Who is behind Human Rights Watch?

Under President Clinton, Human Rights Watch was the most influential pro-intervention lobby: its ‘anti-atrocity crusade’ helped drive the wars in ex-Yugoslavia. Under George W. Bush it lost influence to the neoconservatives, who have their own crusades. But the ‘two interventionisms’ are not so different anyway: Human Rights Watch is founded on belief in the superiority of American values. It has close links to the US foreign policy elite, and to other interventionist and expansionist lobbies.

No US citizen, and no US organisation, has any right to impose US values on Europe. No concentration camps or mass graves can justify that imposition. But Human Rights Watch finds it self-evident, that the United States may legitimately restructure any society, where a mass grave is found. That is a dangerous belief for a superpower: European colonialism shows how easily a ‘civilising mission’ produces its own atrocities. The Belgian ‘civilising mission’ in the Congo, at the time promoted as a noble and unselfish enterprise, killed half the population. Sooner or later, more people will die in crusades to prevent a new Holocaust, than died in the Holocaust itself. And American soldiers will continue to kill, torture and rape, in order to prevent killings, torture and rape.

For a century there has been a strong interventionist belief in the United States – although it competes with widespread isolationism. In recent years attitudes hardened: human-rights interventionism became a consensus among the ‘foreign policy elite’ even before September 11. Human Rights Watch itself is part of that elite, which includes government departments, foundations, NGO’s and academics. It is certainly not an association of ‘concerned private citizens’. HRW board members include present and past government employees, and overlapping directorates link it to the major foreign policy lobbies in the US. Cynically summarised, Human Rights Watch arose as a joint venture of George Soros and the State Department. Nevertheless, it represents some fundamental characteristics of US-American culture.

The September 11 attacks confirmed the interventionism of the entire foreign policy elite – not just the highly visible neoconservatives. More important, the public response illustrated the almost absolute identification of Americans with their own value system. Without any apparent embarrassment, President Bush declared that a war between good and evil was in progress. Ironically, that mirrors the language of the Islamic fundamentalists. It implies a Crusader mentality, rather than the usual pseudo-neutrality of liberal-democratic political philosophy. A society which believes in its own absolute goodness, and the absolute and universal nature of its own values, is a fertile ground for interventionism.

Human rights are part of the American value system, but they are also especially useful as an ‘ideology of justification’ in wartime. Such an ideology should ideally meet some criteria. First, it should not be a simple appeal to self-interest. Simply stating “We own the world!” or “We are the master race, submit to us!” is not good propaganda. As a slogan, ‘war on terrorism’ is also inadequate, since it is too clearly an American war, against the enemies of America. For propaganda purposes, an appeal to higher values is preferable.

Second, these higher values should be universal. This is why Islamism would probably fail as an interventionist ideology: it is specific to Islam. A geopolitical claim to intervene in support of Islamic values can be answered simply by saying: “We are not Muslims here”. The doctrine of universal human rights is, by definition, universal and cross-cultural.

Third, the ideology should appeal to the population of the super-power. In the United States, for historical reasons, ‘rights doctrines’ have become part of its political culture. It would be pointless for a US President to justify a war by appealing to Islam, or royal legitimacy, because very few Americans hold these beliefs. Most Americans do believe in rights theories – and very few know that these theories are disputed.

Fourth, if possible, the ideology should appeal to the ‘enemy’ population. It should ideally be part of their values. That is difficult, but the doctrine of human rights has succeeded in acquiring cross-cultural legitimacy. This does not mean it is inherently right – but simply that no non-western cultures have an answer to the doctrine. The government of China, for instance, fully accepts the concept of human rights, and claims to uphold them. So when it is accused of human rights violations, it can do nothing but deny, on this issue it is perpetually on the defensive. Acceptance of your values by the enemy population could be seen as the Holy Grail of war propaganda: if the enemy leadership is incapable of presenting an alternative value system, it will ultimately collapse.

Human rights are not the only ideology of intervention. The ‘civilising mission’, which justified 19-th century colonisation, is another example.The point is that human rights can serve a geopolitical purpose, which is unrelated to their moral content. It is not possible to show that ‘human rights’ exist, and most moral philosophers would not even try. It might not be a very important issue in ethics anyway – but it is important in politics and geopolitics. And geopolitics is what Human Rights Watch is about – not about ethics. HRW itself is an almost exclusively US-American organisation. Its version of human rights is the Anglo-American tradition. It is ‘mono-ethical’ – recognising no legitimate ethical values outside its own. However, the human-rights tradition is not, and can never be, a substitute for a general morality. Major ethical issues such as equality, distributive justice, and innovation, simply don’t fit into rights-based ethics.

Ethical values are not, in themselves, culturally specific. However, this ethical tradition has become associated with the United States. It is dominant in the political culture, it has become associated with the flag and other national symbols, and it is capable of generating intense national emotion. It emphasises the universal rights set out in the American Declaration of Independence and its Constitution. In a sense the US was ‘pre-programmed’ as an interventionist power. Universal human rights, by their nature, tend to justify military intervention to enforce those rights. Expansionists, rather than isolationists, are closest to the spirit of the American Constitution, with its inherently interventionist values. In fact, most US-Americans believe in the universality and superiority of their ethical tradition. Interventionist human-rights organisations are, like the neoconservative warmongers, a logical result. Human Rights Watch is not formally an ‘association for the promotion of the American Way of Life’ – but it tends to behave like one.

Human Rights Watch operates a number of discriminatory exclusions, to maintain its American character, and that in turn reduces internal criticism of its limited perspective. Although it publishes material in foreign languages to promote its views, the organisation itself is English-only. More seriously, HRW discriminates on grounds of nationality. Non-Americans are systematically excluded at board level – unless they have emigrated to the United States. HRW also recruits its employees in the United States, in English. The backgrounds of the Committee members (below) indicate that HRW recruits it decision-makers from the upper class, and upper-middle class. Look at their professions: there are none from middle-income occupations, let alone any poor illegal immigrants, or Somali peasants.

Human Rights Watch can therefore claim no ethical superiority. It is itself involved in practices it condemns elsewhere, such as discrimination in employment, and exclusion from social structures. It can also claim no neutrality. An organisation which will not allow a Serb or Somali to be a board member, can give no neutral assessment of a Serbian or Somali state. It would probably be impossible for this all-American, English-only, elite organisation, to be anything else but paternalistic and arrogant. To the people who run HRW, the non-western world consists of a list of atrocities, and via the media they communicate that attitude to the American public. It can only dehumanise African, Asians, Arabs and eastern Europeans. Combined with a tendency to see the rest of the world as an enemy, that will contribute to new abuses and continuing civilian deaths, during America’s crusades.

Who runs the HRW Europe Committee?

HRW Donors

Taken from an older version of the HRW website, this 1995 list is apparently the only information available. In the United States, HRW is not legally obliged to disclose who donates money. About half its funds come from foundations, and half from individual donors, in total about $20 million.

 

In its Annual Reports, HRW always claims that it “accepts no government funds, directly or indirectly.” However, that was a lie according to the 1995 list, and it is still a lie. The Dutch Novib – now part of the Oxfam group – is a government-funded aid organisation, and in turn it funded the activities of Human Rights Watch Africa in the Great Lakes region and Angola. Oxfam itself is primarily funded by the British government and the European Union, see their annual report. It is also funded by the United States Agency for International Development, USAID. Oxfam in turn partly funds Novib, so some of that money finds it way to HRW. Both Oxfam and Novib funded the HRW report on the Rwanda genocide. So, if it is as accurate as HRW’s claim not to accept any indirect government funding, look elsewhere for the truth.

 

DONORS OF $100,000 OR MORE

Dorothy and Lewis Cullman
The Aaron Diamond Foundation
Irene Diamond
The Ford Foundation
The Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett Fund
Estate of Anne Johnson
The J. M. Kaplan Fund
The Fanny and Leo Koerner Charitable Trust
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The John Merck Fund
The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation
Novib, The Dutch Organization for Development Corporation,
The Overbrook Foundation
Oxfam
Donald Pels
The Ruben and Elisabeth Rausing Trust
The Rockefeller Foundation
Marion and Herbert Sandler, The Sandler Family Supporting Foundation
Susan and George Soros
Shelby White and Leon Levy

DONORS OF $25,000 – $99,999

The Arca Foundation
Helen and Robert Bernstein
Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
Nikki and David Brown
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Compton Foundation, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Davis
The Dr. Seuss Foundation
Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller
Jack Edelman
Epstein Philanthropies
Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de L’Homme
Barbara Finberg
General Service Foundation
Abby Gilmore and Arthur Freierman
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund
Katherine Graham, The Washington Post Company
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
Hudson News
Independence Foundation
The Isenberg Family Charitable Trust
The Henry M. Jackson Foundation
Robert and Ardis James
Jesuit Refugee Service
Nancy and Jerome Kohlberg
Lyn and Norman Lear
Joshua Mailman
Medico International
Moriah Fund, Inc.
Ruth Mott Fund
Kathleen Peratis and Richard Frank
Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation
Ploughshares Fund
Public Welfare Foundation, Inc.
Anita and Gordon Roddick
Edna and Richard Salomon
Lorraine and Sid Sheinberg
Margaret R. Spanel
Time Warner Inc.
U.S. Jesuit Conference
Warner Brothers, Inc.
Edie and Lew Wasserman
Maureen White and Steven Rattner
Malcolm Wiener and Carolyn Seely Wiener
The Winston Foundation for World Peace

  

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Why human rights are wrong

 

 

Human rights conflict with the principle of moral autonomy, and form an excuse for oppression. Any harm to others can be justified by claiming that it is intended to respect certain ‘rights’, even if the victim does not know of their existence. Revised June 2004.

