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In September 1955 an editorial column in Toward Freedom, titled “Consent of the Governed,” criticized “the tendency to make the communist issue so big that it obscured all others.” During the recent Bandung conference, which had launched the non-aligned movement, the editor noted that the US press had focused hard on public criticisms of Soviet subversion. But it had ignored other statements by world leaders that “urged the third way of emphasizing democracy and the consent of the governed.”

The following month Bill LLoyd took up the urgent need for timetables leading to self-government:

Six former colonial areas – Jordan, Ceylon, Nepal, Libya, Cambodia and Laos – joined the UN in 1955. Lloyd said it was a time “when national freedom again was recognized as a logical, acceptable goal for all peoples.” The call issued in Bandung had helped power the drive for UN membership. He also acknowledged that the US maintained an air base in Libya and that the removal of Algeria from the UN agenda represented a setback. However, for the first time a UN visiting mission had proposed a timetable for independence in Tanganyika (Tanzania) – although it was just “within 25 years.”

Other countries were edging toward freedom. Ghana was preparing for full independence, Sudan’s parliament had declared it independent, Malaysia was preparing to vote, and Morocco was making slow progress. But thousands of lives were being lost in Algeria, nationalists were defying the British military occupation of Cyprus, and violence persisted in Kenya.

In the midst of the 1956 elections Lloyd addressed the connection between politics and morality. European powers had “milked the colonial people for all they could get,” he charged in an editorial with the pointed title, “Wrongs Must Be Righted.” Too many people forgot “the simple moral fact that the wrongdoer must make restitution before his good intentions can be given full confidence.” That meant restitution for descendants of “grievously wronged” Native Americans and the African people:

If Europe’s governments claim that can’t afford it, Lloyd added, the US should handle a big part of the cost by shifting some money from military spending to a “huge and dramatic educational and development program through the United Nations.”

The Conference on Independent African States

When Ghana became a sovereign nation on March 6, 1957, Homer Jack represented the TF executive board at the independence celebrations and filed a report in the April issue. The British union jack had been replaced with Ghana’s flag of red, green and gold, he wrote, but economic colonialism lingered.

 Jack met with Prime Minister Nkrumah and saw promise in some of his bold ideas. For instance, he liked Nkrumah’s idea for a conference of independent African states – including the Union of South Africa – “to “achieve an African personality in international affairs.”  A year later he covered that event, as well as the Sixth Pan-African Conference, both held in Accra.

Although a few participants at the Conference of Independent African States, notably Tunisia and Ethiopia, were cautiously pro-Western the majority leaned toward neutralism, Jack reported. But there were various types – the positive neutralism of the United Arab Republic, Ghana’s positive non-alignment, and Morocco’s non-dependence. The final resolutions talked about “non-entanglement with the big power blocs.”

Asserting that the African states had a distinctive personality which would speak to the cause of peace, the conference called on the great powers to stop producing nuclear weapons and suspend all testing. In particular, they condemned France’s provocative intentions to test nukes in the Sahara. They urged more African representation in disarmament talks and more consultation generally on global affairs.

There was no anti-Israel rhetoric, by the way, only a call for a “just solution of the Palestinian question.” Part of the reason was that Ghana, which hosted the event, was becoming one of Israel’s closest friends on the continent. The other friend was the Union of South Africa.

Regional Federalism and Atomic Colonialism

Bill Lloyd frequently focused on the challenges of independence and the tension between centralization vs. federal states rights. In an April 1955 commentary he said that, taken to an extreme, self-determination could lead to fragmentation. On the other hand, new countries had a perfect right to suspect the colonial powers of trying to use divide and conquer tactics.

 The ideal was sovereignty of the people. But based on his Swiss research Lloyd argued pragmatically for the potential of “regional federalism under democratic guarantees.” This involved authority for the central government in the areas of defense, foreign relations, and trade but also suggested flexibility; for example, states and regions should be able to negotiate trade agreements with foreign governments subject to federal approval.

The continued testing of hydrogen bombs by the US, USSR and UK led to another idea – expanding the definition of colonialism. It needed to go beyond denial of basic rights of self-determination, he said, “to include the forceful imposition of radioactive fallout upon the citizens of unwilling and protesting nations.”

Foreign planes were prevented from violating the recognized air sovereignty of nations. Invasion by radioactive fallout was an even greater violation, he charged. It was atomic colonialism, the ultimate form of environmental racism.

In a follow up editorial TF Board member Robert Pickus discussed the “engineering of consent,” particularly by the Atomic Energy Commission. “We cannot trust our government to give us adequate information because we have given it a prior command: Secure us, by preparing for war,” Pickus wrote.

He identified a profound conundrum; Americans wanted democracy, which meant access to information, but they also wanted to be prepared to wage atomic war – which meant secrecy and ultimately loss of control over the government.

On the Road Toward Freedom: A Cold War Story, part three of six.

Next: Continent in Crisis

It was master-crafted as an ingratiating speech by the world’s most important leader and the government that has most consistently championed Israel’s cause over the decades. Enthusiastically received by the audience of Israeli youth, and especially by liberal Jews around the world. Despite the venue, President Obama’s words in Jerusalem on March 21st seemed primarily intended to clear the air somewhat in Washington. Obama may now have a slightly better chance to succeed in his second legacy-building presidential term despite a deeply polarized U.S. Congress, and a struggling American economy if assessed from the perspective of workers’ distress rather than on the basis of robust corporate profits. President Barack Obama looks into the crowd and tries to hear a person yelling at him during his speech at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, Thursday, March 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

As for the speech itself, it did possess several redeeming features. It did acknowledge that alongside Israeli security concerns “Palestinian people’s right of self-determination, their right to justice must also be recognized.” This affirmation was followed by the strongest assertion of all: “..put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes.” To consider the realities of the conflict through Palestinian eyes is to confront the ugly realities of prolonged occupation, annexationist settlement projects, an unlawful separation wall, generations confined to the misery of refugee camps and exile, second-class citizenship in Israel, ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, and a myriad of regulations that make the daily life of Palestinians a narrative of humiliation and frustration. Of course, Obama did not dare to do this. None of these realities were specified, being left to the imagination of his audience of Israeli youth, but at least the general injunction to see the conflict through the eyes of the other pointed the way toward empathy and reconciliation.

Obama also encouraged in a helpful way Israeli citizen activism on behalf of a just peace based on two states for two peoples. A bit strangely he urged that “for the moment, put aside the plans and process” by which this goal might be achieved, and “instead..build trust between people.” Is this not an odd bit of advice? It seems a stretch to stress trust when the structures and practice of occupation are for the Palestinians unremittingly cruel, exploitative, and whittle away day after day at the attainability of a viable Palestinian state. But this farfetched entreaty was coupled with a more plausible plea: “I can promise you this: Political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things.” There is some genuine hope to be found in these inspirational words, but to what end given the present situation.

In my opinion the speech was deeply flawed in three fundamental respects:

• by speaking only to Israeli youth, and not arranging a parallel talk in Ramallah to Palestinian youth, the role of the United States as ‘dishonest broker’ was brazenly confirmed; it also signaled that the White House was more interested in appealing to the folks in Washington than to those Palestinians trapped in the West Bank and Gaza, an interpretation reinforced by laying a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl but refusing to do so at the tomb of Yasir Arafat. This disparity of concern was further exhibited when Obama spoke of the children of Sderot in southern Israel, “the same age as my own daughters, who went to bed at night fearful that a rocket would land in their bedroom simply because of who they are and where they live.” To make such an observation without even mentioning the trauma-laden life of children on the other side of the border in Gaza who have been living for years under conditions of blockade, violent incursions, and total vulnerability year after year is to subscribe fully to the one-sided Israeli narrative as to the insecurity being experienced by the two peoples.
   
• by speaking about the possibility of peace based on the two state consensus, the old ideas, without mentioning developments that have made more and more people skeptical about Israeli intentions is to lend credence to what seems more and more to be a delusionary approach to resolving the conflict. Coupling this with Obama’s perverse injunction to the leaders of the Middle East that seems willfully oblivious to the present set of circumstances makes the whole appeal seem out of touch: “Now’s the time for the Arab world to take steps towards normalizing relations with Israel.” How can now be the time, when just days earlier Benjamin Netanyahu announced the formation of the most right-wing, pro-settler government in the history of Israel, selecting a cabinet that is deeply dedicated to settlement expansion and resistant to the very idea of a genuine Palestinian state? It should never be forgotten that when the Palestinian Liberation Organization announced back in 1988 that it was prepared to make a sustained peace with Israel on the basis of the 1967 borders. By doing this, the Palestinians were making an extraordinary territorial concession that has never been reciprocated, and operationally repudiated by continuous settlement building. The move meant accepting a state limited to 22% of historic Palestine, or less than half of what the UN had proposed in its 1947 partition plan contained in GA Resolution 181, which at the time was seen as grossly unfair to the Palestinians and a plan put forward without taking account of the wishes of the resident population. To expect the Palestinians to be willing now to accept significantly less land than enclosed by these 1967 borders to reach a resolution of the conflict seems highly unreasonable, and probably not sustainable if it should be imprudently accepted by the Palestinian Authority.
   
• by endorsing the formula two states for two peoples was consigning the Palestinian minority in Israel to permanent second-class citizenship without even being worthy of mention as a human rights challenge facing the democratic Israel that Obama was celebrating. As David Bromwich has pointed out [“Tribalism in the Jerusalem speech,”] http://mondoweiss.net/2013/03/tribalism-jerusalem-speech.html Obama was also endorsing a tribalist view of statehood that seem inconsistent with a globalizing world, and with secularist assumptions that a legitimate state should never be exclusivist in either its religious or ethnic character. Obama went out of his to affirm the core Zionist idea of a statist homeland where all Jews can most fully embrace their Jewishness: “Israel is rooted not just in history and tradition, but also in a simple and profound idea: the idea that people deserve to be free in a land of their own.” And with embedded irony no mention was made of the absence of any Palestinian right of return even for those who were coerced into fleeing from homes and villages that had been family residences for countless generations.

Such a regressive approach to identity and statehood was also by implication attributed to the Palestinians, also affirmed as a a lesser entitlement. But this is highly misleading, a false symmetry. The Palestinians have no guiding ethno-religious ideology that is comparable to Zionism. Their quest has been to recover rights under international law in the lands of their habitual residence, above all, the exercise of their inalienable right of self-determination in such a manner as to roll back the wider claims of settler colonialism that have been so grandiosely integral to the Greater Israel vision and practice of the Netanyahu government. And what of the 20% of the current population of Israel that lives under a legal regime that discriminates against them and almost by definition is a permanent consignment to second-class citizenship. Indeed, Obama’s speech was also an affront to many Israeli post-Zionists and secularists who do not affirm the idea of living under in a hyper-nationalist state with pretensions of religious endowments.

In my view, there are two conclusions to be drawn. (1) Until the rhetoric of seeing the realities of the situation through Palestinian eyes is matched by a consideration of the specifics, there is created a misleading impression that both sides hold equally the keys to peace, and both being at fault to the same extent for being unwilling to use them.  (2) It is a cruel distraction to urge a resumption of negotiations when Israel clearly lacks the political will to establish a viable and independent sovereign Palestinian state within 1967 borders and in circumstances in which the West Bank has been altered by continuous settlement expansion, settler only roads, the separation wall, and all the signs are suggesting that there is more of the same to come. Making matters even worse, Israel is taking many steps to ensure that Jerusalem never becomes the capital of whatever Palestinian entity eventually emerges, which is a severe affront not only to Palestinians and Arabs, but to the 1.4 billion Muslims the world over.

In retrospect, worse than speech was the visit itself. Obama should never have undertaken such the visit without an accompanying willingness to treat the Palestinian reality with at least equal dignity to that of the Israeli reality and without some indication of how to imagine a just peace based on two states for two peoples given the outrageous continuing Israeli encroachments on occupied Palestinian territory that give every indication of permanence, not to mention the non-representation and collective punishment of the Gazan population of 1.5 million. Obama made no mention of the wave of recent Palestinian hunger strikes or the degree to which Palestinians have shifted their tactics of resistance away from a reliance on armed struggle.  It is perverse to heap praise on the oppressive occupier, ignore nonviolent tactics of Palestinian resistance and the surge of global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and then hypocritically call on both peoples to move forward toward peace by building relations of trust with one another. On what planet has Mr. Obama been living? 

© 2013 Richard Falk

The Anonymous hacking group has claimed that it hacked into the website of Israel‘s Mossad spy agency, gaining access to top-secret documents.

The Internet hacking group said on its twitter page that it gained access to the personal data of more than 30,000 Israeli officials, including military officials, politicians and Mossad agents, and that it will release the information gradually.

Hacking group Anonymous has launched a series of cyber attacks against Israeli websites since November 2012 in retaliation for Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Anonymous said it had launched the OpIsrael campaign following threats by Tel Aviv to cut all Gaza's telecommunication links. OpIsrael campaign aims at wipping Israel off the cyber world by April 7.

Shortly after the pro-Palestinian campaign was launched, dozens of Israeli websites were defaced or attacked. Many of the sites had their homepages replaced with messages in support of Hamas and the Palestinians.

HM/JR

Iran has criticized the Arab League (AL) for giving Syria's seat to the foreign-backed opposition, warning that the move will set a “dangerous” precedence in the Arab world.

This hasty decision can turn into a new procedure and be applied to other Arab League member states in the future, Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Tuesday.

“This measure taken by the Arab League will be taken to mean the end of the [Arab] League’s role in the region,” he noted.

The Iranian official also advised Arab leaders to end their silence toward Israel's aggression and crimes and focus their efforts on supporting the Palestinian people.

In November 2011, the Arab League suspended Syria's membership, though Damascus is a founding member of the organization.

It consequently called on the opposition National Coalition on March 6 "to form an executive body to take up Syria's seat" at the AL summit scheduled for Tuesday in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Damascus has censured the decision and condemned the Arab League for giving the country's "stolen seat to bandits and thugs," Syrian government daily al-Thawra said in a report published on Monday.

Iraq and Algeria are the only countries that have expressed reservations about the decision, while Lebanon has opposed the move.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian army and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of militants are foreign nationals.

Damascus says the West and its regional allies including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are supporting the militants.

MRS/SS

Social media crazes in the Israeli military have seen a number of soldiers behaving in ways “unbecoming of the spirit of the IDF" – videos of soldiers dancing to Internet fads like the Harlem Shake could damage the IDF's image, officials said.

It is believed that viral videos run against the government's attempts to use social media as an effective propaganda tool. Although the IDF boasts its own official Facebook page and Twitter feed, there are fears that 'unauthorized’ materials could harm the image of the military where most young Israeli men and women aged 18 to 21 are required to serve.

“Just as the government uses social media for explaining, for campaigning, for propaganda or for spinning, it also has to deal with private soldiers using new media. Every soldier is a broadcast station,” Israel’s Center for the Protection of Democracy Executive Director Yizhar Be’er told RT.

Israeli military commanders have been recently told to prevent soldiers from uploading material “not appropriate” to the IDF’s “spirit.”

“It’s the problem of free speech… I don't see how you can control it,” said Dr. Yuval Dror, head of digital media studies at the Middle East college of management-academic studies.

The punishment for such behavior “unbecoming of the spirit of the IDF" can be strict. Earlier this year, two soldiers were sent to military prison for several weeks for posting a clip of their artillery battalion performing a version of the Harlem Shake.

“Under the military code of justice, there is an offense... I think it is sergeant and above... which says in effect any conduct which is unbecoming an IDF soldier would therefore potentially at least expose you to criminal liability. Could actually find yourself in jail if you made an offense under that,” former IDF legal advisor David Benjamin told RT.

IDF officials were also incensed when a group of soldiers turned their patrol in Hebron into a dance number: A video titled 'Battalion 50 Rock the Hebron Casbah' featured six armed soldiers in bulletproof vests who start a Macarena-like dance after a Muslim call to prayer is heard.

“You have to remember that soldiers are 18-year-old kids,” Gil Yogev, who was once an officer with the paratroopers' unit, told RT. Yogev said he would brief his soldiers regularly about what they could and could not post online, but many were careless or childishly unaware of the impact such material could have.

“It is not misuse of power, for them it is just fun,” Yogev added.   

“I don't think that the dancing is abusing power, I do think that putting your sniper aim on an innocent person is an abuse of power and I think that this is the distinction that the army should make,” Yuval Dror said.

“You have to remember that soldiers are 18-year-old kids,” Gil Yogev, who was once an officer with the paratroopers' unit, told RT. Yogev said he would brief his soldiers regularly about what they could and could not post online, but many were careless or childishly unaware of the impact such material could have.

“It is not misuse of power, for them it is just fun,” Yogev added.   

“I don't think that the dancing is abusing power, I do think that putting your sniper aim on an innocent person is an abuse of power and I think that this is the distinction that the army should make,” Yuval Dror said.

Sacha Dratwa, the head of the IDF’s social media unit, sparked controversy when he uploaded a Facebook photo with dark mud from the Dead Sea smeared on his face, and a caption reading “Obama style.” The picture provoked mixed reactions, with some accusing the 26-year-old of racism. Dratwa claimed he had been misinterpreted.

Kill the Child, Spare the Lamb

Posted on Mar 25, 2013

AP/Baz Ratner

Ultra-Orthodox Jews gather around a fire as they burn leavened items in a final preparation before the Passover holiday in Jerusalem.

By Robert Scheer

Sorry to be such a nudge, but as I write this before heading off to yet another in a long lifetime of Passover Seders, I still can’t get my head wrapped around this business of the plagues. Particularly that tenth plague, the one that gave the Passover holiday its name when: “On that night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.”

Talk about collective guilt. According to Exodus, as summarized on bible.org, “The weeping and the wailing was not like anything ever heard in the land before.” And that’s without throwing in the disease of livestock, hail and thunder, locusts, lice, frogs, flies, water that turned to blood killing all fish and that old standby: incurable boils. To be fair, according to the revealed truth of Wikipedia, everyone in Egypt, Israelites included, got the lice, frogs and bloody water treatment, and there is a question of just how far the locust exposure extended. Wikipedia also questions whether it was God who did the smiting or the “Angel of Death,” as some think. More research would help here, but I am already late for dinner, and no one there will be interested in my dreary take on the occasion of our freedom feast. They certainly don’t need to be bummed out by the tale of the battle between Moses and the Pharaoh’s sorcerers over who could most expeditiously make the Nile stink from the odor of dead fish.

I know this is a sensitive subject, but, since even the youngest among us are supposed to raise questions at the Seder, doesn’t that vengeance from on high seem excessive? After all, the non-Israelites didn’t get to vote for the Pharaoh or otherwise offer their consent for his choice of false gods to worship, so why are innocent children being treated as collateral damage to make a fanatical religious point? Of course this is not an awkward issue for Jews alone, because the passages in Exodus extolling the slaughter of non-combatant Egyptians represents sacred scripture to Christians and Muslims as well. Maybe we should drop the subject and just eat.

I wouldn’t be bringing it up—I know that any hint of barbarism in the Judeo-Christian heritage is considered heresy in even the most enlightened circles—but it was the article in the New York Times on the Vegan Seder that got me going. That and another one in the Wall Street Journal about spicing up the Passover feast “by throwing toy frogs at one another and having bugs, lice and other fake creatures on the Seder table.” One enthusiast for the ritual intends to use a live frog. Innocent enough, I suppose, except for the report that, “In one household, a son falls to the ground to mark the Death of the First born.”

One would think that this marking of the Death of the Firstborn would pose a particular problem to participants in the vegan Seder, since humans are presumably part of the animal family and therefore unfit candidates for ritualistic sacrifice. The Times treated this issue of vegan abhorrence to animal sacrifice as a culinary rather than a moral challenge to the observance of Passover. “Holidays are often a challenge for vegans, who eschew all animal foods,” the Times observed, “But the holidays present more obstacles to vegan eaters. In addition, some animal foods, like eggs and lamb, take center stage, forcing vegan Jews to chose between powerful religious traditions and their own values about the food they consume.”

The conflict between the powerful religious tradition of God’s wrath against animals, human and otherwise, and deeply felt personal food values was handled by Mayim Bialik, an actress in “The Big Bang Theory,” by, among other clever innovations, substituting a roasted red beet for the traditional lamb’s bone. “For her,” the Times noted, “the beet is a good stand-in, its ‘bloody’ appearance symbolizing the blood the Israelites used to mark their doors to ward off the last of the ten plagues, death of the first born, from their homes.”

The marking of the homes part is clear enough, for how else would an omniscient god know where the Israelites live? But if one is an observant vegan, isn’t it troubling that a first born animal, say the offspring of a pet cat, let alone a human child, is to be sacrificed while the life of the lamb is saved?

Hopefully some youngest child, at a Seder somewhere tonight, will have the chutzpah to ask such a question.

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Amazon Sells Sex Toys as Wellness Products

Posted on Mar 25, 2013

Amazon and other companies have rebranded once taboo sex paraphernalia, thus starting another sexual revolution; public libraries aren’t free, per se, but they’re an absolutely important investment; meanwhile, is the fact that college athletic directors get paid more than $1 million a year justifiable? These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

Amazon Sells 60,000 Sex Toys and Related Products? Welcome to Sex 4.0
When was the last time you used a sex toy?

How We Got to the Supreme Court
Twenty years ago this July, Michelangelo Signorile went to Hawaii to cover the lawsuit that launched the first salvo in the current war over marriage equality, ultimately leading to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Proposition 8 and, this week, arguments before the Supreme Court: Several gay and lesbian couples took the then-extraordinary step of suing the state of Hawaii, claiming gender discrimination because they were denied marriage licenses.

Winning and Whining, or How to Get Your Just Desserts in America
The phrase “American Exceptionalism” has a long, convoluted, and too often tortured track record.

Obama Ignores the Ugly, Brutal Reality of Occupation and Colonization on His Israel Trip
Round after round of tear gas was shot by a group of Israeli soldiers on a hill overlooking a protest of about 100 Palestinians in support of a hunger striking prisoner.

There Are No Free Libraries
Over the past few months, an image has been making its way around social media to underscore the value of libraries.

Religion Without God
The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude.

Why is Science So Obsessed with Beauty?
Scientists have been musing about beauty, order and natural symmetry since Pythagoras.

Science-fiction Turns Real: Genetically Engineering Animals for War
Scientific advances have us on the verge of being able to control and manipulate animals. Should we use that power?

Mistakes, Excuses, and Painful Lessons from the Iraq War
Ezra Klein has admitted he made a mistake in supporting the Iraq War. And he’s sorry.

The ‘Canonical’ Image of a Drone Is a Rendering Dressed Up in Photoshop
The media of the drone war is not like the media of World War II or Vietnam.

Introducing Brics From Above, And Brics-From-Below
In Durban, South Africa, five heads of state meet on March 26-27 2013 at the International Convention Centre, to assure the rest of Africa that their countries’ corporations are better investors in infrastructure, mining, oil and agriculture than the traditional European and US multinationals.

College Athletic Directors—Why is the Pay So High?
We’ve just learned that nine athletic directors of major college-sports programs make more than $1 million annually, with an average salary of about $515,000.

More Below the Ad

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WASHINGTON - March 25 - RABEEA EID, rabeea.eid at arabs48.com
Contrary to many media reports, the student who spoke up during Obama’s speech to students in Jerusalem was not protesting the imprisonment of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. Rather, Eid, who is a student from the village of Eilaboun, which is inside Israel, spoke out to question U.S. policy toward the Palestinians. Specifically, Eid asked Obama in English: “President Obama, did you come to make peace or to support Israel and the Israeli occupation? How can you be democratic and support a Jewish country? Who killed Rachel Corrie? Did you see the apartheid wall when you came from Ramallah?” Reached today by the Institute for Public Accuracy, Eid said: “President Obama talked about the violence from settlers but he didn’t say anything against settlements — they are illegally built on occupied land. He didn’t talk about the apartheid wall that devastates life for many Palestinians. He talked about democracy and justice, but Israel is stopping democracy and justice. It’s an ethnic-religious state — such a state can’t be democratic.” Eid told the New York Times: “It is important for us that the American people know what is happening here, and to know that the money from their taxes is going for  weapons for Israel.” Eid also spoke to the Electronic Intifada.

JEREMY VARON, jvaron at aol.com
CHRISTOPHER KNESTRICK, cknest11 at gmail.com
The Guardian reports: “Guantanamo hunger strike much bigger than reported, rights group claims.” Varon and Knestrick are with Witness Against Torture, which is organizing solidarity hunger strikes and protests around the U.S. this week. Today the group released this statement: “Prisoners at the U.S. military prison camp in Guantanamo are entering their seventh week of a hunger strike and may die soon. Many prisoners were falsely accused and sold for a bounty to the U.S. Around half of all the prisoners of Guantanamo have been cleared to be released but are still being held indefinitely. Most of the prisoners have been held for over 11 years without charge or trial. This is illegal and morally wrong. Because they are in an indefinite or apparently never-ending imprisonment without being convicted of any crime they have little options to help themselves and no hope left. So they stopped eating at the beginning of February.”

ALEXANDER MAIN, main at cepr.net and via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net
The AP reported on Saturday in “U.S. Aids Honduran Police Despite Death Squad Fears” that: “The U.S. State Department, which spends millions of taxpayer dollars a year on the Honduran National Police, has assured Congress that money only goes to specially vetted and trained units that don’t operate under the direct supervision of a police chief once accused of extrajudicial killings and ‘social cleansing.’ But The Associated Press has found that all police units are under the control of Director General Juan Carlos Bonilla, nicknamed the ‘Tiger,’ who in 2002 was accused of three extrajudicial killings and links to 11 more deaths and disappearances. He was tried on one killing and acquitted. The rest of the cases were never fully investigated.” The revelation comes a week after another AP investigative feature detailed current death squad activity within the Honduran police.

