Friday, August 27, 2010
Duplex Humanity
Homo erectus and the Kiss of Rothschild
Dog Poet Transmitting…….
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Someone wrote me this morning to tell me that there are two types of human beings; Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Apparently, the former turned into the latter but they have never found the missing link. He argued that maybe there was no missing link because they weren’t linked; being two different creatures and those of us that couldn’t see much of anything were in one and those of us who could see what was going on were in the other.
I saw a listing yesterday that had a selection of events that had taken place recently. As I studied them, I realized that the full impact of these events had not hit me in any real way, even though I knew such things were coming. Details about many of them were not presented to be as dramatic as they actually were. For instance, the Central European flooding was the worst in over 800 years. The heat wave and fires in Russia were the worst in over 1,000 years. The U.N. determined that the flooding in Pakistan was a greater disaster than the 2004 tsunami. Ten million people in Africa are in immediate danger of starving to death because of drought. Temperatures are so low in the Western United States that many fruits and vegetables are being destroyed. The southern and eastern portions of the United States are suffering from a terrible heat wave, which shows no signs of coming to an end. In Japan, 21,000 have been hospitalized for heat stroke. 6 millions fish, thousands of cattle and hundreds of people have been killed in South America. Thousands are dead in China from flooding. There’s a great deal that I haven’t mentioned but which you are familiar with.
Iheard about some of these things but I had no idea of the scale and scope of them.I hear the word HAARP all the time lately. Someone tells me it’s just a radar machine. That would make it a ‘sensor’. Someone else tells me that pointing it upwards affects the jet stream and that the jet stream has a profound effect on global weather patterns. You can read about everything I mentioned in the last paragraph and a lot of other things in this article.
There is an ominous warning moving around in the areas where food production and distribution are monitored. It seems that there may be serious food shortages come this fall and winter. It looks certain to me that the stock market is going to crash pretty soon. Currency is going to start acting like a fish that jumped out of the Gulf of Mexico to avoid what I call The Kiss of Rothschild. Very shortly after that fish hits the beach, it will be symbolic of various currencies and especially the American dollar which is intricately tied to all sorts of important things on an international basis.
The bankers, stockbrokers, traders, hedge fund managers and all types similar have speculated and gambled like madmen, without restraint, concern or conscience and laid the effects of their irrational behavior, upon the backs of the public, in countries around the world. They deliberately engineered a number of whacked out scenarios that failed in spectacular fashion and which also wound up on the backs of the public. These agents of global chaos are the funding sources for elected politicians and so they were able to demand and get enormous bailouts with the excuse that they were “too big to fail”. The commercial real estate bubble hasn’t burst yet but it will.
Now countries are saddled with debt that was created by predatory elite that couldn’t keep it in their pants because they were trying to stuff it all in their pockets and these same elite, in order to generate maximum profit, destroyed manufacturing, jobs, benefits and pensions in order to push the margins. Their ally in all of this is the Homo erectus. This has been their greatest ally and victim. It’s two for one night at Little Caesars’.
What I am noticing is that many of the things I have seen coming for some time are happening all around but I am not seeing them with any intensity of awareness. There’s some kind of disconnect going on. The various types of response to the conditions of present time keep surfacing in front of me and offering options away from consideration of them. There are options of self-introspection and possibilities of getting high or going the other way on the ladder. There are freaky compulsions that come out of nowhere and demand attention. I’m crossing the lake in a small dingy and these things are leaping out of the water and trying to land in the boat.
They say that during the London blitz, people used to have wild and frenetic sex with total strangers in doorways or practically anywhere. It would seem that some sort of biological imperative was at work, tied to a sense of desperation and fatal despair. People’s lives crumble from drink and drugs, when these things take precedence over the usual concerns of life in terms of importance. Unusual fantasies come up into the surface mind when it can’t process what is taking place around it. The mind seems to want to defend itself against what it can’t explain by creating circumstances of compulsion and obsession that captivate and divert their attention.
Personally, I’m in the dingy rowing across the lake but I see other dinghies and I see the creatures jumping out of the water. I know if you bend over the edge of the boat you will see the faces of men and women, whose arms appear to be outstretched for your embrace. It is by this means that I am able to intuit or observe the conditions and forces I am discussing.
It makes sense to me that when the unpredictable replaces the predictable in terms of the power of manifestation that the same thing has to be going on inside the mind as well. I get the sensation that pornography is really humming at the moment. I get the sensation that any distraction that can be focused on, so that it will defend against consideration of the weirdness happening on all sides, is being engaged in by large groups of people.
Underneath all of this is the power of what any person believes, in respect of the power of everything that challenges it. This makes it a sort of living allegory or individual myth, where each person has to traverse their own personal underworld, as their belief system is tested against the forces that seek to destroy it. I know what I feel but don’t act on. I know what I see and walk away from. This leads me to believe it is pretty widespread since the general tenor of the common mind always intrudes upon the mind of the individual, whether they are already taken over by it or not. In one case it reinforces and in the other case it seeks to compel.
I know that some people see all of this in religious terms and some people see it as a random exercise, working itself out according to chaos theory. Some people see it as the natural progression of basic instincts in humanity and I suppose I could come up with other ways that people might see it or attribute meaning to these times but my sense is that each of us are in a specific relationship, in accordance with how we have conducted ourselves and what we value. Whatever we place the highest value on has had the greatest influence over the direction in which we walked and the occupations and amusements in which we indulged. This could be why some people can’t see and others can. It could be that we are now resident within the parameters of whatever world our values circumscribe. We are all living in the reality of what we believed was real and most important and are being challenged to save it and ourselves but… that will be determined by how our values measure up against archetypal values.
Our truth is going to come up against ‘the truth’. Our actions are going to come up against the cosmic range of permissible action. Our words are going to come up against whatever measuring tool defines the integrity of whatever we had to say and its impact on anyone who heard us.
You can see this in religious terms or you can see it in numbers and symbols and the pure math that lives at the top of the mountain, where our highest possibilities reside and which melt like the snow and run down into the valleys where they turn into all the colors of our natural and unnatural worlds. You can see it or not see it depending on whether you tried to see it enough to convince whatever determines your possession of sight to make it possible. This is how it looks to me today and, no doubt, this will account for something in terms of my tomorrow. I suspect we are all reaping similar rewards depending on what we found rewarding. I’ll say in conclusion that it is never too late until it is too late. It’s a pity that some people closed out their options by making themselves blind, so that they could see something that wasn’t real.
End Transmission…….
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Someone wrote me this morning to tell me that there are two types of human beings; Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Apparently, the former turned into the latter but they have never found the missing link. He argued that maybe there was no missing link because they weren’t linked; being two different creatures and those of us that couldn’t see much of anything were in one and those of us who could see what was going on were in the other.
I saw a listing yesterday that had a selection of events that had taken place recently. As I studied them, I realized that the full impact of these events had not hit me in any real way, even though I knew such things were coming. Details about many of them were not presented to be as dramatic as they actually were. For instance, the Central European flooding was the worst in over 800 years. The heat wave and fires in Russia were the worst in over 1,000 years. The U.N. determined that the flooding in Pakistan was a greater disaster than the 2004 tsunami. Ten million people in Africa are in immediate danger of starving to death because of drought. Temperatures are so low in the Western United States that many fruits and vegetables are being destroyed. The southern and eastern portions of the United States are suffering from a terrible heat wave, which shows no signs of coming to an end. In Japan, 21,000 have been hospitalized for heat stroke. 6 millions fish, thousands of cattle and hundreds of people have been killed in South America. Thousands are dead in China from flooding. There’s a great deal that I haven’t mentioned but which you are familiar with.
Iheard about some of these things but I had no idea of the scale and scope of them.I hear the word HAARP all the time lately. Someone tells me it’s just a radar machine. That would make it a ‘sensor’. Someone else tells me that pointing it upwards affects the jet stream and that the jet stream has a profound effect on global weather patterns. You can read about everything I mentioned in the last paragraph and a lot of other things in this article.
There is an ominous warning moving around in the areas where food production and distribution are monitored. It seems that there may be serious food shortages come this fall and winter. It looks certain to me that the stock market is going to crash pretty soon. Currency is going to start acting like a fish that jumped out of the Gulf of Mexico to avoid what I call The Kiss of Rothschild. Very shortly after that fish hits the beach, it will be symbolic of various currencies and especially the American dollar which is intricately tied to all sorts of important things on an international basis.
The bankers, stockbrokers, traders, hedge fund managers and all types similar have speculated and gambled like madmen, without restraint, concern or conscience and laid the effects of their irrational behavior, upon the backs of the public, in countries around the world. They deliberately engineered a number of whacked out scenarios that failed in spectacular fashion and which also wound up on the backs of the public. These agents of global chaos are the funding sources for elected politicians and so they were able to demand and get enormous bailouts with the excuse that they were “too big to fail”. The commercial real estate bubble hasn’t burst yet but it will.
Now countries are saddled with debt that was created by predatory elite that couldn’t keep it in their pants because they were trying to stuff it all in their pockets and these same elite, in order to generate maximum profit, destroyed manufacturing, jobs, benefits and pensions in order to push the margins. Their ally in all of this is the Homo erectus. This has been their greatest ally and victim. It’s two for one night at Little Caesars’.
What I am noticing is that many of the things I have seen coming for some time are happening all around but I am not seeing them with any intensity of awareness. There’s some kind of disconnect going on. The various types of response to the conditions of present time keep surfacing in front of me and offering options away from consideration of them. There are options of self-introspection and possibilities of getting high or going the other way on the ladder. There are freaky compulsions that come out of nowhere and demand attention. I’m crossing the lake in a small dingy and these things are leaping out of the water and trying to land in the boat.
They say that during the London blitz, people used to have wild and frenetic sex with total strangers in doorways or practically anywhere. It would seem that some sort of biological imperative was at work, tied to a sense of desperation and fatal despair. People’s lives crumble from drink and drugs, when these things take precedence over the usual concerns of life in terms of importance. Unusual fantasies come up into the surface mind when it can’t process what is taking place around it. The mind seems to want to defend itself against what it can’t explain by creating circumstances of compulsion and obsession that captivate and divert their attention.
Personally, I’m in the dingy rowing across the lake but I see other dinghies and I see the creatures jumping out of the water. I know if you bend over the edge of the boat you will see the faces of men and women, whose arms appear to be outstretched for your embrace. It is by this means that I am able to intuit or observe the conditions and forces I am discussing.
It makes sense to me that when the unpredictable replaces the predictable in terms of the power of manifestation that the same thing has to be going on inside the mind as well. I get the sensation that pornography is really humming at the moment. I get the sensation that any distraction that can be focused on, so that it will defend against consideration of the weirdness happening on all sides, is being engaged in by large groups of people.
Underneath all of this is the power of what any person believes, in respect of the power of everything that challenges it. This makes it a sort of living allegory or individual myth, where each person has to traverse their own personal underworld, as their belief system is tested against the forces that seek to destroy it. I know what I feel but don’t act on. I know what I see and walk away from. This leads me to believe it is pretty widespread since the general tenor of the common mind always intrudes upon the mind of the individual, whether they are already taken over by it or not. In one case it reinforces and in the other case it seeks to compel.
I know that some people see all of this in religious terms and some people see it as a random exercise, working itself out according to chaos theory. Some people see it as the natural progression of basic instincts in humanity and I suppose I could come up with other ways that people might see it or attribute meaning to these times but my sense is that each of us are in a specific relationship, in accordance with how we have conducted ourselves and what we value. Whatever we place the highest value on has had the greatest influence over the direction in which we walked and the occupations and amusements in which we indulged. This could be why some people can’t see and others can. It could be that we are now resident within the parameters of whatever world our values circumscribe. We are all living in the reality of what we believed was real and most important and are being challenged to save it and ourselves but… that will be determined by how our values measure up against archetypal values.
Our truth is going to come up against ‘the truth’. Our actions are going to come up against the cosmic range of permissible action. Our words are going to come up against whatever measuring tool defines the integrity of whatever we had to say and its impact on anyone who heard us.
You can see this in religious terms or you can see it in numbers and symbols and the pure math that lives at the top of the mountain, where our highest possibilities reside and which melt like the snow and run down into the valleys where they turn into all the colors of our natural and unnatural worlds. You can see it or not see it depending on whether you tried to see it enough to convince whatever determines your possession of sight to make it possible. This is how it looks to me today and, no doubt, this will account for something in terms of my tomorrow. I suspect we are all reaping similar rewards depending on what we found rewarding. I’ll say in conclusion that it is never too late until it is too late. It’s a pity that some people closed out their options by making themselves blind, so that they could see something that wasn’t real.
End Transmission…….
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Collapsing Israel
A United Iran
Against a Collapsing Israel
ShareKourosh Ziabari 24. Aug, 2010
As the racist regime of Israel moves toward greater international isolation due to its aggressive, belligerent policies, Iran receives wider support from the world’s nations for its uncompromising resistance against the bullying superpowers and annulling their mischievous plots. The world is witness to the growth of Iran’s popularity while hatred and disgust against Israel builds up progressively. Iran is reaching out to the hearts and souls around the world while Israel ignites denunciation and deprecation in the four corners of the globe.
Since Israel raided the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on May 31, the flimsy existence of Tel Aviv began to splinter as the world nations collectively and categorically reacted to the atrocious mass killing of 9 peace activists in the international waters by the Israel Defense Forces.
