has moved in and taken over much of that territory. The situation in Afghanistan is very precarious and the Taliban is on the march again. And ISIS controls a large part of Syria.

President Barack Obama: I think it’s fair to say, Steve, that if — 

Steve Kroft: It’s — they — let me just finish the thought. They say your — 

President Barack Obama: You’re — 

Steve Kroft: — they say you’re projecting a weakness, not a strength–

President Barack Obama: — you’re saying “they,” but you’re not citing too many folks. But here — 

Steve Kroft: No, I’ll cite — I’ll cite if you want me, too.

President Barack Obama: — here — yes. Here — 

Steve Kroft: I’d say the Saudis. I’d say the Israelis. I’d say a lot of our friends in the Middle East. I’d say everybody in the Republican party. Well, you want me to keep going?

President Barack Obama: Yeah. The — the — if you are — if you’re citing the Republican party, I think it’s fair to say that there is nothing I’ve done right over the last seven and a half years.

Apparently, the U.S. President is taking this matter so much to heart, he’s now willing to start World War III over it, so as to prove that he’s not “weak.”

The Cold War was never this hot except at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. But in that particular instance, the U.S. faced a potential Soviet nuclear attack upon the United States, by Soviet missiles being placed near the U.S. in Cuba. This time around, it’s starting very differently: there is no danger that Russia is posing to the United States. Indeed, Putin had repeatedly requested the U.S.’s cooperation with the war against jihadists in Syria, but Obama has repeatedly refused.

Now, Obama is going farther than merely refusing to cooperate: he’s ordering Putin to stop. Obama is doing this by his action, demanding that Putin allow Sunni jihadists to take control in Syria, a nation that under Assad has a secular non-sectarian government, most of whose chief officials are Shiites (though the Prime Minister, Wael Nader al-Halqi, is Sunni), and where the Constitution is entirely non-religious and keeps a wall of separation between church-and-state (the only one like that in the entire Middle East) — which all of the opposition-organizations that are warring against it oppose, because they’re all jihadist Sunni organizations.

Obama is, in effect, now telling Putin that the United States is willing to go to war against Russia in order to be able to eliminate Syria’s non-jihadist government — a government that was founded not only as anti-jihadist but as entirely non-religious. He’s saying this in the clearest language possible, but Putin could simply ignore it. What then will be the response when American and Russian fighter-pilots fire at each other in a Syrian sky, and one of them gets killed in the process, and his plane goes down, perhaps in flames? Will the loser (either Obama or Putin) of that battle, simply quit World War III immediately after it started, before it goes nuclear? Or, will he not? And, if not, then what will his response be? And when would that mutual test of “strength” end — and how would it end?

This could get interesting. It might even get catastrophic.

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.

This is the third of four articles analyzing the new US Department of Defense Law of War Manual. The first article was posted November 3. The second article was posted November 4.

The Department of Defense (DOD) Law of War Manual represents the most advanced ideological expression of the striving of US imperialism to dominate and control the entire world by means of military force.

By authorizing the Pentagon to occupy, wage war against and impose its own version of “law” in every corner of the planet, the DOD manual merely formalizes the world-hegemonic agenda of US imperialism and points to its logical endpoint.

“US capitalism is up against the same problems that pushed Germany in 1914 on the path of war. The world is divided? It must be redivided. For Germany it was a question of ‘organizing Europe.’ The United States must ‘organize’ the world. History is bringing humanity face to face with the volcanic eruption of American imperialism.”

This was written by the founder of the Fourth International, Leon Trotsky, in 1934.

From the mid-1970s onward, the US ruling class has engaged in a relentless militarization drive aimed at overcoming through armed force its economic decline.

This was also foreseen by Trotsky, who wrote: “In the period of crisis the hegemony of the United States will operate more completely, more openly and more ruthlessly than in the period of boom. The United States will seek to overcome and extricate herself from her difficulties and maladies primarily at the expense of Europe, regardless of whether this occurs in Asia, Canada, South America, Australia, or Europe itself, or whether this takes place peacefully or through war.”

The Law of War Manual, which elaborates protocols for military operations in every corner of the globe by the Pentagon and its proxy forces, amounts to a manifesto for this process, set down in legal jargon. If the guidelines laid out in the manual are allowed to be implemented—that is, if the international working class does not intervene in time on the basis of a revolutionary program—then humankind faces a future dominated by concentration camps, slaughter on an unprecedented scale, and, ultimately, a nuclear holocaust.

In essence, the DOD manual represents a comprehensive statement of the only “solution” to the world crisis that the imperialist cliques in Washington and on Wall Street are capable of offering.

Total war

The first two articles in this series have drawn the parallels between the Department of Defense Law of War Manual and the legal and political ideology of Nazi Germany. It has been shown that the very same fascist conceptions rejected by leading American jurists at the Nuremberg trials have, in the form of the DOD manual, been codified as official state policy at the highest levels of the American government.

Later sections of the DOD manual, those covering the practices of US military operations, make clear that the scorched earth methods employed by the Nazis against the populations of Europe, the Soviet Union and North Africa are now embraced and defended by the Pentagon high command.

The manual overturns central tenets of international law designed to place restraints on the use of military violence. On the basis of the Oxford English Dictionary definition of total war as “a war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded,” one can state without hesitation that total war has become the central policy of the DOD.

Every form of military activity conventionally associated with total war—a concept that emerged during the 19th century before finding its consummate expression in the mayhem and destruction perpetrated by both the fascist and “democratic” imperialist governments during the Second World War—is explicitly or implicitly allowed by the Pentagon guidelines.

Every nominal restriction on the DOD’s war-making powers included in the manual is accompanied by caveats that confer virtually unlimited discretion on US military commanders to employ violence in the service of US strategic aims. The manual carefully avoids any language that might discourage commanders from planning offensive operations. There are gaping loopholes in every section designed to instill confidence that there will be no penalty for the indiscriminate use of force.

The manual authorizes US commanders to engage in strategic bombing, attacks on civilian commercial infrastructure, blockades and sieges. It authorizes the establishment of mass detention and forced labor camps.

Image: Hiroshima in 1945

Of course, throughout its history, US imperialism has committed horrific violations of international laws along these lines, carrying out collective punishment, mass slaughter of populations, and the destruction of urban areas in Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and, most recently, Iraq.

The military campaign launched against Iraq in 2003 reduced one of the most advanced economies in the Middle East to a level of social development comparable to that of the poorest countries in the world. Some 4-5 million Iraqis were killed, displaced or disappeared as a result of the US war and occupation. More than half of Iraqi doctors were killed or forced to flee the country. Reports published in 2007 by Iraq’s Statistical Bureau showed that, four years after the war was launched, fully 43 percent of Iraqis were living in “absolute poverty,” without reliable access to food, housing or clothing.

Prior to the release of the DOD manual this year, however, the US high command employed such methods in defiance of its own regulations, which still included clearly worded prohibitions against wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure and populations. The last comprehensive document on military law issued by the US Department of Defense, the 1956 US Army Field Manual on the Law of Land Warfare, still maintained that military operations could not be launched if it was known in advance that they would lead to large-scale civilian casualties.

While including formal prohibitions against the slaughter of civilians similar to those contained in the 1956 document, the new manual provides conceptual loopholes based on notions of “military necessity,” “expected military advantage,” etc.

The publication of the DOD manual is thus enormously significant as an official assertion by the US ruling elite of its “right” to demolish entire societies and peoples in pursuit of its political goals. Undoubtedly, the DOD manual was crafted with an eye toward legalizing, after the fact, the crimes committed against Iraq by US imperialism.

Under the manual’s guidelines, direct mass killing of civilians is effectively legalized, so long as the relevant US military officers consider that attacks around or against civilian targets are weighed “in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained.” (P. 187)

Image: Predator drone firing a Hellcat missile

Commanders are authorized to conduct operations that they know will lead to large numbers of civilian deaths, as long as their subjective assessment finds that such operations contribute to “the broader imperatives of winning the war.” This applies even when the “military advantage” to be gained from a proposed attack could not be understood by an “outside observer,” i.e., on the basis of any objective or universal criteria.

“The military advantage expected to be gained from an attack might not be readily apparent to the enemy or to outside observers because, for example, the expected military advantage might depend on the commander’s strategy or assessments of classified information,”

the manual states. (P. 213)

“The weighing or comparison between the expected incidental harm and the expected military advantage does not necessarily lend itself to empirical analyses,” the document adds. (P. 128)

“In less clear-cut cases, the question of whether the expected incidental harm is excessive may be a highly open-ended legal inquiry, and the answer may be subjective and imprecise,” the manual declares. (P. 245)

In defining what constitutes a legitimate military target, DOD employs a definition that is so broad as to encompass the entire economy and civilian population of enemy states. The manual authorizes destruction of basic infrastructure, including housing stock, power generation facilities, water facilities, and food supply chains of enemy states. Any object that contributes to the “war-fighting capacity” of the enemy nation, even in an indirect manner, is declared by the manual to be a legitimate target. (P. 206)

“The term ‘military objective’ means combatants and those objects during hostilities which, by their nature, location, purpose, or use, effectively contribute to the war-fighting or war-sustaining capability of an opposing force,” the manual reads.

“It is not necessary that the object provide immediate tactical or operational gains or that the object make an effective contribution to a specific military operation. Rather, the object’s effective contribution to the war-fighting or war-sustaining capability of an opposing force is sufficient… The advantage need not be immediate.” (P. 210)

“The law of war does not require that attacks on a military objective be conducted near ongoing fighting, in a theater of active military operations, or in a theater of active armed conflict.” (P. 199)

In a critique of the target selection practices called for by the manual, entitled “The Defense Department Stands Alone on Target Selection,” Professor Adil Haque of the Rutgers School of Law-Newark notes that the manual effectively authorizes US commanders to carry out attacks regardless of the civilian death toll that is likely to result.

“A deeply troubling provision in the Defense Department’s new Law of War Manual suggests that commanders are not legally required to minimize civilian casualties when selecting between different targets,” Haque writes. “The United States is not legally required to select targets so as to reduce collateral harm to civilians.”

Large sections of the manual are devoted to siege, enforced starvation and occupation of densely populated urban areas. It authorizes the erection of ghettos and security cordons to restrict the movement of civilians.

“Starvation is a legitimate method of warfare,” the DOD manual states. (P. 291) “In particular, it is permissible to seek to starve enemy forces into submission.”

During siege warfare, US military commanders are authorized, among other things, to destroy supply lines that are relied on by the civilian population for food and other essential goods. “States may institute general food control programs that involve the destruction of crops and the adequate provision of the civilian population with food,” the manual reads in the section entitled “Starvation of Enemy Forces Not Prohibited.” (P. 1,037)

It advises US officers to allow passage of “certain categories of civilians,” implying that much of the civilian population can be left for dead inside the encircled area. Commanders are authorized to completely isolate urban areas, refusing the movement of even the most basic humanitarian goods into the siege zone.

“A commander of an encircling force is not required to agree to the passage of medical or religious personnel, supplies, and equipment,” the manual states. (P. 316)

The implications of this doctrine were already demonstrated in the US military’s 2004 siege of Fallujah in Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men between the ages of 15 and 55 were prevented from fleeing the city prior to a devastating US bombardment that destroyed some 60 percent of the city’s buildings, irradiated the entire area with toxic munitions byproducts, and permanently reduced the population by as much as 50 percent.

The manual authorizes the use of illegal weapons, another practice commonly understood as a feature of total war, including cluster bombs and nuclear weapons, against a range of “military objectives,” including “mountain passes, hills, defiles, and bridgeheads, villages, towns, or cities” whose seizure is militarily important. (P. 215)

“Under certain circumstances, it may be advantageous to use cluster munitions,” the document reads. “The United States has determined that its national security interests cannot be fully ensured consistent with the terms of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.”

Employing a formula that becomes all too familiar to any reader of the manual, the document openly authorizes use of nuclear weapons based on calculations of “military advantage.”

“Attacks using nuclear weapons must not be conducted when the expected incidental harm to civilians is excessive compared to the military advantage expected to be gained,” the document states. (P. 420)

Such formulations amount to a green light to do anything. Would the DOD high command consider the destruction of China’s key military and economic infrastructure to be militarily advantageous? Of course, and therefore nuclear attacks would be justified.

In fact, the DOD’s Air Sea battle plan envisions a crushing first strike against the Chinese mainland, using a level of force so overwhelming as to prevent any possibility of retaliation by the Chinese military.

Mass detention and concentration camps

Brushing aside democratic legal principles that have been developed over centuries, the manual asserts the absolute power of the US military-security apparatus to detain civilians anywhere on the planet. “Detention is fundamental to waging war or conducting other military operations,” the Pentagon lawyers assert in the opening lines of the section “Detention: Overview and Baseline Rules.” (P. 515)

Image: Prisoners in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 1938

While the executive branch has already asserted similar prerogatives with the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, it remains significant that the DOD now openly maintains its own sweeping powers to act as an independent branch of government, exercising essentially limitless authority.

The manual maintains that the Defense Department may re-interpret and negate international agreements that prohibit extra-legal arrests and detentions, upholding the unlimited right of the American national state to nullify well-established international laws.

The DOD lawyers go so far as to cite relevant portions of international law that directly contradict their own positions before sweeping them aside as incompatible with the US government’s interpretations.

“Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful,” a passage from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), reprinted in the manual, states. (P. 50f)

The document then declares that the US government has “understood” such prohibitions not to apply to its own policies. As far as DOD and the US government are concerned, the manual makes clear, the content of international laws is determined by the way in which such laws are re-understood by top US military attorneys and bureaucrats.

“For example, the right to challenge the lawfulness of an arrest before a court provided in Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) would appear to conflict with the authority under the law of war to detain certain persons without judicial process or criminal charge,”

the manual reads.

“However, the United States has understood Article 9 of the ICCPR not to affect a State’s authorities under the law of war, including a State’s authority in both international and non-international armed conflicts to detain enemy combatants until the end of hostilities.” (P. 50)

The manual goes on to outline authorizations for DOD to create specific legal instruments in order to overcome any remaining legal obstacles to its detention powers, allowing for the creation of “Ad Hoc Legal Instruments or Frameworks” and “Special Courts.”

According to the manual, “Detaining Powers” may segregate detainees in prison camps based on racial and ethnic criteria. “Detainees may be segregated into camps or camp compounds according to their nationality, language, and customs, and the Detaining Power may use other criteria to segregate detainees for administrative, security, intelligence, medical, or law enforcement purposes.” (P. 498)

US military authorities are empowered to carry out mass resettlement of populations for “imperative military reasons.” Under the heading “Displacement of the Civilian Population,”

the manual states: “The Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if required for the security of the population or for imperative military reasons.” (P. 778)

And further: “The displacement of the civilian population shall not be ordered for reasons related to the conflict unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand.” (P. 1,035)

Martial law and occupation

The manual outlines procedures for military occupation and imposition of martial law on subjugated territories. Protocols are formulated in extremely general terms, making clear that the entire world, including the US “Homeland,” is viewed as actual or potential Occupied Territory.

Inhabitants of territory under US military rule must submit unconditionally to the dictates of the “Occupying Power,” rendering “strict obedience to the orders of the occupant,” the manual states in the section “Suspension and Substitution of Governmental Authority.”

US commanders may “exercise authority over all means of public and private transportation, whether land, waterborne, or air, within the occupied territory, and may seize them and regulate their operation,” the manual asserts.

Lest there be any illusions that protocols for military occupation and suspension of constitutional government do not apply within the borders of the United States, the manual announces that the DOD-promulgated law of war policies are being integrated into US domestic law. “Law of war requirements have also been incorporated into domestic law, policy, regulations, and orders,” the document states (P. 1,057)

In the section on “Non-International Armed Conflict,” the manual develops another conceptual loophole that enables US forces to violate the Geneva Conventions and other international laws when engaged in operations against persons or organizations that are not formally part of an internationally recognized state.

Whereas the manual assigns some limited relevance to international laws in relation to military conflicts against rival national states, non-international armed conflicts are said to be conducted under the essentially limitless authorities assigned by the manual to the US government as the world’s most powerful national state.

Non-state actors cannot claim the legal status of national governments and are essentially considered to be legally naked, that is, fully at the mercy of the US government and not entitled to the minimal protections afforded to captured enemy POWs.

“The sovereign equality of States is not applicable in armed conflicts between a State and a non-State armed group. A State may exercise both sovereign and belligerent rights over non-State armed groups.” (P. 1,025)

“The limits imposed by international law on a State’s action against non-State armed groups do not alter the basic principle that the State may exercise its sovereign powers against the non-State armed group…

“Although, during international armed conflict, lawful combatants are afforded certain immunities from the enemy State’s jurisdiction, persons belonging to non-State armed groups lack any legal privilege or immunity from prosecution by a State that is engaged in hostilities against that group.” (P. 1,025)

Such language serves to put US officers on notice that, in confronting insurrectionary movements by the American and international working class, they are permitted to cast aside all restraints conventionally associated with the law of war as it has evolved over centuries.

To be continued

The US military-intelligence complex is engaged in systematic preparations for World War III.  As far as the Pentagon is concerned, a military conflict with China and/or Russia is inevitable, and this prospect has become the driving force of its tactical and strategic planning.

Three congressional hearings Tuesday demonstrated this reality. In the morning, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a lengthy hearing on cyberwarfare. In the afternoon, a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee discussed the present size and deployment of the US fleet of aircraft carriers, while another subcommittee of the same panel discussed the modernization of US nuclear weapons.

The World Socialist Web Site will provide a more detailed account of these hearings, which were attended by a WSWS reporter. But certain preliminary observations can be made.

None of the hearings discussed the broader implications of the US preparations for war, or what a major war between nuclear-armed powers would mean for the survival of the human race, and even of life on our planet. On the contrary, the hearings were examples of what might be called the routinization of World War III. A US war with China and/or Russia was taken as given, and the testimony of witnesses and questions from senators and representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, concerned the best methods for prevailing in such a conflict.

The hearings were component parts of an ongoing process. The witnesses referred to their past writings and statements. The senators and representatives referred to previous testimony by other witnesses. In other words, the preparations for world war, using cyber weapons, aircraft carriers, bombers, missiles and the rest of a vast array of weaponry, have been under way for a protracted period of time. They are not a response to recent events, whether in the South China Sea, Ukraine, Syria or anywhere else.

Each of the hearings presumed a major US conflict with another great power (sometimes unnamed, sometimes explicitly designated as China or Russia) within a relatively short time frame, years rather than decades. The danger of terrorism, hyped incessantly for the purposes of stampeding public opinion, was downplayed and to some extent discounted. At one point in the Senate hearing on cyberwarfare, in response to a direct question from Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the panel witnesses all declared that their greatest concern was nation-states, not terrorists.

One of the witnesses at that hearing was Dr. Peter W. Singer, listed as a “Strategist and Senior Fellow” for New America, a Washington think tank. He titled his presentation, “The Lessons of World War 3.” He began his prepared statement with the following description of that imagined conflict:

“US and Chinese warships battle at sea, firing everything from cannons to cruise missiles to lasers. Stealthy Russian and American fighter jets dogfight in the air, with robotic drones flying as their wingmen. Hackers in Shanghai and Silicon Valley duel in digital playgrounds. And fights in outer space decide who wins below on Earth. Are these scenes from a novel or what could actually take place in the real world the day after tomorrow? The answer is both.”

None of the hearings saw any debate about either the likelihood of a major war or the necessity of winning that war. No one challenged the assumption that “victory” in a world war between nuclear-armed powers is a meaningful concept. The discussion was entirely devoted to what technologies, assets and human resources were required for the US military to prevail.

This was just as true for the Democratic senators and representatives as for their Republican counterparts. By custom, the two parties are seated on opposite sides of the committee or subcommittee chairmen. Without that arrangement, there would be no way of detecting, from their questions and expressions of opinion, which party they belonged to.

Contrary to the media portrayal of Washington as deeply divided between parties with intransigently opposed political outlooks, there was bipartisan agreement on this most fundamental of issues, the preparation of a new imperialist world war.

The unanimity of the political representatives of big business by no means suggests that there are no obstacles in the path of this drive to war. Each of the hearings grappled, in different ways, with the profound crisis confronting American imperialism. This crisis has two major components: the declining economic power of the United States compared to its major rivals, and the internal contradictions of American society, with the deepening alienation of the working class and particularly the youth.

At the House subcommittee hearing on aircraft carriers, the chairman noted that one of the witnesses, a top Navy admiral, had expressed concern over having “an 11-carrier navy in a 15-carrier world.” There were so many challenges confronting Washington, he continued, that what was really needed was a navy of 21 aircraft carriers—double the present size, and one that would bankrupt even a country with far more resources than the United States.

The Senate hearing on cybersecurity touched briefly on the internal challenge to American militarism. The lead witness, retired Gen. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency and former head of the Pentagon’s CyberCommand, bemoaned the effect of leaks by NSA contractor Edward Snowden and Army private Chelsea Manning, declaring that “insider attacks” were one of the most serious threats facing the US military.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia asked him directly, referring to Snowden, “Should we treat him as a traitor?” Alexander responded, “He should be treated as a traitor and tried as such.” Manchin nodded heartily, in evident agreement.

While the witnesses and senators chose to use the names of Snowden and Manning to personify the “enemy within,” they were clearly conscious that the domestic opposition to war is far broader than a few individual whistleblowers.

This is not a matter simply of the deep-seated revulsion among working people in response to 14 years of bloody imperialist interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and across North Africa, important as that is.

A war between the United States and a major power like China or Russia, even if it were possible to prevent its escalation into an all-out nuclear exchange, would involve a colossal mobilization of the resources of American society, both economic and human. It would mean further dramatic reductions in the living standards of the American people, combined with a huge blood toll that would inevitably fall mainly on the children of the working class.

Ever since the Vietnam War, the US military has operated as an all-volunteer force, avoiding conscription, which provoked widespread opposition and direct defiance in the 1960s and early 1970s. A non-nuclear war with China or Russia would mean the restoration of the draft and bring the human cost of war home to every family in America.

Under those conditions, no matter how great the buildup of police powers and the resort to repressive measures against antiwar sentiments, the stability of American society would be put to the test. The US ruling elite is deeply afraid of the political consequences. And it should be.

 On Tuesday, a one-sided bipartisan non-binding House resolution with 71 co-sponsors was adopted by voice vote, no opposition registered.

The entire process on an issue this sensitive took 30 minutes, no debate needed. Rubber-stamp approval sufficed, more proof showing Palestinians are on their own, sustained resistance their only recourse. Changing the deplorable status quo is impossible any other way.

Neocon Republican House Foreign Affairs chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced the measure.

AIPAC applauded the resolution, (e)xpressing concern over anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement within the Palestinian Authority.” Its statement “condemning the recent wave of Palestinian terrorism in Israel.”

Ros-Lehtinen’s hate-filled comments were quoted, saying “(t)he House has sent a clear message to Palestinian leadership that its anti-Israel incitement causing so much of the recent tension, violence, and terror will no longer be tolerated.”

There should be no doubt that the Palestinian Authority sets the tone with its incitement, resulting in the recent wave of attacks that we’re seeing against innocent Israeli civilians.

Other House members voiced similar sentiments – ignoring longstanding Israeli state terror, wars at its discretion, brutalizing occupation harshness, persecuting an entire population ruthlessly, holding it hostage, stealing its land, murdering its people.

Congress near unanimously supports Israel’s right to commit the highest of high crimes. When Palestinians defend their rights, they’re called “terrorists.”

According to AIPAC, “a wave of Palestinian incitement and terror (is ongoing) throughout the state of Israel. (A)t least a dozen Israelis have been killed and scores more wounded.”

Eight Jews were killed since October 1 in Occupied Palestine, not Israel, only two by stabbings. AIPAC’s silence was deafening, ignoring 75 Palestinians murdered by Israeli soldiers and police over the same time period, thousands injured, many hundreds arrested and brutalized in confinement.

Things aren’t entirely hopeless. Activist Josh Ruebner points out similar pro-Israeli resolutions usually get 200 – 300 co-sponsors.

This measure was first introduced in June. House members took months bringing it to the floor for a vote. Only two Democrats spoke in support of the measure.

When a voice vote was called, many members weren’t on the floor. Most pro-Israeli resolutions show recorded votes so representatives can show their allegiance on the public record.

Still it goes without saying. Virtually the entire Congress one-sidedly supports Israel. Palestinian rights don’t matter. Not a single profile in courage in Washington speaks out on their behalf. No one condemns decades of Israeli high crimes.

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.

 

In this paper I use a transborder lens to investigate the region encompassed by the Russian Far East, northeast China, eastern Mongolia, northern Korea, and the Sea of Japan. We need to transcend the framework of nation-states and restore the region’s historical agency in a broader geographic, geopolitical, and economic context. We also need to view the socioeconomic development of the area in terms of a protracted process in which variousindigenous groups played crucial roles. Recognizing the historical dynamic of this region helps to reconceptualize its present and future development.

Since 2000, Russia has increasingly turned its gaze eastward emphasizing the economic potential of Siberia and the Far East. From 2014, international tensions in the wake of the Ukraine crisis have further reinforced Russia’s “pivot to Asia,” a policy that emphasizes cooperation between its Far East and the East Asian countries.¹ This move brought world attention to the northeast part of the Eurasian continent, a long overlooked region that is a substantial and conceptual “frontier” for both Russia and Asia.²

This paper focuses on the transborder region encompassed by the Russian Far East, northeast China, eastern Mongolia, northern Korea, and the Sea of Japan. I call it a “joint frontier” in that it is viewed as an outer and peripheral region in political, economic, and social terms by all surrounding nation states. To understand the historical dynamics of this frontier, I argue, we should view it not as an isolated and divided space at the margins of nation states but restore its historical agency in a broader geographic, geopolitical, and economic context. We also need to view the socioeconomic transformation of the area as a process encompassing at least 500 years, if not more, with multiple indigenous groups, state and nonstate actors alike, playing crucial roles in local development and interchanges. Realizing the historical dynamic of this region will help us reconsider its contemporary and future development and its place in the geopolitics of the wider region.

Boundaries and Nation-Centered Narratives

The geographic area I am focusing on encompasses the Russian Far East (including Sakhalin Island), northeast China, eastern Mongolia, northern Korea, and the Japanese island of Hokkaidō. We have no common name to refer to this vast borderland in the northeastern part of the Eurasian Continent. The modern phrase “Far East,” which was popularly used before the 1960s, typically referred to Eastern Asia (including northeast Asia and sometimes southeast Asia). Today, “Far East” as a fixed geopolitical term is arguably only officially used in Russia (Dal’niy Vostok), referring to the eastern territory comprising the Far Eastern Federal District. Since Russia is not normally considered an Asian nation, few scholars discuss the Russian Far East within the framework of Asia (and vice versa).³ By the same token, none of the indigenous terms used in Asian countries captures this vast land stretching from the Tumen River region all the way to the Chukchi Peninsula.

The Northeast Eurasian Region (Revised by author from the “Relief Map of Far Eastern Federal District” in Wikimedia Commons. “J. A. O.” is the “Jewish Autonomous Oblast.”)

Scholars refer to the Russian Far East as a “frozen frontier” or “the last frontier.” ⁴ The extremely harsh climate and mountainous topography, with its diverse ecological systems, make it one of the few areas in the Eurasian continent that has not been fully developed by modern states. The Russian Far East is of course not an isolated space. Its ecology and geography were shared with the larger geoecological realm surrounding it. The southern part of this area (including the greater Amur River region⁵ and the Sea of Japan) deserves special attention, as it has long been a center of human activity, a place where multiple state influences intersect. Indigenous inhabitants long shared a similar nomadic or seminomadic lifestyle of hunting, fishing, and gathering. It was not until the nineteenth century that these modes of production gradually diversified with timbering, mining, agriculture and eventually industry brought by immigrant settlers. Local histories, not always in written form, largely concentrated on this relatively warmer part of the frontier. Likewise, if we look at today’s Russian Far East, leaving aside other parts of the region, it is clear that the local population is concentrated in its southern part. A significantly greater portion of economy in this federal district (90 percent of agricultural production, heavy industry, consumer goods production, and food processing) is in the five bordering administrative units of Amur Oblast, Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai, Primorsky Krai, and Sakhalin Oblast. Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, the two largest cities in the Russian Far East (their populations far outnumbering that of the third largest city, Komsomolsk-on-Amur⁶), are both border cities and transportation hubs. Their strategic importance comes precisely from their location as gateways connecting the Russian Far East to the surrounding areas.

This puzzle – there is no common name to identify this vast and geographically integrated realm – is related to another problem: the obstinate habit of understanding all space from the perspective of the modern state. Historians and political scientists tend to look at this peripheral region from various “centers” and with a contemporary sense of international boundaries. The very term “Far East,” of course, betrays a deep-seated Eurocentrism. In Anglophone scholarship, “northeast Eurasia” is not an independent category of Asian studies but only partly overlaps with “inner Asian frontiers,” which includes (greater) Manchuria as well as (greater) Mongolia, Chinese Turkistan (Xinjiang), and Tibet.⁷ Until recently, written histories in Russia, China, Korea, and Japan all describe indigenous peoples (most of them nomadic tribes) as “barbarian.”⁸ Moreover, the surrounding states, recognizing only their own parts of the region, divided this ecological and historical unit into several separate subregions: the Russian Far East and Siberia, China’s northeast three provinces and eastern Inner Mongolia, northeast Korea, eastern Mongolia, and northern Japan. Such a view ignores, even denies, the historical interactions among local peoples. It also turns a blind eye to the longue durée development of this land by inhabitants of multiple cultures for thousands of years before the coming of modern imperial and national states. It is perhaps not far-fetched to draw an analogy between this region and what scholars of Southeast Asia, notably James Scott, call “Zomia,” the highland region stretching from the Indochinese Peninsula and southwest China to northern India: both are divided by modern international borders and are home to diverse indigenous peoples that all neighboring states regard as “marginal.”⁹

The Greater Amur River Region (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Any historical narrative about this joint frontier, then, can hardly be immune to a state-centered perspective. The most typical example is the history of Russia’s eastward expansion into Siberia from the late sixteenth century, which usually starts like this: spurred by the thought of the profitable fur trade, the powerful Stroganov merchant family, with the support of Tsar Ivan the Terrible (r. 1533-1584), recruited Cossack mercenaries led by Yermak Timofeyevich (? -1584) to conquer Siberia in the name of the tsar. With their more advanced weaponry, Yermak and his army of 840 Cossack soldiers invaded and overthrew the Kuchum Khan of Sibir in 1582. From this point, Moscow vigorously expanded its military power east to the Ural Mountains, establishing numerous fortresses to solidify the new Russian colonies in this terra incognita. In 1647 the Russians built Okhotsk, their first fortress on the Pacific coast and what was to become the most strategic Russian base in the Far East until the Amur Acquisition in 1860. It is not surprising that Russia’s eastward march is frequently seen as parallel to the Anglo-American westward conquest at the other end of the Pacific in the nineteenth century.¹⁰ Historian Alan Wood reminds us of the speed of Russia’s expansion: “If one accepts the date of Yermak’s original foray as 1582, then Russia’s early pioneers had traversed the entire continent from the Urals to the Pacific in the space of only 65 years.”¹¹

The story of the Russian expedition, important as it is, has nevertheless been presented as a one-sided colonial narrative, much like its American counterpart of Manifest Destiny. While highlighting the continuity of Russian empire/nation-building, it ignores the internal momentum of regional development over a much more protracted historical period. It compresses history to a brief moment – a mere 65 years – relegating the long durée to the status of prologue to the consolidation of the Russian state. Another problem of the Russia-centered narrative is that it isolates the eastward movement from its global context. Such a movement is depicted as an “occasional” event due mainly to the initiative of certain “national heroes” (as Yermak is portrayed in modern Russian historiography). The impulse of capital accumulation and the desire to join a global competition for commercial interest are largely separated from the story of frontier exploitation.

The Russian version of frontier historiography is hardly unique. Similar narratives can be found in almost all countries in the transborder region. Japanese historians, for example, have seen the colonization of Hokkaidō and Karafuto (Sakhalin Island) of the Meiji period as a significant step towards a modern Japanese nation.¹² China, too, weaves this remote frontier into its nationalist historical memory. Modern historiography either emphasizes Han or non-Han rule over the Inner and Outer Manchurian region from the Han to Qing dynasties or stresses defense and territorial loss in the face of Russian and Japanese intrusions.¹³ Since the early twentieth century, Korean nationalist historiography has called for greater attention to the continental elements of the peninsular nation. The nostalgia for the ancient kingdoms of Koguryŏ (37 BC–668 AD) and Parhae (698–926) (Gaogouli and Bohai in Chinese), whose territory expanded from the Liaodong Peninsula to Primorsky, has an important place in historical textbooks and museum exhibitions in contemporary North and South Korea.¹⁴

In all this rhetoric of the past, many indigenous peoples are voiceless; history is fragmented, the space segregated. The overall development of the Northeast Eurasian continent, instead of being examined as a continuous process and an organic part of world history, is broken into pieces each of which is subsumed as a peripheral part of the Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Histories (with a capital H—history as a linear narrative of a nation). These parallel linear Histories, of course, hardly coincide, overlapping only in the case of confrontations (territorial, political, ethnic, economic, and military) among imperial or national states. This region was the battlefield of the Qing-Russian border wars (1652–1689), the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), the Siberian Intervention (1918-1922), the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts (1932-1945), and the PRC-Soviet border war (1969), to name a few. It is no surprise, then, that being a gateway or “meeting ground”¹⁵ of different cultures and civilizations, the region is rather portrayed as the “cradle of conflict.”¹⁶

An Alternative Narrative: Northeast Eurasia as the Center

Recent developments in historiography, especially the application of world system theory and increasing attention to marginal communities, provide opportunities to rethink the history of this joint frontier.¹⁷ By examining indigenous dynamics of regional development, I place the transformation of Northeast Eurasia in a regional and global (as opposed to national) context. This is not to deny that competitive nation building over the last two centuries has been a decisive stimulus for borderland transitions. To the contrary, a frontier-centric view aims at reexamining the interaction between hinterland and frontier. It urges us to recognize the historical significance of the nation-state-building processes in all surrounding countries and gives us a new angle from which to consider the ongoing development of the region and its potential .