 

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A Serbian or Iraqi child who is shot to enforce human rights, suffers just as much pain, as an American or British child. Yet the US and British governments do not kill or injure their own citizens, to protect their human rights. That fate is reserved for Eastern Europeans, Arabs, Africans, and Asians. The western human rights lobby claims, that it is wrong to deny people human rights. They claim opposition to human rights is based on ‘ethical relativism’, and that their own ‘moral universalism’ is superior. Yet they would not bomb their own cities like they bombed Belgrade or Falluja or remote Afghan villages. Clearly, the ‘moral universalism’ of the human rights lobby is itself relative: it is turned on and off to conform to geopolitical interests. It was never much more than a propaganda slogan anyway.

Increasingly, the doctrine of human rights is itself a cause of suffering, oppression and injustice. Increasingly, the argument that superpowers have a ‘moral duty’ to enforce human rights, is used in the same way as the doctrine of the ‘civilising mission’ once was used to justify colonialism. Since this was first written, it appears that the civilising mission – or at least crusades in defence of western civilisation – are not quite dead yet. American reactions to the attacks of 11 September 2001 have re-emphasised the so-called “Clash of Civilizations”. In that vision of history and geopolitics, democracy, freedom, and human rights are seen as universally valid, and yet historically specific to western civilisation. They are seen as a gift, which the West must bring to the rest of the world, or at least defend against the rest of the world. The position presented below is a rejection of human rights, without any appeal to cultural relativism or ethical relativism.

Human rights, sovereignty and military intervention

Universal human rights and sovereignty are two separate issues. It is possible to believe in universal human rights, but also in national sovereignty. In fact, until recently, this was the standard view among foreign policy elites.

A justification of intervention does not logically follow from human rights, even if those rights are violated. Interventionists try to suggest that it does, but they never explain the logic on this assertion. The assertion that military intervention is necessary in the face of clear human rights violations, is emotional propaganda. It is often successful, but it is not ethics. If, for instance, children are being tortured to death in Eritrea, then this is wrong. It is not necessary to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to know it is wrong. But whatever grounds you have for finding it wrong, it does not follow that the US Marines can legitimately invade Eritrea. The tactic of interventionists is usually to massively publicise the violations, and to imply that opponents of the intervention are accomplices.

The torture does not automatically produce a moral entitlement to intervention (breach of sovereignty). Even if the torture did create such an entitlement, it does not automatically follow that it must be a military intervention. And even if the torture creates an entitlement to military intervention, it does not automatically follow that the United States ‘owns’ that entitlement. All of these are separate steps, separate events, which need separate moral justification. With or without human rights, universal or not.

Human-right interventionism is in any case historically recent. For centuries great powers justified their wars, with speaking of human rights. The atrocity story is a traditional part of wartime propaganda, but it is only since the 1950’s that it is called a ‘human rights violation’ – And not every legitimation of intervention is formulated in human-rights terms – the Genocide Convention, for instance, simply prohibits genocide. But in the media and political rhetoric, these formal distinctions are often ignored. (Genocide is referred to as a ‘human rights violation’, although it is more accurate to call it a crime in international law). Since the emergence of the mass media in 19th-century western states, it is the emotional impact of the atrocity story which counts.

Of course, there are atrocities which exercise a powerful emotional appeal. If a future Eritrean dictator personally tortures children on a live CNN broadcast, the interventionist pressure would be intense. No doubt President Bush would think about sending in the US Marines. But what if Osama bin Ladin offers to rescue the children? Would they get American weapons to do so? When I first wrote that rhetorical question, before the September 11 attacks, my answer was: No: I think President Bush would suddenly feel that the rescue of the children had less priority. So would the majority of the US population. My assessment was, that the national interests of the USA would override any concern for human rights, any revulsion at atrocities. After September 11, that assessment was proved right. Countries such as Pakistan and Tadzikistan were suddenly promoted from ‘human-rights abusers’ to allies. And conversely the US gives no more aid to Osama bin Ladin – but the US had no problems with him, when he was fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Until September 2001, western powers sought to justify foreign wars by reference to human rights abuses, and other atrocities. That is no longer necessary, at least not for the American public. If the President convinces them than Osama bin Ladin is hiding in Antarctica, they will support a war on Antarctica. No foreign incident, however horrific, could match the impact of a spectacular attack of an American city. In retrospect, this undermines the pretensions of previous western military interventions, which where justified from abuses and atrocities – as in Bosnia. Western public outrage at the siege of Sarajevo was perhaps the most important factor behind that intervention. It is now clear, that such emotions are false and hypocritical. The outrage at atrocities is turned on and off, according to the political and geopolitical reality of the day. It is these realities which determine the interventionist human rights rhetoric: interventionists are insincere.

So where is the moral or cultural relativism? In the example described above, it is President Bush who is the relativist. His desire to rescue the child victims would be strong, if the US Marines do the rescuing – but not if the rescue is a propaganda victory for his worst enemies (Saddam or Osama bin Ladin, for example). I think this is a realistic assessment of how Bush thinks – it’s not the atrocities that count, it’s the war. The American public appears to share that kind of relativism.

The idea, that any human rights violation automatically legitimises any western military action, obviously has no moral basis. This short-cut is an evasion of the moral and political issues. However, interventionists are often successful in this evasion, partly because of the semi-sacred status of human rights. I will now consider the legitimacy of that status.

 

Definition and ethics of human rights

A human right is an ethical construction used to justify a harmful act against another person, by claiming that undergoing the harmful act is an absolute moral entitlement, and that accordingly the harmful action can not be judged morally wrong. For instance, a man who wants to rape a woman would say, that women have a ‘right to sex’, and that his action was beyond moral judgment, because in raping the woman he was respecting a universal right. Rights are not intended to improve the conditions of the person who gets the rights, but to legitimise the actions of the person who declares them. In practice, it is not individuals but states which declare rights, and they are used to justify state policy.

Some people in history have indeed claimed rights – but most have had their rights declared for them by others. They are not allowed to renounce these ‘declared rights’. The idea that a person must accept all rights declared for them, clearly contradicts the idea of political freedom. The human-rights tradition includes no element of consent. It is these aspects, which make the doctrine of human rights a license for oppression. Generally, rights have the following characteristics…

• a right is declared by one person or organisation, for another person
• usually, a right is declared by one person or organisation, for all human beings
• the consent of the other person or persons is not necessary, for the right to be declared
• there are certain actions (or restraint from certain actions) which constitute ‘respect’ of the right
• these actions (or restraint from action) may legitimately be taken
• there is usually a moral duty to take these actions (or restrain from certain action)
• the person with the ‘right’ has no moral grounds to oppose this action of respecting – even if they have not consented to the right in the first place
• therefore there are certain actions which may legitimately be taken against another, since they fulfil a moral obligation to respect a right, and these actions do not constitute a harm
• since there is a moral obligation to these actions, they are not wrong, even if consent for them is explicitly refused, and even if the person affected considers them a harm

Those are far-reaching claims by the rights theorists, and the human rights lobby. It is obvious, even from this summary, that the logic of rights interferes with the principle of moral autonomy.

Formally, what happens when a right is declared? The standard answer is: it creates a moral duty to respect it. But that is not all that happens. A right, once its existence is recognised, effectively divides all possible human actions into three categories: actions which respect that right, violations of the right, and actions which are neutral with respect to that right. Declaring a right is a declaration of a desired course of action, not necessarily action by the holders of the right. Implicitly, the declaration of a right promotes and legitimises actions to enforce that right. The ‘right not to be tortured’ is at first sight a classic claim right of torture victims. It appears to create en entitlement for the victim, the entitlement that the torture stops. But the present political reality is that it is interpreted as an entitlement to prevent torture. This entitlement is claimed to legitimise a wide variety of acts, usually hostile acts by one state against another state. In other words, although the ‘right not to be tortured’ appears to be a concession by states to individuals, in reality it is a power claim by states. It is the creation of an entitlement to make war and impose sanctions. The formal declaration may say “right not to be tortured”, but the Pentagon reads this as ‘”right to bomb torturers” – including a right to cause collateral damage.

Within states, the declaration of a right is an act comparable to law-giving, in the way that kings gave law. It is essentially a command or decree: do this, don’t do that. Implicitly, the law is intended for enforcement, and is assumed to create an entitlement to enforce it. So declarations of rights are ‘rule’, in the political science sense. If a king does write the laws for a territory, without any other legislature, then normally the king would be described as the ‘ruler’ of that territory. If the king has the means to generally enforce those laws, then the king exercises political power, again in the political science sense. A political scientist who arrives in an unknown territory, asks: “Who writes the laws here?”, “Who raises taxes here?”, “Who commands the army here?” The answers to these questions indicate who rules the territory, and who controls the State (if there is a state). But it is equally possible to ask: “Who declares the rights here?”

Declarations of rights are therefore fundamentally political acts, acts of policy. Anyone who issues and enforces declarations of rights is exercising political power. As you would expect, it is normally governments, and inter-governmental organisations, which issue the declarations. It is not an activity of oppressed individuals, as suggested by the propaganda of claim rights.

As such, human rights are the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings: as long as the populace believed that God appointed the king to rule, his rule was considered legitimate. In the last 200 years ‘popular sovereignty’ replaced ‘divine right’ – all nation states now claim to derive their legitimacy from the people. But unnoticed by political scientists, the proliferation of rights has created a parallel system of political legitimacy. Governments can appeal to human rights to justify their actions – without necessarily claiming to act in the name of the people. Rights doctrines have not yet displaced popular sovereignty as political legitimation, but over a generation or more, they might.

 

Human rights: opposing principles

Another way to illustrate the logic of rights, is to look at how rights could be ethically acceptable. The table below compares the standard view of human rights with a fictional ethic of rights, which would be more acceptable.

