It all rests too on the imbalance of power and “perils of dominance,”  which Gareth Porter argues was  “the road to war in Vietnam” (title and subtitle of his excellent book). If you have overwhelming power, you think you can get away with anything, and that you can push up against the edge in threatening war, waiting for the target to recognize prospective defeat and surrender in advance. If they don’t surrender, you can hope to win more or less easily with your superior power, and preserve your (or your client’s) ability to ethnically cleanse and/or maintain your prime bullying power in a region, and your credibility.

Given this imbalance and structure of interests and pressures, and this kind of policy calculus, Iran’s getting a nuclear weapon capability would be a benefit to peace, as it would to some modest degree diminish the axis of evil’s freedom to dominate and ethnically cleanse. The West’s support of Israel’s buildup of nuclear weapons was destabilizing and peace-threatening, as well as supportive of  large-scale ethnic cleansing. It was, and remains, a violation of the spirit and letter of the UN Charter and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The claim that Iran poses a threat because of its nuclear activity is valid, but only in the sense that it might slightly weaken U.S. hegemony, Israel’s freedom to dispossess, and U.S. and Israeli aggression rights.

The double standard here is breath-taking. Israel is now openly threatening to attack Iran, and the media report it without the slightest indignation, and a good chunk of the political class openly approves the idea and urges U.S. support  of this planned aggression. The reservations of the liberal media and politicos rest on the possibility that the attack might lead to a really major military conflagration and might cause oil prices to skyrocket and recessionary conditions to intensify. There is no problem for the mainstream that this would be a gross violation of the UN Charter. Ban Ki-Moon is silent about this threatened violation of the Charter that he is supposed to be enforcing (but actually betrays on a daily basis  as he serves as a U.S. puppet). Steven Pinker’s “Better Angels” once again seem to be in hiding.

When Ahmadinejad made his statement that Israel would some day be wiped off the map, this was given huge publicity in the West as showing the sinister quality of the Iran government and the threat it posed to Israel and the West. But Ahjmadinejad never explicitly threatened an Iranian attack on Israel, and there is solid evidence that his much cited and stripped down statement was mistranslated and misinterpreted—that he was actually paraphrasing Khomeini’s earlier statement that Israel would one day be transformed from an ethnically exclusive state to a more tolerant one, as the Soviet Union was transformed, not by force but by political processes. But while Ahmadinejad’s statement outraged Western officials and pundits, although in its valid form and substance it contained no threat of an Iranian attack,  Israel’s very clear and explicit threat to attack Iran arouses not the slightest indignation and demands for counter-action in the Free World. The double standard and associated lying run deep here.

It is also sick comedy that the excuse for this possible attack is that Iran may be close to nuclear weapons capability. That Iran needs this, and needs the weapons themselves, for elementary defense, is made obvious by the Israeli threat and the failure of the West to constrain Israel. In fact, the United States and other Western states have connived to allow Israel to become a nuclear weapons state outside the supervisory reach of the International Atomic Energy Agency, while engaging in righteous indignation and threats over Iran’s imperfect cooperation  with the IAEA, again an object lesson in double standards and hypocrisy.

It is also almost amusing to see how carefully the mainstream media (and politicos) play dumb over Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, as if this is a natural right and raises no questions about inequality of law and rules enforcement and about why only Israel has the right of self-defense. In the “world’s greatest newspaper” (Paul Krugman, referring to the New York Times), David Sanger and David Broad have written literally scores of  articles on IAEA reports and claims about Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s supposed lack of cooperation, with only the rarest passing mention of Israel’s nuclear arms.  (This same newspaper could also write 70 editorials on the imminent U.S. attack on Iraq, between September 11, 2001 and March 21, 2003, without once mentioning international law or the UN Charter.) This is great war propaganda service.

The same double standard, propaganda service, and just plain poor journalism, is evident in the reports and comments on Israeli and Iranian “terrorism.” A string of Iranian scientists have been assassinated, facilities and military personnel have been bombed, and sophisticated cyber-warfare has been used to damage Iranian nuclear programs. It is fairly openly acknowledged that Israel’s Mossad has been working with the Iranian terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), in carrying out these assassination and bombing attacks. Although this was admitted by several U.S. officials on NBC news (Brian Williams, “Israel turns to terror gang to kill Iranian scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News,” February 9, 2012), it is treated in very low key in the mainstream media, with no indignation or calls for action against this state sponsorship of terrorism, perhaps because the United States is the indirect sponsor as the funder-protector of Israel itself.  With this sponsorship, Israel has a right to invade Lebanon, drop and leave perhaps a million cluster bombs there in the few days before its exit in 2006,  ethnically cleanse Palestinians and Bedouins, terrorize Iran, and threaten and perhaps directly bomb Iran.

But Iran is an official (U.S.-official) sponsor of terrorism, so attention, gullibility and indignation are in a different realm altogether when it is charged with terrorism. It will be recalled that it was regularly charged with the crime of  supplying weapons to one of the contesting parties in Iraq at the height of the Iraq fighting, when the only legitimate supplier (and major direct killer) was that distant invader protecting itself from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. So Iran’s behavior there was villainous.

More recently Iran was alleged to be behind an alleged planned assassination attempt against the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington D.C.  Iran officials were supposed to have hired an Iranian expatriate living in the United States to contract with operatives of a Mexican drug cartel to do the assassination job. Amazingly, the man hired was a troubled and incompetent individual, and the Mexican he contacted was a DEA agent, a remarkable coincidence. This effort violated all rational principles of  intelligence operations on the part of Iran, and flew in the face of its recent attempts to spruce up diplomacy and mend its relationships with its Arab neighbors (including Saudi Arabia). This assassination plot, which, of course, never got off the ground, would have been damaging to Iran’s national interests even if successfully carried out. On the other hand, it served well the interests of the powerful war parties in the United States and Israel. This was almost surely another combination false flag and entrapment operation, and as Juan Cole describes it, “falling down funny.”

The follow-up terrorist actions in India, Georgia and Thailand also have the smell of  false flag operations. In the Delhi bombing of an Israeli car, it is notable that nobody was killed or badly injured, and Gareth Porter shows that the bomb effort seemed designed not to do serious bodily injury. (Porter, “Who was behind the Delhi bombing?,” Aljazeera, March 2,  2012.)  Also, Iran has a strong interest in maintaining India’s goodwill, as it is an important outlet for Iranian oil and gas in defiance of Western efforts to get India to cut these off. Contrary to Israeli claims, the Tbilisi and Bangkok bombings  did not use the “same kind of devices,” and as Porter says, these bombing efforts were contrary to Iranian interests but strongly suggestive of Israeli false flag operations. Interestingly, also, these terrorist actions, unlike those carried out by Mossad and MKO in Iran itself, didn’t result in any deaths. But in the Free Press they provided confirmation of Iran’s terrorist proclivities, while the treatment of Israel’s sponsored real killings in Iran have gotten something close to a free pass.

• First published in Z Magazine, April 2012

Once the black sheep of high finance, government owned banks can reassure depositors about the safety of their savings and can help maintain a focus on productive investment in a world in which effective financial regulation remains more of an aspiration than a reality.

– Centre for Economic Policy Research, VoxEU.org (January 2010)

Public sector banking is a concept that is relatively unknown in the United States.  Only one state—North Dakota—owns its own bank.  North Dakota is also the only state to escape the credit crisis of 2008, sporting a budget surplus every year since; but skeptics write this off to coincidence or other factors.  The common perception is that government bureaucrats are bad businessmen.  To determine whether government-owned banks are assets or liabilities, then, we need to look farther afield.

When we remove our myopic U.S. blinders, it turns out that globally, not only are publicly-owned banks quite common but that countries with strong public banking sectors generally have strong, stable economies.  According to an Inter-American Development Bank paper presented in 2005, the percentage of state ownership in the banking industry globally by the mid-nineties was over 40 percent.[i]  The BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—contain nearly three billion of the world’s seven billion people, or 40% of the global population.  The BRICs all make heavy use of public sector banks, which compose about 75% of the banks in India, 69% or more in China, 45% in Brazil, and 60% in Russia.

The BRICs have been the main locus of world economic growth in the last decade.  China Daily reports, “Between 2000 and 2010, BRIC’s GDP grew by an incredible 92.7 percent, compared to a global GDP growth of just 32 percent, with industrialized economies having a very modest 15.5 percent.”

All the leading banks in the BRIC half of the globe are state-owned.  In fact, the largest banks globally are state-owned, including:

• The two largest banks by market capitalization (ICBC and China Construction Bank)
• The largest bank by deposits (Japan Post Bank)
• The largest bank by assets (Royal Bank of Scotland, now nationalized)
• The world’s largest development bank (BNDES in Brazil).

A May 2010 article in The Economist noted that the strong and stable publicly-owned banks of India, China and Brazil helped those countries weather the banking crisis afflicting most of the rest of the world in the last few years.  According to Professor Kurt von Mettenheim of the Sao Paulo Business School of Brazil:

Government banks provided counter cyclical credit and policy options to counter the effects of the recent financial crisis, while realizing competitive advantage over private and foreign banks.  Greater client confidence and official deposits reinforced liability base and lending capacity.  The credit policies of BRIC government banks help explain why these countries experienced shorter and milder economic downturns during 2007-2008.

Surprising Findings

In a 2010 research paper summarized on VoxEU.org, economists Svetlana Andrianova, et al., wrote that the post-2008 nationalization of a number of very large banks, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, “offers an opportune moment to reduce the political power of bankers and to carry out much needed financial reforms.”  But “there are concerns that governments may be unable to run nationalised banks efficiently.”

Not to worry, say the authors:

Follow-on research we have carried out (Andrianova et al, 2009) . . . shows that government ownership of banks has, if anything, been robustly associated with higher long run growth rates.

Using data from a large number of countries for 1995-2007, we find that, other things equal, countries with high degrees of government ownership of banking have grown faster than countries with little government ownership of banks. We show that this finding is robust to a battery of econometric tests.

Expanding on this theme in their research paper, the authors write:

While many countries in continental Europe, including Germany and France, have had a fair amount of experience with government-owned banks, the UK and the USA have found themselves in unfamiliar territory. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that there is deeply ingrained hostility in these countries towards the notion that governments can run banks effectively. . . . Hostility towards government-owned banks reflects the hypothesis . . . that these banks are established by politicians who use them to shore up their power by instructing them to lend to political supporters and government-owned enterprises. In return, politicians receive votes and other favours. This hypothesis also postulates that politically motivated banks make bad lending decisions, resulting in non-performing loans, financial fragility and slower growth.

But that is not what the data of these researchers showed:

[W]e have found that . . . countries with government-owned banks have, on average, grown faster than countries with no or little government ownership of banks. . . . This is, of course, a surprising result, especially in light of the widespread belief—typically supported by anecdotal evidence—that ‘… bureaucrats are generally bad bankers’ . . . .

What accounts for their surprising findings?  The authors provide a novel explanation:

We suggest that politicians may actually prefer banks not to be in the public sector. . . . Conditions of weak corporate governance in banks provide fertile ground for quick enrichment for both bankers and politicians – at the expense ultimately of the taxpayer. In such circumstances politicians can offer bankers a system of weak regulation in exchange for party political contributions, positions on the boards of banks or lucrative consultancies.  Activities that are more likely to provide both sides with quick returns are the more speculative ones, especially if they are sufficiently opaque as not to be well understood by the shareholders such as complex derivatives trading.

Government owned banks, on the other hand, have less freedom to engage in speculative strategies that result in quick enrichment for bank insiders and politicians. Moreover, politicians tend to be held accountable for wrongdoings or bad management in the public sector but are typically only indirectly blamed, if at all, for the misdemeanours of private banks. It is the shareholders who are expected to prevent these but lack of transparency and weak governance stops them from doing so in practice. On the other hand, when it comes to banks that are in the public sector, democratic accountability of politicians is more likely to discourage them from engaging in speculation. In such banks, top managers are more likely to be compelled to focus on the more mundane job of financing real businesses and economic growth.

The BRICs as a Global Power

Focusing on the financing of real businesses and economic growth seems to be the secret of the BRICs, which are leading the world in economic development today.  But the BRIC phenomenon is more than just a growth trend identified by an economist.  It is now an international organization, an alliance of countries representing the common interests and goals of its members.  The first BRIC meeting, held in 2008, was called a triumph for former Russian President Vladimir Putin’s policy of promoting multilateral arrangements that would challenge the United States’ concept of a unipolar world.

The BRIC countries had their first official summit and became a formal organization in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009.  They met in Brazil in 2010 and in China in 2011, and they will meet in India in 2012.  In 2010, at China’s invitation, South Africa joined the group, making it “BRICS” and adding a strategic presence on the African continent.

The BRICS seek more voice in the United Nations, the IMF, and the World Bank.  They are even discussing their own multicultural bank to fund projects within their own nations, in direct competition with the IMF.  They oppose the dollar as global reserve currency.  After the Yekaterinburg summit, they called for a new global reserve currency, one that was diversified, stable and predictable; and they have the clout to get it.  According to Liam Halligan, writing in The U.K.Telegraph:

The BRICs account for . . . around three-quarters of total currency reserves. They have few serious fiscal issues and all are net external creditors.

Western financial interests have long fought to maintain the dollar as global reserve currency, but they are losing that battle, despite economic and military coercion.  Russia, China and India are now nuclear powers.  The BRICS will have to be negotiated with, and the first step to forming a working relationship is to understand how their economies work.  Rather than declaring war on their more successful practices, we may decide to assimilate some of them into our own.

— Associated Press, February 3, 2012

It’s unfortunate and disturbing that Bradley Manning’s attorneys have chosen to consistently base his legal defense upon the premise that personal problems and shortcomings are what motivated the young man to turn over hundreds of thousands of classified government files to Wikileaks. They should not be presenting him that way any more than Bradley should be tried as a criminal or traitor. He should be hailed as a national hero. Yes, even when the lawyers are talking to the military mind. May as well try to penetrate that mind and find the freest and best person living there. Bradley also wears a military uniform.