From the Ancient Period to the Mongol Empire

Northeast Eurasia was the home of various ancient Altaic- or Turkish-speaking peoples. Many of them, such as the Sushen, Huimo, Donghu, Xianbei, Wuhuan, Fuyu, Woju, Mohe, Koguryŏ (Chinese: Gaogouli), Shiwei, Khitan, and Jurchen, gradually merged into (or amalgamated with) other groups and became indistinguishable from them. Many others, such as the Yakut, Nanai (Ch: Hezhe), Oroqen (Ch: Erlunchun), Daur, Koryaks, Evenks (Ch: Erwenke), Chukchi, Nivkh, and Ainu, are officially recognized minorities and indigenous peoples in today’s Russia, China, and Japan. It should be emphasized that the boundaries of these groups were far from rigid, and there was a large degree of overlap or acculturation both among them and with the surrounding communities such as the Han Chinese, Manchu, Russian, Mongol, Korean, and Japanese. A distinguishing feature of the indigenous groups is that most of them engaged in hunting, fishing, and gathering as their primary form of livelihood. Agriculture was also developed in the southern parts of the border region, especially in Manchuria and the northern Korean Peninsula. Archeological evidence shows the sociopolitical organizations of the indigenous people varied. Some formed states or quasi-states, others did not. Before the Mongol Empire (1206<-1368) conquered substantial parts of the Eurasian continent and for the first time placed a major part of Northeast Eurasia under a single administration (the Liaoyang Xingsheng), several indigenous kingdoms had ruled various parts of this frontier. Among them were Koguryŏ, Parhae, the Khitan Liao (915–1125), and the Jurchen Jin (1115–1234).

Liao Dynasty in 1025 AD	Jin Dynasty in 1141 AD (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Liao Dynasty in 1025 AD	Jin Dynasty in 1141 AD (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The early history of Northeast Eurasia was recorded mainly in Chinese official histories. These works portrayed a geopolitical map highlighting the military tension between the Middle Kingdom and the nomad Xiongnu Khanate (4^th century BC – 48 AD) in today’s northern China, Mongolia, and Central Asia. To the east, various tribal polities in the greater Amur River region (Wuhuan, Xianbei, etc.) were viewed as either potential allies or enemies in the China-Xiongnu confrontation. John Stephan argues that in this early stage China had the most visible cultural and political influence in the area.¹⁸ The Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) established four commanderies in 109 BC to rule today’s southern northeast China and the northern Korean Peninsula. By the time of the Western Jin Dynasty (216-366), however, with the rise of Koguryŏ, all four commanderies had dissolved (313 AD). The Tang Dynasty (618–907), along with Silla of Korea, overthrew Koguryŏ in 668. The Tang not only reestablished Chinese control over the Yalu and Tumen River region but also set up outposts and established “tributary” relations with native chiefs in the middle and lower Amur River regions. Meanwhile, other neighboring polities attempted to expand to this area. In the mid-seventh century, Japanese general Abe no Hirafu launched several successful wars against the Sushen (Japanese: Mishihase) and Emishi/Ainu peoples in Hokkaidō. But the Tang-Silla allied force defeated Abe’s later invasion of the Korean Peninsula.¹⁹

Although the centralizing governments viewed it as a marginal place, the diverse inhabitants of the greater Amur River region played a critical role in bringing East Asian societies together. Through war, trade, migration, and governmental communication, the region not only linked societies in China, Korea, and Japan but also connected East Asia to a larger world. Take the example of local religions: in all early indigenous regimes, from Koguryŏ to the Mongol Yuan, the belief system was a mixture of Buddhism and native Shamanism (occasionally combined with Daoism), which confirmed the region’s geocultural importance as a meeting ground of South Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia. It was also a hub on the trans-Eurasian trade route (aka the Silk Road): those traveling from Europe to Korea and Japan simply couldn’t bypass this region. The earliest recorded Japanese contacts with China were through the four commanderies.²⁰ Later the Koguryŏ kingdom frequently interacted with various Chinese dynasties to its west, Paekche and Silla to its south, the Wuji/Mohe tribes to its north, and Japan in the east. The Parhae kingdom established official diplomacy with both Tang China and Japan in the eighth and ninth centuries. The Khitan Liao and Jurchen Jin not only penetrated deeply into the Chinese hinterland but fostered trade relationships with states in central Asia, west Asia, and even eastern Europe. In most Slavic languages, the word “Khitan” (Kitay in Russian) is still the name for China, revealing the huge historical impact the Northeast Eurasian power once had in both ends of the continent.

The regimes that arose in premodern Northeast Eurasia have distinct sociopolitical features (e.g. nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle and shamanism) that differentiate them to varying degrees from the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese states that existed in the same period. Today, however, their histories have been subsumed into the larger Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, and Japanese national Histories, provoking fierce debates as to which modern nation-state can lay claim to a particular indigenous regime. One of the most visible conflicts in recent decades has been the Chinese-Korean dispute over Koguryŏ/Gaogouli.²¹ Each side refused to view the ancient kingdom as an independent regional polity that adopted (and rejected) influences from both the Middle Kingdom and the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. Although the PRC and the ROK maintained a glowing bilateral trade record, the antagonism ignited by anachronistic historical narratives certainly hindered their political trust and cooperation.

The Age of Discovery, the Competition between Empires

Scholars refer to the expansion of power in Western Europe in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries as the Age of Discovery, highlighting the maritime exploration of the trade route that eventually incorporated most human societies into a capitalist world. The main players were Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain, and France. But let us not forget two important elements that were deeply embedded in the European motive to “discover” the world. The first was the desire to find a route to trade directly with the East, including India, China, and Southeast Asia. This was at least partially inspired by Marco Polo’s travels to the Mongol Yuan (1271-1368), a transcontinental power that arose from the northeast Eurasian steppe. The other was the persistent need to acquire various kinds of fur (known as “soft gold” at the time) thanks to the global cooling in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.²² It was these two elements that absorbed Northeast Eurasia into an increasingly globalized trade network in which the Amur region would play an important role. Contrary to earlier assumptions, China was not an outsider in this transformative era. Recent scholarship demonstrates that Ming China’s voyage to the Indian Ocean from 1405 to 1433, led by the Muslim eunuch and mariner Zheng He, shared many similarities with European maritime expansion.²³

Another Chinese expedition around the same period that is less well known than Zheng He’s voyage is the expedition to the Amur River region led by another eunuch, Yishiha (Isiqa). In 1409 Emperor Yongle (r. 1402-1424) set up the Nurgan Regional Military Commission (Nu’ergan dusi) in today’s Tyr, Russia, to incorporate local tribes in the Amur and Sungari River regions to his frontier administration. From 1411 to 1432, as an imperial envoy, Yishiha led the Ming fleet to inspect the Nurgan region (including Sakhalin Island) on ten occasions.²⁴ Like Zheng He’s voyage, Yishiha’s overland expeditions combined political, military, and commercial interests. Ming China’s strategic goal was to secure local Jurchen support for its military campaign against the post-Yuan Mongols and to establish tributary relationships with native chiefs. Ming rule of this vast area followed the Tang practice of “nominal governorship” (jimi), in which native leaders received official titles and were entrusted to govern local affairs in exchange for political submission and preservation of order. Historical records show that Yishiha, who spent nine years altogether in Nurgan, was in contact not only with the Jurchens but also the Nivkh, Ainu, and other indigenous tribes.²⁵ His expedition significantly increased social, political, and commercial exchanges between Beijing and Nurgan. Although the Nurgan commission was abolished in 1434, the more than 200 guards and dozens of outposts supervised by Nurgan largely remained until the Jianzhou Jurchen unified the region in the early seventeenth century and renamed the Jurchen people “Manchu.”²⁶

Early Ming expeditions in the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, central Asia, and northeast Asia. The red line shows Yishiha’s expedition; the black line shows Zheng He’s voyages. The green line shows Chen Cheng’s mission to Central Asia in the first half of the 15th century. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Ming northeast expedition needs to be understood within global, regional, and local frameworks. First, the expedition was part of the imperial enterprise of extending China’s political influence, as was Zheng He’s voyage to the Indian Ocean. It incorporated Northeast Eurasia into what was to become a much more connected world. Commodity exchanges, in the form of tributary mission or border markets, strengthened Manchuria’s socioeconomic ties with China, Korea, and Siberia. Horses produced in Manchuria, furs in Siberia, and foodstuff and iron implements in China’s Central Plains and Korea were among the most important commodities. Various Jurchen chiefs competed for the limited patents to trade with the Ming. The monopoly of the Ming trade eventually contributed to Nurhaci’s unification of the Jurchen tribes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.²⁷Second, the expedition occurred around the time when Chosŏn Korea (1392-1897) expanded its territory to the Tumen River and Muromachi Japan (1336-1573) to southern Hokkaidō. All three East Asian powers were marching north to solidify control over the ethnic frontiers in the wake of the collapse of the Mongol Empire. Third, the establishment of Nurgan was initially proposed by native Jurchen tribes and was supervised by Yishiha, an ethnic Jurchen himself.²⁸ These facts suggest that local initiative could be equally critical, if not more important, in linking the capital and the frontiers. The creation of the northeast Eurasian gateway was never a one-sided project imposed by the imperial state.

The seventeenth century was a period of global imperial competition. It witnessed not only the rise of maritime powers like the Netherlands and Britain but also the rise of two continental powers in Eurasia: the Manchu Qing in the east and Russian Tsardom in the west.²⁹ Russia was lured eastward to Siberia and the Far East, as mentioned above, by the huge profits in the fur trade. Historians suggest that before the fiscal reform of Peter the Great (r. 1696-1725), profits from the fur trade accounted for approximately 10% of the state revenue.³⁰ The same quest for fur drove the Dutch, the British, and the French to explore and conquer North America. The two new sources for fur, Siberia and North America, spurred the contests for markets and trade routes. But fur was not itself the end goal. European explorers expected the capital generated by the fur trade to fund a bigger enterprise: trade with China. As Timothy Brook explains, “The dream of getting to China is the imaginative thread that runs through the history of early-modern Europe’s struggle to escape from its isolation and enter the wider world.”³¹ From this perspective, Russia’s eastward push, perhaps the only expedition to kill two birds with one stone, was an inseparable part of early global reach of the European powers.

In the late seventeenth century, however, Russia’s exploration in the Far East was checked by the Qing in the Amur River basin. For Qing China, the northeast frontier had unique political, social, ritual, religious, and economic meanings since it was regarded as the birthplace of the ruling ethnic group, the Manchus. During its rise, the Qing successfully incorporated or conquered various Mongol tribes, and established its control over the inner Asian steppe. Many recent scholars thus emphasize the Manchu Qing’s nature as an inner Asian power as opposed to merely another Chinese dynasty.³² I would rather emphasize its Northeast Eurasian character. Qing rule over the greater Manchurian region was institutionally distinct from both the order imposed in China proper (the Six Boards system) and that in the rest of inner Asia (the lifanyuan system). The region was ruled under the indigenous banner system and supervised by three military commanders (Shengjing, Jilin and Heilongjiang). Until 1905, almost all commanders were members of either the Manchu or Mongol Eight Banners.³³

Qing policy towards the Amur River region differed from Russian policy towards the same region. During most of the Qing period, the forest zone of Jilin and Heilongjiang, largely segregated from the agricultural zone of Liaodong and the nomadic zone of Mongolia, was designated as “royal reserves” for the Manchus. Access to this part of the empire was limited. As a result, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century when Russia gradually extended its reach to the far north, even Alaska, the Qing Northeast Eurasia was preserved from exploitation (and continued to be so until the late nineteenth century).

The military clash between the two great powers eventually led to a Qing-Russian agreement to divide Northeast Eurasia. The 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk officially established the boundaries and regulated bilateral trade.³⁴ The treaty, mediated by Jesuit and Mongol interpreters, was among the earliest of several similar diplomatic protocols between countries of the Eurasian continent. In other words, the competition over this frontier gave birth to one of the first international treaties over national territory in the modern world.³⁵ As a result, Russia was kept out of the Amur River basin until 1860. In 1727, Russia and Qing China signed the Treaty of Kyakhta, which established official border trade between the two empires. The treaty made Kyakhta one of the most famous Sino-European commercial ports (along with Canton) and helped to create a thriving cross-continental trade route through the Mongolian steppe.

The Russian expedition in the Far East in the late seventeenth century led to the first Russo-Japanese encounter. For generations, many Japanese ships foundered on the shores of the Kamchatka Peninsula. In 1697 a sailor from a Japanese shipwreck, Dembei, encountered a Russian explorer, Vladimir Atlassov, in Kamchatka. Dembei eventually was sent to St. Petersburg and served as the first Japanese-language teacher in Russia. From that moment, Russian merchants and envoys appeared in the Ezo region (Hokkaido) as well as the Japanese interior. They became one of the rare sources, aside from the Dutch, to provide Japan information about early modern Europe before the coming of the “Black Ships” in the mid-nineteenth century.³⁶

2-3 Modern Stage: The Continuation of Frontier Transformation

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are notable for the global spread of capitalism, nationalism, and industrialism. Imperial, colonial, and national powers struggled against each other as they vied for territory, people, markets, and natural resources. The impact in Northeast Eurasia, as in other parts of the world, was unprecedented. The Northeast Eurasian frontier was profoundly transformed by the coming of “modernity” in the form of global capitalism. ³⁷

There is no need to elaborate on the competition among Russia (and later the Soviet Union), Japan, China, Korea, and the United States to control the region in the last two centuries. But we need to understand how certain significant transitions in this multilateral borderland were partly the result of this competition.

Russia’s territorial acquisitions, especially outer Manchuria in 1860 and Sakhalin in 1875, stimulated great immigration waves from all directions. To strengthen their control on Manchuria, the Qing gradually opened what were once forbidden lands and encouraged Chinese to settle the region. It also allowed Koreans to claim the wild land north to the Tumen and Yalu Rivers. By the end of World War II, northeast China was home to 20 million Han Chinese, nearly 2 million Koreans and 1.66 million Japanese. Responding to the Russian threat, Meiji Japan also moved aggressively to colonize Hokkaidō and the Kuril Islands. By 1945, more than 3.5 million Japanese and others had migrated to Hokkaidō. Between 1860 and 1940, the Russian Far East not only accommodated millions of immigrants from Ukraine, Siberia, and central Russia but also 200,000 Koreans (who were forcibly resettled in central Asia in the 1930s). The immigrants far outnumbered the indigenous peoples, who were classified as ethnic minorities in their homeland with the flow of migrants from the late nineteenth century.

Second, with the arrival of agricultural settlers and large-scale building of infrastructure (roads, railways, ports and cities), what had been a forest frontier simultaneously experienced agricultural and industrial development. Manchuria and Hokkaidō became important food bases for China and Japan. The fishing industry in Primorsky and Hokkaidō played a critical role in Russia and Japan. Mining and timber industries had long been economic pillars of the region. Heavy industries in northeast China in the twentieth century were among the most advanced in East Asia. The result was the modern transformation of local ways of life and the profound transformation of society and ecology.

Third, the modern transformation of the frontier took place amidst fierce rivalry among the powers. The industrialization of northeast China can be trace to late Qing New Policy reforms and their extension under the Beiyang warlords in the 1910s and 20s. The Japanese turned Manchukuo into an industrial base of the colonial empire in the years 1932-45.³⁸ With significant input from the Soviets, northeast China became a vital engine for industrialization of the PRC from the late 1940s. The industrial transformation of Northeast Eurasia thus continued across various historical stages, taking place under diverse political regimes including imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, and socialism). We cannot understand the transition of the region without seeing its historical continuities.

Fourth, in most the twentieth century when this frontier region was fundamentally transformed, the dominant economic mode was (and to some extent still is) planned economy, as opposed to market economy. On one hand, local products (soybeans, rice, coal, timber, and industrial goods) were directly sold to the global capitalist market in exchange for industrial products; on the other hand, various states proactively controlled and commanded local economic development in order to transform this “virgin land” into an agricultural and industrial base for modern states.³⁹ State projects, such as intensive infrastructure building (railroads, roads), collective agricultural production, energy exploitation, and heavy industrial construction, drove local development and stimulated inward migration from the early twentieth century to the 1970s. The region’s geostrategic importance long placed a premium on state planning. In the 1990s, neoliberal economic reform in northeast China, including privatizing state-owned enterprises and abandoning the welfare system, has generally been deemed a failure in both economic and social terms.⁴⁰

Finally, the frontier’s transition since the nineteenth century would not have been possible had there had been no local initiative or transboundary collaboration. Take the example of the Trans-Siberian Railway (1891-1916) (including the Chinese Eastern Railway and South Manchurian Railway attached to it), a grand project that significantly changed Northeast Eurasia’s political, economic, and ecological landscapes. The construction of the railway combined the efforts of engineers, laborers, managers, local suppliers, and technicians from Russia, China, Korea, and Japan. It was hardly an enterprise completed by one government or one group of people. By the same token, northeast China and Primorsky became rice producers only because Korean immigrants, through years of experiment in the early twentieth century, applied Japanese seed and their farming skill to the paddy fields in this high-latitude area.⁴¹ Later Chinese, Russians, and Japanese all promoted rice farming in this area, to the extent that the principal local food changed from millet to rice. This history of local cooperation is, I believe, particularly pertinent for discussion today. In this multinational frontier, no single nation could build a thriving economy or society on its own.

Hunchun: A Case Study

Perhaps no city better exemplifies the historical evolution of this joint frontier than Hunchun, a border town in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China’s Jilin Province. Located at the mouth of the Tumen River and facing the settlement of Posyet in Russia, the city of Rasŏn in North Korea, and the Sea of Japan, Hunchun is regional hub. The township was first built by the Koguryŏ kingdom and set up by the Parhae dynasty as the eastern capital (Longyuanfu) and political center. During the Parhae period (698-926), the rulers sent envoys from Hunchun to Japan thirty-four times, receiving thirteen return visits. Trade between Parhae and Japan (fur, textile, ginseng) thrived until Hunchun was occupied by the Jurchen in the tenth century. In 1714 the Qing established a mid-ranking banner unit of assistant commandant (xieling) in Hunchun, in 1859, promoting it to vice commander-in-chief (fudutong). According to the terms of the Qing-Russian Treaty of Beijing (1860), Russia occupied the mouth of the Tumen River, so that Hunchun (and the whole of northeast China) lost direct access to the Sea of Japan.⁴²

The location of Hunchun

In the late nineteenth century, Hunchun was no longer a military town inhabited mainly by the Manchus. With the opening of Manchuria, this border town grew to become a center of the regional market network. Merchants from China, Japan, and Russia flooded in, along with Han and Korean agricultural immigrants. By 1909 Hunchun was home to more than 7,000 people and 500 firms. Adjoined by the Posyet Bay of Russia, Hunchun was an important intersection of several land and maritime routes in northeast Asia, proclaiming itself the center of the Hunchun-Vladivostok commercial circle. The business area of the circle covered Jilin and Heilongjiang of Manchuria, the southern part of Primorskaya Oblast, northern Korea, and northern Japan, as shown in the chart below. ⁴³

The Hunchun-Vladivostok circle connected with the business circles in Shandong, Shanghai, and Japan. According to Chinese historian Huang Jinfu, many Hunchun merchants set up headquarters in Shanghai, general branches in Hunchun and Vladivostok, and retail shops in towns and villages in eastern Jilin.⁴⁴ This linked the world market to the multilateral frontier of Jilin-Hamgyŏng-Primorsky. Local agricultural products (soybean bricks, soybean oil, vegetables, livestock, and timber) were exported from Hunchun in exchange for industrial products from inner China, Russia and other countries. The imports included fine cloth (made in Japan, Shanghai, the United States, and Britain), oil products (mainly Mei Foo, a local brand of Standard Oil from the United States), matches (Japan), gauze and woolens (Russia), seafood (Russia and Japan), cigarettes (Russia and Britain), and cotton (Japan and China).⁴⁵

When the Chinese Eastern Railway, which connected Siberia and Vladivostok through Manchuria, was built in1903, Hunchun’s status as a regional commercial center was weakened. Cargo imported from Vladivostok and Posyet Bay could then be delivered to Manchuria and Russia without passing through Hunchun. But what was more significant was the border restriction that resulted from military tensions between the newly established Soviet Union and Japan in the 1920s.⁴⁶ In 1922, the Soviets turned Vladivostok into a navy port and closed off the border, curtailing overseas trade. A decade later, Japan occupied the whole of Manchuria and established Manchukuo. From the 1920s to the end of WWII, Japan monopolized international trade in Hunchun. The once thriving multinational commercial town became an easy channel for Japan to dump its products to Manchuria.⁴⁷ During the Cold War, aside from very limited exchanges between China and North Korea, there was litle international trade in Hunchun.⁴⁸

The Hunchun Commercial Circle

The end of the Cold War brought new opportunities for local development. In 1992 the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) endorsed the Tumen River Area Development Programme (renamed the Greater Tumen Initiative in 2005).⁴⁹ Proposed first by China, the program envisaged regional economic cooperation among the neighboring countries and aimed to create a free economic zone in the Tumen River delta. Hunchun was regarded as the linchpin to implement this plan. The city soon established a Border Economic Cooperation Zone in hope of following the successful developmental model of Chinese coastal cities. After several years of high-speed development and investment fever, however, the government-oriented plan reached a bottleneck. Since the late 1990s, the program has stagnated. Trying to pinpoint the reason for the failure, one local official suggested that the lack of international cooperation was the main obstacle.⁵⁰ Most observers also attribute the difficulty to ongoing geopolitical tensions in the region.⁵¹

The City of Hunchun (photo by Wang Laihui, 2012)

Recognizing the difficulties, the Chinese government altered the original plan and refocused on developing the provincial economy of Jilin, hoping that its power would radiate to the frontier. In 2009 the Jilin provincial government presented the “Outline of the Tumen River Area Cooperative Development Program Considering Changchun-Jilin-Tumen as a Pilot Zone for Development and Opening.”⁵² The program soon received the Chinese central government’s endorsement.⁵³ The new plan prioritized the economic integration of the three sub-regions in Jilin: Changchun, Jilin, and the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Hunchun’s strategic status was again highlighted. Viewing industrialized regions like Changchun and Jilin as its hinterland, the Chinese promised to turn Hunchun into the “bridgehead of Tumen River regional cooperation.” Some progress has been made since 2009, especially in infrastructure. The collaboration with North Korea, including the long-term lease of the Rasŏn port and transborder tourism, also shows some positive signs. Yet the program faces challenges in the form of international and domestic politics, long-term investment, and a sustainable social environment. Considering especially the current awkward China-DPRK relationship since North Korean leader Kim Jungun assumed power in 2011, the future of bilateral economic cooperation remains in doubt.

Viewed in regional perspective, neither the Tumen Initiative nor the Changchun-Jilin-Tumen program is a new creation. Rather, each can be seen as a return to the past or the resumption of an historical trajectory that was interrupted by geopolitical conflict in the last century. The historical evolution of Hunchun —and the northeast frontier in general—was never just about economy or trade. Although Hunchun once played a leading role in regional trade, the prosperity of such a network was contingent on the social-ecological transition of Northeast Eurasia in general. The key to its historical success was not so much the logic of a transborder free market but the transformation of the frontier region within a dynamic state and region. Without a comprehensive program for promoting social and ecological development in Hunchun and throughout the region, the economy will eventually lose momentum. In the past two decades, transportation and communications infrastructure in Hunchun has grown dramatically. However, a significant portion of young ethnic Koreans have left for employment as migrant workers in South Korea. The “empty-nest” family has become a pervasive social problem in both the countryside and cities in Yanbian. If current economic plans and programs cannot attract local youth, how will they attract people from elsewhere?

Conclusion:

Russia’s recent “pivot to Asia” has drawn interest in the economic potential of the Northeast Eurasian frontier. But Russia’s move is only the latest in various similar projects initiated by various states in the region. For example, Japan was arguably the first country to promote the concept of “the economic circle surrounding the Sea of Japan.” Immediately after the end of the Cold War, this project envisioned international collaboration among Japan, Russia, China, and the two Koreas. Japan’s plan was followed by the Greater Tumen Initiative, which was announced by the UNDP and endorsed by China, Russia, Mongolia, South Korea, and North Korea (which withdrew in 2009). Moreover, in the 1990s, North Korea established its first “economic special zone” in Rasŏn, a city that adjoins both Russia and China. In 2010, P’yŏngyang even promoted Rasŏn as a “special city” governed directly by P’yŏngyang. Russia’s recent “pivot” further confirms the strategic importance of this Eurasian gateway.

However, none of the previous projects achieved their goal. If this plan is to be more successful, it is important to learn the lessons suggested by earlier projects. The most important one, simply put, is that the national agendas of each country hardly coincide. Inter-national conflicts during the last century have repeatedly undermined attempts to fulfill the regional potential for development and trade. Ultimately, multilateral cooperation is critical to the success of all of these projects.

By providing an alternative way to view the history and modern development of the northeast Eurasian frontier, I argue for understanding this ecological space in terms of its unique historical agency, with its own developmental dynamic. It was never isolated from “civilizations,” nor was it merely a joint periphery of multiple nation-states. Rather, this region not only played a crucial role in connecting various Asian societies while also giving birth to some great transregional powers, notably the Yuan and the Qing. The history of this frontier is inseparable from regional and global history with their cycles of absorption and expansion. This multilateral interaction repeatedly transformed the region, at times making it a dynamic immigrant destinations and developmental area, while remaining susceptible to conflicts among the regional powers.

Current attempts to revitalize the economy of this joint frontier must be seen within the historical trajectory of local and regional evolution and transformation; success hinges ultimately on the development of local and regional social and ecological systems. Comparing the trading systems in Southeast Asia, where the overseas Chinese played a critical role in forming a social network, Takeshi Hamashita observes that a major difficulty for the future development of Northeast Asia is “the lack of an appropriate human network that could serve as a template for regional structures.”⁵⁴ International cooperation is possible only if there is sufficient local initiative. A unilaterally imposed plan cannot succeed if it serves only the short-term interests of a state rather than the long-term welfare of a transborder society. By the same token, a neoliberal vision of a “free-trade zone,” which highlights only economic development but not social and ecological development, is hardly sustainable.

Nianshen Song ([email protected]) is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the History Department, Vassar College. This article is based on a paper he presented at the conference “Developing Asia Pacific’s Last Frontier: Fostering International Cooperation in the Development of Russia’s Siberia and Far East,” held in Vladivostok, Russia, in 2015.

Related articles

• Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Democracy’s Porous Borders: Espionage, Smuggling and the Making of Japan’s Transwar Regime (Part I)

• Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Democracy’s Porous Borders: Espionage, Smuggling and the Making of Japan’s Transwar Regime (Part 2)

• Mark Selden, Economic Nationalism and Regionalism in Contemporary East Asia

• Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–Present

• Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Guarding the Borders of Japan: Occupation, Korean War and Frontier Controls

• Uradyn E. Bulag, The Nomonhan Incident and the Politics of Friendship on the Russia-Mongolia-China Border

• Mark Selden, East Asian Regionalism and its Enemies in Three Epochs: Political Economy and Geopolitics, 16th to 21st Centuries

• Matthew R. Augustine, Border-Crossers and Resistance to US Military Rule in the Ryukyus, 1945-1953

• Andrei Lankov, China’s Korean Autonomous Prefecture and China-Korea Border Politics

Notes

¹ Andrew C. Kuchins, “Russia and the CIS in 2013: Russia’s Pivot to Asia,” Asian Survey, Vol. 54, No. 1, A Survey of Asia in 2013 (January/February 2014), pp. 129-137.

² The first recognition of the importance of the region in Anglophone literature came in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. See, for example, Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East (New York: Routledge, 1995); Mark J. Valencia, ed., The Russian Far East in Transition: Opportunities for Regional Economic Cooperation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); Tsuneo Akaha, ed., Politics and Economics in the Russian Far East: Changing Ties with Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, 1997); Peggy Falkenheim Meyer, “The Russian Far East’s Economic Integration with Northeast Asia: Problems and Prospects,” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Summer 1999), pp. 209-224. Also mention literature on Tumen zone from 1992?

³ For example, the Association for Asian Studies, the world’s leading academic organization in Asian studies, doesn’t list Russia or the Russian Far East within its research umbrella.

⁴ For example, see Alan Woods, Russia’s Frozen Frontier: A History of Siberia and the Russian Far East 1581-1991, (New York: Bloomsbury Academy, 2011) and Sue Davis, The Russian Far East: The Last Frontier? (New York: Routledge, 2003).

⁵ I use this term to refer to an area that roughly includes the eastern part of northeast China (Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces, and the eastern part of Inner Mongolia), the southern part of the Russian Far East (Amur Oblast, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Primorsky Krai, and southern Khabarovsk Krai), the eastern part of Mongolia, and the northeastern part of the Korean Peninsula.

⁶ According to the 2002 census, the populations of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk are 594,701 and 583,072 respectively. The population of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the third largest city in RFE, was 271,600. Source: Russian Census of 2002.

⁷ Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontier of China (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). See also Joseph Fletcher, “Ch’ing Inner Asia,” in Denis Crispin Twitchett and John King Fairbank, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Volume 10, Part 1 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 35–106. However, in a new book Evelyn Rawski argues that “[f]rom the perspective of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries … the primary Inner Asian influences come from northeast Asia.” Evelyn Rawski, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia: Cross-Border Perspectives, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) p.2.

⁸ For example, Yan Congjian, a Chinese writer in the Ming dynasty, defines the Tartars (Mongols) as “Northern Barbarians (di)” and the Jurchen as “Northeastern barbarians (dongbei yi).” See Zhou yu zhou zi lu, (Beijing: zhong hua shu ju, 1993). Korean texts before the 20^th century refer to the Jurchen/Manchu people in its northern border as “barbarians (ho).” Ancient Japanese texts use the term “Emishi” or “Ezo” for aboriginal people living in northern Honshu and Hokkaido, a term which is composed of two characters for “shrimp” and “barbarian.”

⁹ James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

¹⁰ During the heyday of Russia’s eastward expansion, Russian intellectuals frequently envisaged the Amur River region as “Russia’s very own Mississippi.” See Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.10.

¹¹ Alan Wood, Russia’s Frozen Frontier: A History of Siberia and the Russian Far East, 1581 – 1991 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), p. 31.

¹² Michele Manson, Dominant Narratives of Colonial Hokkaido and Imperial Japan: Envisioning the Periphery and the Modern Nation-State (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

¹³ Jin Yufu, Dongbei tongshi (东北通史) (Chongqing: Wushi Niandai Press, 1943); Xue Hong and Li Shutian, eds., Zhongguo dongbei tongshi (中国东北通史)(Changchun: Jilin Wenshi Press, 1991).

¹⁴ Andre Schmid, “Looking North toward Manchuria,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 219–240; Andre Schmid,”Rediscovering Manchuria: Sin Ch’aeho and the Politics of Territorial History in Korea,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 1 (February 1997), pp. 26-46.

¹⁵ John J. Stephan, The Russian Far East: A History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 2.

¹⁶ Owen Lattimore, Manchuria: Cradle of Conflict (New York: Macmillan, 1935).

¹⁷ For example, Takeshi Hamashita’s study of the Ryukyu kingdom located at the intersection of the East China Sea and South China Sea, incorporated world system theory. See “The Ryukyu maritime network from the fourteenth to eighteenth century,” in Takeshi Hamashita Takeshi, “China, East Asia, and the Global Economy: Regional and Historical Perspectives” (London: Routledge, 2008.)

¹⁸ Stephan, The Russian Far East, pp. 14-19.

¹⁹ Nihon shoki (日本書紀), Vol. 26.

²⁰ Fan Ye, Book of Later Han (后汉书), Vol. 85, Treatise on the Dongyi, “Wo.”

²¹ Yonson Ahn, “The Contested Heritage of Koguryo/Gaogouli and China-Korea Conflict,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (accessed on May 6, 2015).

²² See Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008).

²³ See Geoff Wade, “The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 78, No. 1 (288) (2005), pp. 37-58; Tansen Sen, “The Formation of Chinese Maritime Networks to Southern Asia, 1200-1450,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 49, No. 4 (2006), pp. 421-453.