Israel’s unlawful, brutal killing of the unarmed civilians aboard the Freedom Flotilla sparked such a remarkable international condemnation that even the most stalwart allies of Tel Aviv in the EU zone recalled their ambassadors from Israel and called for a thorough, detailed investigation of the incident which they described as offensive and violent. The international condemnations were so extensive and intensive that even the most pessimistic Israeli politicians couldn’t envisage. Four countries downgraded their diplomatic relations with Israel – in addition to the four countries that had cut their diplomatic ties with Israel during the 22-day Gaza war of 2008-2009, Twelve Latin American countries condemned the Israeli actions, Twenty-one European countries protested Israel and Twelve non-Arab Asian countries officially disapproved Tel Aviv.
The precursor of global protests to Israel was Turkey which had lost 9 of its citizens in the raid. In an insightful, thought-provoking and appreciable statement before his country’s parliament, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly questioned Israel’s impunity from the international laws and called for a decisive end to the illegal actions of this regime: “It is no longer possible to cover up or ignore Israel’s lawlessness. The international community must from now on say ‘enough is enough’. Dry statements of condemnation are not enough … There should be results.”
At the beginning and when the first news was released, the extent of Israel’s violence had not become clear to the public opinion; however, as the international peace activists began retelling the stories of their ordeal upon being deported by Tel Aviv to their respective countries, the world realized that a great calamity had taken place.
Upon his extradition to Istanbul, the Irish historian and activist Dr. Fintan Lane told the media about his terrible experience on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was unjustifiably attacked by the Israeli commandos on May 31: “when they boarded our boat, we resisted entirely peacefully. I sat on the floor and tried to reason with them, but the Israeli commandos physically attacked us. Fiachra (one of the Irish passengers aboard the flotilla) was dragged around the ground and I had a gun pointed in my face by a screaming commando. His mania was so intense that I genuinely feared for my life. Others received beatings.”
The American peace activist and anti-imperialist speaker Kenneth O’Keefe was another passenger on board the Gaza aid convoy. He witnessed the death of two of his Turkish colleagues in person and was brutally harassed, tortured by the Israeli forces: “while in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted… in stress positions while hand cuffed to the point of losing circulation of blood in our hands. We were lied to incessantly, in fact I am awed at the routineness and comfort in their ability to lie, it is remarkable really. We were abused in just about every way imaginable and I myself was beaten and choked to the point of blacking out… and I was beaten again while in my cell.”
Hassan Ghani, the 25-year-old Scottish journalist and media correspondent of the Press TV was also among the flotilla travelers. He was ruthlessly punished by the Israeli commandos in what he described as the “brutal Israeli assault” on the flotilla: “we didn’t expect a ship with 32 different nationalities on board, with aid from 50 different countries on board, would be attacked in such a brutal manner… They began by throwing stun grenades on to the deck of the ship when people were in the middle of morning prayers. Then they began using rubber bullets, they tried to come aboard the ship from the side. People repelled the commandos with water cannons they had set up on the side of the ship. Then the Israelis used helicopters to drop people onto roof and there was scuffles on the roof. The Israeli solders had already opened fire on the ship, so people were grabbing anything they could to stop the attack in international waters.”
Another painful account of the flotilla raid was retold by the prominent Swedish author Henning Mankell who described the Israeli actions as “committing murder”: “they got very aggressive and ordered us to come down. There was one older man who was a little slow, so the Israelis attacked him with an electric stun gun. He was in a lot of pain. So was another passenger who was covered in paint after being hit with a paint ball missile. The commandos searched the ship thoroughly and emerged waving a razor and a metal-box cutting tool, which they claimed were “weapons” intended to be used against them. All the passengers were then herded into a group, with armed guards standing watch as the ship was taken to Israel When we got off… we were made to walk down a corridor of armed commandos who filmed all of us with cameras. They stole my mobile phone, my money, my clothes and my credit cards.” Mankell said that he was held in a cell for 24 hours along with a Swedish Member of Parliament and then deported even “without his socks”.
All of these accounts attest to the fact that Israel is being reprimanded by people from the four corners of the world who object to the inhuman policies and actions of Tel Aviv regardless of the nationality they belong to and the political stance they champion.
Today, it’s known to everyone that Israel is a political entity which the United States supports in order to maintain its interests in the Middle East and subject the region’s nations. In the other words, Israel plays the role of America’s permanent representative in the Middle East and is entitled to resort to every possible mean to intimidate and bring under control the independent nations in the region. The fact is that Israel is a fragile and unstable political regime and every day of its shaky survival is hinged on the exertion of force and violating the rights of other nations. As the Iranian journalist Mohieddin Sajedi once noted, Israel cannot live without creating troubles. From mass killing to occupation, from assassination to the construction of illegal settlements, Israel continues to exist with illegal actions and this is what keeps them alive.
The main adversary of Israel is Iran. Israel has repeatedly warned Iran against the use of force and launch of a military strike on its nuclear facilities. The reason is clear. Iran is turning into an inspiring model for the independent nations around the world. Iran’s 30-year-long resistance against imperialism and its courageous confrontation with the bullying superpowers has made it an example of victorious struggle with political arrogance and many independent nations on the face of world see Iran on the frontline of battle with the United States and its colonies such as Israel.
Iran is winning international popularity because it has demonstrated the effectiveness of self-sufficiency in nationalizing the nuclear energy. While Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads in flagrant violation of the international law and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has made striking advancements in taking over the nuclear power and excelling in using it for peaceful purposes. The fact that Iran has succeeded in nationalizing the nuclear energy without the assistance of Western superpowers is indigestible for Israel which is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East; that’s why it has warned Iran against a preemptive military strike; however, the reality is that a 70-million-strong army stands by the resistance movement of Iran and a coalition of powerful troops consisted of the independent nations around the world, stand by Iran against the collapsing Israel forever.
As the racist regime of Israel moves toward greater international isolation due to its aggressive, belligerent policies, Iran receives wider support from the world’s nations for its uncompromising resistance against the bullying superpowers and annulling their mischievous plots. The world is witness to the growth of Iran’s popularity while hatred and disgust against Israel builds up progressively. Iran is reaching out to the hearts and souls around the world while Israel ignites denunciation and deprecation in the four corners of the globe.
Since Israel raided the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on May 31, the flimsy existence of Tel Aviv began to splinter as the world nations collectively and categorically reacted to the atrocious mass killing of 9 peace activists in the international waters by the Israel Defense Forces.
Israel’s unlawful, brutal killing of the unarmed civilians aboard the Freedom Flotilla sparked such a remarkable international condemnation that even the most stalwart allies of Tel Aviv in the EU zone recalled their ambassadors from Israel and called for a thorough, detailed investigation of the incident which they described as offensive and violent. The international condemnations were so extensive and intensive that even the most pessimistic Israeli politicians couldn’t envisage. Four countries downgraded their diplomatic relations with Israel – in addition to the four countries that had cut their diplomatic ties with Israel during the 22-day Gaza war of 2008-2009, Twelve Latin American countries condemned the Israeli actions, Twenty-one European countries protested Israel and Twelve non-Arab Asian countries officially disapproved Tel Aviv.
The precursor of global protests to Israel was Turkey which had lost 9 of its citizens in the raid. In an insightful, thought-provoking and appreciable statement before his country’s parliament, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly questioned Israel’s impunity from the international laws and called for a decisive end to the illegal actions of this regime: “It is no longer possible to cover up or ignore Israel’s lawlessness. The international community must from now on say ‘enough is enough’. Dry statements of condemnation are not enough … There should be results.”
At the beginning and when the first news was released, the extent of Israel’s violence had not become clear to the public opinion; however, as the international peace activists began retelling the stories of their ordeal upon being deported by Tel Aviv to their respective countries, the world realized that a great calamity had taken place.
Upon his extradition to Istanbul, the Irish historian and activist Dr. Fintan Lane told the media about his terrible experience on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was unjustifiably attacked by the Israeli commandos on May 31: “when they boarded our boat, we resisted entirely peacefully. I sat on the floor and tried to reason with them, but the Israeli commandos physically attacked us. Fiachra (one of the Irish passengers aboard the flotilla) was dragged around the ground and I had a gun pointed in my face by a screaming commando. His mania was so intense that I genuinely feared for my life. Others received beatings.”
The American peace activist and anti-imperialist speaker Kenneth O’Keefe was another passenger on board the Gaza aid convoy. He witnessed the death of two of his Turkish colleagues in person and was brutally harassed, tortured by the Israeli forces: “while in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted… in stress positions while hand cuffed to the point of losing circulation of blood in our hands. We were lied to incessantly, in fact I am awed at the routineness and comfort in their ability to lie, it is remarkable really. We were abused in just about every way imaginable and I myself was beaten and choked to the point of blacking out… and I was beaten again while in my cell.”
Hassan Ghani, the 25-year-old Scottish journalist and media correspondent of the Press TV was also among the flotilla travelers. He was ruthlessly punished by the Israeli commandos in what he described as the “brutal Israeli assault” on the flotilla: “we didn’t expect a ship with 32 different nationalities on board, with aid from 50 different countries on board, would be attacked in such a brutal manner… They began by throwing stun grenades on to the deck of the ship when people were in the middle of morning prayers. Then they began using rubber bullets, they tried to come aboard the ship from the side. People repelled the commandos with water cannons they had set up on the side of the ship. Then the Israelis used helicopters to drop people onto roof and there was scuffles on the roof. The Israeli solders had already opened fire on the ship, so people were grabbing anything they could to stop the attack in international waters.”
Another painful account of the flotilla raid was retold by the prominent Swedish author Henning Mankell who described the Israeli actions as “committing murder”: “they got very aggressive and ordered us to come down. There was one older man who was a little slow, so the Israelis attacked him with an electric stun gun. He was in a lot of pain. So was another passenger who was covered in paint after being hit with a paint ball missile. The commandos searched the ship thoroughly and emerged waving a razor and a metal-box cutting tool, which they claimed were “weapons” intended to be used against them. All the passengers were then herded into a group, with armed guards standing watch as the ship was taken to Israel When we got off… we were made to walk down a corridor of armed commandos who filmed all of us with cameras. They stole my mobile phone, my money, my clothes and my credit cards.” Mankell said that he was held in a cell for 24 hours along with a Swedish Member of Parliament and then deported even “without his socks”.
All of these accounts attest to the fact that Israel is being reprimanded by people from the four corners of the world who object to the inhuman policies and actions of Tel Aviv regardless of the nationality they belong to and the political stance they champion.
Today, it’s known to everyone that Israel is a political entity which the United States supports in order to maintain its interests in the Middle East and subject the region’s nations. In the other words, Israel plays the role of America’s permanent representative in the Middle East and is entitled to resort to every possible mean to intimidate and bring under control the independent nations in the region. The fact is that Israel is a fragile and unstable political regime and every day of its shaky survival is hinged on the exertion of force and violating the rights of other nations. As the Iranian journalist Mohieddin Sajedi once noted, Israel cannot live without creating troubles. From mass killing to occupation, from assassination to the construction of illegal settlements, Israel continues to exist with illegal actions and this is what keeps them alive.
The main adversary of Israel is Iran. Israel has repeatedly warned Iran against the use of force and launch of a military strike on its nuclear facilities. The reason is clear. Iran is turning into an inspiring model for the independent nations around the world. Iran’s 30-year-long resistance against imperialism and its courageous confrontation with the bullying superpowers has made it an example of victorious struggle with political arrogance and many independent nations on the face of world see Iran on the frontline of battle with the United States and its colonies such as Israel.
Iran is winning international popularity because it has demonstrated the effectiveness of self-sufficiency in nationalizing the nuclear energy. While Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads in flagrant violation of the international law and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has made striking advancements in taking over the nuclear power and excelling in using it for peaceful purposes. The fact that Iran has succeeded in nationalizing the nuclear energy without the assistance of Western superpowers is indigestible for Israel which is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East; that’s why it has warned Iran against a preemptive military strike; however, the reality is that a 70-million-strong army stands by the resistance movement of Iran and a coalition of powerful troops consisted of the independent nations around the world, stand by Iran against the collapsing Israel forever.
USA Drug War
Mexico, the USA, and the Unthinkable:
Drug Legalization
By Patrick Corcoran , August 23, 2010
These are heady days for Mexican advocates of drug legalization. It started when Felipe Calderón kicked off a flurry of conversation with a call for debate on the topic in early August. Days later, President Calderón’s predecessor (and occasional sparring partner) Vicente Fox took a step further and wrote a piece advocating the immediate legalization of drug production and consumption in a post on his personal blog.
In the weeks that followed, newspaper opinion pages were filled to the brim with, fittingly, opinions regarding the various proposals being bandied about, and what their impact on Mexico would be.
The comments from the present and past presidents follow the participation of their predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo, in the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which has turned him into one of the most respected and high-profile legalization advocates on the globe.
All of this adds up to a scenario that is all-but-unthinkable in the US: a wide-open debate about drug legalization among the nation’s elites.
For the American corollary, think of the response from Barack Obama, during an online forum set up by the White House in March 2009, to questions about legalization of marijuana: “I don't know what that says about the online audience…. The answer is no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”
In other words, asked a legitimate question about revisiting an ongoing 40-year-old policy catastrophe that has turned the US into the world’s foremost jailer, has gravely degraded its neighbors’ governments, and has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, Obama — himself a former drug user — responded with a joke and an evasion.