Here are Manning’s own words from an online chat: “If you had free reign over classified networks … and you saw incredible things, awful things … things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC … what would you do? … God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. … I want people to see the truth … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

Is the world to believe that these are the words of a disturbed and irrational person? Do not the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Geneva Conventions speak of a higher duty than blind loyalty to one’s government, a duty to report the war crimes of that government?

Below is a listing of some of the things revealed in the State Department cables and Defense Department files and videos. For exposing such embarrassing and less-than-honorable behavior, Bradley Manning of the United States Army and Julian Assange of Wikileaks may spend most of their remaining days in a modern dungeon, much of it while undergoing that particular form of torture known as “solitary confinement”. Indeed, it has been suggested that the mistreatment of Manning has been for the purpose of making him testify against and implicating Assange. Dozens of members of the American media and public officials have called for Julian Assange’s execution or assassination. Under the new National Defense Authorization Act, Assange could well be kidnapped or assassinated. What century are we living in? What world?

It was after seeing American war crimes such as those depicted in the video “Collateral Murder” and documented in the “Iraq War Logs,” made public by Manning and Wikileaks, that the Iraqis refused to exempt US forces from prosecution for future crimes. The video depicts an American helicopter indiscriminately murdering several non-combatants in addition to two Reuters journalists, and the wounding of two little children, while the helicopter pilots cheer the attacks in a Baghdad suburb like it was the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.

The insistence of the Iraqi government on legal jurisdiction over American soldiers for violations of Iraqi law — something the United States rarely, if ever, accepts in any of the many countries where its military is stationed — forced the Obama administration to pull the remaining American troops from the country.

If Manning had committed war crimes in Iraq instead of exposing them, he would be a free man today, as are the many hundreds/thousands of American soldiers guilty of truly loathsome crimes in cities like Haditha, Fallujah, and other places whose names will live in infamy in the land of ancient Mesopotamia.

Besides playing a role in writing finis to the awful Iraq war, the Wikileaks disclosures helped to spark the Arab Spring, beginning in Tunisia.

When people in Tunisia read or heard of US Embassy cables revealing the extensive corruption and decadence of the extended ruling family there — one long and detailed cable being titled: “CORRUPTION IN TUNISIA: WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE” — how Washington’s support of Tunisian President Ben Ali was not really strong, and that the US would not support the regime in the event of a popular uprising, they took to the streets.

Here is a sample of some of the other Wikileaks revelations that make the people of the world wiser:

• In 2009 Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano became the new head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which plays the leading role in the investigation of whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons or is working only on peaceful civilian nuclear energy projects. A US embassy cable of October 2009 said Amano “took pains to emphasize his support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded the [American] ambassador on several occasions that … he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”
• Russia refuted US claims that Iran has missiles that could target Europe.
• The British government’s official inquiry into how it got involved in the Iraq War was deeply compromised by the government’s pledge to protect the Bush administration in the course of the inquiry.
• A discussion between Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and American Gen. David H. Petraeus in which Saleh indicated he would cover up the US role in missile strikes against al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Saleh told Petraeus.
• The US embassy in Madrid has had serious points of friction with the Spanish government and civil society: a) trying to get the criminal case dropped against three US soldiers accused of killing a Spanish television cameraman in Baghdad during a 2003 unprovoked US tank shelling of the hotel where he and other journalists were staying; b )torture cases brought by a Spanish NGO against six senior Bush administration officials, including former attorney general Alberto Gonzales; c) a Spanish government investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; d) a probe by a Spanish court into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for American extraordinary rendition (= torture) flights; e )continual criticism of the Iraq war by Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, who eventually withdrew Spanish troops.
• State Department officials at the United Nations, as well as US diplomats in various embassies, were assigned to gather as much of the following information as possible about UN officials, including Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, permanent security council representatives, senior UN staff, and foreign diplomats: e-mail and website addresses, internet user names and passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers, frequent flyer account numbers, work schedules, and biometric data. US diplomats at the embassy in Asunción, Paraguay were asked to obtain dates, times and telephone numbers of calls received and placed by foreign diplomats from China, Iran and the Latin American leftist states of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. US diplomats in Romania, Hungary and Slovenia were instructed to provide biometric information on “current and emerging leaders and advisers” as well as information about “corruption” and information about leaders’ health and “vulnerability”. The UN directive also specifically asked for “biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats”. A similar cable to embassies in the Great Lakes region of Africa said biometric data included DNA, as well as iris scans and fingerprints.
• A special “Iran observer” in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku reported on a dispute that played out during a meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. An enraged Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff, Mohammed Ali Jafari, allegedly got into a heated argument with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and slapped him in the face because the generally conservative president had, surprisingly, advocated freedom of the press.
• The State Department, virtually alone in the Western Hemisphere, did not unequivocally condemn a June 28, 2009 military coup in Honduras, even though an embassy cable declared: “there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch”. US support of the coup government has been unwavering ever since.
• The leadership of the Swedish Social Democratic Party — neutral, pacifist, and liberal Sweden, so the long-standing myth goes — visited the US embassy in Stockholm and asked for advice on how best to sell the war in Afghanistan to a skeptical Swedish public, asking if the US could arrange for a member of the Afghan government to come visit Sweden and talk up NATO’s humanitarian efforts on behalf of Afghan children, and so forth. [For some years now Sweden has been, in all but name, a member of NATO and the persecutor of Julian Assange, the latter to please a certain Western power.]
• The US pushed to influence Swedish wiretapping laws so communication passing through the Scandinavian country could be intercepted. The American interest was clear: Eighty per cent of all the internet traffic from Russia travels through Sweden.
• President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy told US embassy officials in Brussels in January 2010 that no one in Europe believed in Afghanistan anymore. He said Europe was going along in deference to the United States and that there must be results in 2010, or “Afghanistan is over for Europe.”
• Iraqi officials saw Saudi Arabia, not Iran, as the biggest threat to the integrity and cohesion of their fledgling democratic state. The Iraqi leaders were keen to assure their American patrons that they could easily “manage” the Iranians, who wanted stability; but that the Saudis wanted a “weak and fractured” Iraq, and were even “fomenting terrorism that would destabilize the government”. The Saudi King, moreover, wanted a US military strike on Iran.
• Saudi Arabia in 2007 threatened to pull out of a Texas oil refinery investment unless the US government intervened to stop Saudi Aramco from being sued in US courts for alleged oil price fixing. The deputy Saudi oil minister said that he wanted the US to grant Saudi Arabia sovereign immunity from lawsuits
• Saudi donors were the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
• Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial 1996 drug trial involving children with meningitis.
• Oil giant Shell claimed to have “inserted staff” and fully infiltrated Nigeria’s government.
• The Obama administration renewed military ties with Indonesia in spite of serious concerns expressed by American diplomats about the Indonesian military’s activities in the province of West Papua, expressing fears that the Indonesian government’s neglect, rampant corruption and human rights abuses were stoking unrest in the region.
• US officials collaborated with Lebanon’s defense minister to spy on, and allow Israel to potentially attack, Hezbollah in the weeks that preceded a violent May 2008 military confrontation in Beirut.
• Gabon president Omar Bongo allegedly pocketed millions in embezzled funds from central African states, channeling some of it to French political parties in support of Nicolas Sarkozy.
• Cables from the US embassy in Caracas in 2006 asked the US Secretary of State to warn President Hugo Chávez against a Venezuelan military intervention to defend the Cuban revolution in the eventuality of an American invasion after Castro’s death.
• The United States was concerned that the leftist Latin American television network, Telesur, headquartered in Venezuela, would collaborate with al Jazeera of Qatar, whose coverage of the Iraq War had gotten under the skin of the Bush administration.
• The Vatican told the United States it wanted to undermine the influence of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in Latin America because of concerns about the deterioration of Catholic power there. It feared that Chávez was seriously damaging relations between the Catholic church and the state by identifying the church hierarchy in Venezuela as part of the privileged class.
• The Holy See welcomed President Obama’s new outreach to Cuba and hoped for further steps soon, perhaps to include prison visits for the wives of the Cuban Five. Better US-Cuba ties would deprive Hugo Chávez of one of his favorite screeds and could help restrain him in the region.
• The wonderful world of diplomats: In 2010, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the question of visas for two wives of members of the “Cuban Five”. “Brown requested that the wives (who have previously been refused visas to visit the U.S.) be granted visas so that they could visit their husbands in prison. … Our subsequent queries to Number 10 indicate that Brown made this request as a result of a commitment that he had made to UK trade unionists, who form part of the Labour Party’s core constituency. Now that the request has been made, Brown does not intend to pursue this matter further. There is no USG action required.”
• UK Officials concealed from Parliament how the US was allowed to bring cluster bombs onto British soil in defiance of a treaty banning the housing of such weapons.
• A cable was sent by an official at the US Interests Section in Havana in July 2006, during the run-up to the Non-Aligned Movement conference. He noted that he was actively looking for “human interest stories and other news that shatters the myth of Cuban medical prowess”. [Presumably to be used to weaken support for Cuba amongst the member nations at the conference.]
• Most of the men sent to Guantánamo prison were innocent people or low-level operatives; many of the innocent individuals were sold to the US for bounty.
• DynCorp, a powerful American defense contracting firm that claims almost $2 billion per year in revenue from US tax dollars, threw a “boy-play” party for Afghan police recruits. (Yes, it’s what you think.)
• Even though the Bush and Obama Administrations repeatedly maintained publicly that there was no official count of civilian casualties, the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs showed that this claim was untrue.
• Known Egyptian torturers received training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
• The United States put great pressure on the Haitian government to not go ahead with various projects, with no regard for the welfare of the Haitian people. A 2005 cable stressed continued US insistence that all efforts must be made to keep former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whom the United States had overthrown the previous year, from returning to Haiti or influencing the political process. In 2006, Washington’s target was President René Préval for his agreeing to a deal with Venezuela to join Caracas’s Caribbean oil alliance, PetroCaribe, under which Haiti would buy oil from Venezuela, paying only 60 percent up front with the remainder payable over twenty-five years at 1 percent interest. And in 2009, the State Department backed American corporate opposition to an increase in the minimum wage for Haitian workers, the poorest paid in the Western Hemisphere.
• The United States used threats, spying, and more to try to get its way at the crucial 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen.
• Mahmoud Abbas, president of The Palestinian National Authority, and head of the Fatah movement, turned to Israel for help in attacking Hamas in Gaza in 2007.
• The British government trained a Bangladeshi paramilitary force condemned by human rights organisations as a “government death squad”.
• A US military order directed American forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis.
• The US was involved in the Australian government’s 2006 campaign to oust Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.
• A 2009 US cable said that police brutality in Egypt against common criminals was routine and pervasive, the police using force to extract confessions from criminals on a daily basis.
• US diplomats pressured the German government to stifle the prosecution of CIA operatives who abducted and tortured Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen. [El-Masri was kidnaped by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia on December 31, 2003. He was flown to a torture center in Afghanistan, where he was beaten, starved, and sodomized. The US government released him on a hilltop in Albania five months later without money or the means to go home.]
• 2005 cable re “widespread severe torture” by India, the widely-renowned “world’s largest democracy”: The International Committee of the Red Cross reported: “The continued ill-treatment of detainees, despite longstanding ICRC-GOI [Government of India] dialogue, have led the ICRC to conclude that New Delhi condones torture.” Washington was briefed on this matter by the ICRC years ago. What did the United States, one of the world’s leading practitioners and teachers of torture in the past century, do about it? American leaders, including the present ones, continued to speak warmly of “the world’s largest democracy”; as if torture and one of the worst rates of poverty and child malnutrition in the world do not contradict the very idea of democracy.
• The United States overturned a ban on training the Indonesian Kopassus army special forces — despite the Kopassus’s long history of arbitrary detention, torture and murder — after the Indonesian President threatened to derail President Obama’s trip to the country in November 2010.
• Since at least 2006 the United States has been funding political opposition groups in Syria, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country.

It was carried out with same method by which Israel’s Iranian proxy, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, had assassinated an Iranian scientist in mid-January. It occurred on the anniversary of the 2008 assassination of Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mugniyeh, which Hezbollah had vowed to avenge. And it happened at the same time as what appeared to be attempted bombings in Bangkok and Tbilisi.

But a review of the evidence uncovered thus far makes the link to Iran begin to look very dubious. Instead, it points to the distinct possibility that the Israelis planned a carefully limited bomb attack that was not intended to cause serious injury to Israeli diplomatic personnel, but that would advance the larger Israeli narrative on the need to punish Iran.

The evidence surrounding that bomb itself indicates a series of decisions by the terrorist team that is fundamentally inconsistent with an Iranian-Hezbollah revenge bombing. The preliminary forensic analysis of the bomb itself had estimated it to be 250-300 grams of explosives, but sources in the investigation later reduced the estimate to 200-250 grams. The 250-gram bomb that exploded near the Delhi High Court in May 2011 did not even damage the car under which it had been placed and was characterised by Police Commissioner B K Gupta as a “low-intensity and mild blast”.

Burning questions

The main damage to the Israeli diplomat’s car was not from the explosion but from the fire, which burned so slowly that the occupants suffered no burns.

If the bomb had been filled with shrapnel of iron filings, nails or glass, or if it had been attached underneath the fuel tank or on the door next to the passenger, that bomb would have seriously injured or killed the passenger, Tal Yehoshua-Koren, the wife of the Israeli Defense Attaché. But Delhi police were able to determine that the bomb contained no such potentially deadly shrapnel. And an examination of the videos and photos of the car after the bombing revealed that the bomb had been attached instead to the rear of the vehicle, where it would have the least impact on the occupants.

Indian investigators obtained a fourth piece of evidence bearing on the intentions of the planners from their interview with Yehoshua-Koren. She told them the bomb did not go off for 30 to 40 seconds after she felt a bump from the rear of the car and saw the motorcyclist go past her window. Indian investigators had assumed that the bomb had operated on a five- or 10-second delay, like other magnet bombs with which they were familiar – only enough time for the motorcyclist to get far enough away from the blast.