Alexander Main is senior associate for international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is author of the recent blog post, “Fifty-eight Members of Congress ask for investigation of Honduras killings and policy review –- will Kerry and Holder act?” He said today: “For several years the U.S. administration ignored pleas from dozens of members of Congress demanding that human rights in Honduras take priority over the U.S.’s militarized security policy there. Despite the increasing number of reports of extrajudicial killings and attacks perpetrated by state security forces, the U.S. has continued to pump millions of dollars into Honduras’ corrupt police and military, claiming that no units suspected of abuses receive U.S. support. Now key members of Congress are finally taking concrete steps to force the administration to reconsider its Honduras policy, itself a cornerstone of the regional ‘war on drugs,’ which has empowered security forces and undermined civilian institutions and human rights.”

For the US, UK, France, and its regional partners including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, nothing would have suited their interests more than if the recent chemical attack reported in Aleppo Syria turned out to be (or could have been portrayed as being) the work of the Syrian government, or even “loose” weapons that had fallen into the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists the West both arms and condemns simultaneously.

However, a strange silence has fallen across the Western media regarding the chemical attack which Israel had even claimed to have “confirmed.”  Now, a recent report published in the London Telegraph by Channel 4 journalist Alex Thomson has produced convincing evidence that implicates the West’s terrorist proxies as the perpetrators, and goes far in explaining the otherwise inexplicable silence exhibited by Wall Street and London’s propaganda machine. Titled, “Syria chemical weapons: finger pointed at jihadists,” Thomson reported that:

The military’s version of events is that the home-made rocket was fired at a military checkpoint situated at the entrance to the town. The immediate effects were to induce vomiting, fainting , suffocation and seizures among those in the immediate area.

A second source – a medic at the local civilian hospital – said that he personally witnessed Syrian army helping those wounded and dealing with fatalities at the scene. That Syrian soldiers were among the reported 26 deaths has not been disputed by either side.

The military source who spoke to Channel 4 News confirmed that artillery reports from the Syrian Army suggest a small rocket was fired from the vicinity of Al-Bab, a district close to Aleppo that is controlled by Jabhat al-Nusra – a jihadist group said to be linked with al-Qaeda and deemed a “terrorist organisation” by the US.

Thomson describes his contact in Syria as “a trusted and hitherto reliable source.” Thomson’s report, coupled with the silence across the West’s governments and media houses, implies that indeed this version of the story falls closest yet to the truth. The West’s silence in the face of an otherwise spectacular opportunity to advance its agenda may also indicate its faltering legitimacy and the loss of confidence that it can rewrite, at will, reality to suit its agenda – as it has done so many times in the past.

The West also faces a growing crisis if its terrorist proxies continue using chemical weapons, whatever their origin. CNN had reported in December of 2012, in a report titled, “Sources: U.S. helping underwrite Syrian rebel training on securing chemical weapons,” that:

The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday.

The training, which is taking place in Jordan and Turkey, involves how to monitor and secure stockpiles and handle weapons sites and materials, according to the sources. Some of the contractors are on the ground in Syria working with the rebels to monitor some of the sites, according to one of the officials.

This would implicate the West directly in giving terrorists using chemical weapons against Syria’s population the knowledge and training to handle just such weapons. While the West continues to insist there is a divide between the terrorists it is arming, funding, and training, and the terrorists openly fighting under the banner of sectarian extremism, it is clear that even the US’ hand-picked “interim government” is run entirely by the sectarian extremist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. Thomson’s report implicates the Al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra as possibly being behind the attack, and notes that it is listed by the US as a “terrorist organisation.” However, so-called Syrian opposition leader, Moaz al-Khatib, had personally defended al-Nusra, openly admitting it was fighting alongside his Western-backed front.

As the West’s credibility crumbles regarding Syria, and as its “success” in Libya continues to burn, its arming, training, aiding and abetting of terrorists carrying out increasingly horrific atrocities which now appear to include the use of chemical weapons, will haunt them not only in their pursuit of transforming the Levant, but in many years to come, in regards to all of their geopolitical ambitions.

WASHINGTON - After a week of retrospectives on the tenth anniversary of Washington’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq, the most compelling consisted of a retrospective of the retrospectives.

(Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images) It came from Marc Lynch, an expert on Arab public opinion at George Washington University and prominent blogger on the foreignpolicy.com website. The flood of retrospectives that materialised over the week, he wrote, has “almost exclusively been written by Americans, talking about Americans, for Americans.”

Lynch even did a tally. The New Republic, an important liberal publication, ran commentaries by eight writers, none Iraqi. Foreign Affairs, the country’s most influential foreign-affairs journal, featured 25 contributors, none Iraqi. The New York Times did slightly better: one Iraqi out of six commentators.

Foreign Policy itself, in cooperation with the Rand Corporation, featured 20 participants in a lengthy discussion on lessons learned from Iraq. Not a single one was Iraqi.

Most major newspapers – and cable news channels — ran a scattering of stories from Iraq in which officials and citizens voiced their satisfaction or, more often, their disillusionment with the results of the invasion and subsequent eight-year occupation, as well as their hopes and fears for the future. But these were largely overshadowed on the international news front by the growing drumbeat for U.S. intervention in Syria and President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel.

This self-absorbed world view also assumes that the United States can always control any events if it just chooses the right tools and puts the right people in charge.

"Strategic narcissism,” as Lynch called it, is neither new in U.S. relations with the rest of the world, nor is it something that the still-reigning global superpower has by any means shed as a result of the Iraq debacle. “The notion that what the United Sates does is the most important aspect of every development pervades American foreign-policy punditry, whether about Iraq or Egypt, Syria and the Arab uprisings,” he wrote.

Indeed, strategic narcissism, combined with a remarkable lack of interest in foreign peoples for an imperial power that has long been insulated by exceptionally weak neighbours and two great oceans, was in many ways responsible for the last great foreign-policy debacle of the post-World War II era: the Vietnam War.

According to Robert McNamara, that war’s defence secretary and later World Bank president, the U.S. foreign-policy elite saw Ho Chi Minh primarily as a puppet of an aggressive and expanding Soviet-Chinese Communist empire rather than as a Vietnamese nationalist.

“The basic lesson is: understand your opponent,” McNamara ruefully told the New York Times in 1997. “We don’t understand the Bosnians, we don’t understand the Chinese and we don’t really understand the Iranians.”

Of course, in the case of Iraq, the key policy-makers – and the commentariat that supported them – claimed to understand the locals quite well, primarily through long-time exiles; most importantly, Ahmad Chalabi, a wealthy banker and confidence man who helped persuade them that invading U.S. troops would be greeted with “flowers and sweets” by a grateful population, and whose ideas about de-Baathification – or “de-Sunnification”, as one military participant in the Rand seminar called it – would set the stage for the bloody sectarian conflict that followed the invasion.

They were also reassured by the neo-conservative views about Arabs of the eminent Islamic historian and ardent Zionist, Bernard Lewis, who, however, in an academic career spanning six decades, had never actually set foot in Iraq.

The ouster of Saddam Hussein by the U.S., they told their credulous – and highly narcissistic — interlocutors would not only put an end to a particularly ruthless and reckless dictator. It would also liberate the Iraqi people, serve as an example (and a first democratic domino) for the rest of the region, intimidate Iran and Syria, and ensure that the U.S. would have a reliable ally in the heart of the Middle East for generations.

Of course, it was not as if the government knew nothing about Iraq or how Iraqis might react to a U.S. invasion. Decades of federal support for Middle East Studies centres at major universities, as well as the accumulation of experience with the region built up in key bureaucracies, notably the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had produced high levels of expertise, much greater than those on Indochina in the build-up to the war there.

In fact, a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the State Department organised an ambitious “Future of Iraq” project that, in addition to U.S. experts, involved dozens of Iraqi professionals. At the same time, the intelligence community, using its own contacts and expertise, produced a series of reports that sharply questioned the confident predictions of the war hawks both in and outside the administration.

They warned, among other things, that de-Baathification would lead to the sectarian violence that followed, that a successor government could be more a boon for Iran than the U.S., let alone Israel, and that Washington’s ability to shape the consequences of the invasion was far more limited than the White House believed.

The studies, however, were ignored or discarded by the policy-makers and their mainly neo-conservative advisers who believed that the experts involved in these studies were “Arabists” and hence too sympathetic toward the subjects of their study – in this case, Iraqis – to be trusted.

In a recent Foreign Policy article, neo-conservative Elliott Abrams, who served under Ronald Reagan as a top Latin America aide and then as George W. Bush’s senior Middle East adviser (with little Spanish and no Arabic skills, respectively) stressed that every administration should establish a “shadow government of presidential loyalists” to ensure that experts in the relevant bureaucracies do not wrest control of policy.

That approach was vividly described some years ago by Col. Pat Lang (ret.), a former Green Beret and the top Middle East analyst in the Defence Intelligence Agency who had spent most oif his career in the region and who had been recommended to head the Pentagon office of special operations under Bush.

Asked by Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative close to Abrams, whether it was true he knew Arabs well and that he spoke Arabic fluently, Lang replied affirmatively. “That’s too bad,” Lang quoted Feith as telling him. “And that was the end of the interview.”

Thus, it was not only Iraqis who were not listened to; also ignored were those in and outside the government who were most knowledgeable about Iraqis and understood that the Chalabi-fuelled dreams of the policy-makers on top were in fact delusions designed to appeal to the imperial narcissists at the top.

While this week’s retrospectives partially rectified the latter problem by including many of those experts, Iraqis, who, like the Vietnamese a generation ago, suffered far more from the decisions taken in Washington, remained almost entirely absent, as stressed by Lynch.

“Lynch is right on the money when he chastises Americans for neglecting Iraqi perceptions of the war,” Stephen Walt, who teaches international relations at Harvard University, told IPS.

“This self-absorbed world view also assumes that the United States can always control any events if it just chooses the right tools and puts the right people in charge. In fact, there are many situations that are beyond our control, and failure to appreciate that fact could sow the seeds of similar debacles in the future.”

“Myopia has consequences,” Lynch wrote. “Failing to listen to those Iraqi voices meant getting important things badly wrong. …The habit of treating Iraqis as objects to be manipulated rather than as fully equal human beings – with their own identities and interests – isn’t just ethically problematic, it’s strategically problematic.”

© 2013 IPS North America

US President Barack Obama must treat Iran interests seriously by accepting it as an unavoidably important regional player if he wants a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear issue, American analysts say.

In an article published on Aljazeera website on Friday, Hillary Mann Leverett and Flynt Leverett, co-authors of the book Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on the Obama administration to accept Iran “as an enduring political entity representing legitimate national interests.”

The analysts said that there could be no diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear dispute “If the administration does not change course and accept Iran's strategic independence and rising regional influence - including accepting the principle and reality of internationally-safeguarded uranium enrichment in Iran...,”

Based on their own observations in Iran, the authors argue that despite claims by some experts, Washington sanctions against Tehran have failed and that Iran has not been “softened up”.

The authors assert that sanctions have become an unconstructive diplomatic tool in negotiations with Tehran as “Obama's ability to modify sanctions in the course of negotiations - or lift them as part of a deal - is tightly circumscribed by laws that he himself signed.”

“Tehran's conditions for a long-term deal remain fundamentally what they have been for years- above all, US acceptance of Iran's revolution and its independence, including its right to enrich under international safeguards,” the authors add.

The analysts say as “the US reaches the end of its ability to threaten ever more severe sanctions against countries doing business with Iran”, Tehran continues developing its “indigenous” peaceful nuclear capabilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring.

“Under these circumstances, ... he [Obama] could launch another war to disarm yet another Middle Eastern state of weapons of mass destruction it does not have - not to remove a chimerical "existential threat" to Israel, but to protect Israel's military dominance over its own neighborhood they add.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran argues that as a committed signatory to NPT and an IAEA member, it is entitled to acquire and develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that the Iranian nuclear program has been diverted toward military objectives.

PG/SS/SL

According to a report yesterday in Bloomberg Businessweek, former 2012 Republican Presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were very close to forming a “Unity Ticket” back in February of 2012, in an effort to knock Mitt Romney out of nomination contention.

After Santorum claimed the Iowa caucus and three other primaries in early February, the talk of forming a “Unity Ticket” reached its peak.

John Brabender, Santorum’s chief strategist, told Bloomberg Businessweek that, “Everybody thought there was an opportunity. It would have sent shock waves through the establishment and the Romney campaign.”

But the talks over the ticket broke down when neither candidate could agree over which one of them would be at the top of the eventual ticket.

These talks of an alliance between Santorum and Gingrich to take down Romney remind us how narrow our choices are with a two-party system. If our political system provided for third, fourth or fifth parties, Santorum and Gingrich could have simply run on other party tickets, and Republican-leaning voters would have had more choices.

Every generation or so, it seems that an American presidential candidate will run on a third party ticket. They always lose, and they rarely even advance their own interests, as they split the votes from the side they’re on.

Charles Koch ran as a Libertarian, Ross Perot invented the Reform Party to run on, and Ralph Nader hooked up with the Greens. Before that John Anderson ran in 1980 as an independent. None ever got anywhere.

That’s because in the United States, we use what’s called “first-past-the-post, winner-take-all” voting systems.

But that wouldn’t have been the case if we had instant runoff voting (IRV) or proportional representation (PR).

The United States is one of only a handful of developed countries in the world that doesn’t have proportional representation, and of those few nations, two, Australia and New Zealand, have instant runoff voting.

We don’t have it, because we’re one of the world’s oldest democracies. After the Constitution was written, James Madison had a horrible realization.

Madison realized that we were the first real democracy of major significance since Rome, and that our democracy was, in reality, an experiment.

Madison also realized that with first-past-the-post-winner-take-all elections, you could have a democracy if there were only two parties, so 51% of the vote could win, but couldn’t have a real small-d democracy with more than two parties. With three parties, 34% of the vote could run the country. With four parties, it could be 26% of the vote.

That’s why, in Federalist Papers #10, Madison begged us not to from political parties, or what he called “factions”.

Madison wrote that, “…It may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.”

It wasn’t until Madison was long dead that Englishman John Stuart Mill proposed, and invented, the idea of proportional representation, where whichever party got, for example, 9% of the vote, that party would get to put their people into 9% of the seats in Parliament. Or thirty percent. Or sixty percent. Whatever the voters wanted, they got.

Proportional representation is the reason why there are so many political parties in Israel, Germany, France, Japan and a host of other developed nations.

Under proportional representation, the voices of all of the people are heard, because it not only allows for but actually promotes multiple political parties

There are two ways we can accomplish this democratic ideal of more than just two political parties here in the United States.

The first is to have the states change the way they apportion votes to Congress and the Senate.

Proportional representation, otherwise known as “fair voting,” already has a long history in U.S. elections. Over 100 cities and counties across the country use some form of fair voting to fill their various elected offices.

FairVote is one of the leading organizations in the fight to bring proportional representation to the halls of Congress and the Senate.

The organization also advocates strongly for instant runoff or ranked voting.

In our current system of voting, also known as a “plurality voting system,” three political parties is a crowd. Our current two-party system discourages new candidates from entering the fray, and suppresses new ideas and dissenting opinions.

However, instant runoff voting creates the democratic ideal of majority rule and voter choice.

Instant runoff voting allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference (i.e first, second, third and so on).

If a candidate receives a majority of first choices, he or she is elected. But if nobody has a clear majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoffs begin, using voters’ preferences as indicated on their ballot.

The candidate who receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated.

All ballots are then recounted, and if you voted for the guy who got the least number of votes, your second choice gets counted instead.

The weakest candidates are continually eliminated and their voters' ballots are added to the totals of their next choices until one candidate wins a majority of votes.

An example of an election when instant runoff voting would have worked wonders for America was the 2000 election between Bush, Gore and Nader.

Back in 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader, and Louise voted for Al Gore.

Although the real reason Bush took Florida was because the US Supreme Court stopped a statewide recount, and because Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris had illegally knocked about 70,000 African-American voters off the rolls even before the polls opened, Ralph Nader did get around 70,000 votes in that election.

But what if IRV had been in place?

Under IRV, and if I lived in Florida (I actually lived in Vermont at the time) I could have voted for Ralph Nader as my first choice, and Al Gore as my second. Since Nader had the fewest votes and lost, my ballot would have rolled over to a vote for Al Gore.

Now just imagine all of the Ralph Nader votes that were cast across the country rolling over to votes for Al Gore.

Surely, Al Gore would have won the election, and the Supreme Court never could have stolen it for George Bush.

Right now, instant runoff voting is used in more than 300 communities across the country, including San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, California.

And, thanks to organizations like FairVote and the Green Party, instant runoff voting is becoming more and more popular across America.

But we need to take instant runoff voting and proportional representation national.

We need more voices and more choices in our elections.

It’s time to leave the 18^th century system behind, and step into the 21^st century!

While on his first state visit to Israel, Barack Obama cast doubt and expressed deep scepticism toward the Assad government’s version of events, stating that if the government did indeed use chemical weapons, then it meant a “red line” had been crossed. Obama vowed not to make further announcements until concrete facts were established. What this essentially means is that Obama is now in a position to act on his statements and intervene more boldly and directly than the United States has already been doing since the beginning of the conflict. Additionally, NATO personnel have also indicated that they are prepared to employ a wide range of operations. US-European Command Admiral James Stavridis recently told media that the alliance was “prepared, if called upon, to be engaged as we were in Libya.”

Those who have critically monitored the situation from the beginning are under no illusions. The way in which mainstream media sources have covered the Syrian conflict, perhaps more so than any other topic in recent times, shows unequivocally how certain content providers have moved in step with the foreign policy of the Western and Gulf states who have enabled insurgent groups and provided diplomatic cover for opposition politicians who represent their economic and strategic interests. The Obama administration’s policy toward Libya and Syria eyes the same familiar endgame as what the Bush administration sought in its foreign policy adventures. The fact that many of those on the left who campaigned against Iraq and Afghanistan are now generally silent, or even supportive of Obama’s agenda, is proof that his policies have been packaged far more intelligently for mainstream consumption. The reality is that Syria is “Shock and Awe” by other means.

There are a myriad of reasons why Bashar al-Assad must go in the eyes of policy makers in Washington and Tel Aviv, and the destruction of his tenure could not have been possible without the financial muscle of Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s wretchedly opulent Sunni Monarchs. These glittering kingdoms of disaster-capitalism are not only responsible for supplying weapons and cash; a major incentive of theirs is exporting the Wahhabist and Salafist ideologies that many of Syria’s imported jihadists subscribe to, a warped and primal interpretation of Islam that has fueled the sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict and deepened social divisions to their most dangerous point – in a country that was once renowned for its tolerance of religious diversity. These Gulf kingdoms, which are more-or-less given a trump card to commit deplorable human rights violations institutionally, are also responsible for propping up the political arm of their militant foot soldiers, and that comes in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Syria’s opposition coalition, which is itself entirely a creation of foreign powers, has recently elected its own interim prime minister – enter, Ghassan Hitto, a virtually unknown political novice with a US passport and a computer science degree from Purdue University. Hitto is an Islamist Kurd with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has politically dominated the Syrian National Council since its creation, in addition to organizing tactical elements of the insurgency. The backbone of the Brotherhood’s relationship with the medieval monarchies of the Persian Gulf is grounded in a firm opposition to Shi’a Islam, as extolled by clerical leaders in Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah; Assad himself is also an Alawite, an offshoot of Shi’a Islam. It should be clear enough by now how enflaming sectarian divisions in the region was a prerequisite for those bank-rolling the insurgency, aimed at demolishing the secular Syrian state.

Several high-profile members of Syria’s opposition coalition boycotted the vote for interim prime minister, citing what they viewed as a foreign-backed campaign to elect Hitto. Kamal Labwani, a veteran opposition campaigner, was reported as saying, “We don’t want what happened in Egypt to happen in Syria. They hijacked the revolution.” Those who abstained from the vote accuse Hitto of being a puppet of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that the SNC’s decisions were being dictated from the outside. Walid al-Bunni, another senior figure in the opposition, stated, “The Muslim Brotherhood, with the backing of Qatar, have imposed their prime minister candidate. We will keep away if the coalition does not reconsider its choice.” Let’s just get this straight – Assad, a leader whose presence today is a testament to the fact that he continues to enjoy majority popular support, is considered to have lost his legitimacy. On the other hand, Hitto, a man with no political experience who received 35 votes out of 49 ballots cast during a Syrian National Coalition meeting, is supposed to be legitimate representative of the Syrian people?

These realities can only be interpreted as the boot of the so-called “International Community” squashing the face of the Syrian people, imposing on them a man who does not represent them, but the business interests of multinational corporations who seek to plant their flags in the soil of a post-Assad Syria. Let’s not humor ourselves by thinking John Kerry, William Hague, Laurent Fabius or Qatari Emir Khalifa Al Thani actually care about the people of Syria. However many casualties the Syrian conflict has incurred thus far can be attributable to the influx of foreign funds, foreign arms, and foreign fighters. It would be intellectually dishonest to deny that the tactics of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian Arab Army have also caused widespread civilian causalities and suffering. It is an enormous challenge for a state military to quell unconventional insurgencies of the sort carried out by militants in Syria when these battles take place in densely populated residential areas.

One should not cynically credit Syrian government forces with intentionally killing their own people; this does not serve the purposes of the state in anyway. Civilian deaths that have occurred as a result of government forces engaging the insurgency should more accurately be seen as a heinous by-product of a foreign campaign to topple the Syrian government. While the foreign ministries of Western capitals cite politically charged death-toll statistics to justify their campaign against “Assad the Butcher”, it is absolutely unconscionable that Paris and London have called for lifting the Syrian arms embargo, and for vowing to arm militant groups with or without the consent of the EU. Apparently some seventy thousand people have been killed in Syria according to the United Nations, and these cited European states, which allegedly are so concerned about terrorism, want to dump more guns into Syria – this is madness.

Western states want to install proxy leaders who will grovel to their multinationals and swallow IMF medicine, Gulf states seek unfettered hegemony in their own backyards, and they all want to see the Shi’a resistance smashed to pieces. Following the news of chemical weapons being used in Syria, the most immediate conclusion of this observer is that foreign-backed militants, who have used every opportunity to call for more material and support, employed the use of a smuggled chemical weapon of poor quality to bring about direct military intervention in their favor. Right on cue, Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain are frothing at the mouth, urging President Obama to “take immediate action” and consider deploying troops. Graham was quoted as saying, “If the choice is to send in troops to secure the weapons sites versus allowing chemical weapons to get in the hands of some of the most violent people in the world, I vote to cut this off before it becomes a problem.” There is no surer sign of a pathological mind than when one credits others with the blood on their own hands.

Nile Bowie is an independent political analyst and photographer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com

 Canadian radio host and journalist James Corbett believes that the group of six world powers have not ever been sincere and honest in their negotiations with Iran and constantly used the opportunity of talks to put more pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

 “At this point, the players in this drama have all but given up the pretense that this is a negotiation at all. It has become more of a venue for the west to deliver threats and ultimatums to Iran. The goalposts are constantly shifting and have become so hopelessly nebulous that they are about as realistic as it was for Bush and Blair to demand that Saddam Hussein “disarm” the WMDs he never had or face military invasion,” said Corbett in an interview with Fars News Agency.

James Corbett edits, writes and hosts the Corbett Report. James has been living and working in Japan since 2004. He started The Corbett Report website in 2007 as an outlet for independent critical analysis of politics, society, history, and economics. Corbett has interviewed several renowned authors, journalists, academicians and activists for his listener-supported show. He is also a producer for Global Research TV (GRTV).

What follows is the text of Fars News Agency’s interview with James Corbett ahead of the upcoming nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1.

Q: Iran and the P5+1 held a meeting in Kazakhstan on February 26 to talk about Iran’s nuclear program. The past meetings between Iran and the six world powers yielded few practical results as the West has persistently called on Iran to abandon its enrichment activities, while knowing that Iran’s nuclear program is purely peaceful. What’s your viewpoint in this regard?

A: In labor law there is a concept of “good faith negotiation” which stipulates that both sides in that negotiation have to recognize each other as bargaining representatives, attend and take part in meetings at reasonable times, respond in good time to proposals from other representatives, and to respond to those proposals with reasoned responses indicating a genuine attempt to consider them. On almost every point, the P5+1 powers have shown themselves to be in violation of these principles in their negotiation with Iran over the Iranian nuclear program. The attempt to force concessions and/or impose sanctions as a precondition to negotiations is a clear sign that the P5+1 are not negotiating in good faith.

Take the IAEA’s ‘revelation’ this week that Iran is installing “advanced” centrifuge technology at its Natanz plant. The leak comes conveniently right as these so-called negotiations are set to begin, and provides a convenient excuse for everyone, including, of course, the Obama administration, to deliver more hand-wringing about Iran’s “provocative” actions. The problem with this reading, of course, is that this technology is in no way inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear program, and the very same IAEA report also shows no evidence whatsoever that any of Iran’s nuclear materials are being diverted for weapons purposes. All this is conveniently ignored, however, and the entire attempt to replace Iran’s admittedly outdated 1970s centrifuge technology with more stable, modern equipment is portrayed as some type of monstrous breach of international etiquette.

The hypocrisy is self-evident. Iran cannot so much as upgrade its aging equipment without being accused of provocative action. None of its actions are in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the IAEA itself cannot demonstrate any proof that it is diverting any of its nuclear material for an offensive weapons program. Meanwhile, Israel, its avowed enemy who has repeatedly threatened military action against it for even pursuing the idea of peaceful nuclear technology, is the world’s sixth largest nuclear power and yet is not an NPT signatory and has never allowed its nuclear facilities to be inspected by anyone, least of all the IAEA. What clearer indication can there be that the P5+1 are not negotiating in good faith?

