Understanding Empire: Hierarchy, Networks and Clients: The Case OF Somalia

[Nur]

The Hands of Esau

By Uri Avnery

 

15/01/08 "ICH" -- - Which of the two men is the leader of the greatest power on earth and which is the boss of a small client state?

 

A visitor from another planet, attending the press conference in Jerusalem, would find it hard not to answer: Olmert is the president of the great power, Bush is his vassal.

 

Olmert is taller. He talked endlessly, while Bush listened patiently. While Olmert anointed Bush with flattery that would have made a Byzantine emperor blush, it was quite clear that it is Olmert who decides policy, while Bush humbly accepts the Israeli diktat. And Bush's flattery of Olmert exceeded even Olmert's flattery of Bush.

 

Both, we learned, are "courageous". Both are "determined". Both have a "vision". The word "vision", once reserved for prophets, starred in every second sentence. (Bush could not know that in Israel, "vision" has long become a jocular appellation for highfaluting speeches, usually in combination with the word "Zionism".)

 

The President and the Prime Minister have something else in common: not a word of what they said at the press conference had any connection with the truth.

 

One OF the most moving dramas in the Bible tells about our old blind forefather, Isaac, who wanted to bless his eldest son, Esau, a reddish and hairy hunter. But the second son, the homebody (or rather tent-body) Jacob, exploited the absence of his brother and went to his father in order to steal the blessing. He wore Esau's clothes and covered his arms with hairy goat skins. The ruse nearly failed, when the father felt the arms of Jacob and his suspicion was aroused.

 

That's when he uttered the famous words: "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." (Genesis, 27: 22).

 

Yet Jacob, the impostor, did receive the blessing and became the father of the nation which was named after him (he was also called Israel). It seems that Ehud Olmert is a true successor: there is no connection between his voice and his hands.

 

Anyone who listens to him - not just at the press conference, but also on every other occasion - hears words of peace and reason: The Palestinians must have a state of their own. The "vision" must be realized while Bush is president, because Israel has never had and never will have a truer friend. The settlement outposts must be removed, as promised by us again and again. The settlements must be frozen. Etc. etc.

 

That is the voice of Jacob. But the hands, well, they are the hands of Esau.

 

* * *

BEFORE ANNAPOLIS, during Annapolis and after Annapolis, nothing at all was done to promote the Two-State Solution. The negotiations were about to begin - any moment now - a year ago, and now they are again about to begin - any moment now. Yes, the "core issues" - borders, Jerusalem, refugees - will be addressed. Sure. Any moment now.

 

But in the meantime, the hands of Esau are working feverishly. All over the occupied territories, the settlements are being enlarged. The existing outposts remain untouched, new ones spring up from time to time. Around them, a well choreographed dance has evolved, a kind of formal ballet executed by the settlers and the army. The settlers set up a new outpost, the army removes it, the settlers return and set it up again, the army dismantles, and so forth.

 

In the meantime the outpost gets bigger and bigger. The government connects it to the electricity and water systems and builds a road. And the army, of course, protects it day and night. We cannot leave good Jews at the mercy of the evil Palestinian terrorists, can we?

 

Bush knows all this and still continues to blabber that "the illegal outposts must be removed". And so it continues: the voice is Jacob's voice, the hands are the hands of Esau.

 

But one cannot fool all of the people all of the time, to quote another American President who was slightly more intelligent than the present incumbent.

 

And so, after Olmert and Bush repeated the mantra about removing the outposts and freezing the settlements, one of the journalists popped an innocent question: How does this fit together with the announcement about the building of a huge new housing project at Har Homa?

 

If anyone thought that this would embarrass Olmert, he was sadly mistaken. Olmert just cannot be embarrassed. He simply answered that this promise does not apply to Jerusalem, nor to the "Jewish population centers" beyond the Green Line.

 

"Jerusalem" - since the time of Levy Eshkol - is not only the Old City and the Holy Basin. It is the huge tract of land annexed to Israel after the Six-Day War, from the approaches to Bethlehem to the outskirts of Ramallah. This area includes the hill that was once forested and called Jebel Abu-Ghneim, now the site of the big and ugly Har Homa settlement. And the "population centers" are the big settlement blocs in the occupied Palestinian territories, which President Bush so generously presented to Ariel Sharon.

 

This means that almost all the extensive building activities that are now going on beyond the Green Line are not covered by the Israeli undertaking to freeze the settlements. And while Olmert publicly announced this, President Bush was standing at his side, smiling foolishly and painting on another layer of compliments.

 

The following day, Bush visited Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and told the shocked Palestinians that the innumerable Israeli roadblocks in the West Bank, which turn the life of the Palestinians into hell, are necessary for the protection of Israel and must remain where they are - until after the establishment of the hoped-for democratic Palestinian state.