Moving beyond politicians’ comedic parrying, the arguments for legalization in Mexico, the US, and elsewhere are as solid as that rock in the Mediterranean that the British are so fond of. To wit: marijuana, the consumption of which presents less of a threat to society than that of alcohol, accounts for an estimated 60 percent of the roughly $20 billion that Mexican traffickers make on a yearly basis. That sum, presently used for such activities as buying off police officers and politicians, could be reduced by some $12 billion if US politicians embraced legalization of marijuana. (Legalization in Mexico would be hugely symbolic, but the Americans would need to go along for it to be a revolutionary change.)
Of course, this wouldn’t be a cure-all. Indeed, rather than immediately eliminating the drug gangs presently terrorizing many parts of Mexico, in all likelihood legalization would have some extremely sticky short-term consequences with regard to security, as gangs squeezed out of the marijuana trade would seek to replace the lost income through more menacing activities like extortion and kidnapping. For this reason, it would be folly to think of legalization as a substitute for Mexico’s uneven efforts to reform its criminal justice system.
However, if Mexico’s eventual future is to be one free of criminals with the wealth and power of Chapo Guzmán, the easiest and surest way to get there is to eliminate the source of the capos’ income: black market drugs. While legalization is often caricatured as the terrain of the soft-on-crime left, legalization is no lily-livered concession to drug traffickers. Indeed, it would be an existential assault on them.
Furthermore, the futility of prohibition is an established fact at this point, and has been for years. As Fox pointed out, the decision to use or not use drugs is a personal one, much as it was before prohibition, and much as is the case with alcohol. The drug prohibition has added a stigma to the use of certain drugs (though not always the right ones), but it has not made the desire to get high much more difficult to act on. Four decades after Nixon declared the War on Drugs, most drugs are cheaper, purer, and more plentiful than they were in the 1960s.
Unfortunately for proponents of legalization in Mexico, the chances of moving the debate toward the actual passage of legislation are slim. Less than 30 percent of the country is in favor of the measure according to most polls. But while a radical policy move like legalization would be a bad idea with such low levels of support, public debates such as that Mexico has witnessed these last few weeks could do wonders to increase support.
In contrast, the reluctance from US policy-makers to honestly consider legalization reflects a rather embarrassing (and bipartisan) lack of courage and logic. Of course, these two virtues have been conspicuously absent in official policy throughout the war on drugs, which is precisely why it has continued for more than two generations.
These are heady days for Mexican advocates of drug legalization. It started when Felipe Calderón kicked off a flurry of conversation with a call for debate on the topic in early August. Days later, President Calderón’s predecessor (and occasional sparring partner) Vicente Fox took a step further and wrote a piece advocating the immediate legalization of drug production and consumption in a post on his personal blog.
In the weeks that followed, newspaper opinion pages were filled to the brim with, fittingly, opinions regarding the various proposals being bandied about, and what their impact on Mexico would be.
The comments from the present and past presidents follow the participation of their predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo, in the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which has turned him into one of the most respected and high-profile legalization advocates on the globe.
All of this adds up to a scenario that is all-but-unthinkable in the US: a wide-open debate about drug legalization among the nation’s elites.
For the American corollary, think of the response from Barack Obama, during an online forum set up by the White House in March 2009, to questions about legalization of marijuana: “I don't know what that says about the online audience…. The answer is no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”
In other words, asked a legitimate question about revisiting an ongoing 40-year-old policy catastrophe that has turned the US into the world’s foremost jailer, has gravely degraded its neighbors’ governments, and has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, Obama — himself a former drug user — responded with a joke and an evasion.
Moving beyond politicians’ comedic parrying, the arguments for legalization in Mexico, the US, and elsewhere are as solid as that rock in the Mediterranean that the British are so fond of. To wit: marijuana, the consumption of which presents less of a threat to society than that of alcohol, accounts for an estimated 60 percent of the roughly $20 billion that Mexican traffickers make on a yearly basis. That sum, presently used for such activities as buying off police officers and politicians, could be reduced by some $12 billion if US politicians embraced legalization of marijuana. (Legalization in Mexico would be hugely symbolic, but the Americans would need to go along for it to be a revolutionary change.)
Of course, this wouldn’t be a cure-all. Indeed, rather than immediately eliminating the drug gangs presently terrorizing many parts of Mexico, in all likelihood legalization would have some extremely sticky short-term consequences with regard to security, as gangs squeezed out of the marijuana trade would seek to replace the lost income through more menacing activities like extortion and kidnapping. For this reason, it would be folly to think of legalization as a substitute for Mexico’s uneven efforts to reform its criminal justice system.
However, if Mexico’s eventual future is to be one free of criminals with the wealth and power of Chapo Guzmán, the easiest and surest way to get there is to eliminate the source of the capos’ income: black market drugs. While legalization is often caricatured as the terrain of the soft-on-crime left, legalization is no lily-livered concession to drug traffickers. Indeed, it would be an existential assault on them.
Furthermore, the futility of prohibition is an established fact at this point, and has been for years. As Fox pointed out, the decision to use or not use drugs is a personal one, much as it was before prohibition, and much as is the case with alcohol. The drug prohibition has added a stigma to the use of certain drugs (though not always the right ones), but it has not made the desire to get high much more difficult to act on. Four decades after Nixon declared the War on Drugs, most drugs are cheaper, purer, and more plentiful than they were in the 1960s.
Unfortunately for proponents of legalization in Mexico, the chances of moving the debate toward the actual passage of legislation are slim. Less than 30 percent of the country is in favor of the measure according to most polls. But while a radical policy move like legalization would be a bad idea with such low levels of support, public debates such as that Mexico has witnessed these last few weeks could do wonders to increase support.
In contrast, the reluctance from US policy-makers to honestly consider legalization reflects a rather embarrassing (and bipartisan) lack of courage and logic. Of course, these two virtues have been conspicuously absent in official policy throughout the war on drugs, which is precisely why it has continued for more than two generations.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Rouseff & Chavez
Brazil and Venezuela:
Two Turning Point Elections this Fall
22. Aug, 2010 By James Petras
Introduction
Two elections in Latin America this fall will have decisive importance in the direction of economic and foreign policy for the coming decade.
Venezuelan legislative elections on September 26 will determine whether President Chavez can secure the two-thirds majority needed to proceed with his democratic socialist agenda without the procedural obstructionism of an increasingly hardline Right.
Brazil the most powerful and dynamic industrial and agro-export economy in the region, faces Presidential elections on October 3rd.
In both countries, the electorate is highly polarized, though in Brazil not along a socialist-capitalist axis.
In Venezuela the Rightwing is aiming to block the further advance of public ownership of strategic industries, foment destabilization by encouraging non-compliance or sabotage of local community based policy initiatives and to impose constraints on budgetary expenditures for social programs and public investments. The strategic aim of the Right is to enhance institutional penetration by US military, intelligence and “aid” agencies, in order to weaken President Chavez’s independent foreign policy initiatives and pressure his government to make concessions to the White House, especially by dampening his support for Iran, Palestine and most important the independent Latin American political-economic formations that exclude Washington (MERCOSUR, ALBA, UNASUR).
Presidential Elections: Brazil
In Brazil, the Presidential elections pit the Workers Party candidate Dilma Rousseff backed by outgoing President Lula Da Silva against the former governor of Sao Paulo State and standard bearer of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party Jose Serra. The party labels are irrelevant, as both candidates have pursued and are proposing to continue free trade, export-led, agro-mineral development policies and both draw financial backing from business and banking elites. Despite their ties to the business elites and eschewing any radical (or even moderate) changes in Brazil’s highly unequal income distribution and land tenure system, there are crucial differences which will affect: (1) the balance of power in the hemisphere; (2) the capacity of Brazilian social movements to freely articulate their demands; (3) the future of center-left regimes in neighboring countries (especially Bolivia, Venezuela and Argentina); (4) and the public-private joint ventures in the massive newly discovered offshore oil fields.
Serra will shift Brazil’s foreign policy toward greater accommodation with the US, lessening or breaking ties with Iran and reducing or even cancelling joint investment programs with Venezuela and Bolivia. However, Serra will not change foreign trade and investment policies with regard to Asia. Serra will continue Lula’s free trade policies, looking to diversify markets (except where the US defines geo-political “threats” or military interests), promoting agro-business and mineral-energy exports. He will continue Lula’s policy of budget surpluses and tight fiscal and income policies. Serra’s social policies will likely deepen and expand Lula’s cuts in public pensions and follow his policy of wage constraints, while reducing public spending especially for education, health and poverty programs. In the crucial area of the exploitation of the new massive oil and gas fields, Serra will downgrade the role of the state (and its share of revenues, profits and ownership) for private foreign oil companies. Serra is less likely to co-opt trade union leaders and resort to greater reliance on ‘legal’ repression of strikes and greater criminalization of rural social movements, especially of the land occupations of the Rural Landless Movement (MST). Diplomatically Serra will move closer to the US and its militarist policies, without overt support for direct military intervention. An indication of Serra’s embrace of Washington’s agenda was his calling Bolivia’s reform government a “narco-state” echoing Hilary Clinton’s rhetoric, in contrast to the friendly ties between the two countries under Lula. No doubt, Serra will reject any independent diplomatic initiatives which conflict with US military ambitions. Rousseff’s campaign essentially promises a continuation of Lula’s economic and diplomatic policies, including majority public ownership of the new oil and gas fields, the promotion of poverty programs and a margin of tolerance – though not backing – for social movements like the MST and the trade unions.
In other words the choice is between a step backward toward the repressive, conformist, policies of the 1990’s, or the status quo of free markets, an independent foreign policy, poverty programs and greater Latin American integration.
If Serra wins, the balance of power in Latin America will shift toward the Right and with it, a re-assertion of US influence and leverage on all of Brazil’s center-left neighbors. Serra will largely follow Lula’s footsteps in domestic policy, administering poverty programs via his functionaries while ensuring that Lula’s social movement supports are weakened. With these limited options, the major business associations of Sao Paulo are backing Serra (with individual business people contributing to both candidates) while the major trade unions are in Rousseff’s camp; the social movements like the MST who feel betrayed by Lula’s broken promise of land reform are campaigning “against Serra” – indirectly supporting Rousseff. The saying “which way goes Brazil goes Latin America” has more than a grain of truth especially if we are discussing Latin America’s economic future and prospects for deeper integration.
Legislative Elections: Venezuela
Venezuela under Chavez is the key to prospects for progressive social change in Latin America. The democratic socialist government backs reform regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean and through its public spending has established path breaking gains in health, education and food subsidies for 60% of the poorest sectors of the population.
Despite Chavez immense popularity over the decade and the innovative redistributive programs and progressive structural changes, there is a clear and imminent danger that the Right will make significant gains in the forthcoming legislative elections.
The United Venezuela Socialist Party (PSUV) led by President Chavez, has to its credit six years of high growth, rising incomes and declining unemployment. Against that is the current 18 month recession, high inflation and crime with budgetary constraints limiting new programs.
According to official US aid agency documents, Washington has poured over $50 million dollars into the coffers of opposition controlled NGO’s and political “fronts” which promote US interests in the run up to the elections, focusing on unifying the squabbling opposition factions, subsidizing the 70% private mass media and financing opposition controlled community groups in middle and lower class neighborhoods. Unlike the US, Venezuela does not require recipients of overseas funds acting on behalf of a foreign power to register as foreign agents. The Rightwing campaign focuses on government corruption and drug trafficking, a line echoed by the White House and the New York Times, forgetting to mention that Venezuela’s Attorney General announced the prosecution of 2,700 cases of individual corruption and 17,000 cases of drug trafficking. The opposition and the Washington Post cite the case of the state distribution system (PDVAL) failing to deliver several thousand tons of food, causing it to rot and go to waste but they failed to mention that the three former directors are in jail and that the food ministry provides one-third of staple food consumption in the country at prices up to one-half lower than the private supermarkets.
The Right will undoubtedly make significant gains in the legislative elections, simply because they start from a low base point, ground zero, since they boycotted the last elections. Their anti-corruption campaign is not likely to overwhelm Chavez’s majoritarian constituency, since their previous standard bearer, ex President Carlos Andres Perez was convicted of multi-million dollar fraud and pillage of the public treasury. Local opposition governors and majors have also been indicted for fraud and malfeasance of funds and are holed up in Miami. Nevertheless, while Chavez is perceived by most voters as honest and untainted, the same cannot be said for some of the incumbents running for office. The question is whether the voters will re-elect them despite their record in order to back Chavez or whether they will abstain. Abstention based on disenchantment and not a switch to the Right, is the greatest threat to a decisive PSUV victory.
In the run-up to the legislative elections the PSUV ran primaries in which many community councils elected popular local candidates against those chosen by the official establishment. It will be revealing to see if the candidates from the grass roots perform better than those selected from the “top”. A victory of the former will strengthen the socialist as opposed to the moderate sectors of the PSUV.
The electoral process is highly polarized along class lines; with the majority of the lower class backing the PSUV and the middle and upper class almost uniformly supporting the Right. Nevertheless, there is a significant sector of the poor and trade unions which is undecided and not motivated to vote. They can decide the outcome in crucial voting districts and that is where campaigning is fierce. Key to a PSUV electoral victory is whether the trade unions, the worker managed factory committees and communal councils will make a major effort to turn out reticent voters and elect leftist candidates. Even militant trade unionists and worker based management groups have been notoriously focused on “local” and “economistic” (wage issues) overlooking or ignoring the larger political issues. Their vote and activity as opinion leaders in pointing out the “big picture” is crucial to overcoming political inertia and even their disenchantment with some of PSUV candidates.