THE STANDARD CLAIMS ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS	AN ETHICALLY IMPROVED TYPE OF RIGHTS
Rights are declared without consultation, let alone consent.	Rights are voluntary. They can not be imposed on a person without consent.
Declarations of rights impose the same set of rights on everyone.	Every person is free to chose their own rights, if any.
International bodies, usually associations of nation states, declare most rights.	Specifically, the state or international organisations may not declare rights for persons, unless those persons participated in the formulation of those rights, and expressed their consent.
Every right must be respected, all the time, in all cases.	It is not in itself good to respect a right. Every right is itself subject to ethical assessment, to moral judgment. It can be wrong to respect a right, even a right that has been consented to.
Respecting a right is always good: it is never a harm or an injustice. Therefore it is not necessary to ask permission for any action done to a person, if that action constitutes respect of a right.	An action done to a person, to respect the rights of that person, can be a harm to that person. Each person is morally autonomous in deciding what constitutes a harm to themselves.
Rights are eternal, and involve no choice for the individual.	Rights may be renounced at any time.
No formal procedure to amend rights exists, certainly not for the individual.	There should be an impartial procedure of appeal against rights. Obviously this function can not be exercised by pro-rights organisations, such as the United Nations.
My enemies can agree to declare that I have a “right”, which in reality is a disadvantage for me.	An agreement on rights can not bind persons, who have not entered into the agreement.
Rights, once declared, must simply be accepted without question.	Objections of conscience to any right are valid.

This table shows how far the present human rights are from the fictional concept. No supporter of human rights would ever accept anything like these suggested limits, and that illustrates their arrogance toward those affected by their policies.

The UN-declared human rights

The present debate on human rights and sovereignty is largely concerned with a specific set of rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Declaration was approved by the United Nations in December 1948. In this case, the failure of ethical legitimacy is clear. The human rights lobby claims, that this document is morally binding on the whole world, forever. But what basis does that claim have?

The Declaration was certainly not approved by the whole world in any real sense. The text was decided by the diplomatic representatives of UN member states. No other persons or organisations participated in the negotiations on the text. These states were the victorious allied powers of 1945, and their allies, with a few others. They did not even approximate the present membership of the United Nations…

• In many cases, the government and political system in these states had been installed in 1944 and 1945 by Allied military action. (In Europe especially, the Soviet Union and the US manipulated the political process to obtain the desired government, inside their new spheres of influence). Even by the limited standards of parliamentary elections, those governments did not ‘represent’ their inhabitants. In some countries, such as Greece and China, a civil war was in progress.
• Some of the signatory states were, at the time, de facto protectorates of Allied powers – such as Persia, Egypt and Iraq. Others were self-ruled colonies, but with a whites-only government, such as Australia and South Africa.
• Several of the states excluded large sections of the population from any political influence – such as the remains of the German minorities in Eastern Europe at the time. Germany and Japan themselves were under military occupation, and not represented.
• Some of the States – Afghanistan, for instance – had no modern political system of any kind. Afghanistan in 1948 was no more a western democracy than it was under the Taliban.
• Most notably, Africa was ‘represented’ by colonial powers. At the time, most held no elections of any kind, in colonial territory. Often, all political activity by ‘natives’ was forbidden.

Probably only five governments decided, without outside pressure, their position on the Declaration: the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and Mexico. All others were, to a greater or lesser extent, dependent on their protecting power (or colonial power). The text was ultimately a compromise, between the United States and the Soviet Union. The USA was the initiator in this process, and the Soviet Union was on the defensive. The Declaration is, without doubt, a primary historical text of the Cold War.

Far from ‘claiming’ the rights in the Declaration, most of the world population never even saw the text before it was approved. Probably the majority could not even understand the few official languages, in which it was available. The text is still not available in the majority of the languages spoken on earth.

No political process of any kind was available to the population of even the signatory states, concerning the text of the Declaration. It was purely an intergovernmental affair. No election was held in any country, with the text as an election issue. No referendum, or any other form of test, was held to approve the text, in any country. There was no ratification procedure of any kind, since the Universal Declaration is not a Treaty. Despite the rhetoric about individual and inalienable human rights, no individual ever formally consented to the document, as an individual. The United Nations never organised any consent procedure. For the majority of the world population, consent in 1948 was not an option anyway: they were not born yet. I am obliged to accept the contents, even though it was approved before I was born, and any influence on its contents was therefore impossible.

There is no procedure for revision of the Declaration. There is no procedure for periodic review, let alone periodic re-approval. The Declaration is therefore considered to apply indefinitely, beyond the lifetime of those who drafted it, and without any possibility of amending it or annulling it. Their descendants will, apparently, forever be bound by the Declaration. There is no independent appeal against its contents, or against the rights imposed, or against the application of the Declaration by the United Nations. Specifically, there is no independent appeal procedure, against military action to enforce it. If the UN decides tomorrow, that it is necessary to destroy Beijing with a nuclear weapon, to enforce human rights, then no-one can take any legal steps against this decision. Neither the individual residents, nor the Chinese government, nor any organisation, can appeal – certainly not to the International Court. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is considered beyond appeal, in fact beyond all legal procedure.

The mythology says that I, and other humans, demanded human rights – and the UN graciously consented. The reality is that a geopolitical coalition of great powers drafted a decree, and enforced it militarily and politically.

This is a very weak ethical basis, for what is now regarded as the basic document of the United Nations, overriding the UN Charter (which guarantees national sovereignty). If the United States colonises Africa in 2020, then it will probably refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as the legal basis for its actions. And since the United States is now the only superpower capable of doing this, and no other power can successfully oppose it, the temptation will be great. Because of its claimed universal and absolute force, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an emergent license for global conquest, in a unipolar world.

Human rights are clearly political

There is no doubt, that the doctrine of human rights belongs within a specific political tradition: the broad European liberal tradition. Human rights have also become a central element, in recent Anglo-American democratic liberalism (the type of political philosophy represented by John Rawls). But the liberal tradition is only one section of European political thought. Not only are human rights not universal, they are not even ‘western’ or ‘European’. I have completely rejected human rights, but my background is as European as liberalism. My rejection is certainly not African or Asian, in cultural or philosophical terms. Human rights are not culturally specific, they are politically specific. The human rights doctrine is a classic political ideology.

The imposition of human rights on the world, is the imposition of that political ideology. And with it comes the rest of the liberal package. The supporters of human rights are also the supporters of free trade, democracy, an open society and the free market. Two recent military interventions to protect rights, in Timor and Kosovo, have also brought open free-market economies to these regions. In organisations like the NATO or the OSCE, the free market and human rights are always referred to together, as if they were the same thing. And because of that, in practice, they are. The long-term geopolitical reality is of an ideological war of global conquest, by a small number of market-democratic states: human rights form part of the ideology of this conquest.

 

 http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/

 

 

 

 

 

‘America’s Outrageous War Economy!’

Pentagon can’t find $2.3 trillion, wasting trillions on ‘national defense’

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

Yes, America’s economy is a war economy. Not a “manufacturing” economy. Not an “agricultural” economy. Nor a “service” economy. Not even a “consumer” economy.
Seriously, I looked into your eyes, America, saw deep into your soul. So let’s get honest and officially call it “America’s Outrageous War Economy.” Admit it: we secretly love our war economy. And that’s the answer to Jim Grant’s thought-provoking question last month in the Wall Street Journal — “Why No Outrage?”

There really is only one answer: Deep inside we love war. We want war. Need it. Relish it. Thrive on war. War is in our genes, deep in our DNA. War excites our economic brain. War drives our entrepreneurial spirit. War thrills the American soul. Oh just admit it, we have a love affair with war. We love “America’s Outrageous War Economy.”
Americans passively zone out playing video war games. We nod at 90-second news clips of Afghan war casualties and collateral damage in Georgia. We laugh at Jon Stewart’s dark comedic news and Ben Stiller’s new war spoof “Tropic Thunder” … all the while silently, by default, we’re cheering on our leaders as they aggressively expand “America’s Outrageous War Economy,” a relentless machine that needs a steady diet of war after war, feeding on itself, consuming our values, always on the edge of self-destruction.
Why else are Americans so eager and willing to surrender 54% of their tax dollars to a war machine, which consumes 47% of the world’s total military budgets?

Why are there more civilian mercenaries working for no-bid private war contractors than the total number of enlisted military in Iraq (180,000 to 160,000), at an added cost to taxpayers in excess of $200 billion and climbing daily?
Why do we shake our collective heads “yes” when our commander-in-chief proudly tells us he is a “war president;” and his party’s presidential candidate chants “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” as if “war” is a celebrity hit song?
Why do our spineless Democrats let an incompetent, blundering executive branch hide hundreds of billions of war costs in sneaky “supplemental appropriations” that are more crooked than Enron’s off-balance-sheet deals?
Why have Washington’s 537 elected leaders turned the governance of the American economy over to 42,000 greedy self-interest lobbyists?
And why earlier this year did our “support-our-troops” “war president” resist a new GI Bill because, as he said, his military might quit and go to college rather than re-enlist in his war; now we continue paying the Pentagon’s warriors huge $100,000-plus bonuses to re-up so they can keep expanding “America’s Outrageous War Economy?” Why? Because we secretly love war!

We’ve lost our moral compass: The contrast between today’s leaders and the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 shocks our conscience. Today war greed trumps morals. During the Revolutionary War our leaders risked their lives and fortunes; many lost both.
Today it’s the opposite: Too often our leaders’ main goal is not public service but a ticket to building a personal fortune in the new “America’s Outrageous War Economy,” often by simply becoming a high-priced lobbyist.
Ultimately, the price of our greed may be the fulfillment of Kevin Phillips’ warning in “Wealth and Democracy:” “Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out.”
‘National defense’ a propaganda slogan selling a war economy?
But wait, you ask: Isn’t our $1.4 trillion war budget essential for “national defense” and “homeland security?” Don’t we have to protect ourselves?
Sorry folks, but our leaders have degraded those honored principles to advertising slogans. They’re little more than flag-waving excuses used by neocon war hawks to disguise the buildup of private fortunes in “America’s Outrageous War Economy.”
America may be a ticking time bomb, but we are threatened more by enemies within than external terrorists, by ideological fanatics on the left and the right. Most of all, we are under attack by our elected leaders who are motivated more by pure greed than ideology. They terrorize us, brainwashing us into passively letting them steal our money to finance “America’s Outrageous War Economy,” the ultimate “black hole” of corruption and trickle-up economics.
You think I’m kidding? I’m maybe too harsh? Sorry but others are far more brutal. Listen to the ideologies and realities eating at America’s soul.