 

Condoleezza Rice was quick to remind him in private that this was not very wise, since he was about to visit half a dozen Arab countries. So Bush hastened to call another press conference in Jerusalem, talking about the "core issues": there would be a "contiguous" Palestinian state, but the 1949 borders (the Green Line) would not be restored. He would not speak about Jerusalem. Also, the refugee problem would be settled by an international fund - meaning that none at all would be allowed to return.

 

Altogether, much less than Bill Clinton's 2000 "parameters", and less than most Israelis are already prepared to accept. It amounts to 110% support for the official Israeli government line.

 

After that, Bush had dinner with Israeli cabinet ministers. He cordially shook the hand of Minister Rafael Eitan, the former spymaster who controlled the Israeli spy in Washington, Jonathan Pollard, whom Bush refuses to pardon. (Eitan would be arrested the moment he set foot on American soil.) He spoke cordially with the ultra-rightist Minister Avigdor Liberman, urging him to support Olmert. Throughout the dinner, he talked and talked, until Condi sent him a discreet note suggesting that he shut up. Bush, in high spirits, read the note out loud.

 

* * *

I HAVE mentioned more than once the British World War II poster which was pasted up on the walls in Palestine: "Is this trip really necessary?"

 

That is again the question now: Is this trip of Bush's really necessary?

 

The answer is: Of course. Necessary for Bush. Necessary for Olmert. Necessary for Abbas, too.

 

For Bush, because he is a lame duck, in the last year of his term, and therefore almost paralyzed. In the United States he is rapidly becoming irrelevant. His touted Middle East tour has been drowned out by the primary elections mayhem, which produces a new drama almost every day. While Hillary wrestles with Obama and the glib Bill competes with an impressive black grandma, who cares where the worst president in American history is traipsing around?

 

Olmert is well aware of the situation. When he declares that the last year of the term of his noble friend must be used, what he really means to say is: he cannot exert any pressure on us, he cannot even "nudge" us, as he promises. There is no need to remove even one single outpost for him. So let us squeeze the last drop of juice out of his presidency, before he is thrown onto the trash pile of history.

 

But Olmert needs the presence of Bush at his side, because his position is not much more secure than Bush's. Bush is bankrupt in a big way, after starting one of the most pointless and unsuccessful wars in US history. That is true for Olmert in a small way. He is bankrupt too, and he also started a pointless, failed war.

 

In two weeks time, the Winograd Commission will publish its final report on Lebanon War II, and everyone expects it to come down on Olmert like a 16 ton weight. He may survive, if only because there is now no credible substitute. But he needs all the help he can get - and what better help than the "Leader of the Free World" gazing at him with liquid eyes?

 

It's the old story about the lame and the blind.

 

* * *

THIS WAS NOT Bush's last presidential visit to Israel. He has already promised to return on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state, which falls this year (in accordance with the Hebrew calendar) on May 8. What else can a president do in his last months in office, except star in ceremonies with kings, presidents and prime ministers?

 

Perhaps he had intended to finish with a big bang, a historic climax that would overshadow even his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, such as a grand attack on Iran. But it seems that the US intelligence community, in a patriotic act that makes up for some of its earlier sins, has prevented this by publishing its sensational report.

 

True, this week something happened that put on a warning light. Some small Iranian boats were reported to have made a provocative gesture against the powerful American warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

 

That takes us right back to 1964 and to what has become known as the "Gulf of Tonkin incident". President Lyndon Johnson announced that Vietnamese vessels had attacked American warships. That was a lie, but it was enough for Congress to empower the president to widen the war that killed millions of people (and buried Johnson's career).

 

But this time the red light went out quickly. The US Congress is not what it was, it seems that the Americans have no stomach for another war, the historical parallel was too obvious. Bush has been left without an option for war. He has been left with nothing.

 

Apart from Olmert's flattery, of course.

 

Uri Avnery is an Israeli peace activist who has advocated the setting up of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He served three terms in the Israeli parliament (Knesset), and is the founder of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc)

[Nur]

Swan Song for NATO

 

The Real Cost Of Defeat In Forgettistan

 

By Mike Whitney

 

"It is our right to defend our country. We are not a threat to other countries. But we have to use our rights when our country is occupied by foreign forces." - Mullah Omar, Taliban leader

 

13/02/08 "ICH" -- - It was supposed to be "the good war"; a war against terror; a war of liberation. It was intended to fix the eyes of the world on America's state of the art weaponry, its crack troops and its overwhelming firepower. It was supposed to demonstrate—once and for all-- that the world's only superpower could no longer be beaten or resisted; that Washington could deploy its troops anywhere in the world and crush its adversaries at will.

