Posts Tagged ‘Géopolitique’
Kyrgyzstan will demand U.S. close airbase – eventually
Kyrgyzstan will demand U.S. close airbase – eventually
21/ 02/ 2008
MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti) -
Kyrgyzstan is to eventually demand that the United States close down its airbase in the country, the Central Asian republic’s president said on Wednesday, without giving a firm date.
The U.S. Ganci airbase at Manas airport, located 30 kilometers (17 miles) east of Bishkek, accommodates 1,000 U.S. troops along with nine refueling and cargo planes supporting antiterrorism operations in Afghanistan.
“We will eventually raise the issue of its closure. That’s for certain,” Kurmanbek Bakiyev said in an interview with RIA Novosti and Russia Today.
Kyrgyz Finance Minister Tazhikan Kalimbetova disclosed earlier this month that Washington pays $17.5 million each year in rent.
Although Russia has encouraged Bishkek to demand the withdrawal of American troops, the impoverished nation of five million needs U.S. support and the military base has generated jobs and is a strong contributor to the Kyrgyz economy.
Russia established in October 2003 its own airbase in Kant, about 20 miles west of the Kyrgyz capital. The Russian base currently deploys about 400 troops, as well as 20 combat and transport planes, helicopters, and L-39 trainers.
Kalimbetova said Kyrgyzstan has not charged Russia, and has no plans to impose charges for the use of the Kant airbase, because the Russian troops are stationed at Kant under an agreement in the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a regional security bloc in Central Asia, which also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Furthermore, Kyrgyzstan’s debt to Russia totals $184 million, and in these circumstances, it would be rather “inappropriate” to demand rent, the minister said.
Opening a Pandora’s Box: Kosovo “Independence” and the Project for a “New Middle East”
Opening a Pandora’s Box:
Kosovo “Independence”
and the Project for a “New Middle East”
By: Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
on: 20.02.2008
Western public opinion has been misled. Unfolding events and realities on the ground in former Yugoslavia have been carefully manipulated.Germany and the U.S. have deep-seated geo-strategic interests in dividing Yugoslavia. Washington and Berlin have also been the first governments to recognize the secessionist states, which resulted from the breakup of the Yugoslav federation.The Broader Implications of Kosovo “Independence”
The February 2008 declaration of independence of Kosovo is a means towards legitimizing the dissolution and breaking up of sovereign states on a global scale.
Eurasia is the main target. Kosovar “independence” is part of a neo-colonial program with underlying economic and geo-political interests. The objective is to instate a New World order and establish hegemonic control over the global economy.
In this sense Kosovo provdes a blueprint, a “dress-rehearsal” which can now be applied to restructuring the economies and borders of the Middle East, under the Project for a “New Middle East.”
The restructuring model that is being applied in the former Yugoslavia is precisely what is intended for the Middle East — a process of balkanization and economic control.
Kosovo’s Pseudo-Declaration of Independence
On February 17, 2008, the secessionist province of Kosovo declared unilateral independence from the Republic of Serbia. The occasion was declared through an extraordinary gathering of the Kosovar Parliament and its executive bodies. Belgrade has not had any control over Kosovo since 1999, when NATO went to war with Serbia to impose control over Kosovo under humanitarian arguments.
President Fatmir Sejdiu, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and Parliament Speaker Jakup Krasniqi all marked the occasion with speeches inside and outside of the Kosovar Parliament.
Many in Kosovo’s ethic Albanian majority celebrated what they believed was a shift towards self-determination. The truth of the matter is that the Kosovar declaration of independence was a declaration of dependency and surrender to colonial forces.
Kosovar leaders have transformed their land into a colonial outpost of Franco-German and Anglo-American interests. February 17, 2008 also marked the day that Kosovo further entrenched itself as a NATO-E.U. protectorate. Under the so-called independence” roadmap, NATO and E.U. troops and police officers will formally administer Kosovo.
In reality, Kosovo would have had greater independence as an autonomous province in an agreement of autonomy with Serbia, which had been envisaged in bilateral talks between Belgrade and Pristina. The majority of Kosovars would have been satisfied under such an agreement.
However, the talks were never meant to succeed for two obvious reasons:
1) the leadership of Kosovo are agents of foreign interests that do not represent the Kosovar populaiton;
2) the U.S. and E.U. were determined to establish another protectorate in the former Yugoslavia.
Kosovo: Another phase in the Economic Colonization of the former Yugoslavia
One of the leading global academic figures who has thoroughly documented the foreign-induced disintegration of Yugoslavia and the situation in Kosovo is Michel Chossudovsky. He has documented the economic and geo-strategic motives that have acted as the fingers pulling the strings that have caused the collapse of Yugoslavia and the drive for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. His work unmasks the truth behind the downfall of Yugoslavia and the tactics being used to divide nations and peoples who have lived together in peace for hundreds of years.
A glance at the restructuring of Bosnia-Herzegovina must be made before further discussing the case of Kosovo.
Bosnia’s constitution was written at a U.S. Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio by U.S. and European “experts.”
Chossoduvsky appropriately labels Bosnia-Herzegovina as a neo-colonial entity. NATO troops have dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina, closely followed by the imposition of a new political and economic framework and model.
Chossudovsky’s work also reveals that the real head of the Bosnian government, the High Representative, and the head of the Bosnian Central Bank are both foreigners that are hand-picked by the European Union, the U.S., and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 1 This is a clear re-enactment of a colonial administration.
This model has also been replicated with some variations in several of the former republics of the Yugoslav federation. The major obstacle to the full implementation of this agenda is the popular will of the local people in the former Yugoslavia, especially the Serbs.
Serbia, like an island of resistance, is the last bastion of independence left in the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans, but even in Serbia a modus vivendi exists where the local people have made a one-sided accommodation with the foreign economic agenda to allow their way of life to go on for a little longer. However, this accommodation is not meant to last.
The same Political and Socio-Economic Model is being applied in the Balkans and the Middle East
The process in Iraq is no different than the model applied in the former Yugoslavia. Divisions are fueled by foreign catalysts, the economy is destabilized, national dissolution is induced, and a new politico-socio-economic order is established.
Foreign interference and military intervention are also justified on bogus humanitarian grounds. It is no coincidence that a “High Representative” was appointed by the US led coaltion to govern Iraq, thereby replicating the Bosnia-Herzegovina model, which is characterised by E.U. appointed “High Representative”. The pattern should start becoming startlingly familiar!
The parallels between Iraq and the former Yugoslavia are endless.
In the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and Britain established the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which evolved into the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority was also called “Special Representative,” “Governor,” “Special Envoy,” and “Consul.”
The justifications for setting up the occupation administration in Iraq, similarly to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where originally humanitarian and national stabilization. However, the main objectives of the Coalition Provisional Authority were to decentralize the state and implement a mass privatization program.
It is no coincidence that Bosnia-Herzegovina was divided alongside ethnic and religious lines: Serb, Croat, and Bosniak); Christian Muslim. To these various ethnic-religious divisions, however, further sectarian divisions were created: Eastern Orthodoxy versus Roman Catholicism.
A similar strategy of “divide and rule” was applied in Iraq. Just like in the former Yugoslavia the centralized economic system of Iraq was also shattered by the occupying administration. Under the Anglo-American occupation and its Coalition Provisional Authority foreign corporations entered Iraq in a second wave of foreign invasion, an economic takeover.
The neo-colonial project is based on two inderdependent building blocks: a military stage executed by NATO and process of political, social and economic restructuring executed by the U.S. and E.U. with the help of corrupt local leaders. The shock and awe of war opens the door for destabilization followed by “nation building” or the restructuring process, which even attacks the cultural and social roots of the target nation-state.
The Economic Colonization of Kosovo
The economic affairs of Kosovo are to be exclusively under the hands of the E.U. in partnership with the United States. The euro was already being used in Kosovo, despite of the protests of Belgrade, as the official currency for a number of years before 2008. The utilization of the euro was part of the process of untying the Kosovar economy from the rest of the Serbian economy and a means of establishing control over the sovereignty of Kosovo via monetary and financial means.
The Kosovar flag has been designed to match both the flags of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the European Union. The Bosnian flag was also designed to match the flag of the European Union.
This unraveling process has been the modus operandi throughout the former Yugoslavia. The key players behind this process are the usual players; the U.S., Germany, Britain, and France, which have been sharing the spoils of war and economic colonization in the former Yugoslavia. NATO and the E.U. have been the agents of this process on behalf of all four Western powers.
An Illegal Precedent: Paving the Way for the Dismantlement of other Nation-States
In the realm of international law, a Pandora’s Box has been opened. A new form of interventionism which threatens nation-states has emerged. Worldwide, nations have been divided into two camps in regards to Kosovo: those that recognize it at the expense of international law and those that do not recognize Kosovar independence.
There are profound implications in regards to the events in Yugoslavia. The law of the jungle and the concept that “might is right” have been unveiled as the true ideals of E.U. and American foreign policy. From Somalia, Sudan, and Iraq to the Russian Federation and Central Asia, a dangerous precedent has been established. The latter is intent upon fracturing and dividing.
The E.U. and NATO have also threatened Belgrade and the Serbian people with military action if they try and keep Kosovo. NATO had prepared for Kosovar independence through the holding of war games in late-2007. As Germany has admitted, negotiations for a solution were never taken seriously by Western powers from the start. NATO’s military preparations for the secession of Kosovo suggests that the negotiations were a diplomatic game, which was intended to succeed.
The global ramifications of EU-US interentionism are significant. Nations combating secessionist movements worldwide have voiced disapproval of the Kosovar declaration of Independence, while espressing apprehension regarding the enthusiastic support shown by American, German, British, and French officials.
China has voiced disapproval out of fears that Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) may declare independence under the precedent set by Kosovo. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Spain, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Russia have all voiced opposition because of their own secessionist movements such as the Tamil Tigers and the Basque separatist group ETA.
Ramifications of the Kosovo Precedent in the Caucasus and the Former Soviet Space
While fully acknowledging the fact that the Kosovo precedent is internationally illegal, Moscow has nonetheless used the Kosovo precedent against Georgia. Moscow’s objective is to strengthen its control in the geo-strategically important Caucasus region. Georgia has opposed the push by Kosovar Albanians for independence because of secessionist movements in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Adjara. While Adjaran separatism has become prominent, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have standing armies, with close ties to Moscow, and are virtually independent.
Russia is arguing that if the U.S. and E.U. recognize the independence of Kosovo , then the independence of Abkhazia and South Oesstia must also be recognized.
The Kosovar declaration of independence also has ramifications for Trans-Dniester (also known as Transnistria or Transdniestria), a tiny breakaway Russian-majority portion of Moldava.