Conclusion:
The coming elections in Brazil and Venezuela will have a decisive impact on Latin American politics, economic policy and relations with the US throughout the second decade of this century. If Brazil “goes Right”, it will immeasurably strengthen US influence in the region,and eliminate an independent voice. Even as neither candidate will put a foot forward toward greater social justice, the election of Lula’s preferred candidate Dilma Rousseff will proceed toward greater Latin American integration and a relatively independent foreign economic policy. Her election will not open the door to any consequential structural changes.
A victory for the Venezuelan Socialists will strengthen Chavez’s resolve and ability to continue his social welfare polices and his anti-imperialist and pro-integration policies. Chavez’s strong stance in opposing US militarization, including the coup in Honduras and the military bases in Colombia, embolden center-left regimes to adopt a somewhat more moderate but principled position opposing militarization. Chavez’s socialist reforms in Venezuela serve as a pressure on center-left regimes to legislate social reforms, promote poverty programs and joint ventures, instead of following the neo-liberal policies of the pro-US hard Right. In Brazil the question is voting for the lesser evil, in Venezuela it is a question of voting for the greater good.
James Petras
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 article
Introduction
Two elections in Latin America this fall will have decisive importance in the direction of economic and foreign policy for the coming decade.
Venezuelan legislative elections on September 26 will determine whether President Chavez can secure the two-thirds majority needed to proceed with his democratic socialist agenda without the procedural obstructionism of an increasingly hardline Right.
Brazil the most powerful and dynamic industrial and agro-export economy in the region, faces Presidential elections on October 3rd.
In both countries, the electorate is highly polarized, though in Brazil not along a socialist-capitalist axis.
In Venezuela the Rightwing is aiming to block the further advance of public ownership of strategic industries, foment destabilization by encouraging non-compliance or sabotage of local community based policy initiatives and to impose constraints on budgetary expenditures for social programs and public investments. The strategic aim of the Right is to enhance institutional penetration by US military, intelligence and “aid” agencies, in order to weaken President Chavez’s independent foreign policy initiatives and pressure his government to make concessions to the White House, especially by dampening his support for Iran, Palestine and most important the independent Latin American political-economic formations that exclude Washington (MERCOSUR, ALBA, UNASUR).
Presidential Elections: Brazil
In Brazil, the Presidential elections pit the Workers Party candidate Dilma Rousseff backed by outgoing President Lula Da Silva against the former governor of Sao Paulo State and standard bearer of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party Jose Serra. The party labels are irrelevant, as both candidates have pursued and are proposing to continue free trade, export-led, agro-mineral development policies and both draw financial backing from business and banking elites. Despite their ties to the business elites and eschewing any radical (or even moderate) changes in Brazil’s highly unequal income distribution and land tenure system, there are crucial differences which will affect: (1) the balance of power in the hemisphere; (2) the capacity of Brazilian social movements to freely articulate their demands; (3) the future of center-left regimes in neighboring countries (especially Bolivia, Venezuela and Argentina); (4) and the public-private joint ventures in the massive newly discovered offshore oil fields.
Serra will shift Brazil’s foreign policy toward greater accommodation with the US, lessening or breaking ties with Iran and reducing or even cancelling joint investment programs with Venezuela and Bolivia. However, Serra will not change foreign trade and investment policies with regard to Asia. Serra will continue Lula’s free trade policies, looking to diversify markets (except where the US defines geo-political “threats” or military interests), promoting agro-business and mineral-energy exports. He will continue Lula’s policy of budget surpluses and tight fiscal and income policies. Serra’s social policies will likely deepen and expand Lula’s cuts in public pensions and follow his policy of wage constraints, while reducing public spending especially for education, health and poverty programs. In the crucial area of the exploitation of the new massive oil and gas fields, Serra will downgrade the role of the state (and its share of revenues, profits and ownership) for private foreign oil companies. Serra is less likely to co-opt trade union leaders and resort to greater reliance on ‘legal’ repression of strikes and greater criminalization of rural social movements, especially of the land occupations of the Rural Landless Movement (MST). Diplomatically Serra will move closer to the US and its militarist policies, without overt support for direct military intervention. An indication of Serra’s embrace of Washington’s agenda was his calling Bolivia’s reform government a “narco-state” echoing Hilary Clinton’s rhetoric, in contrast to the friendly ties between the two countries under Lula. No doubt, Serra will reject any independent diplomatic initiatives which conflict with US military ambitions. Rousseff’s campaign essentially promises a continuation of Lula’s economic and diplomatic policies, including majority public ownership of the new oil and gas fields, the promotion of poverty programs and a margin of tolerance – though not backing – for social movements like the MST and the trade unions.
In other words the choice is between a step backward toward the repressive, conformist, policies of the 1990’s, or the status quo of free markets, an independent foreign policy, poverty programs and greater Latin American integration.
If Serra wins, the balance of power in Latin America will shift toward the Right and with it, a re-assertion of US influence and leverage on all of Brazil’s center-left neighbors. Serra will largely follow Lula’s footsteps in domestic policy, administering poverty programs via his functionaries while ensuring that Lula’s social movement supports are weakened. With these limited options, the major business associations of Sao Paulo are backing Serra (with individual business people contributing to both candidates) while the major trade unions are in Rousseff’s camp; the social movements like the MST who feel betrayed by Lula’s broken promise of land reform are campaigning “against Serra” – indirectly supporting Rousseff. The saying “which way goes Brazil goes Latin America” has more than a grain of truth especially if we are discussing Latin America’s economic future and prospects for deeper integration.
Legislative Elections: Venezuela
Venezuela under Chavez is the key to prospects for progressive social change in Latin America. The democratic socialist government backs reform regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean and through its public spending has established path breaking gains in health, education and food subsidies for 60% of the poorest sectors of the population.
Despite Chavez immense popularity over the decade and the innovative redistributive programs and progressive structural changes, there is a clear and imminent danger that the Right will make significant gains in the forthcoming legislative elections.
The United Venezuela Socialist Party (PSUV) led by President Chavez, has to its credit six years of high growth, rising incomes and declining unemployment. Against that is the current 18 month recession, high inflation and crime with budgetary constraints limiting new programs.
According to official US aid agency documents, Washington has poured over $50 million dollars into the coffers of opposition controlled NGO’s and political “fronts” which promote US interests in the run up to the elections, focusing on unifying the squabbling opposition factions, subsidizing the 70% private mass media and financing opposition controlled community groups in middle and lower class neighborhoods. Unlike the US, Venezuela does not require recipients of overseas funds acting on behalf of a foreign power to register as foreign agents. The Rightwing campaign focuses on government corruption and drug trafficking, a line echoed by the White House and the New York Times, forgetting to mention that Venezuela’s Attorney General announced the prosecution of 2,700 cases of individual corruption and 17,000 cases of drug trafficking. The opposition and the Washington Post cite the case of the state distribution system (PDVAL) failing to deliver several thousand tons of food, causing it to rot and go to waste but they failed to mention that the three former directors are in jail and that the food ministry provides one-third of staple food consumption in the country at prices up to one-half lower than the private supermarkets.
The Right will undoubtedly make significant gains in the legislative elections, simply because they start from a low base point, ground zero, since they boycotted the last elections. Their anti-corruption campaign is not likely to overwhelm Chavez’s majoritarian constituency, since their previous standard bearer, ex President Carlos Andres Perez was convicted of multi-million dollar fraud and pillage of the public treasury. Local opposition governors and majors have also been indicted for fraud and malfeasance of funds and are holed up in Miami. Nevertheless, while Chavez is perceived by most voters as honest and untainted, the same cannot be said for some of the incumbents running for office. The question is whether the voters will re-elect them despite their record in order to back Chavez or whether they will abstain. Abstention based on disenchantment and not a switch to the Right, is the greatest threat to a decisive PSUV victory.
In the run-up to the legislative elections the PSUV ran primaries in which many community councils elected popular local candidates against those chosen by the official establishment. It will be revealing to see if the candidates from the grass roots perform better than those selected from the “top”. A victory of the former will strengthen the socialist as opposed to the moderate sectors of the PSUV.
The electoral process is highly polarized along class lines; with the majority of the lower class backing the PSUV and the middle and upper class almost uniformly supporting the Right. Nevertheless, there is a significant sector of the poor and trade unions which is undecided and not motivated to vote. They can decide the outcome in crucial voting districts and that is where campaigning is fierce. Key to a PSUV electoral victory is whether the trade unions, the worker managed factory committees and communal councils will make a major effort to turn out reticent voters and elect leftist candidates. Even militant trade unionists and worker based management groups have been notoriously focused on “local” and “economistic” (wage issues) overlooking or ignoring the larger political issues. Their vote and activity as opinion leaders in pointing out the “big picture” is crucial to overcoming political inertia and even their disenchantment with some of PSUV candidates.
Conclusion:
The coming elections in Brazil and Venezuela will have a decisive impact on Latin American politics, economic policy and relations with the US throughout the second decade of this century. If Brazil “goes Right”, it will immeasurably strengthen US influence in the region,and eliminate an independent voice. Even as neither candidate will put a foot forward toward greater social justice, the election of Lula’s preferred candidate Dilma Rousseff will proceed toward greater Latin American integration and a relatively independent foreign economic policy. Her election will not open the door to any consequential structural changes.
A victory for the Venezuelan Socialists will strengthen Chavez’s resolve and ability to continue his social welfare polices and his anti-imperialist and pro-integration policies. Chavez’s strong stance in opposing US militarization, including the coup in Honduras and the military bases in Colombia, embolden center-left regimes to adopt a somewhat more moderate but principled position opposing militarization. Chavez’s socialist reforms in Venezuela serve as a pressure on center-left regimes to legislate social reforms, promote poverty programs and joint ventures, instead of following the neo-liberal policies of the pro-US hard Right. In Brazil the question is voting for the lesser evil, in Venezuela it is a question of voting for the greater good.
James Petras
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 article
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Intervention in Africa
U.S. Military Intervention in Africa:
The New Blueprint for Global Domination
by Paul C. Wright Global Research, August 20, 2010
The United States’ intervention in Africa is driven by America’s desire to secure valuable natural resources and political influence that will ensure the longevity of America’s capitalist system, military industrial complex, and global economic superiority – achieved through the financial and physical control of raw material exports. While America’s prosperity may be waning due to a number of current factors, policy makers are bent on trying to preserve America’s global domination and will pursue policy objectives regardless of the downturn in the economy at large.
The U.S. has a long history of foreign intervention and long ago perfected the art of gaining access to other countries’ natural, human, and capital resource markets through the use of foreign trade policy initiatives, international law, diplomacy, and, when all else fails, military intervention. Typically and historically, diplomatic efforts have largely been sufficient for the U.S. to establish itself as a player in other nations’ politics and economies. While U.S. intervention in Africa is nothing new, the way the U.S. is going about the intervention features a new method that is being implemented across the globe.
The U.S. has followed a great deal of its diplomatic interventions with the establishment of extensive networks of foreign military posts - designed to influence other nations and protect what are defined as U.S. strategic national interests. This global reach is evidenced by an extensive network of over 737 military installations [1] all around the globe, from Ecuador to Uzbekistan, Colombia to Korea. The model for successfully accessing these nations and their critical financial and commodities markets is changing, however, particularly as it relates to renewed intervention in Africa. The new intervention is directly linked to two factors: the fast paced and heated battle with rivals China and Russia over their access to key natural resources, and the U.S.’ declining ability to manage a bloated international network of overseas military outposts.
I. Resources Rivalry
Access to natural resources – particularly oil and rare earth elements - is critical for the U.S. to remain a dominant industrial and military power, especially since the U.S. has experienced a decline in natural resource production while China’s production and foreign access to strategic materials has only increased. A sustained increase in oil imports has been underway since domestic U.S. oil production peaked in the 1970s, with oil imports surpassing domestic production in the early 1990s. Strategic metals, such as the titanium used in military aircraft, and rare earth elements used in missile guidance systems are increasingly produced by China or under the control of Chinese companies. The issue is of such importance that 2009 saw the creation of the annual Strategic Metals Conference, a forum designed to address concerns related to US access to metals with important industrial and military uses. The second annual conference, held in Cleveland, Ohio in January 2010, saw dozens of engineers and military personnel express heightened concern over China’s near monopoly over rare earth metals. [2] China controls around 95% of the world’s rare earth output and has decided to restrict the export of these metals, leaving international consumers short by approximately 20,000 tons in 2010. [3]
China’s rapidly developing economy, recently over taking Japan as the world’s second largest, continues to log nine to ten percent annual growth in Gross Domestic Product, and is fueled by a rapidly growing middle class as well as new export markets around the world. The demand for raw materials has led to new policy initiatives in which Africa has taken center stage for Chinese investment. China has gained access to Africa by, in large part, offering favorable aid packages to several nations which include loans, debt forgiveness, and job training. [4] In contrast to Western aid packages, Chinese aid has few if any strings attached.