²⁴ Li Jiancai, Ming dai dong bei (明代东北) (Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Press, 1986), pp. 17-19. The size of his expedition varied each time. For example, in 1411, he employed 25 giant boats with more than 1000 staff and crew; the final expedition (1432) mobilized 50 giant boats with a crew exceeding 2000 .

²⁵ Yishiha, “yong ning si ji (永寧寺記)” and “chong xiu yong ning si ji (重修永寧寺記).”

²⁶ Li Jiancai, Ming dai dongbei, p. 19. Also see Agui, qing ding man zhou yuan liu kao (欽定滿洲源流考), Vol.1.

²⁷ Gertraude Roth Li, “State Building before 1644”, in Willard J. Peterson (ed.), Cambridge History of China, Vol. 9, Part 1: The Ch’ing Dynasty to 1800, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,) pp. 9–72

²⁸ Shih-Shan Henry Tsai, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), pp. 129–130.

²⁹ See Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

³⁰ Wood, Russia’s Frozen Frontier, p. 32.

³¹ Brook, Vermeer’s Hat, pp. 43-46.

³² See Pamela Kyle Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999); Mark Elliot,The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

³³ The only exception was Fumingga, a member of the Hanjun banner who was the commander of Jilin from 1866 to 1870.

³⁴ Peter Perdue, “Boundaries and Trade in the Early Modern World: Negotiations at Nerchinsk and Beijing,”

Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Spring 2010), pp.341-356.

³⁵ Wang Hui, Xiandai zhongguo sixiang de xingqi (现代中国思想的兴起) (Beijing: SDX Joint Press, 2004), p. 690.

³⁶ Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 31-58.

³⁷ By “modernity” I mean the global sociopolitical transformation associated with Western-oriented capitalism, colonialism, industrialism and nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

³⁸ See Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-1932 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001).

³⁹ Hai Zhao, Manchurian Atlas: Competitive Geopolitics, Planned Industrialization and the Rise of Heavy Industrial State in Northeast China, 1918-1954 (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2015).

⁴⁰ See Mun Young Cho, The Specter of “the People”: Urban Poverty in Northeast China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).

⁴¹ Yi Baozhong, chaoxian yimin yu dongbei shuitian kaifa (朝鲜移民与东北地区水田开发) (Changchun: Chuangchun Press, 1999).

⁴² Hunchun shi difangzhi bianzhuan weiyuanhui, Hunchun Shi Zhi (珲春市志), (Chuangchun: Jilin renmin chubanshe, 2000), pp.11-18.

⁴³ Adapted from Huang Jinfu, “Chuyi jindai maoyi zhongzhen, Hunchun (刍议近代贸易重镇——珲春),” in Yanbian Institute of Historical Studies, ed., Yanbian Lishi Yanjiu (延边历史研究), Vol. 3 (Yanji: Yanbian Institute of Historical Studies, 1988), pp. 22-23

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Ge Xiufeng, “Hunchun zaoqi duiwai maoyi(珲春早期对外贸易),” in Wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui, Yanbian Committee of the CCPCC, ed., Xiri Yanbian Jingji,Yanbian Wenshi Ziliao, Vol. 7 (昔日延边经济：延边文史资料第七集), (Yanji: Yanbian Renmin Press, 1995), p. 212. Also see Tōkanfu Rinji Kantō Hashutsujo Zanmu Seirijo,Kantō sangyō chōsasho (間島産業調査書), Shōgyō, pp. 23-26, pp. 112-114.

⁴⁶ Chōsengun Shireibu. Kantō oyobi Konshun (間島及琿春), 1921, pp.55-56.

⁴⁷ Japan did this by lowering the import tax for Japanese goods. See Hunchun shi zhi, p.400 and p.461. See also Setsurei Tsurushima, Tomankō chiiki kaihatsu (豆満江地域開発), (Suita-shi : Kansai Daigaku Shuppanbu, 2000), p.176.

⁴⁸ Hunchun shi zhi, pp.455-461.

⁴⁹ Greater Tumen Initiative (accessed on May 6, 2015).

⁵⁰ See the interview with Deng Kai, CCP secretary of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in 2007 by the Xinhua News Agency.

⁵¹ For example, see Shen Yue, “Tumenjiang quyu guoji hezuo: libi yinsu yu jianyi (图们江区域国际合作:利弊因素与建议),” Jingying guanli zhe, 2013, Issue 27.

⁵² Zhenxing dongbei wang.

⁵³ Central People’s Government of People’s Republic of China, official website (accessed on May 6, 2015).

⁵⁴ Takeshi Hamashita, “The Future of Northeast Asia,” in Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East(New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 320.

It was brewing for some time. Airbnb’s specialised style of accommodation – allowing users resident in a city to effectively let their premises outside the usual hotel-rent nexus – was bound to put urban planners, some citizens and authorities out of joint.

San Francisco’s Proposition F ballot measure would have imposed tighter measures on short-term housing rental services, of which Airbnb represents with standard bearing enthusiasm. Rentals would have been capped at 75 days a year, whether or not the resident is present during the renter’s stay. In San Francisco, the current law limits rentals to 90 days a year for unhosted rentals, while leaving hosted rentals untouched. The proposition would have also vested power in landlords and neighbours (so-called interested parties) to sue short-term rental companies in the event of infringement.

The Airbnb view insists on the entrepreneurial motive, supposedly allowing those hosting short-term renters to earn a tidy sum on the side even as they are renting the host accommodation.

Much of this is self-serving and economising. The traveller is offered accommodation in a private residence and takes the cheaper rate, side-stepping the traditional hotel. The issue then is how accountable such companies are in terms of hotel tax. Airbnb has insisted it has generated $12 million in tax revenue for the city.

The traveller, while not necessarily an insentient or amoral being, is in the business of travel, and the image of the stalking “Dutch tourists with wheelie bags” or intrepid Australian visitors raiding such opportunities has certainly made its mark on the debate.[1] “Everyone loves using Airbnb, and they’ll say they always use Airbnb no matter where they go,” suggested Russian Hill resident Gary Hermansen, “as long as it’s not in their neighbourhood” (LA Times, Nov 4).

The overall context here is less that of Airbnb’s conduct than rules that either should be passed or enforced. It is not that company’s existence that poses the problem, so much as where it fits in the rental market.

Cases have been noted of leasers being evicted because they were earning just that bit too much of a tidy sum on the side, effectively engaging in sub-letting through the company. This has effectively created an artificial market of accommodation, one that Airbnb erroneously argues as actually helping with rising rents.

As Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal noted (June 16, New York Times), “A market-rate tenant may find he can make extra money renting out his pad – until his landlord finds it’s easier to cut out the middleman.” The displaced tenant will then have considerable difficulty finding new lodgings which will be duly leased at a rate three times the monthly rate.

Rate controlled premises do not escape the horns of this dilemma. The moral argument is made that rent-controlled tenants should not have that chance to make a small fortune which effectively means using a regulation against itself to make a profit. New York has been particularly prone to instances of illegal Airbnb listings – New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s findings suggest that the percentage may be as high as 72 percent.[2]

On Tuesday night, the measure lost by a good 55 percent from approximately 133,000 votes cast. That was not to say that the opposition had been negligible. A 45 percent vote in favour suggest that the debate is well and truly afoot in terms of how companies such as Airbnb operate in centres where rental accommodation is suffering the big squeeze.

The Proposition F debate is far broader in terms of its implications than San Francisco. The city faces median rest-costs in the area of $4000 a month for single bed room flats. Housing is at a premium, and San Francisco retains rent-ceilings. With a limited number of apartments and very high demand, the transformation of apartments into hotels, or something coming close to that, will invariably make the remainder less affordable.

The battle, and discrepancy, of campaign war chests, was also in evidence during the campaign. Airbnb marshalled $8 million in its campaign, one aggressively waged with an insistence that its existence had actually made money for the city in terms of hotel tax revenue. A series of brazen billboards were unleashed. “Dear Public Library System,” went one such advertisement, “We hope you use some of the $12 million in hotel taxes to keep the library open later. Love, Airbnb.” Broader consequences to the rental market were discounted. Their opponents, in contrast, gathered a meagre $800,000.

The proposition’s supporters were certainly going to go down with a robust fight. Coalition groups in favour of the proposition distributed leaflets, barraging post boxes with mail targeting Airbnb’s considerable expenditure of funds for the campaign. (So much for its heralded credentials as a generous tax payer.) The “ShareBetter SF, Yes on F” campaign insisted that Airbnb was effectively concealing the housing crisis. “What are they trying to cover up?”

On Monday, Prop F backers stormed the Brannan Street headquarters of the company. They came equipped with forceful placards and posters floated on helium balloons – “ENTITLEMENT: love Airbnb”; “HOMELESSNESS: love Airbnb”: “EVICTIONS: love Airbnb.” The activist insistence here was that Airbnb has encouraged more displacement.

The supporters of Airbnb can only see innovation and a form of business genius. Arun Sundararajan at the Stern School of Business at New York University prefers to see Airbnb as a barnstormer in creating “a new form of mixed-use real estate: residential units that sometimes double as short-term paid accommodation.”[3] It is always the same language that smacks of an amoral pursuit of pocket over viability. He takes the view that the impact on rental supply is ambiguous, though such speculation only tends to arise when a company narrative contests that of an institutional one.

Sundararajan also raises the issue that San Francisco is particularly problematic given the presence of over 170,000 spaces which are rent-controlled. The subtext here is that such regulations are at fault, and that entities such as Airbnb are collaborators in the rental market rather than promoters of naked opportunism. Here, again, the non-regulatory genie is released.

Who, then, can we trust? San Francisco officials who claim that the impact is negative, or Airbnb’s own analysis which, with astonishing surprise, suggests otherwise? The clue here is to see who is paying for the research.

A report by Abby Lackner, Anita Roth and Christopher Nulty (Jun 8) on the Airbnb community in San Francisco suggests that “a housing unit in San Francisco would need to be rented more than 211 nights annually on a short-term basis in order to out-compete a long-term rental.” Only 0.09 percent of all housing units in SF fall into that category, and only 1.14 percent of vacant housing units are rented for more than 211 days via Airbnb. As the number of such units has also remained unchanged between 2005 and 2013, the authors conclude that the “Airbnb community has no material impact on housing availability in San Francisco.”[4]

The question that should be asked, ultimately, is whether the citizen’s imperative is protected in allowing residents to effectively create a pseudo-hotel system within a rental market that is already stressed. A form of regulation is certainly warranted, but the looming question is whether Airbnb is a partner in the civic, public cause or an agent for selfish accumulation in spite of it. Self-regulation, which often appears in such debates, tends to be the backdoor to profit rather than distribution.

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

Notes

 [1] http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/16/san-francisco-and-new-york-weigh-airbnbs-effect-on-rent/airbnb-is-a-problem-for-cities-like-new-york-and-san-francisco

[2] http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Airbnb%20report.pdf

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/16/san-francisco-and-new-york-weigh-airbnbs-effect-on-rent/airbnb-is-an-ally-to-cities-not-an-adversary

[4] https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/the-airbnb-community-in-sf-june-8-2015.pdf

 

EU must take action against European arms exporters to Israel to avoid becoming an accessory to criminal activity, under international law

When David Ben ­Gurion, the architect and first Prime Minister of Israel, the modern Jewish state, in 1948, he was statesman enough to recognise that there were two competing nationalisms for the land of Palestine, both with valid claims.

Why is Netanyahu, the current incumbent, so frightened to admit that plain truth? Is it because his grasp of historical fact is deficient or is it because he revels in political power and deception at the expense of future Jewish generations?

Now is already beyond time for a paradigm shift that will consign the repressive, neo-colonial policies of Likud Zionism to the dustbin of the 20^th century. A Jewish homeland is one thing: genocide is another and European arms exporters to Israel must take action to avoid becoming potential accessories to criminal activity on a substantial scale.

• By “genocide” we mean the destruction of an ethnic group…. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups….

(Axis Rule in Occupied Europe ix. 79)[2][7] Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jewish jurist

• The crime of genocide should be recognized therein as a conspiracy to exterminate national, religious or racial groups. The overt acts of such a conspiracy may consist of attacks against life, liberty or property of members of such groups merely because of their affiliation with such groups. The formulation of the crime may be as follows: “Whoever, while participating in a conspiracy to destroy a national, racial or religious group, undertakes an attack against life, liberty or property of members of such groups is guilty of the crime of genocide.

(“Genocide”, American Scholar, Volume 15, no. 2 (April 1946), p. 227–230)

 

The explosion and crash of Russian Metrojet Airbus A321-200 over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula raises ominous new questions. There are going to be numerous theories bandied about in the course of another long international “investigation”, accompanied with endless political spin from all sides.

We hear numerous variations that boil down to two basic theories: catastrophic mechanical failure or bomb.

Many officials have already ruled out a missile strike because there was no evidence of a missile launch nor an engine burn. US satellites detected heat around the plane before the explosion, but the cause of the heat is unknown. In an Associated Press account, US aviation analyst Paul Beaver stated, “It doesn’t tell us if it was a bomb, or if someone had a fight in the airplane with a gun—there is a whole raft of things that could happen in this regard.” Adding to the mystery, Beaver also noted that in the event of a fuel tank or engine explosion, “engines are designed so that if something malfunctions or breaks off, it is contained within the engine”. The plane broke up at high altitude.

Most recently, British officials have more strongly suggested that a bomb was the cause. And now, US intelligence officials are coming forward to embrace the idea of a bomb.

Looking past the political smoke, one scenario deserves scrutiny.

The Islamic State (IS) has taken responsibility for the incident. In a manifesto, the IS claimed to have brought down the Russian plane in retaliation for Russian military intervention in Syria.

Egyptian officials immediately derided the claim as propaganda that damages the image of Egypt. But at the same time, the authenticity of the IS propaganda has not been debunked. The nature of the propaganda was in keeping with previous manifestos; CIA standard procedure. There is “insufficient evidence” to support the claim, but there never is sufficient evidence. By design.

Given the amply documented fact that the IS (ISIS, ISIL, etc.) is a creation of US intelligence, and function as assets and military-intelligence fronts of the CIA and Washington—financed, recruited and trained by the US and its allies— why shouldn’t the claims of responsibility be taken at face value?

In an era in which false flag atrocities and deception have constituted US foreign policy, it is in no way inconceivable that forces aligned with Washington committed yet another act of terrorism, another act of war, to send a message of warning and/or provocation to Moscow.

This is by no means the first time that the downing of a plane has been exploited for political purpose, aimed at Russia. The false flag shootdown of MH-17 and the cover-up and propaganda that followed offers a ghastly example. The history of American covert operations is rife with atrocities involving planes.

The CIA is opportunistic, flexible, and selective with its work. In this conveniently-timed case, Washington can deny terrorism, warn about terrorism, poo-pooh the jihadist rhetoric (sourced to their own propaganda machine), and express sympathy, all at the same time that a brutal political message is sent to Moscow.

This scenario is not merely “conspiracy theory” when viewed against current big picture realities, and the fact that a superpower war is underway. As chronicled by Michel Chossudovsky:

While the media narrative acknowledges that Russia has endorsed the counter-terrorism campaign, in practice Russia is (indirectly) fighting the US-NATO coalition by supporting the Syrian government against the terrorists, who happen to be the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance, with Western mercenaries and military advisers within their ranks. In practice, what Russia is doing is fighting terrorists who are supported by the US.

The forbidden truth is that by providing military aid to both Syria and Iraq, Russia is (indirectly) confronting America.

Moscow will be supporting both countries in their proxy war against the ISIL which is supported by the US and its allies.

Russia is now directly involved in the counter-terrorism campaign in coordination with the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

In fact, as written in Tru Publica, the war in Syria is not about the Islamic State.

In fact,

“the countries involved in this war are now from all four hemispheres of the planet who are now represented and engaged in a conflict that will definitely be a fight to the very end.”

We can even go beyond this measured view. From Ukraine to Syria, to hot spots across the Middle East and North Africa, we are witnessing an increasingly open war between Washington and Russia, no different than the Cold War (Vietnam, etc.) but with stakes even higher, engulfing far more of the planet. Add to this the increasing tensions between the United States and China, and the map of the global conflict is literally worldwide. What cannot be argued is that the war between the superpowers is intensifying, perhaps past the brink.

The downing of a Russian passenger plane and the death of hundreds of Russians would mean nothing to the war criminals with grand aspirations of conquest for the geography and resources of the most resource-rich chunks of the Earth.

Russia has openly and resolutely waged effective military counter-terrorism operations against the terror fronts of the US and NATO—all jihadist terrorist armies, including ISIS, ISIL, Al-Qaeda, and Al-Nusra, which are all US and CIA fronts. What Moscow has done is call Washington’s bluff and upping the ante.

Put simplistically, Moscow said:

“If you (US-NATO) truly wish to combat terrorism throughout the region, then we will ‘help you’, by actually doing it.”

These operations were followed by agonized and flummoxed whines from Washington, as more and more of the Anglo-American empire’s terror assets have been hampered from their massive attempt to topple the Assad regime. The Vienna-Geneva Peace Talks are a charade that buys time for Washington to counter the Russian actions.

Moscow, acting as the actual “good guys”, have “ruined everything”; ripped the “false good guy” mask off of Washington’s massive criminal operation. This embarrassment to the empire had to be met with a desperate reply.

Was Metrojet Airbus A321-200 part of this response? The message from the Islamic State (aka the CIA) clearly was.

The message was received: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov quickly rejected any connection between the crash and the Russian military operation in Syria, while Putin himself has vowed that nothing will succeed in scaring them off.

After 40 years, Republic of Guinea native Alpha Diallo still remembers the emotion he felt as a 20-year-old college student in Cuba when he made a decision that would change his life. The Cuban government had just decided to send troops to Angola to fight the invading South African army, which had crossed the border into Angola several weeks earlier on Oct. 23, 1975. Diallo, who had come from western Africa to Havana on scholarship two years earlier to study agricultural engineering, attended a rally of 800,000 people in the Plaza of the Revolution as Fidel Castro announced the military mission to support the anti-colonial Angolan movement and fight apartheid.

“I followed Fidel’s speech and it was compelling. Among the Guineans, 15 of us decided to give up our studies to go fight,” Diallo recalled recently in a phone interview from his home in Washington D.C. “We were so impressed and we were excited to go.”

Diallo said that as Africans, he and the other students felt a special obligation to help the Cubans fight for the liberation of other African countries. Since the early 1960s, Cuba had provided crucial support to movements throughout Africa seeking to free themselves from colonialism.

In Guinea-Bissau, Cuba had provided military instructors and doctors, enabling the rebels to gain their independence from Portugal two years earlier. After the Portuguese dictatorship fell in 1974 and Portugal prepared to grant Angola independence on Nov. 11, 1975, three local movements fought to take power.

The largest rebel group with the most popular support was the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). They had gained a decisive advantage internally and were poised to take control of the government. The MPLA was providing critical training and safe haven to other anti-colonial rebel groups opposed to minority rule from neighboring countries such as (Nelson Mandela’s) ANC of South Africa, SWAPO of Namibia, and FRELIMO of Mozambique.

By early November, the South African Defence Force (SADF) was advancing 45 miles per day toward the capital Luanda. South Africa’s invasion jeopardized not only Angola’s revolution, but the struggle for liberation throughout the continent. The racists were set to install a puppet regime led by former Portuguese collaborator Jonas Savimbi that would be amendable to white rule in South Africa and willing to work with apartheid to crush the liberation movements. The situation in Angola was bleak.

“The MPLA leaders, who had been prepared for a guerilla struggle rather than a full-scale war, then understood that only an urgent appeal for international solidarity would enable them to rout this concerted attack by neighboring states, supported by the most rapacious and destructive resources of imperialism,” wrote Colombian author Gabriel García Marquez in 1977.

The Angolans had only one unlikely country they could turn to: Cuba. The poor Caribbean country, suffering under a vicious economic war waged on them for 15 years by the world’s most dominant superpower, had already provided military instructors to assist the MPLA. But they would not be nearly enough on their own. MPLA leader Agostinho Neto would appeal to Fidel Castro on Nov. 3 for reinforcements to ward off the racists.

The answer came less than 48 hours later on Nov. 5. Yes. “The Communist Party of Cuba reached its decision without wavering,” García Marquez wrote. He noted the date had historical significance for Cubans: “On another such November 5, in 1843, a slave called Black Carlota, working on the Triunvirato plantation in the Matanzas region, had taken up her machete at the head of a slave rebellion in which she lost her life. It was in homage to her that the solidarity action in Angola bore her name: Operation Carlota.”

On Nov. 7, the first 82 soldiers, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying light artillery, set off on a Cubana Airlines flight to Luanda. Over the coming weeks and months, Cuban troops would pour into Angola by air and by sea. By the end of the year, they would number nearly 10,000 . More than a decade later, before the end of apartheid, there would be as many as 36,000 troops throughout the country.

Fidel Castro, Commander of the Cuban Revolution, would immerse himself in the battle.

“There was not a single dot on the map of Angola that he was unable to identify, nor any feature of the land that he did not know by heart. His absorption in the war was so intense and meticulous that he could quote any statistic relating to Angola as if it were Cuba itself, and he spoke of its towns, customs and peoples as if he had lived there all his life,” writes García Marquez.

“In the early stages of the war, when the situation was urgent, Fidel Castro would spend up to fourteen hours at a stretch in the command room of the general staff, at times without eating or sleeping, as if he were on the battlefield himself. He followed the course of battles with pins on minutely detailed wall-sized maps, keeping in constant touch with the MPLA high command on a battlefield where the time was six hours later.”

After landing in Angola, Cuban troops went straight to the battlefield and proved decisive in keeping the racist South Africans at bay. On Nov. 10, Cuban troops ambushed the SADF’s Zulu column, inflicting heavy casualties on the apartheid army.

At the Battle of Ebo on Nov. 23, Cuban soldiers attacked the Zulu column as it approached a bridge, according to historian Piero Gleijeses. They killed and wounded as many as 90 racist troops and knocked out seven or eight armored cars. The victory bought Cuba time as reinforcements poured in, and Angola received a shipment of weapons from the Soviet Union. The apartheid army tried to advance, but were pushed back by heavy resistance. By Dec. 27, they were ordered to fall back.

“As 1975 came to a close, the tide had turned against Washington and Pretoria. It had turned on the battlefield, where the Cubans had stopped the South African advance, and it had turned on the propaganda front: the Western press had noticed that South Africa had invaded Angola,” writes Gleijeses in Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976. [1]

Imperialism and Apartheid Conspire Against African Self-Determination

South Africa had tried to disguise its involvement in the invasion of Angola by pretending that mercenaries, rather than the regular South African army, had invaded. The Americans, meanwhile, tried to distance themselves by claiming they had no involvement in South Africa’s military operation. But it is clear from the documentary record that Washington’s fingerprints were all over South Africa’s actions.

In a June 1975 meeting of the National Security Council, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told President President Ford he was not “in wild agreement” with the options presented by an interagency task force: “The first is neutrality – stay out and let nature take its course… As for the second course, my Department agrees, but I don’t. It is recommended that we launch a diplomatic offensive … and encourage cooperation among the groups.” The absence of American intervention, Kissinger admitted, would lead to a victory for the MPLA and for Neto to “gradually gain the support of other Africans.” [2]

Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger offered: “We might wish to encourage the disintegration of Angola. Cabinda in the clutches of (Congolese military dictator) Mobutu would mean far greater security of the petroleum resources.” Ford was in agreement that the United States must prevent Angolan self-determination: “It seems to me that doing nothing is unacceptable.” [3]

The most damning evidence, though, was admitted publicly by apartheid South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha in the House of Assembly in 1978. Botha declared that when the SADF invaded Angola: “we did so with the approval and knowledge of the Americans.” [4]

By the end of 1975, Cuban troops had routed the apartheid army and prevented their takeover of the country. There is no doubt that had Castro and the Cuban government declined to confront the apartheid regime on the battlefield, the MPLA would have fallen. A South African victory would have solidified apartheid and devastated the decolonization movements across southern Africa.

“Without the Cuban intervention, the South Africans would have seized Luanda before anyone reported that they had crossed the border. The CIA covert operation in Angola would have succeeded,” Gleijeses writes. [5]

Diallo and his fellow countrymen in Cuba would not, in the end, join the fight against apartheid. When the Cuban government found out that the African students wished to take part in the military mission, they informed them through the university that they should stay in Cuba.

Even though he had never been to South Africa, Diallo said he understood the injustices black South Africans faced under the apartheid system. “I was aware of that, the humiliation of people telling you that you weren’t as good, telling you where you could live and restricting your ability to move around,” he said. Ridding Africa of apartheid, what Castro himself called “the most beautiful cause,” was worth fighting for. [6]

But Diallo is glad the Cubans made it clear that the students should serve in a civic capacity, rather than a military one. “They told us: ‘Your country needs you. We appreciate your offer, but let us handle this. Stay here and finish your studies and then go back and help your own countries,’ ” Diallo said.

References

[1] Gleijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976. The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Kindle edition.

[2] June 27, 1975, NSC Minutes, “Angola” (Document obtained from Gerald Ford Library, NSC Meetings File, Box 2) http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/gleijeses6.pdf (pg. 3-4)

[3] Ibid. (pg. 7)

[4] as quoted in Gleijeses, 2002

[5] Gleijeses, op. cit.

[6] Instructions to the Cuban Delegation for the London Meeting, ‘Indicaciones concretas del Comandante en Jefe que guiarán la actuación de la delegación cubana a las conversaciones de Luanda y las negociaciones de Londres (23-4-88)’,” April 23, 1988, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Archive of the Cuban Armed Forces. Obtained and contributed to CWIHP by Piero Gleijeses and included in CWIHP e-Dossier No. 44. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/118134 (pg. 5)

Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his blog. You can follow him on twitter.

 

U.S. Military Used Christian NGO as Front for North Korea Espionage

On May 10, 2007, in the East Room of the White House, President George W. Bush presided over a ceremony honoring the nation’s most accomplished community service leaders. Among those collecting a President’s Volunteer Service Award that afternoon was Kay Hiramine, the Colorado-based founder of a multimillion-dollar humanitarian organization.

Hiramine’s NGO, Humanitarian International Services Group, or HISG, won special praise from the president for having demonstrated how a private charity could step in quickly in response to a crisis. “In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” read Hiramine’s citation, “HISG’s team launched a private sector operation center in Houston that mobilized over 1,500 volunteers into the disaster zone within one month after the hurricane.”

But as the evangelical Christian Hiramine crossed the stage to shake hands with President Bush and receive his award, he was hiding a key fact from those in attendance: He was a Pentagon spy whose NGO was funded through a highly classified Defense Department program.

The secret Pentagon program, which dates back to December 2004, continued well into the Obama presidency. It was the brainchild of a senior Defense Department intelligence official of the Bush administration, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin. Boykin, an evangelical Christian who ran into criticism in 2003for his statements about Islam, settled on the ruse of the NGO as he was seeking new and unorthodox ways to penetrate North Korea.

Long a source of great concern to the U.S. and Western Europe because of its nuclear program, North Korea was the most difficult intelligence target for the U.S. “We had nothing inside North Korea,” one former military official familiar with U.S. efforts in the country told me. “Zero.” But Hiramine’s NGO, by offering humanitarian aid to the country’s desperate population, was able to go where others could not.

It is unclear how many HISG executives beyond Hiramine knew about the operation; Hiramine did not respond to repeated requests for comment and neither did any of his senior colleagues. Few, if any, of the rest of the organization’s staff and volunteers had any knowledge about its role as a Pentagon front, according to former HISG employees and former military officials.

The revelation that the Pentagon used an NGO and unwitting humanitarian volunteers for intelligence gathering is the result of a months long investigation by The Intercept. In the course of the investigation, more than a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials, humanitarian aid workers, missionaries, U.S. officials, and former HISG staffers were interviewed. The U.S. government officials who were familiar with the Pentagon operation and HISG’s role asked for anonymity because discussing classified military and intelligence matters would put them at risk of prosecution. The Pentagon had no comment on HISG or the espionage operations in North Korea.

Before it was finally dismantled in 2013, Hiramine’s organization received millions in funding from the Pentagon through a complex web of organizations designed to mask the origin of the cash, according to one of the former military officials familiar with the program, as well as documentation reviewed for this article.

To Read Complete Article on The intercept click here

 

Pekín desea que el yuan se convierta en divisa de reserva mundial. Si bien el camino para lograr la plena convertibilidad todavía es muy largo, China ha visto incrementada la presencia de su moneda más que cualquier otro país en los últimos años. El yuan es hoy la segunda moneda más utilizada para el financiamiento comercial, y la cuarta más solicitada para realizar pagos transfronterizos, según los datos de la Sociedad de Telecomunicaciones Financieras Interbancarias Mundiales (SWIFT, por sus siglas en inglés).

La estrategia del gigante asiático para yuanizar la economía global está sustentada en el ‘gradualismo’. No hay prisa entre los dirigentes chinos. El Partido Comunista [de China] está consciente de que cualquier movimiento en falso puede provocar ‘guerras financieras’ en contra suya. Es que tanto la Reserva Federal como el Departamento del Tesoro de Estados Unidos se resisten a que el dólar y Wall Street disminuyan su influencia en las finanzas mundiales.

El Gobierno chino toma precauciones, ya que para alcanzar objetivos de largo plazo, vale más avanzar paso a paso y en sigilo que asumir altos riesgos. Por esa razón, en un primer momento, China sumó el apoyo de la región asiática, bien sea suscribiendo acuerdos sobre permutas (‘swap’) de divisas, bien sea instalando bancos de liquidación directa (‘RMB offshore clearing banks’), bien sea otorgando cuotas de inversión para participar en el Programa de Inversores Institucionales Calificados en Renminbi (‘Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor Program’).

En un segundo momento, el Gobierno chino volteó la mirada hacia el Norte de Europa. Para posicionar su moneda en las grandes ligas resultó clave la asesoría técnica de los países occidentales. China comenzó elevando el nivel de la ‘asociación estratégica’ con el Reino Unido, que dicho sea de paso, a pesar del declive de su economía, se conserva como protagonista en la gestión de las finanzas internacionales. No es cualquier cosa que la City de Londres tenga el mercado cambiario más grande del mundo, y aglutine el mayor número de operaciones ‘over the counter’.

A mediados de 2013 el Reino Unido se convirtió en el primer país en promover el uso del yuan en Europa. Alemania, Francia, Suiza y Luxemburgo entraron a la competencia a través de la instalación de bancos de liquidación directa (‘RMB offshore clearing banks’) para facilitar el uso de la “moneda del pueblo” (‘renminbi’). Sin embargo, ninguno de ellos se constituyó en una seria amenaza para el Reino Unido. La City de Londres registra más de la mitad de las operaciones denominadas en yuanes en todo el continente europeo.

Como la economía del Reino Unido se encuentra sumergida en el estancamiento, y amenazada muy de cerca por la deflación (caída de precios), el Gobierno de David Cameron insiste desesperadamente en fortalecer sus vínculos con los países de Asia-Pacífico, y especialmente con China, que con todo y su desaceleración de los últimos años, sigue contribuyendo con 25% del crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) mundial.

Para el canciller de la Hacienda del Reino Unido –y candidato favorito del Partido Conservador para ocupar el puesto de primer ministro en 2020–, George Osborne, el mundo actual es testigo de una nueva configuración geopolítica y económica, y China desempeña un papel preponderante. Los negocios ya no se concentran únicamente en Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea. Es por eso que para la City de Londres las oportunidades comerciales y de inversión con Pekín están por encima de los mandatos de alineamiento de Washington.

Prueba de ello es que en marzo pasado el Reino Unido se sumó a la convocatoria del Banco Asiático de Inversiones en Infraestructura (‘Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’), la institución que puso punto final a la dominación del Banco Mundial (‘World Bank’) y el Banco Asiático de Desarrollo (‘Asian Development Bank’) en Asia. Jim O’Neill, ex empleado de Goldman Sachs, y quien inventó el acrónimo BRICS (Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica) en 2001, es asesor en estos momentos de la Hacienda británica; para él seguramente está claro que la prosperidad económica se encuentra en la región asiática.

Estados Unidos lo mismo despliega un buque de guerra en el archipiélago Spratly, que acusa a China de “espionaje cibernético” y “manipulación del tipo de cambio”. En contraste, el Reino Unido se perfila como el principal socio de China en Occidente. La ‘época de oro’ entre los 2 países no es una novedad, se viene consolidando con gran rapidez a lo largo de la última década. Entre 2004 y 2014 los intercambios comerciales entre China y el Reino Unido pasaron de 20.000 a 80.000 millones de dólares, mientras que las inversiones chinas en territorio británico crecieron a una tasa anual de 85% desde 2010.

Durante la visita del presidente Xi Jinping a Londres, entre el 19 y el 23 de octubre, el Gobierno de David Cameron ganó más oxígeno para la economía. China comprometió cientos de millones de dólares en inversiones, desde la construcción de la planta nuclear de Hinkley Point hasta la puesta en marcha de un tren de alta velocidad que comunicará las ciudades de Londres y Manchester. Asimismo, se estudia la posibilidad de conectar las operaciones de los mercados bursátiles de Shanghái y Londres, con lo cual, los títulos financieros denominados en yuanes serían adquiridos por un mayor número de agentes de inversión.