Yehoshua-Koren did not get out of the car before the bomb went off, and suffered what the Israeli Defense Ministry called “moderate“ wounds – evidently from metal fragments from the rear hatch. She was nevertheless able to exit the car and get to the Israeli Embassy without any assistance.

Israeli commentary on the bombing suggested that the Iranian-sponsored terrorist team had simply proven to be ineffective in carrying out the bombing. But the combination of these four distinct indicators strongly suggests that the operation was planned so that the passenger in the car would not be injured.

Unclear patterns

Israel claimed that the evidence links the Delhi bombing to other alleged Iranian-Hezbollah plots in Tbilisi and Bangkok. Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon declared, ”It is the same pattern, the same bomb, the same lab, the same factory”.

That information led investigators in Delhi to conclude that the operations in Delhi and Bangkok were “unrelated“.

Despite the fact that a group of Iranian passport-holders were clearly involved with highly lethal bombs in Bangkok, there is good reason to doubt that they were working for Iran’s IRGC or Hezbollah. They spent their first three days in the country with Thai prostitutes at Pattaya. That profile suggests Iranian mercenaries, like the former kickboxer hired by Mossad to assassinate Iranian scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi in January 2010, rather than Iranian or Hezbollah operatives.

India‘s importance

In the larger context, it is very difficult to believe that Iran would have chosen New Delhi as the location for revenge against Israel, given the importance of India as a buyer of Iranian oil and India’s delicately balanced political-diplomatic position in the larger conflict.

India had just replaced China as Iran’s single biggest crude oil customer, having increased its imports to roughly 550,000 barrels a day in January, which compensated for a drop in sales to China. And the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had resisted pressure from the United States and Europe to reduce its purchases from Iran, even working with Iran to find ways to get around the planned sanctions against Iran’s National Bank. India’s Commerce Ministry was planning a large business delegation to Iran to discuss increased trade.

India had thus taken on the role of potential “spoiler” in the Western sanctions strategy against Iran. This central geopolitical reality prompted New Delhi’s “Economic Times” to ask, “Why would Iran go and poke its finger in the eye of its best customer, especially knowing full well that Israel will use even the flimsiest excuse to put the blame on it?”

Indeed, it was Israel, not Iran that stood to gain politically from the terrorist car bomb in Delhi. Israel was well aware that a terrorist bombing in Delhi that could be blamed on Tehran was a potential lever to change India’s policy toward Iran. As an Israeli official told the Wall Street Journal, if India were to adopt Netanyahu’s position that Iran was responsible for the bombing, it would take the India-Iran relationship to “a whole different level”.

Nearly two weeks before the bombing, Israel acted to ensure that Indians would assume that a terrorist attack in Delhi on that date had been carried out by Iran. A letter to the Delhi police on February 1 signed by the Israeli Deputy Chief of Mission in Delhi and the First Secretary responsible for security expressed concern that Iran and Hezbollah would take revenge on the anniversary of the Mugniyeh assassination by carrying out terrorist actions against Israelis. It also referred to the possibility of Iranian revenge for the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan on January 11. Although the letter did not specify that an attack might take place in Delhi, Mossad chief Tamir Pardo led a delegation of intelligence officials on a visit to Delhi around the same time and turned over a list of 50 Iranian nationals with the request that they be kept under surveillance.

The Israeli letter referred to an alleged Hezbollah terror plot against Israelis that had been broken up in Bangkok in January. But the idea of a Hezbollah plan to kill Israelis in Thailand had come only from Israeli intelligence - not from any local sources. The Thai police detained Hussein Atris, a Swedish-Lebanese, in January only because Israeli intelligence officials had told them they “suspected” that he and two other Lebanese, whom they claimed were linked to Hezbollah, might carry out terrorist attacks at tourist sites popular with Israelis.

Atris admitted to owning large supplies of urea fertiliser and ammonium nitrate, which are ingredients in bombs, but Thai investigators concluded that they were not connected to any terror plot in Thailand, because of the absence of any other bomb components. The head of Thailand’s National Security Council, General Wichean Potephosree, a former chief of police, expressed doubt that Atris was a terrorist, as Israel had claimed.

After the Bangkok explosion, the Israelis renewed the claim of an Iran-Hezbollah terror threat in Bangkok, alleging that the bombs found in in all three capitals in mid-February were  “exactly the same kind of devices”. But we now know that was not the case.

We may never be able to establish with certainty what happened in Delhi, Bangkok and Tbilisi earlier this month, but the evidence that has come to light thus far doesn’t support the widely accepted notion that Iran and Hezbollah were behind it. That evidence is consistent, however, with a clever Israeli “false flag” car bombing operation that would not injure the passenger but would serve its broader strategic interests: dividing India from Iran and pushing US public opinion further towards support for war against Iran.

And after a series of apparently premature explosions shook Bangkok on Tuesday—including the detonation of two grenades by an Iranian national—Israel once again laid blame firmly at the feet of Iran.  As Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated: “The attempted terrorist attack in Bangkok proves once again that Iran and its proxies continue to perpetuate terrorism.”

Yet, as the Mossad connected DEBKAfile reported, Israel remains “in the dark about the source or sources of the attacks on Israeli diplomats abroad and the investigations have a long way to go.”

Nonetheless, the series of attacks have been quickly (and quite cynically) seized upon by the war hawks, given that the attacks seemingly provide the latest justification for “taking out” Iran’s nuclear program.  As Yosef Kuperwasser, director general of Israel’s strategic affairs ministry, warned, “If Iran dares to do things like this when it isn’t nuclear, just imagine what it would do when it is nuclear.”  (For an indication of the terror a nuclear Iran may sow, Kuperwasser might have added, one need look no further than the terror employed by the nuclear state of Israel.)

Predictably helping to inflame tensions, and largely rallying behind the unsubstantiated Israeli claims of Iranian culpability in the week’s attacks, has been the corporate media.  As the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl wrote of the New Delhi attacks: “That Iran would risk a strike in such a sensitive place suggest that its leaders are panicked.”

But the claims of a panicked and altogether irrational Iranian regime lashing out in some last act of desperation defy logic.  As Vijay Prashad asks: “Why would Iran conduct an attack on an Israeli diplomat in India, particularly as India is in the midst of trying to negotiate a delicate arrangement with Tehran to pay for Iranian oil?”

Indeed, for amidst tightening Western economic sanctions, India has moved to surpass China as the largest purchaser of Iranian crude.  And as the New York Times reported, India plans to deepen its economic ties to Iran by sending a large trade delegation to Tehran within weeks to “exploit opportunities created by American and European anti-nuclear sanctions.”

In fact, many in the West have begun to fret the effectiveness of a sanctions regime lacking the active participation of not only India, but China as well.  As the Times noted, there is also growing fear that “China could easily undermine the oil-sanctions effort.”  And according to the paper, the Partnership for a Secure America (a whose who of American imperialists past) is using the visit of Vice President Xi Jinping of China to further pressure China to crack down on Tehran.

The punitive and quite draconian sanctions, however, are already inflicting severe pain amongst ordinary Iranians.  According to Gallup, a staggering 48% of Iranians reported that there “were times in the past year when they did not have enough money to buy food for their families.”

But starving an entire nation concerns the U.S. in the least.  We implement our foreign policy and furnish our wars whatever the cost.  For instance, when recently asked about the plight of Iranians under economic sanctions, hawkish Illinois Senator Mark Kirk replied, “It’s okay to take food out of the mouth of the citizens from a government that’s plotting an attack directly on American soil.”  (Reminiscent of when Madeleine Albright deemed 500,000 Iraqis dead from U.S. imposed sanctions “worth the cost.”)

Although in the wake of Monday’s attack, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, “India will likely be under substantial pressure to now weaken its ties to Iran.”  Needless to say, losing revenue from India is something Iran can ill afford.  And in the end, the Iranian regime may be “radical,” in the words of Ehud Barak, “but not totally crazy. They have a quite sophisticated decision-making process, and they understand reality.”

Given this, one cannot rule out the possibility that the resent attacks against Israeli diplomats were an Israeli false flag operation.  For the attacks just may serve to further isolate Iran economically, while also creating additional support for Israeli military intervention.  All of which is more than ample motive for a nation quite comfortable with employing terrorism as a means to an end.

And regardless if Israel really has gone “rogue” in its effort to orchestrate a pretext for a military strike, the U.S. will no doubt come to be enmeshed in the greater regional war a strike shall unleash.  But rest assured, for if it comes to this, the U.S. stands “ready today” to strike Tehran, as Vice Admiral Mark Fox, commander of the U.S. 5^th Fleet boasted to the media.

Also increasingly “ready today” for military confrontation is the American public.  The Monitor reports that nearly 50% of Americans say they would support bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities to stop its advancement toward the ability to build a bomb.  Unsurprisingly, a remarkable 64% think Iran is currently trying to build a bomb.  No evidence, of course, exists that they are.  But alas, truth is indeed the first casualty of war.

Thus, it is really no longer a matter of if the West shall come to strike Iran, but when.

The Middle East smolders, as the West readies to set it ablaze.

I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita … ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer, 22 April 1904 – 18 February 1967
Scientific Director of the Manhattan Project, on the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Chilling ironies surely do not come much greater than the Nobel Peace Prize winning President of the United States, in an election year, having contributed to global instability and the possibility of nuclear conflict, to such an extent that the “Doomsday Clock”, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago, has this week been moved to five minutes to midnight.

The forward-creeping hands of the symbolic clock, maintained since 1947, two years after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, indicate the closest to global catastrophe in twenty six years, with the exception of 2007, when the hands were similarly set under the gung-ho “Bring ‘em on”, presidency of George W. Bush.

What a world away from Obama’s June 2009 speech at Egypt’s Al Azhar University, where he declared he was in Cairo: “… to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims round the world (and to) share … tolerance and dignity…”

He asserted: “There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other, to learn from each other, to respect one another and to seek common ground … the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful then the forces that drive us apart.”

Tell that to the bereaved, maimed, homeless Libyans, Iraqis, Afghans, the US-menaced people of Syria, over one third of whom are  fourteen or under; the annihilation-threatened Iranian population, nearly a quarter also children, fourteen years or under.

Tell it to Iran, so demonized, yet which generously hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world. (1999 UNHCR figures cite at a cost then, to embargoed Iran, of ten million $s a day.)

Tell it also to the droned and blown (away) of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia.

A “ … sustained effort to listen …”, has been largely denied the untried, incarcerated, abused, tortured in Bagram and Guantanamo’s “gulags of our times”, as totally during the Obama presidency as the years before.

But back to the ticking Atomic clock. Alarmingly, the furthest from “midnight” it has ever been is seventeen minutes, in 1991, when the US and then Soviet Union, under George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (31 July), a heartening seven minute leap from the ten to midnight of 1990, even that, in spite of the onslaught of the 32 nation war on Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait. The Berlin Wall had, however, fallen and the Cold War seemed to be ending.

In 1963, 1972, both years of seemingly ground breaking arms limitation treaties between the US and Soviet Union, the clock still stood at ten minutes to midnight.

Even when India tested a nuclear device, and the US and Soviet Union both modernized their destructive potential in 1974, the clock stood four minutes further away from annihilation than Obama’s contribution – then at nine minutes to midnight.

As the United States aircraft carriers, Carl Vinson and John C. Stennis, bristling with nuclear and other holocaustal weapons,  and twitchy testosterone-fuelled troops, steam Iran-wards, to either bomb nuclear installations – with the danger of a potential nuclear winter – or bomb to keep the Straits of Hormuz open for one fifth of the world’s oil supplies – the clock is just two minutes back from when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1947, officially starting the nuclear arms race.

It is three minutes from the two minutes to midnight – the most apocalyptic ever – of 1953, when both the US and Soviet Union tested thermo-nuclear devices within nine months of each other.

There are about 19,000 nuclear weapons in the world according to the Science and Security Board. That’s enough to blow up the Earth many times over. We are really in a pickle”, says Kennette Benedict, Executive Director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, of their latest clock re-set.

“Recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task”, said President Obama, in Cairo, when some believed his “Yes, we can”, meant peace, and a new dawn for the planet and humanity.

No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other. It’s easier to start wars than to end them.… It’s easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share.  But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path.

There’s one rule that lies at the heart of every religion  – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

This truth transcends nations and peoples — a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian or Muslim or Jew.† It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today”, he concluded.

Indeed! Beware of Presidents bearing Nobel Peace Prize tags.

“To be internationalist is to pay our debt to humanity” says Fidel Castro and this can be read on many billboards in Cuba.

What is internationalism?—cooperation among people and nations, states my dictionary. The book of definitions maintains that internationalism is a principle of communism and socialism. It is the belief of ideological leaders such as Lenin, Fidel and Che.

Che wrote in his essay, “Socialism and Man”, that proletarian internationalism isn’t just a duty but a necessity. If revolutionary leaders forget this, Che wrote, the revolution will lose its inspiration and imperialism will benefit.

Che was also known for having severely criticized Soviet Union leadership for having lost its internationalism with the world’s proletariat and the Third World. Following up on Che’s critique, I find it important to criticize communist and socialist parties, and governments led by these parties, which let down people who are oppressed by, or invaded by, national or foreign powers.

Internationalism in action

1. Internationalists must support resistance fighters against invasions. Therefore, one must chastise political parties and groups that give political or moral support to those who call themselves the Iraq Communist Party as it is part of the Quisling government the USA terrorist state set in. ICP leaders live side by side the invaders in the Green Zone. That there are organizations in the United States, UK, Denmark and elsewhere, which call themselves communist or socialist parties and that cooperate with the world’s greatest terrorist state is incomprehensible, shameful, immoral and anti-internationalist.