The effects of Kosovar independence have also been watched carefully by the leaders of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan, because of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict. In the cases of Trans-Dniester, Nagorno-Krabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, all four breakaway republics believe they have far stronger cases for lobbying for official recognition by the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.), Russia, and the United Nations.
Preparing a Dangerous Precedent for the Middle East and Beyond
The ghosts of Versailles and earlier schemes still hunt humanity. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s seemingly good intentioned declaration of creating an arc of “national self-determination” stretching from the Baltic Sea and the Balkans to the Middle East after the First World War is coming into fruition.
Since the First World War, the larger and more powerful states of Eastern Europe and the Middle East have progressively been carved up into smaller and weaker states. This process was part of a colonial project to control the Eurasian Heartland 2
The board is being set for the recognition of new states in a redrawn Middle East in total disregard for international law. The Kosovar declaration of independence from Serbia is part of the broader post-Cold War balkanization and dismantlement of Yugoslavia. Kosovar “independence” serves to extend Anglo-American and Franco-German influence across the globe. This model is tied in a straight line with the forthcoming plans in the Middle East to breakup countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Iran in fragmented and easy to control protectorates managed by the E.U., the U.S., and Israel.
Russia and China also are aware of the real danger of dividing their territory as has been advocated for years by Anglo-American policy makes in Washington, D.C. and London. Iran is also aware of a Kosovo-like scenario planned for its predominately Arab regions in Khuzestan. The declaration of independence was also closely watched by the Kurdish Regional Government of Northern Iraq.
The synchronization of other global events with Kosovo Independence: Coincidence?
The “Arc of Instability” is yet again being exasperated and agitated. In Pakistan threats of civil war and balkanization loom large. In the Levant one of Hezbollah’s top officials, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in Syria by a car bomb similarly to those killing Lebanese politicians.
Most probably Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated by the Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel. American, Jordanian, Saudi, French, British, and German intelligence were almost all likely to be involved. It is an open secret that all these intelligence agencies have been collaborating together in Lebanon against Hezbollah and have been behind attempts to assassinate Hezbollah leaders. The timing of the assassination is extremely suspicious.
Mughniyeh’s assassination also came just before the anniversary of the Hariri Assassination and could have been meant to further galvanized political tensions in Lebanon. Israel has denied being behind the assassination, but it is now talking about a new war with Lebanon that it conveniently plans to blame Hezbollah for starting with the help of Syria and Iran.
The rupture of multiple conflicts and crises can be a means to also encircle and envelope the westernmost periphery of Russia within an arc of conflict or in other words there may be a deliberate attempt to supersaturate the “Arc of Instability” to paralyze Russia and other opposing players.
A Prepackaged Solution: Supranationalism?
The leadership in Serbia is playing a balancing act between its people and foreign interests. The Serbian people are against the foreign agenda in their region, but the leadership in Serbia is the spawn of a Western-funded and supported Velvet Revolution that occurred in 2000 and ousted Slobodan Milosevic. A large portion of Belgrade’s leadership supports the foreign agenda and has been co-opted into the neo-liberal restructuring project for the Balkans. The fact that the U.S. and the E.U. became major paymasters for Serbia after the Kosovo War is a mere testimony to this.
Surpanationalism or entry into the E.U. or a larger supranational entity for both Serbia and Kosovo is most probably going to be presented as the solution for Kosovar independence. Similar such a solution may also be presented for a balkanized Middle East through such projects as the Mediterranean Union. Supranationalism is also being pressed as an answer to the unification of Cyprus under the Mediterranean Union.
Returning to Serbia and Kosovo, many of the leaders of Serbia are opposing Kosovar succession, but this is merely a façade that is meant to occupy the minds of the Serbian general public. These same leaders are taking a soft stance on the issue and also moving towards integration into the European Union. To them, like the case of Québec, supranationalism is a solution.
On the Eve of the New World Order: Welcome to the Rule of the Jungle
While the E.U. pushes for a bridge to end national and ethnic divisions amongst its own members it does the opposite in the cases of Kosovo and other regions. Is not the American Civil War marked with honour, because the Union States fought a war to keep the Confederate States within the “American Union” by force?
Whatever the case, the hypocrisy of the E.U. and the U.S. in international relations is exposed by the recognition of Kosovar independence. Firstly, it is a breach of international law, but also it is insincere and for self-serving motives and not because of genuine principles or concerns for the people of Kosovo.
In addition, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus has a far more legitimate case of being recognized in addition to its own institutions and maturity. Although there is a secure and stable means to peacefully address the desires of the Basque and the Catalans in the Pyrenees and the Flemish in the Flanders region of Belgium, these separatist movements are also ignored.
The Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence on December 10, 1991. Yet, the self-proclaimed and functioning breakaway republic enjoys no backing from either the U.S. or the E.U. unlike Kosovo. What sets Northern Cyprus, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and Trans-Dniester apart from Kosovo? The answer is: Anglo-American and Franco-German interests represented through the E.U. and NATO are the forces behind self-serving “exceptionalism” — the same force that permitted the Nazis to believe that they could colonize Eastern Europe and the Eurasian Heartland without guilt.
American and European Union leaders have argued that the Serbs are no longer morally capable of managing the affairs of Kosovo. What gives the governments of the U.S., Germany, France, and Britain any moral capability after years of blood baths and a deficit in credibility? If these claims where based on any principle then what about the case of the Palestinians? Does Israel have any moral capability to occupy the Palestinians? Yet, the occupation continues. Ironically it is not Serbian troops who occupy Kosovo, but NATO troops and tanks.
NOTES
1 Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, (Montreal, Global Research, 2003), pp.257-277.
2 Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, The “Great Game:” Eurasia and History of War, Global Research, December 3, 2007.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an independent writer based in Ottawa specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Large Potential Albanian Oil and Gas Discovery Underscores Kosovo’s Importance –
Large Potential Albanian Oil and Gas Discovery Underscores Kosovo’s Importance
February 20, 2008
On January 10, Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corporation broke the news. Gustavson Associates LLC’s Resource Evaluation identified large prospects of oil and gas reserves in Albania, close to Kosovo. They’re in areas called blocks A, B, C, D and E, encompassing about 780,000 acres along the northwest to southeast “trending (geological) fold belt of northwestern Albania.”
Assigned estimates of the find (so far unproved) are up to 2.987 billion barrels of oil and 3.014 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. However, because of their depth, oil deposits may be capped with a layer of gas. If so, Gustavson calculates the potential to be 1.4 billion barrels of light oil and up to 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Further, if only gas is present, the discovery may be as much as 28 trillion cubic feet. In any case, if estimates prove out, it’s a sizable find.
In its statement, Gustavson reported: “The probability of success for a wildcat well in a structurally complex area such as this is relatively high (because) it is in a structurally favorable area (and) proven hydrocarbon source and analogous production exists only 20 to 30 kilometers away.”
Currently, the Balkans region has small proved oil reserves of about 345 million barrels, of which an estimated 198 million barrels are in Albania. Proved natural gas reserves are much larger at around 2.7 trillion cubic feet.
In December 2007, Albania’s Council of Ministers allowed DWM Petroleum, AG, a Manas subsidiary, to assist in the exploration, development and production of Albania’s oil and gas reserves in conjunction with the government’s Agency of Natural Resources.
This development further underscores Kosovo’s importance and the cost that’s meant for Serbia. Since the 1999 US-led NATO war, it’s been all downhill for the nation, the region and its people:
–Kosovo is part of Serbia; at least it was; since 1999 it’s been a Washington-NATO occupied colony stripped of its sovereignty in violation of international law;
– it’s been run by three successive US-installed puppet Prime Ministers with known ties to organized crime and drugs trafficking;
– it’s the home of one of America’s largest military bases in the world, Camp Bondsteel; the province/country is more a US military base than a legitimate political entity;
– its part of Washington’s regional strategic objective to control and transport Central Asia’s vast oil and gas reserves to selected markets, primarily in the West;
– on February 17 during a special parliamentary session, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence; the action violates international law; Kosovo is as much part of Serbia as Illinois is one of America’s 50 states; to no surprise, Washington and dominant western countries support it; opposed are Serbia, Russia, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus;
– might makes right; the issue is a fait accompli; the February 17 declaration ignores EU division pitting one-third of its 27 members in opposition; and
– unilateral western-supported independence mocks the 1999 UN Security Council Resolution 1244; it only permits Kosovo’s self-government as a Serbian province; the resolution recognizes the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia;” only a new UN resolution in compliance with international law can change that legally; nonetheless, it happened anyway on another historic day of infamy when Washington again trashed international law and the rules and norms of civil society.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached
at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussion of world and national topics with distinguished guests.
Turkey plans to invade northern Iraq
Turkey plans to invade northern Iraq
Feb. 19, 2008
ANKARA, Turkey, — The Turkish military said it is setting the ground work for a large-scale ground invasion into northern Iraq targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
The military said the ground operation is the final strike against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its Kurdish language initials of PKK. The operation follows airstrikes on the group in late 2007 and military officials said the operation is scheduled for mid-March, the English language Turkish daily, Today’s Zaman said Monday.
Military sources told the newspaper that the operation would be on two fronts; one along the Turkish border with Iraq and one inside Turkey in its southeastern provinces.
Israel gave the Turkish military unmanned surveillance drones that military officials said will provide key intelligence about PKK activity.
The Turkish military deployed about 50,000 troops along the border with Iraq and the newspaper said military officials will keep the same amount of troops in the region for the March operations.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/02/18/turkey_plans_to_invade_northern_iraq/9268/
Turkey readies for ground operation
The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) is preparing for a comprehensive ground operation into northern Iraq against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) organization, expected to take place in spring.
The TSK is currently developing its strategy for the operation, which will most likely be launched in the middle of March. The ground operation is planned to be the final strike against the terrorist organization. It will follow upon a series of aerial attacks that have seriously disrupted the organization, bringing it to the brink of collapse. Reports indicate that communications between PKK leaders was seriously disrupted by the operations and that the distrust that emerged following the severing of communications has brought the organization to the edge of dissolution. The TSK has set up military bases at high elevations in the Cudi, Gabar, Küpeli, Tanin and Kato mountains, strategic points used by the PKK militants for infiltration into Turkey. The bases will include helicopter landing facilities, thermal cameras and artillery equipment.
TSK Special Forces based in Bolu, Kayseri, Isparta and Manisa have been trained for the purpose of destroying the remaining PKK presence in northern Iraq. The Land Forces Command is currently working to determine the number and state of armored vehicles, trucks, trailers, mobile medical units and mobile kitchens in the transportation units. A thorough review is being undertaken to check the state of equipment, clothing and food supplies of the units based in the region.