China’s platform for developing trade with and providing aid to Africa was of such importance that in October 2000, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was launched. Fifty African nations participate in the forum which serves as the foundation for building bridges of economic trade as well as political and cultural exchange. [5] The forum, and indeed China’s Africa strategy as a whole, has been so successful that Africans view China as an equal partner in trade and development, validating the politically and culturally significant “South-South” economic alliance that the FOCAC maintains is at the foundation of its engagement with Africa. This plays on the historical disparities that Western powers created and exploited in their former “North-South” colonial relationships with Africa and has been a key factor in developing strong bonds and a highly favorable opinion of China among Africans. Survey data indicates that most Africans share the view of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade when he says:
“China’s approach to our needs is simply better adapted than the slow and sometimes patronizing post-colonial approach of European investors, donor organizations and nongovernmental organizations. In fact, the Chinese model for stimulating rapid economic development has much to teach Africa. With direct aid, credit lines and reasonable contracts, China has helped African nations build infrastructure projects in record time—bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, dams, legislative buildings, stadiums and airports. In many African nations, including Senegal, improvements in infrastructure have played important roles in stimulating economic growth.”
“It is a telling sign of the post-colonial mindset that some donor organizations in the West dismiss the trade agreements between Chinese banks and African states that produce these vital improvements—as though Africa was naive enough to just offload its precious natural resources at bargain prices to obtain a commitment for another stadium or state house.” [6]
In fact, opinion polls clearly reveal that Africans see Chinese influence as being far more positive than U.S. influence. [7] China has clearly gained a substantive advantage in working with dozens of African nations as U.S. influence continues to wane.
Russia has also taken a renewed interest in Africa, reminiscent to some in the U.S. media as a revision of the Soviet Union’s Africa Strategy in which the Soviet Union created numerous “Soviet Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation” as a counterweight to Western capitalism and institutions like the United States Agency for International Development. [8] Russian President Medvedev, and Prime Minister Putin have been making their rounds in Africa with “legions of Russian businessmen, targeting diamonds, oil, gas, and uranium” and have been establishing commodities production agreements with several nations. [9] Putin’s push to restore Russia’s international stature, power, and prestige has led Russia to purchase in excess of $5 billion of African assets between 2000 and 2007. [10] Russia’s investments in and trade with Africa are quite small when compared with both the U.S. and China. Still, Russia has made an increase in trade and the acquisition of African raw materials a geostrategic imperative.
Chinese and Russian influence is quickly spreading and is seen in many cases as a viable and preferable alternative to the Western model which, particularly considering Africa’s colonial past, is seen to attach unfavorable conditions to aid and development that are designed to enrich the West at the expense of the people of Africa. Africans have in effect identified what sociologist Johan Galtung considers to be a “disharmony of interests” that the U.S. is trying to manage through new diplomatic efforts. The U.S. continues to lose influence in Africa to China and Russia, both of which are increasing their influence at a steady clip, and continues to be branded as imperialist in the eyes of Africans. The U.S. is well aware that it needs to improve its image in Africa in order to realize its strategic goals.
II. The Weight of Empire
While there is no reliable data on the precise cost of maintaining the United States’ network of over 700 military bases, it is estimated that the cost is $250 billion per year. [11] This is 38% of the entire disclosed 2010 budget for the Department of Defense of $663.7 billion. The cost includes facilities, staff, weapons, munitions, equipment, food, fuel, water, and everything else required to operate military installations.
In 2004, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that the U.S global military presence had to change and adapt to the post-cold war world. The post-cold war world did not require large garrisons of heavy armor throughout the European theater – garrisons stocked with enough soldiers and armament to challenge the massive Soviet military and Warsaw Pact nations on the borders of Eastern and Western Europe. The new military would be lighter, faster, rely more on light infantry and special-forces, and would used to fight multiple smaller scale wars across the globe in what was branded as an eternal Global War on Terror (GWOT). In Rumsfeld’s opinion, the U.S. would save up to $6 billion of its annual operating budget by closing (or realigning) 100 to 150 foreign and domestic bases [12] and save $12 billion by closing 200 to 300 bases. [13] Clearly, the cost of maintaining America’s legions was central to the Rumsfeld’s transformation initiative and to the U.S. military’s new role.
This military transformation would reduce the number of heavy garrisons abroad and would increasingly rely on pre-positioned war materials managed by smaller staffs at foreign military installations. These military installations would be available for a massive influx of U.S. troops if needed. Bilateral treaties and Status of Forces Agreements created by the Department of Defense and host nations would ensure that these installations would be available, to the extent required, to the American military and would ensure that the American military could operate freely with few constraints on its activities, legal or otherwise.
In the case of Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, a key military outpost and strategically important piece of real-estate in the Horn of Africa, precisely where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden, the United States government entered into an agreement [14] with the government of Djibouti that has several striking features:
· U.S. military personnel have diplomatic immunity
· The United States has sole jurisdiction over the criminal acts of its personnel
· U.S. personnel may carry arms in the Republic of Djibouti
· The U.S. may import any materials and equipment it requires into the Republic of Djibouti
· No claims may be brought against the U.S. for damage to property or loss of life
· Aircraft, vessels, and vehicles may enter, exit, and move freely throughout the Republic of Djibouti.
Such an agreement allows the U.S. to maintain a small permanent presence in Djibouti, but staff and stock up with as many military personnel and weapons as it deems fit for any particular operation inside or outside of Africa as needed. Additionally, the agreement gives the U.S. the flexibility it wants to operate freely without interference from or liability to the people and government of Djibouti.
III. The New Model - AFRICOM
With all of the concern over U.S. access to key natural resources, it is hardly a surprise that United States conceived of and finally launched United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007. The unveiling AFRICOM was done under the auspices of bringing peace, security, democracy, and economic growth to Africans. The altruistic rationale for the creation of a new military command was belied by the fact that from the start it was acknowledged that AFRICOM was a “combatant” command created in response to Africa’s growing strategic importance to the United States; namely, “the size of its population, its natural resource wealth, its potential". [15]
Africans were aware of U.S. described strategic national interests in their oil and gas fields, and raw materials long before most Americans were had any idea that renewed intervention in Africa was being planned. In November 2002, the U.S. based Corporate Council on Africa held a conference on African oil and gas in Houston, Texas. The conference, sponsored by ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco among others, was opened by United States Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter Kansteiner. Mr. Kansteiner previously stated that, “African oil is of strategic national interest to us and it will increase and become more important as we go forward,” while on a visit to Nigeria. [16] In fact, President Fradique de Menezes of Sao Tome and Principe said at that time that he had reached agreement with the United States for establishment of a U.S. naval base there, the purpose of which was to safeguard U.S. oil interests. [17] The U.S. Navy has in fact proceeded with its basing plans in Sao Tome and recently reported on its activities in that nation on its website in July, 2010. [18] Since the establishment of AFRICOM, numerous training exercises have been carried out in Africa by U.S. military forces, and basing agreements have been worked out with several African partners across the continent – even in the face of strong dissent from the citizens of several countries. The U.S. has been able to create these relationships through the careful structuring of its operations, size and make-up of its staff, and public relations efforts.
The structuring of AFRICOM was a critical component in making AFRICOM palatable to Africans. After several nations objected to the presence of a physical headquarters in Africa, AFRICOM’s commander, General William E. Ward, went on record several times to say that a physical command presence was not needed in Africa (even though the U.S. initially did try quite hard but unconvincingly to establish a permanent headquarters there). The command is currently based in Stuttgart, Germany, and will remain there for the foreseeable future, mainly in deference to African objections.
AFRICOM’s size was also an important factor. It has no large garrisons, no sizeable staff beyond the headquarters in Germany and the small number of forces and civilian support personnel based at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti as part of Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), and no large armory to sustain division or brigade sized operations. The small size and staff of U.S. basing operations like CJTF-HOA is the new model for U.S. foreign intervention. Instead of large garrisons, the U.S. has is created a series of Forward Operating Locations (FOLs). FOLs are “smaller, cheaper, and can thus be more plentiful. In short, the FOL can lie in wait with a low carrying cost until a crisis arrives, at which point it can be quickly expanded to rise to whatever the occasion demands.” [19] Arrangements have been made with several countries, north, south, east, and west, including Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Namibia, Sao Tome, Senegal, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Zambia. [20]
AFRICOM’s staffing structure is a military-civilian hybrid for two reasons: to convey the message that the combatant command does not have an exclusive military purpose, and to gain influence over African nations’ domestic and foreign policies. AFRICOM has a civilian deputy commander and a large civilian staff, in part made up of U.S. State Department personnel. These civilian personnel include foreign policy advisors from the U.S. Bureau of African Affairs, humanitarian assistance advisors from the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as advisors from the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security. [21] Africa’s burgeoning relationships with China are seen as undermining Western “efforts to bolster good governance, improve respect for human rights, and reduce corruption,” [22] hence the need for civilian subject matter expertise to help the Africans manage their civil affairs and security.
U.S. officials have long been cognizant of African hostility to any efforts that could be perceived as neo-colonialist and imperialist. A number of missteps to rectify were (and continue to be) identified as the new command took shape. Several contradictory statements were made with respect to AFRICOM’s role, whether with respect to terrorism, natural resources, China, or the militarization of the continent. Even the timing of the command’s creation was criticized, it being created during a dramatically deteriorating time of war in Iraq. The actions of the U.S. government sent “mixed signals” [23] and fueled anti-Americanism among the citizens that would eventually become unwilling hosts of American forces. To overcome poor public relations, the command built several activities into the structure of AFRICOM, to include the building of schools in poor villages, air and sea port construction projects, the distribution of medicine and textbooks to children, military-to-military training programs, and legal operational support. Military personnel have also taken a more deferential tone in speaking about the way AFRICOM interfaces with African nations. Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller explained: “We do not lead or create policy . . . . Our programs are designed to respond to what our African partners have asked us to do.” [24]
Public relations efforts have been of such importance to the military, the U.S. Army War College published a research paper in March 2008, entitled “Combating African Questions about the Legitimacy of AFRICOM”. The paper expressed Africa’s strategic importance to the United States, yet offense that the creation of AFRICOM prompted a “hostile” response from African leaders. [25] It urged the U.S. to learn more about African institutions and to engage them rather than ignore them. It also advocated that U.S. personnel gain a stronger understanding of Africa’s colonial past while pushing for African nations to become more multilateral in working towards a common goal. It called for the increased use of “soft power that could be leverage by the U.S. Department of State in winning the public relations fight for Africa. [26]
AFRICOM has certainly run into a number of roadblocks but it appears that the new command will flourish as a result of intensive diplomatic and public relations efforts by the United States government. The structure and domestic operations of AFRICOM also makes it more palatable to African leaders who can more easily claim that they have a harmony rather than a disharmony of interests with the U.S. while the U.S. is building roads, training military forces, and passing out textbooks to children. A leaner, smaller, less intrusive, and more culturally engaged network of military outposts is America’s new blueprint for foreign intervention and global domination.
Paul C. Wright is an attorney, business consultant, and legal researcher who has practiced both military and civil law. His legal practice areas have included criminal, international, insurance, and consumer law.
The United States’ intervention in Africa is driven by America’s desire to secure valuable natural resources and political influence that will ensure the longevity of America’s capitalist system, military industrial complex, and global economic superiority – achieved through the financial and physical control of raw material exports. While America’s prosperity may be waning due to a number of current factors, policy makers are bent on trying to preserve America’s global domination and will pursue policy objectives regardless of the downturn in the economy at large.
The U.S. has a long history of foreign intervention and long ago perfected the art of gaining access to other countries’ natural, human, and capital resource markets through the use of foreign trade policy initiatives, international law, diplomacy, and, when all else fails, military intervention. Typically and historically, diplomatic efforts have largely been sufficient for the U.S. to establish itself as a player in other nations’ politics and economies. While U.S. intervention in Africa is nothing new, the way the U.S. is going about the intervention features a new method that is being implemented across the globe.
The U.S. has followed a great deal of its diplomatic interventions with the establishment of extensive networks of foreign military posts - designed to influence other nations and protect what are defined as U.S. strategic national interests. This global reach is evidenced by an extensive network of over 737 military installations [1] all around the globe, from Ecuador to Uzbekistan, Colombia to Korea. The model for successfully accessing these nations and their critical financial and commodities markets is changing, however, particularly as it relates to renewed intervention in Africa. The new intervention is directly linked to two factors: the fast paced and heated battle with rivals China and Russia over their access to key natural resources, and the U.S.’ declining ability to manage a bloated international network of overseas military outposts.
I. Resources Rivalry
Access to natural resources – particularly oil and rare earth elements - is critical for the U.S. to remain a dominant industrial and military power, especially since the U.S. has experienced a decline in natural resource production while China’s production and foreign access to strategic materials has only increased. A sustained increase in oil imports has been underway since domestic U.S. oil production peaked in the 1970s, with oil imports surpassing domestic production in the early 1990s. Strategic metals, such as the titanium used in military aircraft, and rare earth elements used in missile guidance systems are increasingly produced by China or under the control of Chinese companies. The issue is of such importance that 2009 saw the creation of the annual Strategic Metals Conference, a forum designed to address concerns related to US access to metals with important industrial and military uses. The second annual conference, held in Cleveland, Ohio in January 2010, saw dozens of engineers and military personnel express heightened concern over China’s near monopoly over rare earth metals. [2] China controls around 95% of the world’s rare earth output and has decided to restrict the export of these metals, leaving international consumers short by approximately 20,000 tons in 2010. [3]
China’s rapidly developing economy, recently over taking Japan as the world’s second largest, continues to log nine to ten percent annual growth in Gross Domestic Product, and is fueled by a rapidly growing middle class as well as new export markets around the world. The demand for raw materials has led to new policy initiatives in which Africa has taken center stage for Chinese investment. China has gained access to Africa by, in large part, offering favorable aid packages to several nations which include loans, debt forgiveness, and job training. [4] In contrast to Western aid packages, Chinese aid has few if any strings attached.