Q: Iran has always expressed its willingness for engaging in talks with the six world powers based on mutual respect and provided that its nuclear rights are recognized, but the Western powers have always imposed new sanctions against Iran before the talks and stalled clear and meaningful negotiations. Isn’t this practice a policy of carrot and stick aimed at intimidating Iran and forcing it into making concessions?

A: At this point, the players in this drama have all but given up the pretense that this is a negotiation at all. It has become more of a venue for the west to deliver threats and ultimatums to Iran. The goalposts are constantly shifting and have become so hopelessly nebulous that they are about as realistic as it was for Bush and Blair to demand that Saddam Hussein “disarm” the WMDs he never had or face military invasion. Just this week, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that “If it [Iran] fails to address the concerns of the international community, it will face more pressure and become increasingly isolated.” What does this blather mean? What are the concerns, and how does Iran go about “addressing” them? It is obvious at this point than nothing short of the government of Iran agreeing to shut down the nuclear program entirely and hand the keys to their country over to America would be enough to meet these vague demands.

A perfect case in point revolves around the sanctions that the US unilaterally imposed this month shutting down the gold-for-gas trade that had developed between Iran and Turkey. The sanctions have already had their effect: the trade is drying up. Now the major powers come along and tell Iran that they might ease up on these sanctions if Tehran scraps their Fordow uranium enrichment plan. This is not a negotiation by any stretch of the imagination, this is one step shy of all-out war. As Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast put it: “They want to take away the rights of a nation in exchange for allowing trade in gold.” No self-respecting state could possibly give in to such demands. This is no carrot here, only stick, and no negotiation, only threats.

Q: 13 American intelligence agencies reported in 2007 that Iran’s nuclear activities haven’t diverted toward producing nuclear weapons and don’t have a military dimension. However, Washington still insists that Iran is after nuclear weapons, obstructing the progress of talks between Iran and the P5+1. Why does the U.S. repeat its claims for which it has no substantial evidence or proof?

A: The claim is entirely political, and explicitly so. One of the key authors of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that came to the conclusion that Iran’s nuclear program is not offensive in nature, Dr. Tom Fingar, recently received a “Sam Adams Award” from the Oxford Student Union for integrity in intelligence work. The event received virtually no attention from any of the press and Dr. Fingar is still a complete unknown to the American public. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have done their best to cover up the findings and assessments of their own intelligence agencies, exactly as the Bush regime worked to cover up any intelligence pointing to Saddam’s lack of WMDs in the run-up to the war in Iraq. The intelligence was being manipulated then, and it is being manipulated now.

Q: It was in 2004 that a German spy stole a laptop computer from a military unit in Iran. The laptop is said to have included thousands of documents regarding Iran’s alleged underground nuclear activities. The American intelligence agencies confirmed that the data in this laptop are genuine, but so far, nothing of the information saved in the laptop have been presented and offered to the public or the inspectors of the IAEA. Can we say that the laptop issue is an intelligence hoax aimed at blemishing Iran’s reputation and putting more pressure on it?

A: How can the public possibly be asked to put their trust in the pronouncements of politicians and government officials who have been caught lying to demonize their enemies time and again? The laptop should not be assumed to exist until it is presented for inspection by independent experts in a neutral setting, and even then all possible forms of tampering and planting of evidence have to be taken into account. Perhaps the intelligence agencies have learned their lesson since the release of the Niger yellowcake documents, which were easily exposed as crude forgeries. If the evidence is never presented, it can never be exposed as a forgery.

Q: The anti-Iran sanctions have created problems for the ordinary Iranian citizens, but it seems that they cannot persuade the Iranian politicians and the people to retreat from the path of peaceful nuclear program the country has been pursuing and investing on. What’s your viewpoint about the sanctions, their humanitarian impact and the effects they have had on Iran’s nuclear program?

A: The sanctions are lunacy on every level: humanitarian, political and strategic. The effects on the Iranian population are well documented and a perfectly predictable outcome of this form of economic warfare. But this has the exact opposite effect as the one supposedly intended by the west. To whatever extent reformist sentiment exists in Iran, the sanctions only help to make the case that the country is under attack by the west and must refuse to back down from the confrontation. If anything, it only stiffens the resolve of Iranians and makes the American dream of some spontaneous uprising from within that much less likely.

Even more bafflingly, the sanctions are having devastating effects on the P5+1 allies. Europe in general and Turkey in particular are sorely in need of Iranian gas to supplement their energy imports. The sanctions put the squeeze on these countries perhaps even more so than Iran, which will always find willing buyers for its gas in Asian markets that are unfettered by western sanctions.

Of course, this is well-known by America and its allies. The reason for the sanctions is not, ultimately, to make Iran cave to their demands; no one is seriously expecting this to happen. It is instead to exacerbate the situation so that international pressure against Iran increases. Europeans and Turks, for example, now have that much more incentive to pressure Iran on its nuclear program, since it is directly effecting their own bottom line.

Q: What’s your opinion about the upcoming nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1? Given that some members of the group have shown no willingness to ease the sanctions as an indication of their goodwill to Iran, can we await the success of the talks after an almost 8-month hiatus?

A” It would be nothing short of a miracle if any sort of agreement is actually struck in Almaty. The P5+1 powers have already made it abundantly clear that they are not interested in any agreement that involves Iran maintaining its nuclear program in any capacity. Sadly, if unsurprisingly, the best possible outcome is also the least likely one: the abolition of nuclear weapons altogether. It is also the one that was suggested by Ayatollah Khamenei last week, in keeping with a long tradition of Iranian proposals for a nuclear free Middle East that have been roundly rejected by the west. Go figure.

Some Syrian rebel groups get training and intelligence straight from CIA officers, US officials told media. The helping hand is meant to bolster the secular opposition against both governmental troops and Islamist forces.

The CIA’s increased involvement in Syria is part America’s greater engagement in the war-torn country, according to The Wall Street Journal. The spy agency has selected some small rebel units from the Free Syrian Army to receive combat training and fresh intel they can act upon, the newspaper says, citing unnamed US officials and rebel commanders.

The training is provided by the CIA, working together with British, French and Jordanian intelligence agencies. The rebels are taught to use various kinds of arms, including anti-tank weapons. They are also schooled in urban combat tactics and counterintelligence tactics. 

The experience will supposedly help them stand against the professional Syrian army, which scores victories against the armed opposition thanks to both more advanced weapons and better organization.

The rebels are also receiving fresh intelligence collected by the CIA, which they can act upon at short notice. The extent of the info provided remains in secret, but the US can potentially provide what they gather trough satellite and signal surveillance as well as intelligence coming through exchanges with Israeli and Jordanian agencies.

The CIA is said to keep this part of dealing with the rebels limited, withholding sensitive types of information, like the suspected locations of Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles.

The US spy agency was previously working in Turkey vetting rebel groups for receiving arms shipments from Gulf monarchies. The effort aimed at preventing the weapons from being funneled to Islamists had mixed results, the WSJ says. The CIA also works with Iraqi counterterrorism units to counter the flow of Islamist militants across the border to Syria.

The White House has been reluctant to send combat-worthy equipment to Syrian rebels, despite calls inside the US and from Gulf and some European countries to do so. It is concerned that those would end up in the hand of the more powerful Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist force, the Nusra Front. Unlike arms, the intelligence from CIA is operationally useful for a short period of time and would not be traded for years to come, a US official explained.

Washington’s concern over the growing influence of the Nusra Front was reiterated on Friday by President Barack Obama, as he was visiting Jordan as part of his Middle Eastern tour. 

“I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism because extremists thrive in chaos, they thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums,” Obama said after meeting Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

The Nusra Front is believed to be responsible for the bloodiest bombings in Syria over the past months. The latest such attack was the assassination of Mohammad Buti and influential Sunni preacher and supporter of the Syrian government. Buti was killed on Thursday along with some 50 others when a car bomb was detonated near a Damascus mosque.

The US is reportedly gathering intelligence on Nusra Front commanders and fighters for a possible campaign of targeted drone killing similar to those the CIA wages in Pakistan and Yemen and the Pentagon in Afghanistan.

Rachel Maddow highlighted, in real time, what CNN and MSNBC were showing versus what Fox News decided was relevant (repealing the health care law) when President Obama makes his first trip to Israel. The results were eye-opening, surreal even. At the very moment Obama was receiving the highest honor Israel can bestow, Fox News was quite literally declaring him an enemy of the state.

Text via Egberto Willies' blog:

After that big speech that was so well received by that huge Israeli audience in Jerusalem, President Obama was honored at a state dinner. He was awarded the Israeli Medal Of Distinction which is the highest honor a civilian can receive in Israel. He is the first sitting President to ever receive this award. Israeli President Simon Peres said to President Obama quote “The people of Israel are particularly move by your unforgettable contribution to their security”. He called President Obama, Dear Barack.

So that was what was happening live in Israel. CNN and MSNBC are carrying it live showing the President of the United States receiving this medal at this big state dinner in a foreign country… Fox News channel however is pretending like it is not happening. They’re talking about repealing Obamacare…. We are all watching as the Israeli president is saying to President Obama, “I know that you would not stop striving for a better world. What was running on Fox News instead was a commercial for their new special on President Obama as an enemy of Israel…

COMMERCIAL: Obama: The State Of Israel will have no greater friend than the United States. Narrator: But with a friend like Obama are Israel’s enemies gaining strength. Sean gets expert insight on a special Hannity.

That is what Fox News was telling its audience of American Conservatives instead of showing this, happening in Israel. in real life, in the actual world at that very moment, They report, you decide.

In 2003, the legendary television host Phil Donahue was fired from his prime-time MSNBC talk show during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The problem was not Donahue’s ratings, but rather his views: An internal MSNBC memo warned Donahue was a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war," providing "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." Donahue joins us to look back on his firing 10 years later. "They were terrified of the antiwar voice," Donahue says.

TRANSCRIPT:

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Phil, I’d like to bring in another subject in terms of this whole issue, the—what happened to you, directly, as a host on MSNBC in the midst of the run-up to the war, and the responsibilities of the press in America and its—the mea culpas that have rarely been uttered by the pundits and by the journalists over what the American press did in the run-up to war.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, I think what happened to me, the biggest lesson, I think, is the—how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage. This was a decision—my decision—the decision to release me came from far above. This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you’re General Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer. So, by the way, I had to have two conservatives on for every liberal. I could have Richard Perle on alone, but I couldn’t have Dennis Kucinich on alone. I was considered two liberals. It really is funny almost, when you look back on how—how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice. We were scolds. We weren’t patriotic. American people disagreed with us. And we weren’t good for business.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I had this unusual experience, Phil, in July of 2006. It was the 10th anniversary of MSNBC, and I was invited on Hardball by Chris Matthews to celebrate the 10th anniversary. I think first Brian Williams was on the show, and then the Israeli ambassador, and then I was on the show. And we were standing outside 30 Rock. It was a big deal. All the execs were on the top floor of 30 Rock, and they were all about to have a big party. And we were just coming out of a commercial.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to congratulate you, Chris, on 10 years of MSNBC, but I wish standing with you was Phil Donahue. He shouldn’t have been fired for expressing an antiwar point of view on the eve of the election. His point of view and the people brought on were also important.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I don’t know what the reasons were, but I doubt it was that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have the MS—the NBC memo, that was a secret memo—

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Oh, OK, good.

AMY GOODMAN: —that came out, that said they didn’t want him to be the face of this network, an antiwar face, at a time when the other networks were waving the flag.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: Could I answer the question? I’d love to answer that question.

AMY GOODMAN: Phil Donahue is a great patriot.

AMY GOODMAN: I said there, Phil, you were a great patriot. We did have the NBC memo, the secret memo that said they didn’t want their flagship show to be you, when the other networks were waving the American flag.

PHIL DONAHUE: That’s what it said. And, by the way, that memo was written by a Republican focus group, a Republican counseling group that took the focus group and that revealed that most of the people in the focus group didn’t like me. But I saw that, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, you were the most popular show.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, often we led the night for the—nobody burned the town down on MSNBC, including me. Fox just ran away with the ratings and continues to enjoy that success.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you watching MSNBC that night?

PHIL DONAHUE: I did. I saw it. And I called the kids. I said, "Hey!" I’m not sure I did it soon enough. But I certainly was grateful for—I mean, I needed the pat on the back at the time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Phil, the irony that MSNBC now is supposedly this liberal—

PHIL DONAHUE: It’s amazing, really.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —the liberal network now?

PHIL DONAHUE: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You wonder, though, if another—if another move to war came, how liberal it would remain.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, you know, the coin of the realm is the size of the audience. It’s important to see this. When a broadcasting executive gets out of bed in the morning, before his foot hits the floor, his thoughts are ratings. "What are my ratings?" Not unlike Wall Street people, who get their—and CEOs, their first thought is the price of their stock. So, you know, what—and I was replaced by Michael Savage. So there was a desperate need to get numbers.

AMY GOODMAN: Who is one of the most conservative, and that’s giving conservatives a bad name.

PHIL DONAHUE: This was the decision of—

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Savage lived up to his last name.

PHIL DONAHUE: And this was a decision by higher-ups at General Electric and NBC.

AMY GOODMAN: Tomas, you wanted to say something here. Let me go to a break, and then we’re going to come back, as we wrap up this broadcast. We’re talking to Phil Donahue and Tomas Young, Iraq War veteran, age 33—says he will end his life in the next few months, dealing with the pain of war—and his wife, Claudia Cuellar. We’ll be back in a minute.

WASHINGTON - Defence establishments around the world increasingly see climate change as posing potentially serious threats to national and international security, according to a review of high-level statements by the world’s governments released here Thursday.

The review, “The Global Security Defense Index on Climate Change: Preliminary Results,” found that nearly three out of four governments for which relevant information is available view the possible effects of climate change as a serious national security issue.(Courtesy of the American Security Project)

It found that the wealthy developed countries of North America, Europe and East Asia, including China, have made the most progress in integrating climate change into their national security strategies.

With the notable exception of India, leaders of South Asian countries have also made strong statements about the security threats posed by climate change, while smaller countries in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and Central America have expressed alarm at the possible catastrophic impacts of climate change on them, according to the review.

It was officially released at the this week’s Climate Security Conference in the Asia-Pacific Region in Seoul, South Korea by the American Security Project (ASP), a non-partisan group headed by former senior U.S. government and military officials.

The Index, which will go online later this spring and be constantly updated, will catalogue official documents and statements by national governments – and particularly their military establishments — about the relationship between climate change and security issues.

“In many nations, the armed forces are the most respected arm of government, and their action on climate change can raise awareness throughout the country,” according to ASP’s Andrew Holland, who co-authored the report with Xander Vagg.

The review’s release comes amidst growing frustration among both climate scientists and activists over the slow pace and weakness of multilateral and unilateral efforts to curb the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Governments’ failure to take stronger action has been attributed in part to the fact that climate change has been seen primarily as an environmental issue. As such, it has been accorded a lower priority than other challenges faced by countries, particularly economic growth.

In recent years, however, governments in a growing number of countries have recognised climate change as a national security issue – a recognition welcomed by activists who believe it should bolster their efforts to push the issue up the national and international agenda.

Here in the U.S., such an effort has been underway for some time. Just last month, a bipartisan group of 38 former senior and cabinet-level U.S. foreign policy officials, military officers, and lawmakers published an “open letter” to President Barack Obama and Congress calling for urgent action, especially in funding programmes designed to help poor countries both curb emissions and adapt to climate change.

Unless such action is forthcoming, “climate change impacts abroad could spur mass migrations, influence civil conflict and ultimately lead to a more unpredictable world,” the letter, sponsored by the Partnership for a Secure America, warned.

“…(P)rotecting U.S. interests under these conditions would progressively exhaust American military, diplomatic and development resources as we struggle to meet growing demands for emergency international engagement.”

A recent joint report by the Center for American Progress, the Stimson Center, and the Center for Climate and Security found that crop failures resulting from both severe droughts and flooding in various parts of the world contributed to food shortages that helped spark popular unrest in key Arab countries, paving the way for the upheavals known as the Arab Spring.

In his annual global threat assessment report issued last week, the director for national intelligence (DNI) warned that “(e)xtreme weather events (floods, droughts, heat waves) will increasingly disrupt food and energy markets, exacerbating state weakness, forcing human migrations, and triggering riots, civil disobedience, and vandalism.”

At the same time, head of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), Adm. Samuel Locklear, warned that the impact of climate change on his region was “probably the most likely thing that is going to happen …that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

He told the Boston Globe that his command was already engaging the militaries of other regional countries, including China and India, about co-operation in addressing the challenge.

But the security implications of climate change are by no means confined to the U.S. and other wealthy countries with large military establishments, according to the ASP review.

It found that the governments and militaries of a least 110 of 155 countries for which relevant information was available have identified climate as a threat to their security. And many of those have integrated into their defence and national security planning documents.

“It was fascinating to learn how many different nations with such a variety of political systems, economic practices, and geographic locales share a common view on the dangers posed by climate change,” Vagg told IPS in an email.

“More to the point, these states all share the view that climate change — and its direct/indirect effects — should no longer be treated as a purely environmental threat, but rather a full-blown national security issue.”

Of the 32 countries identified by the study as resisting the view that climate change poses a security threat, India and Brazil were by far the most important.

Both countries opposed a move last month sponsored by Pakistan and Britain to put climate change on the U.N. Security Council’s agenda, according to Vagg.

Russia and China also opposed “securitising” the issue by placing it under the Security Council’s jurisdiction, although senior political and military leaders in both countries have defined climate change as a security threat, along with other non-traditional threats, such as global pandemics, terrorism, and transnational crime networks.

Climate change poses the greatest – even existential – threats to small island states of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the Caribbean. Surrounded by rising seas and highly vulnerable to storm surges, they have been ringing the alarm for some time, sometimes with the help of their larger continental neighbours, such as Australia. Sea-level rise in another low-lying coastal country, Bangladesh, could also displace tens of millions of people.

Of all the world’s regions, the report found that the Middle East and North Africa are most resistant to defining climate change as a security threat, although Turkey, Israel, Qatar, Jordan and Kuwait were notable exceptions.

© 2013 IPS North America

Jordanians have staged a demonstration in the capital, Amman, to express their discontent with US President Barack Obama’s visit to the region.

Jordanian demonstrators gathered outside the US Embassy in Amman on Thursday, chanting slogans against the US president and burning American flags.

The US president will travel to Jordan to hold talks with King Abdullah II on Friday on the last leg of his Middle East tour.

The two sides are expected to discuss the crisis in neighboring Syria and the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Obama began its three-day trip to the region on Wednesday and held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, where he reiterated strong support for the regime.

He also paid a visit to the occupied West Bank and met with acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Thursday.

Palestinians have also staged similar protest rallies against Obama’s visit over the past two days, saying he is not doing enough to stop Israel’s settlement activities and the arbitrary arrest of Palestinians by Israeli troops.

On Wednesday, Palestinian activists set up a protest camp on the controversial E1 area near al-Quds (Jerusalem) where the Israeli regime intends to build thousands of illegal settler homes.

They also took to the streets in Ramallah on Thursday and voiced their anger at Obama over his all-out support for the occupying Israeli regime.

MKA/MA

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the “Shock and Awe” US invasion of Iraq.

The ravages of that invasion continue at home and in Iraq, the US is still at war in Afghanistan (troops and contractors remain in Iraq) and unofficially waging war on countries like Pakistan and Yemen, is aggravating aggression with North Korea as part of an Asian pivot encircling China, is putting more military into Africa and Obama is in Israel where he sings a duet for war with Netanyahu against Syria and Iran. Meanwhile, poverty, unemployment and homelessness continue to grow in the US with threats of austerity for everything except the national security state.

When we occupied Freedom Plaza in October, 2011, we made the connection between US Empire and the corporate control of our political process, between unlimited military spending and cuts to necessary domestic programs. We understood the misreporting in the corporate media about the Iraq War. Kathy Kelly from Voices for Creative Nonviolence was in Baghdad during Shock and Awe. On this tenth anniversary, she reminds us of the horrible price of war and warns of never ending war as the US seems to edge toward more war in the region. The need to understand those connections grows more important each day as we see the costs of war affecting people on every level.

And this report details the tremendous costs in loss of life, the US legacy of cancer in Iraq from poisons we brought there, the number of refugees, orphans, widows and people now living in poverty. Violence continues in Iraq including a series of attacks on the tenth anniversary that left 98 people dead and 240 wounded.

Iraq War veteran Tomas Young is bringing increased attention to the human costs at home as he prepares to die from his wounds. Over 130,000 Iraq vets have been diagnosed with PTSD. Over 250,000 are suffering from traumatic brain injuries. The ongoing costs of caring for veterans is expected to bring the total cost of the Iraq invasion alone to $6 trillion. And, vets fight homelessness, sometimes with the aid of Occupy activists who protest to save the homes of vets.  Veterans are also experiencing unemployment and medical debt.

These are some of the costs of war, not to mention that the US Military is the greatest polluter on the planet.

As we join the national week of actions in solidarity with the Strike Debt Rolling Jubileeand the coast-to-coast actions in support of the Tar Sands Blockade, let us remember that all of these issues are connected. As our allies at Veterans For Peace have been saying lately it is time to Stop the War on Mother Earth. VFP has been joining with groups like Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival and the Tar Sands Blockade to protect the planet.

The breadth of opposition to the extraction economy that undermines the ecology of the planet is shown by the people involved in the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance and the “Sacred Journey for Future Generations,” a march across Canada by hundreds in support of the Idle No More Movement. The fracking movement has also shown the kind of culture of resistance needed to stop hyrdo-fracking as we saw in Watkins Glen, NYthis week.

Let us remember that there is strength in solidarity and all these issues are connected by policies that put corporate greed before human needs and protection of the Earth.

Solidarity has produced some real successes recently. In the UK, 21 climate activists were being sued by the energy giant EDF for shutting down an energy plant for 8 days. But when 64,000 customers signed a petition in support for the “No Dash for Gas” activists; EDF dropped its civil suit. Criminal charges remain, so solidarity with the activists continues to be important. And in Cyprus, the EU tried to impose a tax on the population in exchange for assistance with their debt. Massive protests resulted in the Cypriot Parliament saying no to the tax.

The plague of Wall Street banking affects people across the globe. Wall Street was a key focus of Occupy. This week, activists in Philadelphia explained their protest against Wells Fargo which led to their arrest and acquittal, indeed being thanked by the judge for their actions.  This was one of five recent court victories for Occupy. Now, people are standing up in New York with a class action lawsuit against the abusive stop and frisk searches which had beenprotested by occupiers and others.

Single payer groups are joining with Strike Debt to fight medical debt and our debt-based society. Chicago Teachers invited Occupy Wall Street to teach them protest skills. And, the Imokalee workers are walking across Florida to protest low wages. In Maryland, Fund Our Communities is holding a day long“Prosperity Not Austerity” Bus Tour that links issues such as health care, education and food security with the cost of war. The Strike Debt Resistor’s Manual provides a guide for communities to learn more about ways that debt affects them and what they can do about it.Perhaps you see opportunities for making connections around issues where you are?

It is through these connections that we can grow stronger and become more effective. And it is through these connections that we can have real conversations about the root causes of our shared situations, about the real needs that we have and how we can meet them together and build a unified movement that can say “No” to war at home and abroad. Let us not be afraid to talk about US imperialism and the effects of capitalism and a debt-based world. Let us look for the truth and not be lied into another war in Syria, Iran or North Korea. And let us all join together in the urgent need for climate justice.

We can succeed too. As we make connections and build solidarity, we are preparing for the day when we will shift power to the people. An important issue that needs your attention, particularly next week, is the hunger strike in Guantanamo. Don’t let these prisoners die in vain. Witness Against Torture is calling for a week of national solidarity actions starting March 24th. Join them.

This article is based on our weekly newsletter from October2011.org/OccupyWashington DC which covers protest and resistance movements.To sign up for this free newsletter, click here.

Kevin Zeese JD and Margaret Flowers MD co-host ClearingtheFOGRadio.org on We Act Radio 1480 AM Washington, DC and on Economic Democracy Media, co-direct It’s Our Economy and were organizers of the Occupation of Washington, DC. Their twitters are @KBZeese and @MFlowers8.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has expressed Russia’s content over the latest round of expert-level talks between Iran and the six major world powers in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

“We believe there’s been a certain progress following the expert panel in Istanbul,” Ryabkov said at a press briefing in Moscow on Thursday.

He added, “It is tangible but not sufficient to call it a breakthrough.”

“The dynamics of these talks suggest that this progress can still be reversed. We find it a bit unsettling, although the discussion has taken on a more serious, deep and businesslike approach after the string of negotiations,” the Russian diplomat noted.

Iran and the P5+1 group -- China, Russia, France, Britain and the US plus Germany -- held their latest round of expert-level negotiations in Istanbul on March 17-18.

Iran and the P5+1 agreed to hold the expert-level meeting during their previous negotiations in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 26-27. The two sides agreed to convene again in Istanbul on April 5-6 to continue the negotiations.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said during their meeting in Istanbul, the Iranian and P5+1 experts discussed various aspects of the proposals put forward by both sides.

According to the statement, the discussions revolved around proposals presented by Iran during the meeting in Moscow in June 2012, and offers given by the P5+1.

Michael Mann, a spokesman for European Union (EU) foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, also said in a statement on Tuesday that the meeting provided an opportunity for experts of both Iran and the P5+1 group to explore each other's positions on a number of technical subjects.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran has categorically rejected the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to NPT and an IAEA member, it is entitled to acquire and develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that the Iranian nuclear program has been diverted toward military objectives.