The spring operations will coincide with the withdrawal of the units that carried out operations in the winter and the deployment of replacement units. Military sources indicate that the spring operation will be carried out in two separate regions, one along Turkey’s borders with Iran and Iraq and one inside Turkey, near the provinces of Tunceli, Bingöl, Siirt and Diyarbakır.
The military units that will take part in the spring operation are being picked by the authorities at the Land Forces Command and Gendarmerie Command. The number of training sessions for the command units based in Bolu, Kayseri, Isparta and Manisa has been increased in preparation for the ground operation in spring. Two large military units from Bolu have been deployed to the region. The Land Forces Command is currently working to determine the quantity of military equipment proper for use in the operation.
Turkey will also reportedly use unmanned Heron surveillance airplanes, which will be provided by Israel. These will play an indispensable role in the combat against terrorist activity. The Heron will be used to screen and monitor a large area, including northern Iraq and the Gabar, Cudi, Küpeli, Kato, Yazlıca and Tanin mountains.
These will play an indispensable role in the combat against terrorist activity. The Heron will be used to screen and monitor a large area, including northern Iraq and the Gabar, Cudi, Küpeli, Kato, Yazlıca and Tanin mountains. The intelligence thus gathered will be swiftly evaluated and used in military strikes.
The TSK had previously deployed 50,000 troops in the border region before the cross-border operation on Dec. 16, when Turkish warplanes began pounding PKK bases. During the operations, which also included members of the TSK Special Forces Unit, the regular forces backed the main units by performing mine sweeping. Reports say that the number of troops deployed along the border will not go below 50,000.
The Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) held a march to Mt. Cudi last week in an attempt to protest the projected military action.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=134248
_____________________________________________________________
Comment:
Turkey is a long-time ally and servant of US, a member of NATO since 1952. It is being governed behind the scenes by pro-US and pro-Zionist generals.
Parties and governments have very little say. Turkish army has killed more than 30,000 people of Kurdish origin in Turkish Kurdistan between 1984 and 1999 and deported more than 2 millon Kurdish peasants from their homes and villages. Besides, Turkey has supported the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.
It has troops in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Northern Iraq. It supported the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, has troops in Kosovo and has recognized the ‘independence’ of pro-US semi-colony of Kosovo.
Turkey has oppressed and massacred its Armenan, Greek, Kurdish etc. minorities for decades with the support of imperialists, has expansionist ambitions which in general is in line with NATO policies.
It has invaded Northern Cyprus in 1974 with the support of US and Britain, who play the game o divide and rule between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
We should be against the pro-US policies of Iraqi Kurds and oppose Barzani-Talabani cliques; this, however does not and cannot lead to the rejection of the right of Kurdish people for self-determination.
The same is true for the people of Kosovo. Such questions cannot be described in terms of black and white.
by marlenst
Russia says U.S. may use satellite blast as test
Russia says U.S. may use satellite blast as test
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday a U.S. plan to shoot down an ailing spy satellite could be used as a cover to test a new space weapon.
The ministry said there was insufficient proof that Washington’s decision to fire a missile at the disabled satellite was to prevent a potentially deadly leak of toxic gas as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.
“In our opinion, the decision to destroy the U.S. satellite is not as harmless as it is being presented. Especially as the United States has been avoiding talks on restricting a space arms race for quite a long time,” the ministry’s information department said in a statement.
“Under cover of discussions about the danger posed by the satellite, preparation is going ahead for tests of an anti-satellite weapon. Such tests mean in essence the creation of a new strategic weapon.”
U.S. officials said on Thursday that President George W. Bush had decided to have the Navy shoot the 5,000-pound (2,270 kg) satellite with a modified tactical missile after security advisers suggested its re-entry could lead to a loss of life.
Some space and security experts have said they did not believe Washington’s justification for the plans and argued the Pentagon was more likely testing its ability to target other states’ satellites.
This suggestion is rejected by U.S. officials.
It will be the first time the United States has conducted an anti-satellite operation since the 1980s. Russia also has not conducted anti-satellite activities in 20 years.
(Reporting by Tanya Mosolova)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1645129720080216
Imposing the New World Order
Imposing the New World Order
Review of F. William Engdahl’s ”A Century of War” (Part II)
Stephen Lendman
February 15, 2008
Part II continues the story of “A Century in War” in Part I. It’s breathtaking in scope and content, and a shocking and essential history of geopolitics and the strategic importance of oil. Part I covered events from the late 19th century through the end of the 1960s. Part II completes the story to the present era under George Bush.
Running the World Economy in Reverse: Who Made the 1970s Oil Shocks?
In 1969, the US was in recession, interest rates were cut, dollars flowed abroad, and the money supply expanded. In addition, in May 1971, America recorded its first monthly trade deficit that triggered a panic US dollar sell-off. Things were desperate, gold reserves were one-quarter of official liabilities, and Nixon shocked the world on August 15. He unilaterally imposed a 90 day wage and price freeze, a 10% import surcharge, and most importantly closed the gold window, suspended dollar convertibility into the metal, and shredded the Bretton Woods core provision. He also devalued the dollar by 8%, far less than what US allies wanted.By this action, Nixon “pulled the plug on the world economy” and set off a series of events that shook it. Further deterioration followed with massive capital flight to Europe and Japan. It forced Nixon to act again on February 12, 1973. He announced a further 10% devaluation, major world currencies began a process called a “managed float,” and world instability was the worst seen since the 1930s.
Unknown was the reason behind the August, 1971 strategy. It was to buy time before initiating a bold new monetary “paradigm shift” – to revive a strong dollar and US world power with it. In May 1973, the scheme was hatched – to initiate a “colossal assault” on world industrial growth through a 400% increase in oil prices. In addition, the resulting petrodollar flood had to be managed. A global oil embargo was the scheme to rocket up its price and create an equally great demand for dollars.
Kissinger’s Yom Kippur war began it when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on October 6, 1973. It wasn’t by accident as Washington and London carefully orchestrated the conflict while Kissinger controlled Israel’s response. An oil embargo followed, OPEC prices skyrocketed 400% overnight, panic ensued, Arab oil producers were scapegoated, and the key part of the scheme took shape. It was for much of the windfall oil revenue (mainly Saudi, the world’s largest producer) to be recycled into US investments.
Following a Tehran January 1, 1974 meeting, a second price increase doubled the price of oil for even more recycling. The net effect – the worst American and European economic crisis since the 1930s with bankruptcies, unemployment, and in the US, a bonus of stagflation. The fallout was horrific. It brought down most European governments but its effects on developing states were devastating. Nixon as well got caught in the “Watergate affair” that benefitted Henry Kissinger hugely. He became de facto president throughout the period while his boss battled to survive and lost. For Big Oil and major US and London banks, it was even sweeter. They profited handsomely.
Other issues were at stake as well, one of which was potentially cheaper nuclear electricity as an alternative energy source. By the early 1970s, it was viewed favorably, and European governments favored building 160 to 200 nuclear plants by 1985. For the first time, America’s nuclear export market was threatened as well as Big Oil’s overall energy dominance. It got Anglo-American think tanks and journals to launch an “awesome propaganda offensive” to ensure the oil shock strategy’s success. The scheme was an “Anglo-American ecology agenda” (strongly anti-nuclear) that became “one of the most successful frauds in history.”
A second Malthusian plot was also hatched through a classified Kissinger April 1974 memo. It was a secret project called National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) that called for drastic global population reduction. It reasoned that many developing nations are resource rich and vital to US growth. If Third World populations grow too fast, their domestic demand will as well, and that will pressure price rises for their goods. Curbing population growth was the counter strategy. It’s also self-defeating along with horrific fallout for targeted countries.
Europe, Japan and a Response to the Oil Shock
By late 1975, industrial countries began recovering but not developing ones. The oil shock was crushing and prevented their ability to finance industrial and agricultural growth and the hopes of their people for a better life. Perversely, it was also at a time the worst global drought in decades hit Africa, South America and parts of Asia especially hard. The fourfold increase in oil prices exacerbated conditions and increased developing states’ current account deficits sevenfold by 1976. They halted internal development to preserve revenue for debt service and to buy oil. Conditions also let foreign banks and later the IMF provide loans that became an onerous debt bondage cycle.
At the same time in 1974, 70% of surplus OPEC revenues were recycled abroad into equities, bonds, real estate and other investments as part of an exclusive OPEC decision to accept only US dollars for oil. It forced world nations to buy enormous amounts of dollars and do it when the currency was weak. This effectively replaced the gold standard with a “highly unstable (petrodollar) exchange system.” Washington and New York banks planned to control it and thus benefit from artificially inflated oil prices.
The scheme transformed the world economy and began an unprecedented transfer of wealth to an elite minority. Engdahl called it “a perverse variation on the old mafia ‘protection racket’ game.” Third World agricultural and industrial development suffered so a select few could prosper. It sent shock waves through the developing world and got a Colombo, Sri Lanka gathering to confront it.
Officials from 85 Non-Aligned Nations met in the Sri Lankan capital in August, 1976 and produced a document unlike any others by developing states post-war. Its theme was “A fair and just economic development, and its contents stated that “economic problems have become the most difficult aspect of international relations (and) developing countries have become the victim(s) of this worldwide crisis.” Steps were proposed to address it, and they called for a “fundamental reorganization of the international trade system to improve” its terms. They also wanted the international monetary system overhauled and the “explosive issue” of foreign debt raised for the first time.
The proposal was then presented at the annual UN General Assembly meeting in New York. It was a “political bombshell,” and financial markets reacted sending bank shares and the dollar lower. The fear was a potential alliance between key oil producing states and continental Europe and Japan. If in place, it could challenge Anglo-American dominance, had to be confronted, and Henry Kissinger got the job with “the full power and force of the US government.” He warned EEC foreign ministers and disrupted any efforts they were considering to ally with OPEC and the non-aligned group.
Coordinating with Britain, he also forced key non-aligned nation strategists out of office within months of their declaration. The threat was thwarted and leading New York and London banks took full advantage. They turned on the spigot and increased lending to developing nations under draconian IMF terms.
Down but not out, North-South cooperation resurfaced in new ways. In late 1975, Brazil contracted with Germany to build a nuclear power plant complex. A similar deal was made with France for an experimental fast breeder reactor. Mexico as well decided to go nuclear for part of its electricity to conserve oil and so did Pakistan and Iran. The Shah’s oil revenues were substantial, and his idea was “to realize an old dream” – to create a modern energy infrastructure, built around nuclear power generation, that would transform the entire Middle East’s power needs. In 1978, Iran had the world’s fourth largest nuclear program, the largest among developing states, and the plan was for 20 new reactors by 1995.