 

Then everything went sideways. The war veered from the Pentagon's script. The Taliban retreated, waited, regrouped and retaliated. They enlisted support from the Pashtuns and the tribal leaders who could see that America would never honor its commitments; that order would never be restored. Operation Enduring Freedom has brought neither peace nor prosperity to Afghanistan; just occupation. Seven years have passed and the country is still ruled by warlords and drug-merchants. Nothing has gotten better. The country is in shambles and the government is a fraud. The humiliation of foreign occupation persists while the killing goes on with no end in sight.

 

War is not foreign policy. It is slaughter. Seven years later; it's still slaughter. The Taliban have taken over more than half of Afghanistan. They have conducted military operations in the capital of Kabul. They're dug in at Logar, Wardak and Ghazni and control vast swathes of territory in Zabul, Helmand, Urzgan and Kandahar. Now they are getting ready to step-up operations and mount a Spring offensive. That means the hostilities will progressively intensify.

 

The Taliban's approach is methodical and deliberate. They've shown they can survive the harshest conditions and still achieve tactical victories over a better-equipped enemy. They are highly-motivated and believe their cause is just. After all, they're not fighting to occupy a foreign nation; they're fighting to defend their own country. That strengthens their resolve and keeps morale high. When NATO and American troops leave Afghanistan; the Taliban will remain, just as they did when the Russians left 20 years ago. No difference. The US occupation will just be another grim footnote in the country's tragic history.

 

The United States has gained nothing from its invasion of Afghanistan. US troops do not control even a square inch of Afghan soil. The moment a soldier lifts his boot-heel; that ground is returned to the native people. That won't change either. General Dan McNeill said recently that "if proper US military counterinsurgency doctrine were followed; the US would need 400,000 troops to defeat Pashtun tribal resistance in Afghanistan." Currently, the US and NATO have only 66,000 troops on the ground and the allies are refusing to send more. On a purely logistical level; victory is impossible.

 

The battle for hearts and minds has been lost, too. A statement from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) sums it up like this:

"The reinstatement of the Northern Alliance to power crushed the hopes of our people for freedom and prosperity and proved that, for the Bush administration, defeating terrorism has no meaning at all....The US doesn’t want to defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse to stay in Afghanistan and achieve their economic and strategic goals in the region....After seven years, there is no peace, human rights, democracy or reconstruction in Afghanistan. The destitution and suffering of our people is increasing everyday. ...We believe that if the troops leave Afghanistan, our people will become more free and come out of their current puzzlement and doubts...Afghanistan’s freedom can only be achieved by Afghan people themselves. Relying on one enemy to defeat another is a wrong policy which has just tightened the grip of the Northern Alliance and their masters on the neck of our nation." (RAWA www.rawa.org)

 

Gradually, the Allies are beginning to see that Bush's war cannot be won and that continuing the fighting is counterproductive. There is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and the political objectives are getting murkier all the time. The lack of direction just adds to the growing frustration.

Recently Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tried to bully the allies into sending more combat troops to fight in the South, but he met with stiff resistance . He said:

"I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security," Gates said. "We must not become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not. Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would in effect destroy the alliance."

 

But public support for the war is waning in Europe. This is America's war, not theirs. Europeans don't need to occupy foreign nations to meet their energy needs. Their economies are thriving and they can simply pay for their fuel on the open market. Only America wants the war. It's all part of a crazy geopolitical "grand strategy" to project US power into the region to control its resources. So far, there's no indication that the plan will succeed.

Germany has the third biggest economy in the world. Over the last few years, they have strengthened ties with Russia and made agreements that will satisfy their long-term energy needs. But German involvement in Afghanistan has put a strain on relations with Moscow. Putin thinks that the US is using the war to put down roots in Central Asia so it can control pipeline-routes from the Caspian Basin while surrounding Russia and China with military bases. Putin is right. Naturally, he'd like to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel to withdraw from Afghanistan which would strike a blow against the US-led alliance. And, that is the way it will probably turn out, too.

 

Eventually, German leaders will see that its foolish to tweak the nose of the people who provide them with energy (Russia) just to support Washington's adventures. When Germany withdraws from Afghanistan; NATO will disband, new coalitions will form, and the transatlantic alliance fall apart. The cracks are already visible.

President Bush has said that the war in Afghanistan must continue or the country will become a haven for drugs, terrorism and organized crime. He says we are fighting a “poisonous ideology of Islamic extremism which threatens to become a global movement”.

 

But the Taliban and Pashtun tribesmen see it differently. They see the conflict as an imperial war of aggression which has only added to the suffering of their people. A recent report by the United Nations Human Development Fund appears to support this view. It shows that Afghanistan has fallen in every category. The average life expectancy has gone down, malnutrition has risen, literacy has dropped, and more than half the population is living below the poverty-line. Hundreds of thousands of people have been internally displaced by the war. The occupation has created plenty of misery, but no democracy. The war was a failure.

Afghanistan now produces 90% of the world's opium; more than any other country. The booming drug trade is the direct corollary of the US invasion. No one even denies this. Bush has created the world's largest narco-colony. Is that success?