1. Our toxic ‘war within’ is threatening America’s soul

How powerful is the Pentagon’s war machine? Trillions in dollars. But worse yet: Their mindset is now locked deep in our DNA, in our collective conscience, in America’s soul. Our love of war is enshrined in the writings of neocon war hawks like Norman Podoretz, who warns the Iraq War was the launching of “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” a reminder that we could be occupying Iraq for a hundred years. His WW IV also reminded us of the coming apocalyptic end-of-days “war of civilizations” predicted by religious leaders in both Christian and Islamic worlds two years ago.
In contrast, this ideology has been challenged in works like Craig Unger’s “American Armageddon: How the Delusions of the Neoconservatives and the Christian Right Triggered the Descent of America — and Still Imperil Our Future.”
Unfortunately, neither threat can be dismissed as “all in our minds” nor as merely ideological rhetoric. Trillions of tax dollars are in fact being spent to keep the Pentagon war machine aggressively planning and expanding wars decades in advance, including spending billions on propaganda brainwashing naïve Americans into co-signing “America’s Outrageous War Economy.” Yes, they really love war, but that “love” is toxic for America’s soul.

 
2. America’s war economy financed on blank checks to greedy

Read Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes’ “$3 Trillion War.” They show how our government’s deceitful leaders are secretly hiding the real long-term costs of the Iraq War, which was originally sold to the American taxpayer with a $50 billion price tag and funded out of oil revenues.
But add in all the lifetime veterans’ health benefits, equipment placement costs, increased homeland security and interest on new federal debt, and suddenly taxpayers got a $3 trillion war tab!

3. America’s war economy has no idea where its money goes

Read Portfolio magazine’s special report “The Pentagon’s $1 Trillion Problem.” The Pentagon’s 2007 budget of $440 billion included $16 billion to operate and upgrade its financial system. Unfortunately “the defense department has spent billions to fix its antiquated financial systems but still has no idea where its money goes.”
And it gets worse: Back “in 2000, Defense’s inspector general told Congress that his auditors stopped counting after finding $2.3 trillion in unsupported entries.” Yikes, our war machine has no records for $2.3 trillion! How can we trust anything they say?

4. America’s war economy is totally ‘unmanageable’

For decades Washington has been waving that “national defense” flag, to force the public into supporting “America’s Outrageous War Economy.” Read John Alic’s “Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why It Costs So Much.”
A former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment staffer, he explains why weapon systems cost the Pentagon so much, “why it takes decades to get them into production even as innovation in the civilian economy becomes ever more frenetic and why some of those weapons don’t work very well despite expenditures of many billions of dollars,” and how “the internal politics of the armed services make weapons acquisition almost unmanageable.” Yes, the Pentagon wastes trillions planning its wars well in advance.
Comments? Tell us: What will it take to wake up America, get citizens, investors, anybody mad at “America’s Outrageous War Economy?”

Why don’t you rebel? Will the outrage come too late … after this massive war bubble explodes in our faces?

Link

Russia seizes US vehicles

By John Matthew Hall and AP

Russian soldiers in a armored personnel carrier tow away a US-built Humvee, in the Black Sea port city of Poti. Russian soldiers today held blindfolded Georgian servicemen at gunpoint and commandeered US Humvees in a dramatic sequence of events in Poti, a key Black Sea port.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe stated that if Russia has seized any US military equipment in Georgia, it must return it immediately.

In Poti, on the Black Sea, Russian forces blocked access to the naval and commercial ports this morning and towed the missile boat Dioskuria, one of the navy’s most sophisticated vessels, out of sight of observers. A loud explosion was heard minutes later.

Several hours later, an Associated Press photographer saw Russian trucks and armored personnel carriers leaving the port with about 20 blindfolded and handcuffed men riding on them. Port spokesman Eduard Mashevoriani said the men were Georgian soldiers.

The Russians also took with them four Humvees that were at the port awaiting shipment back to the United States after taking part in earlier US-Georgian military exercises.

The deputy head of Russia’s general staff, Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said in Moscow that Russian forces plan to remain in Poti until a local administration is formed, but did not give further details. He also justified previous seizures of Georgian soldiers as necessary to crack down on soldiers who were “out of any kind of control … acting without command.”

A small column of Russian tanks and armored vehicles left Gori on Tuesday, and a Russian officer said they were heading back to South Ossetia and then Russia. It was the first sign of a Russian pullback of troops from Georgia.

The column, which also apparently included a mobile rocket-launcher, passed the village of Ruisi, outside Gori on the road to South Ossetia on Tuesday afternoon.

Col. Igor Konoshenkov, a Russian military officer, told The Associated Press at the scene the unit was headed for South Ossetia and, ultimately, back to Russia. He gave no timetable for when the unit would reach Russia.

Konoshenkov said it was part of the Russian pullback mandated by a cease-fire that requires both sides to return to positions held before fighting broke out Aug. 7 in South Ossetia, a separatist Georgian province with close ties to Russia.

Elsewhere, Russia they exchanged POWs with Georgia and pulled back some troops from the strategic city of Gori. It was a day of deeply mixed messages that left the small, war-battered country full of anxiety about whether Russia was aiming for a long-term military presence in Georgia or whether it was just trying to inflict maximum damage before adhering to a EU-brokered cease-fire and troop pullout.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-seizes-us-vehicles-902432.html

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Top US General In Georgia For Talks On Military Aid

The top U.S. military commander in Europe, Gen. John Craddock, arrived in Tbilisi Thursday for talks on rebuilding Georgia’s armed forces, which were routed by Russia two weeks ago.

“I’m sure we are going to talk about their military,” Craddock, who is also the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s supreme allied commander in Europe, told reporters after arriving in Tbilisi from Brussels.

“We will have to help them rebuild because they are a partner in the war on terror. They are going to ask us, I’m sure, to replace and rebuild. I think that is probably what will happen.”

Craddock was to meet with President Mikhail Saakashvili and Georgian military leaders during his two-day visit to Tbilisi.

The U.S. provided military training to Georgia, which contributed troops to Iraq, and has been a strong supporter of Georgia’s bid to join NATO.

Asked if any U.S. trainers were involved in fighting with Russia, Craddock said: “I have no information. I cannot confirm or deny that. We have no one missing. There were no reports of anyone wounded among U.S. trainers.”

Link

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India places two billion dollar order for Russian missiles

Designers of the Indo-Russian supersonic cruise missile BrahMos hope to receive an order for the production of missiles for submarines of the Indian Navy, the chairman of board of directors of the joint-venture, Alexander Dergachev said.

“The missiles will be made for submarines of the Indian Navy. The nearest order is seven submarines. We do not know yet when exactly it is going to happen. I hope soon,” the official said at a press conference devoted to ten years since the establishment of the joint venture BrahMos.

Dergachev said that India would announce the tender for seven submarines in the nearest future. Submarine-makers from Russia and other countries of the world will participate in the tender. The tender stipulates BrahMos cruise missiles for the submarines.

Sivathanu Pilai, the chief executive of the Indo-Russian aerospace joint venture BrahMos, stated that India already had a contract for the production of six submarines on the base of Scorpio project (France).

India’s order to the joint enterprise is evaluate at $2 billion, Pilai said. BrahMos makes land and sea-based supersonic cruise missiles for the Indian Armed Forces.

BrahMos Aerospace is a joint Indo-Russian venture established in 1998 to design, develop, produce and market a unique supersonic cruise missile.

BrahMos is a supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft or land. The acronym BrahMos is perceived as the confluence of the two nations represented by two great rivers, the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia. It is a joint venture between India’s Defense Research and Development Organization and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroeyenia who have together formed the BrahMos Corp. Propulsion is based on the Russian Yakhont missile, and guidance has been developed by BrahMos Corp. At speeds of Mach 2.5 to 2.8, is the world’s fastest cruise missile. It is about three and a half times faster than the American subsonic Harpoon cruise missile.

Between late 2004 and early 2008, the missile has undergone several tests from variety of platforms including a land based test from Pokhran desert, in which the S maneuver at Mach 2.8 was demonstrated for the Indian Army and a launch in which the land attack capability from sea was demonstrated.

Source > Pravda.ru

http://www.effedieffe.com/content/view/4222/183

French troops ‘killed by Nato jets’

Sarkozy said he had no regrets about sending 700 more troops to Kabul.

Reports that 10 French soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan after being mistakenly attacked by Nato aircraft are to be “looked into,” officials for the military alliance have said.

France’s Le Monde newspaper quoted French soldiers who had survived the ambush near Kabul on Monday saying they were hit in a “friendly fire” incident.

The soldiers told the newspaper they waited for four hours for back-up after being ambushed.

But when Nato planes finally arrived they hit French troops after missing their target, the newspaper quoted the soldiers as saying.

A Nato official said on Wednesday: “I have nothing substantive to confirm or deny this particular suggestion.

“We are aware of the media reports and therefore we have to look into it.”

The official said the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) “would probably defer in the first instance to the French authorities,” in the investigation.

Afghan ‘quagmire’

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “We have no reports of any casualties caused by close air support.” Asked whether French soldiers had been killed or wounded by friendly fire, he said there were “no reports of that”.  The French army has refused to comment, the AFP news agency reported. The comments came after Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, visited survivors of the incident at a French military base on the outskirts of Kabul on Wednesday. He reaffirmed his government’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan, saying: “We have to be here.”  Speaking from Kabul, where he met Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, Sarkozy said he had no regrets about sending 700 reinforcements to the French contingent, adding: “If it had to be done again, I would do it.

“This is where the fight against terrorism is being waged.”

No statements

Al Jazeera correspondent Zeina Khodr said: “Sarkozy did not make any statements after his talks with president Karzai – just a photo op – leaving many questions unanswered.

“The main questions now: how will the loss of soldiers affect the French mission here and also Sarkozy’s decision to send reinforcements as promised earlier this year.”

The bodies of the 10 dead French soldiers were returned home on Wednesday as politicians and journalists questioned why France had got itself involved in the Afghan “quagmire”.