The idea was simple – to diversify from Iran’s dependence on oil and weaken Washington and London’s pressure to recycle petrodollars. Also involved was investing in leading European companies to ally with the continent. Washington was alarmed and tried to block the plan but failed. Nonetheless, the Carter administration continued Kissinger’s strategy behind a phony “human rights” mask. In reality, the game was unchanged – limit Third World growth and maintain dollar hegemony. It failed miserably but threats to dollar dominance were stalled for a time.
They resurfaced in June, 1978 on the initiative of France and Germany. Responding to policy disagreements and a fluctuating dollar, they took steps to create a European currency zone and proposed Phase I of the European Monetary System (EMS) under which central banks of EEC countries agreed to stabilize their currencies relative to each other. EMS became operational in 1979 with notable positive results. This worried Washington and London as a threat to petrodollar supremacy, Britain refused to be an EMS partner, and Carter was unable to dissuade Germany from pursuing a nuclear option. The situation required drastic action.
It began in November 1978 with a White House Iran task force that recommended Washington end support for the Shah and replace him with Ayatollah Khomeini, then living in France. It would be by the same type coup that overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 along with broader aims that again are in play in the region.
Key then (and now) was to balkanize the Middle East along tribal and religious lines – a simple divide and conquer strategy that worked in the 1990s Balkan wars. The aim was to create an “Arc of Crisis” that would spread to Central Asia and the Soviet Union. Another 1978 event highlighted the urgency. At the time, the Shah was negotiating a 25-year oil agreement with British Petroleum (BP), but talks broke down in October. BP demanded exclusive rights to future Iranian output but refused to guarantee oil purchases. The Shah balked and was on the verge of independently seeking new buyers with eager ones lined up in Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere.
Washington and London were alarmed and acted. They implemented destabilization plans, starting with cutting Iranian oil purchases. Economic pressures followed, and trained US and UK agitators exacerbated them by fanning religious discontent and overall turmoil. Oil strikes as well were used. They crippled production and made things worse. American security advisors recommended Iran’s Savak secret police use repressive tactics to maximize antipathy to the Shah. The Carter administration cynically protested human rights abuses, and BBC correspondents exaggerated anti-Shah protests to rev up hysteria against him. At the same time, it gave Khomeini an open platform to speak and prevented the Shah from replying.
Things came to a head in January, 1979 when he fled the country, and Khomeini returned to Tehran and proclaimed a theocratic state. Chaos was unleashed, and by May the new regime cancelled plans for further nuclear reactor development. At the same time, Iran’s oil exports were cut off, and the Saudis inexplicably cut their own in January. Spot prices skyrocketed, and a second oil shock ensued that was as deviously conceived as the first one. Then it got worse. In October, newly appointed Fed Chairman Paul Volker unleashed a new scheme that turned calamity into catastrophe by design.
It was a radical new monetary policy on the pretext of “squeezing inflation out of the system.” In fact, it was made-in-Washington fraud to preserve dollar hegemony, make it the world’s most sought currency, and crush industrial growth to let political and financial power prop up dollar strength. Volker succeeded by raising interest rates from 10% to 16% and finally 20% in weeks. World policy makers were stunned, economies plunged into the deepest recession since the 1930s, and the dollar began an extraordinary five year ascent.
The combined effect of oil and Volker shocks took “the bloom off the nuclear rose” and ended its threat to Anglo-American oil supremacy. And if more was needed it came on March 28, 1979 in the middle of Pennsylvania at a place called Three Mile Island. Conveniently, at the same time The China Syndrome was released that fictionalized the ongoing event. The combined effect was public hysteria, and later investigation revealed critical valves had illegally been closed. In addition, FEMA controlled all news to create panic. The scheme worked, and Anglo-American supremacy was reasserted over the industrial and financial world. Nothing is stable forever, however, and within a decade new rumblings would be felt.
Imposing the New World Order
The combined effects of two oil shocks and resulting inflation created a new US “landed aristocracy” while the vast majority of Americans saw their living standards sink. It was the same type scheme Margaret Thatcher imposed on Britain when she declared “there is no alternative.” Preaching free market hokum, she claimed deficit spending was the culprit, not two oil shocks causing 18% UK inflation. Her remedy – kill the patient to save it by cutting the money supply and government spending while sharply hiking interest rates to 17% in weeks, thereby causing depression she called the “Thatcher revolution.” Engdahl had another view saying: “Never in modern history had an industrialized nation undergone such (a counterproductive) shock” in so short a time, except in wartime emergency. Thatcher crushed the economy by design the way Volker did in America.
At the time, Britain’s problem wasn’t government ownership. It was lack of investment in public infrastructure, in educating a skilled work force, and in enough scientific research and development. Government isn’t the problem. Misguided policy is, and Thatcher and Volker excelled at it with one mutual aim – benefit their banks and Big Oil interests by cutting taxes and spending, reducing social services, privatizing and deregulating business, and breaking the back of organized labor in their brave new world order.
President Carter knew nothing about finance and economics and was duped into signing an “extraordinary piece of legislation” – the Depository Institutions Deregulation Monetary Control Act of 1980. It let the Fed impose reserve requirements on banks and be able to choke off credit to them. It also phased out interest rate ceilings banks could charge customers. Reagan continued the policies and was bamboozled by Chicago School ideologues like Milton Friedman. Engdahl called his radical monetarism “one of the most cruel economic frauds ever perpetrated.” It was that and more because of all the human wreckage it caused.
It led to the Third World debt crisis and its horrific fallout. It willfully immiserated millions of people, and events came to a head in the summer of 1982 with debtor states struggling to repay. Their burden was too onerous, and Reagan and Thatcher planned an example of what happens when nonpayment is an option. The Malvinas (or Falkland) archipelago was the targeted choice. It’s off Argentina’s coast but was hardly a reason for war. The issue wasn’t Argentina’s sovereignty. It was to enforce the principle that Third World debts must be paid by a “new form of 19th century gunboat diplomacy.” Two-thirds of Britain’s fleet was dispatched, a shooting war ensued, and Argentina became a test case.
Reagan backed Thatcher, and it soured relations with Latin American states like Mexico that also became a target. President Jose Lopez Portillo favored a modernization and industrialization policy and planned to use his oil revenue to implement it. The prospect of a strong Mexico was intolerable, Washington had other ideas, and a scheme was hatched to sabotage the plan by demanding rigid repayment of Mexican debt at exorbitant rates.
It began with an orchestrated run on the peso in the fall of 1981. Claims of an impending devaluation followed, and stories were planted of impending capital flight. An unavoidable austerity program followed, and the Portillo government cracked under pressure. It devalued the peso 30%, Mexican industry was devastated, many businesses were bankrupted, industrial production was cut and so were living standards for the majority of the people under conditions of orchestrated chaos.
Mexico effectively became insolvent at a time the US was in deep recession. Nonetheless, the Reagan administration hatched a plan to solve the debt crisis and save New York banks. Ignoring the root cause of the crisis, Secretary of State George Schultz offered IMF medicine combined with stimulating US consumer purchases as a way to increase Third World exports.
It would be “the most costly recovery in world history (and what followed) was almost beyond belief.” Lopez Portillo failed to rally Latin American support, and his term expired two months later. US officials then blackmailed Brazil and Argentina to back down, and debtor countries had to accept IMF terms that became “the most concerted organized looting operation in modern history,” far exceeding the worst of Versailles.
New York and London banks profited hugely the way they do today. First, they “socialize(d) their debt crisis” by getting unprecedented international repayment support. Working through governments and the IMF, they spun off their debt to taxpayers, privatized gains for themselves, and pummeled debtor countries by structural adjustment looting.
That was Step One. Next came Step Two – restructuring debtor nations’ repayment schedules that included onerous interest on top of oppressive principal. It caused mounting debt no matter how much was paid in an unending looting daisy chain still in play today and bigger than ever.
Back in the 1980s, here are the numbers. Between 1980 and 1986, 109 debtor countries were charged $326 billion in interest. They paid an additional $332 billion in principal for a total of $658 billion on original debt of $430 billion. In spite of it, in 1986 they still owed $882 billion, an impossible debt trap, and Engdahl attributed it to “the wonders of compound interest and floating rates” with a little gunboat diplomacy thrown in. Only one way out was possible – surrender economic sovereignty and valued raw materials, or else. Capital flight in the tens of billions followed, and it became a profit-making bonanza for major US banks.
In the 1980s, Americans also suffered. Reaganomics victimized them by structuring big gains for banks, oil and defense giants while ignoring the greater good and long-term economic health. The plan was nonsensical and built around the largest post-war tax cut until the combined three George Bush ones (with another coming) may have topped it. They did in nominal dollars, but Reagan’s was much bigger as a percent of GDP in an economy half today’s size.
Reagan and Bush had the same scheme in mind. Some call it “supply-side economics,” others a “voodoo” variety on the idea that tax cuts release “stifled creative energies,” stimulate higher economic growth and produce greater government revenue. The Reagan one signaled “anything goes.” Besides generous benefits for the rich and business, it encouraged speculative real estate investment, especially for commercial ventures. It also removed restrictions on corporate takeovers.
A year later, interest rates headed down, stock and bond prices shot up, a speculative bonanza was unleashed, and here’s the bottom line. Reaganomics failed to encourage productive investment, except for selected defense contractors. Money instead poured into equities and debt instruments, high-risk real estate, junk bond-financed leveraged buyouts, and tax-sheltered oil well and other development.
At the same time, infrastructure needs were ignored, organized labor was targeted, government became the problem, and deregulation the solution to get it off our backs. Throughout the 1980s and since: organized labor ranks declined, high-paying manufacturing jobs were lost, working American living standards declined, and an astonishing generational shift began – the annual wealth transfer of over $1 trillion from 90 million working class households to for-profit corporations and the richest 1% of the population to create an unprecedented wealth disparity. It continues unabated and is destroying the bedrock middle class without which democracy can’t survive and is already on life support and sinking.
Simultaneously, by the mid-1980s, the US went from being the world’s largest creditor to a net debtor nation for the first time since 1914. Budget deficits as well skyrocketed along with the national debt, and the true economic condition was revealed. “It was sick.” Today, it’s much sicker and depends on “the kindness of strangers” the way it did in the roaring twenties until the 1929 market crash smashed it.
At the end of the 1980s, a lesser version of it occurred from the savings and loan industry (S & Ls) collapse. During the decade, almost $1 trillion went into speculative real estate, and for the first time banks were allowed to participate. S & Ls took full advantage in an anything goes, deregulated environment. The 1982 Garn-St. Germain Act let them invest in anything they wished with government-backed $100,000 per account insurance. It allowed reckless speculation, massive fraud, and was an ideal way for organized crime and CIA to launder billions in drugs-related funds.