 

Presently, there are no plans to improve the lives of ordinary Afghanis or to remove the warlords. Reconstruction is at a standstill. If the US stays in Afghanistan, the situation 10 years from now will be the same as it is today, only more people will have needlessly died. Most Afghanis now understand that the promise of democracy was a lie. The only thing the occupation has brought is more grinding poverty and random violence.

 

There's no back-up plan for Afghanistan. In fact, there is no plan at all. The administration thought the Taliban would see America's high-tech, laser-guided weaponry and run for the hills. They did. Now they're back. And now we are embroiled in an “unwinnable” war with a tenacious enemy that grows stronger and more resolute by the day.

 

Eventually, the Europeans will see the futility of the war and leave. And that will be the end of NATO.

[Nur]

Separatism and Empire Building in the 21st Century

 

By Prof. James Petras

13/06/08 "Global Research" -- - Throughout modern imperial history, ‘Divide and Conquer’ has been the essential ingredient in allowing relatively small and resource-poor European countries to conquer nations vastly larger in size and populations and richer in natural resources. It is said that for every British officer in India , there were fifty Sikhs, Gurkhas, Muslims and Hindus in the British Colonial Army. The European conquest of Africa and Asia was directed by white officers, fought by black, brown and yellow soldiers so that white capital could exploit colored workers and peasants. Regional, ethnic, religious, clan, tribal, community, village and other differences were politicized and exploited allowing imperial armies to conquer warring peoples. In recent decades, the US empire builders have become the grand masters of ‘divide and conquer’ strategies throughout the world. By the 1970’s, the CIA made a turn from promoting the dubious virtues of capitalism and democracy, to linking up with, financing and directing, religious, ethnic and regional elites against national regimes, independent or hostile to US world empire building.

 

The key to US military empire building follows two principles: direct military invasions and fomenting separatist movements, which can lead to military confrontation.

 

Twenty-first century empire building has seen the extended practice of both principles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, China (Tibet), Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Somalia, Sudan, Burma and Palestine – any country in which the US cannot secure a stable client regime, it resorts to financing and promoting separatist organizations and leaders using ethnic, religious and regional pretexts.

 

Consistent with traditional empire building principles, Washington only supports separatists in countries that refuse to submit to imperial domination and opposes separatists who resist the empire and its allies. In other words, imperial ideologues are neither ‘hypocrites’ nor resort to ‘double standards’ (as they are accused by liberal critics) – they publicly uphold the ‘Empire first’ principle as their defining criteria for evaluating separatist movements and granting or denying support. In contrast, many seemingly progressive critics of empire make universal statements in favor of the ‘right to self-determination’ and even extend it to the most rancid, reactionary, imperial-sponsored ‘separatist groups’ with catastrophic results. Independent nations and their people, who oppose US-backed separatists, are bombed to oblivion and charged with ‘war crimes’. People, who oppose the separatists and who reside in the ‘new state’, are killed or driven into exile. The ‘liberated people’ suffer from the tyranny and impoverishment induced by the US-backed separatists and many are forced to immigrate to other countries for economic survival.

 

Few if any of the progressive critics of the USSR and supporters of the separatist republics have ever publicly expressed second thoughts, let alone engaged in self-critical reflections, even in the face of decades long socio-economic and political catastrophes in the secessionist states. Yet it was and is the case that these self-same progressives today, who continue to preach high moral principles to those who question and reject some separatist movements because they originate and grow out of efforts to extend the US empire.

 

Washington ’s success in co-opting so-called progressive liberals in support of separatist movements soon to be new imperial clients in recent decades is long and the consequences for human rights are ugly.

 

Most European and US progressives supported the following:

 

1. US-backed Bosnian fundamentalists, Croatian neo-fascists and Kosova-Albanian terrorists, leading to ethnic cleansing and the conversion of their once sovereign states into US military bases, client regimes and economic basket cases – totally destroying the multinational Yugoslavian welfare state.

 

2. The US funded and armed overseas Afghan Islamic fundamentalists who destroyed a secular, reformist, gender-equal Afghan regime, carrying out vast anti-feudal campaigns involving both men and women, a comprehensive agrarian reform and constructing extensive health and educational programs. As a result of US-Islamic tribal military successes, millions were killed, displaced and dispossessed and fanatical medieval anti-Communist tribal warlords destroyed the unity of the country.