2. The same applies to people who still support the Zionist state of Israel, which commits genocide against the Palestinian people. Millions of decent people have gotten together to support Palestinians in many ways, including Ships to Gaza. In Denmark, four groups of people have challenged the state’s terrorist laws by donating solidarity aid to the secular leftist PFLP which is part of the Palestinian resistance. Rebellion (Denmark), Fighters and Lovers, Horserød-Stuthoff Association (veterans of WWII resistance fighters imprisoned in Horserød and Stuthoff prisons), and TIB’s club (local carpenters near Copenhagen) have aided both PFLP and FARC, Colombian armed liberation movement.

3. Internationalist can not cooperate with US-NATO aggressive wars, which always have the goal of controlling that country’s economy and politics for capitalist profits. It is shameful that many experienced socialists and communists, as well as naïve progressive people, have backed up West’s big capitalist plans to take over Libya, and thus have bombed Libya back to the stone age. Denmark was one of only six countries that dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Libya, destroying much of it infrastructure, schools, hospitals…In fact, Denmark dropped more bombs on Libya than it has on any other country in its history, Afghanistan included. And the pilots were cowards as there was no resistance by Libya’s air force, already decimated.

This conflict has little to do with the Arab Spring movement. It is a conflict between internal war lords, with ordinary people involved who wished to increase democracy but who were misled by US-NATO whose forces seek to control Libya’s oil and avoid a gold-based currency that Gaddafi was promoting amongst all African countries. Now, US-NATO has placed a lackey government in Tripoli just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

4. Internationalists must also criticize comrade governments, such as Cuba and ALBA governments in Latin America, when they make big mistakes regarding internationalism. We can’t be true comrades-solidarity activists by keeping our mouths shut when this occurs. Such is the case with their support of the brutal government of Sri Lanka, which practices genocide against the minority Tamil population. Ever since independence from Great Britain, in 1947, the majority Sinhalese governments and chauvinist Buddhist monk system has discriminated against Tamils. They have constantly been treated as second class citizens, their language and religions relegated to secondary status without national recognition. Even pogroms have been employed with the brutal murder of many thousands on various occasions. And since May 2009, following the end of a 26-year civil war, ethnic cleansing in the traditional Tamil homeland in the north and eastern areas is the rule of the day.

Cuba and ALBA have spoken only positively of their historic ties with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), to which Sri Lanka is a member, but so are 130 other nations. One cannot, in the name of protecting each nation’s sovereignty, avoid critique when one or more of these nations oppresses or conducts pogroms and genocide against part of the population. Nor can we accept as an excuse the immoral geo-political game that nearly all governments of whatever color play.

We shall also criticize Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil and other Latin American progressive governments for helping the US and France in their ouster of the only decent and only democratically elected people’s president in Haiti’s history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These Latin American governments actually assist the US’s 2004 coup d´état against Aristide by placing occupying troops in the small country, seeking to dampen the people’s anger. These progressive governments should, instead, back up the people’s desire to bring their president back to state power, just as they sought to do for President Zelaya in Honduras where national capitalists and generals kicked him out of office, with background support once again by the United States government.

5. On the personal and organizational plain, internationalism operates when workers of a major firm ask people to boycott a product because of the mistreatment of the workers by the firm. This is the case with Coca-Cola whose workers in Colombia asked us to stop buying the “drink of the death squad” (David Rovics song), because it hires mercenaries to murder workers who seek to organize a union and struggle for collective bargaining. Workers in other countries, such as Guatemala, and farmers in India have asked the same.

It is with joy that I can state that here where we gather (carpenters’ hall in Valby, Denmark), this union is one of the few local unions and political or grass roots groups in Denmark that has boycotted Coca-Cola. This is something any and all individuals can do. It is just a soda drink. So drink something else. Boycotting Coca-Cola is just like boycotting all products from Israel and Sri Lanka. It is a simple act of solidarity, of internationalism.

Charlotte and I have just returned from a six week trip in India where two of my books (“Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka” and “Sounds of Venezuela”) were published by New Century Book House, Tamil Nadu. The Tamil book concerns the history and contemporary life of the Tamil people in that island-nation, and the need to act in solidarity with them. The Venezuela short book concerns this people’s efforts to create a better world for themselves and solidarity with all peoples. When people asked us where we are from we often replied that we are “internationalists”. Interestingly, many Indians understood our meaning and were pleased to think in terms of being brothers and sisters in the world.

This concept, and feeling, of brotherly love, of internationalism has taken off in a bigger way, in 2011, than in many decades. It started in Tunisia, and has expanded to the indignados in Spain, to the anti-capitalists in Wall Street and in hundreds of cities throughout the US and the West.

We have much to criticize and yet much to be glad for as 2012 opens. We must remember and appreciate those who set us off on this new anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist, non-violent and democratic revolution—from the martyr in Tunisia (street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi) and his Iraqi spiritual brother a bit earlier, shoe-thrower Muntazar al-Zaidi, to Occupy Wall Street protestors to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and co-workers at Wikileaks, who helped spark it all by blowing the whistle on the war criminals. These modern-day Paris Commune resisters without arms—OWS and Occupy the World—are growing and they are presenting a vision and with it a program-in-discussion that must be studied and supported.

Internationalism is an endless struggle, an endless challenge. It does not end even when one or more of our political parties take over the governing reigns. We activists from the streets must always keep our wary eyes pinned on the leaders, regardless of their names, just as our clear eyes cast light upon humanity’s future.

After a century of scheming in the Middle East and Central Asia by first Britain and then the US, the tables turned much faster than anyone could have imagined. As the pivotal 2011 draws to a close, it is the perfect moment to look at how we got here. The rollercoaster ride has been long and terrifying, and it is vital to understand where it is taking us.

From the 19th century on, it was clear to imperial strategists such as Cecil Rhodes and Halford MacKinder, motivated by the desire to conquer the world, that the “heartland”, Eurasia, was the key to securing the proposed world empire. WWI was supposed to clinch the deal, with the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate leaving the Levant “free” to be carved up and secured. The Indian Raj was the empire’s base for securing Central Asia and the Far East .

But the horrors of the war led to an unforeseen result: revolution in Russia, inspiring a growing anti-imperial movement across Eurasia. Inspired by Russian revolutionaries, the Raj seethed in discontent, demanding freedom from the British yoke, and Chinese patriots coalesced around their own rapidly growing Communist movement. Historic Turkestan was now off limits, part of the Soviet Union or in the case of Afghanistan, unconquerable.

WWII erupted as Germany attempted to snatch the world empire from the British and destroy its Russian nemesis, but this merely accelerated the decline of the Euro-imperialists, their schemes exposed as relying on mass slaughter and cold, calculating privilege for the elite of the imperial centre.

When the war ended, there were hopes that imperialism would end too. The empire had been forced to ally with the Communists to defeat the Germans, and to promise to dismantle the imperial system after WWII. This new world order was to be one of independent nations competing on a level playing field. But what should have been the last gasp of this inhuman system of “free trade” in the service of empire gained a new lease on life, as the US had escaped the 20th century’s cataclysms unscathed, and its capitalists were eager to take on the mantle of empire ceded by the bankrupt Brits.

Moreover, a new, subtle but key force in the new empire was the Jewish state established by the British and Americans in the heart of the Middle East, a blatant colonial entity which draped its imperial role in the language of anti-colonial liberation. This, despite the fact that it was created by dispossessing the native Arabs, even as neighbouring Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and North Africa were gaining nominal independence from their colonial masters.

This new playing field witnessed a long, bloody match, pitting the empire’s forces against both Communists and anti-colonial forces. After millions of deaths, it culminated in the defeat of the Communists in 1991, and a new game began, with world control once again the prize.

The dreams of revolution and an end to empire were dashed, and this new world order was once again baldly imperial, as planners accelerated their plans, epitomised by the rise of the neoconservatives with their Project for a New American Century, combining market fundamentalism and imperial aggression in a deadly cocktail where there were no longer any geographical limits.

The former Communist union, especially Turkestan, with its strategic location and oil wealth, was quickly brought into the imperial orbit. Even China was accommodated, as it acceded to the world economic order established by the empire after WWII.

But the baggage of empire continued to complicate the picture. The Islamists, so useful in the destruction of the Communist bloc, resisted imperial designs. Israel, also useful throughout the post-WWII struggle against both the Communists and the 3rd world liberation forces, established itself as an independent player and even posed as the new imperial coach, penetrating to the heart of the empire and asserting its own goals of expansion and hostility against its Muslim neighbours.

At its beheast, the resulting wars have been against the Arab and Muslim world, but two decades of attempts to subdue them have merely hardened Muslims’ opposition to empire, even as the devastation caused by imperial designs increases.

Hence, the Arab Spring of 2011 and the accession to power of Islamists via the ballot box across the Middle East . Hence, the unwinnable war against the Afghan people, that brought empire to its knees in fateful 2011, even as the slaughter of insurgents and civilians increased. Yes, the imperialists managed a clever ruse, invading Libya to depose the clownish Gaddafi, but the Islamists and fiercely independent tribes there are unlikely allies of empire.

The tsunami of resistance to imperialism surged throughout 2011 around the world, while the empire’s leaders put a worldwide “missile defence” system in place. But even as radars and missiles were installed in Europe, the rising tide reached the empire’s shores in 2011, as financial crisis led to rising poverty and unrest in the imperial centre itself.

Taking inspiration from the Arab Spring, mass demonstrations in Greece and Spain erupted and Wall Street, the empire’s “heartland”, was occupied. The “99 per cent” entered the political lexicon as the people vs the ruling elite (the 1 per cent who own half of the country’s assets). Even Israel and newly capitalist Russia witnessed mass demonstrations, as ordinary citizens began to realise how the system works, or rather doesn’t work for them. How increasing disparity of wealth is the logical result of market fundamentalism and control of the economy by financial capital.

2011 will go down in history as a year as fateful as 1917, when the blinkers fell away from the common people’s eyes in Russia and they rose up against their oppressors. But while 1917 witnessed a Communist revolution against capitalism and imperialism by a small corps of professional revolutionaries, 2011 has witnessed a mass, leaderless revolution facilitated by telecommunications, and in the case of the key Middle East, inspired by Islam.

There is no Lenin, not even a Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the one Arab leader who managed to slow down the imperial steamroller in the Middle East and is still revered for his defiance. Unlike Communist revolutionaries of yore, the new leaders in the Middle East of what must be called the Islamic revolution of 2011 are not the object of veneration, something that Islam as a religion warns against.

Revolutions always start in the weakest links. Thus, the Middle East has a head start on the revolutionary process over the West, though through the growing Palestinian solidarity movement, notably the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign, the struggles of East and West are increasingly seen to be one and the same. What will be the decisive test for the new revolutionaries in the Middle East and the West itself is how well they can navigate the political shoals and landmines laid by a century of empire.

How to dismantle apartheid Israel without it unleashing nuclear war on the world? How to put an end to US world financial blackmail centred on the dollar without the US strategists taking everyone else down with them? While the empire is on the defensive, it is still powerful and as its star wanes, it will only become more lethal.

The foes of empire are popping up faster than the empire’s drones can knock them off. They are found not only in Arab (and Persian) lands, or even in a skeptical Russia and still-Communist China. As the links in the system continue to fray, they are increasingly in the heart of the empire itself. Americans and Europeans will continue to develop alternatives to empire, financially, economically and politically, in their own communities and continue to link up with their comrades-against-arms in the heart of the supposed enemy in Eurasia .

More and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to capitalism. Some 130 million Americans are part owners of co-op businesses and credit unions. As Obama cuts funding to states, the latter considers establishing their own banks and use public pensions to fund state economic development.

There is a wealth of expertise in the “heartland” of the empire that can help show the whole world the way out of the imperial dead end. The new generation in America lacks the Cold War paranoia about socialism: Americans under 30 years old are “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism”, according to a 2009 Rasmussen poll.

Even as the world environment degrades, even as imperial arms continue to kill, maim and choke demonstrators and insurgents both at the heart of the empire and in the heart of the “enemy”, we can take heart in the new sense of human dignity which 2011 spawned, and fight the intrigues of empire with new vigour in 2012.

How could the U.S. behave so recklessly, not realize it was responsible for the atomic arms race and for allowing and even moving others to obtain the bomb? Why does it not consider in its policies the argument that those most likely to use the bomb are more important than those who have the bomb? Answers to both these questions expose an almost purposeful U.S. policy to drive others to obtain the “doomsday explosive” and, if we concede the Islamic Republic is developing a bomb, give meaning to Iran’s determination to develop a nuclear weapon. A simple proposition can deaden that determination, and not only for Iran; the world’s major powers can give any nation that entertains a “first strike” a rethink: do it and get demolished.

The consequence of not facing down to India and Pakistan defines the real arms race; nuclear weapons in the military depots of nations that contain extremist elements who kill mercilessly and, if able to obtain the weapons, would apply them worldwide, including at the United States. Iran’s possibility of obtaining a nuclear capability is conjectural and not as significant as the actual; Pakistan has many bombs and Pakistan is politically stable. The laxity is emphasized by the lack of control on previous actions by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s (in)famous nuclear physicist.

In 2004, Dr. Khan indicated he had provided Iran, Libya, and North Korea with designs and centrifuge technology to aid in nuclear weapons programs. Where was the CIA when Khan roamed the world? Pondering about Iran, no doubt, and developing policies that have driven North Korea to develop a nuclear deterrent and motivating Iran to do the same.

Noting U.S. intensive hostility towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), coupled with its extensive military presence in Japan and South Korea, shouldn’t the Pyongyang leaders be apprehensive? Their apprehension inspired them to welcome previous treaties.

In October 1994, President Clinton negotiated the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework:

North Korea agreed to freeze its existing plutonium enrichment program and be monitored by the IAEA;
Both sides agreed to replace by 2003 North Korea’s reactors with light water reactors, financed and supplied by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO);
The United States agreed to provide heavy fuel oil to the DPRK for energy purposes until atomic energy was available;
The two sides agreed to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations;
Both sides agreed to work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula; and
Both sides agreed to work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.

What happened to this anxiety relieving treaty? The charges, countercharges, truths, and distortions are difficult to unravel.