The 1980s ended the Reagan era when George HW Bush became President in 1989. It coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November and breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Around the same time, it was decided to target the Middle East and its vast oil reserves to counter the fear of a united Germany and economically expanding continental Europe that could threaten US dominance. Saddam would be the victim and an easy target after being weakened by the 1980 – 1988 Iran-Iraq war and a $65 billion debt to foreign creditors.
The scheme was to lure him into a trap (with Kuwait as bait) to provide a pretext for US military intervention. The rest is history:
– Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990;
– four days later Operation Desert Shield was launched; harsh economic sanctions were imposed and a large US troop deployment began;
– Operation Desert Storm began on January 17, 1991 and ended six weeks later on February 28;
– Next came 12 years of the most comprehensive genocidal sanctions ever imposed on a country that included a crippling embargo; hundreds of thousands died and millions suffered;
– Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched on March 19, 2003 and is still ongoing nearly five years later; the “cradle of civilization” was erased, a free market paradise created, and the death, human misery and displacement toll is incalculable for an impossible to win guerilla war.
From the Evil Empire to the Axis of Evil
In his 1991 State of the Union address, GHW Bush proclaimed a New World Order, quickly dropped the term but pursued the policy. The younger Bush does as well with focus shifted from the “Evil Empire” to the “Axis of Evil.” It was a vague construct that conveniently encompassed the Eurasian continent and its oil riches. To ensure US dominance, they had to be controlled, especially against key Japanese, European Union (EU) and emerging Chinese rivals.
A threefold scheme was hatched to do it:
– target Russia, eastern Europe and all parts of the world to ensure IMF rules and US dollar hegemony are maintained;
– control every country with significant energy or other vital raw material resources; and
– maintain unchallengeable military supremacy to deter opposition to US-imposed rules.
The catch word was “globalization.” It denies global justice, globalizes US dominance, and consolidates it by political, economic and military enforcement. At the start of the 1990s, however, Japan had become the world’s economic and banking leader and had to be confronted. A reckless speculation decade left American banks in deep crisis. Japan operated differently, prospered and challenged US supremacy. Its influence was recognized and had to be undercut.
Treasury Secretary James Baker laid the trap through the 1985 Plaza accord and the Baker-Miyazawa month later agreement. He got Tokyo to exercise monetary and fiscal measures to expand domestic demand and reduce Japan’s external surplus. At the same time, the Bank of Japan cut interest rates to 2.5% in 1987 and held that level until May, 1989. The plan was for lower rates to stimulate US goods purchases. Instead, cheap money went into Japanese stocks and real estate and led to colossal twin bubbles still deflating today.
The yen was also affected. Within months, it shot up 40% against the dollar, and overnight Japan became the world’s largest banking center, surpassing London and New York. As the country’s twin bubbles inflated, Japan became home to the world’s 10 largest banks, an astonishing achievement for a country its size or any country. Things were so extreme at the bubble’s peak that the value of Tokyo real estate, in dollars, exceeded all of it in the US, and the nominal value of Japanese stocks amounted to 42% of the world’s total – but not for long.
Tokyo equities peaked in December, 1989. Three months later, the Nikkei dropped 23% or over $1 trillion in value, and it was just the beginning. From its 38,915 peak, Japanese stocks plunged to 7831 in April, 2003 with no assurance that’s a bottom. Why and how could this happen? Japanese officials speculated on the reason.
In 1990, Japan proposed financing the former Soviet Union’s reconstruction and drew strong US opposition. In addition, Japan’s MITI model was suggested for former communist countries with Washington dead set against it for two reasons: it might exclude US companies, and it would rely on state economic guidance that impressively fueled Japanese and Asian Tiger growth. It had to be stopped as America had other ideas for the post-Cold War era.
Pressure was applied with threats of drastic US troop cuts that would endanger Japan’s security. The message was abandon economic plans or provide your own defense. At the same time, Japan’s twin bubbles kept deflating, months later the Nikkei had lost $5 trillion in value, the country was badly hurt, and its challenge to America was dropped.
That was Phase One. Phase Two confronted Asian Tiger countries because (like Japan) their economic model bested the US and threatened it. It was a major embarrassment to IMF rules that exploit developing states for America’s gain. In the 1980s, East Asia boomed with 7 – 8% annual growth rates compared to half that in the US. Their market economy followed state guidance and planning and it worked. They were also debt-free and unhampered by IMF restrictions. In addition, their model enhanced social security and productivity, promoted universal education and set limits on foreign investment and imports. Washington had other ideas.
In 1993, demands were made to deregulate, open financial markets, and allow free capital flows. Easing followed and trouble began. From 1994 to 1997, hot money flooded in and created speculative real estate, stock and other asset bubbles. Hedge funds (including George Soros’ billions allied with major international banks) forcefully acted. They attacked the weakest regional economy and its currency – Thailand and its baht. The aim? Force devaluation, and it worked. Thailand capitulated, floated its currency and turned to the IMF for help it never before needed.
Next came the Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea as their “populations sank into economic chaos and (mass) poverty.” Prosperous Asian Tigers were humbled, they were forced into IMF debt bondage, and Russia got the same medicine plus a bonus. A sole superpower remained under US dollar supremacy, and US military bases encircled its former adversary, were closing in, and targeted an emerging China as well.
Russian shock therapy was especially tragic. Washington wanted to deindustrialize the country to permanently destroy the old Soviet economic structure. Boris Yeltsin complied, and IMF wreckage was the scheme. A corporatist state replaced a communist one, and its apparatchiks were winners along with a handful of mutual fund managers who made dizzying returns from newly privatized Russian companies. In addition, 17 nouveau billionaires (called “the oligarchs”) emerged overnight, strip mined the country’s wealth, and shipped it overseas to safe havens.
Russia’s people were devastated and still suffer. Unemployment is epidemic, well over half the population is impoverished, 80% of farmers were bankrupted, and 70,000 state factories were shuttered. And it got worse. Social services ended, diseases like HIV/AIDS became rampant, suicides rose, violent crime jumped fourfold, and the population now declines by about 700,000 a year with free market medicine already having killed over 10% of it. Outside a select elite, the former superpower was humbled, reduced to Third World status, and it created potential for Big Oil to exploit Russia’s energy riches that were given away for kopecks on the ruble.
Seven oligarchs grabbed off half the country’s natural resources. Their hard currency profits were dollarized, but by summer 1998 things got out of hand. With the economy in trouble, the IMF extended an emergency $23 billion loan to support the ruble and protect speculative western investments, but it came too late. On August 15, Russia did the unthinkable. It defaulted and, for a time, shock the dollarized world. The largest of all hedge funds (LTCM) bet on the country and leveraged up manyfold. A financial disaster loomed, the Fed intervened, Russia’s default was quietly forgiven, and dollarization resumed.
Earlier, the Balkans got shock therapy and became a target for dismemberment with a simple idea in mind – destroy its mixed socialist economy that was independent of the West and couldn’t be tolerated. Europe’s soft underbelly also lies between central Asia’s oil and the route over which Washington wants it transported. It had to be brought to heel, and a US-led NATO was the way. Softening up began by the late 1980s, continued into the new decade, and George Soros was at it again. IMF medicine was employed, living standards plunged, and economic chaos resulted. Breakup began, each region was on its own, and a lot of pushing came from the West.
Croatia and Slovania seceded first in 1991. That lit the fuse that exploded in a series of Balkan wars. Slobadan Milosevic became the fall guy, was targeted for removal, conflict lasted the decade, and it culminated with US-NATO’s merciless 79 day 1999 Serbia bombing that caused an estimated $40 billion of destruction to the country’s economy and infrastructure. The US moved in and set up shop in one of its largest military bases in the world – Camp Bondsteel near Gnjilane in southeast Kosovo. It’s a Serbian province that was split off and occupied by design. The West’s divide and conquer strategy is in play, Kosovo heads for independence, and the mother country’s objections don’t matter.
At war’s end, US Eurasian control was enhanced but not guaranteed as the contest for Caspian riches is still in play with Russia, China and others vying for them.
A New Millennium for Oil Geopolitics
A new president accompanied the new millennium with a changed Washington focus – oil is at its core, controlling it is key, and Dick Cheney’s first job as vice-president was working with the (James) Baker Institute to draft the April 2001 National Energy Policy Report. It projected a growing dependency on foreign oil, highlighted Iraq’s “de-stabilizing influence,” and recommended “restat(ing) goals with respect to Iraq policy.” It also linked the Pentagon with future energy policy plans.
Core report recommendations signalled how with a crystal clear message:
– securing foreign sources is key;
– less than cooperative governments in volatile parts of the world control some of the largest sources; and
– Cheney highlighted concern at a private 1999 London Institute of Petroleum meeting saying: “by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.”
He didn’t flinch saying where we’d get it: “the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies….” and Iraq is the potential crown jewel with the largest of all untapped low-hanging fruit. Immediately on entering the White House, Cheney & Co. swung into action. They focused on Iraq like a laser, targeted Saddam Hussein, and removing him from office became top goal.
Washington teems with schemes and intrigue, but a neoconservative think tank was particularly diabolical. Established in 1997, it was called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), its goal was unchallengeable US dominance, and a policy paper was drafted to achieve it. It appeared in 2000 and was called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” It stated that “America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces.” It further called for “American hegemony” and “full-spectrum dominance,” and believed achieving it would be long-term “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
A rogues gallery of PNAC members joined the Bush administration in 2001, key among them Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, and topping their goals was removing Saddam Hussein. September 11 obliged, the “war on terror” was born, “terrorism” replaced communism as the new enemy, its core was in the oil-rich Middle East, and its headquarters was in Iraq. Removing the Taliban was just a warm-up for the main event ahead. It was conceived before bin Laden was “Enemy Number One” and overnight Al-Queda became western civilization’s greatest threat.
On October 7, 2001 (four weeks after 9/11), America went to war. Target One was Afghanistan, controlling Central Asian oil was the goal, transporting it through Afghanistan was the plan, and the Taliban had to go because they rejected one-way Washington (double) deal making. They fled Kabul five weeks later, Northern Alliance warlords took over, a puppet president was installed, war ended (for a time), and the focus shifted to Iraq.
Prepping the public began, Saddam became another Hitler, his WMDs threatened western civilization, so he had to go. “Shock and awe” began on March 19, 2003, and Baghdad fell three weeks later. Saddam was removed, fighting “officially” ended in May, and to almost no one’s surprise, no WMDs were found because they’re weren’t any, and that was known by the mid-1990s or earlier.