MP/MA

The same week President Obama honored Rosa Parks Parks’ 100th birthday, Israel announced two newly segregated bus lines for Palestinian workers traveling to Israel from the West Bank. The “Palestinian only” buses were introduced after Israeli settlers complained that fellow Palestinian passengers posed a “security risk.”

The timing of Israel’s announcement set the internet abuzz with moralizing references to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Jim Crow. If only Palestinians could produce their own Rosa Parks. More sophisticated Palestine analysts observed that for Palestinians, segregation is already routine. Israeli society functions thanks to a complex web of segregated highways, neighborhoods, and educational institutions. Potential Palestinian “Martin Luther King Jr.’s”cycle in and out of Israeli jails.

Of course, President Obama avoids Jim Crow/Israel analogies. His administration continues to oppose international efforts to recognize Palestinian self-determination and the itinerary for Obama’s upcoming Israel trip resembles a POTUS version of Birthright. His first activity is a photo op with missile battery. Obviously, a spell of liberal indignation over bus segregation and a brief flurry of Rosa Park’s references will not translate into US policies shifts on Israel/Palestine. But in this faux-outrage, there is something valuable to be learned about the shortcomings of liberalism and its failure to fully comprehend both the plight of Palestinians and America’s own history of racial oppression.

As Samir Sonti pointed out in Jacobin last week, contemporary liberals sanitize the movement for black liberation as a fundamentally individual struggle for “civil rights,” stripped of its working class roots, revolutionary goals, and strong ties to organized labor.

For liberals, racial oppression is an uncomfortable concept because it lays the blame for inequality at the feet of society at large and implicates the very legitimacy of liberal institutions. For that reason, Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered more for his leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott — with its modest goals of bus integration — than for his Poor People’s Campaign and his deeper indictment of American society.

Liberals who generally support Israel, but find themselves cringing when Israeli politicians make racist remarks, seize on incidents like Israeli bus segregation because it packages the conflict in digestible terms. This impulse does signal some empathy for the Palestinian plight. But it also smacks of triumphalism. Realizing African American civil rights, we are told, is the landmark achievement of 20^th century liberalism — a hard but necessary journey. When we chastise Israel for segregating buses there is a clear subtext: America has come so far from the days of Jim Crow and our little sibling in the Middle East has some catching up to do.

But Palestinians know that bus segregation is merely a cosmetic feature of their oppression. Commuter discrimination amounts to a red herring. The separate buses are only significant for how they reflect on the general ideological predicament of Israeli society. In fact, many of the Palestinian workers who actually ride the buses welcome the segregation. The new routes are more direct and save the Palestinians from having to endure harassment from settlers.

The perspectives of Palestinian laborers fail to register with liberals, who are desperate to recast Palestinian oppression as an individualistic struggle for civil rights. For them, Palestinian oppression is comfortably framed as “inequality before the law,” a condition easily remedied by extending the largess of the Jewish state. This limited understanding works to reinforce the primacy of Israel — its courts, government, and military — as flawed but ultimately legitimate liberal institutions capable of reform.

If the problem is primarily a problem of civil rights, an issue of inequality rather than oppression, then the solution must be new laws, better courts ,and more sensitive politicians. This is a very comfortable position for liberals because it forecloses far reaching criticism of Israeli society at large and quashes difficult questions about the very foundation of that state.

By sidestepping the question of oppression and dismissing the potential for restructuring Israeli society, liberals do not pause to consider the claims of Palestinians. The age-old Palestinian demand for the “right of return” is considered inconceivable because it would undermine the very nature of the Jewish state. Palestinians are encouraged to set aside their historic grievances and embrace the existing “facts on the ground.” The liberal view holds that by working within the system Palestinians can overcome inequality. It does not leave much room for, in MLK’s words, “radically restructuring society itself.”

The same tendency infects the liberal civil rights mythos. In the push for a color blind society, any system-wide attempts to reach equal racial outcomes are cast outside the mainstream. The ultimate watchdog of American liberalism, the U.S. Supreme Court, is poised to strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, one of the lone vestiges of a transformative approach to racial equality. For liberals, contemporary racism is the fault of a few bad apples and any push to fundamentally alter the distribution of resources is considered in poor taste.

Rosa Parks is cast as an ordinary woman, fed up with the indignity of her commute, rather than a lifelong activist with revolutionary aspirations and ties to the American Communist Party. Thus, the sanitized perception of Rosa Parks enables people like Mitch McConnell to bask in the achievement of civil rights alongside President Obama.

As liberalism fails to offer compelling solutions to racial inequality, a growing chorus of voices on the Left are shining a light on persistent Jim Crow-like segregation in American society. Under the “New Jim Crow” one in three black men are destined to go to prison and blacks are ten times more likely than whites to be incarcerated for drug crimes.

Critical race theorists like Charles Lawrence III have long anticipated this reconfiguration of racial castes. Lawrence III warned that the dominant individualistic understanding of racial inequality would prove inadequate to reverse centuries of oppression: “Racial equality [should be seen] as a substantive societal condition rather than as an individual right.” Yet radical solutions to persistent racial inequality — more aggressive affirmative action, slavery reparations, dismantling the criminal justice system as we know it, legalizing drugs that are the overwhelming cause of black incarceration — all fall beyond the purview of liberal criticism.

Liberals bring this same limited scope to their understanding of Israel/Palestine and their range of solutions for the conflict exposes grave ideological contradictions. Of course, Palestinians deserve equal rights, liberals proclaim, but fundamental questions about the very nature of Israel and its foundation remain taboo. Those who oppose the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state are quickly labeled anti-semites.

Liberals balk at racism within Israeli society but the roots of that racism go unexamined. Religion and State should be kept separate, say the liberals, but theocratic and overtly racist Israeli political parties continue to grow. For the foreseeable future Israeli politics will increasingly ruffle liberal sensibilities, but the liberal frame will continue to view Palestinian oppression as an understandable, if regrettable, blip in Israel’s democratic journey.

Amid US President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel, Palestinian activists have set up a protest camp on a controversial site near al-Quds (Jerusalem) where the Israeli regime intends to build thousands of illegal settler homes.

Palestinian protesters pitched some 15 tents in E1 outside al-Quds on Wednesday to express their discontent with Obama’s visit to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The demonstrators said Obama was not doing enough to stop the Israeli regime’s illegal settlement activities.

Abdullah Abu Rahma, one of the protest organizers, said the move is to send a “message to Obama to tell him: Obama - enough with bias and support for Israel.”

“This is our land and we are opposed to settlements and occupation which are backed by the US administration,” he added.

Mustafa Barghouthi, a senior Palestinian politician, also said, “We are here to send a message to President Obama, our struggle, our non-violent peaceful resistance will continue until we are free.”

The US president is set to arrive in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas later on Thursday.

Obama will only spend a few hours in Ramallah, before heading to al-Quds to deliver a speech.

Ahead of Obama's first visit to Israel as president, Palestinians held a a similar demonstration in the occupied West Bank and defaced banners bearing Obama's image.

E1 is a sensitive zone between East al-Quds and the West Bank and its expansion has been on Israel’s agenda since the 1990s.

More than half a million Israelis live in illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.

The Israeli settlements are considered illegal by much of the international community. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the settlement construction is part of Tel Aviv’s policy and will not stop.

MKA/HMV

If US President Barack Obama wanted to move the Palestine/Israel issue along, he would need to demand that Israel free thousands of political prisoners it holds in violation of international law, end its violations of Palestinian human rights, lift the siege on Gaza or at the very least end the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians.US President Barack Obama at the Israel lobby group AIPAC’s conference in 2011. (AIPAC)

However, because the fear that retribution by Israel’s lobby will be swift and painful, none of these things will be said — much less demanded — even though they are well-documented and widely known. And so, President Obama’s planned trip to Israel will not offer any solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict.

The Israeli-Palestinian issue is, politically, a toxic wasteland that no US president in his right mind would want to clean up. It has become a vicious cycle of deceit and double standards, and it will contaminate any US politician who tries to clean it up. One may trust that President Obama, being fully aware of this, will avoid getting involved with this issue in his second term, just as he did in his first term.

Even if he does visit the West Bank city of Ramallah during his planned visit, there can be little doubt that Barack Obama will continue to stand behind Israel and place his real efforts elsewhere. It’s the cost of doing business.

Blank check

The official US stance on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is that it needs to be resolved within the framework of a two-state solution but without the US pressuring the parties to reach a resolution. The pressures placed upon politicians in the US by the Israel lobby have created a reality in which criticizing Israel constitutes political suicide.

Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren, the Torquemada of the Israel lobby, stated recently on the satirical television program The Colbert Report that: “there are not many issues for which there is bipartisan support, the support for Israel is a true bipartisan issue” (“Obama’s Israel trip - Michael Oren,” 5 March 2013).

“Support for Israel” means a blank check. Understandably, Oren takes pride in this because it is an accomplishment for which his inquisition-style lobby has worked tirelessly. So much so, that the only vote on this issue that is acceptable in Washington is a vote that is aligned with Israel.

Reckless and destructive

The price of doing business in US politics is to applaud, encourage and pay for Israel to do whatever it wants, regardless how reckless and destructive it may be, and to ignore the plight of the Palestinians. This was true before the last Israeli elections, and now with the results of the Israeli elections clearly showing that Israelis have no interest in resolving the Palestinian issue, the president would have to go against Israeli electorate as well as the Israel lobby in the US, and all this to accomplish something no American president would even dare to articulate: peace and justice for Palestinians.

The naïve hope that Obama’s second term in office will be different than his first on this issue is just that, naïve. A just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian question will not come from an American president, nor will it come from an Israeli prime minister. The resolution of the conflict will come as a result of the fall of the Zionist state, not unlike the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

No substance at all

As student groups, churches, trade unions, civil society organizations and the movement calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel increase their pressure, Western governments who are now complicit in Israel’s crimes will inevitably be forced to halt their support for Israel.

This, along with the ongoing pressure from popular Palestinian resistance, disobedience and defiance of the laws that allow the Zionist occupation of Palestine to function, will bring about a democracy in Palestine, in place of the Zionist state.

But this will not come about of its own accord. People who care about Palestinians and Israelis and who care about justice and peace need to act vigorously and demand a democracy with full equal rights in Palestine/Israel. As for the president’s planned visit, we may expect, and we will surely see no substance at all.

© 2013 Electronic Intifada

WASHINGTON - Ten years after President George W. Bush launched his “shock and awe” campaign to overwhelm Iraq – and the rest of the world – with the futility of resisting Washington’s military might, the public and much of the foreign policy elite appear remarkably uninterested in marking the anniversary, let alone assessing the results.

“If I had to do it over again, I’d do it in a minute,” former vice president Dick Cheney told an interviewer about invading Iraq in a television biography that aired last Friday. The lack of interest may be explained by the fact that media attention to Iraq dwindled rapidly after 2008 as President Barack Obama instituted a rapid drawdown – ultimately withdrawing virtually all U.S. troops from Iraq by late 2011 – the same time that he more than doubled the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

“The only way Americans learn about the rest of the world is when we get involved in foreign wars,” noted one Washington veteran.

The lack of interest may also be explained by the fact that the war was an experience that many – even some of its defenders – would prefer to forget.

After all, the balance sheet doesn’t look very good: nearly 4,500 U.S. military personnel and another 3,400 U.S. private contractors killed and tens of thousands more badly wounded both physically and psychologically, while direct war-related costs to a cash-strapped Treasury exceeding two trillion dollars over the decade, according to the latest estimates of the Costs of War Project at Brown University released last week.

The Project also estimated the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war at at least 134,000. It stressed, however, that that figure should be considered very conservative and, in any case, did not include deaths caused by war-related hardships which it said could total many hundreds of thousands more.

Also not included in the Project’s report were the more than 50 people killed in Baghdad Tuesday in a series of bombings – probably by Sunni insurgents – designed apparently to both mark the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion and remind the world that Washington’s goal of restoring stability to Iraq remains elusive at best.

The anniversary would seem to offer an important opportunity for reflection. This is particularly so given the growing domestic pressure here to intervene more forcefully in Syria – a “Free Syria Act of 2013” authorising the administration to spend 150 million dollars in lethal and non-lethal aid to the rebels was introduced by the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Monday — and the still-looming possibility of war with Iran.

Yet, with just a couple of exceptions, Washington’s most prominent foreign policy think tanks, as well as cable news and newspapers, focused their discussions and op-eds this week far more on Obama’s trip this week to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan than on the Iraq War and the lessons learned from it.

One notable exception was the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the neo-conservative stronghold whose pre-war “black coffee briefings” and close ties to Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld ensured its “scholars” a leading role in both promoting and actually planning the invasion and subsequent occupation – under the careful guidance of Ahmad Chalabi, the exiled Iraqi banker and confidence man who had hoped to be installed as the country’s new president.

In a one-hour briefing Tuesday afternoon that dwelled heavily on the supposed “success” of the 2007 so-called surge of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to prevent Iraq from falling into an all-out sectarian civil war, AEI associates, joined by Sen. John McCain, defended their advice throughout the war.

They have also run a flurry of op-eds published this past week, including one for FoxNews by former Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, entitled “Iraq War taught us tough lessons, but world is better off without Saddam Hussein.”

Wolfowitz, a key architect of the war and major backer of Chalabi, argued that Washington should have adopted a Surge-like counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy much earlier in the war, a particularly ironic observation given his very public denunciation on the eve of the war of Gen. Eric Shinseki, then-Army chief of staff, who warned Congress of the need for several hundred thousand troops to keep the peace after the U.S. invasion.

Indeed, the war’s defenders – mostly neo-conservatives and aggressive nationalists, like Cheney and former U.N. Amb. John Bolton, another AEI “scholar” – spent most of the past week insisting that they had done nothing wrong.

“If I had to do it over again, I’d do it in a minute,” Cheney told an interviewer about invading Iraq in a television biography that aired last Friday.

Like his fellow hawks, the former vice president insisted that U.S. and other intelligence services were convinced that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that he was theoretically prepared to give to terrorists – and that, in the wake of 9/11 – justified the invasion.

Indeed, the notion that the only flaw in the decision to go to war was “bad intelligence” has become a mantra of the war’s defenders who, like Wolfowitz, appear to miss the irony of their complaints, given their own interference in the intelligence process in the run-up to the war.

“Intelligence did not drive or guide the decision to invade Iraq – not by a long shot, despite the aggressive use by the Bush administration of cherry-picked fragments of intelligence reporting in its public sales campaign for the war,” according to Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia at the time.

Indeed, the White House systematically ignored key reports by the intelligence community and the State Department that warned of the likely consequences of invading Iraq, even if it had WMD and was inclined to share them with terrorists, according to Pillar and a 2007 report by the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Among other things, these reports accurately predicted a breakdown in civil order – for which the Pentagon was completely unprepared — after the invasion.

It also predicted – accurately, it turns out — that a far-reaching de-Baathification programme of the kind promoted heavily by AEI and Chalabi would lead to violent sectarian conflict; that political Islam and anti-U.S. sentiment would surge across the region; and that any successor government would align itself more closely with Iran.

As for the general public, it, too doesn’t appear too inclined toward a major re-appraisal of the war. A spate of polls released this week suggests that opinions about the war have remained relatively stable over the past five years.

A majority (58 percent) told an ABC/Washington Post poll earlier this month they believed the war was “not worth fighting” – down from a high of 64 percent in late 2008), while 59 percent in a CNN survey released Tuesday characterised the decision to invade as a “dumb thing to do”.

A Pew Research Center poll released Monday found a virtually even split among respondents when asked whether using military force against Iraq was a “right” or “wrong” decision and whether the U.S. “mostly succeeded” or “mostly failed” in achieving its goal in Iraq.

© 2013 IPS North America

Cyprus Finance Minister and top bankers are in Moscow searching financial help after the EU proposal implying private savings levy was rejected by parliament. The Cypriot delegation is looking into whether Moscow’s terms are better.

Finance Minister Michael Sarris, who heads the Cyprus delegation, has expressed hope that Moscow is going to lend money to Nicosia on acceptable conditions on Wednesday.

The negotiations between Sarris and his Russian counterpart Anton Siluanov have not brought practical results so far.

"There were no offers, nothing concrete... We're happy with a good beginning," Sarris said.

He told reporters after talks that the discussion with Siluanov had been “very honest” and that the Cypriot delegation “underscored how difficult the situation is.”

But Sarris shared hope that "We'll now continue our discussion to find the solution by which we hope we will be getting some support.”

Allegedly, Cyprus has asked Russia for a five-year extension of an existing loan of 2.5 billion euro Moscow that granted the island nation in 2011.

Besides that Nicosia needs a credit line of several billion euro to bail out its banks.

The demands of the European creditors pledging 10 per cent deposit levy in exchange for bailout of the Cyprus economy caused panic among country’s citizens and investors. Parliament on Tuesday voted against the EU demand to tax all accounts registered on the country. The measure supposed to claim 6.75 per cent from accounts under 100,000 euro and 9.9 per cent from those over 100,000 euro.

On Tuesday, credit rating company Fitch announced it is going to reconsider ratings of Cyprus’ three major banks: Bank of Cyprus (BOC), Cyprus Popular Bank (CPB) and Hellenic Bank (HB) if the EU-proposed tithe is introduced in the country.

Cyprus Popular Bank was de-facto nationalized in 2012 after it demanded 1.8 billion euro for recapitalization. The crisis in Cyprus Popular Bank (branded Laiki at home) became one of the reasons why the Cypriot government had to address to the EU and IMF for financial support.

Cyprus banking system is paralyzed since March 18. All banks will remain closed till at least the end of the week.

Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble warned that without the EU financial support Cypriot financial institutions are going bankrupt. Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter warned that the European Central Bank would not support Cyprus banking system forever and that without liquidity from ECB Cypriot banks would not be able to open.

On Tuesday evening, President of Cyprus Nikos Anastasiadis called on Russian leader Vladimir Putin to discuss the immediate situation. Putin expressed concern that expropriation of private savings proposed by the EU in Cyprus might harm the interests of the Russian citizens and welcomed further dialogue.

The day after the phone talks between presidents, the Cypriot delegation boarded the plane for Moscow.

According to various estimates the amount of cross-border loans Russian banks issued to Russia-related companies registered in Cyprus totals between US$30 billion and $40 billion. Most of Russia's largest banks are somehow involved in crediting Cyprus-based businesses.

The attempt to introduce private deposit levy in Cyprus undermines the world financial system in general, said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich on Wednesday.

“The question is that is does not matter who is punishing whom with this decision. The matter is if this is possible in Cyprus – it is possible everywhere,” Dvorkovich pointed out.

“This decision would mean that there is no place to keep your savings, that banking system does not work anymore. It is easy to lose credibility to banks, but it is hard to restore it. There are other means of punishment – well known and easily applicable,” he concluded.

The presence of Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Giorgos Lakkotripis in the Cypriot delegation only adds intrigue to talks in Moscow.

Speculation is raging as to what Russia is planning to ask from Cyprus in exchange for the money.

The Wall Street Journal assures that Nicosia is preparing to exchange some shares in the island’s banks and energy projects in return for a Moscow credit line.

Russian energy giant Gazprom has reportedly offered Cyprus a private bailout plan of its own, proposing to lend money in exchange for rights to offshore gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea, the New York Times reports.

Cyprus’ gas reserves appear to be promising, yet undeveloped so far. Cypriot gas fields lie next to similar gas deposits recently found off the coast of Israel.

In December 2012 Gazprom lost a bid for Israel's Leviathan natural gas field to Australia's largest oil and gas firm Woodside Petroleum, which bought a 30 per cent stake.

Gazprom decided to approach the same gas deposits from a different shore, to gain entry to the gas supply of the Mediterranean.

Britain is loudly proclaiming that the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands, the South Atlantic island group that is hotly contested between Britain and Argentina, voted 99.8 percent to remain an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister David Cameron publicly rebuked the Argentine government and the new Pope, Francis I, for their support of Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio supported Argentina’s historical claim to the islands.

If only Mr. Cameron were as dedicated to the wishes of the inhabitants of some of Britain’s other far-flung and nearer –to–home territories as he is toward the “Kelpers,” as the Falkland Islanders call themselves.

In the cases of the Turks and Caicos Islands and Anguilla in the Caribbean, the Tory-Liberal Democratic government in London has rolled back the self-government previously afforded the two island colonies.

The British government imposed direct rule on the Turks and Caicos in 2009, citing misrule and corruption by the island’s then-premier, Michael Misick. Britain appointed a Commission of Inquiry led by Sir Robyn Auld that recommended direct rule of the islands from London through Governor Gordon Wetherell; his successor Ric Todd; Attorney General Huw Shepheard; and Chief Financial Officer Hugh McGarel Groves. The Commission of Inquiry was replaced by a Special Investigation and Prosecution Team (SIPT) that began investigating Turks and Caicos government officials for corruption.

The new Premier, Galmo Williams, declared, “Our country is being invaded and re-colonized by the United Kingdom, dismantling a duly elected government and legislature and replacing it with a one-man dictatorship, akin to that of the old Red China, all in the name of good governance.”

The British neo-colonial government brought criminal charges against a dozen Turks and Caicos official, including five ministers in the Misick government, including Misick himself. The former premier fled to Brazil and was arrested pursuant to an extradition request from Britain. However, the breakdown in relations between London and Latin America over the Falklands issue may have compelled the Brazilian government to release Misick on bail awaiting a final determination on the extradition request.

Last November, an election was held in the Turks and Caicos and the Progressive National Party of former Premier Misick barely eked out a victory in an 8 seat to 7 seat vote for the opposition People’s Democratic Party in the House of Assembly. Dr. Rufus Ewing became Premier and among his first acts was to demand London restore constitutional powers from the abrogated constitution to the elected government and sack the governor, Attorney General, and other appointed officials. Cameron and Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary William Hague have resisted these calls. Essentially, when the white population and government of the Falklands demand something from London, they are heard and the request in positively acted upon. However, when it is an Afro-Caribbean population in the Turks and Caicos that makes a demand, they are ignored. It is the British colonial way.

In a letter to Hague, Ewing wrote that the investigation of the previous Misick government was a “farce, impregnated with cloak and dagger acts on the part of the Governor, AG Chambers and SIPT, to incarcerate Turks and Caicos Islanders at all costs, even the cost of the violation of the principles of justice and the human rights of individuals.”

Ewing told a summit of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in Port au Prince, Haiti, “We are today being governed by a constitution that was conceived in Whitehall, and was, for all intents and purposes, thrust upon the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands, at a time when they were without representation.” Ewing was referring to the 2011 Constitution that afforded the island less rights than the previous Constitution of 2006.

One of the main objectives of the London-appointed government was to impose a tax hike and austerity measures on the Turks and Caicos. Hague rejected Ewing’s request and stated: “We expect the territories to meet the same high standards of good governance and public financial management as in the UK.” That is rich coming from a British government that has been mired in financial and sexual scandal since it came to power. But, again, the rationale in London is based on the fact that when white ministers and Tory and Liberal Democratic MPs are engaged in scandal, it is a minor infraction, but when a government composed of people of color are accused of scandal, an unconstitutional, anti-democratic, neo-colonialist sacking of the entire government ensues.

It is clear that the Turks and Caicos wants to join its fellow CARICOM partners as an independent nation but London has thrown in a number of obstacles to full sovereignty. The Turks and Caicos are not alone in having neo-colonialism imposed on them from the halls of power along the banks of the Thames.

Britain, working with France, the Netherlands, the United States, Morocco, New Zealand, Canada, Israel, and Australia, has sought to diminish the role of the United Nations’ Special Committee on Decolonization in speeding independence for the 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories recognized by the committee, which includes the Turks and Caicos and another Caribbean island where Britain has re-stamped its colonial imprimatur, Anguilla.

In the 1960s, Anguilla declared unilateral independence from the Federation of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla because it wanted to retain its ties to Britain and not shed them in favor of a colonial status within a West Indies mini-federation. However, after some forty years, things have started to change on the island. Britain, instead of allowing Anguilla more self-government under Anguilla Constitutional Order 1 April 1982, amended in 1990, has reversed course and started to retain and retake more powers for itself. This has resulted in more Anguillans bringing up the independence option decades after the Anguillan Revolutions of 1967 and 1969.

Britain is trying to eliminate a provision in the Anguillan Constitution that provides for an option of independence. It is clear that Britain is trying to do to Anguilla what the Netherlands did to the three small Caribbean island territories of Bonaire, Saba, and Saint Eustatius after the dissolution of the self-governing Netherlands Antilles, make Anguilla part of Britain and incorporate it into the United Kingdom and European Union. The Netherlands incorporated its three territories as municipalities of the Netherlands in a move that was not clearly explained to the residents of the islands.

Last year, Anguillan Chief Minister Hubert Hughes told the UN that his government “decided that the Anguilla people will have to decide whether they want to stay in slavery or go on to freedom.”

As with the Turks and Caicos, Britain has imposed economy-crippling austerity on Anguilla using the pretext that the island is rife with financial corruption.

As bad as the Turks and Caicos islanders and Anguillans are in being re-colonized by Britain, no people have suffered more than the Ilois of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. In the 1960s, they were removed by Britain against their wishes and relocated to Mauritius where they live in squalor. Britain removed the islanders to make way for a U.S. nuclear weapons, intelligence, and, more recently, a gulag for detainees, on the island of Diego Garcia.