El espaldarazo del Gobierno de David Cameron será decisivo en las próximas semanas. El Reino Unido ya anunció que votará a favor de la incorporación del yuan en los Derechos Especiales de Giro (DEG, ‘Special Drawing Rights’), la canasta de divisas creada por el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) en 1969, actualmente integrada por el dólar estadounidense, el euro, el yen japonés y la libra esterlina.

Según los cálculos de diversos analistas citados por la agencia Reuters, si el FMI aprueba que el yuan se sume a los DEG, la demanda global del ‘renminbi’ se incrementará a un equivalente de 500.000 millones de dólares, y, por lo tanto, será almacenado en las reservas de los bancos centrales en una proporción de aproximadamente 5%, muy por encima de los dólares australiano y canadiense (cada uno con casi 2%), aunque todavía muy por debajo del euro (20.5%) y el dólar estadounidense (60%).

En definitiva, Estados Unidos no logra socavar el ascenso del yuan. Las turbulencias de la bolsa de valores de Shanghái de los últimos meses no diluyeron la confianza que el Reino Unido tiene depositada en el desarrollo de la economía china, sino todo lo contrario, su apuesta ahora es más ambiciosa: gracias a la City de Londres, Pekín está a punto de llevar adelante la yuanización en una escala sin precedentes…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Ahead of a meeting scheduled between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama and their speeches to the United Nations General Assembly in late September, the Russian President branded Washington’s support for the insurgent forces in Syria as both illegal and ineffective in an interview with Charlie Rose for the U.S. CBS and PBS television networks. Aside from saying that U.S. support to the insurgents was a “provision of military support to illegal structures” that violates “the principles of modern international law and the United Nations Charter,” Putin pointed out that the militants being trained and armed by the U.S. were actually joining the so-called Islamic State.

Washington is fighting a multi-dimensional global war on several fronts using proxies. In Europe it is using the Ukrainian government and the European Union to confront the Russian Federation while in Arabia it is using Saudi Arabia and a group of Arab regimes to gain control over Yemen. In East Asia, the U.S. is using tensions between the People’s Republic of China and its neighbours to confront Beijing. In this context South Korea is being used to confront the North Koreans as a means of ultimately targeting the Chinese.

The so-called Islamic State or ISIL/ISIS is a creation of the U.S. It has been incubated by Washington as a proxy to wage the very same multi-dimensional war that has been described above. In fact, the U.S. military build-up in Iraq and Syria that the U.S. is leading is a smokescreen for regime change and war operations in Southwest Asia that target Syria, Iran, and their regional allies. The U.S. has been using parallel tracks of engaging these players while it continues to build-up the means for war and regime change. This is why mission creep is setting in and the U.S., along with Canada and France, has been bombing Syria and its infrastructure under the pretext of bombing ISIL/ISIS. The fact that the U.S. and its allies are engaging with Iran or Syria is only a repeat of the scenario of what happened to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya; while the U.S. engaged with Muammar Qaddafi, it built-up the means for regime change against him. Moreover, it is precisely due to these regime change plans that Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria have setup a coordinating cell in Baghdad to fight the ISIL/ISIS and that the Russians are reinvigorating their military presence inside Syria.

The name changes of the groups fighting in Syria and Iraq should not fool anyone. In essence they are the same forces; they are “agents of chaos” being using to create insecurity against U.S. rivals and any governments or entities that are resisting U.S. edicts. With the erosion of Al-Qaeda and the fading of Osama bin Laden from the limelight, Washington created new legends or myths to replace them in the eyes of the public and the world as a means to sustain its foreign policy. Soon Jubhat Al-Nusra, ISIL/ISIS, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were all conjured up and fostered as new bogeymen and monsters to sustain Washington’s “long war” and to justify the militarism of the United States. These bogymen also have been used to fan the flames of sedition, drive out Christians and other minorities, and fuel sectarianism among Muslims with the objective of dividing the region and pushing Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims to kill one another.

This is why the Canadian embassy in Jordan was caught recruiting for the ISIL/ISIS and Canadian diplomats had aided in the formation of the Syrian National Council (SNC) as a face for the death squads in Syria. While the Harperites demonize Arabs and Muslims, in one way or another, at home in Canada, they have been supporting the head chopping ISIS/ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Before this, they supported the same characters in Libya and even allowed Canadian security contractors and drones to assist them.

Charges and reports have been made that Prime Minister Harper’s government was recruiting for the same terrorist organization that it told Canadians it was fighting in Iraq and Syria. The Ottawa Citizen had this to say about it:

“Canada’s embassy in Jordan, which is run by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s handpicked ambassador and former top bodyguard, is being linked in news reports to an unfolding international terrorism and spy scandal.”

Reuters has also confirmed the Harper government’s role in recruiting for the same terrorists it claims to be fighting alongside the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. “A European security source familiar with the case of the three girls said the person in question had a connection with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) spy agency,” Reuters reported on March 12, 2015.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney refused to comment on the reports that Canada is recruiting for ISIL/ISIS, saying it was an issue of operational security whereas Ray Boisvert, a former CSIS director, said that the story is plausible. This is while Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said that the situation is very complicated, but that the ISIL/ISIS recruiter is a Syrian national working for one of the countries inside Washington’s anti-ISIL coalition. Although the man — reported to be called Mohammed Al-Rashed — is not a Canadian citizen, he had Canadian government-issued equipment and was known to have visited the Canadian Embassy in Amman frequently.

Despite the fact that it was ravaging Iraq and Syria for years, it is no coincidence that the ISIL/ISIS gained major world attention only in 2014 when the U.S. executed a new strategy in its war on Syria and its partners and needed a pretext to concentrate its military assets into Southwest Asia again. Nor is it a coincidence that the U.S. failed to notify the federal government in Baghdad about the attack on Mosul or that Iraqi officials reported that Israeli forces were also involved in the operations or that the corrupt Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq appeared to move in coordination with the insurgents from Syria in partitioning Iraq.

While Mosul was being taken over by the insurgents from Syria, Peshmerga troops were mobilized by the KRG to quickly takeover the energy-rich city of Kirkuk on June 12, 2014. KRG President Massoud Barzani began talking about dividing Iraq, saying the time had come for Iraqi Kurdistan to break away as a separate country, not long after the KRG takeover of Kirkuk and other federally administered Iraqi territory. This push for dividing Iraq was also endorsed by Israel when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech that echoed Massoud Barazani’s calls. Canada and the anti-ISIL coalition have endorsed this too by sending arms to the KRG, circumventing the Iraqi federal government and military.

According to various high-level sources, the ISIL/ISIS has been nurtured by Washington as a smokescreen. The ISIL’s leadership is controlled by the U.S., according to Nikolai Pushkaryov, a retired Russian lieutenant-general that worked in the Central Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff. Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier-General Massoud Jazayeri has corroborated this. Jazayeri has even testified that Iran knows that the U.S. and its allies have provided the ISIL with supplies to fight. This is why the U.S. and Turkey have been caught helping the ISIL/ISIS against the Kurds in Kobani and the rest of Syria. Moreover, Russia’s Ramzan Kadyrov has claimed that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was originally recruited inside Iraq to work for the U.S. by the disgraced General David Petraeus before he became the head of the ISIL. There are even photographs that appear to include Al-Baghdadi in meetings between Salim Idriss, the so-called Free Syrian Army’s commander, and the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee’s Senator John McCain in May 2013 when McCain illegally entered Syria from Turkey to discuss regime change in Damascus.

It says a lot when ISIL/ISIS forces have begun working privately for different Ukrainian oligarchs and actively fight in Ukraine through such formations as the Sheikh Mansour Battalion, alongside Ukrainian ultra-nationalist forces glorifying Nazism. This illustrates the fact that the ISIL/ISIS is a tool of Washington.

(October 5, 2015)

Dimitrios Konstantakopoulos Provides The Most Accurate Description Of European Politicians:

“Today’s European politicians . . . are ‘test-tube politicians,’ who haven’t emerged from a process of significant political battles with worthy political oppnents, but have instead risen to power through the manipulations conjured by the strong players of the financial capital system, with the objective to control the political elite of the European continent. They are more employees than they are politicians. Moreover, their programme is not for public disclosure.  Should they discuss in public what they really want to achieve, or rather what the bankers who appointed them want to achieve, even the stones will cry out in Europe in protest against them!

“Today’s European politicians are the product of a very particular historical period which started with the collapse of the European left and its integration into the established status quo and especially with the collapse of the USSR. They are also the product of decades of successful ‘filtering’ of European politics and of a very successful strategy of ‘entryism’ into the political elites, using in particular generalized corruption and the possibility to blackmail anybody, by the financial capital and by the most extremist representatives of the deep American state, organised around a ‘neoliberal’ and ‘neoconservative’ core respectively.”

Athens, 3 July 2015
Konstantakopoulos.blogspot.com

El pasado 27 de octubre, en avanzadas horas de la noche se aprobó en primer debate por parte de la Asamblea Legislativa de Costa Rica el  “Acuerdo Bilateral para la Promoción y Protección de Inversiones” entre Costa Rica y China, suscrito en Beijing el 24 de octubre del 2007 (ver  nota  de CRHoy): el resultado de la votación fue de 36 votos a favor de los 45 diputados presentes.  Se trata de un instrumento bilateral de inversión muy similar a los que ha suscrito (y posteriormente ratificado) Costa Rica con otros Estados desde los años 90: en la actualidad se contabilizan 14 instrumentos vigentes de este tipo (ver  listado ), en particular con Alemania, Canadá, Corea del Sur, España, Francia, Países Bajos, República Checa y Suiza. El texto integral del acuerdo bilateral de inversiones entre China y Costa Rica  – Expediente Legislativo 17.246 – puede ser consultado en este  enlace . Notemos que varias bancadas de la oposición y el mismo Poder Ejecutivo acordaron inscribirlo en la “agenda de vía rápida” en junio del 2015 (ver  nota  de CRHoy).

Cabe recordar que en febrero del 2010, los equipos negociadores de Costa Rica y de China concluyeron exitosamente sus rondas de negociaciones con miras a la adopción de otro instrumento: el tratado de libre comercio – o TLC- (ver  nota  de prensa) entre ambos Estados, el cual fue aprobado de manera un tanto expedita por la Asamblea Legislativa de Costa Rica en mayo del 2011, por 32 votos a favor y 13 en contra (ver  nota  de prensa).  A diferencia del TLC con China, el acuerdo bilateral de inversiones pareciera haber conocido un cronograma legislativo más extendido en el tiempo; de manera un tanto paradójica, cuenta al parecer con mayor apoyo que el TLC con China.

TBI y libre comercio

Los acuerdos bilaterales sobre promoción y protección de inversiones son más conocidos en la literatura especializada como TBI o ABI, AII o también APPRI (expresión usada sobre todo en publicaciones en España – ver al respecto artículo sobre práctica convencional española -); así como por sus siglas en inglés: se usa, según el autor anglófono, la expresión BIT o FIPA o FIPPA. Son convenios bilaterales que parten de una misma base o modelo de acuerdo, pero cuyo contenido definitivo (sobre todo con relación a la formulación de ciertas cláusulas), resulta de una negociación entre ambas partes. Fueron firmados a partir de finales de los años 90, y su cifra supera hoy los 3000 acuerdos. En el 2012, China firmó su TBI número 100, según se indica en este estudio sobre la práctica de China con relación a los TBI publicado en el 2013 (p. 35).  Esta inusual proliferación de tratados se debe al denominado “Consenso de Washington” de los años 90, liderado por el Banco Mundial, que  impulso estos peculiares instrumentos como una herramienta jurídica necesaria para permitir a la inversión extranjera acompañar los procesos de liberalización de la economía, reforma del Estado, desregulación y  privatización de empresas estatales, que caracterizaron dicho consenso. Un dogma (que a la fecha se ha mantenido incólume en muchos sectores) consistió en considerar en aquellos años que la inversión extranjera era garantía de crecimiento económico y de desarrollo: los indicadores sociales en buena parte de América Latina 15 años después evidencian que algunos bemoles se debieron de imponer. En un detallado  análisis  sobre la inversión española en Bolivia y Venezuela, se indica que: ”la agenda del Consenso de Washington era una agenda única que en ningún momento fue adaptada a las circunstancias de cada país, por otro lado, las reformas que promovió – la liberalización del comercio, del mercado de capitales y del sector financiero – expusieron a los países a un mayor riesgo y cosecharon sonoros fracasos en no pocos de ellos, al contribuir a aumentar en ellos la desigualdad y la pobreza” (p. 22).  Un dogma asociado al anterior (y que se mantiene también muy presente en algunos sectores) es que sin TBI no hay inversión extranjera: este dogma hace a un lado algunas realidades difíciles de ignorar, como por ejemplo el hecho que Brasil, 5ª economía mundial,  no ha ratificado ninguno de estos tratados.

TBI y demandas internacionales

Resulta oportuno recalcar que uno de los primeros TBI suscritos por Costa Rica fue con Alemania: acordado en setiembre de 1994 y aprobado el 5 de noviembre de 1997 en la ley 7695 (ver  texto), este acuerdo ha dado pié para una demanda interpuesta en el 2008 por parte de una pareja de empresarios alemanes contra Costa Rica por 8, 5 millones de US$ ante el Centro Internacional de Disputas entre Inversionista y Estados (más conocido como CIADI): se trata de un mecanismo arbitral creado mediante la Convención de Washington de 1965 para resolver disputas entre un inversionista extranjero y un Estado. El caso se resolvió en el 2012 con un fallo del CIADI condenando a Costa Rica a pagar 4 millones de US$ (ver  fallo arbitral  del caso Marion & Reinhard Unglaube ARB 09/20).

Otro de los primeros TBI suscritos por Costa Rica también ha sido utilizado para demandar recientemente a Costa Rica: se trata del convenio con  España, suscrito en julio de 1997 y aprobado el 13 de abril de 1999 (ver texto en la ley 7869). Este tratado ha dado lugar a una demanda por 262 millones de US$ contra Costa Rica interpuesta por la empresa Supervisión y Control S.A., subsidiaria de la empresa RITEVE en el 2012 (ver  ficha técnica de la demanda, caso ARB 12/4): el caso se encuentra pendiente de resolución, con inéditos acontecimientos que han pasado un tanto desapercibidos en Costa Rica y con unas afirmaciones iniciales de las autoridades dignas de mencionar (Nota 1).

Uno de los primeros TBI suscritos por Costa Rica con Estados del hemisferio americano fue con Canadá: firmado en marzo del año 1998 fue aprobado por el Poder Legislativo el 30 de abril de 1999 (ver  texto  de la ley 7870). Este tratado fue utilizado en el 2005 por la empresa minera canadiense Vanessa Venture para demandar a Costa Rica por 276 millones de US$ con relación al proyecto minero ubicado en Las Crucitas (ver nota de La Nación del 9 de agosto del 2005 y  otra  del Tico Times);  y nuevamente en 2014 por la minera canadiense Infinito Gold para reclamar a Costa Rica una indemnización por 94 millones de US$ ante el CIADI por el mismo proyecto minero. Sobre los últimos acontecimientos relacionados con esta demanda, remitimos a nuestra modesta  nota  publicada en el sitio jurídico Ius360 en setiembre del 2015.

El tratado bilateral de inversiones con Suiza (firmado en agosto del 2000 y aprobado el 12 de febrero del año 2002 – ver  texto  de la ley 8218) ha dado lugar a una demanda contra Costa Rica en el 2013 ante el CIADI de un grupo de accionistas suizos denominado Cervin Investment S.A. que controla mayoritariamente a la empresa Gaz Z por 30 millones de US$ (ver  ficha técnica  de la demanda, caso ARB 13/2): este caso se encuentra pendiente de resolución, al igual que los dos anteriores.

Paralelamente a los TBI firmados y aprobados de manera un tanto intempestiva a finales de los años 90, otro tipo de tratados también permiten demandas de inversionistas extranjeros contra el Estado receptor de la inversión: es el caso del Tratado de Libre Comercio entre Centroamérica, República Dominicana y Estados Unidos  (más conocido como CAFTA-DR) aprobado en Costa Rica mediante referéndum el 7 de octubre del 2007. Actualmente, a los casos anteriormente señalados inscritos ante el CIADI, se registran dos casos contra Costa Rica presentados por dos consorcios norteamericanos, sobre la base del TLC: el caso presentado en el 2013 Spence International Investments et al. (ICSID Case No. UNCT/13/2), en el que se exige un monto de 49 millones de US$ (ver  solicitud  de arbitraje del 10 de junio del 2013): ello debido a limitaciones para desarrollar un proyecto en las playas de Santa Cruz, Guanacaste.  Para detalles de tipo procesal, remitimos a la  ficha técnica  de este caso del mismo CIADI.  También se registra el siguiente caso, por un proyecto frenado en Playa Esterillos, en el que se reclama un monto de 70 millones de US$: David Aven, Samuel Aven, Carolyn Park, Eric Park, Jeffrey Shioleno,Giacomo Buscemi, David Janney and Roger Raguso v. Costa Rica. Remitimos al lector al documento enviado por la Ministra de COMEX el 24 de febrero del 2014 en respuesta a la solicitud de arbitraje (ver  texto ) y a los últimos desarrollos de setiembre del 2015 registrados en la  ficha técnica  de este caso.

Como se puede apreciar con esta breve reseña, TBI y CIADI son parte de un mismo esquema: en este artículo sobre la (triste) experiencia de Argentina, que llegó a acumular en el CIADI 45 demandas, luego de suscribir más de 50 TBI a inicios de los años 2000 (ver  listado ), leemos que “el CIADI es parte de un sistema que se complementa con los Tratados Bilaterales de Inversión suscritos profusamente en los últimos 25 años y en los que se otorga el consentimiento a los inversionistas para que, en caso de controversias, puedan acudir directamente al arbitraje” (Nota 2).

Por otra parte, algunos Estados europeos están experimentando los efectos de otros instrumentos legales en materia de inversión que permiten la presentación de demandas por parte de inversionistas: por ejemplo  España, a raíz de un recorte en las subvenciones estatales para proyectos de producción de energía eólica y solar, se ha visto inundada de demandas, que la colocan detrás de Venezuela (26) y  (a la hora de redactar esta nota) arriba de Argentina (20) en cuanto a número de casos registrados ante el CIADI (ver nota de El País del mes de junio del 2015). Según las cifras oficiales del CIADI, en América Latina, continúan luego de Venezuela (26 demandas) y Argentina (20 demandas), Costa Rica (con 5), Ecuador, Panamá y Perú (con tres demandas cada uno), Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, México y Uruguay (con una cada uno). El detalle preciso de las 22 demandas pendientes contra España puede consultarse en este  enlace  oficial del CIADI (las que inician con la sigla ARB/14 y ARB/15 son las más recientes). Al realizar la consulta, un investigador español se sorprenderá tal vez del carácter exiguo y limitado de la información proporcionada por el CIADI en su sitio oficial: ello le ayudará a entender mejor las críticas sobre la poca transparencia del CIADI hechas desde hace muchos años en América Latina y en otras partes del mundo, y que han llevado a Estados como por ejemplo Brasil, Cuba, India, y México a mantener una prudente distancia: ninguno de estos Estados ha ratificado la convención de 1965 que establece el CIADI.

Finalmente cabe señalar que, ante el paulatino cambio de posición operado por China con relación al CIADI y a los TBI (ver estudio ante citado de Julian Ku), ello en aras de contar con estándares de protección similares a los de los demás Estados exportadores de inversión extranjera, se registró la primera demanda de una empresa china en el CIADI contra Perú en el 2007. Desde entonces, se contabilizan cuatro más: dos contra Tanzania, una contra Bélgica y otra contra Yemen respectivamente (ver  listado). Por su parte, China contabiliza tan solo dos demandas ante el CIADI en su contra: la primera interpuesta en mayo del 2011 con base en el TBI de China con Israel y de China con Malasia, a la cual desistió meses después el inversionista (ver ficha técnica); y la segunda recientemente interpuesta por una empresa surcoreana (ver ficha técnica) en noviembre del 2014 sobre la base del TBI entre China y Corea del Sur del 2007 por un monto de 14 millones de US$ (ver reporte de prensa). A modo de comparación, Costa Rica (que ratificó la convención que crea el CIADI de 1965 el mismo año que China en 1993) acumula 10 demandas (ver listado), de las cuáles únicamente una fue objeto de un desistimiento por parte del inversionista (caso Quadrant Pacific Growth Fund et al. v. Costa Rica, Caso ARB(AF)/08/1): el TBI con Canadá sirvió de base para tres demandas, el TBI con Alemania a dos, el CAFTAD-DR a dos, el TBI con España a una así como el TBI con Suiza. La primera demanda (caso Hacienda Santa Elena) se planteó en 1996 con base en la Convención que crea el CIADI: Costa Rica fue condenada por el CIADI en febrero del 2000 a pagar 16 millones de US$ a unos inversionistas norteamericanos (que reclamaban 41 millones de US$) por la expropiación de una finca cuyo valor cuando se adquirió en 1970 fue de unos 395.000 dólares (ver texto del fallo arbitral del 17 de febrero del 2000, punto 16).

De algunos casos de interés para un Estado receptor

La demanda interpuesta en el 2010 ante el CIADI por la transnacional Philip Morris por 25 millones de US$ contra Uruguay (a raíz de la adopción de una legislación para proteger a los uruguayos de los efectos del fumado) evidencia hasta donde se puede llegar usando algunos TBI con cláusulas más favorables que otros para el inversionista. La decisión preliminar del CIADI del 2013 en la que se declara competente (ver  texto ),  pese a los argumentos presentados por el Uruguay (ver puntos 31 a 54 de la sentencia), evidencia las ventajas ofrecidas por el TBI entre Uruguay y Suiza escogido por esta transnacional (lo cual debería de llamar la atención sobre el tipo de cláusulas insertas en los TBI con Suiza).

El hecho que el TBI con los Países Bajos haya sido denunciado  por Venezuela en mayo del 2008 (ver  nota de El Universal), por Sudáfrica en el 2012 (ver  nota)  y por Indonesia  (denuncia efectiva a partir del 1ero de julio del 2015 (ver  nota) constituye a su vez un indicador que deberían invitar a un ejercicio similar para los TBI suscritos con los Países Bajos: una publicación especializada del 2012 sobre los TBI de los Países Bajos (ver  artículo  titulado “The Netherlands: A Gateway to ‘Treaty Shopping’ for Investment Protection”) refiere, entre otros aspectos, al hecho que los Países Bajos son usados por muchas transnacionales para constituirse formalmente ahí y al hecho que los habilidosos negociadores holandeses han obtenido la inclusión de cláusulas sumamente favorables para sus inversionistas. Un poco más cerca de nosotros, merece mención el hecho que de las tres demandas actualmente pendientes contra Panamá ante el CIADI, una de ellas fue interpuesta en abril del 2015 por la corporación costarricense Álvarez y Marín (ver  ficha técnica) con base en el CAFTA-DR y… el TBI entre Panamá y los Países Bajos.

Por otra parte, el retiro, unas semanas después de presentada, de la demanda interpuesta ante el CIADI por la petrolera Harken contra Costa Rica en septiembre del 2003 por 57.000 millones de US$ (ver  nota  de La Nación) evidencia cuán desventajoso puede resultar para un inversionista extranjero molesto (y ventajoso para un Estado …) el no contar con ningún TBI o TLC vigente que garantice un consentimiento previo del Estado a un arbitraje ante el CIADI u otra instancia. La posición de las máximas autoridades de Costa Rica en aquel momento fue categórica: “Costa Rica tiene el soberano derecho de que las diferencias, si a alguno le asiste la razón para un reclamo, sean resueltas por las autoridades administrativas o judiciales de Costa Rica” afirmó su Presidente, quién no se dejó impresionar en lo más mínimo por los dígitos de la suma exigida ante el CIADI (ver  nota  de La Nación del 30 de setiembre del 2003).  Años después, se presentó una acción ante los tribunales de Costa Rica por parte de la misma empresa por un monto mucho menor (13 millones de US$  según indica esta  nota  de prensa), la cual fue finalmente desestimada en el 2014 (ver texto sentencia del Tribunal Contencioso Administrativo).

La valentía de las máximas autoridades de un Estado no necesariamente logra permear a los mandos de menor nivel.  En un  artículo  publicado en La Nación en el 2010 titulado “Minería, arbitraje y amenazas” referíamos a un extraño episodio (no investigado a la fecha, salvo error de nuestra parte) relacionado con el proyecto minero Crucitas en el que una demanda ante el CIADI interpuesta contra Costa Rica en julio del 2005 por 276 millones de US$ por la empresa minera  (y anunciada como un “respaldo” o “ back up ”  al momento de formalizarla)  fue retirada dos meses antes de que la Secretaría Técnica Nacional del Ambiente (SETENA) aprobará el Estudio de Impacto Ambiental (diciembre del 2005): nadie ha considerado oportuno conocer el detalle de las “negociaciones” sobre las que la empresa se mostraba “reasonably optimistic” y a las que refería en su carta del 3 de octubre del 2005 remitida a la Secretaría del CIADI (ver  documentos). A 10 años de suscrito este documento, se desconoce la identidad de quiénes en nombre del Estado costarricense “negociaron” durante la administración del Presidente Abel Pacheco (2002-2006) con la empresa canadiense Vanessa Venture.

Desarrollos recientes en aras de limitar el alcance de los TBI

Ante los cuestionamientos cada vez más contundentes relativos al funcionamiento tan peculiar del arbitraje de inversiones extranjeras, su carácter poco transparente, el “respaldo” que obtienen las empresas al presentar una multimillonaria demanda, la inclinación de los árbitros a favorecer casi siempre al inversionista extranjero, con contadas excepciones (Nota 3) y la hostilidad creciente de varios Estados en América Latina, tal como detallado en este artículo del año 2015 (Nota 4), algunos académicos han propuesto mecanismos que permitan reconciliar al CIADI con América Latina (Nota 5). Desde la perspectiva de los derechos humanos, un reciente informe del Relator Especial de Naciones Unidas sobre la Promoción de un Orden International Democrático y Equitativo  (ver texto  en español del  documento A/70/285  del 5 de agosto del 2015) indicó que: “La solución de controversias entre inversores y Estados es un mecanismo bastante reciente y arbitrario; es una forma privatizada de solucionar controversias que acompaña a muchos acuerdos internacionales de inversión. En lugar de litigar ante los tribunales locales o invocar la protección diplomática, los inversores recurren a tres árbitros que, en procedimientos confidenciales, deciden si sus derechos y la inversión han sido violados por un Estado. Los tribunales de solución de controversias entre inversores y Estados pueden entender en demandas de los inversores contra los Estados, pero no pueden hacerlo respecto de las demandas de los Estados contra los inversores, por ejemplo, cuando estos últimos violan leyes y reglamentos nacionales, contaminan el medio ambiente y el suministro de agua, introducen la utilización de organismos modificados genéticamente potencialmente peligrosos, etc. Un defecto de nacimiento de una solución de controversia entre inversores y Estados es su calidad de “caballo de Troya”: se introdujo en los acuerdos internacionales de inversión sin revelar plenamente su aplicación potencialmente invasivas” (punto 21, p. 11).

Por su parte, un análisis presentado en el marco de un seminario auspiciado por el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Finlandia en el 2013, titulado “Improving the international investment law and policy regime: Options for the future”, concluye por su parte  en la imperiosa necesidad de establecer un “International Investment Steering Group” (ver la sección de Concluding Remarks del informe disponible  aquí, pp. 61-62).

En otras latitudes, Estados receptores de inversión extranjera como  Indonesia, Sudáfrica o la misma Australia han decidido poner fin unilateralmente a una gran cantidad de TBI (ver por ejemplo  nota  de prensa del 2014). En el caso de Argentina, autores de este país han  enfatizado la urgente necesidad de renegociar los TBI vigentes. Leemos en las reflexiones finales de este  artículo  que: “El impacto que han tenido los “encorcetamientos jurídicos” que generan los TBI frente a la necesaria modificación de políticas públicas o normas de orden público hace necesario que el Estado renegocie los TBI, a la vez que se estudie con cautela y responsabilidad la posibilidad de excluir a ciertos sectores estratégicos para el desarrollo y la seguridad nacional del Estado, especialmente aquellos que no cuentan con un criterio de reciprocidad hacia inversores en el Estado contraparte” (p.125). Con respecto a la reciprocidad mencionada por este último autor, un reciente informe del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) sobre la inversión de América Latina en China refiere a las fuertes limitaciones para la inversión extranjera en China en sectores considerados estratégicos o altamente sensibles (ver  informe,  pp. 29-30).

Cabe mencionar que en el caso de Colombia (uno de los pocos Estados de la región latinoamericana que no ha sido objeto de ninguna demanda ante el CIADI), una nota preparada por la Embajada de Estados Unidos en Bogotá de mayo del 2011 (y destinada a las empresas norteamericanas interesadas en invertir en Colombia) reconocía la dificultad que presentaba para el inversionista extranjero la legislación colombiana (al restringir la posibilidad de acudir a un arbitraje internacional), pero informaba que la suscripción de numerosos TBI por parte de Colombia podría cambiar la situación (Nota 6).

Implicaciones para Costa Rica de un nuevo TBI

En el caso de Costa Rica se había insistido por parte de varios sectores hace unos años sobre la urgente necesidad para Costa Rica de renegociar el CAFTA-DR, así como el contenido de los TBI, y buscar salvaguardas que protejan adecuadamente al Estado de este tipo de demandas (en algunos casos claramente abusivas). En materia de concesión de obra pública, resulta evidente que el Estado costarricense todavía está “aprendiendo”, tal y como lo declaró la Contralora General de la República en el 2011 (ver nota de prensa): el aprendizaje pareciera arduo según se desprende de recientes declaraciones del mismo ente fiscalizador. No obstante, en este como en otros ámbitos, el concesionario extranjero beneficia con un TBI de una ventaja sobre los concesionarios de nacionalidad costarricense y ya son tres las demandas que enfrenta Costa Rica por parte de concesionarios molestos con algunas acciones del aparato estatal. Más generalmente, y sin mayores pretensiones, remitimos al lector a esta   nota  del Semanario Universidad que señala los desafíos y los riesgos – a nuestro modesto parecer siempre actuales  –  que conlleva para Costa Rica el seguir suscribiendo acuerdos tan favorables para el inversionista extranjero sin restricciones de ningún tipo. Los tratados de libre comercio y los TBI no son normas pétreas y pueden ser renegociados si así lo disponen las partes: en materia de TBI, su renegociación constituye una práctica bastante consolidada en los últimos años. El año pasado,  la misma Comunidad de Estados de América Latina y del Caribe (CELAC) externó su profundo malestar con relación al actual mecanismo arbitral en materia de inversiones, llamando a establecer un mecanismo regional alternativo para la región: lo hizo en la Declaración Final de su II Cumbre celebrada en Cuba – suscrita por  sus 33 integrantes, incluyendo a los delegados de Costa Rica – en enero del 2014 (ver  texto  completo) al declarar que : “Subrayamos la importancia de que nuestros países fortalezcan su preparación en materia de atención a controversias internacionales, y consideramos que se debe evaluar la posibilidad de que nuestra región se dote de mecanismos apropiados para la solución de controversias con inversionistas extranjeros. Manifestamos nuestra solidaridad con los países de la América Latina y el Caribe que están siendo afectados por reclamaciones que ponen en riesgo el desarrollo de sus pueblos, y solicitamos a las empresas y grupos trasnacionales que mantengan una conducta responsable y consistente con las políticas públicas adoptadas por los Estados receptores de la inversión” (punto 43 de la Declaración de La Habana).

Resulta oportuno precisar que entre la diversas críticas al arbitraje internacional en materia de inversión, se incluye el elevado costo que debe sufragar el Estado para su defensa: en la actualidad, el monto promedio para cubrir únicamente los gastos en honorarios de abogados para la defensa de un Estado demandado, (y ello, independientemente del resultado final) ronda los 8 millones de US$, según lo indicado por un especialista costarricense en materia de arbitraje de inversión (ver  nota  en CRHoy). En el largo caso Pacific Rim que enfrenta El Salvador en el CIADI (demanda inicialmente planteada por 314 millones de US$ por una empresa minera canadiense, ahora en manos de una empresa australiana), se leyó recientemente que el monto en honorarios de abogados supera los 12 millones de US$ (ver  nota  de prensa titulada “Arbitraje con Pacific Rim ha costado al Estado $12.6 millones”. Un muy completo  informe  del 2012 de una ONG lleva al respecto un evocador título de “Cuando la injusticia es negocio. Cómo las firmas de abogados, árbitros y financiadores alimentan el auge del arbitraje “. Este informe detalla de una manera bastante bien documentada cuál es el destino final de gran parte de estas cuantiosas sumas de dinero que significa una demanda ante el CIADI.