China’s platform for developing trade with and providing aid to Africa was of such importance that in October 2000, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was launched. Fifty African nations participate in the forum which serves as the foundation for building bridges of economic trade as well as political and cultural exchange. [5] The forum, and indeed China’s Africa strategy as a whole, has been so successful that Africans view China as an equal partner in trade and development, validating the politically and culturally significant “South-South” economic alliance that the FOCAC maintains is at the foundation of its engagement with Africa. This plays on the historical disparities that Western powers created and exploited in their former “North-South” colonial relationships with Africa and has been a key factor in developing strong bonds and a highly favorable opinion of China among Africans. Survey data indicates that most Africans share the view of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade when he says:
“China’s approach to our needs is simply better adapted than the slow and sometimes patronizing post-colonial approach of European investors, donor organizations and nongovernmental organizations. In fact, the Chinese model for stimulating rapid economic development has much to teach Africa. With direct aid, credit lines and reasonable contracts, China has helped African nations build infrastructure projects in record time—bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, dams, legislative buildings, stadiums and airports. In many African nations, including Senegal, improvements in infrastructure have played important roles in stimulating economic growth.”
“It is a telling sign of the post-colonial mindset that some donor organizations in the West dismiss the trade agreements between Chinese banks and African states that produce these vital improvements—as though Africa was naive enough to just offload its precious natural resources at bargain prices to obtain a commitment for another stadium or state house.” [6]
In fact, opinion polls clearly reveal that Africans see Chinese influence as being far more positive than U.S. influence. [7] China has clearly gained a substantive advantage in working with dozens of African nations as U.S. influence continues to wane.
Russia has also taken a renewed interest in Africa, reminiscent to some in the U.S. media as a revision of the Soviet Union’s Africa Strategy in which the Soviet Union created numerous “Soviet Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation” as a counterweight to Western capitalism and institutions like the United States Agency for International Development. [8] Russian President Medvedev, and Prime Minister Putin have been making their rounds in Africa with “legions of Russian businessmen, targeting diamonds, oil, gas, and uranium” and have been establishing commodities production agreements with several nations. [9] Putin’s push to restore Russia’s international stature, power, and prestige has led Russia to purchase in excess of $5 billion of African assets between 2000 and 2007. [10] Russia’s investments in and trade with Africa are quite small when compared with both the U.S. and China. Still, Russia has made an increase in trade and the acquisition of African raw materials a geostrategic imperative.
Chinese and Russian influence is quickly spreading and is seen in many cases as a viable and preferable alternative to the Western model which, particularly considering Africa’s colonial past, is seen to attach unfavorable conditions to aid and development that are designed to enrich the West at the expense of the people of Africa. Africans have in effect identified what sociologist Johan Galtung considers to be a “disharmony of interests” that the U.S. is trying to manage through new diplomatic efforts. The U.S. continues to lose influence in Africa to China and Russia, both of which are increasing their influence at a steady clip, and continues to be branded as imperialist in the eyes of Africans. The U.S. is well aware that it needs to improve its image in Africa in order to realize its strategic goals.
II. The Weight of Empire
While there is no reliable data on the precise cost of maintaining the United States’ network of over 700 military bases, it is estimated that the cost is $250 billion per year. [11] This is 38% of the entire disclosed 2010 budget for the Department of Defense of $663.7 billion. The cost includes facilities, staff, weapons, munitions, equipment, food, fuel, water, and everything else required to operate military installations.
In 2004, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that the U.S global military presence had to change and adapt to the post-cold war world. The post-cold war world did not require large garrisons of heavy armor throughout the European theater – garrisons stocked with enough soldiers and armament to challenge the massive Soviet military and Warsaw Pact nations on the borders of Eastern and Western Europe. The new military would be lighter, faster, rely more on light infantry and special-forces, and would used to fight multiple smaller scale wars across the globe in what was branded as an eternal Global War on Terror (GWOT). In Rumsfeld’s opinion, the U.S. would save up to $6 billion of its annual operating budget by closing (or realigning) 100 to 150 foreign and domestic bases [12] and save $12 billion by closing 200 to 300 bases. [13] Clearly, the cost of maintaining America’s legions was central to the Rumsfeld’s transformation initiative and to the U.S. military’s new role.
This military transformation would reduce the number of heavy garrisons abroad and would increasingly rely on pre-positioned war materials managed by smaller staffs at foreign military installations. These military installations would be available for a massive influx of U.S. troops if needed. Bilateral treaties and Status of Forces Agreements created by the Department of Defense and host nations would ensure that these installations would be available, to the extent required, to the American military and would ensure that the American military could operate freely with few constraints on its activities, legal or otherwise.
In the case of Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, a key military outpost and strategically important piece of real-estate in the Horn of Africa, precisely where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden, the United States government entered into an agreement [14] with the government of Djibouti that has several striking features:
· U.S. military personnel have diplomatic immunity
· The United States has sole jurisdiction over the criminal acts of its personnel
· U.S. personnel may carry arms in the Republic of Djibouti
· The U.S. may import any materials and equipment it requires into the Republic of Djibouti
· No claims may be brought against the U.S. for damage to property or loss of life
· Aircraft, vessels, and vehicles may enter, exit, and move freely throughout the Republic of Djibouti.
Such an agreement allows the U.S. to maintain a small permanent presence in Djibouti, but staff and stock up with as many military personnel and weapons as it deems fit for any particular operation inside or outside of Africa as needed. Additionally, the agreement gives the U.S. the flexibility it wants to operate freely without interference from or liability to the people and government of Djibouti.
III. The New Model - AFRICOM
With all of the concern over U.S. access to key natural resources, it is hardly a surprise that United States conceived of and finally launched United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007. The unveiling AFRICOM was done under the auspices of bringing peace, security, democracy, and economic growth to Africans. The altruistic rationale for the creation of a new military command was belied by the fact that from the start it was acknowledged that AFRICOM was a “combatant” command created in response to Africa’s growing strategic importance to the United States; namely, “the size of its population, its natural resource wealth, its potential". [15]
Africans were aware of U.S. described strategic national interests in their oil and gas fields, and raw materials long before most Americans were had any idea that renewed intervention in Africa was being planned. In November 2002, the U.S. based Corporate Council on Africa held a conference on African oil and gas in Houston, Texas. The conference, sponsored by ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco among others, was opened by United States Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter Kansteiner. Mr. Kansteiner previously stated that, “African oil is of strategic national interest to us and it will increase and become more important as we go forward,” while on a visit to Nigeria. [16] In fact, President Fradique de Menezes of Sao Tome and Principe said at that time that he had reached agreement with the United States for establishment of a U.S. naval base there, the purpose of which was to safeguard U.S. oil interests. [17] The U.S. Navy has in fact proceeded with its basing plans in Sao Tome and recently reported on its activities in that nation on its website in July, 2010. [18] Since the establishment of AFRICOM, numerous training exercises have been carried out in Africa by U.S. military forces, and basing agreements have been worked out with several African partners across the continent – even in the face of strong dissent from the citizens of several countries. The U.S. has been able to create these relationships through the careful structuring of its operations, size and make-up of its staff, and public relations efforts.
The structuring of AFRICOM was a critical component in making AFRICOM palatable to Africans. After several nations objected to the presence of a physical headquarters in Africa, AFRICOM’s commander, General William E. Ward, went on record several times to say that a physical command presence was not needed in Africa (even though the U.S. initially did try quite hard but unconvincingly to establish a permanent headquarters there). The command is currently based in Stuttgart, Germany, and will remain there for the foreseeable future, mainly in deference to African objections.
AFRICOM’s size was also an important factor. It has no large garrisons, no sizeable staff beyond the headquarters in Germany and the small number of forces and civilian support personnel based at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti as part of Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), and no large armory to sustain division or brigade sized operations. The small size and staff of U.S. basing operations like CJTF-HOA is the new model for U.S. foreign intervention. Instead of large garrisons, the U.S. has is created a series of Forward Operating Locations (FOLs). FOLs are “smaller, cheaper, and can thus be more plentiful. In short, the FOL can lie in wait with a low carrying cost until a crisis arrives, at which point it can be quickly expanded to rise to whatever the occasion demands.” [19] Arrangements have been made with several countries, north, south, east, and west, including Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Namibia, Sao Tome, Senegal, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Zambia. [20]
AFRICOM’s staffing structure is a military-civilian hybrid for two reasons: to convey the message that the combatant command does not have an exclusive military purpose, and to gain influence over African nations’ domestic and foreign policies. AFRICOM has a civilian deputy commander and a large civilian staff, in part made up of U.S. State Department personnel. These civilian personnel include foreign policy advisors from the U.S. Bureau of African Affairs, humanitarian assistance advisors from the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as advisors from the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security. [21] Africa’s burgeoning relationships with China are seen as undermining Western “efforts to bolster good governance, improve respect for human rights, and reduce corruption,” [22] hence the need for civilian subject matter expertise to help the Africans manage their civil affairs and security.
U.S. officials have long been cognizant of African hostility to any efforts that could be perceived as neo-colonialist and imperialist. A number of missteps to rectify were (and continue to be) identified as the new command took shape. Several contradictory statements were made with respect to AFRICOM’s role, whether with respect to terrorism, natural resources, China, or the militarization of the continent. Even the timing of the command’s creation was criticized, it being created during a dramatically deteriorating time of war in Iraq. The actions of the U.S. government sent “mixed signals” [23] and fueled anti-Americanism among the citizens that would eventually become unwilling hosts of American forces. To overcome poor public relations, the command built several activities into the structure of AFRICOM, to include the building of schools in poor villages, air and sea port construction projects, the distribution of medicine and textbooks to children, military-to-military training programs, and legal operational support. Military personnel have also taken a more deferential tone in speaking about the way AFRICOM interfaces with African nations. Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller explained: “We do not lead or create policy . . . . Our programs are designed to respond to what our African partners have asked us to do.” [24]
Public relations efforts have been of such importance to the military, the U.S. Army War College published a research paper in March 2008, entitled “Combating African Questions about the Legitimacy of AFRICOM”. The paper expressed Africa’s strategic importance to the United States, yet offense that the creation of AFRICOM prompted a “hostile” response from African leaders. [25] It urged the U.S. to learn more about African institutions and to engage them rather than ignore them. It also advocated that U.S. personnel gain a stronger understanding of Africa’s colonial past while pushing for African nations to become more multilateral in working towards a common goal. It called for the increased use of “soft power that could be leverage by the U.S. Department of State in winning the public relations fight for Africa. [26]
AFRICOM has certainly run into a number of roadblocks but it appears that the new command will flourish as a result of intensive diplomatic and public relations efforts by the United States government. The structure and domestic operations of AFRICOM also makes it more palatable to African leaders who can more easily claim that they have a harmony rather than a disharmony of interests with the U.S. while the U.S. is building roads, training military forces, and passing out textbooks to children. A leaner, smaller, less intrusive, and more culturally engaged network of military outposts is America’s new blueprint for foreign intervention and global domination.
Paul C. Wright is an attorney, business consultant, and legal researcher who has practiced both military and civil law. His legal practice areas have included criminal, international, insurance, and consumer law.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Jerusalem Greetings
Photo taken by yours truly of a T-shirt stand in the Old City of Jerusalem
Pilger On Wikileaks
Why Wikileaks must be protected by John Pilger
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the importance of Wikileaks as a new and fearless form of investigative journalism that threatens both the war-makers and their apologists, notably journalists who are state stenographers.
On 26 July, Wikileaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. Wikileaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times are a fraction.
There is understandably hysteria on high, with demands that the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is “hunted down” and “rendered”. In Washington, I interviewed a senior Defence Department official and asked, “Can you give a guarantee that the editors of Wikileaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?” He replied, “It’s not my position to give guarantees on anything”. He referred me to the “ongoing criminal investigation” of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to “fatally marginalise” Wikileaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.
On 31 July, the American celebrity reporter Christiane Amanapour interviewed Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the ABC network. She invited Gates to describe to her viewers his “anger” at Wikileaks. She echoed the Pentagon line that “this leak has blood on its hands”, thereby cueing Gates to find Wikileaks “guilty” of “moral culpability”. Such hypocrisy coming from a regime drenched in the blood of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq – as its own files make clear – is apparently not for journalistic enquiry. This is hardly surprising now that a new and fearless form of public accountability, which Wikileaks represents, threatens not only the war-makers but their apologists.
Their current propaganda is that Wikileaks is “irresponsible”. Earlier this year, before it released the cockpit video of an American Apache gunship killing 19 civilians in Iraq, including journalists and children, Wikileaks sent people to Baghdad to find the families of the victims in order to prepare them. Prior to the release of last month’s Afghan War Logs, Wikileaks wrote to the White House asking that it identify names that might draw reprisals. There was no reply. More than 15,000 files were withheld and these, says Assange, will not be released until they have been scrutinised “line by line” so that names of those at risk can be deleted.