Not debatable is that the George W. Bush administration signaled North Korea with unfriendly intentions. Despite it being the most significant milestone in the treaty, the first reactor, promised for delivery by 2003, was pushed up until 2008 at the earliest. A leaked version of the Bush administration’s January 2002 classified Nuclear Posture Review mentioned North Korea as a country against which the United States should be prepared to use nuclear weapons.

After starts and stops, self-destruction of nuclear facilities and reconstruction of the same facilities, the DPRK proceeded to definitely develop nuclear weapons. Their arguments for this posture had validity. The United States did not meet its most important commitment, President George W. Bush designated North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” the State Department continually equated not having a peace treaty with Pyongyang violations of human rights, and Washington carelessly inferred that, if hostilities developed, North Korea could expect a nuclear attack. What did the Bush administration expect of the ‘hermit state’ leaders? The U.S. State Department evidently imagined, by being conciliatory, Kim Jong IL would take advantage and secretly develop an atomic bomb. However, by not being conciliatory, it assured the DPRK would be provoked into securing a nuclear weapon.

Except for the United States’ offensive attack against Japan, the nuclear club nations that signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty developed the weapons as deterrents. The Soviet Union needed to neutralize USA power. Great Britain and France requisitioned a nuclear arsenal to defend against the Soviet Union. China had the greatest fear; it was surrounded by a world of enemies.

Of those who have not signed the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons — India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel — all, except Israel had deterrent as an immediate reason. India feared China, Pakistan feared India and North Korea feared the United States. When Israel allegedly started nuclear weapons developments in 1963, none of its antagonists were even thinking nuclear.

The United States claims that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons because Iran’s developments will provoke a Middle East nuclear arms race. However, by allowing Israel to develop the weapons, the U.S. and friends already stimulated the Middle East arms race. It is mainly due to the United States, Great Britain, and France that Israel has nuclear capability. As a consequence, Middle East nations sought means to neutralize the Israel bomb.

Saddam Hussein clearly expressed this dilemma in a speech he made at al-Bakr University, 3 June 1978.

“When the Arabs start the deployment, Israel is going to say, ‘We will hit you with the atomic bomb.’ So should the Arabs stop or not? If they do not have the atom, they will stop. For that reason they should have the atom. If we were to have the atom, we would make the conventional armies fight without using the atom. If the international conditions were not prepared and they said, “We will hit you with the atom,” we would say, “We will hit you with the atom too. The Arab atom will finish you off, but the Israeli atom will not end the Arabs.”¹

France started Israel on the road to nuclear capability with the sale of a nuclear reactor and uranium fuel.

“Franco-Israeli nuclear cooperation is described in detail in the book Les Deux Bombes (1982) by French journalist Pierre Pean, who gained access to the official French files on Dimona. The book revealed that the Dimona’s cooling circuits were built two to three times larger than necessary for the 26-megawatt reactor Dimona [supplied by France] was supposed to be — proof that it had always been intended to make bomb quantities of plutonium. The book also revealed that French technicians had built a plutonium extraction plant at the same site. According to Pean, French nuclear assistance enabled Israel to produce enough plutonium for one bomb even before the 1967 Six Day War. France also gave Israel nuclear weapon design information.”²

Great Britain paved the road for Israel to reach the bomb. When he was UK prime minister, Harold Wilson supplied Israel with plutonium.

“In Harold Macmillan’s time the UK supplied uranium 235 and the heavy water which allowed Israel to start up its nuclear weapons production plant at Dimona — heavy water which British intelligence estimated would allow Israel to make ‘six nuclear weapons a year.’”³

The United States looked the other way.

“After the United States discovered the Dimona reactor in 1960, U.S. nuclear specialists inspected Dimona every year from 1965 through 1969, looking for signs of nuclear weapon production. It is not clear what they found, but in 1968 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported to President Lyndon Johnson its conclusion that Israel had already made an atomic bomb. In 1969, Israel limited inspection visits by U.S. scientists to such an extent that the Americans complained in writing. Without explanation, the Nixon administration ended the visits the following year.”²

After tacitly agreeing to Israel’s nuclear weapon developments and permitting India and Pakistan to go nuclear, the United States engages Iran in a similar manner to its engagement with North Korea — provoking Iran to develop a bomb in another “lose-lose” situation.

Blind to the effects on Iran’s posture, the U.S. stages its military in adjacent nations to Iran, constantly harangues Iran about its human rights record and its despotic government and accuses Iran of all sorts of terrorist activities. None of the activities are specified nor does the charge consider that Iranians are mysteriously getting assassinated, their facilities are blowing up, their computers are attacked by the Stuxnet virus, and CIA spies are being uncovered and arrested by them and Hezbollah. Who are doing these nefarious activities? Aren’t they terrorists?

Although insurgents in Iraq carry U.S. weapons, the U.S., without proof, accuses Iraq of arming them. In Afghanistan, the U.S. rails against alleged Iranian assistance to the Taliban, although the Taliban is an enemy of Iran and is interfering with a myriad of business deals the Iranians are arranging with the Karzai government, with whom it is friendly. By deeds the U.S. is telling Iran: “If you want to survive, get yourself a deterrent.” The U.S. policies towards Iran, similar to most State Department policies, are counterproductive and push Iran to invest in nuclear weapons.

Shouldn’t the U.S. State Department consider in its policies the argument that those most likely to use the bomb are more important than those who have the bomb? Great Britain has the bomb, but there is no possibility it will use the weapon. There is little probability that even if about to be defeated, the DPRK will use the bomb — against whom, their own brethren? Only Pakistan radical elements and Israel can effectively use the bomb in an offensive manner; the former because they have suicidal tendencies, and the latter because it does not face nuclear retaliation.

Pakistan’s present government won’t use it, but it is entirely possible that anarchy in Pakistan can deliver bombs to radical groups that have no compunction against using the deadly weapon.

If Israel faces defeat, it could use the bomb. In several wars, especially during the December 2008 invasion of Gaza, Israel demonstrated a disregard for enemy life. Even if an engaged nation had a nuclear weapon, and presently none of Israel’s foes have a mass destruction device, Israel’s small size and closeness to Arab peoples give it an advantage in a nuclear war. The possibility of inflicting severe damage to innocent Arab populations hinders a retaliatory action. Israel’s principal reason to have the bomb is for the threat, real or imagined, it poses to any nation that counters its policies, including Iran, who is concerned about the possible loss of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem and is disturbed about Israel’s expansion and oppression of the Palestinian people.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel faced possible defeat, a fear existed that unless the United States assisted Israel with more armaments, Israel might use nuclear weapons against its adversaries. A large U.S. airlift of military aid finalized the battle in favor of Israel. A French official explained the situation.

In 1986, Francis Perrin, high commissioner of the French atomic energy agency from 1951 to 1970, was quoted in the press as saying that France and Israel had worked closely together for two years in the late 1950s to design an atom bomb. Perrin said that the United States had agreed that the French scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project could apply their knowledge at home provided they kept it secret. But then, Perrin said, ‘We considered we could give the secrets to Israel provided they kept it a secret themselves.’ He added: ‘We thought the Israeli bomb was aimed against the Americans, not to launch it against America but to say ‘if you don’t want to help us in a critical situation we will require you to help us, otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs. ‘⁴

The Islamic Republic cannot use nuclear weapons for an offensive purpose. Any attempt to do that and Iran’s enemies will extinguish the Islamic Republic in a flash of the radioactive light. Its bomb can only neutralize other bombs.

Which leads to the only ways to halt nuclear proliferation in the Middle East — either dismantle all existing bombs or neutralize them.

Better yet — signal that a first nuclear strike by any nation will be met by a severe strike on that nation with conventional weapon from the great powers of the United Nations Security Council. Give them an offer they can’t refuse. Not far fetched!

1. Conflict Records Research Center (CRRC) Record No. SH-PDWN-D-000-341, “Speech at al-Bakr University,” 3 June 1978
2. Israel’s Nuclear Weapon Capability: An Overview, The Risk Report, Volume 2 Number 4, July-August 1996
3. Secret sale of UK plutonium to Israel, Meirion Jones, BBC Newsnight, 10 March 2006
4. Ibid

We have heard this song before.  It takes us back to the soaring oratory that uplifted the masses and propelled a one-term senator to the presidency.  Then as now, the president correctly and brilliantly deconstructs the problem: The middle class is under siege, hemorrhaging skilled and unskilled jobs to cheap labor markets overseas, resulting in depressed wages and declining benefits, depleted retirement funds, union busting and unregulated industries.

But, then as now, his solutions fail to approach the heart of the matter.  Proclaiming a new world economy based on innovation, he advocates government funding for research and education, science and engineering, progressive taxation, regulation, consumer protection and a commitment to building and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure.

These are all worthy ideas that the president strings together with a rising intonation in order to avoid the obvious, central and core solution.  Consequently, he builds to a dull crescendo, sounding a sour chord and all too familiar refrain:  Technology and innovation will save us.

The president prides himself on his knowledge of history, so much so that he summoned the memory of Theodore Roosevelt in this address.  Unfortunately, history does not uphold his case.  Technology and innovation have never sustained the middle class.  They have created fortunes and whole industries but how it affects the working people depends entirely on where the industries are located and how the workers are paid.

Take a good look at the major innovations of the Free Trade era:  The personal computer, the laptop and the smart phone are all made in China and serviced in India.  Solar technology created advanced solar collectors and panels, creating a thriving industry in China.  Hybrid vehicles may be assembled in America but by-and-large they are constructed in foreign nations where the cost of labor trumps all other concerns.  Even our bridges are made in China.

Within the parameters of a global Free Trade economy, there is no innovation that can revive American industry.  The idea that innovation and education are going to create jobs for 300 million Americans is a pipe dream, a fantasy and, in this case, an excuse not to address the heart of the matter.

The obvious answer and the one that perpetually evades the president and the majority of his party is Fair Trade.  American workers can compete and win on a fair playing field but no one can compete with dirt-cheap labor.  The masterminds behind the new global economy have built corporate profits by exploiting the cheapest possible labor overseas and simultaneously undermining labor in our own country.

What is Fair Trade?  It is built on the conviction that all nations that engage our nation in trade should uphold the rights of labor, including the right to organize, and pay their workers living wages.

How would Fair Trade be implemented?  The most direct route would be to reserve preferred trade status to nations that protect the rights of labor, provide basic health and retirement benefits, and pay living wages to their workforce.  All other nations would be subject to a tariff proportionate to the cost of compliance.

The message to China, India and all other nations that now benefit from the imbalance of trade would be clear:  Pay your workers at home or pay to protect our workers at the border.

Human rights and the critical issue of carbon emissions also come into the equation but if the goal is rebuilding American industry, then the heart of the matter is labor.

Why is Fair Trade off the table?  There was a time when simply raising the cry of “Protectionism” could defeat any such proposal but after decades of job exportation, Americans are losing their fear of words.  Protecting our workers in the current environment is a moral imperative.

Accordingly, Fair Trade is alive and well in the United States Congress.  Even Republicans in the House and Senate are afraid to go on record in opposition.  The Trade Reform Accountability Development and Employment Act proposed by Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Representative Michael Michaud of Maine would fundamentally reshape America’s trade policy, bringing labor to the forefront.

Unfortunately, the silence of the White House enables congressional leadership to keep the measure from coming to the floor for a vote.  President Obama presses forward on Free Trade deals with Korea, Columbia and Panama, ensuring the exportation of jobs to even more nations.

Even progressive economists are reluctant to address trade policy, preferring to attack trade imbalance through so-called currency manipulation.  The idea is if our trading partners increased the value of their currency it would be more expensive to buy their goods and less expensive for them to buy ours.  If the revaluation were large enough and sustained, it would certainly have an effect.

The problem with the currency approach is that it allows the tenets of Free Trade to stand.  It does not end the anti-labor measures enforced by austerity regimes under the dictates of the International Monetary Fund.  That is why even the prototypical corporate candidate, Republican Mitt Romney, feels free to advocate punitive actions against China based on the charge of currency manipulation.  It leaves workers out on the lurch and the rights of labor out of the picture.  Moreover, all nations manipulate currency.  That is the primary function of the Federal Reserve.

Of course, if we were to insist that other nations respect the rights of labor, we would have to do a better job of protecting our own workers.  We could no longer allow individual states to effectively crush unions with so-called Right to Work laws.  We could no longer allow legislative attacks on collective bargaining without paying a price.

It is as if the entire liberal establishment, from the politicians to the intellectuals to the media, signed on to Bill Clinton’s Free Trade mandate back in the eighties and have adhered to that agreement ever since.

It was a deal with the devil, a betrayal of every working man and woman not only in America but throughout the world, and it demands to be revisited now.

In 2008 candidate Barack Obama said, “I voted against CAFTA, never supported NAFTA, and will not support NAFTA–style trade agreements in the future. While NAFTA gave broad rights to investors, it paid only lip service to the rights of labor and the importance of environmental protection.”

Where is that candidate now?  He disappeared upon taking the oath of office.

In retrospect, it seems amply clear that candidate Obama made a deal with Wall Street, his leading campaign contributors, before he embarked on his road to the White House.  Fair Trade was off limits.  It was the one territory he could not visit.  It was the one line he could not cross.

An original sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act (an affirmation of the right to organize and establish a union by majority vote) had President Obama remembered his labor roots in his address at Osawatomie, had he raised the banner of Fair Trade to initiate his campaign for a second term, then that address might have stood alongside Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism or Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal inaugural address.

As it stands, it is the perfect symbol of his presidency to date:  A promise unfulfilled.

If we were to initiate the age of Fair Trade, it would fundamentally change the debate and ultimately alter the structure of the global economy.  The world would face a choice.  The European people would insist that their governments follow our lead.  China and India would fight back but they are as dependent on us as we are on them.  A bargain would be struck and a transition would be negotiated.

America would win back her industries and the middle class would re-emerge at the heart of the global economy.