 

3. The US invasion destroyed Iraq ’s modern, secular, nationalist state and advanced socio-economic system. During the occupation, US backing of rival religious, tribal, clan and ethnic separatist movements and regimes led to the expulsion of over 90% of its modern scientific and professional class and the killing of over 1 million Iraqis…all in the name of ousting a repressive regime and above all in destroying a state opposed to Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

 

Clearly US military intervention promotes separatism as a means of establishing a regional ‘base of support’. Separatism facilitates setting up a minority puppet regime and works to counter neighboring countries opposed to the depredations of empire. In the case of Iraq , US-backed Kurdish separatism preceded the imperial campaign to isolate an adversary, create international coalitions to pressure and weaken the central government. Washington highlights regime atrocities as human rights cases to feed global propaganda campaigns. More recently this is evident in the US-financed ‘Tibetan’ theocratic protests at China .

 

Separatists are backed as potential terrorist shock troops in attacking strategic economic sectors and providing real or fabricated ‘intelligence’ as is the case in Iran among the Kurds and other ethnic minority groups.

 

Why Separatism?

 

Empire builders do not always resort to separatist groups, especially when they have clients at the national levels in control of the state. It is only when their power is limited to groups, territorially or ethnically concentrated, that the intelligence operatives resort to and promote ‘separatist’ movements. US backed separatist movements follow a step-by-step process, beginning with calls for ‘greater autonomy’ and ‘decentralization’, essentially tactical moves to gain a local political power base, accumulate economic revenues, repress anti-separatist groups and local ethnic/religious, political minorities with ties to the central government (as in the oppression of the Christian communities in northern Iraq repressed by the Kurdish separatists for their long ties with the Central Baath Party or the Roma of Kosova expelled and killed by the Kosova Albanians because of their support of the Yugoslav federal system). The attempt to forcibly usurp local resources and the ousting of local allies of the central government results in confrontations and conflict with the legitimate power of the central government. It is at this point that external (imperial) support is crucial in mobilizing the mass media to denounce repression of ‘peaceful national movements’ merely ‘exercising their right to self-determination’. Once the imperial mass media propaganda machine touches the noble rhetoric of ‘self-determination’ and ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ‘home rule’, the great majority of US and European funded NGO’s jump on board, selectively attacking the government’s effort to maintain a stable unified nation-state. In the name of ‘diversity’ and a ‘pluri-ethnic state’, the Western-bankrolled NGO’s provide a moralist ideological cover to the pro-imperialist separatists. When the separatists succeed and murder and ethnically cleanse the ethnic and religious minorities linked to the former central state, the NGO’s are remarkably silent or even complicit in justifying the massacres as ‘understandable over-reaction to previous repression’. The propaganda machine of the West, even gloats over the separatist state expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities – as in the case of the Serbs and Roma from Kosova and the Krijina region of Croatia…with headlines blasting – “Serbs on the Run: Serves Them Right!’ followed by photos of NATO troops overseeing the ‘transfer’ of destitute families from their ancestral villages and towns to squalid camps in a bombed out Serbia. And the triumphant Western politicians mouthing pieties at the massacres of Serb civilians by the KLA, as when former German Foreign Minister "Joschka" Fischer (Green Party) mourned, “I understand your (the KLA’s) pain, but you shouldn’t throw grenades at (ethnic Serb) school children.”

 

The shift from ‘autonomy’ within a federal state to an ‘independent state’ is based on the aid channeled and administered by the imperial state to the ‘autonomous region’, thus strengthening its ‘de facto’ existence as a separate state. This has clearly occurred in the Kurdish run northern Iraq ‘no fly zone’ and now ‘autonomous region’ from 1991 to the present.

 

The same principle of self-determination demanded by the US and its separatist client is denied to ‘minorities’ within the realm. Instead, the US propaganda media refer to them as ‘agents’ or ‘trojan horses’ of the central government.

 

Strengthened by imperial ‘foreign aid’, and business links with US and EU MNCs, backed by local para-military and quasi-military police forces (as well as organized criminal gangs), the autonomous regime declares its ‘independence’. Shortly thereafter it is recognized by its imperial patrons. After ‘independence’, the separatist regime grants territorial concessions and building sites for US military bases. Investment privileges are granted to the imperial patron, severely compromising ‘national’ sovereignty.

 

The army of local and international NGO’s rarely raise any objections to this process of incorporating the separatist entity into the empire, even when the ‘liberated’ people object. In most cases the degree of ‘local governance’ and freedom of action of the ‘independent’ regime is less than it was when it was an autonomous or federal region in the previous unified nationalist state.

 

Not infrequently ‘separatist’ regimes are part of irredentist movements linked to counterparts in other states. When cross national irredentist movements challenge neighboring states which are also targets of the US empire builders, they serve as launching pads for US low intensity military assaults and Special Forces terrorist activities.