So, while Mr. Cameron lectures the Pope and Argentina on respecting the wishes of the Falkland Islanders, he continues to run roughshod over the wishes of the peoples of the Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, the Chagos Archipelago, and even those closer to home in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man, who would opt for independence if not for the heavy jackboot of British colonial rule…

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Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week's edition of The Wilkerson Report with Lawrence Wilkerson, who now joins us.Larry was former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. He's currently an adjunct professor of government at the College of William & Mary. And he's a regular contributor.Thanks very much for joining us, Larry.COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Thanks for having me, Paul.JAY: So ten�years ago you were very involved in Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations. You were in the midst of all the preparations and politics for the Iraq War. And I'm not going to actually ask you again about that. You and I have discussed that many times, and down below this video player or next to it you'll find a link to a whole series of interviews we've done with Larry about that.But I want to talk about more today on what we have or have not learnt from the Iraq War and how it began. So I guess the simple question to kick off, Larry, is: could it all happen again?WILKERSON: Unfortunately, Paul, I think it could, and probably at the hands of some of the very same people, the neoconservatives in general. But the Richard Perles, the Bill Kristols, the other people like them could march us into war, another catastrophic war, in Western Asia, this time with Iran.JAY: Now, last time, they had this document called the Project for a New American Century, which kind of set a tone, I think, for the Bush administration, the idea that the United States should use its overwhelming superiority in military power to sort of reshape the world as it likes. And it really came down to the issue of regime change. And one could manipulate the media and the intelligence in whatever way was necessary to achieve that. Is that still the agenda?WILKERSON: I think that's basically the game plan. It's a little more sophisticated this time, as you might suspect. They learned a little bit. And it features some new characters. But it's basically the same plotting, careful, methodical use of the media, use of the Congress, use of Israel and AIPAC, use of all the instruments that they can get their hands on to kind of prod the American people, and mostly, of course, the administration, into a point where it doesn't really have any choice but to go to war with Iran.Now, that said, I'm confident here lately--at least, I'm more confident and I'm guardedly optimistic that we're going to stop it, partly because it's a different administration, partly because the American people are war-weary, partly because they are sick and tired also of fiscal irresponsibility and trillions of dollars going down the drain, but in many respects because they are beginning to realize just how badly, how truly badly we have messed up Iraq and Afghanistan and how much that has hurt our prestige and real power in the world.JAY: So is it fair to say, now that you can look back ten�years--and, again, we'll bring it back to current time--that the die was set when the Bush-Cheney administration was elected? They already knew they wanted to find an excuse, a way, a rationale for regime change in Iraq that would be the first in a set of dominoes, which would include Syria, which would include Iran. I'm not so sure they actually cared about Libya at the time. That sort of fell into place. But they would say kind of--or do anything to achieve that agenda.WILKERSON: I think that's true. Various ones of them, whether you're talking about Paul Wolfowitz or Bill Kristol or Richard Perle or Douglas Feith or whatever, or the ultimate non-neoconservative but ultranationalist Dick Cheney, whose single-man documentary is making its way ponderously across Showtime right now, you'd get a different angle, a different perspective, and maybe a different force behind it. But basically it's about pushing American power across the face of the globe at anyone who gets in our way.JAY: And the group that recently--I don't know. I don't think they've actually passed this resolution in the Senate yet, but Lindsey Graham is pushing this resolution that essentially says that if Israel attacks Iran, then the United States has to come to the defense of Israel. Am I reading that right? 'Cause doesn't that mean that Israel gets to decide what war the United States participates in?WILKERSON: You're reading it right, Paul. You're reading that a senator of the United States Congress wants to surrender the sovereign war power of the United States of America to another state, in this case Israel.JAY: Now, the alliance of forces that helped bring us the Iraq War was not just the neocons, though. At the same time we're running this interview, we're running an interview we did with Michael Ratner, and he focused to a large extent on the role The New York Times played in all of this. Is that kind of, you know, unholy alliance, if you will, also still there to be had, in other words, forces that like to describe themself as liberals teaming up with neocons to bring us a war?WILKERSON: I think that's true. I think you've got oil interest who are behind it. I think you've got people who are on the right wing, like AIPAC, who are behind it. You've got people who are messianic about freedom and democracy.But let me just address that last point you made about liberals. Paul, I was in New York City at Temple Emmanual, which is the synagogue in Great Neck, New York, Saturday, Friday and Saturday. And Friday night, after having Shabbat dinner and then going into the synagogue service with them, they asked me to speak, and I spoke. And my subject was we need not be enemies, Iran and the U.S., in the 21st century.And I will tell you that I got an overwhelming feeling in both conversation afterwards, in the Q&A, and their response during my general remarks that that community is very much opposed to war with Iran, very much opposed to the current situation that seems to be marching us there. So this is a liberal Jewish community, very affluent, very, shall we say, comfortable, taking care of themselves in that area of the world--got their schools there and everything, doing a good job, basically looking after one another, warm, hospitable community that's very much opposed to war with Iran. So I think it's unfair, for example, to say that the bulk of America's Jewish community is marching along with these neoconservatives.JAY: That brings up an interesting point, which was back in 2003--I guess it was on February�15, before the war, there was massive protests around the world, in the tens of millions of people if you add it all up, I think the greatest antiwar protest in the history of the world.WILKERSON: I was in London and saw some of it there, and I can tell you it was awesome.JAY: And did it have any influence at all? I mean, the war went ahead. Does an administration pay attention to such a thing?WILKERSON: Well, that administration didn't. And that brings up another point, Paul. You know, I lived through the '60s. You did, too. I saw the rage generated by the war in which I participated. And I've talked to many who either participated in that war or participated in that rage. And, frankly, I have a lot of respect for the people who participated in the rage part, particularly people like Mohammed Ali, Cassius Clay, who actually went to prison for his beliefs. They were right, and basically I was wrong.And I don't see that rage today. I do not see people standing up and going out in the streets and saying, stop this silliness, stop this murder, stop this slaughter, stop sending less than 1�percent of America's citizens, most of whom are socio-economically determined, to war and to death and to horrible wounds. I just don't see the rage. And I wonder what's happening to this country that it's become so apathetic.JAY: Well, some people argue it's--now, at least, it's partly because there's a Democratic Party in power and the president sounds like he's more rational about all these things. But, in fact, what's going on even still in Afghanistan, one would think there'd be a more serious antiwar movement about that, and you don't see it. How much of that is because it's a Democrat and not a Republican?WILKERSON: I'm sure that's part of it. And the Democrats are trapped, of course, in their own political need for not showing any ankle, any weakness at all on the issue of national security now that they seem to be balancing the polls or even maybe ahead in the polls with the Republicans.But that said, too, someone somewhere in here--and it ought to be the American people--have got to pull this back from polls and politics and put it back in the venue of the interests of this country, the ultimate interest of this country. And once that's done, I think we probably could right the ship of state, so to speak, and get it back on a more palatable course. But I think it's going to take the people. I don't see any moral courage, with very few exceptions--Angus King from Maine, for example, the independent from Vermont, maybe one or two--Jones from North Carolina. I don't see--other than these sort of mavericks, I don't see any moral courage amongst the leadership of this country. So I have to turn to the American people and say, over to you; it's your turn.JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Larry.WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Paul.JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

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WASHINGTON - March 18 - NORMAN SOLOMON, [email]
Solomon, who wrote the piece “Ten Years Ago and Today: A Warfare State of Mind,” is author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He said today: “The tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion comes at a time of chilling statements from the top of the U.S. government. Days ago, speaking of possible actions against Iran, President Obama told an Israeli TV reporter: ‘I continue to keep all options on the table.’ Earlier this month, Vice President Biden told the AIPAC annual conference that Obama ‘is not bluffing’ and declared that ‘all options, including military force, are on the table.’ These statements are similar to the threats uttered by President Bush and Vice President Cheney prior to the invasion of Iraq.”

Solomon added: “Despite the myth that just about everyone believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, many experts and independent groups in the United States — including the Institute for Public Accuracy — thoroughly debunked such claims during the year before the invasion.” For examples of pre-invasion news releases and public reports refuting U.S. government claims of Iraqi WMDs, click here, here and here.

For video of a live televised debate last month between Solomon and Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, click here.

Available for radio use: historic audio from “War Made Easy” documentary film.

SAM HUSSEINI, [email], @samhusseini
Communications director for the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini said today: “It’s common to simply blame Bush and Cheney for the Iraq war, but it’s not accurate. Many voted for or otherwise backed the Iraq war — including Obama’s entire foreign policy team from Kerry to Hagel; from Clinton to Rice to Biden. Even among those who voted against the war, many facilitated it, like Pelosi, who claimed during the buildup to the Iraq invasion that ‘there was no question Iraq had chemical and biological agents.’ None of these individuals have ever seriously come clean about their conduct during this critical period (and I’ve questioned most of them) — so there’s never been a moment of reckoning for the greatest foreign policy disaster of this generation. The elevation of Democrats who did not seriously question the war likely facilitated Bush and Cheney never being held accountable for their conduct.

“Persistent myths include that after the invasion, we learned that Bush deceived about Iraqi WMDs. In fact, it was clear before the war that the Bush administration was engaged, as an Institute for Public Accuracy news release headline put it the day before the bombing campaign started, in a ‘Pattern of Deceit.’ Some of these falsifications were brazen, like claiming the UN weapons inspectors were dissatisfied with Iraqi compliance, when they were saying Iraq was making progress and they wanted more time to complete their job. Bush’s deceptions were helped along by the fact that the Clinton administration had also deceitfully hyped Iraqi WMDs, maintained sanctions and a belligerent stance for nearly a decade — a pattern that the Obama administration seems to be repeating in many respects now with Iran and North Korea. Tragically, the peace movement, which took center stage with quasi-global protests on Feb. 15, 2003, went on to marginalize itself by focusing on Bush rather than building a serious global movement for peace and justice.”

See FAIR’s 2007 report “Iraq: A Critical Timeline,” which documents much of the media drumbeat for war, as well as notable exceptions.

An Iranian lawmaker says blind obedience of the European Union (EU) to the US sanctions policy against Iran will be detrimental to the European bloc in the long run.

“The European Union continues to insist on following the White House's dictated policies despite the damages it has sustained as a result of [imposing] sanctions against independent countries,” Mehdi Davatgari said on Wednesday.

He also noted that imposing embargos against independent countries will only tarnish the reputation of the European Union without hindering the progress of those states.

The lawmaker emphasized that by imposing new embargos on Iran, the European Union is trying to put a lid on the heavy losses it has incurred as the result of enforcing sanctions against independent states.

“The European public opinion opposes Europe’s obedience to the unilateral policies of the United States. Therefore, the European Union is trying to appear self-righteous in order to evade criticism,” Davatgari pointed out.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program. Over the false allegation, Washington and the EU have imposed several rounds of illegal unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran refutes the allegation and argues that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is entitled to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted toward military objectives.

TNP/SS

Venezuela is to formally investigate suspicions late President Hugo Chavez’s was afflicted with cancer after being poisoned by foreign enemies, the government said.

Acting President Nicolas Maduro vowed to set up an inquiry into the allegation, which was first leveled by Chavez after being diagnosed with cancer in 2011. Foreign scientists will also be invited to join a government commission to investigate the claim.  

“We will seek the truth,” Reuters cites Maduro as telling regional TV network Telesur late on Monday. “We have the intuition that our commander, Chavez, was poisoned by dark forces that wanted him out of the way.”

Maduro said it was too early to determine the exact root of the cancer which was discovered in Chavez’s pelvic region in June 2011, but charged that the United States had laboratories which were experienced in manufacturing diseases.

"He had a cancer that broke all norms," the agency cites Maduro as saying. "Everything seems to indicate that they affected his health using the most advanced techniques ... He had that intuition from the beginning."

Chavez reportedly underwent four surgeries in Cuba, before dying of respiratory failure after the cancer metastasized in in his lungs.

Maduro compared the conspiracy surrounding Chavez’s death to allegations that Israeli agents poisoned Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to death in 2004.

In December 2011, Chavez speculated that the United States could be infecting the regions leaders with cancer after Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

"I don't want to make any reckless accusations," Chavez said before asking: “Would it be strange if [the United States] had developed a technology to induce cancer, and for no one to know it?"

Maduro repeated the accusation last week on the eve of Chavez’s death.

"Behind all of [the plots] are the enemies of the fatherland," he said on state television before announcing the expulsion of two US Air Force officials for spying on the military and plotting to destabilize the country.

Venezuela’s opposition has lambasted the claim as another Chavez-style conspiracy theory intended to distract people from real issues gripping the country in the run up to the snap presidential election called for April 14.

As Tuesday marked the last day of official mourning for Chavez, ceremonies are likely to continue, fueling claims by the opposition that the government is exploiting Chavez’s death to hold onto power.

While launching his candidacy on Monday, Maduro began his speech with a recording of Chavez singing the national anthem, sending many of his supporters into tears.

The pro-business state governor Henrique Capriles, who is running for the opposition’s Democratic Unity coalition, was quick to remind both his supporters and detractors that the charismatic socialist reformer Chavez was not his opponent.

“[Maduro] is not Chávez and you all know it,” The Christian Science Monitor quotes him as saying while announcing his candidacy on Sunday. “President Chávez is no longer here.”

Maduro, a former bus driver and Chavez's handpicked successor, has attempted to deflect criticism that he lacks the former president’s rhetorical flair by painting himself as a working class hero.

“I’m a man of the street. … I’m not Chávez,” he said Sunday. “I’m interim president, commander of the armed forces and presidential candidate because this is what Chávez decided and I’m following his orders.”   

Polls taken before Chavez's death gave Maduro a 10 point lead over Capriles, who lost to Chavez in last October’s presidential poll.

It’s well known by now that the NATO and Gulf States' initial plans to overturn the sovereign state of Syria has been running behind schedule since their operation was launched two years ago. They had hoped for the sort of slam dunk which they enjoyed in overturning the country of Libya in late 2011.

This same formula could not be applied again however, so Plan B, a ground war using proxies has meant a longer drawn out conflict, with western backed terrorist groups sustaining heavy losses in their fight to topple the Assad government on behalf of NATO and its Gulf allies.

The main obstacle with Plan B is that the very idea of directly arming terrorists in Syria is not one which can be sold openly in either the US or Britain. Plan C is to draw in the UN by creating a ‘chemical weapons’ crisis in Syria, but thanks to a prominent online leak of documents relating to UK DOD contractor Britam, the British have been caught brokering a deal transferring ex-Gaddafi stocks from Libya to Syria to be blamed on Assad, paid for by Qatar. The WMD threat still remains a hard sell for western voters…

From the NATO Allied corner, something drastic needed to be done.

Whilst politicians in the West, namely those in Washington DC, London and parts of Europe, have been publicly denying that they were helping to organise running arms into Syria and issuing very public pleads for ‘humanitarian aid’ for those they identify as the Syrian Opposition, activity back stage has been furious. The debate in government and the media has been mere window dressing for the real operation being quietly carried out.

NATO Gun-running via Croatia

It can now be revealed that NATO allied nations were busy using proxy states to drive their war in Syria – putting together one of the biggest international black operation transfers of military supplies in recent history. So it’s official: large caches of hardware from the West have been transferred to the Syrian jihadist mercenary collective known as the ‘Free Syrian Army’ , ‘Syrian Rebels’, or ‘Syrian Opposition’ – depending on who you ask, a brash move which may be vehemently opposed by other UN Security Council members – namely Russia and China.

Multiple media sources reveal the details of this massive airlift comprised of 75 airplanes, and an estimated 3,000 tons of military weaponry on board has left Croatia and has already been delivered… to Syria.

It is also confirmed from these reports that Saudi Arabia has financed a large portion of this purchase secretly transported to al Qaeda and other FSA fighters – who are working with the support of the CIA, MI6 and others, along with other financial and material support of Qatar and Saudi, to further destabilise and overthrow the Assad government in Syria.

Croatia’s daily newspaper Jutarnji List reported:

From the start of November last year, till February this year, 75 planes flew out from Zagreb Airport with over 3,000 tons of weapons and ammunition bound for Syrian rebels…

The newspaper, quoting diplomatic sources, says that besides Croatian weapons the planes were full with weapons from other European countries including the UK. The weapons were organised by the United States of America.

Sources say that the first few flights to leave Croatia bound for Syria with weapons were operated by Turkish Cargo, which is owned by Turkish Airlines. After those flights, Jordanian International Air Cargo took over the flights. The deal to provide arms to the rebels was made between American officials and the Croatian Ambassador to the US.

In addition to this huge gun-running operation, Croatia also appears to be guilty of either having advanced knowledge, or possibly coordinating with Syrian terrorists as evidenced by their recently withdraw all of troops from the UN observer mission in Golan Heights, indicating that the recent kidnapping by Free Syrian Army Terrorists of at least 20 UNIFIL peacekeepers in the Golan Heights was known in advance by Croatia.

The kidnapping incident may have been designed to test the UN, but also to pull Syria’s southern neighbor, Israel, even closer to the conflict, a development which would almost surely prompt the UN to declare this as trigger to a regional crisis, followed by an authorised military intervention. Pulling Israel in would also risk involving Hezbollah from Lebanon, who are already engaging in assisting Assad in training a new specialist paramilitary force in Syria to deal with urban warfare.

If it was known by Croatia, then one can only conclude that this was also known by US and British operatives as well. Both the US and Britain will naturally claim deniability as their legal out in this case, by deniability through the use of proxies makes no innocent parties when the prospect of a multi-regional war beckons as a result of the west’s financial, logistical, political, and now material involvement in the overthrow of a sovereign state and internationally recognised government.

Much worse, however, is that by employing proxies like Jordan, Croatia, Turkey,and others, the NATO allies have guaranteed long-term retribution down the road, should Syria prevail in this fight. For Syria, it is now known which countries collaborated with the West to dismantle their country. This fact alone will ensure conflict in the region for a generation.

US officials are on record as admitting to helping arrange the weapons airlift, as cited in this Feb 25, 2012 article in the New York Times:

“An official in Washington said the possibility of the transfers from the Balkans was broached last summer, when a senior Croatian official visited Washington and suggested to American officials that Croatia had many weapons available should anyone be interested in moving them to Syria’s rebels.”

Revelations are not limited to the Croatian news report, as we see the US and Europe’s mainstream media wall of silence has begun to crack, including here a recent report from London’s Daily Telegraph sent across Syria’s borders with Jordan and NATO-member Turkey. The article entitled, “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’“ goes on to give further details of direct European involvement in illegal weapons running:

The United States has coordinated a massive airlift of arms to Syrian rebels from Croatia with the help of Britain and other European states, despite the continuing European Union arms embargo, it was claimed yesterday…

Decisions by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, to provide non-lethal assistance and training, announced in the past week, were preceded by much greater though less direct Western involvement in the rebel cause, according to a Croat newspaper.

The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours.

…as from Croatia, weapons came “from several other European countries including Britain”, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.

British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers…

… The weapons, including rocket launchers, recoil-less guns and the M79 anti-tank weapon, have been seen in rebel hands in numerous videos, and were first spotted by an arms expert Eliot Higgins, who blogs under the name Brown Moses. He traced them moving from Dera’a in the south, near the Jordanian border, to Aleppo and Idlib provinces in the north.

It is also no big secret that Britain has deployed a significant contingent of troops and support personnel to Jordan at least as far back as Autumn 2012 as part of its ongoing ‘joint military exercises’ with the Jordan military, but this latest revelation puts into clearer perspective the overwhelming likelihood that high level British military operation have actually been involved in the transfer of arms from Jordan into the hands of the international terrorist confab of mostly foreign fighter running under the west’s media banner of “Syrian Rebels”.

Consequences for Croatia, and Britain

What Britain may be guilty of here, is cynically – and illegally, trying to side-stepping the EU embargo on arms into Syria by using the fledgling EU state of Croatia as their delivery mechanism, because Croatia does not officially join the EU until July 1, and has not implemented any binding EU legislation. This flagrant violation of both EU and international law should mean that Croatia’s entrance into the EU could be appealed by other members states willing to raise an objection, with what are now clear grounds to mount a legal challenge against Croatia.

Regardless of any EU outcomes however, Croatia at least –  is guilty of international war crimes.

International and EU Sanctions Against the US, Britain, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia

As expected, Britain’s Foreign Office denies all of the claims connecting it to the Croatian gun-running program, but if Britain is involved – even indirectly, through a proxy like Croatia, or if British military personnel are aiding and abetting these known terrorist fighters in Syria through the transfer of weaponry, then Britain can also be brought into the international legal framework to answer for what it has done behind the public’s back.

The international war crimes which are now in the public view could test the legal framework of the EU, the UN and the ICC in the Hague. The legal door is now open for charges against state actors including US, Britain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – for the crimes of illegally arming a force of foreign fighters and known terrorists in Syria – designed to destroy the country from within. Many UN resolutions, including the recent Resolution 1973 applied in Libya by the UN, have been implemented on much more spurious and shaky grounds than the overwhelming evidence available regarding Syria.

Consequences for NATO and the UN

Despite any denials in Brussels, NATO are involved through their member states Turkey and Croatia, as well as US, UK, and France from behind. Any involvement should question these country’s NATO status, or at least it begs the question what is NATO for, or even the UN, if their member states are conspiring together to subvert international law?

Moreover, Israel’s unwarranted airstrike against a Syrian Military Research facility last month was also ignored by the UN, but this is not surprising as Israel has long been allowed to operate outside of international law and norms.

If the international community does not act in this instance, then it opens the door to more brazen criminality sans borders, which could spawn similar illegal operations against Iran, opening the door to a Third World War.

US uniformed Personnel Training Rebels in Jordan

Der Spiegel also reports this week that, despite denials by Washington DC, Americans are definitely training Syrian rebels in neighboring Jordan. The reports goes on:

It is not clear if the Americans are members of the US armed forces or are part of a private contracting firm, but the trainers wear uniforms, the paper reported.

It added that the training, which also involves Jordanian intelligence officers, had been going on “for some time,” and that the rebels were being taught how to use anti-tank weaponry.

France sends ‘aid’ for Syria to Jordan

France played an integral part in the destruction of Libya in 2011, and they might also have an interest in their former colonial possessions in Syria, but it’s not clear as yet if France’s commitment to overthrowing the Assad government is on par with the US and Britain’s efforts. Back in August 2012, France had also been sending large shipments designated for Syria via Jordan, claiming that these shipment contained ‘aid and medical supplies’ – intended for Syrian refugees. Real Syrian News reported:

An Antonov 124 cargo aircraft landed at the Marka military airport in Amman on Saturday. The cargo is said to include a field hospital and medical supplies for the refugees in the Zaatari camp near the Syrian border. An A310 airliner carrying 85 French military staff and medical equipment arrived in Jordan on Thursday.

After the Croatian airlift, it’s now not a stretch to suspect that other countries could be involved in similar operations under the cover of supplying ‘humanitarian aid’.

Consequences for Jordan

The overwhelming body of evidence proves that Jordan is playing the key role as proxy and facilitator for the West’s wishes and desires to destroy the country of Syria. The consequences for Jordan, should the West’s efforts fail, is that Jordan has now exposed itself as a provocateur and enemy of both Syria, and Lebanon, and indeed Iran also. It is not know how much Jordan has been paid for its services, or what promises have been made to its royal family in exchange for facilitating the Syrian upheaval, but it cannot compensate Jordan for playing the crucial role in possibly fomenting a regional or multi-theatre global war.

Syria Crisis Planned by the US and NATO Allies Before the ‘Arab Spring’

Despite previous denials and avoiding the issue by states persons like Hillary Clinton and William Hague, it is certain that ‘al Qaeda’ terrorists are operating in Syria and receive various kinds of support from the West and their Gulf allies, and that these are many of the same terrorist who are responsible for violence and killing in Iraq. The New York Times confirmed this fact recently:

Iraqi officials said the extremists operating in Syria are in many cases the very same militants striking across their country. “We are 100 percent sure from security coordination with Syrian authorities that the wanted names that we have are the same wanted names that the Syrian authorities have, especially within the last three months,” Izzat al-Shahbandar — a close aide to the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki — said in an interview on Tuesday. “Al Qaeda that is operating in Iraq is the same as that which is operating in Syria,” he said.

Bangkok based analyst, Tony Cartalucci, from Land Destroyer blog, adds another important piece of evidence in this mix, pointing out the fact that the US and its NATO operatives have been engineering the crisis in Syria well before the official ‘uprising’ began in 2011:

Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, in his 2007 New Yorker report titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?“stated explicitly that: “To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Cartalucci provides further background to support the west’s own knowledge and involvement is the current crisis:

Is there any doubt that the US has executed this plot in earnest, arming and funding sectarian extremists “sympathetic to Al Qaeda” on both Syria’s northern and southern border? Where else, if not from the West and its regional allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, could extremists be getting their weapons, cash, and logistical support from?

And of course, Syria’s borders with Jordan and Turkey have been long-ago identified by the US Army’s own West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) as hotbeds of sectarian extremist/Al Qaeda activity – hotbeds that the West is purposefully funneling thousands of tons of weaponry through, while disingenuously claiming it is attempting to prevent such weapons from falling into the hands of extremists.

The CTC’s 2007 report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” identified Syria’s southeastern region near Dayr Al-Zawr on the Iraqi-Syrian border, the northwestern region of Idlib near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar’a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border, as having produced the majority of fighters found crossing over into Iraq throughout the duration of the Iraq War.

Image: (Left) West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s 2007 report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq” indicated which areas in Syria Al Qaeda fighters filtering into Iraq came from during the US invasion/occupation. The overwhelming majority of them came from Dayr Al-Zawr in Syria’s southeast, Idlib in the north near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar’a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border. (Right) A map indicating the epicenters of violence in Syria indicate that the exact same hotbeds for Al Qaeda in 2007, now serve as the epicenters of so-called “pro-democracy fighters.” These areas are now admittedly the epicenters of fighting, and more importantly, despite being historical hotbeds of Al Qaeda activity, precisely where the West is flooding with cash, weapons, and military “advisers.”