Las inversiones de China en América Latina

En el mes de mayo del 2015, se leyó en Costa Rica (ver  nota  de La Nación del 27/05/2015) que:” El consejero económico y comercial de la Embajada de China, Liu Xiaofeng, explicó que el atraso en el aval a ese proyecto por el Congreso, genera desconfianza en los empresarios asiáticos con interés en venir al país. “Con este documento, los inversionistas chinos tendrían fuerte confianza para invertir sus dineros aquí, instalar empresas o fábricas”, dijo Liu.” No obstante, y sin ánimo de desmerecer lo apuntado por el diplomático de China que cita el artículo, cabe señalar que recientemente, se anunció por parte de China un amplio plan de inversiones en Brasil (ver  nota  de El Pais): Brasil, al igual que Canadá – hasta noviembre del 2013 -, o que Cuba, México, República Dominicana, no ha ratificado (ni tan siquiera firmado en el caso brasileño) la convención de 1965 que establece el CIADI. Brasil tampoco ha ratificado ninguno de los numerosos TBI que ha suscrito en recientes años con Estados europeos y latinoamericanos (ver  listado). A diferencia de lo oído en Costa Rica por parte de algunas hacendosas autoridades (un tanto urgidas) en marzo del 2014 con relación a la empresa brasileña OAS a cargo de la ampliación de la ruta San José – San Ramón, las empresas brasileñas no tienen cómo interponer una demanda internacional ante el CIADI u otros centros de arbitraje de inversión contra Estados: Brasil se ha mostrado inflexible en relación al arbitraje de inversión y como consecuencia, las empresas brasileñas no tienen acceso al CIADI. En años recientes, lo que Brasil ha hecho es idear un tipo de acuerdo sobre inversión – denominado ACFI en portugués, CFIA en español – que cuenta con un mecanismo de resolución de controversias conjunto y culmina, en caso de desacuerdo persistente, en un clásico arbitraje inter-estatal, es decir, de Estado a Estado (Nota 7). Uno de los últimos acuerdos de este tipo suscrito en África fue en abril del 2015 con Mozambique (ver  nota  de sitio oficial en Brasil). Los artículos 18 y 19 del CFIA suscrito por Brasil y México en junio del 2015 (ver texto) permiten dar una idea del sistema de resolución de controversias acordado que ignora totalmente al CIADI.

De igual manera, las crecientes inversiones de China en Venezuela, en Bolivia y en Ecuador (Estados que han denunciado la convención de 1965 que establece el CIADI en el 2007, 2009 y 2012 respectivamente y que han puesto fin o renegociado un sinnúmero de TBI conteniendo cláusulas consideradas abusivas) evidencian que, al menos en América Latina, algunas empresas chinas tienen una política que difiere de la referida por el agregado comercial de la Embajada de China en San José citado por La Nación. En el artículo precitado de la académica Magdalena Bas Villizio leemos que “si bien Argentina se mantiene dentro del régimen, lo hace con restricciones que no implican el abandono del mismo”: Argentina suscribió con China un TBI en el año de 1992, cuya cláusula 8 descarta al CIADI como mecanismo de solución de controversias Estado- inversionista (ver texto), a diferencia de los que suscribiría años después con otros Estados. Es probable que fueran los negociadores chinos los que exigieran el no incluir ninguna cláusula CIADI en este TBI.  En los últimos tiempos, Argentina está buscando mecanismos para evitar ser demandada ante el CIADI, incluyendo la renegociación de los más de 50 TBI que suscribió (ver  nota  de prensa). El distanciamiento de Argentina con el CIADI es un hecho notorio, y no se ha oído de ninguna reducción  de las inversiones de China a Argentina por esta razón, muy por el contrario.

A modo de conclusión

Lo brevemente aquí expuesto no pretende más que ofrecer algunas reflexiones sobre la práctica que en otras latitudes del continente y del planeta se están desarrollando con relación a limitar sustancialmente el alcance de los TBI y del CIADI.  Los elevados niveles de la inversión de China en América Latina evidencian que hay manera de atraer inversión china (y en general extranjera, como lo demuestra Brasil) sin someterse a cláusulas en materia de arbitraje de inversión como las contenidas en un TBI convencional. Los diputados de Costa Rica y las autoridades del Poder Ejecutivo podrían revisar con mayor detenimiento el tema, antes de proceder los primeros a la aprobación definitiva en segundo debate del TBI entre China y Costa Rica.

Finalmente, vale la pena recordar que este acuerdo bilateral fue negociado y suscrito en el año 2007 durante la administración del Presidente Oscar Arias Sánchez (2006-2010): los proyectos fuertemente cuestionados en Costa Rica en los que están involucradas concesionarias chinas – por el momento impedidas de demandar a Costa Rica en el exterior a título de “back- up”- encuentran su origen en actos jurídicos y acuerdos suscritos en ese preciso período. Como se recordará, dicha administración también se caracterizó por abrir la economía costarricense a la globalización sin ningún tipo de salvaguarda y por intentar hacer a un lado la legislación ambiental vigente en Costa Rica so pretexto que no se podía frenar a la inversión extranjera (Nota 8): ambas características explican en gran parte varias de las demandas pendientes de resolución que ahora enfrenta Costa Rica.

 Nicolás Boeglin

Notas

Nota 1: En una conferencia de prensa, (ver nota de Diario Extra, del 16/06/2012) el viceministro del Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transporte (MOPT) de Costa Rica, Rodrigo Rivera, «explicó que para el Estado era más barato permitirle a Riteve quedarse operando 10 años más y de esta manera asegurarse no tener que pagar los $280 millones si perdía el arbitraje». Costa Rica revalidó la concesión por 10 años más a Riteve en el 2012, pero la demanda se mantuvo ante el CIADI. Se lee en la   ficha  de este caso que el pasado 20 de julio del 2015, sucedió algo un tanto inédito en los archivos del CIADI: “The Claimant files a proposal for disqualification of arbitrators Claus von Wobeser, Joseph P. Klock Jr. and Eduardo Silva Romero. The proceeding is suspended in accordance with ICSID Arbitration Rule 9(6)”.

Nota 2: Véase SOMMER Chr., “El reconocimiento y la ejecución en los laudos arbitrales del CIADI: Ejecución Directa o Aplicación del Exequatur?”, Revista Cordobesa de Derecho Internacional Público (ReCorDIP), Volumen 1, (2011). Texto del artículo  disponible  aqui .

Nota 3: Una de ellas es la decisión del CIADI de enero del 2013 a favor de Venezuela ante una demanda interpuesta por la minera canadiense Vanessa Venture. Sobre este caso, remitimos al lector a nuestra breve nota: BOEGLIN N., “CIADI, decisión favorable a Venezuela y dudas en Costa Rica”, CRhoy, 28/01/2013, disponible   aquí.

Nota 4: Véase BAS VILIZZIO M., “Solución de controversias en los tratados bilaterales de inversión: mapa de situación en América del Sur”, Revista de la Secretaría del Tribunal Permanente de Revisión, Número 5, (2015), pp. 233-253. Texto disponible  aquí.

Nota 5: Véase por ejemplo FACHS GOMEZ K., “Proponiendo un decálogo conciliador para Latinoamérica y CIADI”, Revista de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas (Colombia), Vol. 40 (2010), pp. 439-494. Texto integral disponible  aquí.

Nota 6:  En la nota antes referida se lee textualmente que: “Since Colombia has become party to FTAs and multilateral and bilateral investment treaties, the number of international investment arbitration cases between investors and State entities will increase. These arbitration processes may help to change Colombian case law because FTAs, BITs and multilateral investment treaties empower arbitration tribunals to decide cases related to breach of treaty standards of investment protection”. Sobre la dificultad de demandar a Colombia ante el CIADI, se lee en un artículo publicado en Colombia en el año 2006 que: “En Colombia, el Decreto 2080 de 2000, por medio del cual se expidió el régimen general de inversiones de capital del exterior en Colombia y de capital colombiano en el exterior, permite acudir al arbitraje internacional para la solución de este tipo de controversias, siempre que las partes en el conflicto así lo hubieran pactado. Nuestra legislación interna no hace alusión expresa al arbitraje CIADI; en consecuencia, existe libertad para escoger el foro a través del cual se solucionarán las controversias. Por su parte, la recientemente expedida Ley 963, por medio de la cual se establece un régimen de estabilidad jurídica para inversionistas, dispone que en los contratos de estabilidad jurídica que celebre el Estado para promover nuevas inversiones podrá incluirse una cláusula compromisoria por medio de la cual se solucionen las diferencias que surjan entre las partes; pero en tal caso se solucionarán mediante arbitraje nacional regido de manera exclusiva por las leyes colombianas. De tal forma, las controversias surgidas por estos contratos típicos de inversión celebrados entre el Estado colombiano y un inversionista, no podrán ser dirimidas frente al CIADI”: véase MEDINA CASAS H.M., “La jurisdicción del CIADI: una evolución en el arreglo de controversias internacionales”, in ABELLO GALVIS R. (Ed.) Derecho Internacional Contemporáneo: Lo Público, Lo Privado, Los Derechos Humanos: liber amicorum en homenaje a Germán Cavelier”, Bogotá D.C., Universidad del Rosario, 2006, pp. 707-727,  p. 718. Texto integral del artículo disponible aquí

Nota 7:  En un reciente   informe  del SELA sobre los países de América Latina y las economías BRICS, se señala que: ”En 2015, el Ministerio para las Relaciones Exteriores en conjunto con el Ministerio de Desarrollo, Industria y Comercio y el Ministro de Finanzas, apoyados por una de las asociaciones de empresarios más grandes, CNI (Confederação Nacional da Indústria) y FIESP (Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo), diseñaron un nuevo modelo de acuerdo de inversión: El Acuerdo sobre Cooperación y Facilitación de las Inversiones (CFIA). Este acuerdo, ya firmado con Mozambique, Angola, México y Malaui, tiene en su núcleo atenuar los riesgos y la prevención de las discusiones por inversión por medio de un sistema de resolución de conflictos conformado por una fase de negociación con la participación de Puntos Focales o un Defensor del Pueblo. Un Defensor del Pueblo consiste en una persona que apoye a los inversionistas en la solución de problemas de inversiones y de mejorar el ambiente de los negocios estableciendo un canal de negociación entre los inversionistas y el estado para alcanzar una solución pacífica la cual satisfaga los intereses de ambas partes. En este sistema los inversionistas negocian en primera instancia con sus países de origen para convencerles de promocionar sus concesiones y negociar con el país anfitrión” (p. 79).

Nota 8: En una entrevista a Rolando Mendoza, miembro de la Comisión Plenaria de la Secretaría Técnica Nacional para el Ambiente (SETENA) al Semanario Universidad a mediados del 2009,  se lee que “Entonces en nombre de la inversión extranjera ha habido presiones para que aceleremos los análisis, para que en esa “competitividad” saquemos proyectos con cierta premura, y con esto corremos el riesgo de que no se hagan los análisis debidamente, y por estas presiones creo que ahí pudimos haber tenido debilidades”. Ver artículo titulado “Setena es una entidad vulnerable ante presiones políticas. Representante de CONARE confirma presencia constante del Ministro Jorge Woodridge en órgano que toma decisiones en SETENA”, Semanario Universidad, Julio del 2009. Texto del artículo disponible  aquí.

 

Nicolás Boeglin : Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Costa Rica

Image: On October 27, the USS Lassen (above) navigated within 12 nautical miles of territory claimed by China.

Following its provocative naval intervention last week against Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, the Obama administration is engaged in an aggressive diplomatic offensive throughout Asia, seeking to ramp up the pressure on China over the explosive issue.

Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Command, deliberately inflamed tensions yesterday during his trip to Beijing. He emphatically declared that the US military would “continue to fly, sail and operate whenever and wherever international law allows. The South China Sea is not—and will not—be an exception.”

For months Harris pressed for President Obama to give the green light for “freedom of navigation” operations within the 12-nautical mile territorial limit surrounding Chinese-controlled reefs. In March, the admiral implied that China’s land reclamation activities in the region posed a threat, describing it as creating “a great wall of sand.”

On October 27, the USS Lassen, a guided missile destroyer, intruded within the 12-mile limit surrounding at least one of the Chinese-administered islets in the Spratly Islands. It was the first such direct challenge to Beijing’s claims. Washington insists that under international law several of China’s reefs, before land reclamation, were submerged at high tide and therefore do not generate territorial waters. Significantly, however, the US has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that is the basis for this assertion.

Harris declared yesterday that the USS Lassen was simply engaged in a routine operation. “We’ve been conducting freedom of navigation operations all over the world for decades, so no one should be surprised by them,” he said.

In reality, the deliberate violation of Chinese claims has nothing to do with upholding international laws and norms. Rather it is a component of the Obama administration’s broader “pivot to Asia”—an all-encompassing diplomatic, economic and military strategy aimed at isolating China and subordinating it to US interests, by war if necessary.

Chinese officials rebuked Harris for his comments in Beijing. The People’s Liberation Army chief of general staff Fang Fenghui accused him of creating “a disharmonious atmosphere for our meeting.” Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accused the US of “hypocrisy and hegemonism” for demanding that Beijing stop militarising the South China Sea, while sending warships into the region.

Harris attempted to play down the danger of conflict between the two nuclear-armed powers, saying: “Some pundits predict a coming clash between our nations. I do not ascribe to this pessimistic view.”

This remark, which implies that Washington expects Beijing to back down in the face of repeated provocations, actually highlights the dangers of conflict. China cannot relent indefinitely in such a strategically sensitive area. China’s Defence Minister Chang Wanquan warned his US counterpart Ashton Carter yesterday in Malaysia there was a “bottom line” for China in regard to US actions in the South China Sea.

An unnamed US defence official told Reuters yesterday that the Pentagon intended to repeat last week’s naval intrusion “about twice a quarter or a little more than that.” He said such a schedule would “make it regular but not a constant poke in the eye.” Nevertheless that is exactly what the US actions constitute—a constant humiliation that could goad China into responding.

US Defence Secretary Carter is in Kuala Lumpur to attend this week’s biennial meeting of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) defence ministers. In another deliberate affront to China, the US and Japan are both pressing for the South China Sea to be placed on the meeting’s agenda and included in the concluding statement.

Carter has been in Asia to marshal support for the US campaign. Before flying to Malaysia, he visited South Korea where Defence Minister Han Min-koo parroted the line from Washington, declaring that “it is our stance that freedom of navigation and freedom of flight should be ensured in this region.” Pointing to the pressure from Washington, John Delury, an associate professor at Yonsei University, told the Wall Street Journal: “The Americans are trying to get the Koreans to carry water on issues that are farther afield.”

Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein made no reference to the South China Sea in opening the ASEAN defence ministers’ meeting, but cautiously indicated some support for the US in a separate news conference. He said countries with a stake in the region should exercise their right to operate in “international waters.” He nevertheless ruled out any discussion of the issue, saying that it came under the purview of foreign, rather than defence, ministers.

Hishammuddin’s comments point to the nervousness among ASEAN members over the heightened tensions. While the Philippines and Vietnam fully support Washington’s aggressive stance, others such as Malaysia are concerned about the impact on their economic relations with China.

Japan, which is backing the US, is also exploiting the issue to establish its own relations in South East Asia. It delivered two more patrol boats to Vietnam yesterday as part of an agreement last year to boost the country’s coast guard to counter China. Tokyo recently reached a similar arrangement with the Philippines, which is aggressively pursuing its territorial disputes with China.

Washington’s deliberate inflaming of flashpoints in the South China Sea is not only aimed at China but cuts across the efforts of its European rivals to establish closer relations with Beijing. The visits by Carter and Admiral Harris to Asia followed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Britain where he was royally feted and sealed major economic agreements between the two countries. The Dutch king Willem-Alexander, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande each visited Beijing over the past two weeks accompanied by corporate entourages.

None of this will have gone unnoticed in the US, which reacted bitterly earlier this year when Britain signed up to China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, despite US objections. Unable to secure its world domination by economic means, the US is increasingly resorting to risky military measures to undermine its rivals or potential rivals and disrupt their relations, heightening the dangers of war.

Image: A protester launches a tear gas cansiter back at Israeli forces. The practice is difficult and dangerous. Once the canister is launched it is likely that the protester will have to recover for sometime from sticking around while the gas takes affect. (Photo: Abed al Qaisi)

On Thursday evening Israeli forces stormed Aida refugee camp in the southern occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem. Jeeps descended on the camp from all entrances shooting off tear gas rounds indiscriminately, Akkram Huessni, a young man from the camp told Mondoweiss.

Families rushed to close their windows, shoving cloth in any crevice that could allow the noxious gas to seep in, a well practiced drill in homes across the occupied West Bank.

While Aida is known for being politically charged, generally Israeli forces focus on protesters, but on Thursday the forces seemed to be ignoring the protesters and going for the general community instead, firing copious amounts of tear gas, Huessni said.

“The entire camp was full of gas,” he recalled. “We had to have people with gas masks all over in order to pull people who got stuck outside out of the white clouds”

During the middle of the assault, the Israeli army and border police — in a surprise move — issued a message to residents via loudspeaker. One young man caught the entire message on video.

“People of Aida refugee camp, we are the occupation army,” the border police officer’s voice boomed through a main part of the camp in Arabic. “If you throw stones, we will hit you with gas until you all die – the youth, the children, the old people, you will all die.”

“You will all die,” the officer said.

“We won’t leave any of you alive. We have arrested one of you, he’s with us now, we took him from his home and we will slaughter and kill him while you watch if you keep throwing stones. Go home or we will gas you until you die, your families, your children, everyone. We will kill you,”

the message continued.

The border police officer who issued the message was reportedly suspended from duties, Israeli media reported. While the message caught on video was shocking for a number of reasons, it pointed out at least one important truth, tear gas kills.

The next day the threat came to pass as an 8-month-old baby, Ramadan Thawabta, suffocated and died from tear gas inhalation during clashes in Beit Fajjar village, just south of Bethlehem, doctors told Palestinian news agency, Ma’an News.

A little more than a week previously, a 54-year-old peace activist with cardiac disease suffocated on the gas and died. Doctors confirmed that it was the tear gas, and not his previous condition that killed him, according Ma’an.

A “non-lethal” chemical weapon

Tear gas is a supposedly non-lethal chemical weapon, heavily used by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and other areas of the Palestinian Territory. The gas belongs to a group of chemical agents referred to as “lachrymatory agents,” from the latin word “lacrima,” meaning tear.

The name however, is misleading for two reasons. First, tear gas is not a gas at all, but rather a solid chemical made into an aerosol that hangs in the air when released. The gas settles on surfaces, including clothes, and can be reactivated if a surface the tear gas has settled on comes into contact with skin days later.

Secondly, tear gas affects much more than just the eyes, as skin and breathing passages are equally sensitive to the chemical.

When exposed to tear gas the eyes are the first the become affected, as the gas begins to sting and makes it difficult to see. Touching the eyes or putting water on the affected area only makes it worse. The second effect is on the respiratory system, as the gas makes it feel as if the victim’s chest is constricting and it becomes difficult, if not impossible to breathe.

Tear gas also stings and inflames any parts of the skin that is sensitive or damp, like the face, neck and inner arms. Heavy exposure can sometimes lead to burns or blisters, and sweat or water can activate the gas on the skin hours after exposure.

If overexposed, particularly for children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems such as asthma, the “non-lethal” gas can be deadly.

Palestinian defenses

Tear gas is forbidden to be used during warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which was was adopted by the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in 1992. According to the United Nations, 98 percent of the global population has signed the agreement, including Israel.

It is unknown if the chemicals in modern-day tear gas cause long-term effects, as there have been very few studies done on the matter.

Regardless of its supposed illegality and unknown side effects, one would be hard pressed to find a household in the occupied Palestinian Territory that does not know how to combat symptoms of the gas due to its frequent and heavy use by Israeli forces on Palestinians.

On any given day in villages, cities and refugee camps across the occupied Palestinian Territories, where clashes have become a daily occurrence, Palestinians are combating the chemical weapon.

In Aida refugee camp, three teenagers lie flat on the floor of a stranger’s home. While one young woman holds a fan over the young men, the mother of the household grabs an onion ready and waiting on living room table and begins holding broken pieces of the root to the faces of the suffering young men.

Locals use onions, perfume, vinegar and rubbing alcohol to combat the symptoms, though little is known as to why these methods seem to offer relief.

When one young man seems to be severely affected, a medic is summoned from the street outside. The medic, a volunteer who has spent nearly every evening since the start of October helping those injured during the daily clashes, quickly comes to the aid of the young man.

The medic begins lightly beating on the chest of the teen, asking him repeatedly to try and speak. Another medic enters the room, breaking open an alcohol swab and cleans the teen’s face of the chemical. Eventually the young man comes to and can breathe again. He lies red-faced and exhausted on the ground until the effects completely wear off.

A similar scene is repeated daily throughout the occupied Palestinian Territory.

According to Ma’an News Agency, the Red Crescent reported that 5,399 Palestinians were treated for excessive tear gas inhalation during the month of October — an average of 174 people a day.

In addition to injuries caused by the gas, the tear gas canisters themselves sometimes hit protesters, injuring them from the force of the metal tube cutting through the air, as well as from the heat of the metal. The canisters alone can break the skin, shatter windows and catch trees and fields on fire — all things that have long-been a daily reality for Palestinians.

Sheren Khalel is a freelance multimedia journalist who works out of Israel, Palestine and Jordan. She focuses on human rights, women’s issues and the Palestine/Israel conflict. Khalel formerly worked for Ma’an News Agency in Bethlehem, and is currently based in Ramallah and Jerusalem. You can follow her on Twitter at @Sherenk.

Canada’s federal election October 19 was effectively a plebiscite of voter opinion on the decade-long rule by the ultra-neoliberal Conservatives (Tories) led by Stephen Harper. With some 70 per cent of the electorate declaring for “change” in successive polling, the overriding issue was which of the main opposition parties, the New Democratic Party (NDP) or the Liberals, would emerge as the party best situated to replace the Tories.

The Official Opposition NDP entered the campaign in August with high hopes, leading the polls, buoyed by its recent victory in the Tory heartland of Alberta and enjoying new support for its principled opposition to the Tories’ repressive “anti-terror” bill C-51. But on October 19 it was the Liberals, with only 34 seats in the previous Parliament and led by a new leader Justin Trudeau, who were elected the new government, with a clear majority of the 338 seats. The NDP, winning only 44 seats, was reduced to third-party status. Its major losses were in Quebec, the province that had elected 59 NDP MPs in the previous federal election. The defeated Tories will form the Official Opposition, while the death agony of the Bloc Québécois (BQ) gets a further extension.

A typical reaction of many worker activists was that of Suzanne MacNeil, executive vice-president of the Halifax-Dartmouth & District Labour Council and member of Solidarity Halifax, who acted as campaign manager for an NDP candidate:

“I’m disappointed that we lost so many good, progressive MPs, and that an NDP campaign that proposed substantial reforms like national child care couldn’t succeed the way we needed it to.

“I am, however, feeling no small amount of relief that we got rid of a government that was particularly nasty and determined to attack union workers, the working class in general, women, Indigenous people, immigrants, folks who live in poverty, all manner of public institutions, our environment.

“Bear in mind, this is just a moment of relief. The work ahead of us changes, but still needs to go on.”

‘Strategic Voting’

But why the Liberals and not the NDP? Superficially, the result reflected the vagaries of Canada’s grossly undemocratic electoral system under which the House of Commons is composed only of MPs who came first in their constituencies (“ridings”), irrespective of party. This “first past the post” system (FPTP) usually rewards the party scoring the highest number of votes overall with a disproportionately large number of seats.

Had the seats at stake in this election been allocated according to the parties’ respective share of the total popular vote, the Liberals would have formed a minority government with 133 seats, while all the other parties would have elected more MPs: Tories 108, NDP 67, Bloc Québécois (BQ) 16, and the Greens 11 – one short of official party status. (These numbers fall just short of the 338 total seats due to rounding.)

In the context of a concerted movement to rid the country of the Tory government, the FPTP system put enormous pressure on anti-Tory voters to “vote strategically,” i.e. for any other party that had the best chance of defeating the government. The Liberals won that wager.

–

Canada’s Federal Election, 2015
	2015			2011
Party	Seats	Votes	% of vote	Seats	Votes	% of vote
Conservative	99	5,600,496	31.9	166	5,832.401	39.6
Liberal	184	6,930,136	39.5	34	2,783,175	18.9
NDP	44	3,461,262	19.7	103	4,508,474	30.6
BQ	10	818,652	4.7	4	889,788	6
Greens	1	605,864	3.4	1	576,221	3.9
For details, see Canadian federal election, 2015

–

So Why the Liberals?

The reasons why will long be debated, and I don’t intend to canvass them all, but some things seem clear. It was not because of major programmatic differences between the NDP and Liberals. On the contrary, their election platforms[1] seemed very similar – and this allowed quite marginal factors or events during the long campaign to result in sudden and significant shifts in their respective electorates.

Both parties promised to reverse some of the most egregious measures of the Harper era[2] and each proposed new but generally modest social and legal reforms.[3] They differed significantly on a few key issues; for example, the NDP committed to repealing Bill C-51 while the Liberals promised only to “repeal problematic elements.” But neither offered any real change in major features of the neoliberal regime such as the inter-imperialist military alliance structures, the trade and investment deals,[4] or Canada’s dangerous dependency on petro-extractivism.

In fact, one of the weakest parts of the NDP’s platform concerned climate change, where it relies on a market-friendly “cap and trade” mechanism to limit greenhouse gas emissions, while avoiding any reference to the tar sands, the major source of Canada’s dangerously high carbon levels. Party leader Thomas Mulcair supports the Energy East project to convert the TransCanada gas pipeline to transport raw bitumen from west to east for shipment abroad – the major target of the mass environmental movement, especially in Quebec where the project entails construction of 800 km of new pipeline through ecologically sensitive farm and wet lands bordering the St. Lawrence river. On existing and new pipeline and production plans the NDP (like the Liberals) promised only tighter environmental regulations.

‘Balanced Budget’ Pledge Unbalances NDP

Overall, the NDP campaigned slightly to the “left” of the Liberals on a lengthy platform (more than 80 pages) that for the first time in the party’s history was a program for government, including even an appendix on costing so detailed that it looked like a long-term government budget. However, the economic framework throughout fell short of even the neo-Keynesianism of classic social-democracy. And it was Mulcair’s promise of a “balanced budget” with no deficits during a five-year mandate that opened the way for the Liberals, demagogically, to outflank the NDP with a promised but vague “infrastructure funding” proposal that would entail a few years (they said) of budgetary deficits.

The NDP argued that its promised social reforms could be financed without a deficit through a 2 percentage-point increase in corporate taxes (while decreasing small business taxes). But the “balanced budget” fixation looked suspiciously similar to Tory austerity. Liberal fortunes rose quickly in the opinion polls as the corporate media, which had never warmed to the NDP primarily because of its still-existing ties to the unions, boosted the Liberals as a default option if needed, while in most cases editorially endorsing the Tories.

After the Liberal ascent began, the media obligingly collaborated with Harper when he cynically sought to cultivate anti-Muslim racist support through publicly denouncing a couple of women to whom his government wanted to deny citizenship because they wore the niqab, which conceals their faces. The Tories’ maneuver was most likely aimed at winning support from the pro-independence Bloc Québécois (BQ) that would otherwise have gone to the NDP. It seemed to work. BQ leader Gilles Duceppe pounced on the issue, the media blew it up, and NDP support in Quebec continued to decline.

But the BQ’s tactic, while it may have gained it some votes, reminded many Québécois of the xenophobic Charter of Values promoted by its provincial partner, the Parti Québécois, which had played a major role in the PQ’s defeat last year. And Mulcair, to his credit, stood fast on the NDP’s support of secularly inclusive citizenship (a position shared with the Liberals, whom the media ignored in this respect). In the end, the niqab politics probably did little damage to the NDP.

NDP Now Established in Quebec

The NDP’s “orange wave” in 2011, which boosted it to Official Opposition, was centered on its impressive and unexpected victory in Quebec, where it took 59 of the province’s 75 seats. On October 19 the party lost most of those seats. However, its results merit some analysis.

–

Although the NDP’s share of the Quebec vote fell to just over 25 per cent (from 43 per cent in 2011), and the Liberals more than doubled their vote, winning a majority of seats, the NDP came second, ahead of all other parties including the BQ – which thanks to the FPTP system increased its seats while registering its smallest support in its 25-year existence. Moreover, the ethnic divide in Quebec produces different voting patterns between majority Francophone and non-Francophone citizens. The NDP’s support declined most markedly among the non-Francophones, who voted massively for the Liberals. Support for the NDP was probably 30 per cent or more among Francophones. A riding-by-riding analysis of the popular vote will likely confirm this.

In fact, support for the federal NDP remains strongest in Quebec. In British Columbia, the party won a comparable percentage of the vote (25.9 per cent) but only 14 seats. In Ontario the party won 16.6 per cent and 8 seats. Similarly, in the other provinces and territories the NDP’s results were worse than in Quebec: Newfoundland and Labrador, 21 per cent and 0 seats, Nova Scotia 16.4 per cent and 0 seats, Manitoba (where it is the government) 13.8 per cent and 2 seats, and Alberta (elected to government in May) 11.6 per cent and 1 seat.

In 2011 the NDP’s Quebec breakthrough could be attributed to a peculiar combination of factors: fear of a Harper majority in Ottawa; the crisis of the pro-sovereignty movement and decline of the Bloc Québécois, up to then the major party federally; and the NDP’s apparent responsiveness to Quebec’s national concerns, as manifested in its “Sherbrooke Declaration.” Since then, the party membership has not come near to the 20,000 Mulcair had hoped to garner when he became leader. Few of its Quebec MPs emerged as strong public figures; almost all were rookies, many in their 20s.[5] And yet…

I think it can be said that the NDP, for now, is well grounded in Quebec and will continue to be a major player in its politics. And this year, for the first time ever, none of the union centrals endorsed the Bloc. They instead promoted a “strategic vote” against the Conservatives in the seats held by that party. The largest central, the Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ), called for a vote for the NDP in all other ridings.

What About Mulcair?

NDP strategists focused their entire election campaign around the personage of party leader Thomas Mulcair (now referred to as “Tom”). He was so central to the party’s appeal that he is an easy target in explaining its losses. But his real impact on the results is not altogether clear to me.

Mulcair was marketed as “experienced,” but what the party meant by this was his past experience as a minister in the Quebec Liberal government headed by Jean Charest, one of the most anti-worker governments since the days of Maurice Duplessis. Mulcair had served previously in various positions, notably as counsel to Alliance Quebec, the federally-funded Anglophone lobby group, and served for many years as a Liberal in the National Assembly, and a rather right-wing one at that. It was not hard for bloggers to unearth statements by him at the time praising Margaret Thatcher and her “There is No Alternative” mantra.

To pose as a real alternative to the Harper brand of neoliberalism, the NDP had to appeal to the many people concerned about the major issues of the day, many of them already involved in organized protest and social movements for change, including union struggles against capitalist austerity programs. Issues like climate change, the drift to militarism and military intervention abroad, the alignment with Israel and against the Palestinians, etc. This Mulcair was eminently unsuited to do. He supports hydrocarbon development and exports, he is a strong partisan of Zionist Israel, and he (like his predecessors as NDP leader) has never challenged the fundamental direction of Canada’s foreign policy under both Liberals and Conservatives. He barred prospective NDP candidates with known pro-Palestine positions, and he effectively censored Toronto NDP candidate Linda McQuaig when she admitted that Canada would have to stop tar sands development if it was to meet its emissions targets.

But Mulcair is the leader the party chose in 2012. At the time, it probably had little choice, given the majority Francophone Québécois composition of its parliamentary caucus. And the NDP is irrevocably committed to Parliament as its main if not only arena, and it puts a premium on the debating skills of its leaders and MPs – there, Mulcair was primus inter pares. But no attempt was made to develop a more collective leadership, one more attuned to the needs and concerns of the social movements that have always been the party’s base of support, if only in elections. The Liberals successfully campaigned as “Team Trudeau” to counter Tory charges that Justin Trudeau was too young and inexperienced to govern. Not so the NDP; it was the party of “Tom Mulcair.”

Moreover, Mulcair’s NDP was incoherent on some issues. For example, it called for abolition of the unelected Senate (as the social democrats had consistently done in the past), hoping to take advantage of the Duffy affair and related scandals involving Tory and Liberal Senators. But some provinces (and particularly Quebec) have historically viewed the Senate as the chamber representing the regions of Canada, and their unanimous support is required if the Senate is to be abolished. That would require reopening the 1982 Constitution – something the NDP fears as the Devil fears holy water, for that would again put front and center the national question in Quebec, where no government has to this day accepted the unilateral patriation of Canada’s constitution, with its limitations on Quebec powers, under the government of Trudeau senior (and with NDP support).

Where to Now?

Underscoring the limited options posed by the political parties in this election, groups of citizens mobilized independently to publicize their interests and concerns. They included the scientific community protesting government suppression of their views, First Nations seeking development of their communities and full recognition of their indigenous rights, antiwar activists (especially in Quebec) protesting Canada’s military intervention abroad, immigrant and refugee rights groups urging Canada to open its doors to refugees from the Middle East, civil liberties activists campaigning against Bill C-51, and housing activists mobilizing to underscore the need for massive spending on subsidized social housing, etc.