It will happen in any case.  It is inevitable.  To continue on the path we are on will lead only to massive civil unrest and the result will be the same.  By initiating Fair Trade now we could avoid much of that inevitable pain and disruption.

If only we had a leader with the courage to break his pact with Wall Street in order to keep his promise to the American people.

A slump occurs when “capacity outstrips demand” – that is to say, when people can no longer afford to buy all that is being produced. This is inevitable in a capitalist system, where productive capacity is privately owned, because the global working class as a whole are never paid enough to purchase all that they collectively produce. As a result, unsold goods begin to pile up, and production facilities – factories and the like – are closed down. People are thrown out of work as a result, their incomes decline, and the problem gets worse. This is exactly what we are seeing happen today.

In these circumstances, avenues for profitable investment dry up – the holders of capital can find nowhere safe to invest their money. For them, this is the crisis – not the unemployment, the famine, the poverty etc (which, after all, remain an endemic feature of the global capitalist economy even during the ‘boom times’, albeit on a somewhat reduced scale). The governments under their control – through ownership of the media, currency manipulation and control of the economy – must then set to work creating new profitable investment opportunities.

One way they do this is by killing off public services, and thus creating opportunities for investment in the private companies that replace them. In 1980s Britain, Margaret Thatcher privatised steel, coal, gas, electricity, water, and much else besides. In the short term, this plunged millions into unemployment, as factories and mines were closed down, and in the long term it resulted in massive price rises for basic services. But it had its intended effect – it provided valuable investment opportunities (for those with capital to spare) at a time when such opportunities were scarce, and created a long term source of fabulous profits. This summer, for example, saw the formerly publicly owned gas company Centrica hiking its prices by another 18% to bring in a £1.3billion profit. The raised prices will see many thousands more pensioners than usual die from the cold this winter as a result, but gas – like all commodities in capitalist society – is not there to provide heat, but to increase capital.

In the global South, privatisation was harsher still. Bodies like the IMF and the World Bank used the leverage provided by the debt-extortion mechanism (whereby interest rates were hiked on unpayable loans that had rarely benefited the population, often taken out by corrupt rulers imposed by Western governments in the first place) to force governments across Asia, Africa and Latin America to cut public spending on even basics such as health and education, along with agricultural subsidies. This contributed massively to the staggering rates of infant mortality and deaths from preventable disease, as well as to the AIDS epidemic now raging across Africa. But again the desired end for those imposing the policies was achieved, as new markets were created and holders of giant capital reserves could now invest in private companies to provide the services no longer available from the state. The profit system was given a new lease of life, its collapse staved off once again.

The World Bank’s closure of the Indian government’s grain rationing and distribution service, for example, meant that a scheme providing affordable grain to all Indian citizens was closed down, allowing private companies to come in and sell grain at massively increased prices (sometimes up to ten times higher). Whilst this has led to huge numbers of Indians being priced out of the market, and a resulting 200 million people now facing starvation in India, it has also led to record profits for the giant private companies now holding the world’s grain stocks – which is the whole point.

This round of global privatisation from the 1980s onwards, however, was so thorough that when the 2008 crisis hit, there were few state functions left to privatise. Creating investment opportunities now is much trickier than it was thirty years ago, because so much of what is potentially profitable is already being thoroughly exploited as it is.

In Europe, what is left of public services is hastily being dismantled, as right wing political leaders happily privatise what is left of the public sector, and currency speculators use their firepower to pick off any country that attempts to resist. David Cameron, following the path forced on the global South over recent decades, for example, is busy opening up Britain’s National Health Service to private companies, and massively cutting back on public service provision for vulnerable groups such as the elderly and the jobless.

In the global South, however, there is little left for the West to privatise, as successive IMF policies have long ago forced those countries in their grip to strip their public services to the bone (and beyond) already.

But there is one state function which, if fully privatised across the world, would make the profits made even from essentials such as health care and education look like peanuts. That is the most basic and essential state function of all, indeed the whole raison d’etre for the state: security.

Private security companies are one of the few growth areas during times of global recession, as growing unemployment and poverty leads to increased social unrest and chaos, and those with wealth become more nervous about protecting both themselves, and their assets. Furthermore, as the Chinese economy advances at a rate of knots, military superiority is fast becoming the West’s only “competitive advantage” – the one area in which it’s expertise remains significantly ahead of its rivals. Turning this advantage, therefore, into an opportunity for investment and profit on a large-scale is now one of the chief tasks facing the rulers of Western economies.

A recent article in the Guardian noted that British private security firm Group 4 is now “Europe’s largest private sector employer”, employing 600,000 people – 50% more than make up the total armed forces of Britain and France combined. With growth last year of 9% in their “new markets” division, the company have “already benefited from the unrest in north Africa and the Middle East.” Group 4 are set to make a killing in Libya, following the total breakdown of security, likely to last for decades, resulting from NATO’s incineration of the country’s armed forces and wholesale destruction of its state apparatus. With the rule of law replaced by warfare between rival gangs of rebels, and no realistic prospect of a functioning police force for the foreseeable future, those Libyans able to manoeuvre themselves into positions of wealth and power will likely have to rely on private security for many years to come.

When Philip Hammond, Britain’s new Defence Secretary and a multi-millionaire businessman himself, suggested that British companies “pack their suitcases and head to Libya”, it was not only oil and construction companies he had in mind, but private security companies.

Private military companies are also becoming huge business – most famously, the US company Blackwater, renamed Xe Services after its original name became synonymous with the massacres committed by its forces in Iraq. In the USA, Blackwater has already taken over many of the security functions of the state – charging the Department of Homeland Security $1000 per day per head in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, for example. “When you ship overnight, do you use the postal service or do you use FedEx?” asked Erik Prince, founder and chairman of Blackwater. “Our corporate goal is to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did to the postal service”. Another Blackwater official commented that “None of us loves the idea that devastation became a business opportunity. It’s a distasteful fact. But that’s what it is. Doctors, lawyers, funeral directors, even newspapers – they all make a living off of bad things happening. So do we, because somebody’s got to handle it.”

The danger comes when the economic climate is such that the world’s most powerful governments feel they must do all they can to create such business opportunities. During the Cold War, the US military acted (as indeed it still does) to keep the global South in a state of poverty by attacking any government that seriously sought to challenge this poverty, and imposing governments that would crush trade unions and keep the population cowed. This created investment opportunities because it kept the majority of the world’s labour force in conditions so desperate they were willing to work for peanuts. But now this is not enough. In slump conditions, it doesn’t matter how cheap your workforce is if nobody is buying your products. To create the requisite business opportunities today – a large global market for its military expertise – Western governments must impose not only poverty, but also devastation. Devastation is the quickest route to converting the West’s military prowess into a genuine business opportunity that can create a huge new avenue for investment when all others are drying up. And this is precisely what is happening.  David Cameron is, for once, telling the truth, when he says “Whatever it takes to help our businesses take on the world – we’ll do it.”

As The Times put it recently, “In Iraq, the postwar business boom is not oil. It is security.” In both Iraq and Afghanistan, a situation of chronic and enduring instability and civil war has been created by a very precise method. Firstly, the existing state power is totally destroyed. Next, the possibility of utilising the country’s domestic expertise to rebuild state capacity is undermined against by barring former officials from working for the new government (a process known in Iraq as “de-Ba’athification”). Linked to this, the former ruling party is banned from playing any part in the political process, effectively ensuring that the largest and most organised political formation in each country has no option but to resort to armed struggle to gain influence, and thereby condemning the country to civil war. Next, vicious sectarianism is encouraged along whatever religious, ethnic and tribal divisions are available, often goaded by the covert actions of Western intelligence services. Finally, the wholesale privatisation of resources ensures chronically destabilising levels of unemployment and inequality.  The whole process is self-perpetuating, as the skilled and professional sections of the workforce – those with the means and connections – emigrate, leaving behind a dire skills shortage and even less chance of a functioning society emerging from the chaos.

This instability is not confined to the borders of the state which has been destroyed. In a masterfully cynical domino effect, for example, the aggression against Iraq has also helped to destabilise Syria. Three quarters of the 2 million Iraqi refugees fleeing the war in their own country have ended up in Syria, thus contributing to the pressure on the Syrian economy which is a major factor in the current unrest there.

The destruction of Libya will also have far reaching destabilising consequences across the region. As the recent United Nations Support Mission in Libya stated, “Libya had accumulated the largest known stockpile of Manpads [surface-to-air missiles] of any non-Manpad-producing country. Although thousands were destroyed during the seven-month Nato operations, there are increasing concerns over the looting and likely proliferation of these portable defence systems, as well as munitions and mines, highlighting the potential risk to local and regional stability.” Furthermore, a large number of volatile African countries are currently experiencing a fragile peace secured by peacekeeping forces in which Libyan troops had been playing a vital role. The withdrawal of these troops may well be damaging to the maintenance of the peace. Similarly, Libya, under Gaddafi’s rule, had contributed generously to African development projects; a policy which will certainly be ended under the NTC – again, with potentially destabilising consequences.

Clearly, a policy of devastation and destabilisation fuels not only the market for private security, but also for arms sales – where, again, the US, Britain and France remain market leaders. And a policy of devastation through blitzkrieg fits in clearly with the big three current long term strategic objectives of Western policy planners:

1. To corner as large a share as possible of the world’s diminishing resources, most importantly oil, gas and water. A government of a devastated country is at the mercy of the occupying country when it comes to contracts. Gaddafi’s Libya, for example, drove a notoriously hard bargain with the Western powers over oil contracts – acting as a key force in the 1973 oil price spike, and still in 2009 being accused by the Financial Times of “resource nationalism”. But the new NTC government in Libya have been hand picked for their subservience to foreign interests – and know that their continued positions depend on their willingness to continue in this role.
2. To prevent the rise of the global South, primarily through the destruction of any independent regional powers (such as Iran, Libya, Syria etc) and the destabilisation, isolation and encirclement of the rising global powers (in particular China and Russia).
3. To overcome or limit the impact of economic collapse by using superior military force to create and conquer new markets through the destruction and rebuilding of infrastructure and the elimination of competition.

This policy of total devastation represents a departure from the Cold War policies of the Western powers. During the Cold War, whilst the major strategic aims remained the same, the methods were different. Independent regional powers in the global South were still destabilised and invaded – and regularly – but generally with the aim of installing ‘compliant dictatorships’. Thus, Lumumba was overthrown and replaced with Mobutu; Sukarno with Suharto; Allende with Pinochet; etc, etc. But the danger with this ‘imposed strongmen’ policy was that strongmen can become defiant. Saddam Hussein illustrated this perfectly. After having been backed for over a decade by the West, he turned on their stooge monarchy in Kuwait. Governments that are in control can easily get out of control. However, for as long as these strongmen were needed for the services provided by their armies (protecting investments, repressing workers struggles, etc), they were supported. The crisis now underway in the economies of the West, however, calls for more drastic measures. And the development of private security and private mercenary companies mean that the armies provided by these strongmen are starting to be deemed no longer necessary.

Congo is a case in point. For three decades, the Western powers had supported Mobutu Sese-Seko’s iron rule of the Congo. But then, in the mid-90s, they allowed him to be overthrown. However, rather than allowing the Congolese resistance forces to take power and establish an effective government, they then sponsored an invasion of the country by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Although these countries have now largely withdrawn their militias, they continue to sponsor proxy militias which have prevented the country seeing a moment’s peace for nearly fifteen years, resulting in the biggest slaughter since the end of the Second World War, with over 5 million killed. One result of this total breakdown of functioning government has been that the Western companies that loot Congo’s resources have been able to do so virtually for free. Despite being the world’s largest supplier of both coltan and copper, amongst many other precious minerals, the total tax revenue on these products in 2006-7 amounted to a puny £32 million. This is surely far less than what even the most useless neo-colonial puppet would have demanded.

This completely changes the meaning of the word ‘government’. In the Congo, the government’s best efforts to stabilise and develop the country have so far proved no match for the destabilisation strategies of the West and its stooges. In Afghanistan, it is well known that the government’s writ has no authority outside of Kabul, if there. But then, that is the point. The role of the governments imposed on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, like the one they are trying to impose on Syria, is not to govern or provide for the population at all – even that most basic of functions, security. It is simply to provide a fig leaf of legitimacy for the occupation of the country and to award business contracts to the colonial powers. They literally have no other function, as far as their sponsors are concerned.

It goes without saying that this policy of devastation is turning the victimised countries into a living hell. After now more than thirty years of Western destabilisation, and ten years of outright occupation, Afghanistan is at or very hear the bottom of nearly every human development indicator available, with life expectancy at 44 years and an under-five mortality rate of over one in four. Mathew White, a history professor who has recently completed a detailed survey of the humanity’s worst atrocities throughout history, concluded that, without doubt, “chaos is far deadlier than tyranny”. It is a truth to which many Iraqis can testify.

The Afghan war is expanding even further, not only with increasing drone attacks in neighboring Pakistani territory but because of U.S. threats to take far greater unilateral military action within Pakistan unless the Islamabad government roots out “extremists” and cracks down harder on cross-border fighters.

Washington’s tone was so threatening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to assure the Pakistani press October 21 that the U.S. did not plan a ground offensive against Pakistan. The next day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai shocked Washington by declaring “God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan…. If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.”

At the same time, Washington has just suffered a spectacular setback in Iraq, where the Obama Administration has been applying extraordinary pressure on the Baghdad government for over a year to permit many thousands of U.S. troops to remain indefinitely after all American forces are supposed to withdraw at the end of this year.

President Obama received the Iraqi government’s rejection from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki October 21, and promptly issued a public statement intended to completely conceal the fact that a long-sought U.S. goal has just been obliterated, causing considerable disruption to U.S. plans. Obama made a virtue of necessity by stressing that “Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.”

This article will first discuss the situation in Afghanistan after 10 years, then take up the Iraq question and what the U.S. may do to compensate for a humiliating and disruptive rebuff.

The United States is well aware it will never win a decisive victory in Afghanistan. At this point, the Obama Administration is anxious to convert the military stalemate into a form of permanent truce, if only the Taliban were willing to accept what amounts to a power sharing deal that would allow Washington to claim the semblance of success after a decade of war.