The pressure on Assange himself seems unrelenting. In his homeland, Australia, the shadow foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has said that if her right-wing coalition wins the general election on 21 August, “appropriate action” will be taken “if an Australian citizen has deliberately undertake an activity that could put at risk the lives of Australian forces in Afghanistan or undermine our operations in any way”. The Australian role in Afghanistan, effectively mercenary in the service of Washington, has produced two striking results: the massacre of five children in a village in Oruzgan province and the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of Australians.
Last May, following the release of the Apache footage, Assange had his Australian passport temporarily confiscated when he returned home. The Labor government in Canberra denies it has received requests from Washington to detain him and spy on the Wikileaks network. The Cameron government also denies this. They would, wouldn’t they? Assange, who came to London last month to work on exposing the war logs, has had to leave Britain hastily for, as puts it, “safer climes”.
On 16 August, the Guardian, citing Daniel Ellsberg, described the great Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu as “the pre-eminent hero of the nuclear age”. Vanunu, who alerted the world to Israel’s secret nuclear weapons, was kidnapped by the Israelis and incarcerated for 18 years after he was left unprotected by the London Sunday Times, which had published the documents he supplied. In 1983, another heroic whistleblower, Sarah Tisdall, a Foreign Office clerical officer, sent documents to the Guardian that disclosed how the Thatcher government planned to spin the arrival of American cruise missiles in Britain. The Guardian complied with a court order to hand over the documents, and Tisdall went to prison.
In one sense, the Wikileaks revelations shame the dominant section of journalism devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it. This is state stenography, not journalism. Look on the Wikileaks site and read a Ministry of Defence document that describes the “threat” of real journalism. And so it should be a threat. Having published skilfully the Wikileaks expose of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of Julian Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as important as any in my lifetime.
I like Julian Assange’s dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult to publish secret information in Britain, he replied, “When we look at Official Secrets Act labelled documents we see that they state it is offence to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome we have is to publish the information.”
www.johnpilger.com
Link: http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=584
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Bucks For Bombs
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Syria
How do you solve a problem like Syria?
Samira Quraishy (Source: Middle East Monitor)
As Russia prepares to deliver fuel for Iran’s nuclear reactors, it is worth casting a reviewer’s eye over the potential for further conflict in the Middle East. In one corner we have the Zionist state of Israel and its somewhat reluctant – although faithful-ally, the United States. In the other corner we have Iran, Lebanon and Syria and their various proxies.
In a memorandum sent to the US President, Barack Obama, former intelligence specialists warned him of Israel’s likely pre-emptive strike on Iran, not for the commonly stated “threat”‘ of it developing nuclear weapons but to initiate regime change to remove one of Israel’s most prolific critics, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. This memo was released after skirmishes broke out between the Israeli Defence Forces and the Lebanese army on the border between the two states; political analysts suggest that it is not a question of if a strike will happen but a matter of when, unless Obama steps in and pulls Israel back into line.
Looked at from the Israeli side, it can make a strike on Iran more effective by removing Syria from the equation. Not, of course, through conventional military means or the use of Israel’s own nuclear arsenal; the Israelis are far more sophisticated than that. Israel would simply neutralise Syria by appeasement, completing the peace talks brokered by its once close friend in the region, Turkey, before Israel doomed the relationship with its invasion of Gaza and the assault on the Freedom Flotilla.
At the moment, if Israel was to strike Iran today Syria would have no choice but to come to Tehran’s aid and support its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah in the ensuing conflict. However, commentators in Israel regard with optimism recent talks in Lebanon between Syria’s President Bashar Assad, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and the host Prime Minister Saad Hariri, in which Syria’s political hegemony over the region was established, pushing Iran aside and, in the process, probably weakening Hezbollah’s political base in Israel’s northern neighbour.
One commentator in the Jerusalem Post suggested that if Israel were to take advantage of the momentum arising from this meeting and initiate talks with Assad who has in the past claimed to want peace talks with Israel Syria could be out of the strike-on-Iran equation. A peace deal between Syria and Israel would see Syria turning its back on Tehran, which will in turn neutralise or weaken any potential retaliation from Lebanon and Hezbollah.
There is, of course, a price to pay for such a deal; Israel would have to relinquish any claim to the strategically important Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967. Peace with Syria would remove the justification for the occupation, namely “legitimate security concerns”. A deal with Israel would also lead to Syria normalising its relations with the US, a step Damascus would be only too happy to take for the benefit of its own strategic interests. A pact with Syria creating a new Israel-Syria-US axis would thus clear the field for the Jewish state to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear reactors, as it did against Iraq in 1981, without overt US support. If Russia is waiting to offer more than material support for Iran, this could provoke a stand-off between the old Cold War foes, Washington and Moscow. The stakes are high and Israel’s actions have the potential for far-reaching consequences.
One thing stands in Israel’s way, though, and that is its founding ideology’s greed for more territory. Zionism is an expansionist creed and Israel’s leaders have always been reluctant to give up land for peace; even after the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 Israel maintained the occupation by controlling Gaza’s land, air and sea borders. Analysts suggest that this may be Israel’s weak point which will make it impossible to do any deal with Syria. In turn, this may be what the government in Tehran is relying on to keep the Israeli wolves at bay. If so, it’s a slender hope. Israel doesn’t always do things the logical way. When it feels threatened, it has a tendency to hit out; woe betide anyone standing in the way, friend or foe. For that reason alone, it is not only Iran which must be vigilant, but also any state in the region considering peace deals with the Zionist state. So how do you solve a problem like Syria?
In a memorandum sent to the US President, Barack Obama, former intelligence specialists warned him of Israel’s likely pre-emptive strike on Iran, not for the commonly stated “threat”‘ of it developing nuclear weapons but to initiate regime change to remove one of Israel’s most prolific critics, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. This memo was released after skirmishes broke out between the Israeli Defence Forces and the Lebanese army on the border between the two states; political analysts suggest that it is not a question of if a strike will happen but a matter of when, unless Obama steps in and pulls Israel back into line.
Looked at from the Israeli side, it can make a strike on Iran more effective by removing Syria from the equation. Not, of course, through conventional military means or the use of Israel’s own nuclear arsenal; the Israelis are far more sophisticated than that. Israel would simply neutralise Syria by appeasement, completing the peace talks brokered by its once close friend in the region, Turkey, before Israel doomed the relationship with its invasion of Gaza and the assault on the Freedom Flotilla.
At the moment, if Israel was to strike Iran today Syria would have no choice but to come to Tehran’s aid and support its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah in the ensuing conflict. However, commentators in Israel regard with optimism recent talks in Lebanon between Syria’s President Bashar Assad, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and the host Prime Minister Saad Hariri, in which Syria’s political hegemony over the region was established, pushing Iran aside and, in the process, probably weakening Hezbollah’s political base in Israel’s northern neighbour.
One commentator in the Jerusalem Post suggested that if Israel were to take advantage of the momentum arising from this meeting and initiate talks with Assad who has in the past claimed to want peace talks with Israel Syria could be out of the strike-on-Iran equation. A peace deal between Syria and Israel would see Syria turning its back on Tehran, which will in turn neutralise or weaken any potential retaliation from Lebanon and Hezbollah.
There is, of course, a price to pay for such a deal; Israel would have to relinquish any claim to the strategically important Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967. Peace with Syria would remove the justification for the occupation, namely “legitimate security concerns”. A deal with Israel would also lead to Syria normalising its relations with the US, a step Damascus would be only too happy to take for the benefit of its own strategic interests. A pact with Syria creating a new Israel-Syria-US axis would thus clear the field for the Jewish state to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear reactors, as it did against Iraq in 1981, without overt US support. If Russia is waiting to offer more than material support for Iran, this could provoke a stand-off between the old Cold War foes, Washington and Moscow. The stakes are high and Israel’s actions have the potential for far-reaching consequences.
One thing stands in Israel’s way, though, and that is its founding ideology’s greed for more territory. Zionism is an expansionist creed and Israel’s leaders have always been reluctant to give up land for peace; even after the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 Israel maintained the occupation by controlling Gaza’s land, air and sea borders. Analysts suggest that this may be Israel’s weak point which will make it impossible to do any deal with Syria. In turn, this may be what the government in Tehran is relying on to keep the Israeli wolves at bay. If so, it’s a slender hope. Israel doesn’t always do things the logical way. When it feels threatened, it has a tendency to hit out; woe betide anyone standing in the way, friend or foe. For that reason alone, it is not only Iran which must be vigilant, but also any state in the region considering peace deals with the Zionist state. So how do you solve a problem like Syria?
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Change That's Not:
'Obama On Bush Route'
Video Interview With John PilgerSunday, August 08, 2010
Wikileaks Rides On
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Two articles of interest concerning Wikileaks appeared in today's news. Their text is presented below.
Wikileaks To Publish New Documents
The online whistle-blower WikiLeaks said it will continue to publish more secret files from governments around the world despite U.S. demands to cancel plans to release classified military documents.
"I can assure you that we will keep publishing documents — that's what we do," a WikiLeaks spokesman, who says he goes by the name Daniel Schmitt in order to protect his identity, told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday.
Schmitt said he could not comment on any specific documents but asserted that the publication of classified documents about the Afghanistan war directly contributed to the public's understanding of the conflict.
"Knowledge about ongoing issues like the war in Afghanistan is the only way to help create something like safety," Schmitt said. "Hopefully with this understanding, public scrutiny will then influence governments to develop better politics."
He rejected allegations that the group's publication of leaked U.S. government documents was a threat to America's national security or put lives at risk.
"For this reason, we conveyed a request to the White House prior to the publication, asking that the International Security Assistance Force provide us with reviewers," Schmitt said. "That request remains open. However, the Pentagon has stated that it is not interested in 'harm minimization' and has not contacted us, directly, or indirectly to discuss this offer."
The NATO-led ISAF security force is mostly deployed in Afghanistan's less volatile north.
The Pentagon has maintained that the Defense Department had no direct contact with WikiLeaks about possible efforts to redact those documents to make them less of a security threat.
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said late last month that it was "absolutely, unequivocally not true" that WikiLeaks had offered to let U.S. government officials go through the documents to make sure no innocent people were identified.
The Pentagon demanded on Thursday that WikiLeaks cancel any plan to publish more classified military documents and pull back tens of thousands of secret Afghan war logs already posted on the Internet.
The demand to stop publishing more classified documents, which the Pentagon has no independent power to enforce, is primarily aimed at preventing release of approximately 15,000 secret documents that the website WikiLeaks has said it is holding and possibly classified U.S. State Department cables.
The Pentagon also hopes to stop WikiLeaks from making public the contents of a mammoth encrypted file recently added to the site. Contents of that file remain a mystery and Schmitt did not want to comment specifically on the content of a file the group posted online with the label "Insurance" in recent days.
He only said that "we regularly distribute backups of documents that have not been published ... This one has just been placed on a very popular site right now to make sure that it has been distributed as widely as possible."
Schmitt said that the group is committed to the security concerns of the world's entire population — which may in some cases be opposed to the United States' national interests.
"WikiLeaks is a globally acting organization," he said. "In that respect we are responsible toward the people of the world and not the people or the specific interests of one particular nation."
WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 classified military and other documents, mostly raw intelligence reports from Afghanistan, on its website July 25. The 15,000 additional documents are apparently related to that material.
The documents leaked so far illustrate the frustration of U.S. forces in fighting the protracted Afghan conflict and revived debate over the war's uncertain progress. The White House angrily denounced the leaks, saying they put the lives of Afghan informants and U.S. troops at risk.
An Army private, Bradley Manning, is jailed on suspicion of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in a previous case. He is a "person of interest" in the latest release, the Pentagon has said.
Schmitt said that he, editor-in-chief Julian Assange and three more people work full-time for WikiLeaks, and between 800 and 1,000 volunteerwith tasks like verifying documents, programming software or legal defense.
The group publishes their material out of "three to four dozen countries" and has had numerous attacks on its website, he said.
What To Do About Wikileaks? Not Much Can Be Done
WASHINGTON – An online whistle-blower's threat to release more classified Pentagon and State Department documents is raising difficult questions of what the government can or would do, legally, technically or even militarily to stop it.
Constrained by the global reach of the Internet, sophisticated encryption software and the domestic legal system, the answer seems to be: Not much.
But if the U.S. government believes that the release of classified documents WikiLeaks is preparing to disclose will threaten national security or put lives at risk, cyber and legal experts say the options could expand to include cyber strikes to take down the WikiLeaks website and destroy its files or covert operations to steal or disable the files.
It all sounds, at times, like a spy movie, where the possibilities extend as far as the imagination can reach. But most outsiders agree that reality is probably far less dramatic.
At the center of the drama was the posting last week of a massive 1.4 gigabyte mystery file named "Insurance" on the WikiLeaks website.
The "Insurance" file is encrypted, nearly impossible to open until WikiLeaks provides the passwords. But experts suggest that if anyone can crack it — it would be the National Security Agency.
That file, coupled with WikiLeaks' release of more than 77,000 secret military documents last month, prompted the Pentagon to demand that the website's editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, cancel any new document dumps and pull back the Afghan war data he already posted.
WikiLeaks slammed the demand as an obnoxious threat, and Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell declined to detail what, if any, actions the Defense Department may be ready to take.
Few people involved, for the Pentagon and other agencies, would talk openly about what the Pentagon or the clandestine NSA could or would do to stop the expected document dump. It is not even clear if U.S. officials actually know what WikiLeaks has.