Paul Wolfowitz attended an unreported Singapore security conference in June. He was asked why America chose WMDs as a causis belli when none existed. He answered it was “the only thing we could agree on.” He was also asked why Iraq was targeted, not North Korea and its nuclear threat, and he explained: “The country swims on a sea of oil” so there was no other choice with world supply running out.
That conclusion came out of an alarming September 9, 2001 Oil Depletion Analysis Centre energy policy memo to Tony Blair. It highlighted “hydrocarbon difficulties,” declining output, and importance of Iraq as the one remaining untapped oil-rich country. Securing it was key because credible geological reports argued that easy cheap oil was dramatically declining while global demand was rising, especially in emerging China and India. For almost a century, world economic growth needed cheap, plentiful oil. No good substitute exists so controlling what’s left is essential.
Further, if “peak oil” has been reached, as many believe, its cost will explode, and one analyst predicted: “Beyond 2005, the energy required to find and extract a barrel of oil will exceed the energy contained in the barrel.” Further, he estimated most major oil sources are near or at peak, for every new barrel discovered, four are being used, and the only cheap untapped supply left is in the Middle East where around two-thirds of proved reserves remain. Five regional countries are key – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, the Gulf Emirates (notably Qatar) and Iraq above all with estimates that its potential may be 432 billion barrels or around two-thirds more than Saudi Arabia’s proved reserves.
If true, Iraq’s importance is vital, its real estate is the world’s most valuable, and controlling it unchallenged means “Washington (holds) the trump cards over all potential economic rivals,” friends and foes. Even more grandiose would be to control every major and potential worldwide oil source and transport route to achieve unimaginable omnipotence. It would be a global-scale chokehold to decide who gets supply, who doesn’t, how much and at what price. It would thereby assure who controls world economic development and remains Number One.
Unchallengeable military power is key and the reason the Bush administration repositioned its global presence through a web of new bases. They’ve been strategically placed where Cold War geopolitics didn’t permit. Unsurprisingly, they target Eurasia and its importance Zbigniew Brzezinski highlighted in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard.” He referred to the region as the “center of world power extending from Germany and Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific and including the Middle East and Indian subcontinent.” Dominating it assures the US access to and control of its vast energy reserves, so that becomes Goal One.
But it doesn’t exclude broader aims, including Africa that will supply around one-fourth of future US oil supply, according to some analysts. It explains the Pentagon’s AFRICOM presence that’s expected to be fully operational by late summer and be responsible for the entire continent and its valued resources that include more than energy.
Swing over to Latin America and its energy potential. Countries like Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico are very much in US plans with the Bolivarian Republic far and away most important. According to Hugo Chavez and some US estimates, the country has more potential reserves than Saudi Arabia when its heavy oil is included. It explains SOUTHCOM’S mission and command over 30 regional countries with a growing presence in a number of them and ongoing operations (some covert) throughout Latin America.
Engdahl ends his book discussing oil’s importance to US “full spectrum dominance.” Controlling it directly or indirectly through client regimes means holding “a true weapon of mass destruction (and) potential blackmail over the rest of the world. Who would dare challenge the dollar” as the world’s reserve currency? And if IMF rules keep restraining developing countries’ growth, their oil demand will be curbed, so all the more for America and its key Global North allies at a time when most world oil sources have peaked. More than ever then, controlling world energy reserves is crucial to maintaining economic growth.
The 1970s oil shocks were warning shots. Today, threatened shortfalls are real and worsening. We call controlling world supply promoting democracy, others see the subterfuge, and some critics feel our imperial arrogance defines our weakness. Today, America is unrivaled in global power, and Engdahl quoted the late Edward Said after Iraq’s invasion saying: “Every single empire (says) it is not like all the others, that (it’s special), that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy (and only use) force as a last resort.” It remains to be seen what’s ahead in “the New American Century,” but the evidence so far isn’t encouraging, and that’s putting it mildly.
Andrew Sullivan on Obama: The “Best Face” For Imperialism
Andrew Sullivan on Obama:
The “Best Face” For Imperialism
In an article in the December issue of The Atlantic, commentator Andrew Sullivan argues that Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States. (“Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters,” December 2007). Sullivan writes that a (ruling class) “consensus” agenda for endless war and increased repression will be in effect regardless of who is president. He challenges the reader to pick who could best implement all this in the face of global isolation and profound domestic alienation. And, in the process, he sheds light on the real role of elections in this society.
Those who are willing to listen in on a ruling class insider’s case for Obama, read on.
Civics 101: Your Vote for President “Has Little to Do With” Basic Policy Decisions
First, a note on Andrew Sullivan’s credentials: Sullivan writes columns for the New York Times, Time magazine, and is a regular on the political talk shows. He is a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine. Sullivan’s defining political legacy was his tenure as editor of The New Republic, where he counted among his big achievements the promotion of the book The Bell Curve, a completely ridiculous but highly influential pseudoscientific book that claimed that Black people are genetically inferior to whites. The New Republic under his editorship played a key role in—in his words—“helping to torpedo the Clinton administration’s plans for universal health coverage.” A conservative who has differences with Christian fundamentalism (Sullivan is openly gay), he invokes Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as models.
And yes, he is supporting Barack Obama for president.
Very early in Sullivan’s article, he invokes and reveals a little ruling class secret: Your vote “has little to do with” basic policy decisions.
Listen to Sullivan: “The logic behind the candidacy of Barack Obama,” he writes, “has little to do with his policy proposals, which are very close to his Democratic rivals’ and which, with a few exceptions, exist firmly within the conventions of our politics.”
Sullivan lists, rather extensively, how such “conventions of our politics” are set for the next president, regardless of who he is. The war in Iraq? It “has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade.” “Every potential president,” writes Sullivan, “is committed to an open-ended deployment in Afghanistan and an unbending alliance with Israel.” And Sullivan doesn’t even pose as “issues” many of the most egregious outrages that people are angry about—from the abandonment of the poor and Black people of New Orleans, to the generated xenophobia and reign of terror against immigrants. The word “torture” never appears in his article.
While Sullivan’s actual projection of the ruling class “evolving consensus” is bad enough, it also includes what is likely wishful thinking on his part. For example, he postulates that this “consensus” includes permitting abortion in the first trimester—something that the leading Republican candidates have vowed to end. But the more fundamental revelation pointed to here is not that Obama’s policies are the same as those of every other “credible” candidate (which they are), but that it doesn’t really matter what his policies are.
Underlying Sullivan’s assertion that Obama’s candidacy (or anyone else’s) has “little to do with his policy proposals” is a deeper truth which is not acknowledged by Sullivan, although it drives the whole framework that he does acknowledge. The foundational thing here is that whoever is elected president of the United States presides over a system of capitalism-imperialism that has its own logic, and any president who tried to go against that would be “overruled” in one form or another quickly by the system. To take just one example: If someone got elected president and tried to withdraw U.S. military forces from all of the 130 countries with U.S. bases, this plan would be “overruled” in one form or another by the apparatus of the capitalist state (through “advice” from ruling class advisers, impeachment, “scandal,” or other forms). Why? Because the global domination of U.S. capital is projected and enforced by these military bases. That imperialist domination of the world, in turn, is key to the relative high standard of living and social stability within the U.S. If a president tried to shut down all the U.S. military bases around the world, that would be incompatible with, and cause severe disruption in the U.S. imperialist economy and in society.
Having clarified that this election “has little to do with Obama’s policy proposals,” and “even less to do with his ideological pedigree,” Sullivan gets to the argument for Obama, and in the course of doing so, entreats the reader into complicity with terrible crimes.
“The Most Effective Re-Branding of the United States Since Reagan”
Obama, argues Sullivan, is “the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power.” (By “hard power,” Sullivan means military force; by “soft power,” he means non-military dimensions of “winning hearts and minds”—in conjunction with the use of, or threat of, military power.)
Choosing whether Obama, Clinton, Edwards, McCain or anyone else would actually be the most effective “soft power” weapon in the “war on terror,” is choosing who will put the best face on the actual source of the worst global terror—U.S. imperialism. Let’s check back into reality for a moment and reflect on the horrors the “war on terror” has brought: Up to a million or more dead Iraqis. Five million Iraqis dislocated from their homes or country. Afghanistan, in ruins, controlled by either the Taliban or drug-growing Islamic fundamentalist warlords aligned with the U.S. Torture chambers from Bagram in Afghanistan to secret cells in Europe. Rendition to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia for more U.S.-sponsored torture. Detention without trial. Guantánamo. And a world trapped in a horrific polarization between U.S. imperialist aggression, plunder, and terror, and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism that is both the target of and, in many ways, a product of the “war on terror.”
Obama’s invocation of Ronald Reagan is worth another look in the context of Sullivan’s article. Sullivan specifically argues that Obama could be the most effective president at projecting U.S. power around the world since Reagan.
Reagan’s infamous joke: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever, we begin bombing in five minutes,” concentrated his role in history. While he rattled horrific nuclear weapons, he armed thugs to carry out terror from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, from El Salvador and Guatemala to Angola and Mozambique. Reagan fostered a war between Iraq and Iran that took the lives of a million people and backed the apartheid government of South Africa and the racist state of Israel—when both were brutally suppressing internal rebellions of the oppressed peoples within their borders.
Since controversy broke out over his pro-Reagan statements to a Nevada newspaper, Obama has sought to “clarify” what he meant. Let’s re-examine his statements.
In the interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, Obama said: “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the ’60s and ’70s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is, ‘We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.’”
Later Obama “clarified” his remarks to say that he “spent a lifetime fighting against Ronald Reagan’s policies,” while not recanting his previous comments. But, as we have seen, “policies” are not really what elections are all about. What Obama calls the “excesses” of the ’60s were really great struggles that did not go far enough. And the point remains that both Sullivan, and Obama himself, are invoking the Reagan legacy in terms promoting feel-good “clarity” and “optimism” about the crimes of U.S. imperialism.
Nobody who opposes the terrible course this country is on should want to be part of a campaign to do that.
Two Scenarios
In promoting Obama for president, Sullivan poses a couple of very heavy scenarios. Sullivan writes: “Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man Barack Hussein Obama is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm… If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”
This is an argument for who would be the best face on endless imperialist war, mass murder, and torture. Why the hell would you want to be part of choosing who could best put that over on people?