In addition, President Obama seeks to retain a large post-”withdrawal” military presence throughout the country mainly for these reasons:

• To protect its client regime in Kabul led by Karzai, as well as Washington’s other political and commercial interests in the country, and to maintain a menacing military presence on Iran’s eastern border, especially if U.S. troops cannot now remain in Iraq.

• To retain territory in Central Asia for U.S. and NATO military forces positioned close to what Washington perceives to be its two main (though never publicly identified) enemies — China and Russia — at a time when the American government is increasing its political pressure on both countries. Obama is intent upon transforming NATO from a regional into a global adjunct to Washington’s quest for retaining and extending world hegemony. NATO’s recent victory in Libya is a big advance for U.S. ambitions in Africa, even if the bulk of commercial spoils go to France and England. A permanent NATO presence in Central Asia is a logical next step. In essence, Washington’s geopolitical focus is expanding from the Middle East to Central Asia and Africa in the quest for resources, military expansion and unassailable hegemony, especially from the political and economic challenge of rising nations of the global south, led China.

There has been an element of public deception about withdrawing U.S. “combat troops” from Iraq and Afghanistan dating from the first Obama election campaign in 2007-8. Combat troops belong to combat brigades. In a variant of bait-and-switch trickery, the White House reported that all combat brigades departed Iraq in August 2010. Technically this is true, because those that did not depart were simply renamed “advise and assist brigades.” According to a 2009 Army field manual such brigades are entirely capable, “if necessary,” of shifting from “security force assistance” back to combat duties.

In Afghanistan, after the theoretical pull-out date, it is probable that many ”advise and assist brigades” will remain along with a large complement of elite Joint Special Operations Forces strike teams (SEALs, Green Berets, etc.) and other officially “non-combat” units — from the CIA, drone operators, fighter pilots, government security employees plus “contractor security” personnel, including mercenaries. Thousands of other “non-combat” American soldiers will remain to train the Afghan army.

According to an October 8 Associated Press dispatch, “Senior U.S. officials have spoken of keeping a mix of 10,000 such [special operations-type] forces in Afghanistan, and drawing down to between 20,000 and 30,000 conventional forces to provide logistics and support. But at this point, the figures are as fuzzy as the future strategy.”

Estimates of how long the Pentagon will remain in Afghanistan range from 2017 to 2024 to “indefinitely.”

Obama marked the 10th anniversary with a public statement alleging that  “Thanks to the extraordinary service of these [military] Americans, our citizens are safer and our nation is more secure”— the most recent of the continuous praise of war-fighters and the conduct of these wars of choice from the White House since the 2001 bombing, invasion and occupation.

Just two days earlier a surprising Pew Social Trend poll of post-9/11 veterans was made public casting doubt about such a characterization. Half the vets said the Afghanistan war wasn’t worth fighting in terms of benefits and costs to the U.S. Only 44% thought the Iraq war was worth fighting. One-third opined that both wars were not worth waging. Opposition to the wars has been higher among the U.S. civilian population. But it’s unusual in a non-conscript army for its veterans to emerge with such views about the wars they volunteered to fight.

The U.S. and its NATO allies issued an unusually optimistic assessment of the Afghan war on October 15, but it immediately drew widespread skepticism. According to the New York Times the next day, “Despite a sharp increase in assassinations and a continuing flood of civilian casualties, NATO officials said that they had reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgency as enemy attacks were falling for the first time in years…. [This verdict] runs counter to dimmer appraisals from some Afghan officials and other international agencies, including the United Nations. With the United States preparing to withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of this year and 23,000 more by next October, it raises questions about whether NATO’s claims of success can be sustained.”

Less than two weeks earlier German Gen. Harald Kujat, who planned his country’s military support mission in Afghanistan, declared that “the mission fulfilled the political aim of showing solidarity with the United States. But if you measure progress against the goal of stabilizing a country and a region, then the mission has failed.”

According to Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is a critically important “long term commitment” and “we’re going to be there longer than 2014.” He made the disclosure to the Senate Armed Services Committee September 22, a week before he retired. In a statement October 3, the Pentagon’s new NATO commander in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, declared: “The plan is to win. The plan is to be successful. And so, while some folks might hear that we’re departing in 2014… we’re actually going to be here for a long time.”

Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, departing head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, told the AP October 8:  “We’re moving toward an increased special operations role…,whether it’s counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency.” White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said in mid-September that by 2014  “the U.S. remaining force will be basically an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism.” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta strongly supports President Obama’s call for an “enduring presence” in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Former U.S. Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired last year for his unflattering remarks about Obama Administration officials, said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations October 6 that after a decade of fighting in Afghanistan the U.S. was only “50% of the way” toward attaining its goals. “We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough,” he said. “Most of us — me included — had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.”

Washington evidently had no idea that one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world — a society of 30 million people where the literacy rate is 28% and life expectancy is just 44 years — would fiercely fight to retain national sovereignty. The Bush Administration, which launched the Afghan war a few weeks after 9/11, evidently ignored the fact that the people of Afghanistan ousted every occupying army from that of Alexander the Great and Genghis Kahn to the British Empire and the USSR.

The U.S. spends on average in excess of $2 billion a week in Afghanistan, not to mention the combined spending of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, but the critical needs of the Afghan people in terms of health, education, welfare and social services after a full decade of military involvement by the world’s richest countries remain essentially untended.

For example, 220,000 Afghan children under five — one in five — die every year due to pneumonia, poor nutrition, diarrhea and other preventable diseases, according to the State of the World’s Children report released by the UN Children’s Fund. UNICEF also reports the maternal mortality rate with about 1,600 deaths per every 100,000 live births. Save the Children says this amounts to over 18,000 women a year. It is also reported by the UN that 70% of school-age girls do not attend school for various reasons — conservative parents, lack of security, or fear for their lives. All told, about 92% of the Afghan population does not have access to proper sanitation.

Even after a decade of U.S. combat, the overwhelming majority of the Afghan people still have no clear idea why Washington launched the war. According to the UK’s Daily Mail September 9, a new survey by the International Council on Security and Development showed that 92% of 1,000 Afghan men polled had never even heard of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — the U.S. pretext for the invasion — and did not know why foreign troops were in the country. (Only men were queried in the poll because many more of them are literate, 43.1% compared to 12.6% of women.)

In another survey, conducted by Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation and released October 18, 56% of Afghans view U.S./NATO troops as an occupying force, not allies as Washington prefers. The survey results show that “there appears to be an increasing amount of anxiety and fear rather than hope.”

Perhaps the most positive news about Afghanistan — and it is a thunderously mixed “blessing” — is that the agricultural economy boomed last year. But, reports the October 11 Business Insider, it’s because “rising opium prices have upped the ante in Afghanistan, and farmers have responded by posting a 61% increase in opium production.” Afghani farmers produce 90% of the world’s opium, the main ingredient in heroin. Half-hearted U.S.-NATO eradication efforts failed because insufficient attention was devoted to providing economic and agricultural substitutes for the cultivation of opium.

Another outcome of foreign intervention and U.S. training is the boundless brutality and corruption of the Afghan police toward civilians and especially Taliban “suspects.” Writing in Antiwar.com John Glaser reported:

“Detainees in Afghan prisons are hung from the ceilings by their wrists, severely beaten with cables and wooden sticks, have their toenails torn off, are treated with electric shock, and even have their genitals twisted until they lose consciousness, according to a study released October 10 by the United Nations. The study, which covered 47 facilities sites in 22 provinces, found ‘a compelling pattern and practice of systematic torture and ill-treatment’ during interrogation by U.S.-supported Afghan authorities. Both U.S. and NATO military trainers and counterparts have been working closely with these authorities, consistently supervising the detention facilities and funding their operations.”

In mid-September Human Rights Watch documented that U.S.-supported anti-Taliban militias are responsible for many human rights abuses that are overlooked by their American overseers. At around the same time the American Open Society Foundations revealed that the Obama Administration has tripled the number of night time military raids on civilian homes, which terrorize many families. The report noted that “An estimated 12 to 20 raids now occur per night, resulting in thousands of detentions per year, many of whom are non-combatants.” The U.S. military admits that half the arrests are “mistakes.”

Meanwhile, it was reported in October that in the first nine months this year U.S.-NATO drones conducted nearly 23,000 surveillance missions in the Afghanistan sky. With nearly 85 flights a day, the Obama Administration has almost doubled the daily amount in the last two years. Hundreds of civilians, including nearly 170 children, have been killed in the Afghan-Pakistan border areas from drone attacks. Miniature killer/surveillance drones — small enough to be carried in backpacks— are soon expected to be distributed to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

So far the Afghanistan war has taken the lives of some 1,730 American troops and about a thousand from NATO. There are no reliable figures on the number of Afghan civilians killed since the beginning of the war. The UN’s Assistance Mission to Afghanistan did not start to count such casualties until 2007. According to the Voice of America October 7, “Each year, the civilian death toll has risen, from more than 1,500 dead in 2007 to more than 2,700 in 2010. And in the first half of this year, the UN office reported there were 2,400 civilians killed in war-related incidents.”

At minimum the war has cost American taxpayers about a half-trillion dollars since 2001. The U.S. will continue to spend billions in the country for many years to come and the final cost — including interest on war debts that will be carried for scores more years — will mount to multi-trillions that future generations will have to pay. At present there are 94,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan plus about 37,000 NATO troops. Another 45,000 well paid “contractors” perform military duties, and many are outright mercenaries.

Washington is presently organizing, arming, training and financing hundreds of thousands of Afghan troops and police forces, and is expected to continue paying some $5 billion a year for this purpose at least until 2025.

The U.S. government has articulated various different objectives for its engagement in Afghanistan over the years. Crushing al-Qaeda and defeating the Taliban have been most often mentioned, but as an October 7 article from the Council on Foreign Relations points out: “The main U.S. goals in Afghanistan remain uncertain. They have meandered from marginalizing the Taliban to state-building, to counterinsurgency, to counterterrorism, to — most recently — reconciliation and negotiation with the Taliban. But the peace talks remain nascent and riddled with setbacks. Karzai suspended the talks after the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the government’s chief negotiator, which the Afghan officials blamed on the Pakistan-based Haqqani network. The group denies it.”

There is another incentive for the U.S. to continue fighting in Afghanistan — to eventually convey the impression of victory, an absolute domestic political necessity.

The most compelling reason for the Afghan war is geopolitical, as noted above — finally obtaining a secure military foothold for the U.S. and its NATO accessory in the Central Asian backyards of China and Russia . In addition, a presence in Afghanistan places the U.S. in close military proximity to two volatile nuclear powers backed by the U.S. but not completely under its control by any means (Pakistan, India). Also, this fortuitous geography is flanking the extraordinary oil and natural gas wealth of the Caspian Basin and energy-endowed former Soviet Muslim republics such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

In Iraq, the Obama Administration’s justification for retaining troops after the end of this year was ostensibly to train the Iraqi military and police forces, but there were other reasons:

• Washington seeks to remain in Iraq to keep an eye on Baghdad because it fears a mutually beneficial alliance may develop between Iraq and neighboring Iran, two Shi’ite societies in an occasionally hostile Sunni Muslim world, weakening American hegemony in the strategically important oil-rich Persian Gulf region and ultimately throughout the Middle East/North Africa.

• The U.S. also seeks to safeguard lucrative economic investments in Iraq, and the huge future profits expected by American corporations, especially in the denationalized petroleum sector. Further, Pentagon and CIA forces were stationed — until now, it seems — in close proximity to Iran’s western border, a strategic position to invade or bring about regime change.

Under other conditions, the U.S. may simply have insisted on retaining its troops regardless of Iraqi misgivings, but the Status of Forces compact governing this matter can only be changed legally by mutual agreement between Washington and Baghdad. The concord was arranged in December 2008 between Prime Minister Maliki and President George W. Bush — not Obama, who now takes credit for ending the Iraq war despite attempting to extend the mission of a large number of U.S. troops.

At first Washington wanted to retain more than 30,000 troops plus a huge diplomatic and contractor presence in Iraq after “complete” withdrawal. Maliki — pushed by many of the country’s political factions, including some influenced by Iran’s opposition to long-term U.S. occupation — held out for a much smaller number.

Early in October Baghdad decided that 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops in a training-only capacity was the most that could be accommodated. In addition, the Iraqis in effect declared a degree of independence from Washington by insisting that remaining American soldiers must be kept on military bases and not be granted legal immunity when in the larger society. Washington, which has troops stationed in countries throughout the world, routinely insists upon legal exemption for its foreign legions as a matter of imperial hubris, and would not compromise.

The White House has indicated that an arrangement may yet be worked out to permit some American trainers and experts to remain, perhaps as civilians or contractors. Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a staunch opponent of the U.S. occupation, has suggested Iraq should employ trainers for its armed forces from other countries, but this is impractical for a country using American arms and planes.

Regardless, the White House is increasing the number of State Department employees in Iraq from 8,000 to an almost unbelievable 16,000, mostly stationed at the elephantine new embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone quasi-military enclave, in new American consulates in other cities, and in top “advisory” positions in many of the of the regime’s ministries, particularly the oil ministry. Half the State Department personnel, 8,000 people, will handle “security” duties, joined by some 5,000 new private “security contractors.”

Thus, at minimum the U.S. will possess 13,000 of its own armed “security” forces, and there’s still a possibility Baghdad and Washington will work out an arrangement for adding a limited number of “non-combat” military trainers, openly or by other means.

In his October 21 remarks, Obama sought to transform the total withdrawal he sought to avoid into a simulacrum of triumph for the troops and himself: “The last American soldier will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops…. That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.”

Heads held high, proud of success — for an unjust, illegal war based on lies that is said to have cost over a million Iraqi lives and created four million refugees! It has been estimated that the final U.S. costs of the Iraq war will be over $5 trillion when the debt and interest are finally paid off decades from now.