 

For example, almost all of the Kurdish separatist organizations draw a map of ‘Greater Kurdistan’ which covers a third of Southeastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, a quarter of Iran, parts of Syria and wherever else they can find a Kurdish enclave. US commandos operate along side Kurdish separatists terrorizing Iranian villages (in the name of self-determination; Kurds with powerful US military backing have seized and govern Northern Iraq and provide mercenary Peshmerga troops to massacre Iraqi Arab civilian in cities and towns resisting the US occupation in Central, Western and Southern regions. They have engaged in the forced displacement of non-Kurds (including Arabs, Chaldean Christians, Turkman and others) from so-called Iraqi Kurdistan and the confiscation of their homes, businesses and farms. US-backed Kurdish separatists have created conflicts with the neighboring Turkish government, as Washington tries to retain its Kurdish clients for their utility in Iraq , Iran and Syria without alienating its strategic NATO client, Turkey . Nevertheless Turkish-Kurdish separatist activists in the PKK have lauded the US for, what they term, ‘progressive colonialism’ in effectively dismembering Iraq and forming the basis for a Kurdish state.

 

The US decision to collaborate with the Turkish military, or at least tolerate its military attacks on certain sectors of the Iraq-based Kurdish separatists, the PKK, is part of its global policy of prioritizing strategic imperial alliances and allies over and against any separatist movement which threatens them. Hence, while the US supports the Kosova separatists against Serbia , it opposes the separatists in Abkhazia fighting against its client in the Republic of Georgia . While the US supported Chechen separatist against the Moscow government, it opposes Basque and Catalan separatists in their struggle against Washington ’s NATO ally, Spain . While Washington has been bankrolling the Bolivian separatists headed by the oligarchs of Santa Cruz against the central government in La Paz , it supports the Chilean government’s repression of the Mapuche Indian claims to land and resources in south-central Chile .

 

Clearly ‘self-determination’ and ‘independence’ are not the universal defining principle in US foreign policy, nor has it ever been, as witness the US wars against Indian nations, secessionist southern slaveholders and yearly invasions of independent Latin American, Asian and African states. What guides US policy is the question of whether a separatist movement, its leaders and program furthers empire building or not? The inverse question however is infrequently raised by so-called progressives, leftists or self-described anti-imperialists: Does the separatist or independence movement weaken the empire and strengthen anti-imperialist forces or not? If we accept that the over-riding issue is defeating the multi-million killing machine called US imperialism, then it is legitimate to evaluate and support, as well as reject, some independence movements and not others. There is nothing ‘hypocritical’ or ‘inconvenient’ in raising higher principles in making these political choices. Clearly Hitler justified the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the name of defending Sudetenland separatists; just like a series of US Presidents have justified the partition of Iraq in the name of defending the Kurds, or Sunnis or Shia or whatever tribal leaders lend themselves to US empire building.

 

What defines anti-imperialist politics is not abstract principles about ‘self-determination’ but defining exactly who is the ‘self’ – in other words, what political forces linked to what international power configuration are making what political claim for what political purpose. If, as in Bolivia today, a rightwing racist, agro-business oligarchy seizes control of the most fertile and energy rich region, containing 75% of the country’s natural resources, in the name of ‘self-determination’ and autonomy, expelling and brutalizing impoverished Indians in the process – on what basis can the left or anti-imperialist movement oppose it, if not because the class, race and national content of that claim is antithetical to an even more important principle – popular sovereignty based on the democratic principles of majority rule and equal access to public wealth?

 

Separatism in Latin America: Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador

 

In recent years the US backed candidates have won and lost national election in Latin America . Clearly the US has retained hegemony over the governing elites in Mexico , Colombia , Central America , Peru , Chile , Uruguay and some of the Caribbean island states. In states where the electorate has backed opponents of US dominance, such as Venezuela , Ecuador , Bolivia and Nicaragua , Washington ’s influence is dependent on regional, provincial and locally elected officials. It is premature to state, as the Council for Foreign Relations claims, that ‘ US hegemony in Latin America is a thing of the past.’ One only has to read the economic and political record of the close and growing military and economic ties between Washington and the Calderon regime in Mexico , the Garcia regime in Peru , Bachelet in Chile and Uribe in Colombia to register the fact that US hegemony still prevails in important regions of Latin America . If we look beyond the national governmental level, even in the non-hegemonized states, US influence still is a potent factor shaping the political behavior of powerful right-wing business, financial and regional political elites in Venezuela , Ecuador , Bolivia and Argentina . By the end of May 2008, US backed regionalist movements were on the offensive, establishing a de facto secessionist regime in Santa Cruz in Bolivia . In Argentina , the agro-business elite has organized a successful nationwide production and distribution lockout, backed by the big industrial, financial and commercial confederations, against an export tax promoted by the ‘center-left’ Kirchner government. In Colombia, the US is negotiating with the paramilitary President Uribe over the site of a military base on the frontier with Venezuela’s oil rich state of Zulia, which happens to be ruled by the only anti-Chavez governor in power, a strong promoter of ‘autonomy’ or secession. In Ecuador , the Mayor of Guayaquil, backed by the right wing mass media and the discredited traditional political parties have proposed ‘autonomy’ from the central government of President Rafael Correa. The process of imperial driven nation dismemberment is very uneven because of the different degrees of political power relations between the central government and the regional secessionists. The right wing secessionists in Bolivia have advanced the furthest – actually organizing and winning a referendum and declaring themselves an independent governing unit with the power to collect taxes, formulate foreign economic policy and create its own police force.