Just like in Libya where the West literally handed an entire nation to sectarian extremists, we are watching a verbatim repeat in Syria – where we are told Al Qaeda terrorists are “pro-democracy” “freedom fighters” that deserve US cash, weapons, and support, when it couldn’t be any clearer they aren’t.  

Not only has the US and UK lied to the world about their policy toward Syria and their current level of support for increasingly overt terrorists committing an array of atrocities – their latest act including the taking of over 20 UN peacekeepers hostage in the Golan Heights - but have revealed once again the manufactured facade that is the “War on Terror…”

Terrorist Groups Currently Active in Syria

Known terrorist groups are operating in Syria and are receiving the full backing of NATO Allies and Gulf states Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They include – but are not limited to, Saudi Intelligence-backed Jabhat al-Nusra or ‘al Nursa Front’, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,  Abdullah Azzam Brigades and Al Baraa ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade, the jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham, the PKK (in northeast Syria), Kata’ib Mohadzherin from the Russian Caucus region - to name only a few.

Earlier reports of rogue Russian and Chechen terrorists filtering into Syria appear to be preceded by Salafists killing Sufi leaders in the Russian Federation. The Pakistan Christian Post reports:

Recently in Dagestan the Sufi spiritual leader Said Efendi Chirkeisky was killed by a suicide bomber along with a few followers. This happened in late August and the closeness to the recent attack against Sufi leaders in Tatarstan is a clear reminder that Salafism is a potent force within parts of the Russian Federation. Therefore, not surprisingly the Russian Federation is extremely alarmed by major Western powers once more working in collusion with the FSA, al-Qaeda and a whole array of Salafi terrorist organizations.

It’s worth noting also that like Libya’s new militant governor of Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, terrorist group Kata’ib Mohadzherin’s leader Airat Vakhitov was also imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002 after being captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Both were released and filtered back into fighting regions to organise al Qaeda-type Islamist groups – both active in countries which the US and NATO have been actively vying for regime change, in Libya and Syria respectively. You can draw your own conclusions here about what Guantanamo is in reality.

The same New York Times article (above) also mentions terrorists’ theocratic designs of establishing some caliphate in the region:

One Qaeda operative, a 56-year-old known as Abu Thuha who lives in the Hawija district near Kirkuk in Iraq, spoke to an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times on Tuesday. “We have experience now fighting the Americans, and more experience now with the Syrian revolution,” he said. “Our big hope is to form a Syrian-Iraqi Islamic state for all Muslims…"

It’s important to understand that such claims by any shadowy ‘al Qaeda’ figures must also be balance with the reality that these militants have been historically, and are still today, directed and funded at the highest levels of both US and Saudi intelligence, and others. When you see terror spokesman like Ayman al-Zawahri, the alleged leader of Al Qaeda, praise the Syrian fighters by referring to them as “the lions of the Levant,” in messages released exclusively via a known CIA media dissemination outlets like SITE, or INTEL CENTER, then readers should be suspicious of why it’s been released and what political effect it is designed to have.

Now that some of the scope of NATO Allies operation in Syria has been exposed to the public, perhaps political representatives, media journalist, and editors will be able to report more accurately on the Syrian crisis, and demand a withdrawl of NATO, Arab League and others country’s support for the growing and highly dangerous paramilitary and other al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups who are currently working to take power by destabilising the country of Syria.

It’s all happening out in the open now.

Two policemen guard the King Edward VII hospital as the Queen Elizabeth recovers. And that's the long and short of it.

You thought Justin Bieber's lateness was embarrassing? Imagine being caught short while performing.

Nick Clegg: you wouldn't like him when he's angry.

"And what do YOU do?" the man asked Prince Charles.

One of these men is a cycling champion, the other champions... no, wait. The other's a buffoon.

Kevin Pietersen: not necessarily the skilled sportsman he'd have us believe.

Fat Boy Slim was hoping to meet a funk soul brother at the House of Commons. Instead, he got Lembit Opik.

We don't think relations between Poland and Germany have been this good since... Nope, can't think when.

Ever wondered how they keep tiny birds still to weigh them? Well, wonder no more.

The new US Energy Secretary is unveiled. And it's Tommy Lee Jones in 'Lincoln'.

You know when they talk about having a devil on your shoulder..?

Uh-oh - looks like Antony Worrall Thompson's been caught shoplifting again!

People of Britain, note: This pose is as casual as David Cameron gets.

Still, at least his wife knows how to let her hair down.

Gareth Bale finally invests in an invisible mattress to dive on to.

Meanwhile, back at the O2 gig, fans worry that Justin Bieber's getting just a bit <em>too</em> messianic.

Two dogs attempt to reenact the "two fish in a tank" joke.

"Oh, don't worry - I've had plenty of experience sitting next to a dummy."

Sorry, Boots, but <a href="http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.co.uk%2F2013%2F03%2F05%2Fworst-mothers-day-gifts-boots-pictures_n_2810759.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Duk-comedy">this is not what our mums want</a> for Mother's Day.

Meanwhile, at the Vatican, God gives a sign about his unhappiness at having to choose a new Pope.

Francoise Hollande: not putting out for Israel.

Cheryl Cole shows Francois Hollande how it's done.

A rabbit <a href="http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.co.uk%2F2013%2F03%2F05%2Fstuff-on-my-rabbit-tumblr-vinnie_n_2809634.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Duk-comedy">with stuff on its head</a>. Trust us: this toilet roll is just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce).

Finally, Boris starts to smell success.

Cara Delevingne - pulling ugly faces in the way that only the truly beautiful can.

Angela Merkel: not happy at all with her Mother's Day present this year.

It's the fancy dress outfit we've all been waiting for!

Ben Stiller plays tennis, despite having forgotten his kit. AWKWARD!

Wait - is it those two policemen again?

I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if you wanted to see the madness -- and oh yes, it was madness -- not filtered through a complacent and sleepy media that made Washington’s war policy seem, if not sensible, at least sane and serious enough. I stood at Ground Zero of what was intended to be the new centerpiece for a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the U.S. did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long, long time.

The Madness of King George

It’s easy to forget just how normal the madness looked back then. By 2009, when I arrived in Iraq, we were already at the last-gasp moment when it came to salvaging something from what may yet be seen as the single worst foreign policy decision in American history. It was then that, as a State Department officer assigned to lead two provincial reconstruction teams in eastern Iraq, I first walked into the chicken processing plant in the middle of nowhere.

"By invading Iraq, the U.S. did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long, long time."

By then, the U.S. “reconstruction” plan for that country was drowning in rivers of money foolishly spent. As the centerpiece for those American efforts -- at least after Plan A, that our invading troops would be greeted with flowers and sweets as liberators, crashed and burned -- we had managed to reconstruct nothing of significance. First conceived as a Marshall Plan for the New American Century, six long years later it had devolved into farce.

In my act of the play, the U.S. spent some $2.2 million dollars to build a huge facility in the boondocks. Ignoring the stark reality that Iraqis had raised and sold chickens locally for some 2,000 years, the U.S. decided to finance the construction of a central processing facility, have the Iraqis running the plant purchase local chickens, pluck them and slice them up with complex machinery brought in from Chicago, package the breasts and wings in plastic wrap, and then truck it all to local grocery stores. Perhaps it was the desert heat, but this made sense at the time, and the plan was supported by the Army, the State Department, and the White House.

Elegant in conception, at least to us, it failed to account for a few simple things, like a lack of regular electricity, or logistics systems to bring the chickens to and from the plant, or working capital, or... um... grocery stores. As a result, the gleaming $2.2 million plant processed no chickens. To use a few of the catchwords of that moment, it transformed nothing, empowered no one, stabilized and economically uplifted not a single Iraqi. It just sat there empty, dark, and unused in the middle of the desert. Like the chickens, we were plucked.

In keeping with the madness of the times, however, the simple fact that the plant failed to meet any of its real-world goals did not mean the project wasn't a success. In fact, the factory was a hit with the U.S. media. After all, for every propaganda-driven visit to the plant, my group stocked the place with hastily purchased chickens, geared up the machinery, and put on a dog-and-pony, er, chicken-and-rooster, show.

In the dark humor of that moment, we christened the place the Potemkin Chicken Factory. In between media and VIP visits, it sat in the dark, only to rise with the rooster’s cry each morning some camera crew came out for a visit. Our factory was thus considered a great success. Robert Ford, then at the Baghdad Embassy and now America's rugged shadow ambassador to Syria, said his visit was the best day out he enjoyed in Iraq. General Ray Odierno, then commanding all U.S. forces in Iraq, sent bloggers and camp followers to view the victory project. Some of the propaganda, which proclaimed that “teaching Iraqis methods to flourish on their own gives them the ability to provide their own stability without needing to rely on Americans,” is still online (including this charming image of American-Iraqi mentorship, a particular favorite of mine).

We weren’t stupid, mind you. In fact, we all felt smart and clever enough to learn to look the other way. The chicken plant was a funny story at first, a kind of insider’s joke you all think you know the punch line to. Hey, we wasted some money, but $2.2 million was a small amount in a war whose costs will someday be toted up in the trillions. Really, at the end of the day, what was the harm?

The harm was this: we wanted to leave Iraq (and Afghanistan) stable to advance American goals. We did so by spending our time and money on obviously pointless things, while most Iraqis lacked access to clean water, regular electricity, and medical or hospital care. Another State Department official in Iraq wrote in his weekly summary to me, “At our project ribbon-cuttings we are typically greeted now with a cursory ‘thank you,’ followed by a long list of crushing needs for essential services such as water and power.” How could we help stabilize Iraq when we acted like buffoons? As one Iraqi told me, “It is like I am standing naked in a room with a big hat on my head. Everyone comes in and helps put flowers and ribbons on my hat, but no one seems to notice that I am naked.”

By 2009, of course, it should all have been so obvious. We were no longer inside the neocon dream of unrivaled global superpowerdom, just mired in what happened to it. We were a chicken factory in the desert that no one wanted.

Time Travel to 2003

Anniversaries are times for reflection, in part because it’s often only with hindsight that we recognize the most significant moments in our lives. On the other hand, on anniversaries it’s often hard to remember what it was really like back when it all began. Amid the chaos of the Middle East today, it’s easy, for instance, to forget what things looked like as 2003 began. Afghanistan, it appeared, had been invaded and occupied quickly and cleanly, in a way the Soviets (the British, the ancient Greeks…) could never have dreamed of. Iran was frightened, seeing the mighty American military on its eastern border and soon to be on the western one as well, and was ready to deal. Syria was controlled by the stable thuggery of Bashar al-Assad and relations were so good that the U.S. was rendering terror suspects to his secret prisons for torture.

For decades to come, the U.S. will have a big enough military to ensure that our decline is slow, bloody, ugly, and reluctant, if inevitable. One day, however, even the drones will have to land.

Most of the rest of the Middle East was tucked in for a long sleep with dictators reliable enough to maintain stability. Libya was an exception, though predictions were that before too long Muammar Qaddafi would make some sort of deal. (He did.) All that was needed was a quick slash into Iraq to establish a permanent American military presence in the heart of Mesopotamia. Our future garrisons there could obviously oversee things, providing the necessary muscle to swat down any future destabilizing elements. It all made so much sense to the neocon visionaries of the early Bush years. The only thing that Washington couldn’t imagine was this: that the primary destabilizing element would be us.

Indeed, its mighty plan was disintegrating even as it was being dreamed up. In their lust for everything on no terms but their own, the Bush team missed a diplomatic opportunity with Iran that might have rendered today’s saber rattling unnecessary, even as Afghanistan fell apart and Iraq imploded. As part of the breakdown, desperate men, blindsided by history, turned up the volume on desperate measures: torture, secret gulags, rendition, drone killings, extra-constitutional actions at home. The sleaziest of deals were cut to try to salvage something, including ignoring the A.Q. Khan network of Pakistani nuclear proliferation in return for a cheesy Condi Rice-Qaddafi photo-op rapprochement in Libya.

Inside Iraq, the forces of Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict had been unleashed by the U.S. invasion. That, in turn, was creating the conditions for a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran, similar to the growing proxy war between Israel and Iran inside Lebanon (where another destabilizing event, the U.S.-sanctioned Israeli invasion of 2006, followed in hand). None of this has ever ended. Today, in fact, that proxy war has simply found a fresh host, Syria, with multiple powers using “humanitarian aid” to push and shove their Sunni and Shia avatars around.

Staggering neocon expectations, Iran emerged from the U.S. decade in Iraq economically more powerful, with sanctions-busting trade between the two neighbors now valued at some $5 billion a year and still growing. In that decade, the U.S. also managed to remove one of Iran’s strategic counterbalances, Saddam Hussein, replacing him with a government run by Nouri al-Malaki, who had once found asylum in Tehran.

Meanwhile, Turkey is now engaged in an open war with the Kurds of northern Iraq. Turkey is, of course, part of NATO, so imagine the U.S. government sitting by silently while Germany bombed Poland. To complete the circle, Iraq’s prime minister recently warned that a victory for Syria's rebels will spark sectarian wars in his own country and will create a new haven for al-Qaeda which would further destabilize the region.

Meanwhile, militarily burnt out, economically reeling from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lacking any moral standing in the Middle East post-Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the U.S. sat on its hands as the regional spark that came to be called the Arab Spring flickered out, to be replaced by yet more destabilization across the region. And even that hasn’t stopped Washington from pursuing the latest version of the (now-nameless) global war on terror into ever-newer regions in need of destabilization.

Having noted the ease with which a numbed American public patriotically looked the other way while our wars followed their particular paths to hell, our leaders no longer blink at the thought of sending American drones and special operations forces ever farther afield, most notably ever deeper into Africa, creating from the ashes of Iraq a frontier version of the state of perpetual war George Orwell once imagined for his dystopian novel 1984. And don’t doubt for a second that there is a direct path from the invasion of 2003 and that chicken plant to the dangerous and chaotic place that today passes for our American world.

Happy Anniversary

On this 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, Iraq itself remains, by any measure, a dangerous and unstable place. Even the usually sunny Department of State advises American travelers to Iraq that U.S. citizens “remain at risk for kidnapping... [as] numerous insurgent groups, including Al Qaida, remain active...” and notes that “State Department guidance to U.S. businesses in Iraq advises the use of Protective Security Details.”

In the bigger picture, the world is also a far more dangerous place than it was in 2003. Indeed, for the State Department, which sent me to Iraq to witness the follies of empire, the world has become ever more daunting. In 2003, at that infamous “mission accomplished” moment, only Afghanistan was on the list of overseas embassies that were considered “extreme danger posts.” Soon enough, however, Iraq and Pakistan were added. Today, Yemen and Libya, once boring but secure outposts for State’s officials, now fall into the same category.

Other places once considered safe for diplomats and their families such as Syria and Mali have been evacuated and have no American diplomatic presence at all. Even sleepy Tunisia, once calm enough that the State Department had its Arabic language school there, is now on reduced staff with no diplomatic family members resident. Egypt teeters.

The Iranian leadership watched carefully as the American imperial version of Iraq collapsed, concluded that Washington was a paper tiger, backed away from initial offers to talk over contested issues, and instead (at least for a while) doubled-down on achieving nuclear breakout capacity, aided by the past work of that same A.Q. Khan network. North Korea, another A.Q. Khan beneficiary, followed the same pivot ever farther from Washington, while it became a genuine nuclear power. Its neighbor China pursued its own path of economic dominance, while helping to “pay” for the Iraq War by becoming the number-one holder of U.S. debt among foreign governments. It now owns more than 21% of the U.S. debt held overseas.

And don’t put away the joke book just yet. Subbing as apologist-in-chief for an absent George W. Bush and the top officials of his administration on this 10th anniversary, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently reminded us that there is more on the horizon. Conceding that he had “long since given up trying to persuade people Iraq was the right decision,” Blair added that new crises are looming. “You’ve got one in Syria right now, you’ve got one in Iran to come,” he said. “We are in the middle of this struggle, it is going to take a generation, it is going to be very arduous and difficult. But I think we are making a mistake, a profound error, if we think we can stay out of that struggle.”

Think of his comment as a warning. Having somehow turned much of Islam into a foe, Washington has essentially assured itself of never-ending crises that it stands no chance whatsoever of winning. In this sense, Iraq was not an aberration, but the historic zenith and nadir for a way of thinking that is only now slowing waning. For decades to come, the U.S. will have a big enough military to ensure that our decline is slow, bloody, ugly, and reluctant, if inevitable. One day, however, even the drones will have to land.

And so, happy 10th anniversary, Iraq War! A decade after the invasion, a chaotic and unstable Middle East is the unfinished legacy of our invasion. I guess the joke is on us after all, though no one is laughing.

© 2013 Peter Van Buren

If you're concerned about the lack of transparency and accountability of the policy of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, you have to concede that Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have done us a great service: Cruz with his questioning of Attorney General Holder in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Paul with his widely-reported filibuster on the Senate floor.

Unfortunately, some Democrats don't want to acknowledge this contribution. That's a shame.

It's a fact of life in Washington that people who are good on some issues that you care about are bad on other ones. You can see this all the time without leaving your own party. Just this past week, Ron Wyden, key champion on transparency and accountability of the drone strike policy, badly hurt opponents of war with Iran by becoming an original co-sponsor of the AIPAC/Lindsey Graham "backdoor to war" resolution that tries to "pre-approve" participation in an Israeli attack on Iran, saying that if Israel attacks Iran, the U.S. should support Israel militarily and diplomatically.

When a political figure is in the opposing party, that almost certainly means that they're bad on a lot of issues that you care about. But if you dismiss them when they're good on something else, then you're dismissing all the people who care about that issue, including the people in your own party who care about that issue.

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz showed how challenging the Administration's lack of transparency on targeting Americans with drone strikes inexorably leads to challenging the Administration's lack of transparency on targeting non-Americans with drone strikes.

In the Judiciary Committee's hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder, Cruz pressed Holder on the question of whether the Administration would consider it Constitutional to target Americans with drone strikes on U.S. soil. Holder responded by saying, yes, it would be Constitutional, in an extreme circumstance like Pearl Harbor or the September 11 attack.

Cruz pressed: nobody disputes that we would respond to a military attack on U.S. soil, or any physical attack, regardless of whether Americans were involved. The question is: suppose someone you consider to be a terrorist were sitting in a café in the U.S., not an imminent threat. Could you drop a bomb on them, like you do in other countries? And that was the question to which Holder finally gave a clear no.

In other words, Holder said: if you are a citizen of the United States, so long as you keep your feet planted on U.S. soil, even if the U.S. government suspects that you are part of Al Qaeda or an "associated force," the U.S. government cannot drop a bomb on you so long as you are not currently engaged in combat, or are not on your way to combat. So long as you are in the United States, the word "imminent" in the phrase "imminent threat" means what everyone thinks it means, what law enforcement thinks it means, what international law thinks it means: right now, or in the immediate future, you are threatening violence, so we can take you out.

But, according to the Administration, the moment you step outside the United States, then if the U.S. government thinks that you are part of Al Qaeda or an "associated force," the U.S. government can drop a bomb on you, even if you're sitting in a coffee shop, reading a book, with no apparent plans to do anything else. And the reason for that is that the moment you step outside of the United States, the Administration's definition of "imminent" changes from the normal definition: now you are an "imminent" threat because, as a suspected member of Al Qaeda or an "associated force," it's presumed that you will try to do something to the U.S. at some point in the future, not necessarily the immediate future.

And this is a pretty striking revelation, because ordinarily, as Americans, we think that our rights relative to the U.S. government are attached to us, not forfeit when we travel.

During Paul's filibuster, Paul and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin had an exchange that exposed the same point:

As the filibuster crept toward its 13th hour, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) joined to ask Paul whether the U.S. government had the authority to take out the fourth plane on 9/11 before it crashed into the Capitol. "I don't think this is such a clear and easy situation," Durbin said.

Paul called it a "red herring." "We all agree that you can repel an imminent attack," Paul said. "None of us disagree with that. We are talking about a targeted drone program" against citizens who are "not actively engaged in combat. ... I don't think that standard can be used in the United States." [my emphasis]

Durbin said he respected Paul's response. "I stand with the senator," Durbin said. "I think it is a legitimate question." [my emphasis]

You can see why the Administration might have been reluctant to state this clearly: critics who say the drone strike policy violates international law also read American newspapers. When the UN report comes out, it will likely make note of the fact that the Administration has acknowledged that its re-definition of the word "imminent" to claim that the drone strike policy doesn't violate international law - that is, isn't a policy of extrajudicial killing - not only differs from the customary international law definition, but from the Administration's own definition of "imminent" that it applies in the United States.

During the hearing, Holder effectively conceded the point that the Judiciary Committee needs the Justice Department's memos justifying the drone strikes to do oversight. Holder was asked about the recently released "white paper" justifying the policy. Holder said: you have to read the white paper in conjunction with the underlying Justice Department memos. Thus, Holder himself is saying that the committee needs to have access to the memos to understand the policy.

Sen. LEE: In fact, on page seven of the white paper -- the white paper goes so far as to suggest that imminence doesn't really need to involve anything imminent. Specifically, it says that this condition, that of imminence that -- that an operational leader present an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future. So I -- I have to ask, Mr. Attorney General, sir, what -- what does imminence mean if -- if it doesn't have to involve something immediate?

HOLDER: Yeah, I mean I --I think part of the problem is what we talked about in the previous question, but I think that white paper becomes more clear if it can be read in conjunction with the underlying OLC advice.

The events of the last few days proved again what should have been obvious: Congressional pressure works to force the Administration to disclose information that it should disclose, and absence of Congressional pressure doesn't work. The Senate Intelligence Committee, after waiting more than a year, is finally getting the memos because it threatened to hold up the confirmation of John Brennan to head the CIA unless it got the memos and then showed that it was willing to carry out the threat. The Senate Judiciary Committee doesn't have the memos because it has not yet exerted enough pressure. Senator Leahy, chair of the committee, has threatened to issue a subpoena. But Leahy hasn't shown yet that he is prepared to carry out the threat.

Several international journalists, including an RT cameraman, have suffered from teargas as IDF have launched teargas bombs at the media crews outside Ofer Prison, West Bank. In recent weeks protests outside the facility have left scores of injured.

The RT crew, together with other international teams were documenting nonviolent protests near Ofer prison, which has been the site of numerous clashes with Israeli authorities in recent months, leading to hundreds of injuries. A recent Palestinian prisoner’s death has instigated an escalation in already-bitter relations.

On Thursday the activists had been peacefully demonstrating against the death of a young Palestinian man, who sustained injuries during clashes in the village of Abud, north of Jerusalem, and had unfurled banners and were waving flags.

“The rally was not numerous. No one [from the] activists was going to throw stones [at IDF soldiers] or initiate clashes,” RT’s correspondent Yafa Staiti said.

IDF forces asked both the journalists and protesters to retreat 60 meters, and as the journalists began to stand back, Israeli elements started to fire the teargas at both them and the protesters.

The RT crew says that after their withdrawal, the forces proceeded to fire teargas at the car carrying them off.

“There was no necessity to use teargas. As a result our cameraman and dozens of other people, among those there have been correspondents of Maan and Sky News, as well as others sitting in TV crews’ cars, suffered from suffocation after [a] teargas grenade exploded,” Staiti added.

On Wednesday, 15 civilians were also wounded when police attempted crowd dispersal with rubber bullets. Local press also reported the use of teargas. Among those injured included the head of Palestinian Prisoners Society, Qaddura Fares.

RT’s correspondent said they suppose “A day of Palestinian rage” may take place Friday “as well as [a] mass march during [the] funeral of that young man after Friday’s prayer.”

“It can end, as it often happens, with clashes between demonstrators and IDF.”

Over 2,000 Palestinians are currently being detained in Israeli jails and several are on a long-term hunger strike and becoming increasingly weak.

Many Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are in ‘administrative detention,’ which is a practice whereby a suspect can be held indefinitely without charge or the chance to face trial.

Syrian rebels have seized twenty UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights on the border between Syria and Israel. The United Nations Security Council demands the convoy’s immediate release.

A young fighter saying he was from the "Martyrs of Yarmouk" said the peacekeepers would not be set free until Syrian government forces withdrew from the village of Jamlah, a mile east of the ceasefire link with the Israeli-occupied Golan, Reuters reports.

"If no withdrawal is made within 24 hours we will treat them as prisoners," he said, claiming the UN forces had collaborated with Syrian government troops to drive the fighters out of the village.

After a video appeared on YouTube showing several armed-rebel fighters standing in front of two white armored vehicles bearing the UN inscription with at least five peacekeepers inside, the UN confirmed the incident.

UN deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey told reporters that "approximately 30 armed fighters stopped and detained about 20 peacekeepers within the area of limitation."

"The UN observers were on a regular supply mission and were stopped near Observation Post 58, which had sustained damage and was evacuated this past weekend following heavy combat in close proximity, at Al Jamlah," the United Nations said in a statement issued in New York.

The UN Security Council demanded the peacekeepers immediate release. Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said the seizure of the UN observers showed “gross disrespect for the United Nations.”

“Right now there are negotiations between UN representatives and the captors and we hope that the [UN] personnel will be released immediately as the UNSC demands,” Churkin said.

Mentioning an attack on Monday which killed 48 Syrian servicemen and nine Iraqi law enforcers, Churkin said the Golan incident showed “some people are trying very hard in order to extend the geography of the Syrian conflict.”

Human Rights watch said it was investigating the same rebel brigade for its role in a videotaped execution of detained Syrian soldiers posted on the Internet on Tuesday.