“A war without end,” read a headline in the Liberation newspaper, whose editorial nonetheless concluded that, for France and the 40 other nations with troops in Afghanistan, “the worst solution would obviously be withdrawal”.

Francois Hollande, a Socialist party leader who had previously criticised Sarkozy’s decision to send an additional 700 troops to the region, said parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee should meet.

He said: “It is a moment for contemplation … But there also has to be a time for reflection on the sense of our presence in Afghanistan.”

Public opposition

Sarkozy’s decision in April, after heavy pressure from Nato allies, to send an extra 700 French troops to Afghanistan, to bring their number to about 3,000, was
hugely unpopular in the country.

Opinion polls showed a large majority of French opposed the move, with many fearing that France would get bogged down in an unending war whose aims were unclear or unattainable.

About 70,000 international troops, 40,000 of them with a Nato-led force, are fighting alongside Afghan security forces against Taliban fighters whose government was removed in a US-led invasion in 2001.

On Wednesday, Pierre Lellouche, the deputy of Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party, who has been tasked with writing a report on the situation in Afghanistan, said Nato’s strategy “was failing, both on the political and the military level” and must be overhauled.

“Its objectives may be just, but is the strategy being used to achieve them the right one?” asked an editorial in the conservative Le Figaro daily newspaper.

“It is only by leaving behind local forces capable of containing the Taliban that Western soldiers will be able, one day, to get out of the Afghan quagmire without giving the impression that they have lost the war,” it said.

“The question now,” said Bruno Jeanbart of the polling institute OpinionWay, “is whether public opinion will be reinforced in its feeling of the uselessness of the French presence in Afghanistan, or will the public rally round their soldiers in difficulty, and become more favourable to it?”

The latest casualties bring to 24 the number of French troops killed in action or in accidents in Afghanistan since French soldiers were first sent there in 2002.

It was the deadliest attack on French troops since a 1983 assault in Beirut in which 58 French paratroopers serving in a UN force were killed.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/08/2008820131543116429.html

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AFGHANISTAN: 17 Civilians killed in NATO-led Operation in Laghman

Muslims, Jews and the free speech debate

By Sarah El Sirgany

Last year, a Spanish court found two cartoonists guilty of offending the royal family by drawing a caricature of the Spanish crown prince having sex with his wife. They were fined €3,000 each.

“I don’t see the world up in arms defending freedom of expression,” my editor told me after listening to the news on the radio.

Throughout this year, nothing substantial happened to defend this cartoonist, condemn the Spanish royal family for trying to muffle the press, or any reprints of the caricature in defense of the paper’s courageous decision to run it. And no Muslim demonstrations were held to condemn double standards.

A year later, the world is actually up in arms to defend another cartoonist, this time in France. Before you hold your breath in anticipation, it isn’t another cartoon attacking Islam; it’s a satirical editorial about French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s son, which espoused what critics called “anti-Semitic” sentiments.

French daily Le Monde ran a letter condemning the editorial, in which 20 writers and politicians said that Maurice Sinet, known as Sine (who was convicted for racism in 1985) “crossed the line between humorous insult and hateful caricature,” in his column in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. 

The magazine’s editor Philippe Val said Sine was sacked for remarks that “could be interpreted as drawing a link between conversion to Judaism and social success” relaying the old stereotype linking Jews and money, the Agence France-Presse said in its report. 

Val is the very same editor who decided to reprint the infamous Danish cartoons — described by politicians as “unnecessary provocation” — and who later won a case against French Muslims who had accused him of inciting hatred against Muslims.

Val, who was backed by a group of international writers and politicians in defense of freedom of expression, had said at the time that it would be racist to “imagine that they [Muslims] can’t understand a joke.”

Even for someone like me, who believes that the Danish cartoon saga is a product of ignorance and lack of communication rather than a deliberate campaign against Islam, the comparison between the two cases imposes itself, triggering debate, not about conspiracy theories, but about double standards.

Muslims, particularly those living in Europe, are accustomed to court rulings convicting historians for Holocaust denial — a crime in 13 countries which is often confused with historical revisionism. And if it weren’t for the ongoing sensitivity of the issue, these crimes/historical papers would have been confined to the realm of scientific debate, rather than court rooms.

This is but one of many anti-Semitic “criminal violations” that stand in contrast to Muslims’ futile attempts to stop the negative representation of Islamic symbols which reinforces the notion that Islam is synonymous to violence — a notion propagated by a vocal minority of extremists. 

And Muslim communities are bound to compare themselves to their Jewish counterparts. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the hallmark of our era, the preoccupation of both our generation and that of our parents’. It’s at the core of every discussion and debate that remotely relates to both communities and faiths.

An Indian Hindu friend, who explained to me that his initial hatred towards Muslims was a result of the Indian-Pakistani conflict, was surprised to learn that this conflict doesn’t receive much attention in the Arab World; people here are too consumed by the Israeli-Palestinian issue to take notice of other international conflicts involving Muslims. 

These comparisons can be found in both the literature and cultural products of the Arab World and of the West. In one Dutch film about multicultural societies, a teenager asks why Jewish youngsters who go to Israel to join the army are considered heroes, while their Muslim counterparts who consider going to Iraq or Palestine are automatically branded as terrorists.

“Why should it be possible to criticize Islam but not Judaism?”

It wasn’t anyone in the Muslim community who said this, but Sine’s own supporters in an online petition against firing the writer for refusing to apologize for the article.

It is ironic that the editor who was once lauded for winning one of the most important court cases about freedom of expression — publishing cartoons depicting Prophet Mohamed wearing a bomb-shaped turban among others — has fired one of his own veteran writers for making indirect links between Judaism and upward social mobility.

Jean Sarkozy “has just said he intends to convert to Judaism before marrying his fiancée, who is Jewish, and the heiress to the founders of Darty [a French retail giant]. … He’ll go far, that lad,” was what Sine had written to get into all that trouble.

It is these double standards — especially within such short time frames — that fuel social unrest and feelings of frustration and injustice among citizens of any community, not to mention the international community.

It’s no surprise that “conspiracy theories” come up in many conversations.

Sarah El-Sirgany is the Deputy Editor of Daily News Egypt.

Algérie : l’Etat reprend le contrôle de l’économie, les idées de LaRouche trouvent un écho

Après plus d’une décennie de soumission aux politiques destructrices du FMI, sous lesquelles l’état algérien a complètement perdu le contrôle de son économie, ce dernier vient d’opérer un changement stratégique dans la conduite des affaires du pays en optant pour une politique « protectionniste ».

Le président de la république Abdelaziz Bouteflika avait vivement critiqué l’attitude des investisseurs étrangers qui ont pu s’enrichir au détriment du pays grâce à de larges facilitations permettant de sortir d’énormes capitaux résultant de l’exemption des taxes et d’une fiscalité avantageuse.

En effet, la dernière note de conjoncture de la Banque d’Algérie datée de juillet indique que les banques étrangères en Algérie ont enregistré en 2007 un taux de rentabilité exceptionnellement élevé de 28,01%. Ce taux est en forte hausse par rapport à 2006 où il n’était que de 23,40%. Le document affirme également que les sociétés étrangères établies en Algérie ont transféré, durant la période allant de 2005 à 2007, 15,7 milliards de dollars, qui, ajoutés aux 6,5 milliards de dollars de 2001 et 2004, font un total de 22,2 milliards de dollars de 2001 à 2007.

Dans le même temps, l’Algérie a reçu des « intentions d’investissements » (des promesses) directs étrangers atteignant seulement 13,53 milliards de dollars de 2001 à 2007, dont 60% émanaient d’investisseurs arabes. Ce niveau est donc bien en deçà des gains transférés à l’étranger !

Mais c’est peut-être la cession des cimenteries de Mascara et de M’sila, dans une opération purement financière, au géant français Lafarge, puis l’annonce de la vente de la société de télecom Djezzy à France Télécom, qui ont provoqué la prise de conscience de l’état algérien qui a décidé le rachat des actifs de Djezzy. Car dans les deux cas, c’est le consortium égyptien Orascom qui s’est enrichi en vendant ses deux filiales sans aucun bénéfice pour la nation algérienne.

« La cession de ces cimenteries par le groupe égyptien à une autre entreprise étrangère a suscité le mécontentement des pouvoirs publics, qui ont décidé de mettre de l’ordre dans le domaine et de revoir la stratégie de privatisation et de partenariat », a lâché le porte-parole du gouvernement Abderrachid Boukerzaza au sortir du Conseil de gouvernement.

En réponse, le Premier ministre récemment nommé, Ahmed Ouyahia, a décidé début août un changement de cap. D’abord, il compte bloquer la vente de Djezzy à France Télecom, et il fait tout pour éviter d’autres « épisodes Lafarge et Djezzy ».

L’Etat algérien exige un droit de regard destiné à empêcher les ventes de filiales de groupes étrangers sans l’aval du gouvernement. Quant à la seconde mesure lourde, stratégique celle-là, elle consiste à tourner définitivement la page des privatisations sauvages par

1. L’arrêt définitif des privatisations des banques et des compagnies d’assurances.
2. L’Algérie entend à l’avenir détenir la majorité du capital dans les structures chargées de réaliser les projets, et cela « en concordance avec ses moyens et ses intérêts nationaux et en conformité avec les usages internationaux qui ne prohibent pas un tel choix ».