And Sullivan argues that Obama is not only a better face for the “war on terror” around the world, but also a uniquely credible face for domestic repression. What would happen, Sullivan asks, if there were “another 9/11–style attack.” He poses that “It is hard to imagine a reprise of the sudden unity and solidarity in the days after 9/11, or an outpouring of support from allies and neighbors. It is far easier to imagine an even more bitter fight over who was responsible (apart from the perpetrators) and a profound suspicion of a government forced to impose more restrictions on travel, communications, and civil liberties. The current president would be unable to command the trust, let alone the support, of half the country in such a time. He could even be blamed for provoking any attack that came.”
The context here is an argument over who would be best, in the event of “another 9/11-style attack” (or, one could add, a claim by the government that one was “planned”), to implement what Sullivan euphemistically calls “more restrictions on travel, communications, civil liberties.”
Right now, uncounted people are on secret “watch lists,” prohibited from traveling on airplanes. The most massively intrusive surveillance in human history monitors your phone calls and your Internet browsing, and makes it illegal for a librarian to tell you the government is looking at what books you check out. The president can lock up anyone, for any reason, on his say-so, without recourse to anything resembling a credible trial. And Sullivan is arguing that Obama would be best for implementing even more fascistic repression.
Once more: Why the hell would you want to be part of choosing who could best put that over on people?
The Intensifying Domestic “Civil War”
Sullivan frames his argument for Obama in the context of what he calls an “intensifying, a nonviolent civil war.” A conflict “about culture and about religion and about race.”
There is profound conflict in the U.S. over culture, religion, and race. It is characterized not by nonviolence, but by one-sided violence. White supremacy that in an earlier era was enforced through lynch mobs and nooses (and note the comeback of the noose) is today enforced in the inner cities by the policeman’s gun. The religious culture war is waged by violent attacks on not only abortion clinics, but also those who work for them. And society is so permeated with violence against women in the form of rape and domestic violence against women that it is an invisible part of the “culture.”
There is also a polarization at the top of society, among the ruling class. On one side, the core around Bush (and, generally speaking, ruling class forces whose agenda is expressed by or represented by the Republican Party) is on a mission—in the literal, religious sense in many ways—to radically remake the post-“Cold War” world and to tear up the “social contract” that has more or less held U.S. society together for generations. On the other side are forces in the ruling class who are operating in the same framework, but fear doing all this too fast, too overtly, and in a way that will tear society apart (generally characterized by the leaders of the Democratic Party).
A substantial thread in Sullivan’s article includes his advice on how to manage the conflict at the top of the ruling class, including his dissatisfaction with Bush’s style and approach (among Sullivan’s complaints: Bush is “unable to do nuance”). But here, we’ll focus on Sullivan’s argument that Obama is the best face not only for U.S. imperialist war, but also for resolving the domestic “civil war.”
Obama, Sullivan writes, can take “America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us.” And Obama can end “the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying.”
Sullivan’s own perspective is that the best course for those with fears and reservations about the direction things are heading is to adopt much of the framework established by Bush, and push for moderation within that. Sullivan sees the Baby Boomers (his repeated term for the legacy of the ’60s) as an obstacle to forging a reasonable course within the “evolving consensus.” In his article, he claims that those who oppose the U.S. “war on terror,” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, “judged the 9/11 attacks to be a legitimate response to decades of U.S. foreign policy.”
This distortion is important to excavate. The most powerful opposition voices to the “war on terror” have never argued that 9/11 was a “legitimate response” to U.S. foreign policy. They have argued that the “war on terror” is immoral, illegal, and illegitimate; and that the people themselves must forge a new way forward in opposition to both McWorld and Jihad. For example, the Call from World Can’t Wait, signed by thousands of people including many prominent actors, authors, political activists, and others, begins: “YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.” (The Call is available at worldcantwait.org.) Millions in this country have asked, and more should ask, “Why do they hate us so much?”
Distorting such questioning and opposition in the way Sullivan does—claiming that such opposition judges the 9/11 attacks “legitimate”—fits in with the framework established by the Bush mantra of “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”
Sullivan, and let’s face it, he is accurately projecting what Obama is about, argues that Obama can isolate “the Baby Boomers” and get America past all that ’60s stuff. And here again, the Reagan legacy is invoked, not—actually—by Sullivan, but by Obama himself who recently pointed to Reagan’s ability to “transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways…”
As we wrote last week, in the wake of the rebellious culture of the ’60s, “Reagan came out there with this shit-eating grin and salesman’s chuckle, and all the while he mobilized a fascist social base ready to bully anybody, and he narcotized those in the middle, and he effectively silenced and marginalized those who stood for anything decent.” (See “ ‘American Greatness’—And Why Obama and Reagan Really DO Belong Together,” by Toby O’Ryan at revcom.us.) In this context, Obama’s constant invocation that “There is no liberal America, there is no conservative America, there is only the United States of America…” can be understood as a call for patriotic national unity—unity with the most terrible crimes being committed by the world’s sole superpower.
And again, it must be posed: Who the hell would want to “resolve” the culture wars in society this way?
Sullivan does not focus much in this essay on the great societal divide over the oppression of Black people (or other oppressed nationalities). (The relationship between Obama’s campaign and white supremacy is beyond the scope of this article, but here it can be noted that in this essay Sullivan describes “Obama’s campaign for white America: courteous and smiling and with no sudden moves.”) Sullivan does address the question of the rise of theocratic Christian religious fundamentalism. In the method typical of his article, Sullivan defines the societal divide over religion in terms that marginalize secularism, and even separation of church and state, referring to a conflict between “God-fearing Americans and the peacenik atheist hippies.”
Sullivan argues for a bigger role for religion in society and government than has been the norm up to Bush. The choice, Sullivan poses, is between “crude exploitation of sectarian loyalty and religious zeal by Bush and Rove,” and a bigger role for religion that stops short of that. Sullivan writes, “You cannot lead the United States without having a foot in both the religious and secular camps.” Whatever Sullivan’s intentions, the view of ceding a larger role to religion and denigrating secular culture (those “atheist hippies”) cedes the moral high ground to Christian fascists. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton (and before her Bill Clinton) have also promoted the illusion that by conceding ground to the Christian fundamentalists you can moderate or temper them. It is in this context that Obama’s particular brand of professed Christian beliefs fits the bill, according to Sullivan, although he acknowledges that Hillary Clinton as well is taking pains to position herself as accommodating to the rise of Christian fundamentalism.
What We REALLY Need
Underlying Sullivan’s argument that Obama is the best candidate to manage all these conflicts in the direction the ruling class wants to take things is an explicit acknowledgement that there is a sharp polarization in U.S. society that could get out of control—“the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying.”
This intensifying situation will not just “fall into” anything good for the people. The global anger at the U.S. is far from enough to bring about anything positive. That is the case within the U.S., and it is the case worldwide. Within the U.S., anger at the direction of things can take, and for many is taking, the form of rallying around patriotic Christian fascism and an attraction to the “good old days” of unquestioned white supremacy and “good vs. evil” simplistic support for U.S. wars. Around the world, far too many angry oppressed people look to the reactionary dead end of Islamic fundamentalism as a “response” to imperialism.
But the emergence of a real and visible opposition to the whole direction this country is headed, standing with and starting from the interests of humanity,can forge a new polarization within the U.S. and create a much better climate for the emergence of progressive and revolutionary movements worldwide, and can even create openings for, and forces for, revolutionary change in the U.S.
Working for that is something worth doing. And it is a lot more realistic than putting your faith in a candidacy, and a process that is part of putting “the best face” on a world of horrors!
“If you fall into the orientation of trying to make the Democrats be what they are not, and never will be, you will end up becoming more like what the Democrats actually are.”
—Bob Avakian
Join NATO and we’ll target missiles at Kiev, Putin warns Ukraine!
Join NATO and we’ll target missiles at Kiev, Putin warns Ukraine!
Russia could redirect its missiles towards Ukraine if the country joined Nato, Vladimir Putin warned today.
The president said he would be forced to target Russian rockets at Ukraine in response to a possible deployment of a US missile shield in the eastern European country.
“I am not only terrified to utter this, it is scary even to think that Russia … would have to target its offensive rocket systems at Ukraine,” he said.
If Kiev agrees to sign up to Nato, it could host US anti-missile defences on Ukrainian soil.
The mood proved more amicable between the two neighbours moments earlier when an agreement had been reached to end the gas dispute.
Putin said Russia and Ukraine had negotiated a deal on Kiev’s gas debt repayment.
The Russian state energy firm Gazprom had threatened to halt gas supplies to Ukraine today from 6pm (3pm GMT) if an agreement could not be reached, but a last-minute deal was reached.
“We have heard that the settlement of the debt will begin in the nearest time,” said Putin, after talks with the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko.
Yushchenko said Ukraine would start repaying the debt, “which was amassed in November-December of last year because supply contracts had not been signed”.
The debt for gas from Russia and central Asia is put at $1.5bn (£770m).
The row raised the spectre of disrupted gas supplies to Europe. A pricing dispute between Moscow and Kiev stopped shipments to EU states in 2006.
Gazprom insisted the row would not have affected gas deliveries to the EU, and would only halt Ukraine’s Russian gas, which makes up 25% of Kiev’s supply. Shipments would have continued from central Asia, which accounts for the remaining 75%.
In another source of tension with the west, Russia warned that a unilateral declaration of independence by Serbia’s Kosovo province would violate international law and damage security in Europe.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the US and European countries did not understand the potential consequences of independence for Kosovo, whose Albanian leaders are expected to announce the move on Sunday.
“It would undermine the basics of security in Europe, it would undermine the basics of the UN charter,” Lavrov said in Geneva. He said western countries were dealing with the problem in a “haphazard” way.
“Many of them, frankly, do not understand the risks and dangers and threats associated with a unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence,” he said.
“They do not understand that it would inevitably result in a chain reaction in many parts of the world, including Europe and elsewhere.”
Russia has warned that Republika Serbska could call a referendum on its secession from Bosnia-Herzegovina or that the Albanian minority in Macedonia may seek independence.
Moscow To Present Sino-Russian Space Arms Race Control Initiative
Moscow To Present Sino-Russian Space Arms Race Control Initiative
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by Staff Writers
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Feb 12, 2008
Russia will submit to a UN disarmament conference a joint Sino-Russian proposal for an international treaty to ban the deployment of weapons in outer space.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will present the draft treaty to the UN-sponsored annual Geneva Disarmament Conference on February 12.
The United States has been critical of the Russian-Chinese initiative, especially following China’s anti-satellite missile tests last year.
Donald Mahley, acting U.S. deputy assistant secretary for threat reduction, export controls and negotiations, said: “We see nothing in the new proposal to change the current U.S. position.” He said additional binding arms control agreements, “are simply not a viable tool for enhancing the long-term space security interests of the United States or its allies.”Washington said that after China tested an anti-satellite missile in January 2007, the U.S. administration had intensified work on a program called Space Situational Awareness (SSA).