A notable effort – although it was given little attention in the corporate media – was publication of the leap manifesto.org, “A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another.” Launched by Naomi Klein and other prominent names in the environmental movement, it was designed to offer “bold policy solutions… not on offer from any of the major political parties.” Its “justice-based energy transition” highlighted indigenous rights, “energy democracy” through community-based initiatives designed to help achieve an economy based 100 per cent on renewable energy sources by 2050, ecology-friendly agriculture, skills retraining for workers in carbon-intensive industries, an end to trade deals that restrict environment-friendly national legislation, etc.

Optimistically summing up the lessons of the campaign on the eve of the election, the editors of the Quebec on-line journal Presse-toi à gauche made some important points that merit serious thinking by the Canadian left as a whole:

“What the social movements now intervening in this election show to us is that it is necessary to go beyond a narrow electoralism and to denounce the parties of Big Business for what they are and their role as defenders of the interests of the oligarchy.

“They also demonstrate to us that… the pan-Canadian nature of these struggles is obvious, and necessitates coordination and common initiatives at the level of the Canadian state as a whole.

“These battles [also] pose a central challenge to the anticapitalist left: the need to build a political alternative to the left of the NDP at the federal level, capable of presenting to the popular majority in Canada another social agenda [projet de société] that can take these struggles on to the political terrain….”

Appendix

The Bullet, an e-publication of the Ontario-based Socialist Project, published in translation (by yours truly) two views on the election by leading activists in Quebec, Roger Rashi and Pierre Beaudet. In a post-publication comment posted in French by Marc Bonhomme (like Rashi and Beaudet a member of Québec solidaire, the Quebec left sovereigntist party), some important points were made about the election result. I drew on them in some of my analysis above. Here is Bonhomme’s comment, in free translation:

“No ‘orange rout’ among the Francophone Québécois”

“There was an ‘orange rout’ in Ontario and in non-Francophone Quebec, but not at all in Francophone Quebec, where the NDP no doubt got close to 30 per cent of the popular vote (its 25 per cent overall reflects its low vote among non-Francophones). This compares favourably with the party’s 17 per cent in Ontario. The NDP could build on this base instead of continuing to self-destruct through its centrist politics, which it will no doubt do, although being the second opposition party may allow a certain verbal radicalism.

“As to the niqab politics, it was rejected by the Francophones. The combined vote of the Conservatives and the Bloc, the ‘blue’ vote, is lower than it was in 2011. Be careful about the optical illusion of the higher number of MPs from these two parties, which is solely due to the deformations of the first past the post system.

“If we consider that the Bloc had a more left populist discourse (pipelines, taxes, unemployment insurance and… independence) than right wing (niqab), we could say that the Bloc’s vote, like that of the NDP and the Greens, was a progressive vote and the Conservative and Liberal vote was not progressive notwithstanding the Liberal promise of a deficit for infrastructure spending. Judging by this, Quebec as a whole voted non-progressive by 52 per cent and progressive by 47 per cent. But if we consider the very strong Liberal vote among the non-Francophones, which conceals a high Conservative vote (e.g. Mount Royal riding, with 38 per cent), it is quite possible that the Francophone vote was, by a slim margin, in the majority progressive.” •

Richard Fidler is an Ottawa member of the Socialist Project. This article first appeared on his blog Life on the Left.

Notes:

1. For the NDP platform, go here; for the Liberals’, here.

2. For example, both NDP and Liberals said they would reduce the age of eligibility for government pensions from 67 to 65 and boost benefits; implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on indigenous residential schools; call an inquiry into the cases of the missing and murdered indigenous women; restore the Court Challenges Program; repeal federal antilabour legislation (Bills C-377 and C-525); ease limits on family immigration; restore Canada Post home mail delivery; limit restrictions on eligibility for employment insurance benefits; end some restrictions on Parliamentary procedures; and end the combat missions in Iraq and Syria (although the Liberals want to train local forces in both countries and maintain Canada’s military intervention in Eastern Europe).

3. Most notably, the NDP promised to open one million new childcare spaces within eight years at $15 a day per child, modeled on the existing Quebec plan, while the Liberals offered simply to adjust the Harper government’s Child Care Benefit for individual parents. Both parties pledged to replace the FPTP system with some version of a mixed-member proportional representation electoral system.

4. These include the new Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – both of which have yet to be ratified by Parliament – and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

5. Incidentally, the NDP’s highest vote in Quebec on October 19 went to Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who achieved notoriety in 2011 when she was elected in Berthier-Maskinongé (between Montréal and Quebec City) without even setting foot in the riding and lacking fluency in French. Now fully bilingual, she won 42.2 per cent of the popular vote: 22,942 votes, while the Bloc candidate who held the riding before 2011 came second with 14,037 votes.

 

Israel continues attacking defenseless Palestinians with weapons of war, daily deaths reported, scores of others injured and arrested.

On November 4, Maan News said Hamas and Islamic Jihad warned of “new methods of resistance” if Israeli brutal force continues.

Representatives from both groups said they’ll join the Intifada if Israeli occupation troops keep assassinating Palestinians.

Islamic Jihad leader Khalid al-Batsh said “Al-Quds Brigades and al-Qassam Brigades won’t accept it that only one side bleeds. (Israeli) crimes won’t…stop the Intifada. (They’ll) pay a heavy toll for executions…conduct(ed) in the field.”

He urged PA officials to stop collaborating with Israel “once and for all.” Side with resistance against occupation.

Hamas official Ismail Radwan urged Palestinians to count on resistance to “deter the occupation.” Both officials called efforts to compromise with Israel farcical, a waste of time.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces raided another Palestinian medical facility. Baladna medical center director Mahmoud al-Shami said they came with a court order to examine patients’ files, wanting information on ones injured  during street clashes. Al-Shami was ordered to appear for interrogation, a brutal procedure amounting to torture.

On Tuesday, Israeli soldiers attacked East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood youths and children. The community is isolated, held hostage. It’s an open-air prison, no one let in or out without proper identification and intrusive searches.

Access to workplaces and schools are blocked. Protesters were attacked with live fire, potentially lethal rubber/plastic coated steel bullets, and tear gas.

Palestinians call East Jerusalem a city governed by fear. Soldiers and police are everywhere. So are radicalized settlers, intimidating Arab residents freely.

Neighborhoods are sealed off by concrete blocks, walls in some places. Some neighborhoods are preemptively attacked. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents are collectively punished.

In 1967, East Jerusalem’s population was exclusively Arab. Now it’s around 37% – ethnically cleansed by systematic Judaization, heading for removing Palestinians entirely from the city and access to its holy sites.

Residents remaining are considered state enemies, outsiders to be replaced by Jews. A police commander said “(o)ur job here is to defend Jewish residents.”

An entire Arab population lives in fear of being brutalized, arrested, tortured, injured or killed. Racial profiling is rife. Even Jews looking like Arabs aren’t safe.

A Haifa resident was stabbed and seriously injured by a fellow Jew. Israeli soldiers murdered an Eritrean asylum seeker at a Beersheba bus station.

The Al-Zaytouna Center for Studies & Consultations  said long-persecuted people “overc(ame) the state of paralysis of” their leaders.

How far things go from here aren’t clear. Youths resisting are mostly “educated and mature…(They) made their decisions with awareness and calculation,” said the Center.

Their ranks are “socially broad-based,” their commitment real. They want occupation ended and their holy sites protected. They reject collaborating/corrupt PA officials.  They want Abbas replaced.

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.

An article published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), documents that, ever since 1998 in the U.S, Whites who are of non-Hispanic origin have been dying younger and younger, and that this is especially true for those Whites who are low-educated (non-BA’ed) and middle-aged (45- to 54-year-old). But it’s true also for the other age-categories of non-Hispanic Whites.

This study, by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century,” published now in PNAS, finds that, for the low-educated, group,

“The change in all-cause mortality for white non-Hispanics 45–54 is largely accounted for by an increasing death rate from external causes, mostly increases in drug and alcohol poisonings and in suicide.”

It “was driven primarily by increasing death rates for those with a high school degree or less. … Those with college education less than a BA saw little change in all-cause mortality over this period; those with a BA or more education saw death rates fall.”

Whereas in 1998, only 2 persons per 100,000 in the White non-BA’ed group died from poisonings, that figure has steadily soared since then and is now above 30, a 15-fold increase.

The suicide-rate rose from 16 to 25; and the rate from chronic liver disease rose from 16 to 21.

Poisonings are thus now the leading cause of deaths within the low-educated White middle-aged group; lung cancer is #2; suicide is #3; chronic liver disease is #4; and diabetes is #5. The only one among the five major causes that has gone down among Whites since 1998 is lung cancer (perhaps a result of reduced smoking). However, the increase from diabetes has been only very slight, from 11 to 12.

Table 2 in the article shows that for all White non-Hispanics aged 45-54, there were enormous increases (doubling in some, going to tenfold in others) in such categories as “days physical health was not good”; “days mental health was not good”; and difficulty with or related to “walking,” climbing stairs,” “standing,” “sitting,” “activities limited by physical or mental health,” “unable to work,” and “heavy drinking.”

The article doesn’t speculate as to the causes of this mortality-rise among Whites.

The question here is: what was done in or around 1998 that might have, to a greater degree than with other groups, adversely affected Whites, and especially low-educated ones, so as to have markedly and very disproportionately increased the stresses that can lead to deaths from poisonings (especially “drug and alcohol poisonings”), and from suicides?

Blacks and Hispanics have always been highly stressed in the U.S.; so, their decline in death-rates was actually continuing during this time; we’re looking here only for a differential indicator, one which can explain the rapid plunge in the welfare of Whites, and especially of middle-aged ones, and especially of low-educated middle-aged ones — not of young or old ones. However, actually, the entire category of American (non-Hispanic) Whites has been dying younger than before, and this fact also needs to be part of the same explanation.

American Whites, in their middle years, used to expect to outperform their parents; they used to expect to become better-educated and higher-income than their parents. Perhaps they no longer do.

One cannot say that the white majority has suffered more than minorities have suffered during the economic stagnation that this nation has experienced since, actually, around 1980. For example, here, from the Economic Policy Institute, is a table showing America’s economic stagnation across groups:

http://www.epi.org/publication/a-decade-of-flat-wages-the-key-barrier-to-shared-prosperity-and-a-rising-middle-class/

Furthermore, here is the Conclusion from the 2010 study, “Foreclosures by Race and Ethnicity,” that Responsible Lending did, of the extent to which the George W. Bush economic crash and home-foreclosures, affected Whites, Blacks, and Latinos:

We have estimated that two million families have lost their primary homes and that AfricanAmerican and Latino borrowers have borne and will continue to disproportionately bear the burden of foreclosures.

Blacks and Hispanics were hit harder by the 2005-2008 foreclosure-crisis than Whites were. And yet, ever since 1998, for some reason, Whites (especially low-educated ones) have lost hope at a far greater percentage than have Hispanics or Blacks.

Do Hispanics and Blacks have stronger psychological, and perhaps also physical, constitutions than Blacks and Hispanics do? They’ve always had lower suicide-rates than Whites. So: maybe they do.

At this stage, one can only speculate as to the reasons behind the Case-Deaton findings.

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.

German Economic News |  Published: 10/31/15  |  deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de (Translated here by — and with closing commentary from — Eric Zuesse)

EU, US and NATO are preparing a media offensive against Russia inside Russia. The alliance aims to operate propaganda against the Russian government. This will also reduce the likelihood that independent media will thrive in Russia.

The «Strategic Communication Team East», as this operation is called», has already «reached its full staffing levels» as of 1 September 2015, according to the German federal government.

Critical voices against this proposal are arising from within the European Union — especially in Germany’s Left Party. …

Member of the Bundestag Andrej Hunko, from the Left Party, said:

«The new proposal is an affront to Russia. The media force will be subordinate to the Foreign Service, and thus to the EU’s military arm»…

Parliamentarian Alexander S. Neu, also from the Left, says:

«The EU member states don’t only build, with NATO’s help, Russian-language media in the eastern EU Member States, as is happening with the television station ETV + in Estonia. In addition, there are clear indications that even Russian free media are being funded [infiltrated] directly. The EU and NATO, the propaganda program against Russia, will be extended with the start of the operation. The EU Member States already finance non-governmental media in Russia, and this means that they intervene directly in the media landscape of Russia. Russian perspectives are now to be neutralized with counter-perspectives, foreign propaganda. The expected communication offensive poses a real danger that the relationship between the Western countries and Russia will become even more confrontational than it already is. The logical reaction of Russia will be to outlaw the foreign financing of free media».

Hunko then adds:

«Now the media and members of civil society will also be invited to this backroom politics of propaganda. It is extremely dangerous if governments and military try to gain information superiority and pretend that propaganda, even when and if it’s against propaganda, is instead news-reporting, not propaganda itself. It is particularly problematic when the ‘Strategic Communications Team East’ as described by the Foreign Office, even poke at youngsters. Instead of continuing to rely on media tutelage, the EU needs to reconsider its policy towards Russia fundamentally. To say it with the words of former EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen: Peace is possible only if no one wants to dominate the other. This also applies to the media front, Russia, the US and the EU alike».

That’s the German Economic News news-report.

COMMENTARY by Eric Zuesse:

This cannot be understood outside its broader context, which is the West’s overall war to defeat Russia — a war that’s heading possibly to become a hot war, perhaps a very hot one. Over what, really?

America’s war to control Russia is not at all defensive (as is claimed), but extremely aggressive. Even in 2010, before there had yet been even a concocted excuse for the West to prepare for war against Russia, the Obama Administration was already struggling, behind the scenes, to get Europe on-board with their aggressive plans, under the pretext that an Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) ‘defensive’ shield system based in Europe, which would protect against incoming Russian missiles, would be ‘defensive’ not offensive, even though it’s designed to enable a first-strike nuclear-attack knockout blow by the U.S. of Russia’s capacity to defend itself, by eliminating any incoming missile bombs in flight. It thus would be a way to eliminate Russia’s ability to defend itself. According to a wikileaked cable describing a meeting between U.S. ‘Defense’ Secretary Robert Gates and French Minister of Defense Herve Morin:

Morin, having expressed strong reservations to new U.S. and NATO missile defense (MD) plans at the NATO ministerial in Istanbul (reftel), said he wanted to explain how France sees MD and raise some questions. First, he believes that the shift from Theater Missile Defense (TMD) to defense of populations and territory will give publics a false sense of security, since the sword was ultimately stronger than the shield. For France, security came from strong defense and deterrence. Second, Morin asked what threat the system aims to counter. Nuclear states or rogue states? Third, Morin asked about funding and how European countries would participate in command and control (C2) decisions.  Morin summarized his own personal opposition to MD by asserting that the U.S. and Europe have differing mentalities on defense spending. He said the U.S. has true resiliency with “infinite” means, while in Europe defense spending has collapsed in every country but the UK and France.  As a result, any development needing common funding will dilute the already weak European defenses. Morin concluded by stating that it was folly to assume that MD would give us added security.

¶7. (S/NF) SecDef [Gates] refuted Morin’s arguments, pointing out that MD contributes to deterrence.  SecDef explained to Morin that the system was aimed at nations with a handful of nuclear weapons and a limited but growing missile capability to launch them.  Noting Iran fits that profile, SecDef said that MD provides a good deterrent against limited attacks.

In other words: the U.S. ‘justifies’ its push for ABM’s as being ‘defense’ against what Morin was calling ‘rogue states,’ not against Russia — and this is obviously a lie, so Gates didn’t answer that question in direct words, such as by saying, “This isn’t against Russia.” Gates even went further, to assert that, “the U.S. believed partnering with Russia is once again potentially possible.” (As if it hadn’t always been possible ever since 1991.)

Later, the cable says, “Responding to SecDef’s discussion of MD, Morin asked why there was a need to shift from theater to population defense” (“theater” meaning protection of military forces, versus “population” meaning protection of the civilian population) and Gates had a similarly irrelevant answer: “SecDef said the systems the U.S. was deploying have broader applications. For example the THAAD system, which the U.S. had deployed to Hawaii as a measure against North Korean threat, protects both the theater and the population.”

But actually (and Morin almost certainly knew this), the U.S. had already busted the anti-ABM Treaty with Moscow, under George W. Bush, and the first European installations of U.S. ABMs had already taken place. And they were in Poland and Czech Republic, near Russia — not at all relevant to a nuclear ‘threat’ from Iran (which didn’t even have nukes anyway). Bob Gates might as well have been a salesman for Phillip Morris, as for Lockheed Martin. (In either case, of course, he was being paid by U.S. taxpayers, not by his actual clients, the beneficiary military corporations.)

The end of that cable (section 20) includes this, from Gates to Morin:

“SecDef observed that Russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services.” So: the U.S. argument, essentially, was that ABMs are needed against a non-existent Iranian threat to France, because … “Russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services.” Sounds like a pretty good description of the United States there: its aristocracy, and the CIA etc. But the evidence that the description actually applies to Russia is far less than that it applies to the U.S. (And here’s more on that, from a different angle.)

Wikileaks’ book, after reviewing and summarizing the cables concerning ABMs, doesn’t mince words, when, at the end of its seventh Chapter, Russ Wellen concludes: “Instead of wasting time and resources lamenting the effects of the [leak of] the cables on international relations and harassing Wikileaks, the United States needs to overhaul its foreign policy. Continuing to view a state such as Russia as a rival in a zero-sum game, as well as an energy resource and an emerging market, instead of as representing a people, only perpetuates conflict.” The topmost of the Amazon reviewers of this book sums up the entire 600+ pages (as E.M. Bristol wrote there): “To say that the US … comes off poorly in this book is like saying the Titanic suffered some water damage.”

America’s anti-Russia club, NATO, has crept up to the very borders of Russia and demands that Russians be so stupid as not to recognize what the West is doing, as if John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been so stupid as not to have recognized that the USSR’s placing nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 wouldn’t have constituted an aggressive act by the Soviets and thus needed to be blocked. Russians are even more endangered now by the U.S.: Ukraine, after all, directly borders Russia. America’s coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine in February 2014 and installed a rabidly anti-Russian one there, was extremely bloody, and the U.S.-backed ethnic cleansing to eliminate the residents in the heavily pro-Russian far east of Ukraine has been even more so. Even Khrushchev’s intent wasn’t so aggressive against the U.S. in 1962.

This aggressive intention of the U.S. government and its allies — extending to Russia’s very doorstep in Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics — is so intense, that U.S. President Barack Obama holds it even higher in priority than he does the war against the international jihadist movement, a movement that’s actually funded by America’s allies, the royal families of both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The U.S. now demands that Russia not even try  to defeat the jihadists in Syria (which is an ally of Russia, one that’s being attacked by jihadists hired by the Sauds and Thanis) — as if the request for Russian help, by Syria’s President (democratically elected by Syrians because no alternative person stood even a chance to hold the country together) were invalid — as if the request for that military assistance doesn’t have legitimacy, but the demand by America’s imperial President Obama does have legimacy. Obama simply lies. He said on October 3rd (1:08 on the video), “We’re not going to make Syria a proxy war between the United States and Russia,” but that’s exactly what he has been doing.

So, Obama has placed the jihadists after  Russia, as his targets to destroy. Why?

Islamic jihad is mainly funded by, and an extension from, the two U.S.-backed Arabic royal families (the Sauds of Saudi Arabia, and the Thanis of Qatar), who constitute a genuine national-security threat against the West, by their ongoing financing of Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Salafist Sunni jihadist organizations, which seek to establish a global Muslim dictatorship. (“Salafist” is basically a synonym for Wahhabist Islam, the Saudi form of Islam; but it’s the term that’s used for the sect outside of Saudi Arabia.) As an example of this jihadism: the Muslim Brotherhood, in its “Who We Are” statement, refers twice to the Salafs (which means ancestors), thrice to the Sunna, and once to jihad. (Specifically regarding jihad, it says: “Prayer is the foundation of religion, jihad is the peak of the [camel’s] hump, and God [the camel’s rider] is the end [religion’s rider].”) (And here is that “Who We Are” in English.)

Whereas the Thani clan (which owns Qatar) finances the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saud clan (which owns Saudi Arabia) finances Al Qaeda. Are these Europe’s allies? Or instead Europe’s enemies? They’re America’s and Saudi Arabia’s and Qatar’s tools, so long as they are carrying out their mass-murders in other  countries. As Obama’s advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told Osama bin Laden’s jihadists back in 1979 when they were fighting against Russia, “God is on your side.” To people such as Brzezinski and Obama, Russia’s abandoning communism and dictatorship, and adopting capitalism and democracy, doesn’t make any difference; like George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s ‘Defense’ chief has said: “Russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services.” But, even if that had been true (and it wasn’t true of Russia, though it has become true of the U.S.), what business is that of America’s? Even if it had been true, this wouldn’t be any reason for America to extend NATO even “one inch to the east.”

For the nations of Europe to be in NATO, and allied to the U.S., is for them to join America’s real war against Russia — a very dangerous and destructive war, which is driving millions of Syrians fleeing into Europe. Such European politicians are thus traitors to their own countries. The nations of Europe should instead be joining in defense of Russia against America’s aggressions (including now against “Strategic Communication Team East”), aggressions which started by Americas’ targeting Russia’s allies: originally, Libya; then, Syria; then, Ukraine. The U.S.-Saud-Thani threat against the most secular, non-sectarian, country in the Middle East, Syria — to replace its secular government by a jihadist one — is also a threat against all of Europe (and not only by its flooding Europe with the refugees). The refugees from Syria and Libya are merely the start of the harms to European peace. Europeans who vote for NATO (alliance with the U.S.) are voting for war against Russia — not for war against America, the Sauds and the Thanis. Not for war against Europe’s actual enemies. And, last of all, such voters, and the politicians they’re voting for, are not voting for peace.

The “Strategic Communication Team East” is the latest phase of this war-treason from these politicians, treason against their own countries. The reviewer of the Wikileaks book had it correct: “To say that the US … comes off poorly in this book is like saying the Titanic suffered some water damage.”

Russia is a part of Europe. By contrast: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the U.S., are not, and they don’t actually want to be. They’re not trying to be European. (During America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, non-participant France was even publicly despised with slurring jokes aagainst “French fries.”) They’ve never requested membership in the European Union, and they’re not even on the European Continent. By contrast, Russia is historically a part of the European family. Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy were Europeans, as much as Beethoven and Dickens were. Mark Twain, great though he was, was American, not  European. Arabia and today’s jihadist-supporting U.S. are not and don’t want to be European.

Instead, Arabia has been, and the U.S. has become, dictatorial, even having the nerve to demand that Syria’s popular elected President Assad, the only secular leader that that country can have, must be expelled from power and replaced by a U.S./Saudi/Qatari stooge, and the nerve to proclaim that Syrians aren’t the people who possess the right and the final say-so to determine whether or when Assad should be removed from Syria’s Presidency. The EU’s leaders who favor the U.S. instead of Russia are favoring dictatorship over democracy in Syria — and in Europe, too. The U.S. used to be a democracy, but no longer is. “Strategic Communication Team East” is part of the U.S.-Arabic war against Russia — against a nation of  Europe. Rather than having welcomed post-Soviet Russia into the democratic club, the United States has steadily been extending its military alliance against Russia: NATO.

As U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon has said: “The future of President Assad must be decided by the Syrian people. … I think it is totally unfair and unreasonable … to paralyze all this political negotiation. This is not acceptable. It’s not fair. … Many Western countries oppose the Syrian government’s position. Meanwhile, we lost years. 250,000 people have been killed. There are 13 million refugees or internally displaced. Over 50% of hospitals, schools and infrastructure has been destroyed in Syria.” The national leaders he is implicitly charging there are actually being accused by him of war-crimes against the Syrian people; and those war-crimes are even hurting the very people whom those politicians are sworn to be serving — their own populations.

Has democracy been dying in Western countries? Is it already dead in some? Is the ignorance by Western publics regarding these historically important realities of our time, itself proof of that? Did the West learn nothing from George W. Bush’s having lied his country into the catastrophic invasion of Iraq? Now, it’s “regime-change in Syria,” also based upon lies.

—————

The American 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.

This article was originally published by Who What Why on November 4, 2015.

These are the facts. At some point, someone somewhere in the US government had an amazing idea: why not build a compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station in Afghanistan? Forty-three million taxpayer dollars later, the city of Sheberghan, in the far north of the country, got its gas station. But, according to the watchdog agency probing Afghanistan reconstruction spending, nobody seems to know — or wants to admit — who signed off on the project or how its costs spiraled so completely out of control.

The whole thing is so strange and wrongheaded that the crazily high price tag — more than 100 times what a similar facility would cost in neighboring Pakistan — is not even the worst thing the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found.

Natural Gas? For what Cars?

Even more troubling than the high price tag is that there was no point in building the gas station in the first place. While Afghanistan has vast natural gas reserves, it does not have a sufficient number of cars that run on natural gas, and converting a vehicle literally costs as much as the average Afghan earns in a year.

Had a feasibility study been conducted, somebody probably would have figured this out, but SIGAR found no evidence of such a precaution having been taken.

You might think the Department of Defense (DOD) would want to get to the bottom of this waste of money. After all, the project was part of the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations (TFBSO), which was created by the Deputy Secretary of Defense and reported directly to the Office of the Secretary.

Instead, DOD stonewalled.

“One of the most troubling aspects of this project is that the Department of Defense claims that it is unable to provide an explanation for the high cost of the project or to answer any other questions concerning its planning, implementation, or outcome,” SIGAR John Sopko wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

Did the Dog Eat the Records?

DOD’s excuse for its lack of cooperation is that TFBSO, an $800 million program, was shut down in March of 2015 and now nobody is around to address SIGAR’s questions. That didn’t sit well with Sopko, who recently gave an exclusive interview to WhoWhatWhy in which he discussed the staggering amount of taxpayer funds wasted in Afghanistan.

“Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago,” he wrote to Carter.

Sopko vowed to continue the investigation to determine “whether any conduct by TFBSO staff or contractors was criminal in nature” — as opposed to just crazily lucrative — for some well-connected insiders.

On November 4, a Russian cargo plane crash-landed in South Sudan, the nation’s second aircraft incident in days. Reports said the plane went down moments after takeoff. Reuters reported 10 deaths.  

Other news sources said up to 40 passengers, crew, and others on the ground perished, only two on board survived. It’s believed around five crew members and seven passengers were aboard the flight, the exact number unclear as this is written.

The crash site was around 800 meters from Juba airport. Reuters reported witnesses saying the plane’s tail fin and other parts were scattered in the area.

The flight was headed to Paloich in Sudan’s Upper Nile region. Little more is known at this time. The incident followed the October 31 downing of Russian airliner Kolavia Metrojet Flight 7K9268, killing all 217 passengers and seven crew members aboard.

An investigation remains ongoing to determine the cause of the crash. What first looked like a technical failure now may be something more sinister. It’s too early to know for sure.

On November 3, Sputnik News quoted an unnamed Egyptian forensic expert involved in examining crash victims, saying

“A large number of body parts may indicate that a powerful explosion took place aboard the plane before it hit the ground.”

Months may be needed to reconstruct the plane, complete forensic exams of victims, and determine the cause of the crash. RT International quoted the Russian tabloid LifeNews saying initial forensic examinations indicate passengers “in the tail section of the liner died because of so-called blast injuries.”

Burns covered over 90% of their bodies, said LifeNews. Metal particles and other objects pierced their bodies. Front end passengers died from multiple fractures, head wounds, blood loss and shock.

Tass reported otherwise, citing Russian and Egyptian experts, indicating no blast related trauma found in preliminary examinations of victims. An unnamed source said “(t)here were no signs of an explosion impact found…”

An Egyptian source indicated “no signs of external impact” found on bodies examined. No official announcements were made. Aviation expert Anil Padhra told RT examination of victims’ injuries isn’t the most reliable way to determine the cause of the crash.

“It’s too early to say categorically whether or not the plane broke up in the air,” he said. “It’s difficult to tell what the injuries would have been if there was an explosion onboard. And I think it’s difficult to tell how it would be different to injuries sustained when the bodies impacted the ground.”

Padra mentioned another possibility – the aircraft colliding with another object, maybe a drone operating over Sinai, a known conflict area. Drones can fly at high altitudes, Padhra explained.

A US reported satellite detected heat flash in the area is inconclusive, according to retired flight commander Sultan Mahmoud Hali, telling RT: “A large number of body parts may indicate that a powerful explosion took place aboard the plane before it hit the ground.”

A bomb planted on board remains possible crash cause. RT said Egyptian airport security is lax, screenings inadequate. Any number of factors may be responsible for what happened, why it’s important to wait for at least a preliminary assessment to draw meaningful conclusions.

It’ll take a month or longer to fully examine the contents of both black boxes recovered, invaluable information crucial to determining the crash’s cause.

On November 4, Global Research reported US/Israeli operation “Blue Flag” or “Blue Skies” air combat drills ongoing in the Arava desert, directly east of Sinai, both areas adjacent to each other – when the Russian airliner went down on Saturday.

A YourNewsWire.com report was cited, saying Greek and Polish aircraft were involved in “the largest aerial exercise in the history of the Israeli Air Force,” beginning on October 30, the day before the crash.

Draw your own conclusions. Best to wait for Russia’s assessment once preliminary and final analyses are concluded. For now, it’s clear to say suspicions of foul play are warranted, yet to be proved or disproved.

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.

Political groups in the European Parliament have sent a clear message to the Commission on its GMO proposals, writes Molly Scott Cato – we are not willing to have piecemeal and vaguely-defined ‘opt-out’ legislation forced down our throats.

Last week something almost unprecedented occurred in the European Parliament. All the political groups joined together to roundly reject a proposal on GMOs from the Commission.

The issue was a botched attempt to break the majority opposition to allowing GM food and feed into the single market. This followed a similarly bad proposal to facilitate GM cultivation which was voted on in January.

The Parliamentary vote this time round focused on the possibility for Member States to restrict or prohibit the use of GM food or feed on their territory.

During the plenary debate several speakers reminded the Parliament that it is a year since President Juncker agreed to democratise the EU’s flawed GMO authorisation procedure. In reality, what is proposed is not democratisation but buck passing to Member States who will face significant legal uncertainty if they choose to ‘opt-out’ of GM on their territory.

With Member States unable to invoke health or environment concerns to justify such an opt-out decision, they could easily be challenged on an opt-out decision the grounds that it severely impacts the internal market.

Indeed, in a hearing with the Parliament’s Environment committee, the Commissioner for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness admitted that Member States would need to “consider the impacts of such measures very carefully.” It is clear that under corporate pressure, the Commission has reneged on the promise to democratise the authorisation procedure.

The Commission’s empty promises

The current proposal is piecemeal, only addressing issues of vaguely-defined ‘use’ whilst ignoring the even more significant issue of GMO cultivation on EU territory.

In previous negotiations on GMO cultivation, the Commission had reassured the Parliament that it would address the undemocratic procedure by which GMOs are currently approved for cultivation in the EU. Yet, rather than procedural reform, this proposal offers sloppy ‘opt-outs’ as an afterthought.

This has become another empty promise, which the Commission aims to muscle through, with a threat to the Parliament that they must accept this final offer as there will be nothing else on the table.

The Commission’s attempt to steamroller its way through the democratic process has led to an unholy mess. Earlier this month, on the issue of cultivation of GMOs, at least 17 of the 28 EU Member States chose to opt-out of EU authorisations, to ensure that no GMOs are grown on their territory.

Where powers are devolved, regions can make the same demand, as Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have done. However, despite many English councils taking a stance against GMOs, England enjoys no such protections.

Fortunately, certain EU governments have taken a more long-sighted view than the UK government. Austria, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Cyprus and Slovenia have called for a “GMO-free agriculture model” for Europe. One key proposal is that the EU should reduce its reliance on imported GM protein, primarily soya.

While most citizens across the EU continue to reject GM it is entering our food chain indirectly. This is because there is no requirement to separate GM from non-GM feed and no labelling to inform consumers. This means most non-organic meat and dairy products come from animals fed GM feed.

Time for Europe to start listening to its citizens

This whole row is badged with the slogan of the need to ‘break the current deadlock’ in the European Council – that is to say, making GMO authorisations quicker and easier, by circumventing the opinion of the majority of Europeans. The Commission is attempting to sidestep not only the lack of democracy, but also the lack of rigour in the feeble authorisation processes.

Less than a month ago we saw the Syngenta scandal, in which it was revealed that six genetically modified maize varieties, authorised for import into the EU between 2008 and 2011, carry genetic modifications that were not included in risk assessment at the time of authorisation.

Syngenta failed to notify the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the EU Commission of these additional GM traits until July 2015. Clearly there are fundamental problems with EFSA’s risk assessment, if it relies on information provided by the applicant – the very same biotech firm requesting the authorisation.

Green MEP, Bart Staes, put forward an amendment to the legislative resolution, calling on the Commission “to withdraw its proposal and submit a new one.” This demand passed, with broad support from members of all the main groups from all sides in the European Parliament.

The Commission must swiftly come forward with a more credible proposal that addresses the fundamental problems with the system. And it would be wise to involve those of us who represent the people of Europe in its discussions, rather than relying on the weasel words of corporate lobbyists.

In the meantime, Greens in the European Parliament will continue to argue for a moratorium on all GMO authorisations.