C’est donc dans le contexte d’une bataille plus vaste pour la survie des états-nations qu’il est intéressant de constater que la presse algérienne donne un écho aux écrits, tant sur le plan stratégique que sur le plan de l’analyse économique et financière, à l’économiste américain Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Le 14 août, le quotidien financier Le Maghreb, le quotidien de l’économie a repris des longs passages du commentaire de LaRouche sur le déni de réalité qui frappe nos élites. Le même jour, le professeur Chems Eddine Chitour de l’Ecole Polytechnique d’Algers, dans un article conséquent dans le quotidien algérien l’Expression, sous le titre « La troisième guerre mondiale a commencé » reprend les dénonciations particulièrement pointues de LaRouche sur le rôle des britanniques dans le conflit russo-géorgien : « Ce n’est pas juste une provocation pour tirer les moustaches des Russes ou les conduire dans un piège, c’est une tentative de démembrement de la Russie. En réalité, c’est une troisième guerre mondiale qui démarre. C’est la même chose que l’attaque sur l’Iran ! Exactement la même opération. Londres attise une troisième guerre mondiale, dénonçons-le ! »

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’Algérie : ces attentats qui cachent la guerre des matières premières

par Eduardo Garcia

Dans le cadre de la visite d’état de Nicolas Sarkozy en Algérie nous avons décidé de reprendre ici cet article publié dans Nouvelle Solidarité N° 17, XIIIième annéé, du 28 septembre 2007.

Une série d’attentats de plus en plus rapprochés a ensanglanté l’Algérie ces derniers mois, révélant un réveil virulent de la guerre des clans au pouvoir au fur et à mesure que la prochaine élection présidentielle approche, sur fond de lutte entre grandes puissances pour le contrôle des matières premières algériennes, notamment gaz et pétrole. C’est la seule hypothèse possible pour expliquer l’activisme de l’Organisation d’Al-Qaida au Maghreb, née de la fusion, annoncée le 11 septembre 2006, entre l’ancien GSPC (Groupe salafiste de prédication et du combat) et Al-Qaida, revendication reçue avec le plus grand scepticisme par la plupart des experts et politiciens, vu le contexte dans lequel ces attentats sont intervenus.

Le 11 avril 2007, deux attentats suicides avaient visé le Palais du gouvernement à Alger et le Quartier général oriental de la Police à Bab Ezzouar, faisant 30 morts et plus de 200 blessés. Le 6 septembre dernier, c’est le président Bouteflika qui a échappé de peu à un attentat suicide alors qu’il se rendait en visite à Batna, dans l’est de l’Algérie, attentat qui a fait 22 morts et 107 blessés. Un nouvel attentat suicide a été commis le samedi 8 septembre à Dellys, faisant 30 morts et 47 blessés. Plus récemment, le jeudi 19 septembre, dans une vidéo de 80 minutes, le numéro deux d’Al-Qaida, Ayman al Zaouahri, a invité les musulmans à « nettoyer » le Maghreb des Français et des Espagnols, afin d’y rétablir le règne de l’islam. Dès le lendemain, ces menaces étaient mises à exécution : une bombe à faible puissance explosait devant une voiture transportant deux Français et un Italien entre Alger et le barrage de Koudiat Acerdoune, au sud-est de la capitale, pendant que deux employés d’Aéroports de Paris travaillant à Alger ont dû être évacués après avoir reçu des menaces.

Mais les autorités algériennes ainsi que la plupart des experts mettent en doute la véritable identité d’Al-Qaida au Maghreb et dénoncent plutôt des puissances étrangères comme étant à l’origine de ces attentats. Suite à l’attentat qui l’a visé, le président Bouteflika a dénoncé « des capitales étrangères et des dirigeants étrangers », pendant que son ministre de l’Intérieur, Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, précisait que c’est « le retour de l’Algérie sur la scène internationale qui, visiblement, gêne certains intérêts étrangers ».

Le retour de l’Algérie sur la scène internationale

Une analyse de ce que M. Zerhouni appelle le retour de l’Algérie sur la scène internationale révèle en effet un revirement quasi total d’alliances de l’Algérie sur le plan international. Si l’on avait pu parler d’une véritable « lune de miel » entre l’Algérie et les Etats Unis, entre 2003 et 2006, avec les visites de Donald Rumsfeld en février 2006 et de Dick Cheney en avril de la même année, dont l’un des principaux centres d’intérêt avait été la collaboration dans la « Global war on terror », cette alliance privilégiée a été clairement remise en cause par la faction au pouvoir autour du président Bouteflika.

Divers facteurs seraient à l’origine de ce changement. D’abord, l’augmentation considérable de la manne pétrolière, suite à la hausse des prix, qui donne des ailes aux ambitions des uns et des autres. Surtout, on parle de l’affaiblissement relatif des Etats-Unis à cause de ses difficultés en Irak, et a contrario, du renforcement d’autres puissances, notamment la Russie, la Chine, mais aussi le Venezuela ou l’Iran. Et comme pour le Niger, qui a récemment remis en cause le monopole de la France dans l’exploitation de l’uranium sur son territoire, la concurrence entre ces puissances a permis aux factions algériennes de s’affranchir de la toute puissante tutelle américaine.

Rappelons que les enjeux dans ce domaine sont considérables et concernent, au delà de l’Algérie, toute l’Afrique du nord et le Sahel. Selon l’expert pétrolier algérien Hocine Malti, les réserves avérées de pétrole de ces pays sont conséquentes : 39 milliards de barils pour la Libye, 31,5 milliards pour le Nigeria, 11,8 milliards pour l’Algérie, 1 milliard pour le Tchad, 700 millions pour le Sénégal, 563 millions pour le Soudan, 308 millions pour la Tunisie, 300 millions pour le Niger, 200 millions pour la Mauritanie, tandis que le Sahara Occidental aurait un sous-sol très prometteur.

C’est au niveau de la politique énergétique qu’on voit le plus clairement le changement en cours. En mai 2006, l’Algérie décidait brutalement d’abandonner la loi de privatisation des hydrocarbures qu’elle venait d’adopter un mois plus tôt. C’est vrai qu’entre-temps, M. Bouteflika avait reçu la visite d’Etat du président Hugo Chavez, du Venezuela, qui l’en avait dissuadé ! En effet cette loi préconisait le retour à l’ancien système de concession, qui aurait permis aux compagnies pétrolières internationales de disposer presque totalement du sous-sol Algérien.

Mais c’est le réchauffement considérable des relations avec la Russie depuis janvier 2007 qui confirme cette tendance. Avec un contrat d’achat d’armes d’un montant de 15 milliards de dollars signé à cette date, l’Algérie est, en effet, le premier partenaire de la Russie dans le domaine de l’armement, devançant même la Chine. Si ce contrat ne provoque pas d’inquiétude chez les principales puissances, ce n’est pas le cas pour ce qui est de l’idée de la création d’une OPEP du gaz autour d’une alliance algéro-russo-iranienne.

Cette démarche inquiète les Européens, en particulier, qui dépendent de la Russie pour 23 % de leur consommation de gaz, et de l’Algérie pour 13 %. Dans une conférence de presse donnée à Alger le 11 septembre, Christof Ruehl, l’économiste en chef de British Petroleum, déclarait que « la création d’une OPEP du gaz relève davantage de la manœuvre politique que d’une démarche à objectifs économiques », avant de la qualifier de « stupide ». La visite à Alger du président iranien Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, au cours de laquelle des accords bilatéraux ont été signés notamment dans le domaine énergétique, est venue confirmer que cette option est bel et bien sur la table. La question d’une coopération dans le domaine du nucléaire civil a aussi été soulevée.

A l’arrivée de plus en plus encombrante des sociétés pétrolières et gazières russes (Gazprom, Lukoil, Rosneft, Stroytransgaz…), il faut ajouter celle, plus discrète, des chinoises et indiennes, en revanche très présentes dans les autres pays du Sahel.

Comme au Soudan ou au Niger, la Chine, n’en déplaise à la France qui se voit contrainte d’améliorer les conditions commerciales qu’elle propose à ses anciennes colonies, est de plus en plus présente en Algérie, où elle vient de rafler quelques contrats majeurs pour la construction d’autoroutes et d’un million de logements. Autre enjeu principal où la France avance elle aussi sa propre candidature, la volonté algérienne de faire de l’année 2008 l’année de l’investissement dans le nucléaire civil, un choix appuyé par un important contrat de coopération, signé juin dernier avec les Etats-Unis. L’Algérie possède déjà deux réacteurs nucléaires et la France devra, si elle veut être compétitive, proposer mieux que les Chinois et les Russes, principaux partenaires de l’Algérie dans ce domaine.

Le prétexte pour le déploiement de l’AFRICOM

Dans le domaine sécuritaire et militaire, le renversement des alliances de l’Algérie est là aussi frappant, car de principal allié des Etats-Unis dans la lutte contre le terrorisme dans la région (notamment après la prise d’otages de touristes européens par le GSPC, en janvier 2003), elle serait aujourd’hui la cible d’un terrorisme déployé par l’administration Bush/Cheney et ses contrôleurs en Angleterre. Les questions fusent à nouveau sur la véritable identité du GPSC/Al-Qaida, car l’augmentation des attentats depuis fin 2006 coïncide étrangement avec cette réorientation de la politique étrangère algérienne, et des médias tels qu’Al Watan ou les auteurs d’Algerie Watch n’hésitent pas à établir un lien entre ces actes de « terrorisme » et les pressions faites par l’administration Bush/Cheney pour obliger les pays du Maghreb à s’aligner et à accueillir des bases militaires américaines.

Pour bon nombre de spécialistes du terrorisme algérien, le GSPC a toujours représenté la faction « dure » du pouvoir – la Direction des renseignements militaires – qui est un relais en Algérie des politiques des Anglo-Américains. Lors de la prise d’otages de 2003, par exemple, le GSPC était dirigé par Abderrezak El Para, un ancien des forces spéciales algériennes et garde de corps du général Khaled Nezzar, ancien ministre de la Défense et membre du Haut Comité d’Etat.

De plus, l’action du GSPC/Al-Qaida à travers tout le Sahel bénéficie d’une aide importante du prince Bandar, ex-ambassadeur d’Arabie saoudite aux Etats-Unis et actuel patron de la sécurité dans son pays, dont le Sahel serait la chasse gardée. Le prince Bandar a récemment été attrapé la main dans le sac à financer des groupes rebelles au Darfour et au Tchad. Actuellement, des actions en justice au Royaume Uni et aux Etats-Unis mettent en cause son rôle dans un méga contrat d’armes et de pétrole, conclu entre la monarchie britannique et le régime saoudien à l’époque de Thatcher, impliquant la compagnie anglaise d’aéronautique BAE, contrat qui permet de générer des fonds abondants pour le financement d’attentats et autres sales coups.