 

The success of the Santa Cruz secessionist is due to the political incapacity and total incompetence of the Evo Morales-Garcia Linera regime which promoted ‘autonomy’ for the scores of impoverished Indian ‘nations’ (or indianismo) and ended up laying the groundwork for the white racist oligarchs to seize the opportunity to establish their own ‘separatist’ power base. As the separatist gained control over the local population, they intimidated the ‘indians’ and trade union supporters of the Morales regime, violently sabotaged the constitutional assembly, rejected the constitution, while constantly extracting concession for the flaccid and conciliatory central government of the Evo Morales. While the separatists trashed the constitution and used their control over the major means of production and exports to recruit five other provinces, forming a geographic arc of six provinces, and influence in two others in their drive to degrade the national government. The Morales-Garcia Linera ‘indianista’ regime, largely made up of mestizos formerly employed in NGOs funded from abroad, never used its formal constitutional power and monopoly of legitimate force to enforce constitutional order and outlaw and prosecute the secessionists’ violation of national integrity and rejection of the democratic order.

 

Morales never mobilized the country, the majority of popular organizations in civil society, or even called on the military to put down the secessionists. Instead he continued to make impotent appeals for ‘dialog’, for compromises in which his concessions to oligarch self-rule only confirmed their drive for regional power. As a case study of failed governance, in the face of a reactionary separatist threat to the nation, the Morales-Garcia Linera regime represents an abject failure to defend popular sovereignty and the integrity of the nation.

 

The lessons of failed governance in Bolivia stand as a grim reminder to Chavez in Venezuela and Correa in Ecuador : Unless they act with full force of the constitution to crush the embryonic separatist movements before they gain a power base, they will also face the break-up of their countries. The biggest threat is in Venezuela, where the US and Colombian militaries have built bases on the frontier bordering the Venezuelan state of Zulia, infiltrated commandos and paramilitary forces into the province, and see the takeover of the oil-rich province as a beach-head to deprive the central government of its vital oil revenues and destabilize the central government.

 

Several years into a Washington-backed and financed separatist movement in Bolivia , a few progressive academics and pundits have taken notice and published critical commentaries. Unfortunately these articles lack any explanatory context, and offer little understanding of how Latin American ‘separatism’ fits into long-term, large-scale US empire building strategy over the past quarter of a century.

 

Today the US-promoted separatist movements in Latin American are actively being pursued in at least three Latin American counties. In Bolivia, the ‘media luna’ or ‘half-moon’ provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija have successfully convoked provincial ‘referendums’ for ‘autonomy’ – code word for secession. On May 4, 2008 the separatists in Santa Cruz succeeded, securing a voter turnout of nearly 50% and winning 80% of the vote. On May 15, the right-wing big business political elite announced the formation of ministries of foreign trade and internal security, assuming the effective powers of a secession state. The US government led by Ambassador Goldberg, provided financial and political support for the right-wing secessionist ‘civic’ organizations through its $125 million dollar aid programs via AID, its tens of millions of dollar ‘anti-drug’ program, and through the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) funded pro-separatist NGOs. At meetings of the Organization of American States and other regional meetings the US refused to condemn the separatist movements.

 

Because of the total incompetence and lack of national political leadership of President Evo Morales and his Vice President Garcia Linera, the Bolivian State is splintering into a series of ‘autonomous’ cantons, as several other provincial governments seek to usurp political power and take over economic resources. From the very beginning, the Morales-Garcia regime signed off on a number of political pacts, adopted a whole series of policies and approved a number of concessions to the oligarchic elites in Santa Cruz , which enabled them to effectively re-build their natural political power base, sabotage an elected Constitutional Assembly and effectively undermine the authority of the central government. Right-wing success took less than 2 ½ years, which is especially amazing considering that in 2005, the country witnessed a major popular uprising which ousted a right-wing president, when millions of workers, miners, peasants and Indians dominated the streets. It is a tribute to the absolute misgovernment of the Morales-Garcia regime, that the country could move so quickly and decisively from a state of insurrectionary popular power to a fragmented and divided country in which a separatist agro-financial elite seizes control of 80% of the productive resources of the country…while the elected central government meekly protests.

 

The success of the secessionist regional ruling class in Bolivia has encouraged similar ‘autonomy movements’ in Ecuador and Venezuela , led by the mayor of Guayaquil ( Ecuador ) and Governor of Zulia ( Venezuela ). In other words, the US-engineered political debacle of the Morales-Garcia regime in Bolivia has led it to team up with oligarchs in Ecuador and Venezuela to repeat the Santa Cruz experience…in a process of “permanent counter-revolutionary separatism.”