"Do we believe that WikiLeaks has additional cables? We do," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "Do we believe that those cables are classified? We do. And are they State Department cables? Yes."
Officials say the data may also include up to 15,000 military documents related to the Afghanistan war that were not made public in the initial release.
Daniel Schmitt, a WikiLeaks spokesman in Berlin, said Saturday the new batch of classified documents the website is preparing to release will contribute to the public's understanding of the war.
"Hopefully with this understanding, public scrutiny will then influence governments to develop better politics," he told The Associated Press.
Schmitt denied that the disclosure of the documents is a threat to U.S. security interests.
Assuming the documents contain highly sensitive information that threatens national security, the U.S. must weigh a number of options, experts say.
First, from a legal standpoint, there is probably little the U.S. government can do to stop WikiLeaks from posting the files.
It is against federal law to knowingly and willfully disclose or transmit classified information. But Assange, an Australian who has no permanent address and travels frequently, is not a U.S. citizen.
Since Assange is a foreign citizen living in a foreign country, it's not clear that U.S. law would apply, said Marc Zwillinger, a Washington lawyer and former federal cyber crimes prosecutor. He said prosecutors would have to figure out what crime to charge Assange with, and then face the daunting task of trying to indict him or persuade other authorities to extradite him.
It would be equally difficult, Zwillinger said, to effectively use an injunction to prevent access to the data.
"Could the U.S. get an injunction to force U.S. Internet providers to block traffic to and from WikiLeaks such that people couldn't access the website?" Zwillinger said. "It's an irrelevant question. There would be thousands of paths to get to it. So it wouldn't really stop people from getting to the site. They would be pushing the legal envelope without any real benefit."
Legal questions aside, the encrypted file conjures visions of secret codebreakers hunched over their laptops, tearing open secret, protected files in seconds with a few keystrokes.
Reality is not that simple. It appears WikiLeaks used state-of-the-art software requiring a sophisticated electronic sequence of numbers, called a 256-bit key, to open them.
The main way to break such an encrypted file is by what's called a "brute force attack," which means trying every possible key, or password, said Herbert Lin, a senior computer science and cryptology expert at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.
Unlike a regular six- or eight-character password that most people use every day, a 256-bit key would equal a 40 to 50 character password, he said.
If it takes 0.1 nanosecond to test one possible key and you had 100 billion computers to test the possible number variations, "it would take this massive array of computers 10 to the 56th power seconds — the number 1, followed by 56 zeros" to plow through all the possibilities, said Lin.
How long is that?
"The age of the universe is 10 to the 17th power seconds," explained Lin. "We will wait a long time for the U.S. government or anyone else to decrypt that file by brute force."
Could the NSA, which is known for its supercomputing and massive electronic eavesdropping abilities abroad, crack such an impregnable code?
It depends on how much time and effort they want to put into it, said James Bamford, who has written two books on the NSA.
The NSA has the largest collection of supercomputers in the world. And officials have known for some time that WikiLeaks has classified files in its possession.
The agency, he speculated, has probably been looking for a vulnerability or gap in the code, or a backdoor into the commercial encryption program protecting the file.
At the more extreme end, the NSA, the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies — including the newly created Cyber Command — have probably reviewed options for using a cyber attack against the website, which could disrupt networks, files, electricity, and so on.
"This is the kind of thing that they are geared for," said Bamford, "since this is the type of thing a terrorist organization might have — a website that has damaging information on it. They would want to break into it, see what's there and then try to destroy it."
The vast nature of the Internet, however, makes it essentially impossible to stop something, or take it down, once it has gone out over multiple servers.
In the end, U.S. officials will have to weigh whether a more aggressive response is worth the public outrage it would likely bring. Most experts predict that, despite the uproar, the government will probably do little other than bluster, and the documents will come out anyway.
"Once you start messing with the Internet, taking things down, and going to the maximum extent to hide everything from coming out, it doesn't necessarily serve your purpose," said Bamford. "It makes the story bigger than it would have been had the documents been released in the first place."
"If, in the end, the goal is to decrease the damage, you have to wonder whether pouring fuel on the fire is a reasonable solution," he said.
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Castro Speaks
Fidel Castro makes 1st official gov't appearance
HAVANA (AP) — Fidel Castro is delivering a speech before Cuba's parliament, his first official government appearance in four years.
The 83-year-old bearded revolutionary waved and smiled Saturday as he arrived in the chamber, led by a subordinate and dressed in olive fatigues. A cheering crowd yelled "Fidel, Fidel, Fidel!" and "Long live Fidel! Long live Raul!" a reference to his younger brother and the current Cuban president.
Castro is expected to discuss his growing preoccupation with the threat of global nuclear war.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The 83-year-old bearded revolutionary waved and smiled Saturday as he arrived in the chamber, led by a subordinate and dressed in olive fatigues. A cheering crowd yelled "Fidel, Fidel, Fidel!" and "Long live Fidel! Long live Raul!" a reference to his younger brother and the current Cuban president.
Castro is expected to discuss his growing preoccupation with the threat of global nuclear war.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Friday, August 06, 2010
Please Tell Me Again
What's The War About?
By William BlumAugust 05, 2010
When facts are inconvenient, when international law, human rights and history get in the way, when war crimes can't easily be justified or explained away, when logic doesn't help much, the current crop of American political leaders turns to what is now the old reliable: 9/11. We have to fight in Afghanistan because ... somehow ... it's tied into what happened on September 11, 2001. Here's Vice-President Joe Biden: "We know that it was from the space that joins Afghanistan and Pakistan that the attacks of 9/11 occurred."
Here's Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC): "This is the place [Afghanistan] we were attacked from 9/11."
Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranking House Republican, asserted that the revelations in the Wikileaks documents do not change his view of the Afghan conflict, nor does he expect a shift in public opinion. "Back home in Indiana, people still remember where the attacks on 9/11 came from."
Here's President Obama a year ago: "But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."
And here is the president, two days after the release of the Wikileaks documents, referring to Afghanistan and Pakistan as "the region from which the 9/11 attacks were waged and other attacks against the United States and our friends and allies have been planned".
Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.
Never mind that the "plot to kill Americans" in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn't Washington bombed those countries?
Indeed, what actually is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does "an even larger safe haven" mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.
There are many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan — the ones still living — who deeply resent the US presence there and the drones that fly overhead and drop bombs on their houses, their wedding parties, their funerals, their life. As in Iraq, the American "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan regularly, routinely, and conspicuously creates numerous new anti-American terrorists.
The only "war of necessity" that draws the United States to Afghanistan is the need for protected oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea area, the establishment of military bases in this country that is surrounded by the oil-rich Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf regions, and making it easier to watch and pressure next-door Iran. What more could any respectable imperialist nation desire? Oh, did I mention that the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex and its shareholders will be further enriched?
But the war against the Taliban can't be won. Except perhaps by killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States should negotiate the pipelines with the Taliban, as the Clinton administration tried to do, without success, then get out, and declare "victory". Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech.
USrael and Iran
If and when the United States and Israel bomb Iran (marking the sixth country so blessed by Barack Obama) and this sad old world has a new daily horror show to look at on their TV sets, and we then discover that Iran was not actually building nuclear weapons after all, the American mainstream media and the benighted American mind will ask: "Why didn't they tell us that? Did they want us to bomb them?"
The same questions were asked about Iraq following the discovery that Saddam Hussein didn't in fact have any weapons of mass destruction. However, in actuality, before the US invasion Iraqi officials had stated clearly on repeated occasions that they had no such weapons. I'm reminded of this by the recent news report about Hans Blix, former chief United Nations weapons inspector, who led a doomed hunt for WMD in Iraq. Last week he told the British inquiry into the March 2003 invasion that those who were "100 percent certain there were weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq turned out to have "less than zero percent knowledge" of where the purported hidden caches might be. He testified that he had warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a February 2003 meeting — as well as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in separate talks — that Hussein might have no weapons of mass destruction.
In August 2002, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told American newscaster Dan Rather on CBS: "We do not possess any nuclear or biological or chemical weapons."
In December, Aziz stated to Ted Koppel on ABC: "The fact is that we don't have weapons of mass destruction. We don't have chemical, biological, or nuclear weaponry."
Hussein himself told Rather in February 2003: "These missiles have been destroyed. There are no missiles that are contrary to the prescription of the United Nations [as to range] in Iraq. They are no longer there."
Moreover, Gen. Hussein Kamel, former head of Iraq's secret weapons program, and a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, told the UN in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed its banned missiles and chemical and biological weapons soon after the Persian Gulf War.
There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials telling the world that the WMD were non-existent.
If you don't already have serious doubts about the mainstream media's devotion to questioning the premises and rationales underlying American foreign policy, consider this: Despite the two revelations on Dan Rather's CBS programs, and the other revelations noted above, in January 2008 we find CBS reporter Scott Pelley interviewing FBI agent George Piro, who had interviewed Saddam Hussein before he was executed:
PELLEY: And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?
PIRO: He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s, and those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.
PELLEY: He had ordered them destroyed?
PIRO: Yes.
PELLEY: So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk? Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?
Would it have mattered if the Bush administration had fully believed Iraq when it said it had no WMD? Probably not. There is ample evidence that Bush knew this to be the case, as did Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate just how psychopathic his two adversaries were. Bush was determined to vanquish Iraq, for the sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for expanding the empire, though it hasn't all worked out as the empire expected; for some odd reason, it seems that the Iraqi people resented being bombed, invaded, occupied, and tortured.
The result of Bush's Iraqi policy can be summed up by saying that it would be difficult to cite many other historical examples of one nation destroying another so completely, crushing and perverting virtually every aspect of their society and humanity.
Now Israel presses Washington relentlessly to do the same to Iran — not that the US necessarily needs much prodding — primarily because Israel is determined to remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East; this despite Iran telling the United States and the world many times that it is not building nuclear weapons. But if Iran is in fact building nuclear weapons, we have to ask: Is there some international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not? If the United States had known that the Japanese had deliverable atomic bombs, would Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been destroyed? Does USrael believe that there is not already enough horror and suffering in the news?
In what could be part of the preparation for an attack on Iran, 47 members of the House of Representatives recently put forth a non-binding resolution declaring Iran to be "an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel". To illustrate this threat, the resolution quoted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on several occasions avowing sentiments like: "God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism" ... calling for "this occupying regime [Israel] to be wiped off the map" ... "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation" ... "I must announce that the Zionist regime, with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion, and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene" ... "Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come, and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started".
Pretty damning stuff, isn't it? N'est-ce pas? Nicht wahr? But there's a lot less here than meets the eye. Notice that it doesn't quote Ahmadinejad in a single specific, explicit threat of an Iranian attack upon Israel or the United States. No mention or indication that "I" or "We" or "Iran" is going to do any of this, carry out any act of violence. And I would say that that's because it's not what he meant. In another quote, which the resolution fails to cite, the Iranian president in December 2006 said: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom." Obviously, the man is not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place very peacefully. Furthermore, in June 2006, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated: "We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state. Why didn't the authors of the congressional resolution quote that one?
I think that one can derive a better understanding of the Iranian president's statements by seeing them as metaphor, as bragging, as wishful thinking, as well as poor translation (for example: "wiped off the map"), coming from a man foolish enough to publicly claim that there are no gays in Iran.
But more significantly, the resolution offers no reason why Iran actually would attack Israel or the United States. What reason would Iran have to use nuclear weapons against either country other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? Indeed, the very same question could have — and should have — been asked before the invasion of Iraq. Of the many lies surrounding that invasion, the biggest one of all was that if, in fact, Saddam Hussein had had those weapons of mass destruction the invasion would have been justified.
With all the lies exposed about the American Iraqi misadventure, I and many others had allowed ourselves the luxury, the hidden pleasure, of believing that the United States government and media had learned a lesson which would last for some time. They'd been caught and exposed. But it's the same all over again with the lies about Iran and Ahmadinejad. (No, he's not even a Holocaust denier.)
In any event, Israel probably doesn't believe its own propaganda. In March of last year, the Washington Post reported: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation." This was the very last sentence in the article and, according to an extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any other English-language media in the world.
And earlier this year we could read in the Sunday Times of London: "Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the [Israeli] defence establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons. The views expressed by the former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission contradict the assessment of Israel's defence establishment and put him at odds with political leaders."
If any country in this world is a threat to use nuclear weapons with remarkably little regard for the consequences it's Israel. Martin van Creveld, an Israeli professor of military history, and loyal Israeli citizen, remarked in 2002: "We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under." Think of the closing scene of "Dr. Strangelove". That's Israel sitting astride the speeding nuclear missile waving the cowboy hat.
There's no business like show business
She played Mozart's Piano Concerto in D Minor.
And accompanied the one and only Aretha Franklin.
A gala benefit performance in Philadelphia.
At the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Before 8,000 people.
And they loved it.
How many of them knew that the pianist was a genuine, unindicted war criminal?
Guilty of crimes against humanity.
Defender of torture.
With much blood on her pianist hands.
Whose style in office for years could be characterized as hypocrisy, disinformation, and outright lying.
But what did the audience care?
This is America.
Home of the Good Guys.
She was fighting against the Bad Guys.
And we all know that the show must go on.
So let's hear it, folks ... Let's have a real all-American hand ... Let's hear it for our own darling virtuoso ... Miss Condoleezza Rice!
Not As They Told You