L’activisme du GSPC/Al-Qaida à travers tout le Maghreb joue un rôle très utile pour les Américains, leur servant de prétexte pour tenter d’imposer le déploiement de bases militaires américaines à travers toute la région dans le contexte de leur nouveau commandement africain, l’Africom. C’est dans cette visée que les Américains ont conçu leur initiative « Pan-Sahel », devenue début 2005 « Initiative transsaharienne de lutte contre le terrorisme (TSCTI) », destinée à inclure dans une stratégie militaire américaine des pays comme l’Algérie, le Tchad, le Mali, la Mauritanie, le Maroc, le Niger, le Sénégal, le Nigeria et la Tunisie. Très important pour comprendre la nouvelle série d’attentats qui frappe l’Algérie, ce pays a refusé, tout comme la Libye et le Maroc, d’accueillir sur son sol des bases américaines sous couvert de lutte contre le terrorisme et de participer au projet américain de réorganisation du grand Moyen-Orient.

L’Algérie s’attaque directement à Dick Cheney

Notons que dans la même période, Bouteflika a lancé également une attaque frontale contre Dick Cheney, en démantelant Brown, Root and Condor (BRC), une joint venture créée en 1994 par la Sonatrach (Société nationale des hydrocarbures) (41 %), le CRND (Centre de recherche nucléaire de Draria) (10 %) et KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root) (49 %), filiale d’Halliburton dont le vice-président américain est toujours actionnaire.

C’est en octobre 2006 que le gouvernement algérien a lancé une enquête pour corruption à l’encontre de cette société, gérant des contrats pétroliers et d’armement. Riche en rebondissements, l’enquête a révélé, entre autres, que BRC avait sous-traité un contrat sur le gisement de Rhourde-Nouss à une société israélienne, Bateman Litwin, propriété du milliardaire israélien Benny Steinmetz, proche de la droite israélienne. Révélatrice aussi de la guerre d’influence que se livrent différentes puissances en Algérie, ce sont les services russes qui ont révélé au gouvernement algérien que des équipements de communication sophistiqués, commandés par BRC aux Etats-Unis pour le compte de l’Etat-major général algérien, étaient connectés en permanence aux systèmes d’intelligence électronique américains et israéliens ! En septembre dernier, KBR a été contraint de céder à la Sonatrach ses parts dans BRC.

Nous avons essayé, en rassemblant tous les éléments ci-dessus, de dépeindre l’environnement international complexe dans lequel est intervenue la récente vague d’attentats en Algérie. Que certaines factions au pouvoir en Algérie soient sorties des griffes de l’administration Bush/Cheney est une bonne chose.

Cependant, le tout n’est pas de jouer les uns contre les autres, mais de rétablir une politique orientée vers le bien commun, où les ressources seront développées pour le plus grand bien de l’Algérie et de ses générations futures. Avec ses quelque 100 milliards d’euros de réserves et en travaillant de concert avec la Russie, la Chine, l’Inde et les grands pays d’Amérique du Sud pour refonder l’actuel système économique et monétaire international, l’Algérie aura une chance de sortir de la crise dans laquelle elle est plongée depuis de trop longues années.

Bibliographie :

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• Al-Qaida au Maghreb et les attentats du 11 avril 2007 à Alger, par François Gèze et Salima Mellah, dans Algeria Watch (21 avril 2007).
• Madjid Laribi, « Brown & Root Condor : une holding “militaro-énergétique”« , Le Maghrébin, 13 novembre 2006.
• « Le P-DG de BRC sous mandat de dépôt », Le Jour d’Algérie, 1er avril 2007.
• Madjid Laribi, « Que cache le dossier Brown Root & Condor », Le Maghrébin, 9 octobre 2006.
• « L’un des kamikazes était un compagnon d’El Para », Le Jour d’Algérie, 14 avril 2007.
• Hocine Malti, « De la stratégie pétrolière américaine et de la loi algérienne sur les hydrocarbures », Le Quotidien d’Oran , 9-10-11 juillet 2005.

Pour creuser le sujet : focus

Al-Qaïda au Maghreb islamique, la violence instrumentalisée par l’Europe ?

Rice in Poland to sign defence deal

Kaczynski has said the signing is an important day in Poland’s history File.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, has arrived in Poland to sign a deal that will see a US missile defence base built on the soil of the former Soviet satellite.

Rice and Radek Sikorski, her Polish counterpart, are to sign the deal on Wednesday in Warsaw, the capital, in the presence of both the Polish president and prime minister.

But the plan has infuriated Russia, which says the Poles risk attack, if the deal goes ahead.

The deal to site 10 US interceptor missiles by 2011-2013 at a base 180km from Russia’s westernmost frontier has further strained Moscow’s ties with the West.

Russia is already at war with Georgia, a former Soviet republic backed by the US.

‘Important day’

Lech Kaczynski, Poland’s president, said on Wednesday that the signing ceremony would be “an important day in our history”.

The deal “strengthens Poland’s position in the world”, Kaczynski said in a televised address on Tuesday evening.

The country has in recent years joined the EU and is wishing to join Nato.

Philip Coyle, a senior adviser with the Centre for Defence Information in Washington DC, said the Bush administration has been trying for about 18 months to reach this deal, but the timing has turned out to be “most unfortunate from a Russian point of view”.

“The tragedy in all of this confrontation with Russia is that the system that’s proposed for Poland and the Czech Republic is a scarecrow,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It’s not something that Europe can rely on, it is not dependable. If Iran had missiles that could reach central Europe, which they don’t yet, this system couldn’t be relied on to defend against them anyway.”

‘Sword-rattling’

The “commotion and sword-rattling with Russia is for nothing”, Coyle said.

“Some of this may be just a threat, but Russia has shown in just the past week or so it has a formidable military force, so if I were Poland or the Czech Republic, I would be more worried about Russia than I would be about Iran or North Korea.”

The US says the missile defence system is aimed at protecting it and Europe from future attacks from states such as Iran.

It rejects Moscow’s insistence that it is a threat to Russia.

For Poles, it has a further dimension at a time when Russia’s actions in Georgia have generated alarm throughout Eastern Europe.

They see it as offering a form of protection beyond that of Nato in light of a resurgent Russia to the east.

The two countries spent a year and a half negotiating, and talks recently had stalled on Poland’s demands that the US bolster Polish security with Patriot missiles in exchange for hosting the missile defence base.

Washington agreed to do so last week, as Poland invoked the Georgia conflict to strengthen its case.

Short-range missiles

The Patriots are meant to protect Poland from short-range missiles from neighbours – such as Russia.

Kaczynski stressed that the missile defence shield was purely a defensive system and not a threat to any nation.

“For that reason, no one who has good intentions toward us and toward the Western world should be afraid of it,” he said.

Poles have been shaken by Russian threats against their nation in punishment for accepting the US site.

A day after Warsaw and Washington reached agreement on the deal last week, a leading Russian general made his country’s strongest warning to date against the system.

“Poland, by deploying the system is exposing itself to a strike – 100 per cent,” General Anatoly Nogovitsyn was reported as saying on Friday by the Interfax news agency.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/08/20088204579879999.html

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syria’s assad to visit Moscow

MOSCOW: Syrian President Bashar Assad plans to visit Russia on Wednesday at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

“On August 20-21, 2008, the president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar Assad, will make a working visit to Russia at the invitation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev,” the Kremlin said in a statement, providing no further details on the agenda for the visit.

It was announced as Russia faced mounting international pressure to pull its forces out of Georgia and as Moscow signaled it was in no rush to do so.

Assad visited Moscow in December 2006, when he said that, as an influential power in the Middle East, Syria was open to dialogue with the United States but would not take “instructions” from Washington.

Russia’s conflict with Georgia has also turned into a standoff between Moscow and Washington. The United States has strongly supported Georgia and also backs Syrian adversary Israel in the Middle East.

In remarks to soldiers near the conflict zone on Monday, Medvedev warned that no one should have any “illusion” about Russia’s determination to ensure security in the Caucasus region

Last year, Russian media reported that Moscow had delivered MiG-31 fighter planes and modern air-defense systems to Syria, angering Israel. – AFP

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=95203

‘Russia to deploy missiles in Syria’

Russia plans to deploy Iskander missiles in Syria:

Russia plans to place its advanced missile systems in Syria to counter US and Israeli interventions in South Ossetia, an Israeli website says.

DEBKAfile said in a report on its website that Moscow appears to be eying Poland, the Middle East, and possibly Ukraine, as the main arenas for its reprisals against Israel and the US for supplying arms to the Georgian army.

“The retaliatory plan includes the establishment of big Russian military, naval and air bases in Syria and the release of advanced weapons systems including, the S-300 air-missile defense system, and the nuclear-capable Iskander to Syria,” the report said on Tuesday.

It further said that Russia is arming warships, submarines and long-range bombers in the Baltic and Middle East with nuclear warheads.

Reacting to the report it said Israel’s army should revamp its anti-missile defense array and Air Force assault plans for the third time in two years.

The chairman of the Israeli Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee, Tzahi Hanegbi, slammed Ehud Olmert’s plan to cut military budget, claiming that the regime faces grave confrontations in the coming year.

Meanwhile, the official Syrian SANA news agency reported on Tuesday that President Bashar Assad pays a visit to Russia on Wednesday at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

Russia has condemned both Israel and the US for their alleged role in arming the Georgian army with sophisticated weapons and elite training to face Russian troops in South Ossetia.

MMS/PA

Link

Taliban Offensive

Why the new cold war with Russia?

by Justin Raimondo

No one ever believed the Americans’ explanation of why they wanted to base interceptor missiles in Poland, of all places, some 20 years after the fall of the Soviet empire – not even the Americans. The idea, said Washington, is to defend the Poles against the alleged threat of an attack from… Iran, which has yet to exhibit any hostile intentions toward Warsaw, and in fact does not even possess the sort of missiles the new system is designed to intercept.