Molly Scott Cato is Green MEP for the South West of England, elected in May 2014. She sits on the Economics and Monetary Affairs Committee and Agricultural Committee in the European Parliament and is Green Party speaker on finance. She has published widely, particularly on issues related to green economics and is formerly Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at the University of Roehampton. See Wikipedia for further details.

This is the second of four articles analyzing the new US Department of Defense Law of War Manual. The first article was posted November 3.

A framework for military dictatorship

The most menacing passages of the Pentagon’s Law of War Manual concern its relationship to other areas of law. According to the manual, the law of war is separate from and supersedes all other bodies of law, including international human rights treaties and the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights. This is nothing less than a formula for martial law, military dictatorship and the suspension of the Constitution.

Citing a legal treatise entitled “Military Law and Precedents,” the manual states that the law of war can supersede the Constitution:

“‘On the actual theatre of military operations,’ as is remarked by a learned judge, ‘the ordinary laws of the land are superseded by the laws of war. The jurisdiction of the civil magistrate is there suspended, and military authority and force are substituted.’ Finding indeed its original authority in the war powers of Congress and the Executive, and thus constitutional in its source, the Law of War may, in its exercise, substantially supersede for the time even the Constitution itself …” (p. 10, emphasis added).

With the entire world declared to be the “battlefield” in the “war on terror,” this is a formula for the Pentagon to impose military dictatorship on all of Planet Earth.

When the Pentagon refers to the “law of war,” it is not referring to historic precedents or international treaties. The phrase “law of war,” in the context of the manual, is a euphemism for “the law according to the Pentagon.”

Under the Pentagon’s pseudo-legal framework, the “law of war” is an independent source of legal authority that overrides all democratic rights and sanctions arbitrary rule by the military. The manual states: “Although the law of war is generally viewed as ‘prohibitive law,’ in some respects, especially in the context of domestic law, the law of war may be viewed as permissive or even as a source of authority” (p. 14).

Image: Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt

Changing a few words here and there, these doctrines could have been copy-pasted from the writings of the Nazi “crown jurist” Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). According to Schmitt’s infamous “state of exception” doctrine, under conditions of a national emergency, the executive is permitted to override democratic protections and disregard the rule of law. Under this doctrine, democratic rights are not formally abrogated, they are simply suspended indefinitely.

Schmitt’s “state of exception” doctrine was used as a legal justification for the 1933 “Act to Relieve the Distress of the People and the Reich,” also known as the “Enabling Act,” which codified Hitler’s dictatorship.

The Pentagon manual invokes Schmitt’s “state of exception” theory in all but name. Having claimed that the law of war is a “special” discipline of law, as opposed to a “general” discipline, the manual states that “the special rule overrides the general law” (p. 9). For added effect, a Latin legal maxim saying the same thing is cited: “lex specialis derogat legi generali.”

Thus, according to the Pentagon, the law of war is the exception to the general “law of peacetime.” Here we have nothing less than a Nazi legal doctrine, incorporated by the Pentagon into a major policy document.

“In some circumstances,” the Pentagon’s manual states,

“the rules in the law of war [i.e., the rules invented by the Pentagon] and the rules in human rights treaties may appear to conflict; these apparent conflicts may be resolved by the principle that the law of war is the lex specialis during situations of armed conflict [again, the state of exception], and, as such, is the controlling body of law with regard to the conduct of hostilities and the protection of war victims” (p. 9).

In other words, whenever the Pentagon’s policies conflict with human rights treaties, the human rights treaties should be ignored.

The manual continues, “Underlying this approach is the fact that the law of war is firmly established in customary international law as a well-developed body of law that is separate from the principles of law generally applicable in peace” (p. 10). The implication is that during wartime, America’s vast military establishment is a “separate,” independent branch of government, subject to its own rules and accountable to no one.

Despite the references to the war powers of Congress and the executive under the American Constitution, the Pentagon’s conceptions are the opposite of the framework envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence, in its list of grievances against the British monarch, charges that the king “affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.”

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have been fond of invoking the phrase “commander in chief,” which appears in Article II of the US Constitution, in a manner that turns its original meaning upside down. The American revolutionaries described the president as the commander in chief of the navy and army as a way of expressing the subordination of the military to civilian authority. This phrase was not meant to elevate the military, with the president as its head, into some kind of supreme authority over the rest of the state and the population.

The manual’s reference to “principles of law generally applicable in peace” has particularly sinister implications.

“Human rights treaties,” according to the Pentagon, are “primarily applicable to the relationship between a State and individuals in peacetime” (p. 22). Therefore, in “wartime”—including the “war on terror” of indefinite scope and duration—human rights treaties no longer apply.

This formula would allow the Pentagon to override more than just human rights treaties. The manual’s authors include the Bill of Rights and other guarantees of civil liberties in the category of laws that apply in “peacetime” only. The arguments made by the manual justify suspending the Bill of Rights altogether as a “peacetime” law that is superseded for the duration of the “war on terror.”

But why stop there? Aren’t elections also part of a system of laws “generally applicable in peace?” What about other civil liberties? What about the right to freedom of speech, or the right to form political parties? What about the right to trial by jury? What about the right to privacy, and the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment?” What about laws against racial discrimination? The right to a minimum wage?

Taken to its logical conclusion, the Law of War Manual would justify imposing a military dictatorship, suspending all democratic rights and rounding up and imprisoning all dissenters.

Should any reader think this analysis far-fetched, it should be remembered that one top American military man recently called for setting up military internment camps for “disloyal” and “radicalized” Americans. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark (a Democrat) declared: “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States, as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right, and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.” He added, “We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning.”

Clark’s extraordinary proposals provoked no significant discussion or disagreement within the political or media establishment. None of the current presidential candidates from either major party has referred to Clark’s statement, presumably because they do not fundamentally disagree with it. There have been no consequences for Clark’s lobbying and consulting firm. The Pentagon’s manual makes clear that Clark was merely testing the waters, revealing plans that have been broadly discussed, developed and approved at the highest levels of the state.

Image: Antonin Scalia

When asked last year about the military internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War, US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia responded, “You are kidding yourself if you think the same thing won’t happen again.” He added, in a formulation that mirrors the Pentagon’s manual, “In times of war, the law falls silent.”

The manual also features a heavy dose of the Obama administration’s trademark “balancing” rhetoric. Pursuant to this approach, a basic democratic right or legal principle will be affirmed in abstract terms. But then it will be “balanced” against some authoritarian counter-principle, with the result that the basic principle will be rendered meaningless. The Obama administration has invoked this formula repeatedly as its justification for NSA spying, as well as for drone assassinations.

The document states, “Civilians may not be made the object of attack, unless they take direct part in hostilities.” This seems clear enough, but then a “balancing” formula is introduced.

“Civilians may be killed incidentally in military operations; however, the expected incidental harm to civilians may not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage from an attack, and feasible precautions must be taken to reduce the risk of harm to civilians during military operations” (p. 128).

In other words, after applying the “balancing” formula, it turns out that it is acceptable to kill civilians if, on balance, the expected “military advantage” outweighs the harm to civilians. This effectively makes the rule against killing civilians meaningless. In practice, the “balancing” formula translates to the unfettered power of military leaders to order mass killing and destruction.

The brutality of imperialist war

The manual features a chilling discussion of killing civilians. According to the Pentagon, massacres of civilians are permissible if they help achieve “operational objectives.”

The authors take pains not to state that the killing of civilians is prohibited per se. Instead, the manual indicates that “feasible precautions” should be taken to “avoid” civilian casualties, which should not be “excessive” or “unreasonable.” However, the manual defines “feasible precautions” as merely “those that are practicable or practically possible, taking into account all circumstances ruling at the time, including humanitarian and military considerations” (p. 190).

Image: The Pentagon’s manual authorizes mass killing of civilians as in the assault on Fallujah during the Iraq War

“For example,” the document states, “if a commander determines that taking a precaution would result in operational risk (i.e., a risk of failing to accomplish the mission) or an increased risk of harm to their own forces, then the precaution would not be feasible and would not be required” (p. 191). This is a blank check for mass killings of civilians if a military leader decides that failing to do so would be an “operational risk.” If exterminating the population of a hostile city would reduce the “risk of harm” to US forces, then the Pentagon manual would allow it.

This “balancing” formulation appears to contradict previous statements of American policy, such as the following remarks from 1987 by a State Department legal adviser: “[C]ivilian losses are not to be balanced against the military value of the target. If severe losses would result, then the attack is forbidden, no matter how important the target” [2].

The manual also codifies the tendentious “human shields” doctrine, whereby civilian deaths are blamed on the targets of indiscriminate bombing.

“A party that is subject to attack might fail to take feasible precautions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians, such as by separating the civilian population from military objectives … the ability to discriminate and to reduce the risk of harm to the civilian population likely will be diminished by such enemy conduct” (p. 198).

This is merely a justification for collective punishment by another name. If the Pentagon identifies a “military objective” in a densely populated area, then the military supposedly has the legal right to obliterate the neighborhood with high explosives and blame the civilian population for being “human shields.” Collective punishment is, under international law, a war crime. It is designed to terrorize a population and discourage resistance.

The manual expressly authorizes targeted killings. “Military operations may be directed against specific enemy combatants,” the document states, adding, “US forces have often conducted such operations” (p. 201).

In support of targeted killings, the manual cites Obama’s speech on May 2, 2011:

“Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound [suspected of housing Osama Bin Laden] in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body” (p. 201).

The manual fails to mention that journalist Seymour Hersh has exposed the account given in Obama’s speech as a pack of lies.

Censorship and targeting of journalists as “unprivileged belligerents”

The manual’s proposed treatment of journalists as spies has evoked the only media attention to the document. “Reporting on military operations,” the manual states, “can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying” (p. 175).

The Pentagon goes on to authorize itself to “capture” and “punish” journalists, forbid journalists to work anonymously, and require that journalists obtain “permission” and “identification documents” from the US military to conduct their work.

The manual states:

“A journalist who acts as a spy may be subject to security measures and punished if captured. To avoid being mistaken for spies, journalists should act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities. Presenting identification documents, such as the identification card issued to authorized war correspondents or other appropriate identification, may help journalists avoid being mistaken as spies” (p. 175).

The document further states that journalists can be subject to military censorship. It declares:

“States may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy. Under the law of war, there is no special right for journalists to enter a State’s territory without its consent or to access areas of military operations without the consent of the State conducting those operations” (p. 175).

There is nothing here that would be out of place in the code of laws of a totalitarian police state. This legal framework, for example, would justify setting up a military internment camp to imprison each journalist who published material disclosed by Edward Snowden. There is nothing in the manual that would prohibit the Pentagon from launching drone strikes against targeted journalists who are deemed to be acting as “spies.” (If a journalist’s family and friends were killed in the drone strike, it would be the journalist’s fault for employing “human shields”).

Do we exaggerate? An article appeared in the recent spring/summer issue of the academic National Security Law Journal titled “Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict/Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column” [3 Nat’l Sec. L.J. 278 (2015)]. In this article, West Point law professor William C. Bradford argues that academics who criticize the “war on terror” are “aiding the enemy,” such that they should be treated as “unlawful combatants” under the law of war.

Bradford, a professor at the prestigious United States Military Academy, goes on to argue that by criticizing the war on terror, certain professors are working in “the service of Islamists seeking to destroy Western civilization and re-create the Caliphates.” These professors, Bradford charges, are guilty of “skepticism of executive power,” “professional socialization,” “pernicious pacifism,” and “cosmopolitanism.”

Bradford recommends firing “disloyal” professors and imposing loyalty oaths at universities. He further recommends arresting and prosecuting professors for treason and for providing material support to terrorism. Finally, he argues that “disloyal” professors and the universities that employ them could be considered “lawful targets” for military attack under the law of war.

Bradford has also advocated a military coup (“What conditions precedent would be required before the American military would be justified in using or threatening force to oust a US president…?”) and genocide (“total war” until “the political will of Islamist peoples” is broken, or until “all who countenance or condone Islamism are dead”). The latter policy would include the targeted destruction of “Islamic holy sites.”

The journal subsequently repudiated Bradford’s article, calling it an “egregious breach of professional decorum,” and Bradford resigned from West Point on August 30. However, the episode provides a glimpse of what the Pentagon has in mind for its critics under the “law of war.” Bradford’s fascistic rants simply represent the doctrines expressed in the Law of War Manual taken to their logical conclusions.

The persecution of journalists such as Glenn Greenwald (and his partner David Miranda) and Julian Assange, together with whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden and Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, has already made clear that the American government will treat the exposure of official criminality as “espionage” and “aiding the enemy.” The Pentagon’s manual codifies this position and authorizes the military to carry out repressive measures against journalists.

The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) issued a statement on July 31 protesting the manual, pointing to the rising numbers of journalists killed and maimed while covering armed conflicts. “The Obama administration’s Defense Department,” the CPJ wrote, “appears to have taken the ill-defined practices begun under the Bush administration during the War on Terror and codified them to formally govern the way US military forces treat journalists covering conflicts.”

It is significant that the words “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press” do not appear anywhere in the Pentagon’s manual.

In a section setting forth the Pentagon’s authority as an “Occupying Power,” the manual states that

“for the purposes of security, an Occupying Power may establish regulation of any or all forms of media (e.g., press, radio, television) and entertainment (e.g., theater, movies), of correspondence, and of other means of communication. For example, an Occupying Power may prohibit entirely the publication of newspapers that pose a threat to security, or it may prescribe regulations for the publication or circulation of newspapers of other media for the purpose of fulfilling its obligations to restore public order” (pp. 759-60).

A footnote includes the caveat that “this sub-section focuses solely on what is permitted under the law of war and does not address possible implications of censorship under the First Amendment of the Constitution.” Presumably, the authors would contend that the First Amendment applies only in “peacetime,” and is “superseded” by the Pentagon’s “lex specialis” for the duration of the “war on terror.”

To be continued

Notes:

[2] See The Position of the United States on Current Law of War Agreements: Remarks of Judge Abraham D. Sofaer, Legal Adviser, United States Department of State, Jan. 22, 1987, American University Journal of International Law and Policy 460, 468 (1987) (cited in the Law of War Manual, p. 247). 

The Iraqi government has seized two planes of the US-led anti-ISIL coalition member states that were carrying weapons to the Kurdistan Region without prior coordination or information of Baghdad, Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Commission Hakem al-Zameli disclosed on Monday.

“The inspection committee in Baghdad International Airport has found a huge number of rifles equipped with silencers, as well as light and mid-sized weapons,” Zameli said.

He noted that a Swedish and a Canadian airplanes were going to fly to Iraq’s Kurdistan region, but they were seized after arms cargoes were discovered.

Zameli called on the Iraqi foreign ministry to question the international coalition in this regard and warn the coalition members to avoid such moves in future.

“The US ambassador to Baghdad has tried to send the weapons to the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and the government should investigate this and arrest the perpetrators,” he added.

The US and some other coalition members have been supplying arms to different actors in Iraq.

During the last year, Iraqi officials have on different occasions blasted the US and its allies for supplying the ISIL in Syria with arms and ammunition under the pretext of fighting the Takfiri terrorist group.

Last week, Iraqi volunteer forces discovered and seized US-made military hardware and ammunition in captured terrorists’ positions.

In early October, the Iraqi forces discovered US-made military hardware and ammunition, including missiles, in terrorists’ command center in Salahuddin province, informed sources said.

The Iraqi army and volunteer forces discovered US-made military hardware and ammunition, including anti-armor missiles, in terrorists’ positions and trenches captured during the operations in the Fallujah region in Al-Anbar province.

The Iraqi forces found a huge volume of advanced TOW-II missiles from the Takfiri terrorists in al-Karama city of Fallujah.

The missiles were brand new and the ISIL had transferred them to Fallujah to use them against the Iraqi army’s armored units.

Also in October, the Iraqi forces discovered US-made military hardware and ammunition from terrorists in the town of Beiji.

“The military hardware and weapons had been airdropped by the US-led warplanes and choppers for the ISIL in the nearby areas of Beiji,” military sources told FNA.

In February, an Iraqi provincial official lashed out at the western countries and their regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, revealing that the US airplanes still continue to airdrop weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL terrorists.

“The US planes have dropped weapons for the ISIL terrorists in the areas under ISIL control and even in those areas that have been recently liberated from the ISIL control to encourage the terrorists to return to those places,” Coordinator of Iraqi popular forces Jafar al-Jaberi told FNA.

He noted that eyewitnesses in Al-Havijeh of Kirkuk province had witnessed the US airplanes dropping several suspicious parcels for ISIL terrorists in the province.

“Two coalition planes were also seen above the town of Al-Khas in Diyala and they carried the Takfiri terrorists to the region that has recently been liberated from the ISIL control,” Al-Jaberi said.

Also in February, a senior lawmaker disclosed that Iraq’s army has shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province.

“The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” al-Zameli said, according to a Monday report of the Arabic-language information center of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

He said the Iraqi parliament has asked London for explanations in this regard.

The senior Iraqi legislator further unveiled that the government in Baghdad is receiving daily reports from people and security forces in al-Anbar province on numerous flights by the US-led coalition planes that airdrop weapons and supplies for ISIL in terrorist-held areas.

The Iraqi lawmaker further noted the cause of such western aids to the terrorist group, and explained that the US prefers a chaotic situation in Anbar Province which is near the cities of Karbala and Baghdad as it does not want the ISIL crisis to come to an end.

Also in February, a senior Iraqi provincial official lashed out at the western countries and their regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, revealing that US and Israeli-made weapons have been discovered from the areas purged of ISIL terrorists.

“We have discovered weapons made in the US, European countries and Israel from the areas liberated from ISIL’s control in Al-Baqdadi region,” the Al-Ahad news website quoted Head of Al-Anbar Provincial Council Khalaf Tarmouz as saying.

He noted that the weapons made by the European countries and Israel were discovered from the terrorists in the Eastern parts of the city of Ramadi.

Meantime, Head of Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee Hakem al-Zameli also disclosed that the anti-ISIL coalition’s planes have dropped weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL in Salahuddin, Al-Anbar and Diyala provinces.

In January, al-Zameli underlined that the coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq.

“There are proofs and evidence for the US-led coalition’s military aid to ISIL terrorists through air(dropped cargoes),” he told FNA at the time.

He noted that the members of his committee have already proved that the US planes have dropped advanced weaponry, including anti-aircraft weapons, for the ISIL, and that it has set up an investigation committee to probe into the matter.

“The US drops weapons for the ISIL on the excuse of not knowing about the whereabouts of the ISIL positions and it is trying to distort the reality with its allegations.

He noted that the committee had collected the data and the evidence provided by eyewitnesses, including Iraqi army officers and the popular forces, and said, “These documents are given to the investigation committee … and the necessary measures will be taken to protect the Iraqi airspace.”

Also in January, another senior Iraqi legislator reiterated that the US-led coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq.

“The international coalition is only an excuse for protecting the ISIL and helping the terrorist group with equipment and weapons,” Jome Divan, who is member of the al-Sadr bloc in the Iraqi parliament, said.

He said the coalition’s support for the ISIL is now evident to everyone, and continued, “The coalition has not targeted ISIL’s main positions in Iraq.”

In Late December, Iraqi Parliamentary Security and Defense Commission MP disclosed that a US plane supplied the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province.

MP Majid al-Gharawi stated that the available information pointed out that US planes are supplying ISIL organization, not only in Salahuddin province, but also other provinces, Iraq TradeLink reported.

He added that the US and the international coalition are “not serious in fighting against the ISIL organization, because they have the technological power to determine the presence of ISIL gunmen and destroy them in one month”.

Gharawi added that “the US is trying to expand the time of the war against the ISIL to get guarantees from the Iraqi government to have its bases in Mosul and Anbar provinces.”

Salahuddin security commission also disclosed that “unknown planes threw arms and ammunition to the ISIL gunmen Southeast of Tikrit city”.

GR Editor’s Note:

While the issue of the US-Israeli war games must be addressed, there is no evidence that the plane crash is in any way related to the holding of the US-Israeli military exercises.

*      *      *

Israeli and the US took part in operation ‘Blue Flag’, an air-force combat drill taking place in the Arava desert at the same time Metrojet Flight 9268 went down.

Startling new revelations show that both the US and Israel were conducting war games in the Arava desert when Flight 9268 dropped off the radar, shortly before breaking up in mid-air and crashing in the Sinai, Egypt.

The Russian plane crash has been blamed on ISIS fighters shooting it down, but now evidence has emerged, via Israeli state media, that an operation named “Blue Skies” or “Blue Flag” was taking place at the exact location and at the exact time as the crash.

As reported by The Times Of Israel, in their headline, Blue Skies: Israeli, American, Greek, and Polish air personnel square off against a fictional enemy state in two-week drill (Oct. 30, 2015):

Air forces from around the world have gathered deep in the Arava desert in the south of Israel for the past week and a half to take part in the largest aerial exercise in the history of the Israeli Air Force.

The “Blue Flag” exercise, which is continuing through November 3, pits the Israeli Air Force, the United States Air Force, Greece’s Hellenic Air Force and the Polish Air Force against a fictional enemy state, the captain in charge of all IAF exercises told The Times of Israel Thursday night.

American Everyman reports:

Why is this significant? Well, just take a look at two maps.

The Israelis and US running an air-force combat drill in the same general area of the downed Russian passenger plane?

With the collapse of the Communist countries in the 1990’s and their conversion to capitalism, followed by the advent of neo-liberal regimes throughout most of Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America, the imperial regimes in the US and EU have established a new political spectrum, in which the standards of acceptability narrowed and the definition of adversaries expanded.

Over the past quarter century, the US and EU turned their focus from systemic adversaries (anti-capitalist and anti-imperial states and movements) to attacking capitalist regimes, which

(1) had adopted nationalist, re-distributive and Keynesian policies;

(2) had opposed military interventions, coups and bases;

(3) had aligned with non-Western capitalist powers;

(4) had opposed Zionist colonization of Palestine and Gulf State-financed Islamist terrorists;

(5) and had refuse to follow the financial agendas dictated by Wall Street and the City of London investment houses, speculators and vulture funds.

 

The Western imperial regimes (by which we mean the US, Canada and the EU) have exercised their political, military, economic and propaganda powers to

(1) eliminate or limit the variety of capitalist options;

(2) control the kinds of market-state relations; and

(3) secure compliance through punitive military invasions, occupations and economic sanctions against targeted adversaries.

The ‘Media Troika’: the Financial Press and Political Warfare

The major financial newspapers of record in the United States have played a key role in disseminating the post-communist political line regarding what are acceptable capitalist policies: The Wall Street Journal, (WSJ), the New York Times (NYT), and the Financial Times (FT) – the ‘Troika’ – have systematically engaged in political warfare acting as virtualpropaganda arms of the US and EU imperialist governments in their attempts to impose and/or maintain vassal state status on countries and economies, ‘regulated’ according to the needs of Western financial institutions.

 

The propaganda Troika not only reflects the interests and policies of the ruling elites, but their editors, journalists and commentators shape policies through their reportage, analyses and editorials.

The Troika’s methods of political operation and the substance of their policiespreclude any kind of balanced reportage.

Day in and day out, the Troika (1) fabricates ‘crises’ for adversaries and illusory promises of ‘recovery’ for vassals; (2) distorts and/or omits favorable information regarding adversaries, dismissing targeted regimes as ‘authoritarian’ and ‘corrupt’. In contrast, obedient and submissive rulers are described as ‘pragmatic’ and ‘realist’. The Troikaattributes ‘military threats’ and ‘aggressive behavior’ to adversaries engaged in defensive policies, while labeling vassal state invasions or aggression as justified, retaliatory or defensive.

A close reading of the reportage by the stable of Troika scribes over the past 2 years reveals the repeated use of vitriolic and highly charged terms in describing adversarial leaders. This prepares the reader for the one-sided, negative assessment of past, present and future policies adopted by the targeted regime.

Once the imperial states and the Troika decide on targeting a government and its leaders, all the subsequent ‘news’ is designed to present the motives of these leaders as ‘perfidious’ and the economic and social impact of their policies as ‘catastrophic’.

And whenever the ‘Troika’s’ analyses or predictions or prognostications turned out to be blatantly wrong – there are never corrections. Brazen lies are glossed over with nary a ripple in their smooth fabric of propaganda.

Once a government is designated as ‘enemy’ (ripe for ‘regime change’), the Troika recycles the same hostile messages almost daily. The readers, upon viewing Troika headlines, already know at least three quarters of the content of the ‘article’. A small portion of a report may refer tangentially to some particular event or policy decision for which the diatribe launched.

Working hand-in-hand with Western imperial regimes, the Troika targets the same regimes, using the exact same terms dished out by imperial policy spokesmen and women.

In this essay, we will discuss the main regimes and policies targeted by the Troika and its Western imperial state partners. We will then proceed to evaluate Troika facts, interpretations and their track record from the beginning of the onslaught to the present. We will conclude by examining the conversion of the mainstream ‘serious’ financial press into a triumvirate of tub-thumping warmongers.

The Troika’s Targeted Regimes: Trumpeting Their Sins and Denying Their Successes

The Troika’s propaganda war not only converges with the imperial states’destabilization policies (‘regime change’) but also is aimed at specific policies and agreementsamong supposed allies, partners and even vassal states.

The intensity of vitriol and the frequency of hostile articles vary according to the level of conflict between the imperial regime and its target for ‘regime change’. The greater the conflict the more violent the language.

We find intense Troika hostility, in the form of frequent, hysterical attacks, directed against Russia, China, Venezuela, Argentina and Palestine. Even any suspected ‘deviations’by vassals, like Chile or Brazil, in the form of popular domestic social legislations, are subjected to stern scolding and warnings of dire consequences.

The Troika Maligns Russia

The Troika’s attacks vary to some degree with each target. In the case of Russia, theTroika routinely denounces President Vladimir Putin as an authoritarian ruler who has undermined Russian democracy. They claim Russia’s economy is in crisis and facing imminent collapse. They vilify Russia’s military assistance to the Syrian government of Bashar Assad. They question the viability of Russia’s military treaties and economic agreements with China. In sum, the Troika portrays Russia as a once peaceful, democratic law-abiding country (during the kleptocratic years of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990’s), which has been taken over by former secret KGB officials who have embarked on reckless overseas military adventures, while repressing their own ethnic Muslim populations (in Chechnya and Dagestan) and which is being run into the ground because of mismanagement and Western economic sanctions. They never bother to explain why the ‘authoritarian’ Putin maintains a consistently high citizen approval despite the Troika’s litany of evils…

Troika-Backed Ukrainian Puppet Secures 1% Approval:

In December 2013, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, the foul mouth diplomat, puppet dominatrix and austerity zealot, bragged that Washington had poured $5 billion dollars into Ukraine in order to pursue ‘regime change‘and install a puppet regime headed by President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister (‘Our Man Yats’) Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister. Obedient to his Western sponsors and theTroika, Yatsenyuk proceeded to sign off on an IMF bailout and austerity program slashing salaries and pensions of Ukrainian citizens by half, reducing GNP by 25%, ending fuel and food subsidies and tripling unemployment.  These policies brought windfall profits for his billionaire crony capitalists and intensified corruption. The Troika labelled the Nuland’s putsch a ‘democratic revolution’, applauding Yastenyuk for vigorously applying the IMF dictated program and predicted a prosperous future…

As discontent spread and anger mounted among Ukrainian citizens, Yatsenyuk continued to feed his own ego by reading the Troika’s puff-piece editorials lauding his courage for staying the course of austerity and ignoring his compatriots’ opinion polls, up until the October 25, 2015 elections.

As the elections neared, opinion polls revealed that 99% of the electorate (which excluded millions of restive citizens of the Donbas region) completely rejected Arseniy (now known as ‘Nuland’s arsehole’) Yatsenyuk. Faced with the universal rejection of his starvation policies and crony capitalism, he withdrew his party (the Popular (sic) Front) from the election, but not from the ‘democratic’ government…

For two years the Troika had praised the Kiev junta, fabricating ‘reports’ about Kiev’s positive economic ‘reforms’ ….which had benefited the 1% corrupt oligarchs while impoverishing the masses. The Western propaganda mills systematically distorted popular reaction among the Ukrainian citizens, citing imaginary ‘anonymous experts’ and phantom ‘men in the street’ in praise of the debacle. Never had the Troika engaged in such blatantlydeceptive ‘journalism’ as its account of the two years of pillage and mass immiseration under Prime Minister Yatsenyuk. And when ‘Yats’ was faced with total repudiation, he blithely dismissed Ukrainian public opinion, claiming he was ‘not concerned by temporary (sic) political party ratings’. His indifference with an electoral repudiation of 99% is rooted in a delusion that he will remain Prime Minister because he is widely praised by the EU, the US, the IMF … and the media Troika.

The Troika and China: Here Comes the Crash . . .?

In its ‘journalistic pivot to Asia’, the Troika deprecates China’s high-growth economy by questioning its data and by repeatedly predicting the impending crisis, breakdown and mass disaffection.

The Troika describes China’s defense policy as a ‘military threat to its neighbors’ and labels its overseas trade and investment policies as ‘neo-colonial exploitation’.

China’s national campaign against corruption and its prosecution of corrupt officials is dismissed by the Troika as a ‘political purge by a power-hungry president’.

The Troika attributes Chinese advances in science and technology as mere ‘cyber-theft of Western innovations’.

The movement of Chinese workers (internal migration) to areas with better paying jobs and investments is called ‘colonization’.

The Chinese government’s response to terrorism and armed separatists from Tibet and the Western Uighur regions is denounced as “Beijing’s systematic violation of the human rights of minorities”.

The Troika Castigates Capitalist Argentina (for a Decade of Growth)

Argentina has been on the Troika’s radar for a decade, despite the fact that it has a center-left government, which rescued capitalism from a total collapse (the Crisis of 1998-2002) restoring the growth of profits. Multi-nationals, like Monsanto and Chevron, enjoy huge returns on their investments in Argentina.

The Troika denounces the government for running up budget deficits while ignoring the impact of a Manhattan court judgement to award a group of Wall Street ‘vulture fund’ speculators ‘interest payments’ of one-thousand percent on old pre-crisis debt.

The Troika claims the regime engages in populist excesses, which prevent large-scale inflows of investment capital.

The Troika describes the recent slowdown in the economy as a ‘deep crisis’, which requires ‘deep structural changes’ (namely the elimination of social funding for pensioners, low income wage earners and school children).

The Troika paints a catastrophic picture of Argentina: a decaying economy run by a demagogic political leadership engaged in falsifying data…to mask an imminent collapse…Troika and its ‘Hate Venezuela’ Campaign

The Troika’s journalists and editorial writers, portray Venezuela as an unmitigated disaster: a stagnant and collapsing economy, ruined by an authoritarian populist regime repressing peaceful opposition dissenters.

According to the Troika, Venezuela is incapable of providing basic goods to consumers. Instead it resorts to draconian confiscation of goods from honest businesses – unjustly accused of hoarding and profiteering. The daily reality of manufactured ‘shortages’ is consistently ignored.

When the Venezuelan government attempts to stop violent cross border raids by Colombian paramilitary gangs and smugglers it is denounced as arbitrarily repressing Colombian immigrants.

When Caracas arrests opposition leaders because of their well-documented involvement in violent street demonstrations, promoting the sabotage of power plants and clinics and for planning coups, they are portrayed as violating the ‘human rights of legitimate dissidents.’.

The Troika never mentions the tens of millions of US dollars provided by Washington to opposition NGOs to pursue its destabilization campaign against Venezuela. It labels US-funded opposition NGO’s as “independent civil society organizations” (just like Ukraine before the putsch).

For almost 2 decades, the Troika has praised Venezuelan opposition groups as formidable critics of the Chavez-Maduro government, but has never explained to their readers why such ‘formidable’ groups have been soundly defeated in 14 of the 15 elections.

The Troika and Palestine: In Defense of Israeli Terror

In its Middle East coverage, the Troika consistently depicts the Palestinians as violent terrorists and aggressors while describing Israelis as their victims. According to the Troika, the Israeli army is engaged in justifiable ‘reprisals’ when they bomb and slaughter Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza. The endless dispossession of Palestinians of their homes, farms and rights and the violent settler occupation by Israeli Jewish colonists is presented as the just settlement of Jews escaping persecution.

No mention or little importance is given to:

(1)  Israeli-Jewish desecration of Islamic and Christian religious sites;

(2)  Israeli systematic terror and mass jailing of peaceful protesters.

Palestinian resistance is described as ‘incendiary, irrational violence’.

The Troika journalists produce ‘articles’ which are virtually indistinguishable from the press handouts of the Zionist Power Configuration in the US. The Troika even chastises their partner US-EU regimes for their bland criticism or expression of shock at Israel’s most egregious crimes.

The Troika echoes Israeli and Zionist attacks on international tribunals charging Israeli officials with crimes against humanity. The Troika claims they lack ‘balance’.

The Troika and Syria: Armchair Generals

The Troika has demonized the Syrian government of Bashar Assad while backing jihadi terrorists dubbed ‘rebels or ‘moderates’. It has long argued for greater direct military intervention by NATO armies to overthrow the government in Damascus.

The Troika, masquerading as an independent ‘financial press’ publishes scores of articles by dozens of ‘armchair generals’ who concoct military strategies against Damascus while ignoring heavy economic costs, the social catastrophe of 4 million internal and external Syrian war refugees and the grave consequences of the splitting up a once-unified secular nation-state.