The capture of the UN observers points to how the situation on the ground in Syria is getting out of control and all sides are unable to control armed groups on the ground, Karl Sharpo, a Middle East blogger, told RT. He further warned that that there is no way of knowing whose hands outside aid will end up.

“The lines on the ground are very fluid, distinctions don’t really apply and you can’t make sure the weapons end up in the intended sites. Again if you look at the fact at what this incident illustrates is the lack of control that any military authority on the ground for the opposition or an outside political authority, doesn’t exercise the control it says it does,” Sharpo said.

The incident follows a statement on Wednesday by the Arab League offering military support to the Syrian rebels. Previously the League had only offered to support the Syrian opposition via humanitarian and diplomatic assistance.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elarby told a press conference the Syrian Opposition Coalition had been formally invited to send a representative to attend a league meeting to be held in Doha in April.

The UK Foreign Secretary William Hague also announced on Wednesday that Britain will increase non-lethal aid to anti-government forces in Syria. The $19.5 million dollar package will include armored vehicles, body armor, search and rescue, disease prevention and communication equipment.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced last week that any decision to send aid to rebel fighters would intensify the two year Syrian civil war by encouraging “extremists to seize power by force.”

Shortly after Israel warned the UN Security Council it could not be expected to “stand idle” as the Syrian civil war expands beyond its borders, while Churkin said that armed groups operating out of the Golan were undermining regional security.

“It’s of course something very dangerous they are doing by staging armed activity from that area. It’s something which can undermine security between Syria and Israel. So whoever is supporting that kind of activity or approving it tacitly is playing a very dangerous game,” Churkin warned back on Monday.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 war. The country agreed to return the land to Syria in return for a peace agreement that was rejected by the Arab world.

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Syrian forces crossed the ceasefire line into the Golan Heights in an attempt to retake the territory. Syria's troops were repelled by Israeli forces.

Israel annexed the Golan in 1981, though they returned about 5 percent of the territory to Syria. The land was merged into a demilitarized zone that is currently patrolled by UN peacekeeping forces.

The Iranian delegation to the Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons has expressed Iran’s objection to any possession or use of nuclear weapons across the world, Press TV reports.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran does not see any glory, pride or power in nuclear weapons,” said Iran’s Ambassador to Norway Seyyed Hossein Rezvani at the forum in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on Tuesday.

“Quite the opposite, based on the religious decree issued by our Leader [of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei], which is rooted in the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and founded on the high values of our beliefs in preserving human safety, security and dignity, the production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin,” Rezvani added.

Delegates from more than 130 countries came together in Oslo on March 4 and 5 to discuss the humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons.

Several UN bodies, NGOs and representatives of civil society were also present at the conference.

The Israeli regime, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and North Korea refused to participate at the conference, while India and Pakistan were the only nuclear powers represented at the event.

The United States, which is the only country that has ever used atomic bombs against human beings, has conducted over 1,030 nuclear tests since 1945, according to statistics by the UN.

Meanwhile, Israel, the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, is widely known to have between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads.

Meanwhile, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told the conference, “We can’t force anyone to come. We have a vast majority of the states on the planet present and I think it is important to underline that these questions are questions for humanity and not the exclusive rights of the nuclear power states.”

Mohammad Hassan Daryai, a member of the Iranian delegation, also told Press TV, “Lack of participation of these nuclear-weapon states and those who have the capability to produce nuclear weapons outside the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) shows that they are not faithful in fulfilling their commitment on disarmament.”

ASH/HSN

The Iranian nuclear program, whatever it may be, was the only item on the agenda for the seven-nation discussion in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 26, and cautious optimism has been expressed by participants including the United States, Russia, and Iran.  Known as the P5+1 because the group includes the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) plus Germany, the group is called the E3+3 in Europe.

Perhaps the clearest framework for understanding what the Iranian nuclear development program might or might not be is to keep in mind that the most intense claims that Iran is building nuclear weapons comes from the region’s undisputed nuclear-armed state, Israel.  Much like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein playing cat-and-mouse with WMDs he didn’t have, Iran has cooperated with weapons inspectors only to a point of uncertainty as to whether the program is or is not military.

Iran is one of the 190 countries that have signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows for non-military development of nuclear power, nuclear medicine, and other nuclear applications.  Iran claims it has the legal right to enrich uranium as part of its civilian nuclear energy program.

Iran also claims that it has met its obligations to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), although in 2005 the IAEA, in a vote with 12 abstentions, found Iran in non-compliance over its enrichment program (but even the Congressional Research Service was uncertain whether “non-compliance” constituted a “violation” of the treaty).  The dispute had continued ever since, with IAEA inspectors getting inconsistent access to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.  During 2012, four IAEA reports continued to provide inconclusive indications of a possible Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Israel Rejects Nuclear Transparency 

Israel has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is a presumed nuclear power along with other non-signatories who have nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, and

North Korea.  In 2010, the IAEA sought to bring Israeli nuclear facilities within the safeguards of IAEA, with only limited success, as Israel did not reveal all its facilities and has not yet does so.    Estimates of the Israeli nuclear stockpile vary from75 to 400 warheads, with 200 thought most likely, which Israel could deliver by missile, aircraft, or submarine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested more than once that Israeli might act alone against the perceived Iranian nuclear threat, telling the New York Times in November:

“If someone sits here as the prime minister of Israel and he can’t take action on matters that are cardinal to the existence of this country, its future and its security, and he is totally dependent on receiving approval from others, then he is not worthy of leading… 

 “I am not eager to go to war….  I have been creating very heavy pressure, and part of this pressure comes from the knowledge some of the most powerful nations in the world have that we are serious. This isn’t a show, this is not false.”

Netanyahu first called for an attack on Iran at least as early as 1992, when he said the Iranians were only three to five years from producing a nuclear weapon.   But warnings like that are much older, going back to the 1970s and concerns that the Shah of Iran might arm his police state with nuclear weapons.

In Jerusalem on February 12, Netanyahu again threatened Iran:

“They have to know that if the sanctions and diplomacy fall, they will face a credible military threat. That is essential, and nothing else will do the job, and it is getting closer….  This has to be stopped for the interest of peace and security for the entire world.”              

Iran Denies Nuclear Weapons, Rejects Transparency

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often denied the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, as he did in 2008 during an interview with NBC anchor Brian Williams, when he also questioned the utility of nuclear weapons as a source of security:

“Again, did nuclear arms help the Soviet Union from falling and disintegrating? For that matter, did a nuclear bomb help the U.S. to prevail inside Iraq or Afghanistan, for that matter? Nuclear bombs belong to the 20th century. We are living in a new century … Nuclear energy must not be equaled to a nuclear bomb. This is a disservice to the society of man….”   

On February 10, Ahmadinejad, whose term as president ends in a few months, indicated Iran’s willingness to discuss its nuclear program in bi-lateral talks with the U.S., adding that: “You pull away the gun from the face of the Iranian nation, and I myself will enter the talks with you.”

Ahmadinejad’s superior, Iran’s clerical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a foreign policy speech in February 2012 in which he said much the same thing about nuclear weapons that he had said before:

 “The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

Not being able to confirm reality, in either Israel or Iran, American and Europeam policy makers tend, unquestioningly in public, to trust the former and demonize the latter.  And now as the world enters the fourth decade of fear-mongering about Iran’s “nuclear weapons program,” some are ratcheting it up again in advance of the Kazakhstan meering, with front page stories that start like this from the February 13 Washington Post:

“Iran recently sought to acquire tens of thousands of highly specialized magnets used in centrifuge machines, according to experts and diplomats, a sign that the country may be planning a major expansion of its nuclear program that could shorten the path to an atomic weapons capability.” 

If that assertion seems to have a familiar ring, perhaps it’s because it’s so similar in structure and content to what then-President Bush falsely stated, in his 2003 state of the union speech, know known as the infamous “Sixteen Words”:

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”   

Washington Post Works to Create Crisis 

On February 14, under a headline about “the Iranian nuclear crisis,” the Post re-hyped the apparent 2011 order of “ring-shaped magnets” from China as a setback to the “Western-led effort to slow or halt Iran’s nuclear development.” Even though the Post had no idea if the magnets were ever delivered or whether they were actually for centrifuges with a benign purpose.

Taking the Post reports apart on Consortiumnews.com, Robert Parry drew attention to details buried in the story that contradicted the breathless lead – that the centrifuges were old and that Iran had long since told the IAEA of its plans to build 50,000 of them and not some “major expansion of nuclear capacity.”

Parry notes that the sole source for the magnet story was a private entity called the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) whose head is David Albright and that

 “Though Albright insists that he is an objective professional, ISIS has published hundreds of articles about Iran, which has not produced a single nuclear bomb, while barely mentioning Israel’s rogue nuclear arsenal…. 

“The articles not only hype developments in Iran but also attack U.S. media critics who question the fear-mongering about Iran.” 

Albright has hyped the threat of weapons of mass destruction before.  In 2002 when the Bush administration was lying the country into a war against Iraq, claiming that Iraq had “a clandestine nuclear weapons effort” as  well as “chemical and biological weapons” – none of which was true.  As Parry sums it up,

 “A decade ago, Albright and the ISIS were key figures in stoking the hysteria for invading Iraq around the false allegations of its WMD program. In recent years, Albright and his institute have adopted a similar role regarding Iran and its purported pursuit of a nuclear weapon, even though U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran terminated that weapons project in 2003.” 

 And Who Decides What Is Necessary? 

In his 2013 state of the union, President Obama dealt with Iran in a single, misleading, and threatening sentence:

“Likewise, the leaders of Iran must recognize that now is the time for a diplomatic solution, because a coalition stands united in demanding that they meet their obligations, and we will do what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.”   

Since 1979, the United States has waged a long twilight war against its former puppet state with no apparent understanding of why Iran may still resent the U.S. for overthrowing Iran’s elected government in 1953 and imposing one of the world’s nastier police state on 70 million people.  There is credible evidence that the U.S. has not only imposed for economic sanctions that are tantamount to acts of war on Iran, but has also colluded in assassinations of at least five Iranian nuclear scientists as well as cyber attacks on the country’s infrastructure.

Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Valentine’s Day that if Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, Iran should have no trouble proving it.  He urged the Iranians to make “real offers and engage in real dialogue.”

Both the President and the Secretary of State are lawyers, and is aware, most likely, that they don’t have enough evidence of Iran’s “nuclear weapons program” to show probable cause for a get a search warrant from any fair court, never mind an indictment.

That suggests, to use Obama’s words, that perhaps “what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon” might be to stop attacking them.

 William Boardman   panthers007@comcast.net

Private military and security companies (PMSC) are the modern reincarnation of a long lineage of private providers of physical force: corsairs, privateers and mercenaries. Mercenaries, which had practically disappeared during the XIXth and XXth centuries, reappeared in the 1960’s during the decolonization period operating mainly in Africa and Asia. Under the United Nations a convention was adopted which outlaws and criminalizes their activities. Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions also contains a definition of mercenary.

These non-state entities of the XXIst century operate in extremely blurred situations where the frontiers are difficult to separate. The new security industry of private companies moves large quantities of weapons and military equipment. It provides services for military operations recruiting former militaries as civilians to carry out passive or defensive security.

However, these individuals cannot be considered as civilians, given that they often carry and use weapons, interrogate prisoners, load bombs, drive military trucks and fulfill other essential military functions. Those who are armed can easily switch from a passive/defensive to an active/offensive role and can commit human rights violations and even destabilize governments. They cannot be considered soldiers or supporting militias under international humanitarian law either, since they are not part of the army or in the chain of command, and often belong to a large number of different nationalities.

PMSC personnel cannot usually be considered to be mercenaries for the definition of mercenaries as stipulated in the international conventions dealing with this issue does not generally apply to the personnel of PMSCs which are legally operating in foreign countries under contracts of legally registered companies.

Private military and security companies operate in a legal vacuum: they pose a threat to civilians and to international human rights law. The UN Human Rights Council has entrusted the UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries, principally, with the mandate: “To monitor and study the effects of the activities of private companies offering military assistance, consultancy and security services on the international market on the enjoyment of human Rights (…) and to prepare draft international basic principles that encourage respect for human rights on the part of those companies in their activities”.

During the past five years, the Working Group has been studying emerging issues, manifestations and trends regarding private military and security companies.  In our reports we have informed the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly about these issues. Of particular importance are the reports of the Working Group to the last session of the Human Rights Council, held in September 2010, on the Mission to the United States of America  (20 July to 3 August 2009), Document A/HRC/15/25/Add.3; on the Mission to Afghanistan (4-9 April 2009), Document A/HRC/15/25/Add.2, and the general report of the Working Group containing the Draft of a possible Convention on Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) for consideration and action by the Human Rights Council, Document A/HRC/15/25.

In the course of our research, since 2006, we have collected ample information which indicate the negative impact of the activities of “private contractors”, “private soldiers” or “guns for hire”, whatever denomination we may choose to name the individuals employed by private military and security companies as civilians but in general heavily armed. In the cluster of human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by employees of these companies, which the Working Group has examined one can find: summary executions, acts of torture, cases of arbitrary detention; of trafficking of persons; serious health damages caused by their activities; as well as attempts against the right of self-determination. It also appears that PMSCs, in their search for profit, neglect security and do not provide their employees with their basic rights, and often put their staff in situations of danger and vulnerability.

Summary executions

On 16 September 2007 in Baghdad, employees of the US-based firm Blackwater[1] were involved in a shooting incident in Nisoor Square in which 17 civilians were killed and more than 20 other persons were wounded including women and children. Local eyewitness accounts indicate the use of arms from vehicles and rocket fire from a helicopter belonging to this company.

There are also concerns over the activities and approach of PMSC personnel, their convoys of armored vehicles and their conduct in traffic, in particular their use of lethal force. This particular incident was not the first of its kind, neither the first involving Blackwater.

According to a congressional report on the behaviour of Xe/Blackwater in Iraq, Xe/Blackwater guards were found to have been involved in nearly 200 escalation-of-force incidents that involved the firing of shots since 2005. Despite the terms of the contracts which provided that the company could engage only in defensive use of force, the company reported that in over 80 per cent of the shooting incidents, its forces fired the first shots.

In Najaf in April 2004 and on several other occasions, employees of this company took part in direct hostilities, as well as in May 2007, where another incident involving the same company reportedly occurred involving guards belonging to the company and forces belonging to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior allegedly exchanged gunfire in a sector of Baghdad.

Also in central Baghdad the shooting of employees of the PMSC, Unity Resources Group (URG)[2], protecting a convoy, left two Armenian women, Genevia Antranick and Mary Awanis dead on 9 October 2007 when their car came too close to a protected convoy. The family of Genevia Antranick was offered no compensation and has begun court proceedings against URG in the United States.

This company was also involved in the shooting of 72-year-old Australian Kays Juma. Professor Juma was shot in March 2006 as he approached an intersection being blockaded for a convoy URG was protecting. Professor Juma, a 25-year resident of Baghdad who drove through the city every day, allegedly sped up his vehicle as he approached the guards and did not heed warnings to stop, including hand signals, flares, warning shots into the body of his car and floodlights. The incident occurred at 10am[3].

Torture

Two United States-based corporations, CACI and L-3 Services (formerly Titan Corporation), were involved in the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. CACI and L-3 Services, contracted by the Government of the United States, were responsible for interrogation and translation services, respectively, at Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities in Iraq.

Seventy two Iraqi citizens who were formerly detained at military prisons in Iraq, have sued L-3 Services, Inc. (“L-3”), a military private contractor which provided civilian translators for United States military forces in Iraq and Adel Nakhla, a former employee of L-3 who served as one of its translators there under the Alien Tort Statute. They allege having been tortured and physically and mentally abused during their detention and that they should be held liable in damages for their actions. The plaintiffs assert 20 causes of action, among which: torture; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; assault and battery; intentional infliction of emotional distress[4].

Arbitrary detention 

A number of reports indicate that private security guards have played central roles in some of the most sensitive activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) such as the arbitrary detention and clandestine raids against alleged insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan[5] and the involvement in CIA rendition flights[6] as well as joint covert operations[7]. Employees of PMSC would have been involved in the taking of detainees, from “pick up points” (such as Tuzla, Islamabad or Skopje) transporting them in rendition flights and delivering them to drop off points (such as Cairo, Rabat, Bucharest, Amman or Guantanamo) as well as in the construction, equipping and staffing of CIA’s “black sites”.

Within this context, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in May 2007 against Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. (a subsidiary company of Boeing) on behalf of five persons who were kidnapped by the CIA disappearing in overseas prisons kept by USA secret services. Jeppesen would have participated in the rendition by providing flight planning and logistical support. The five persons were tortured during their arbitrary detention[8].

Health

The 2009 annual report of DynCorp International refers to four lawsuits concerning the spraying of narcotic plant crops along the Colombian border adjacent to Ecuador on behalf of 3 Ecuadorian Providences and 3266 plaintiffs[9].

From 1991, the United States Department of State contracted the private company DynCorp to supply services for this air-spraying program against narcotics in the Andean region. In accordance with the subscribed contract of 30 January 1998, DynCorp provides the essential logistics to the anti-drug Office of activities of Colombia, in conformity with three main objectives: eradication of cultivations of illicit drugs, training of the army and of personnel of the country, and dismantling of illicit drug laboratories and illicit drug-trafficking networks.

An NGO report indicated the consequences of the spraying carried out within the Plan Colombia had on persons living in the frontier region[10].  One third of the 47 women in the study exposed to the spraying showed cells with some genetic damage. The study established the relationship of the air fumigations of the Plan Colombia with damages in the genetic material. The study demonstrates that when the population is subjected to fumigations “the risk of cellular damage can increase and that, once permanent, the cases of cancerous mutations and important embryonic alterations are increased that prompt among other possibilities the rise in abortions in the area.

This example is particularly important given that Plan Colombia has served as the model for the arrangements that the United States would apply later to Iraq and Afghanistan. Plan Colombia provides immunity to the employees of the PMSC contracted (DynCorp) the same as Order 14 of the Coalition Provisional Authority did in Iraq.

Self-determination

The 2004 attempted coup d’état, which was perpetrated in Equatorial Guinea is a clear example of the link between the phenomenon of mercenaries and PMSCs as a means of violating the sovereignty of States. In this particular case, the mercenaries involved were mostly former directors and personnel of Executive Outcomes, a PMSC that had become famous for its operations in Angola and Sierra Leone. The team of mercenaries also included security guards who were still employed by PMSCs as was the case of two employees of the company Meteoric Tactical Systems providing security to diplomats of Western Embassies in Baghdad-among which to the Ambassador of Switzerland. It also included a security guard who had previously worked for the PMSC “Steele Foundation” and had given protection to President Aristide of Haiti and conducted him to the plane who took him to exile[11].

Trafficking in persons

In 2005, 105 Chileans were providing/or undergoing military training in the former army base of Lepaterique in Honduras. The instruction consisted in anti‐guerrilla tactics such as possible ambushes and deactivation of explosives and mortars how to avoid them. The Chileans had entered Honduras as tourists and were illegally in Honduras. They used high‐caliber weapons such as M‐16 rifles or light machine guns. They had been contracted by a subsidiary of Triple Canopy.

They were part of a group, which included also 189 Hondurans recruited and trained in Honduras. Triple Canopy had been awarded a contract by the United States Department of State. The strong contingent left the country by air from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in several groups with a stopover in Iceland. Then reached the Middle East and were smuggled into Iraq[12].

The majority of the Chileans and Hondurans were engaged as security guards at fixed facilities in Iraq. They had been contracted by Your Solutions Honduras SRL, a local agent of Your Solutions Incorporated, registered in Illinois, United States of America, which in turn had been subcontracted by Triple Canopy, based in Chicago, United States of America. Some of the Chileans are presently working in Baghdad providing security to the Embassy of Australia under a contract by Unity Resources Group (URG).

Human rights violations committed by PMSC to their employees

PMSC often put the contracted private guards in situations of danger and vulnerability, such as the ‘private contractors’ of Blackwater, killed in Fallujah in 2004 allegedly due to the lack of the necessary safety means that Blackwater was supposed to provide in order to carry out the mission.

It should not be forgotten that this incident changed dramatically the course of the war and the occupation by the United States in Iraq. It may be considered as the turning point in the occupation of Iraq. This led to an abortive US operation to recapture control of the city and a successful recapture operation in the city in November 2004, called Operation Phantom Fury, which resulted in the death of over 1,350 insurgent fighters. Approximately 95 America troops were killed, and 560 wounded.

The U.S. military first denied that it has use white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon in Fallujah, but later retracted that denial, and admitted to using the incendiary in the city as an offensive weapon. Reports following the events of November 2004 have alleged war crimes, and a massacre by U.S. personnel, including indiscriminate violence against civilians and children.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah – cite_note-17 This point of view is presented in the 2005 documentary film, “Fallujah, the Hidden Massacre”. In 2010, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a leading medical journal, published a study, which shows that the rates of cancer, infant mortality and leukemia exceed those reported in Hiroshima and Nagasaki[13].

The over 300 000 classified military documents made public by Wikileaks show that the “Use of Contractors Added to War’s Chaos in Iraq”, as has been widely reported by the international media recently.

The United States has relied and continues to rely heavily on private military and security contractors in conducting its military operations. The United States used private security contractors to conduct narcotics intervention operations in Colombia in the 1990s and recently signed a supplemental agreement that authorizes it to deploy troops and contractors in seven Colombian military bases. During the conflict in the Balkans, the United States used a private security contractor to train Croat troops to conduct operations against Serbian troops. Nowadays, it is in the context of its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular that the State is massively contracting out security functions to private firms.

In 2009, the Department of Defense employed 218,000 private contractors (all types) while there were 195,000 uniformed personnel. According to the figures, about 8 per cent of these contractors are armed security contractors, i.e. about 20,000 armed guards. If one includes other theatres of operations, the figure rises to 242,657, with 54,387 United States citizens, 94,260 third country nationals and 94,010 host-country nationals.

The State Department relies on about 2,000 private security contractors to provide United States personnel and facilities with personal protective and guard services in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Pakistan, and aviation services in Iraq. The contracts for protective services were awarded in 2005 to three PMSCs, namely, Triple Canopy, DynCorp International and the U.S. Training Center, part of the Xe (then Blackwater) group of companies. These three companies still hold the State Department protective services contracts today.

Lack of transparency

The information accessible to the public on the scope and type of contracts between the Government of the United States and PMSCs is scarce and opaque. The lack of transparency is particularly significant when companies subcontract to others. Often, the contracts with PMSCs are not disclosed to the public despite extensive freedom of information rules in the United States, either because they contain confidential commercial information or on the argument that non-disclosure is in the interest of national defense or foreign policy. The situation is particularly opaque when United States intelligence agencies contract PMSCs.

Lack of accountability

Despite the fact of their involvement in grave human rights violations, not a single PMSC or employee of these companies has been sanctioned.

In the course of litigation, several recurring legal arguments have been used in the defense of PMSCs and their personnel, including the Government contractor defense, the political question doctrine and derivative immunity arguments. PMSCs are using the Government contractor defense to argue that they were operating under the exclusive control of the Government of the United States when the alleged acts were committed and therefore cannot be held liable for their actions.

It looks as if when the acts are committed by agents of the government they are considered human rights violations but when these same acts are perpetrated by PMSC it is “business as usual”.

The human rights violation perpetrated by private military and security companies are indications of the threat posed to the foundations of democracy itself by the privatization of inherently public functions such as the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. In this connection I cannot help but to refer to the final speech of President Eisenhower.

In 1961, President Eisenhower warned the American public opinion against the growing danger of a military industrial complex stating: “(…) we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together”.

Fifty years later, on 8 September 2001, Donald Rumsfeld in his speech in the Department of Defence warned the militaries of the Pentagon against “an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America (…) Let’s make no mistake: The modernization of the Department of Defense is (…) a matter of life and death, ultimately, every American’s. (…) The adversary. (…) It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy. (…)That’s why we’re here today challenging us all to wage an all-out campaign to shift Pentagon’s resources from bureaucracy to the battlefield, from tail to the tooth. We know the adversary. We know the threat. And with the same firmness of purpose that any effort against a determined adversary demands, we must get at it and stay at it. Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”

Rumsfeld should have said the shift from the Pentagon’s resources from bureaucracy to the private sector. Indeed, that shift had been accelerated by the Bush Administration: the number of persons employed by contract which had been outsourced (privatized) by the Pentagon was already four times more than at the Department of Defense.

It is not anymore a military industrial complex but as Noam Chomsky has indicated “it’s just the industrial system operating under one or another pretext”.

The articles of the Washington Post “Top Secret America: A hidden world, growing beyond control”, by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin (19 July 2010) show the extent that “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work”.

The investigation’s findings include that some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States; and that an estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. A number of private military and security companies are among the security and intelligence agencies mentioned in the report of the Washington Post.

The Working Group received information from several sources that up to 70 per cent of the budget of United States intelligence is spent on contractors. These contracts are classified and very little information is available to the public on the nature of the activities carried out by these contractors.

The privatization of war has created a structural dynamic, which responds to a commercial logic of the industry.

A short look at the careers of the current managers of BAE Systems, as well as on their address-books, confirms we are not any longer dealing with a normal corporation, but with a cartel uniting high tech weaponry (BAE Systems, United Defence Industries, Lockheed Martin), with speculative financiers (Lazard Frères, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank), together with raw material cartels (British Petroleum, Shell Oil) with on the ground, private military and security companies[14].