The program has been defined as “knowing the location and potential function of every object orbiting the earth active or inactive regardless of its size, its purposes, its mission and its status.”Russian President Vladimir Putin said last Friday that a new arms race had begun, but that Russia would not allow itself to be drawn into it.
Russia has also been unnerved by NATO’s ongoing expansion and Washington’s plans to deploy missile defense bases in Central Europe, which it says are needed to deter possible strikes from Iran and other “rogue states.”
Pakistan nuclear staff go missing – Bush Calls on France for Help: War Without End
Pakistan nuclear staff go missing
The ambassador was en route to the Pakistani embassy in Kabul
Two employees of Pakistan’s atomic energy agency have been abducted in the country’s restive north-western region abutting the Afghan border, police say. The technicians went missing on the same day as Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, was reportedly abducted in the same region.Mr Azizuddin had been going overland from the city of Peshawar to Kabul.
Pakistan’s north-west has witnessed fierce fighting between Islamist militants and government troops. The pro-Taleban guerrillas declared a unilateral ceasefire last week after months of clashes with troops garrisoned there. The workers from Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission were on a mission to map mineral deposits in the mountains when they were kidnapped, police say.
“The technicians were going for some geological survey in the area when they were kidnapped at gunpoint along with their driver,” Romail Akram, a senior police official, told Reuters news agency. Their vehicle was intercepted by masked gunmen in the Dera Ismail Khan district, a stronghold of local militants. “We don’t know if the abductors were militants or members of some criminal gang,” a local police chief, Akbar Nasir, told the AFP news agency.
He said efforts to locate the missing men had yet to yield any results.
Karzai concerned
Efforts are also continuing to locate the missing Pakistani envoy, Tariq Azizuddin. Mr Azizuddin went missing on Monday as he was travelling overland from the Pakistani city of Peshawar to the Afghan capital, Kabul. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was certain the envoy had been abducted, adding: “I hope he is safe and I hope he will be released soon.”
The Khyber region has long been a base for bandits and smugglers but has seen little of the unrest linked to an uprising by Islamist militants in adjoining areas. Pro-Taleban militants recently kidnapped more than 200 Pakistani troops in the South Waziristan region. The soldiers were reportedly released in a prisoner exchange with Pakistani authorities.
‘Protected road’
Pakistan’s government has refused to confirm Mr Azizuddin has been kidnapped, saying only that he was missing. The Pakistani embassy in Kabul said contact was lost with Mr Azizuddin at around 1045 local time (0645 GMT) on Monday. The rugged region near the Afghan border has seen heavy fighting
There were reports on Pakistani television of his car going through a checkpoint without stopping. An official of the Khyber agency tribal administration told the BBC that the ambassador went through the Khyber agency without taking a security escort that was waiting for him at the start of the tribal territory.
Correspondents say that such escorts are routinely sent with dignitaries and officials when they travel through tribal areas. But some travellers dispense with them because they think it makes their movements more noticeable. Mr Azizuddin is said to have previously travelled to Kabul by road, often without the tribal security escort.
The route through the agency is believed to be the shortest and quickest way between Peshawar and Kabul. Being the main trade route, the Khyber agency road is busy in daylight hours, supplying reinforcements and to the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.
It is also one of the most protected of all the tribal roads, with a contingent of tribal police posted every 100m. The paramilitary Frontier Corps have a fort along the road.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7240414.stm
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Bush Calls on France for Help: War Without End
By: PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
on: 12.02.2008
”We support the troops!” That’s the excuse the Democrats have given for continuing to fund Bush’s aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan. But, of course, war funding doesn’t support the troops. War funding supports an evil machine that chews up and spits out the lives and well being of the troops, along with that of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan, men, women, and children. War funding supports Bush’s aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and his continuing efforts to occupy both countries in order to turn them into puppet states.
Polls show that a majority of the troops and their families do not support Bush’s aggression. The fact that Ron Paul’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination received the lion’s share of contributions from military families also underlines the great divide between the troops and those who would “support” them by keeping them in Iraq and Afghanistan. What all those ribbon decals on the back of SUVs, which proclaim “support the troops,” really mean is support Bush’s wars of aggression against Muslims.
According to the Washington Post (Feb. 9, 2008), Bush’s $3.1 trillion federal budget provides no funding for his proposal in his State of the Union address to permit military members to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. Bush got applause for his nationally televised words, but the troops and their families got no money in his budget.
Government analysts calculate the education benefits would cost in the range of $1-2 billion annually–the cost of funding the war for two days.
The only money that Bush and Congress want to give the troops is what is required to keep them at war. Everyone has read the horror stories of the lack of care for the physically and emotionally wounded troops who have made it back from Iraq.
In contrast, to fund Bush’s war, Bush and Congress have already spent in out-of-pocket and future costs at least $1,000 billion. Every American can draw up lists of better uses of this immense fortune than blowing up a country’s infrastructure and killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens.
Nothing good whatsoever has been accomplished by Bush’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was obvious to anyone with a lick of sense in 2002, six months prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq on March 18, 2003, that an invasion would be a strategic blunder. William S. Lind, myself and others made that prediction in October, 2002. Three years later, Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, vindicated us by declaring Bush’s invasion of Iraq to be “the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history.” If the head of the NSA doesn’t know a “strategic disaster” when he sees one, who does?
Gen. Odom’s assessment is certainly correct. Bush, Cheney, the neocons, and the sycophant media were completely wrong. Look at the situation today. Unable to defeat the Sunni insurgency, the US “superpower” has had to resort to paying tens of millions of dollars to insurgency leaders to bribe them not to attack US troops. In addition, Bush is supplying the insurgents with weapons “to fight al Qaeda.” The Sunni leaders gladly accept the money and weapons, but how long can they survive being collaborators with the American enemy that has destroyed their country and the Sunni place in the sun?
It was obvious to everyone but Bush and the neocons that overthrowing Saddam Hussein in the name of democracy would put the majority Shi’ites, who are allied with Iran, in place as the new rulers of Iraq. So far the Iraqi Shi’ites have bided their time and have not joined in earnest the insurgency against the US occupation. Instead, they, like the Sunnis, have directed most of their attention to cleansing neighborhoods of one another. The reasons that violence–although still higher than Americans could live with–is down are that most of the neighborhoods are now segregated, al Sadr has ordered his militia to stand down, and the Sunni insurgents are being paid not to attack US troops.
Bush started a war, and now to avoid losing it Bush pays Iraqis not to attack US troops!
The Sunnis and Shi’ites are stronger than ever, while the US troops are worn down and demoralized from multiple lengthy combat tours that violate traditional US military policy.
It was also obvious that Bush’s invasions would destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan. On February 8, seasoned foreign correspondent Warren Strobel reported for the McClatchy newspapers that “Pakistan is now the central front in America’s war on terror.” On February 9, the Washington Post reported: “Pakistan faces a growing threat from a new generation of radicalized, battle-hardened militants who embrace jihad and have become allied with local and international terrorists intent on toppling the pro-Western government shorthand for paid US puppet, a senior U.S. intelligence official told reporters yesterday.”
US officials have been pressing Pakistan, to no effect, to allow US troops to join the Pakistani army’s fight against Pakistani tribes allied with the Taliban. US officials, “speaking on condition of anonymity,” are trying to muster support for an expanded US military role in Pakistan by alleging that Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are in Pakistan with their top commanders. Bush wants to bomb Pakistan in order to win the war in Afghanistan.
With all available US troops tied down in Iraq, the US is using NATO soldiers as mercenaries to try to counter a resurgent Taliban. Europeans are tiring of their role as an European proxy for America’s legions, and the NATO commander speaks of a NATO defeat in Afghanistan.
NATO was an alliance created to resist a Soviet invasion of Europe. The US has kept an unnecessary NATO alive for 18 years as a source of troops for its foreign adventures. Europeans dislike being mercenaries for American Empire, especially one that slaughters civilians.
Desperate for troops, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is trying to scare Europeans with the threat of “international terrorism,” but Europeans know that the best way to bring terrorism to Europe is to send troops to fight Muslims for the Americans. Whether Gates will get the German and French soldiers that he so desperately needs depends on whether the US can give the German and French leaders, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, enough billions of dollars to divide among their parties to embolden them to override public opinion and send their soldiers to die for US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
Gates told Europe that NATO’s survival is at stake: “We must not–we cannot–become a two-tiered alliance of those willing to fight and those who are not.” In a rare bit of honesty for an American government official, Gates admitted at the NATO conference in Munich last week that Europeans’ anger at the US over Iraq is the reason Europe won’t send enough troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, thus putting what Gates disingenuously called “the international mission in Afghanistan” at risk of failure.
The Afghanistan “mission,” like the Iraq “mission,” was a mission for US and Israel hegemony. The official reason for invading Afghanistan was 9/11 and the alleged refusal of the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Europe, NATO, or any “international mission.” The official reason for invading Iraq was alleged, but nonexistent, weapons of mass destruction that allegedly threatened America–another, but more deadly, 9/11 in the making according to the Bush regime.
If the US now needs foreign troops to save its bacon in these two lost wars, it should demand them from Israel. Israel is why the US is at war in the Middle East. Let Israel supply the troops. The neocons who dominated the Bush regime and took America to illegal wars are allied with the extreme right-wing government of Israel. The goal of neoconservatism is to remove all obstacles to Israeli territorial expansion. The Zionist aim is to grab the entirely of the West Bank and southern Lebanon, with more to follow later.
Remember “mission accomplished”? Remember all the strutting neocons with their promises of a “cakewalk war”? Remember all the ignorant bragging about having “defeated the Taliban”? All of these lies were designed to tie American down in interminable wars in the Middle East for Israel’s benefit. There is no other reason for Bush’s invasions. We know for certain that Bush and his entire administration lied through their teeth about the Taliban and about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
What a total crock of ignorance and deception the Bush regime represents. Bush, defeated in Iraq, defeated in Afghanistan, with Pakistan crumbling in front of his eyes, is now reduced to begging the French, whom it was such grand sport for his neocon officials to denigrate, to send soldiers to save his ass in Afghanistan.
What a laughing stock Bush has made of America. What ruination this utter idiot and his supporters have brought to America. What total traitors the neoconservatives are. Every last one of them should be immediately arrested for high treason. Neonconservatives are America’s greatest enemies, and they control our government! All Americans have to show for six years of Bush’s “war on terror” is an incipient police state.
Now standing in the wings is mad John “hundred year war” McCain. Will the American electorate wipe out the Republican Party before this insane party wipes out America?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.
He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