The Troika and Wayward Neo-Liberals

The Troika even chastises states and governments which have adopted ‘free market policies’ but maintained or introduced moderate social palliatives. For example, the Chilean regime of Michelle Bachelet fell victim to Troika criticism for promoting a mild increase in corporate taxes and implementing trade union legislation allowing for greater workers’ rights. According to the Troika, these mild reforms have led to economic stagnation, a decline in investment and greater social polarization.

Evaluation: Unmasking the Troika’s Distortions, Fabrications and Falsifications

The Troika’s ‘journalism and editorializing’ on Russia has totally distorted its recent political and economic history. Like all confidence men, Troika journalists and editors mix a few threads of facts with patent falsehoods, magnifying defects and minimizing achievements, ignoring positive long-term trends and emphasizing episodic negatives.

The Troika’s accounts of Russia’s recent military and diplomatic assistance to the Syrian government’s struggle against Islamist terrorists, ignores the achievement in reversing IS advances and stabilizing the central government.

The Troika paints a specter of Great Russian geopolitical expansion and ignores the long-standing political partnerships and alliances between Russia and major countries in the region, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

With matters ‘economic’, the Troika describes the ‘catastrophic’ impact of US-EU sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, while ignoring the positive long-term results for Russia’s economy –greater self-reliance and investment in manufacturing and agriculture as a stimulus to local producers and the emergence of alternative overseas suppliers and markets, especially China and Iran.

The Troika highlights Russia’s two-year recession while ignoring a decade and a half of substantial growth after the catastrophic ‘Yeltsin’ years.

The Troika falsifies past and present political developments. They discretely praise the Western-backed violent gangster-oligarchs who ruled Russia during the pillage years of the 1990’s as a democracy while denouncing the relatively peaceful and competitive elections under the Putin Presidency as ‘authoritarian’.

The Troika resorts to similar propaganda ploys with China. Any slowdown from China’s three decades of double digit growth gets spun as an imminent collapse, ignoring the fact that the US-European business community can only dream of China’s still robust growth rate of 7%.

The allegations of Chinese cyber theft of Western science and technology ignore the obvious fact that China’s enormous public investment in basic and applied science and technology in dozens of centers of excellence has produced stunning achievements and levels of scholarship. A review of the international scientific literature and journals – paints an entirely different picture of Chinese advances from that described by the Troika.

Chinese economic growth through seaborne exports requires major investment and commitment to its maritime routes and security. To counter Chinese growth and assert US supremacy, Washington has signed new, provocative military pacts with Japan, Australia and the Philippines and escalated the intrusion of its planes and ships into Chinese waters and airspace. The Troika labels China’s defense of its waterways as an “aggressive” military threat to its regional neighbors, while US military investments in bases in Asia and constant intelligence gathering exceed Beijing’s five- fold. US warships brazenly violate China’s 12 mile maritime boundary.

Troika scribes completely ignore the recent history of US and Japanese empires invading dozens of Asian countries, establishing colonies, and killing scores of millions of people. In contrast to the enormous US strategic ring of military bases and communications outposts throughout the Asia-Pacific region, China has no foreign bases or overseas troops – a fact one will never learn from the ‘Troika’

The Troika’s campaign against Argentina, permeating its pages, minimizes the role of a short-term contemporary slow-down in international demand for commodities and attributes Argentina’s problems to its welfare programs, capital controls and state regulation. TheTroika fails to acknowledge the past decade of growth, prosperity and rising living standards among the people in Argentina.

The source of Argentine stagnation is not because of a lack of free market policies but the Fernandez regime’s accommodation and promotion of the interests of international bankers, virtually all foreign debt holders (except one notorious ‘vulture’!) and extractive capitalists (agribusiness, Monsanto, Barrack Gold etc.).

The Troika ignores ‘the decade of infamy’ – the 1990’s – during which Argentina served as a bargain bazaar for the privatization of lucrative public enterprises and eventually collapsed in the 2001 crash with major bank closings, one hundred thousand bankruptcies and five million unemployed (30% of the labor force) – a thoroughly pillaged economy. Instead the Troika fabricates an ideal world of past free market prosperity in order to condemn contemporary Argentine, ignoring the real historical record of a liberal debacle and Keynesian recovery.

Venezuela is currently in a severe crisis, as the Troika scribes remind us in their shrill reports – blaming it entirely on ‘populist’ (i.e. public spending on social welfare) and ‘nationalist’ policies.

The Troika ignores the well-documented sabotage by the importers and distributers in the private business community, hoarding, excess profiteering and currency speculation. These problems are exacerbated by the sharp decline of oil revenues resulting from international market forces, and not merely government mismanagement.

The Troika tells their readers that the Chavez and Maduro governments are authoritarian, ignoring the dozen and a half free and competitive elections since Chavez’ ascent to power. Moreover, the Troika has remained rather quiet over their verbally violent editorial support for the opposition business-led and US embassy-backed military coup in 2002 and an aborted coup in 2014.

Conclusion

The Troika: the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the Financial Times have repeatedly made false prognoses regarding the economic performances of governments targeted for ‘regime change’. Their economic predictions were repeatedly wrong and their readers among the investor public would have lost their shirts if they had taken their cues from the Troika’s editorial pages and bet ‘short’ against China and the rest…

Their perverse denunciations of Russian and Chinese military defense activities are sharpening world tensions. Their support for ethnic separatists in the Russian Caucuses and western China has encouraged acts of terrorism leading to the deaths of hundreds of Chinese workers murdered by Uighur and Tibetan terrorists, hundreds of Russians at hands of Chechen terrorists and thousands of Russian-speakers in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The Troika cannot be relied on for reliable information, especially regarding the economic, political and foreign policies of US and EU adversaries (those targets for ‘Regime change’).

At most their polemical screeds give the discerning reader an insight into thepropaganda line promoted by the Western powers.

Moreover in recent times, the Troika has become even more strident and militaristic than the ruling elites. The Troika’s armchair generals mocked Obama for not sending ground troops into Syria; chastised the US and EU for signing the nuclear agreements with Iran; and embraced Israel’s systematic murder of Palestinians.

Unreliable and more given to strident invective than reporting the facts in a balanced way, the Troika has lost credibility for intelligent, serious readers who strain to ‘read between the lines’ when they write that a government is ‘unpopular’ during elections. More likely than not, the incumbents sweep the elections and retain popular majorities as has been the case so far in Russia, Argentina, Venezuela and elsewhere.

If and when the Troika succeeds in promoting more wars, as it has been doing in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia, each and every militaristic adventure will lead to economic and social disasters spawning millions more refugees.

When imperial governments, like England, adopt conciliatory policies toward China, eschewing zero sum confrontations, in favor of win-win cooperation, the Troika’s armchair generals are sure to mock and accuse the conservative government of ‘kowtowing’ to authoritarians – dismissing the $30 billion dollar investment deals.

The Troika has gone far beyond its earlier role of presenting the line of imperial regimes. They now march, rather independently, to the military drum of real and imagined nuclear warriors and terrorists. Welcome to the “free press” and the ‘lies of our Times’!

 

•  The US, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the Gulf monarchies have all in the recent past supported al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State (ISIS) with arms, money, and/or manpower.
• The first example of this was in 1979 when the United States began covert operations in Afghanistan, six months before the Russians arrived, promoting Islamic fundamentalism across the southern tier of the Soviet Union against “godless communism”. All the al-Qaeda/Taliban shit then followed.
• In addition to Afghanistan, the United States has provided support to Islamic militants in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, the Caucasus, and Syria.
• The United States overthrew the secular governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and is trying to do the same with Syria, thus giving great impetus to the rise of ISIS. Said Barack Obama in March of this year: “ISIS is a direct outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”
• More than a million refugees from these wars of Washington are currently over-running Europe and North Africa. God Bless American exceptionalism.
• The Iraqi, Syrian and Turkish Kurds have all fought against ISIS, but Turkey – close US ally and member of NATO – has fought against each of them.
• Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanese factions have each supported the Syrian government in various ways in Damascus’s struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups, including the (much celebrated but seldom seen) “moderate” ones. For this all four countries have been sharply criticized by Washington.
• The United States has bombed ISIS in Syria, but has used the same occasions to damage Syria’s infrastructure and oil-producing capacity.
• Russia has bombed ISIS in Syria, but has used the same occasions to attack Syria’s other enemies.
• The mainstream media almost never mentions the proposed Qatar natural-gas pipelines – whose path to Europe Syria has stood in the way of for years – as a reason for much of the hostility toward Syria. The pipelines could dethrone Russia as Europe’s dominant source of energy.
• In Libya, during the beginning of the 2011 civil war, anti-Gaddafi rebels, many of whom were al-Qaeda affiliated militias, were protected by NATO in “no-fly zones”.
• US policy in Syria in the years leading up to the 2011 uprising against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, which began the whole current mess, was designed to promote sectarianism, which in turn led to civil war with the goal of regime change.
• US Secretary of State John Kerry declared on October 22 that in resolving Syria’s civil war the country “should not be broken up, that it must remain secular, and that Syrians should choose their future leader.” (All of which actually describes Syria under Assad.) Then Kerry said: “One thing stands in the way of being able to rapidly move to implement that, and it’s a person called Assad, Bashar Assad.”

Why does the government of the United States hate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with such passion?

Is it because, as we’re told, he’s a brutal dictator? But how can that be the reason for the hatred? It would be difficult indeed to name a brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century or of the 21st century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population; at present the list would include Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.

The United States, I suggest, is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile; and so on continuing through the world atlas and history books.

What these governments have had in common can be summarized in a single word – independence … independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.

Democratic Socialism

The candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a “democratic socialist”, for the US presidency has produced an unprecedented barrage of discussion in the American media about just what is this thing called “socialism”. Most of the discussion centers around the question of government ownership and control of the economy versus private ownership and control. This is, of course, a very old question; the meat and potatoes of the Cold War ideological competition.

What’s markedly different now is that a few centuries of uninhibited free enterprise have finally laid painfully bare the basic anti-social nature of capitalism, forcing many of even the most committed true believers to concede the inherent harm the system brings to the lives of all but the richest.

But regardless of what the intellects of these true believers tell them, they still find it very difficult emotionally to completely cut the umbilical cord to the system they were carefully raised to place the greatest of faith in. Thus, they may finally concede that we have to eliminate, or at least strictly minimize, the role of the profit motive in health care and education and maybe one or two other indispensable social needs, but they insist that the government should should keep its bureaucratic hands off everything else; they favor as much decentralization as possible.

The most commonly proposed alternative to both government or private control is worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Sanders has expressed his support for worker-owned cooperatives.

There is much to be said about such systems, but the problem I find is that they will still operate within a capitalist society, which means competition, survival of the fittest; which means that if you can’t sell more than your competitors, if you can’t make a sufficient net profit on your sales, you will likely be forced to go out of business; and to prevent such a fate, at some point you may very well be forced to do illegal or immoral things against the public; which means back to the present.

You cannot follow the mass media without being confronted every day with story after story of one corporation or another trying to swindle the public in one way or another; the latest egregious case being that of the much revered Volkswagen, recently revealed to have manipulated the measurement of the car’s pollution emission. The fact that half of the company’s Supervisory Board – responsible for monitoring the Management and approving important corporate decisions – consists of employee representatives elected by the employees did not prevent this egregious fraud; the company is still obliged to strive to maximize profit and the firm’s stock-market value. It’s the nature of the corporate beast within a capitalist jungle.

Only removal of the profit motive will correct such behavior, and also keep us from drowning in a sea of advertising and my phone ringing several times each day to sell me something I don’t need and which may not even exist.

The market. How can we determine the proper value, the proper price, of goods and services without “the magic of the marketplace”? Let’s look at something most people have to pay for – rent. Who or what designed this system where in 2015 11.8 million households in the US are paying more than 50 percent of their income to keep a roof over their head, while rent is considered “affordable” if it totals some 30 percent or less of one’s income.  What is the sense of this? It causes more hardship than any other expense people are confronted with; all kinds of important needs go unmet because of the obligation to pay a huge amount for rent each month; it is the main cause of homelessness. Who benefits from it other than the landlords? What is magical about that?

Above and beyond any other consideration, there is climate change; i.e., survival of the planet, the quality of our lives. What keeps corporations from modifying their behavior so as to be kinder to our environment? It is of course the good old “bottom line” again. What can we do to convince the corporations to consistently behave like good citizens? Nothing that hasn’t already been tried and failed. Except one thing. Unmentionable in a capitalist society. Nationalization. There, I said it. Now I’ll be getting letters damning me as an “Old Stalinist”.

But nationalization is not a panacea either, at least for the environment. There’s the greatest single source of environmental damage in the world – The United States military. And it’s already been nationalized. But doing away with private corporations will reduce the drive toward imperialism sufficiently that before long the need for a military will fade away and we can live like Costa Rica. If you think that would put the United States in danger of attack, please tell me who would attack, and why.

Most Americans, like other developed peoples, worship the capitalism they were raised with. But do they? See the chapter in my book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower: “The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?” Written in 2000/2005, the examples given in the chapter may need some updating, but the ideas expressed are as valid as ever.

Nationalization, hand-in-hand with a planned society, would of course not preclude elections. On the contrary, we’d have elections not ruled by money. What a breath of fresh air. Professor Cornel West has suggested that it’s become difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic society, without great concentrations of corporate power, would look like, or how it would operate.

Who are you going to believe? Me or Dick Cheney?

I’ve spent about 30 years compiling the details of the criminal record of US foreign policy into concise lists, and I’m always looking for suitable occasions to present the information to new readers. The new book by Dick Cheney and his adoring daughter is just such an occasion.

“We are, as a matter of empirical fact and undeniable history, the greatest force for good the world has ever known. … security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military, economic, political, and diplomatic might.” – Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, “Why the world needs a powerful America”

Well … nothing short of a brain and soul transplant would change the welt anschauung of Dr. Strangelove and his carefully-conditioned offspring, but for all of you out there who still live in a world of facts, logic, human rights, and human empathy, here’s the ammunition to use if you should happen to find yourself ensnared in the embrace of the likes of the Cheney reptiles (including mother Lynne who once set up a website solely to attack me and seven others for holding a teach-in on September 18, 2001 in which we spoke of US foreign policy as the main provocation of what had happened exactly a week earlier.)

These are the lists:

Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

• Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
• Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
• Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
• Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
• Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
• Plus … although not easily quantified … more involved in the practice of torture than any other country in the world … for over a century … not just performing the actual torture, but teaching it, providing the manuals, and furnishing the equipment.

Open Letter to the War Politicians of the World

Jürgen Todenhöfer is a German journalist and former media manager; from 1972 to 1990 he was a member of parliament for the Christian Democrats (CDU). He was one of Germany’s most ardent supporters of the US-sponsored Mujahideen and their guerrilla war against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Several times he traveled to combat zones with Afghan Mujahideen groups. After 2001 Todenhöfer became an outspoken critic of the US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has published several books about visits he made to war zones. In recent years he twice interviewed Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and in 2015 he was the first German journalist to visit the ‘Islamic State’.

Dear Presidents and Heads of Governments!

Through decades of a policy of war and exploitation you have pushed millions people in the Middle East and Africa into misery. Because of your policies refugees have to flee all over the world. One out every three refugees in Germany comes from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. From Africa comes one out of five refugees.

Your wars are also the cause of global terrorism. Instead of some 100 international terrorists like 15 years ago, we now are faced with more than 100,000 terrorists. Your cynical ruthlessness now strikes back at us like a boomerang.

As usual, you do not even consider to really change your policy. You care only about the symptoms. The security situation gets more dangerous and chaotic by the day. More and more wars, waves of terror and refugee crises will determine the future of our planet.

Even in Europe, the war will one day knock again at Europe’s door. Any businessman that would act like you would be fired or be in prison by now. You are total failures.

The peoples of the Middle East and Africa, whose countries you have destroyed and plundered and the people of Europe, who now accommodate the countless desperate refugees, have to pay a high price for your policies. But you wash your hands of responsibility. You should stand trial in front of the International Criminal Court. And each of your political followers should actually take care of at least 100 refugee families.

Basically, the people of the world should rise up and resist you as the warmongers and exploiters you are. As once Gandhi did it – in nonviolence, in ‘civil disobedience’. We should create new movements and parties. Movements for justice and humanity. Make wars in other countries just as punishable as murder and manslaughter in one’s own country. And you who are responsible for war and exploitation, you should go to hell forever. It is enough! Get lost! The world would be much nicer without you.

– Jürgen Todenhöfer

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” was just held. This year set a new record for “yes” votes, with the addition of the Marshall Islands and Palau (heretofore each voting “no” or abstaining) and Micronesia (heretofore abstaining). All three countries had established diplomatic relations with Cuba earlier this year, which of course the United States had also done, but without any change in Washington’s vote. Here is how the vote has gone in the past (not including abstentions):

Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of all other governments. The real reason for Washington’s eternal hostility toward Cuba has not changed since the revolution in 1959 – The fear of a good example; the fear of an alternative to the capitalist model; a fear that has been validated repeatedly over the years as many Third World countries have expressed their admiration and gratitude toward Cuba.

How the embargo began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: “The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” Mallory proposed “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted its suffocating embargo against its everlasting enemy.

Nothing of any real importance has changed recently. Guantánamo Prison still exists in all its imperialist beauty and torture. The US has not renounced its “regime-change” policies toward Cuba. Not a penny of Cuba’s near-trillion-dollar lawsuit for compensation has been paid. Washington has recently threatened to revoke the tax exempt status of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, one of the most respected and experienced Cuba advocacy groups. I still can’t go to Cuba as a tourist, or to present a book of mine at a Cuban Book Fair (for which I’ve been blocked in the past). And the United States still does not relax its death grip on the embargo, including continuing to prohibit the sale of medicines to Cuba.

A note to readers

A number of you have remarked to me about Killing Hope being unavailable in stores and, usually, from Amazon, and often from myself. This is because one of the book’s publishers, Common Courage (Maine), and its editor Greg Bates, have blocked publication and distribution of the book by a new US publisher. Common Courage is essentially out of business but refuses to face up to the fact. Bates stole a royalty payment sent to me by my British publisher via Common Courage. This theft, among other things, nullified my contract with Common Courage. It’s complicated, but I feel obliged to offer some explanation to those of you who have been unable to find a copy of the book.

Notes

1. The Independent (London), March 18, 2015
2. The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire (2015), Introduction by Julian Assange, chapter 10
3. Newsweek, September 21, 2015
4. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2005), Chapter 18
5. See Jürgen Todenhöfer’s Facebook and website. Some minor corrections to spelling and grammar have been made.
6. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba(1991), p.885

 

A secret application has been made to India’s GEAC (Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee) for a new variety of GMO mustard to be released for cultivation.

If accepted, this would be the first GMO variety to be approved in India – and could open the way for many more such applications for other major crops including staple foods like rice, wheat and chickpeas.

According to India’s Business Standard magazine, Deepak Pental, developer of the ‘Dhara Mustard Hybrid 11’ (DMH11) mustard seed at Delhi University, said that he had sent the proposal to the GEAC in mid-September. The GEAC is expected to meet again next week to consider the application.

The GEAC, part of the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, is the statutory authority that appraises proposals for field trials and commercial sale of GM crops. The final decision rests with the Union environment, forests and climate change minister.

The official website of the GEAC makes no mention of this or any other recent application – indeed the entire website appears to be many years out of date and unmaintained. The most recent ‘status of pending projects’ reports dates from March 2007. No minutes of meetings have been posted since April 2012.

India’s Economic Times also reported on 3rd September that a secret meeting of the GEAC had been called that day to discuss 17 applications for field trials of six GMO including varieties of cotton, corn, brinjal, chickpea, rice and wheat.

“The GEAC did meet today and certain decisions were taken. However, they cannot be shared at this stage as minutes have to be made and the minister’s approval is required as well”, an unnamed “senior official from the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF)” told ET, which added:

The decisions taken at the GEAC were kept absolutely wrapped in secrecy at the Environment ministry. The members of the GEAC whom ET spoke to refused to share any information on the decisions taken at the meeting.

The DMH11 GMO mustard, developed by Delhi University, embodies transgenic technology designed to facilitate hybridisation. Deepak Pental also claims the variety delivers a 30% yield increase.

A veil of secrecy over GMO deliberations

Prominent campaigner Aruna Rodrigues, who in 2013 challenged the Indian government over its “reckless promotion” of GMO crops in India’s Supreme Court, has denounced the secrecy surrounding the current round of GMO applications.

Consistent with the total absence of any recent information on the GEAC website, she argues that official regulators have hidden all data about the GM mustard from the public and the independent scientific community – in the process violating constitutional provisions and the orders of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 2008 had ordered that biosafety data be placed in the public domain when petitioners argued that unless the toxicity and allergenicity data are made known to the public, the applicants and concerned scientists in the country would not be in a position to make effective representations to the concerned authorities.

Rodrigues believes that the mandatory rigorous biosafety protocols required by law have not been carried out and the data pertaining to DMH11 therefore needs to be concealed.

According to Rodrigues, the secrecy surrounding GM mustard exemplifies the appalling state of regulation and smacks of corruption. She concludes the Indian government is using underhand means to introduce GM crops into Indian agriculture and that there appears to be no place for science or transparency in this process.

Kavitha Kuruganti, Convenor of Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), has also been seeking biosafety data for DMH11 GM Mustard without success. “GEAC is functioning in a highly secretive fashion”, she complains.

And while the nation does not know what is happening inside the regulatory institutions with applications like this GM mustard, biosafety data is being repeatedly declined by the regulators. What are the regulators hiding and whose interests are they protecting?

She goes on to ask: “Why should the regulators be trusted for their safety assessment when in the case of both Bt cotton and Bt brinjal, the Supreme Court Technical Expert Committee (SC TEC) which took up a sample biosafety analyses in 2013 showed that the regulators were wrong in concluding the safety of these GMOs? …

This current Government seems to be keen to conduct regulatory processes in a secretive fashion. Our past requests to meet with the Environment Minister to share our concerns met with no success. As the government gets more secretive and opaque around regulation, the public has a right to know what are they afraid of, if everything is safe and scientific?

Four expert reports conclude: India is not ready for GMOs

The proposed approval of DMH11 also flies in the face of four official reports that recommend against introducing GMOs to India due to the lack of integrity, independence and scientific expertise in assessing GMO risk:

• The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal, overturning the apex Regulator’s approval to commercialise it;
• the ‘Sopory Committee Report’ (August 2012);
• the ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012);
• and the ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (June-July 2013).

The latest TEC report recommends an indefinite moratorium on the field trials of GM crops until the government devises a proper regulatory and safety mechanism.

The Coalition for a GM Free India is therefore demanding that the Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar, immediately intervene to stop the processing and approval of this GM mustard and makes public all the information regarding the safety tests of the GM Mustard.

Rajesh Krishnan, Convenor of Coalition for a GM-Free India, says the government’s intention is to speed through a raft of GMO applications: “This GM mustard is also a backdoor entry for various other GM crops in the regulatory pipeline.

While herbicide tolerance as a trait has been recommended against by committee after committee in the executive, legislative and judiciary-based inquiry processes in India related to GM crops, this GM mustard uses herbicide tolerance.

Non GMO options are already proven to work

Krishnan also argues that, more importantly, there are non-GM agro-ecological options like ‘System of Mustard Intensification’ yielding far higher production than the claimed yields of this GM mustard of Delhi University:

Contamination is inevitable of all other mustard varieties, while India is the Centre of Diversity for mustard. This is clearly one more GMO that is unwanted and unneeded and is being thrust on citizens in violation of our right to choices, as farmers and consumers.

He adds that the GM mustard hybrid has been created mainly to facilitate the seed production work of seed manufacturers – even though farmers already have a choice of non-GM mustard hybrids in the market, in addition to high yielding mustard varieties.

The claim is that GM mustard will provide yield increases of 25-30%. However, Rodrigues argues that higher yields are not the result of these particular transgenes but rather a direct result of hybridisation of normal crop genes.

This is basically a case of deception, she says: the use of high-yielding hybrids is a deliberate ploy to camouflage the yield attributable to the hybrid and assign it to the GM crop instead. She says that this is precisely the story that ensued with Bt cotton (which is now having disastrous consequences for many farmers) and that thread wove its way through Bt brinjal and now, openly for mustard.

Rodrigues says that the fraud is unprecedented and the case surrounding GM mustard in India is evidence of unremitting regulatory delinquency. The secrecy and regulatory delinquency that Rodrigues talks of is integral to the speeding up of the wider agenda of restructuring Indian agriculture for the benefit of an increasingly impatient Western agribusiness cartel.

These companies are pushing an unsustainable and poisonous industrialised model of farming on India based on a never-ending stream of petro-chemical inputs, commodity crops and corporate (GM) seeds. This is already impoverishing farmers and driving them out of agriculture and will ultimately have tremendously negative consequences for the nation’s food sovereignty, health and security.

An indefinite moratorium was placed on Bt brinjal (eggplant) in India in 2010. Regulators sought public feedback on that particular food crop and the Government of India took up public consultations before taking a final decision on Bt brinjal’s commercial cultivation fate in India.

But they now appear to be abandoning that precedent and moving ahead with DMH11 mustard – and other crops essential to India’s food security – without even a pretence at consultation or release of essential scientific information.

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

This article is an extended version of one written by Colin Todhunter with additional reporting by Oliver Tickell.

First we heard about the epidemic of sexual crimes being committed by US soldiers against women in our armed forces several years ago with over 26,000 cases reported in 2011 alone. Even such pristine, honorable institutions as our US service academies traditionally producing America’s top leaders are blatantly guilty. The Air Force Academy where supposedly this nation’s “cream of the crop” are educated apparently harbors more rapists than any other college in America. And that fact speaks volumes since last year’s headlines across the country uncovered the appalling statistics of a rape epidemic occurring on the campuses of America’s finest colleges and universities. Up to one in three women can expect to be raped at some point in her life. And now a just released  AP finding reports that a thousand police officers lost their badges as “protectors” of our community for various incidents involving sexual misconduct.

If we can’t trust men at our leadership bastions like the prestigious US service academies or our military men in uniform sworn to defend and protect our nation, or our best and brightest attending America’s finest institutions of higher learning, and now also those wearing blue uniform whose designated purpose is to “protect and serve” our communities whose salaries are paid for by our hard-earned tax dollars, then who can we trust? Definitely not either our government officials in the halls of Washington nor our men of cloth like Catholic priests as both our highest political and spiritual authority figures have even longer histories of sex crimes, both notoriously off the charts for their high profile sex scandals in recent decades.

The arrest and highly suspected murder to silence the so called DC Madame Deborah Palfrey underscores the looming infestation of sex crime scandals so historically embedded at America’s top power echelons. The bottom line is that Americans cannot actually trust any of their public servants, either elected or in uniform. This startling, highly unsettling fact reflects just one more glaring sign among many of the crumbling civil and moral breakdown now rampantly plaguing American society.

This latest headline comes from a yearlong investigation by Associated Presscompiling statistics from 41 out of the 50 United States involving state and local law enforcement personnel who lost their jobs over the six year period from 2009-2014 for sexual misconduct charges. Sarasota Florida Police Chief Bernadette DePinoadmits that these sexual offenses go largely underreported, adding “It’s happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country.” The various crimes in this investigation include rape, sodomy, sexual assault, child pornography possession, propositioning citizens while on-duty ad well as engaging in consensual sex while on-duty.

With the “thin blue line” that is infamous for police protecting their own misconduct, and so many cases never reported, charged or convicted, yet 1000 cases found on the books in only 41 states with the biggest states conspicuously not included, police getting away with sex crimes in the US is exponentially greater than the 1000 who ended up losing their jobs. This investigation didn’t even include statistics from the two most populous states in America – California and New York – where criminal misconduct from abusively militant, trigger-happy police departments are the most pervasive in the country. With no help from law enforcement data, of those total number of Americans killed by police (464) in the first five months of 2015, The Guardian found that blacks are over twice as likely to be killed when unarmed as whites. The Guardian also determined that police are killing Americans at twice the rate calculated by the US government’s official public record of police homicides.

In the same way that for all too obvious reasons America’s law enforcement purposely fails to track police shooting unarmed citizens in any systematic or accurate way, least of all black males being inordinately murdered, no doubt California and New York conveniently do not collect statistics of its police officers losing their jobs over sexual misconduct for the same reason. The truth is simply too self-incriminating. The nine states along with the District of Columbia omitted in theAP study either do not decertify police officers (administrative process of revoking law enforcement licenses) for sexual misconduct or are not required to track the numbers of police rapists at all. This systemic hiding of sinister truth behind the badge is a serious enough problem to be considered criminal in and of itself. Also conspicuously absent from this investigation were members of federal law enforcement agencies since only records from states were included.

The estimate of rape cases that remain unreported amongst the general population at-large are at least 9 out of 10. But the number of women raped by police who are understandably too afraid to then go to the same police agency responsible for raping them has to be way more than 9 out of 10 who choose not to report. The severe reprisals and harassment that so often result after women do report sexual assault especially when committed by police officers is atrocious since the thin blue line of tightly sealed police protection diabolically kicks in. Police Chief DePino who worked with the International Association of Police Chiefs to compile the data, illustrates this “thin blue line” with the following point:

It’s so underreported and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.

Just maybe so many people think that because to some extent it’s all too true.

It was found that even among the 41 states that were included in these findings, some of those 41 states reported no officers lost their jobs at all which belies both newspaper headlines and court reports documenting specific rape cases involving police in those states. Thus in some cases, states actually falsely denied rape amongst its police ranks indicating yet more institutionalized protection at either the state governing level or law enforcement level.

Despite the negative publicity covered extensively in recent years of police brutality and use of excessive force on unarmed US citizens, until now police raping US citizens has largely remained under the media’s radar. Reasons? A “patchwork” of laws, “piecemeal” reporting and victims too traumatized and fearful to register complaints and charges. Plus one third of the cases where 1000 cops lost their jobs involved assault victims 17 years old or younger. Most of the victims of police misconduct are poor, often have drug problems or have had some prior run-ins with the law. Thus, predatory cops who rape consciously select their victims amongst those who are most unlikely and least powerful to try and ever hold them accountable.

This investigation also determined that similar to the heinous reshuffling of known predatory priests by religious higher-ups from the pope on down who swept their endemic problem under the rug enabling and protecting criminal clergy to continue raping in other assigned communities, law enforcement leaders are also known to allow guilty police personnel to quietly resign thereby retaining certification to then be hired by other law enforcement communities to rape yet more victims elsewhere… more criminal concealment of liability.

The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics tasked with collecting police data doesn’t even track officer arrests, nor are states mandated to collect or share that information. All this built-in, layered, self-protective deception only emphasizes that the number of US cops raping citizens must actually dwarf the 1000 AP reported, making the true numbers well into thousands upon thousands of police rapists who are systemically allowed to rape and continue getting away with their evil crimes. With recidivism rates for rapists relatively high, higher than even child molesters, rapists often continue to rape until they ultimately are caught and put behind bars. And in prison they likely only continue acting out their pathology with same sex victims.

The breakdown of criminal behavior that caused 1000 police officers to lose their job for sexual misconduct is as follows: 550 police were fired for incidents involving sexual assault that included rape and sodomy, sexual shakedowns where citizens were forced into performing sexual acts to avoid arrest or subjected to gratuitous pat-downs. The other 440 cops engaged in child pornography, voyeurism, sexting juveniles or having on-duty intercourse. The guilty ex-cops who lost their jobs were employed state and local police, sheriff’s deputies, prison guards or school security personnel. The victims in the AP investigation were most often female motorists stopped by police, schoolchildren ordered to lift up their shirts or pull down their pants in bogus drug searches, police interns who were taken advantage of, exploited women with legal problems who were promised help in exchange for performing sexual acts and prison inmates forced to have sex with prison guards.

Both this AP finding and other related research have consistently conferred that police sexual misconduct is among the biggest citizen complaints. A Bowling Green University study examining news articles from 2005 to 2011 determined that 6,724 arrests were made against over 5,500 police officers. Sexual offenses accounted for the third largest number causing police to be arrested behind police violence and profit-motivated crime. Right behind use of excessive force is sexual misconduct in a Cato Institute report from 2010 and 2011 that examined the most common police complaints. As a consequence of the militarization of America, abuse of police authority manifests at its worst through both extreme physical violence and brutal sexual violence perpetrated against those fellow American citizens deemed the most defenseless.

The devastating impact that sexual perpetrators protected by their all-powerful badge have on their victims is nearly incomprehensible. Severe sexual trauma leads to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety and depressive disorders, drug addiction and even suicide when victims remain paralyzed for years, too afraid and powerless to seek justice, often alone suffering in silence without support or professional treatment. Few victims especially if underage juveniles, poor, or prostitutes dare even report police sex crimes.

Moreover, police officers frequently know and are friends with lawyers working at the local district attorney’s office. So in addition to the protection they receive from their fellow law enforcement officers, rapist cops are also sheltered from accountability by the corrupt judicial system that also maintains complicity with its own conflict of interest. These latest grim findings confirm that power of abuse is running rampant at all levels in America and, as is so often the case, the least powerful amongst us are the most egregiously victimized.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/.