The majority of the private military and security companies has been created or are managed by former militaries or ex-policemen for whom it is big business. Just to give an example MPRI (Military Professional Resources Incorporation) was created by four former generals of the United States Army when they were due for retirement[15]. The same is true for Blackwater and its affiliate companies or subsidiaries, which employ former directors of the C.I.A.[16]. Social Scientists refer to this phenomenon as the Rotating Door Syndrome.

The use of security contractors is expected to grow as American forces shrink. A July report by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, a panel established by Congress, estimated that the State Department alone would need more than double the number of contractors it had protecting the American Embassy and consulates in Iraq.

“Without contractors: (1) the military engagement would have had to be smaller–a strategically problematic alternative; (2) the United States would have had to deploy its finite number of active personnel for even longer tours of duty -a politically dicey and short-sighted option; (3) the United States would have had to consider a civilian draft or boost retention and recruitment by raising military pay significantly–two politically untenable options; or (4) the need for greater commitments from other nations would have arisen and with it, the United States would have had to make more concessions to build and sustain a truly multinational effort. Thus, the tangible differences in the type of war waged, the effect on military personnel, and the need for coalition partners are greatly magnified when the government has the option to supplement its troops with contractors”[17].

The military cannot do without them. There are more contractors over all than actual members of the military serving in the worsening war in Afghanistan.

CONCLUSIONS OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE impact of Private Security Contracting on U.S. Goals in Afghanistan[18]

Conclusion I: The proliferation of private security personnel in Afghanistan is inconsistent with the counterinsurgency strategy. In May 2010 the U.S. Central Command’s Armed Contractor Oversight Directorate reported that there were more than 26,000 private security contractor personnel operating in Afghanistan. Many of those private security personnel are associated with armed groups that operate outside government control.

Conclusion 2: Afghan warlords and strongmen operating as force providers to private security contractors have acted against U.S. and Afghan government interests. Warlords and strongmen associated with U.S.-funded security contractors have been linked to anti Coalition activities, murder, bribery, and kidnapping. The Committee’s examination of the U.S. funded security contract with ArmorGroup at Shindand Airbase in Afghanistan revealed that ArmorGroup relied on a series of warlords to provide armed men to act as security, guards at the Airbase.

Open-ended intergovernmental working group established by the HR Council

Because of their impact in the enjoyment of human rights the Working Group on mercenaries in its 2010 reports to the UN Human Rights Council and General Assembly has recommended a legally binding instrument regulating and monitoring their activities at the national and international level.

The motion to create an open ended intergovernmental working group has been the object of lengthy negotiations, in the Human Rights Council, led by South Africa in order to accommodate the concerns of the Western Group, but primarily those of the United States and the United Kingdom and of a lot a pressure exerted in the capitals of African countries supporting the draft resolution. The text of the resolution was weakened in order to pass the resolution by consensus. But even so the position of the Western States has been a “fin de non recevoir”.

The resolution was adopted by a majority of 32 in favour, 12 against and 3 abstentions. Among the supporters of this initiative are four out of the five members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa) in addition to the African Group, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab Group.

The adoption of this resolution opens an interesting process in the UN Human Rights Council where civil society can participate in the elaboration of an international framework on the regulation, monitoring and oversight of the activities of private military and security companies.  The new open ended intergovernmental working group will be the forum for all stakeholders to receive inputs, not only the draft text of a possible convention and the elements elaborated by the UN Working Group on mercenaries but also of other initiatives such as the proposal submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Montreux Document and the international code of conduct being elaborated under the Swiss Initiative.

However, the negative vote of the delegations of the Western Group indicates that the interests of the new staggering security industry – its annual market revenue is estimated to be over USD one hundred billion – have been quite well defended as was the case in a number of other occasions. It also shows that Western governments will be absent from the start in a full in-depth discussion of the issues raised by the activities of PMSC.

We urge all States to support the process initiated by the Council by designating their representatives to the new open-ended intergovernmental working group, which will hold its first session in 2011, and to continue a process of discussions regarding a legally binding instrument.

The participation of the UK and USA main exporters of these activities (it is estimated at 70% the industry of security in these two countries) as well as other Western countries where the new industry is expanding is of particular importance.

The Working Group also urges the United States Government to implement the recommendations we made, in particular, to:

support the Congress Stop Outsourcing Security (SOS) Act, which clearly defines the functions which are inherently governmental and that cannot be outsourced to the private sector;

rescind immunity to contractors carrying out activities in other countries under bilateral agreements;

carry out prompt and effective investigation of human rights violations committed by PMSCs and prosecute alleged perpetrators;

ensure that the oversight of private military and security contractors is not outsourced to PMSCs;
establish a specific system of federal licensing of PMSCs for their activities abroad;

set up a vetting procedure for awarding contracts to PMSCs;

ensure that United States criminal jurisdiction applies to private military and security companies contracted by the Government to carry out activities abroad; and

respond to pending communications from the Working Group.

The United Nations Human Rights Council, under the Universal Periodic Review, initiated a review in November 2010 in Geneva, focussing on the human rights record of the United States. The above article is an edited version of the presentation given by Jose L. Gomez del Prado in Geneva on 3 November 2010 at a parallel meeting at the UN Palais des Nations on that occasion.

Notes

[1] Blackwater Worldwide abandoned its tarnished brand name in order to shake its reputation battered by its criticized work in Iraq, renaming its family of two-dozen businesses under the name Xe’, see Mike Baker, ‘Blackwater dumps tarnished brand name’, AP News Break, 13 February 2009.

[2] URG, an Australian private military and security company, uses a number of ex military Chileans to provide security to the Australian Embassy in Baghdad. Recently one of those “private guards” shot himself, ABC News, reported by La Tercera, Chile, 16 September 2010.

[3]J.Mendes & S Mitchell, “Who is Unity Resources Group?”, ABC News Australia, 16 September 2010.

[4] Case 8:08-cv-01696-PJM, Document 103, Filed 07/29/10. Defendants have filed Motions to Dismiss on a number of grounds. They argue, among others, that the suit must be dismissed in its entirety because they are immune under the laws of war, because the suit raises non-justiciable political questions, and because they possess derivative sovereign immunity. They seek dismissal of the state law claims on the basis of government contractor immunity, premised on the notion that Plaintiffs cannot proceed on state law claims, which arise out of combatant activities of the military. The United States District Court for the district of Maryland Greenbelt Division has decided to proceed with the case against L-3 Services, Inc. It has not accepted the motions to dismiss allowing the case to go forward.

[5] Mission to the United States of America, Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries, United Nations document, A/HRC/15/25/Add.3, paragraphs 22.

[6] James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, “Blackwater guards tied to secret C.I.A. raids ”, New York Times, 10

December 2009.

[7] Adam Ciralsky, “Tycoon, contractor, soldier, spy”, Vanity Fair, January 2010. See also Claim No. HQ08X02800 in the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, Binyam Mohamed v. Jeppesen UK Ltd, report of James Gavin Simpson, 26 May 2009.

[8]ACLU Press Release, UN Report Underscores Lack of Accountability and Oversight for Military and Security Contractors, New York, 14 September 2010.

[9] The reports also indicates that the Revenues of DynCorp for 2006 were of USD 1 966 993 and for 2009 USD 3 101 093

[10] Mission to Ecuador, Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries, United Nations document, A/HRC/4/42/Add.2

[11] A number of the persons involved in the attempted coup were arrested in Zimbabwe, other in Equatorial Guinea itself the place where the coup was intended to take place to overthrow the government and put another in its place in order to get the rich resources in oil. In 2004 and 2008 the trials took place in Equatorial Guinea of those arrested in connection with this coup attempt, including of the British citizen Simon Mann and the South African Nick du Toit. The President of Equatorial Guinea pardoned all foreigners linked to this coup attempt in November 2009 by. A number of reports indicated that trials failed to comply with international human rights standards and that some of the accused had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment. The government of Equatorial Guinea has three ongoing trials in the United Kingdom, Spain and Lebanon against the persons who were behind the attempted coup.
[12] Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries, Mission to Honduras, United Nations document A/HRC/4/42/Add.1.
[13] Wikipedia
[14] Mercenaries without borders by Karel Vereycken,  Friday Sep 21st, 2007
[15] Among which General Carl E. Vuono, Chief of the Army during the Gulf War and the invasion of Panama; General Crosbie E. Saint, former Commander in Chief of the  USA Army in Europe and General Ron Griffith. The President of MPRI is General Bantant J. Craddock.
[16] Such as Cofer Black, former Chief of the Counter Terrorism Center; Enrique Prado, former Chief of Operations and Rof Richter, second in command of the Clandestine Services of the Company
[17] Article published in the Spring 2010 issue of the University of Chicago Law Review, titled “Privatization’s Pretensions” by Jon D. Michaels, Acting Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law
[18] INQUIRY INTO THE ROLE AND OVERSIGHT OF PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS IN AFGHANISTAN, R E P O R T TOGETHER WITH ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF THE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES UNITED STATES SENATE, 28 September 2010

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman says if the P5+1 group of six major world powers continues its logical approach, future talks over Tehran’s nuclear energy program can yield results acceptable to both sides.

“The negotiations held between the representatives of our country and the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany) faced a new positive atmosphere,” Ramin Mehmanparast said on Tuesday.

The continuation of this atmosphere could create an acceptable future for mutual understanding on the issue, he added.

The latest round of the talks between Iran and the P5+1 was held in the Kazakh city of Almaty on February 27-28. The two sides agreed to convene again in the city on April 5-6 to continue the talks after holding “expert-level” talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul on March 17-18.

The Iranian official said if Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear activities is recognized, Tehran will allay concerns over the issue in accordance with agreements.

When asked about a request by the UN nuclear chief Yukiya Amano to visit Parchin military site, Mehmanparast said the issue had been raised during the talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“Based on the rights that Iran is entitled to as a committed member of the agency, we should be provided with enough facilities for the continuation of our work, and alongside that, we will pursue the necessary measures to eliminate worries in the form of mutual agreements,” he added.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program, with the United States and the EU using this pretext to impose several rounds of illegal unilateral sanctions against Tehran.

Tehran rejects the allegation and maintains that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

MYA/MA/HJL

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GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES

The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)

I-Book No. 3, January 25  2012

Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles and videos, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. 

In this Interactive Online I-Book we bring to the attention of our readers an important collection of articles, reports and video material on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and its impacts (scroll down for the Table of Contents).

To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.

INTRODUCTION

The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.

The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:

“This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”

Nuclear radiation –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes – Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden  The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)

Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO’s (Tokyo Electric Power Co  Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.

The realties, however, are otherwise. Fukushima 3 was leaking unconfirmed amounts of plutonium. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”.  

An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government’s information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)

The Impacts in Japan

The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that “the severity rating of its nuclear crisis … matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster”. In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of  the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:

“While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl.” ( Extremely High Radiation Levels in Japan: University Researchers Challenge Official Data, Global Research, April 11, 2011)

Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011

Worldwide Contamination

The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:

“Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer”. (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age,  April 26, 2011)

While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) “quoting diplomatic sources” stated that only “tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health.”

“According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations’ Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. …

… Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts “don’t see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories”.

The spread of radiation. March 2011

Public Health Disaster. Economic Impacts

What prevails is a well organized camouflage. The public health disaster in Japan, the contamination of water, agricultural land and the food chain, not to mention the broader economic and social implications, have neither been fully acknowledged nor addressed in a comprehensive and meaningful fashion by the Japanese authorities.

Japan as a nation state has been destroyed. Its landmass and territorial waters are contaminated. Part of the country is uninhabitable. High levels of radiation have been recorded in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has a population of  39 million (2010) (more than the population of Canada, circa 34 million (2010)) There are indications that the food chain is contaminated throughout Japan:

Radioactive cesium exceeding the legal limit was detected in tea made in a factory in Shizuoka City, more than 300 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Shizuoka Prefecture is one of the most famous tea producing areas in Japan.

A tea distributor in Tokyo reported to the prefecture that it detected high levels of radioactivity in the tea shipped from the city. The prefecture ordered the factory to refrain from shipping out the product. After the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive contamination of tea leaves and processed tea has been found over a wide area around Tokyo. (See 5 More Companies Detect Radiation In Their Tea Above Legal Limits Over 300 KM From Fukushima, June 15, 2011)

Japan’s industrial and manufacturing base is prostrate. Japan is no longer a leading industrial power. The country’s exports have plummeted. The Tokyo government has announced its first trade deficit since 1980.

While the business media has narrowly centered on the impacts of power outages and energy shortages on the pace of productive activity, the broader issue pertaining to the outright radioactive contamination of the country’s infrastructure and industrial base is a “scientific taboo” (i.e the radiation of industrial plants, machinery and equipment, buildings, roads, etc). A report released in January 2012 points to the nuclear contamination of building materials used in the construction industry, in cluding roads and residential buildings throughout Japan.(See  FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies, January 2012)

A “coverup report” by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (May 2011), entitled “Economic Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery“  presents “Economic Recovery” as a fait accompli. It also brushes aside the issue of radiation. The impacts of nuclear radiation on the work force and the country’s industrial base are not mentioned. The report states that the distance between Tokyo -Fukushima Dai-ichi  is of the order of 230 km (about 144 miles) and that the levels of radiation in Tokyo are lower than in Hong Kong and New York City.(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery, p.15). This statement is made without corroborating evidence and in overt contradiction with independent radiation readings in Tokyo (se map below). In recent developments, Sohgo Security Services Co. is launching a lucrative “radiation measurement service targeting households in Tokyo and four surrounding prefectures”.

“A map of citizens’ measured radiation levels shows radioactivity is distributed in a complex pattern reflecting the mountainous terrain and the shifting winds across a broad area of Japan north of Tokyo which is in the center of the of bottom of the map.”

“Radiation limits begin to be exceeded at just above 0.1 microsieverts/ hour blue. Red is about fifty times the civilian radiation limit at 5.0 microsieverts/hour. Because children are much more sensitive than adults, these results are a great concern for parents of young children in potentially affected areas.

SOURCE: Science Magazine

The fundamental question is whether the vast array of industrial goods and components “Made in Japan” — including hi tech components, machinery, electronics, motor vehicles, etc — and exported Worldwide are contaminated? Were this to be the case, the entire East and Southeast Asian industrial base –which depends heavily on Japanese components and industrial technology– would be affected. The potential impacts on international trade would be farreaching. In this regard, in January, Russian officials confiscated irradiated Japanese automobiles and autoparts in the port of Vladivostok for sale in the Russian Federation. Needless to say, incidents of this nature in a global competitive environment, could lead to the demise of the Japanese automobile industry which is already in crisis.

While most of the automotive industry is in central Japan, Nissan’s engine factory in Iwaki city is 42 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Is the Nissan work force affected? Is the engine plant contaminated? The plant is within about 10 to 20 km of the government’s “evacuation zone” from which some 200,000 people were evacuated (see map below).

Nuclear Energy and Nuclear War

The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war.

Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.

In Japan at the height of the disaster, “the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan’s civilian nuclear power plants”.1  (See Yoichi Shimatsu, Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research,  April 12, 2011)

It should be noted that the complacency of both the media and the governments to the hazards of nuclear radiation pertains to the nuclear energy industry as well as to to use of nuclear weapons. In both cases, the devastating health impacts of nuclear radiation are casually denied. Tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb are labelled by the Pentagon as “safe for the surrounding civilian population”.

No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using “safe for civilians” tactical nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.

Such an action would result in “the unthinkable”: a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East and Central Asia. A nuclear nightmare, however, would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing another Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout. (For further details See Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2011)

The Online Interactive I-Book Reader on Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

In view of the official cover-up and media disinformation campaign, the contents of the articles and video reports in this Online Interactive Reader have not trickled down to to the broader public. (See Table of contents below)

This Online Interactive Reader on Fukushima contains a combination of analytical and scientific articles, video reports as well as shorter news reports and corroborating data.

Part I focusses on The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened? Part II  pertains to The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan. Part III  centers on the “Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe”, namely the cover-up by the Japanese government and the corporate media. Part IV focusses on the issue of  Worlwide Nuclear Radiation and Part V reviews the Implications of the Fukushima disaster for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry.

In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, this Global Research Online I-Book on the dangers of global nuclear radiation is intended to break the media vacuum and raise public awareness, while also pointing to the complicity of  the governments, the media and the nuclear industry.

We call upon our readers to spread the word.

We invite university, college and high school teachers to make this Interactive Reader on Fukushima available to their students.

Michel Chossudovsky, January 25, 2012

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: What Happened on “Day One”?
– by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-04-16
Fukushima is the greatest nuclear and environmental disaster in human history
- by Steven C. Jones – 2011-06-20

Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan
Lifting the Veil of Nuclear Catastrophe and cover-up
- by Keith Harmon Snow – 2011-03-18

Humanity now faces a deadly serious challenge coming out of Japan — the epicenter of radiation.

VIDEO: Full Meltdown? Japan Maximum Nuclear Alert
Watch now on GRTV
-by Christopher Busby- 2011-03-30

Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster

- by Sherwood Ross – 2011-11-10

Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?
U.S.-Japan security treaty fatally delayed nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown
- by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-04-12

The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown.

Fukushima: “China Syndrome Is Inevitable” … “Huge Steam Explosions”
“Massive Hydrovolcanic Explosion” or a “Nuclear Bomb-Type Explosion” May Occur
- by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-22

Accident at Second Japanese Nuclear Complex: The Nuclear Accident You Never Heard About

- by Washington’s Blog – 2012-01-12

VIDEO: New TEPCO Photographs Substantiate Significant Damage to Fukushima Unit 3
Latest report now on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-20

PART II

The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan

VIDEO: Surviving Japan: A Critical Look at the Nuclear Crisis
Learn more about this important new documentary on GRTV
- by Chris Noland – 2012-01-23

Fukushima and the Battle for Truth
Large sectors of the Japanese population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination
- by Paul Zimmerman – 2011-09-27

FUKUSHIMA: Public health Fallout from Japanese Quake
“Culture of cover-up” and inadequate cleanup. Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks
- by Canadian Medical Association Journal – 2011-12-30

FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies

- 2012-01-16

VIDEO: Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated
Watch this important new report on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen – 2012-01-19

VIDEO: The Results Are In: Japan Received Enormous Exposures of Radiation from Fukushima
Important new video now on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen, Marco Kaltofen – 2011-11-07

The Tears of Sanriku (三陸の涙). The Death Toll for the Great East Japan Earthquake Nuclear Disaster

- by Jim Bartel – 2011-10-31

The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima

- by Prof. Matthew Penney, Prof. Mark Selden – 2011-05-24

Uncertainty about the long-term health effects of radiation

Radioactivity in Food: “There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” – by Physicians For Social Responsibility – 2011-03-23

71,000 people in the city next to the Fukushima nuclear plant “We’ve Been Left to Die” - 2011-03-19

Tokyo Water Unsafe For Babies, Food Bans Imposed – by Karyn Poupee – 2011-03-23

 

PART III

Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe: Cover-up by the Japanese Government and the Corporate Media

VIDEO: Japanese Government Insiders Reveal Fukushima Secrets
GRTV Behind the Headlines now online
- by James Corbett – 2011-10-06

Fukushima and the Mass Media Meltdown
The Repercussions of a Pro-Nuclear Corporate Press
- by Keith Harmon Snow – 2011-06-20

Scandal: Japan Forces Top Official To Retract Prime Minister’s Revelation Fukushima Permanently Uninhabitable

- by Alexander Higgins – 2011-04-18

Emergency Special Report: Japan’s Earthquake, Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe
- by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-03-13

The tendency to deny systemic errors – “in order to avoid public panic” – is rooted in the determination of an entrenched Japanese bureaucracy to protect itself…

VIDEO: Fukushima: TEPCO Believes Mission Accomplished & Regulators Allow Radioactive Dumping in Tokyo Bay
Learn more on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen – 2012-01-11

The Dangers of Radiation: Deconstructing Nuclear Experts
- by Chris Busby – 2011-03-31

“The nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity.” This war has now entered an endgame which will decide the survival of the human race.

Engineers Knew Fukushima Might Be Unsafe, But Covered It Up …
And Now the Extreme Vulnerabilty of NEW U.S. Plants Is Being Covered Up
- by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-12

COVERUP: Are Fukushima Reactors 5 and 6 In Trouble Also?
- by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-14

Fukushima’s Owner Adds Insult to Injury – Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn’t Theirs

- by John LaForge – 2012-01-17

PART IV

The Process of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

VIDEO: Japan’s Nuclear Crisis: The Dangers of Worldwide Radiation

- by Dr. Helen Caldicott – 2012-01-25

An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the US Follows Arrival of Radioactive Plume from Fukushima, Is there a Correlation?
- by Dr. Joseph J. Mangano, Dr. Janette Sherman – 2011-12-20

In the US, Following the Fukushima fallout, samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal…

Radioactive Dust From Japan Hit North America 3 Days After Meltdown
But Governments “Lied” About Meltdowns and Radiation
- by Washington’s Blog – 2011-06-24

VIDEO: Fukushima Will Be Radiating Everyone for Centuries
New report now on GRTV
- by Michio Kaku, Liz Hayes – 2011-08-23

Fukushima: Diseased Seals in Alaska tested for Radiation

- 2011-12-29

Radiation Spreads to France

- by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-15

Radioactive rain causes 130 schools in Korea to close — Yet rain in California had 10 TIMES more radioactivity

PART V

Implications for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry

Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima
- by Gayle Greene – 2012-01-26

After Fukushima: Enough Is Enough

- by Helen Caldicott – 2011-12-05

VIDEO: Radiation Coverups Confirmed: Los Alamos, Fort Calhoun, Fukushima, TSA
New Sunday Report now on GRTV
- by James Corbett – 2011-07-04

VIDEO: Why Fukushima Can Happen Here: What the NRC and Nuclear Industry Don’t Want You to Know
Watch now on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen, David Lochbaum – 2011-07-12

VIDEO: Safety Problems in all Reactors Designed Like Fukushima
Learn more on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-09-26

VIDEO: Proper Regulation of Nuclear Power has been Coopted Worldwide
Explore the issues on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-05

VIDEO: New Nuclear Reactors Do Not Consider Fukushima Design Flaws
Find out more on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-11-24

Nuclear Energy: Profit Driven Industry
“Nuclear Can Be Safe Or It Can Be Cheap … But It Can’t Be Both”
- by Washington’s Blog – 2011-12-23

VIDEO: Fukushima and the Fall of the Nuclear Priesthood
Watch the new GRTV Feature Interview
- by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-22

Why is there a Media Blackout on Nuclear Incident at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska?

- by Patrick Henningsen – 2011-06-23

Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety

- by Sue Sturgis – 2011-07-24

Radioactive Leak at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station

- by Rady Ananda – 2011-07-01

VIDEO: US vs Japan: The Threat of Radiation Speculation
Dangerous double standards examined on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-06-25

Additional articles and videos on Fukushima and Nuclear Radiation are available at Global Research’s Dossier on The Environment

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TEXT BOX

 Nuclear Radiation: Categorization

At Fukushima, reports confirm that alpha, beta, gamma particles and neutrons have been released:

“While non-ionizing radiation and x-rays are a result of electron transitions in atoms or molecules, there are three forms of ionizing radiation that are a result of activity within the nucleus of an atom.  These forms of nuclear radiation are alpha particles (α-particles), beta particles (β-particles) and gamma rays (γ-rays).

Alpha particles are heavy positively charged particles made up of two protons and two neutrons.  They are essentially a helium nucleus and are thus represented in a nuclear equation by either α or .  See the Alpha Decay page for more information on alpha particles.

Beta particles come in two forms:  and .  particles are just electrons that have been ejected from the nucleus.  This is a result of sub-nuclear reactions that result in a neutron decaying to a proton.  The electron is needed to conserve charge and comes from the nucleus.  It is not an orbital electron.  particles are positrons ejected from the nucleus when a proton decays to a neutron.  A positron is an anti-particle that is similar in nearly all respects to an electron, but has a positive charge.  See the Beta Decay page for more information on beta particles.

Gamma rays are photons of high energy electromagnetic radiation (light).  Gamma rays generally have the highest frequency and shortest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.  There is some overlap in the frequencies of gamma rays and x-rays; however, x-rays are formed from electron transitions while gamma rays are formed from nuclear transitions. See the Gamma Rays  for more” (SOURCE: Canadian Nuclear Association)

“A neutron is a particle that is found in the nucleus, or center, of atoms. It has a mass very close to protons, which also reside in the nucleus of atoms. Together, they make up almost all of the mass of individual atoms. Each has a mass of about 1 amu, which is roughly 1.6×10-27kg. Protons have a positive charge and neutrons have no charge, which is why they were more difficult to discover.” (SOURCE: Neutron Radiation)

“Many different radioactive isotopes are used in or are produced by nuclear reactors. The most important of these are described below:

1. Uranium 235 (U-235) is the active component of most nuclear reactor fuel.

2. Plutonium (Pu-239) is a key nuclear material used in modern nuclear weapons and is also present as a by-product in certain reprocessed fuels used in some nuclear reactors. Pu-239 is also produced in uranium reactors as a byproduct of fission of U-235.

3. Cesium (Cs-137 ) is a fission product of U-235. It emits beta and gamma radiation and can cause radiation sickness and death if exposures are high enough. …

4. Iodine 131 (I-131), also a fission product of U-235, emits beta and gamma radiation. After inhalation or ingestion, it is absorbed by and concentrated in the thyroid gland, where its beta radiation damages nearby thyroid tissue  (SOURCE: Amesh A. Adalja, MD, Eric S. Toner, MD, Anita Cicero, JD, Joseph Fitzgerald, MS, MPH, and Thomas V. Inglesby MD, Radiation at Fukushima: Basic Issues and Concepts, March 31, 2011)

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Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in Western Europe, South East Asia, Latin America and The Pacific, acted as adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant to several international organizations. Prof. Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

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