If President Obama is reelected— even should the Iraq war actually end — he will be coordinating U.S. involvement in wars and occupations in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and now Uganda (where American 100 combat troops have just been inserted). Add to this various expanding drone campaigns, and such adventures as Washington’s support for Israel against the Palestinians and for the Egyptian military regime against popular aspirations for full democracy, followed by the backing of dictatorial regimes in a half-dozen countries, and continual threats against Iran.

Washington’s $1.4 trillion annual military and national security expenditures are a major factor behind America’s monumental national debt and the cutbacks in social services for the people, but aside from White House rhetoric about reducing redundant Pentagon expenditures, overall war/security budgets are expected to increase over the next several years.

The Bush and Obama Administrations have manipulated reality to convince American public opinion that the Iraq and Afghan wars are ending in U.S. successes. Washington fears the resurrection of the “Vietnam Syndrome” that resulted after the April 1975 U.S. defeat in Indochina. The “syndrome” led to a 15-year disinclination by the American people to support aggressive, large-scale U.S. wars against small, poor countries in the developing third world until the January 1991 Gulf War, part one of the two-part Iraq war that continued in March 2003.

According to an article in the October 9 New York Times titled “The Other War Haunting Obama,” author, journalist and Harvard emeritus professor Marvin Kalb wrote: “Ten years after the start of the war in Afghanistan, an odd specter haunts the Obama White House — the specter of Vietnam, a war lost decades before. Like Banquo’s ghost, it hovers over the White House still, an unwelcome memory of where America went wrong, a warning of what may yet go wrong.”

This fear of losing another war to a much smaller adversary — and perhaps suffering the one-term fate of President Lyndon Johnson who presided over the Vietnam debacle — evidently was a factor behind President Obama’s decision to vastly expand the size of the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan and why the White House is now planning a long-term troop presence beyond the original pullout date.

Today’s combat directly touches the lives of only a small minority of Americans — military members and families — and much of the majority remains uninformed or misinformed about many of the causes and effects of the Iraq/Afghan adventures. Obama may thus eventually be able to convey the illusion of military success, which will help pave the way for future imperial violence unless the people of the United States wise up and act en masse to prevent future aggressive wars.

Imagine Britain had been invaded and occupied by armed forces from another region of the world with China, for example, as a significant “partner” in the “coalition”. Imagine tens of thousands of Britons had been killed, and millions had fled as refugees. This is how the Chinese state broadcaster might report the invasion ten years hence:

It’s ten years this week since Chinese forces first became involved in Britain, and more than five years since they assumed responsibility for south-east England. So what’s been achieved in that time?

These were the actual words that presenter Fiona Bruce used on the flagship BBC News at Ten:

It’s ten years this week since British forces first became involved in Afghanistan, and more than five years since they assumed responsibility for Helmand province. So what’s been achieved in that time? (BBC One, October 4, 2011, italics added)

This is BBC ‘impartiality’ in action. These words were a prelude to a piece by Paul Wood, the BBC’s Afghanistan correspondent, that was a model of Pravda-style propaganda which we will examine further in Part 2.

Meanwhile, in a shameful editorial, the Guardian burnished its credentials as a hand-wringing liberal supporter of the war. Readers were told that the war that had been “unavoidable” and that “we’ had then stayed in the country ‘through all the twists and turns imposed by events”, struggling with “the incoherence of our own changing policies, for reasons which have become less and less understandable.” The paper sighed that “an anniversary of this kind has a sobering effect” in that “we hugely overestimated the capacity of our military, diplomatic and intelligence establishments to change other societies.” This “hubris was most evident in the United States, but it was not absent in Britain.”

“The trouble”, claimed the editorial, “was that, once in that obscure corner, whether Iraq or Afghanistan”, coalition forces “were confronted by shrewd and ruthless opponents.” Historically, invaders do tend to be resisted by those “shrewd and ruthless” people in “obscure corners” whose land is being occupied, and whose lives, livelihoods and resources are at risk.

“Some Afghans”, however, “were indeed ‘like us’, recognisably middle class or western in their beliefs and aspirations, and the effect of our intervention may well have been to increase that number.”

The white man’s burden is surely lightened by that happy realisation. Especially because some of these people ‘like us’ – yes, the Guardian really did say that – “may have a more important role to play” in the future. Thus reassured, “we can hope we have planted seed that will bear fruit later.”

The tragedy of the Afghanistan war, asserted the Guardian, is that “we” stumbled into an age-old conflict not of our making:

The problem is not that Afghanistan is unconquerable, as some claim. It is that we, like the Russians before us, joined an ongoing conflict between different ethnicities, between modernisers and traditionalists, between social classes, and between newer and older forms of religiosity.

Now, “after 10 years of muddle and mayhem”, our “minimal common interest” – indeed, “our remaining duty”  – must be to aim at “a power-sharing settlement” involving the Taliban.

There was no hint from this supposed vanguard of critical and liberal journalism that “our remaining duty” should involve an immediate withdrawal of our forces. No hint that this country should make some attempt at restitution for the decade of “muddle and mayhem” that “we” have inflicted on yet more victims of the West’s grasping and destructive foreign policy.

The Independent’s editorial derived from a similarly tortured perspective of perplexed liberalism: “questions about what has been achieved yield far from encouraging answers” and “what little progress there has been is looking increasingly vulnerable.”

However, the editors added, “it would be a mistake to overlook the real advances that have been made”, such as “democratic elections, a written constitution and a degree of social freedom”. The paper also appealed yet again to “the issue of women’s rights – or the lack of them” as “one of the most convincing” supposed “justifications for international involvement in Afghanistan.”

There was token acknowledgement in the editorial of “Afghanistan’s vast natural resources” which, we are to believe,”could still be a source of funding and stability.” But there was only silence about the realpolitik underlying Western foreign policy; namely, that control of these huge resources was, in fact, ‘one of the most convincing’ reasons for the invasion-occupation of Afghanistan.

Instead, the editorial makes a benign-sounding but pathetic plea for the “international community” to “help realise the potential.” But for whose benefit? The corporate media would have us believe that the interests of the Afghan people would be paramount, and that they would be allowed to prosper. For the truth, we have to look elsewhere.

Turning Afghanistan Into A ‘Hub’ And ‘Conduit’ For US Interests

For example, energy analysts Shukria Dellawar and Antonia Juhasz note in a recent article in Foreign Policy in Focus, that:

Unknown to most Afghans, in January 2009 the government implemented a new Hydrocarbon Law that transforms its oil and natural gas sectors from fully state-owned to all but fully privatized.

In April 2011, the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines launched the first of what is expected to be a number of tenders for the country’s oil and gas resources. As in Iraq, the contracts include production-sharing agreements that have been strongly rejected by other major oil-producing countries in the Middle East. Why have such agreements been rejected? Because they heavily favour Western oil corporations, granting extremely long-term contracts (45 years or more in the case of Afghanistan) and greater control, ownership, and profits to the companies compared to the far more common contracts that are used for the bulk – around 88 per cent – of the world’s oil.

Dellawar and Juhasz warn that:

The Afghanistan contracts, moreover, would not require foreign companies to invest earnings in the Afghan economy, partner with Afghan companies, or share new technologies.

Crucially, Afghanistan is not only important as an energy producer, but also as a potential “energy conveyer”. Negotiations are proceeding rapidly for the vital Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline which would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. The pipeline has long been an important objective of Western governments and fossil fuel corporations that have had their sights on the energy-rich countries of the Caspian region. Indeed, the Bush administration made completion of the TAPI a core part of its Afghanistan war strategy.

As then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said in 2007:

One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south.

Dellawar and Juhasz conclude:

If the pipeline is constructed and U.S. companies begin producing in Afghanistan, its importance to the West will only intensify, as will the desire to keep Afghanistan ‘open for business’. If Afghanistan does not have the internal capacity to provide this ‘openness’ itself, the United States and other foreign governments may feel forced to do so on its behalf – utilizing their own troops.

As ever, then, Western states and corporations are striving relentlessly to maintain control of resources and global markets, and to maximise profits for themselves, with as much force and skullduggery as they can muster. And Western media will provide intellectual cover by selling the resultant theft, slaughter and misery as “stabilisation”, “‘investment” and “the protection of human rights”.

As former New York Times journalist Chris Hedges writes:

The liberal class is permitted to decry the worst excesses of power and champion basic human rights while at the same time endowing systems of power with a morality and virtue it does not possess. Liberals posit themselves as the conscience of the nation. They permit us, through their appeal to public virtues and the public good, to see ourselves and our state as fundamentally good.

Supine Reporting In Service To The State

Regular readers may recall an alert in 2007 which compared Soviet and recent US/UK reporting on Afghanistan. The alert was a collaboration with Nikolai Lanine, who had fought with the Soviet Army during its 1979-1989 occupation of Afghanistan. He had subsequently spent several years trawling through Soviet-era newspaper archives comparing the propaganda of that time with modern Western media performance.

As we pointed out then, if the claims of  impartiality and balance in modern professional journalism are to be believed, the similarities should have been few and far between. After all, Soviet-era media such as Pravda – meaning, ironically, “The Truth” – are a byword for state-controlled mendacity in the West. Instead, as the alert showed, the similarities were painfully precise.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was an unalloyed act of aggression, an attempt to crush a perceived threat to Soviet security and power. But it was portrayed by the Soviet government, and compliant Soviet media such as Pravda and Izvestia, as an act of humanitarian intervention “to prevent the establishment of… a terrorist regime and to protect the Afghan people from genocide”, and also to provide “aid in stabilising the situation and the repulsion of possible external aggression.”  Once the “terrorists” had been defeated by the Soviet army, Afghanistan would be left to become “a stable, friendly country”. Soviet “involvement” was presented as being in the best interests of the Afghan people: the focus of the Soviet government’s benevolent concern. ¹

The parallels to the media’s coverage of Western “involvement” in Afghanistan today are obvious.

Western media support for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, in the wake of the al-Qaeda attacks of 11 September, was steadfast from the beginning. Ten years ago, as the bombs and missiles rained down, an Independent editorial described the “war”  — in reality, a massive attack on aThird World Country by the planet’s most powerful military force –  as “ultimately inevitable”. Moreover, “Washington had the right – indeed, the duty – to respond” and ”there was no question that the United States was justified in using armed force.” Piling up the insults to readers’ intelligence, the paper said that it was ”to the immense – and unexpected – credit of America that it approached the business of retaliation with such method, caution and responsibility.”

In fact, the US launched its brutal assault despite dire warnings by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) that more than seven million people were facing a crisis that could lead to widespread starvation if military action were initiated. In September 2001, the US government had demanded that Pakistan stop convoys of food on which much of the already starving Afghan population depended. The FAO warned of a likely ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ unless aid convoys were immediately resumed and the threat of military action terminated. Compare the grim reality with the Independent’s claim of  “caution and responsibility” underpinning the US “business of retaliation”.

Three months into the war, a rare report in the Guardian highlighted the desperation of Afghan people:

The village of Bonavash is slowly starving. Besieged by the Taliban and crushed by years of drought, people in this remote mountain settlement have resorted to eating bread made from grass and traces of barley flour. Babies whose mothers’ milk has dried up are fed grass porridge. The toothless elderly crush grass into a near powder. Many have died. More are sick. Nearly everyone has diarrhoea or a hacking cough. When the children’s pain becomes unbearable, their mothers tie rags around their stomachs to try to alleviate the pressure. “We are waiting to die. If food does not come, if the situation does not change, we will eat it [grass] … until we die,” said Ghalam Raza, 42, a man with a hacking cough, pain in his stomach and bleeding bowels.

But on the eve of war, the Guardian had told its readers:

It needs to be said as clearly and as unemotively as possible at the outset that the United States was entitled to launch a military response.

The invasion was “an act of legitimate self defence to protect our nations from further attack”.

The paper offered token words of hope that Bush and Blair’s promises of food, medicine and other supplies to Afghan civilians would be honoured. Blair tried to sweet-talk the Afghans by saying that, in the past, the West had simply “walked away” from its people. But not now:

This time round we must not repeat that mistake. This conflict will not be the end… once the conflict is over we’ve then got to sit down with people in Afghanistan and try and work out a stable and coherent way for the future… We are not going to walk away again.

This is the standard, patronising rhetoric beloved of all triumphant invaders.

As defenceless Afghan civilians were being slaughtered, the Guardian editors asserted that “nothing in the world is more important right now than that [Bush and Blair] succeed”.

The Guardian even claimed that Afghanistan had brought the storm of destruction upon their own heads:

Offered the opportunity to hand over Bin Laden and to act against his networks, and pressured to do so even by those closest to them, including Pakistan, the Afghan regime has refused. There is no question, therefore, but that a monstrous injustice against America remains unassauged [sic].

In fact, even before 11 September 2001, the Taliban had offered to present bin Laden for trial following attacks on US targets in the 1990s, “but the US government showed no interest”.

Following the 11 September atrocities, the US refused to present evidence of bin Laden’s culpability to the Taliban “presumably because”, as Noam Chomsky said in an interview at the time, “that would have suggested some limit on the imperial prerogative to act without any authority”.

How genuine the Taliban offer was may never be known. But, as Chomsky points out, the brutal US stance could be put succinctly as follows:

Hand him [bin Laden] over, or else; and if you do, we may leave you alone (overthrowing the Taliban regime was a late afterthought). No government, surely not the U.S., would ever accept such a demand, unless compelled to by the threat of extreme violence. There was, then, no alternative to such [a] threat, if that was the demand, as it was. But that offers no justification for the threat of violence, or its implementation.

As for the editorial cheerleaders, press stenographers and armchair-warrior commentators who abased themselves before Western state power, they would do well to heed the cogent summary offered by WikiLeaks:

If a journalist hides the truth they are not journalists; they are partners in the crime they are hiding.

•  Part 2 will follow shortly…

1. Lyahovsky, A.A., & Zabrodin, V.M., 1991, Taini Afganskoi Voini [Secrets of the Afghan War]. Moscow: Planeta