Putin’s pained response – “We are being told the anti-missile defense system is targeted against something that does not exist. Doesn’t it seem funny to you, to say the least?” – showed signs of the sort of exasperation that reached a crescendo last week with the Russian counterstrike against Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia. Since Bill Clinton invaded the Balkans and severed Kosovo from the Yugoslav torso, the incredibly patient Russians had stoically endured years of abuse, insults, and increasingly open belligerence directed at the Kremlin. Yet still they tried to have normal relations with the West. The turning point was reached only recently, as the Americans defended the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and implicitly justified the murder of a dozen Russian soldiers, who were on a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping mission.

The War Party has had a hard-on for Putin ever since the run-up to our Iraq misadventure, when the Russian leader opposed the drive to war, tried to buy time for the Iraqis via the UN, and openly mocked the lies that rationalized the whole disaster. Back in the spring of 2003, when the hunt for those famed “weapons of mass destruction” was becoming too much of an embarrassment even for the coalition of the willingly duped, Putin let loose at a London press conference with Tony Blair:

“Two weeks later they still have not been found. The question is, where is Saddam Hussein? Where are those weapons of mass destruction, if they were ever in existence? Is Saddam Hussein in a bunker sitting on cases containing weapons of mass destruction, preparing to blow the whole place up?”

The Times of London described Blair as standing there “grim-faced.” What a lovely sight it must have been! That alone, given the British temperament, is reason never to forgive the Russian leader, but Western animus directed at Putin predates the Iraq war, and is rooted in the Russian leader’s personal character.

Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, gave the West an easy time of it. Continuously drunk throughout most of his reign, the formerly minor Communist apparatchik plunged his crisis-stricken nation – still reeling from the impact of the Communist implosion – into a crash program of what might be called Bizarro economics, with predictable results.

Bizarro World, as you’ll recall, is an alternate universe where all natural laws are inverted and common sense is turned on its head: up is down, right is left, and the winners of auctions are the lowest bidders, not – as in our world – the highest.

This last example applies directly to what occurred under Yeltsin’s regime, at his direction: “auctions” of property formerly owned by the government and/or the Communist Party were won by those with the most political influence at the court of Czar Boris, not necessarily those who bid highest. Yeltsin sold off the assets of the nation cheap, often to the lowest bidder; even more often there was only one bidder. This is how control of the national assets passed from the old Communist Party to the children of the old Communist Party elite, who were now “businessmen,” albeit a lot closer in type to Al Capone than to Bill Gates.

Having seized control of much of the nation’s industry – the oil sector, the banks, the electrical grid, the trade in aluminum, precious metals, and big item manufactured goods, like cars – these “oligarchs,” as they came to be called, became powers unto themselves. Setting up their own regional and industry-wide fiefdoms, they allied themselves with various criminal gangs, thus acquiring an army of enforcers. As Yeltsin stumbled about in a stupor, this union of the oligarchs with the Russian Mafia established a center of power that quickly came to rival the Kremlin. The country was sinking into chaos when Yeltsin finally succumbed to the ravages of his vices.

Before he bowed out, however, he had one more moment of glory. Yeltsin’s first such moment marked the takeoff of his career as a politician, when he stood on the barricades in front of the Russian parliament and declared that the Soviet coup-plotters – who sought the overthrow of Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev – would not pass. This gesture propelled him into the presidency after Gorbachev’s exit, forever after imbuing a weak leader – who presided over the most precipitous national decline seen since the sudden demise of the Aztecs – with an aura of patriotic heroism. The end of his career, too, was punctuated by Yeltsin rising to the occasion, and, in a moment of clear-eyed sobriety, actually serving the interests of his country, by designating Putin as his heir.

Perhaps it was Yeltsin’s way of confessing and atoning for his crimes, because Putin immediately moved against the oligarchs, and this was his first great sin in Western eyes, the beginning of the long campaign to defame him as Stalin reborn.

This, of course, is what those who want to keep Russia weak and properly compliant would say about any strong leader in the Kremlin. Yeltsin, surrounded by a host of American advisers and in a state of constant inebriation, was a pushover. Putin is anything but, and therein lies the real source of the bile directed at him by Western governments and their attendant elites, especially in the U.S. and Britain.

The oligarchs found themselves hated in Russia as much as they were valorized in the Western press. With huge bank deposits overseas, where they stowed away most of their ill-gotten wealth, they fled Russia a few steps ahead of the law as their various acts of embezzlement, intimidation, and even murder were uncovered and prosecuted. Upon their arrival in the West – many fled to Britain, where they quickly gave sagging real estate values a big shot in the arm – they were hailed as brave political “dissidents” in the tradition of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. For the past decade or so they’ve been agitating for regime-change in Moscow, to which they dream of returning in triumph, regaining their “rightful” place at the pinnacle of power. The revival of the cold war is proving very useful to this crowd, which is behind much of the anti-Russian propaganda that has filled the airwaves for the past few years.

Economic factors also play a major role. The sudden resurgence of Russia on account of its status as a major oil producer has got the Americans and the Brits in a real lather, as their economies respectively plummet into the depths of what some are calling another Great Depression. Russia’s prosperity sticks in their collective craw, and, in response, the Russophobes have developed an entirely novel theory of political economy, which is an outgrowth of the environmentalist fad and the extreme nationalism of our ruling elites. It is the absurd idea that any and all countries that depend on oil to generate the bulk of their national income are unnatural, inherently flawed, and even intrinsically aggressive and a threat to the security of the West. Oil-producing states are inclined, by their very nature, to authoritarianism, they argue, although somehow I don’t think they mean the state of Texas.

The Bizarro World “logic” of this new economic fallacy is based on the concept that oil is, somehow, not a commodity like any other, that it has some special status over and above all others, and yet this is clearly not the case. Oil – like wheat, cow’s bellies, and platinum – is subject to market forces and is unevenly distributed geographically. The economic arrangements that go into the production, distribution, and sale of oil are not fundamentally different from those related to any other commodity, from bananas to high-grade steel. The U.S. has been a major oil producer, at least in the past, and that didn’t distort or retard our economic and political development: quite the contrary, it fueled a new era of industrial and intellectual innovation, freeing the individual from the land and inaugurating a new era of political and economic liberalism.

Yet now we are told that oil is a curse that empowers tyrants, who can’t be entrusted with such a precious commodity in any event. This is what is behind much of the buzz against Putin’s Russia, flush with oil revenues, and the real source of friction between the Kremlin and the West. It is pure nonsense, economically, but, then again, like most war propaganda, it doesn’t have to make sense; it only has to demonize the enemy from as many different angles as possible.

Congruent with this oil-as-the-root-of-illiberalism thesis is the idea that the Russians and the Chinese, along with their clients and allies, constitute a new pole of ideological attraction, in opposition to the liberal democracy of the West. In true Bizarro World style, this gets it completely wrong.

Looked at in terms of the last hundred years, or so, it is Russia – which threw off the yoke of the most oppressive regime in modern times – that is moving in the direction of freedom, and the West – where the surveillance state is a fact of modern life, and that document known as the U.S. Constitution is just a scrap of paper – that is moving toward authoritarian rule. As for China, it has progressed from the Cultural Revolution to the Beijing Olympics in less than the historical blink of an eye.

The U.S. and its allies in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus seem determined to provoke the Russian bear into a confrontation, and the crisis over South Ossetia is just the beginning. As I have warned in this space for what seems like an eternity, a new cold war between the U.S. and Russia is a project dear to the War Party’s heart – and it seems to have come to full fruition in the past week or so.

The War Party never sleeps – they’ve always got a new angle up their sleeves, a new “Hitler” who must be crushed in the name of democracy and decency, and against whom all the resources of the West must be mobilized – until a new enemy is found. The latest such enemy is Putin’s Russia, specifically, Putin himself, who is now being characterized as a hybrid monster, an authoritarian admixture of Hitler and Stalin.

Aside from an upsurge in the profits reaped by the makers of armaments, the revival of the cold war also means that the Kremlinologists of old will be back in fashion in Washington – and that all those doctoral dissertations on the history of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party were not written in vain. The cold war wasn’t just an era, it was also an entire industry, consisting of high-level policy wonks, professional anti-Communists and domestic subversive-hunters, as well as the military-industrial complex, which generously subsidized the activities of the former. This whole network collapsed, along with international communism, back in the 1990s, but anti-Putinism will bring it back to life, thus providing employment for a certain narrow segment of the population, even if the rest of us are selling pencils in the streets.

The Western media is in truly high dudgeon, these days, inveighing against Putin and newly “authoritarian” Russia, but this narrative is belied by the facts. As one analyst writing on the blog of the Foreign Policy Association put it:

“What is troubling is the U.S. media’s willingness to similarly toe the party line, but in the absence of any of the coercive measures, such as the state censorship, that the Russian press endures. There have been no William Dunbars on CNN, despite the fact that every report I’ve seen on the channel yesterday had been framed as ‘Russian invasion,’ with endless clips of Saakashvili alleging Russian crimes, etc., in a loop of totally pro-Georgian coverage. Georgia is a key U.S. ally, the 3rd largest troop contingent in Iraq, and occupies a strategic, oil rich zone. The self-policing in the U.S. media, which has basically been uncritically promoting government talking points, is very disturbing. “

Go read the whole piece, which is unsigned. It’s about how the Russian and Western media combines reported two entirely different wars, which had very little to do with one another.

One explanation is that with Russia moving toward more freedom, in fits and starts, and we in the West moving toward much less, we’re converging somewhere in midstream. Indeed, one could make the case that the Americans and their British counterparts are too well-trained to go off-message, while in Russia they still have to be constrained by formal rules and regulations. Official censorship simply isn’t necessary in the West, because everyone knows what to say – and, more importantly, what not to say.

Yes, it’s disturbing, but at least from my vantage point, not all that surprising. Ever since 9/11, and even predating that signal event, we’ve been headed in this direction, with the media (in alliance with demagogic politicians) policing not only itself but the entire society to make sure no pockets of dissent exist.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13317