 

Separatism and the Ex-USSR

 

The defeat of Communism in the USSR had little to do with the ‘arms race bankrupting the system’, as former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzyenski has claimed. Up to the end, living standards were relatively stable and welfare programs continued to operate at near optimal levels and scientific and cultural programs retained substantial state expenditures. The ruling elites who replaced the communist system did not respond to US propaganda about the virtues of ‘free markets and democracy’, as Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton claimed: The proof is evident in the political and economic systems, which they imposed upon taking power and which were neither democratic nor based on competitive markets. These new ethnic-based regimes resembled despotic, predatory, nepotistic monarhies handing over (‘privatizing’) the public wealth accumulated over the previous 70 years of collective labor and public investment to a handful of oligarchs and foreign monopolies.

 

The principle ideological driving force for the current policy of ‘separatism’ is ethnic identity politics, which is fostered and financed by US intelligence and propaganda agencies. Ethnic identity politics, which replaced communism, is based on vertical links between the elite and the masses. The new elites rule through clan-family-religious-gang based nepotism, funded and driven through pillage and privatization of public wealth created under Communism. Once in power, the new political elites ‘privatized’ public wealth into family riches and converted themselves and their cronies into an oligarchic ruling class. In most cases the ethnic ties between elites and subjects dissolved in the face of the decline of living standards, the deep class inequalities, the crooked vote counts and state repression.

 

In all of the ex-USSR states, the new ruling classes only claim to mass legitimacy was based on appeals to sharing a common ethnic identity. They trotted out medieval and royalist symbols from the remote past, dredging up absolutist monarchs, parasitical religious hierarchies, pre-capitalist war lords, bloody emperors and ‘national’ flags from the days of feudal landlords to forge a common history and identity with the ‘newly liberated’ masses. The repeated appeal to past reactionary symbols was entirely appropriate: The contemporary policies of despotism, pillage and personality cults resonated with past ‘historic’ warriors, feudal lords and practices.

 

As the new post-USSR despots lost their ethnic luster as a consequence of public disillusion with local and foreign predatory pillage of the national wealth, the leaders resorted to systematic force.

 

The principle success of the US strategy of promoting separatism was in destroying the USSR – not in promoting viable independent capitalist democracies. Washington succeeded in exacerbating ethnic conflicts between Russians and other nationalities, by encouraging local communist bosses to split from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and to form ‘independent states’ where the new rulers could share the booty of the local treasury with new Western partners. The US de-stabilization efforts in the Communist countries, especially after the 1970’s did not compete over living standards, greater industrial growth or over more generous welfare programs. Rather, Western propaganda focused on ethnic solidarity, the one issue that undercut class solidarity and loyalty to the communist state and ideology and strengthened pro-Western elites, especially among ‘public intellectuals’ and recycled Communist bosses-turned ‘nationalist saviors.’

 

The key point of Western strategy was to first and foremost break-up the USSR via separatist movements no matter if they were fanatical religious fundamentalists, gangster-politicians, Western-trained liberal economists or ambitious upwardly mobile warlords. All that mattered was that they carried the Western separatist banner of ‘self-determination’. Subsequently, in the ‘post Soviet period’, the new pro-capitalist ruling elites were recruited to NATO and client state status.

 

Washington ’s post-separatism politics followed a two-step process: In the first phase there was an undifferentiated support for anyone advocating the break-up of the USSR . In the second phase, the US sought to push the most pliable pro-NATO, free market liberals among the lot – the so-called ‘color revolutionaries’, in Georgia and the Ukraine . Separatism was seen as a preliminary step toward an ‘advanced’ stage of re-subordination to the US Empire. The notion of ‘independent states’ is virtually non-existent for US empire builders. At best it exists as a transitional stage from one power constellation to a new US-centered empire.

 

In the period following the break-up of the USSR , Washington ’s subsequent attempts to recruit the new ruling elites to pro-capitalist, client-status was relatively successful. Some countries opened their economies to unregulated exploitation especially of energy resources. Others offered sites for military bases. In many cases local rulers sought to bargain among world powers while enhancing their own private fortune-through-pillage.

 

None of the ex-Soviet Republics evolved into secular independent democratic republics capable of recovering the living standards, which their people possessed during the Soviet times. Some rulers became theocratic despots where religious notables and dictators mutually supported each other. Others evolved into ugly family-based dictatorships. None of them retained the Soviet era social safety net or high quality educational systems. All the post-Soviet regimes magnified the social inequalities and multiplied the number of criminal-run enterprises. Violent crime grew geometrically increasing citizen insecurity.

 

The success of US-induced ‘separatism’ did create, in most cases, enormous opportunities for Western and Asian pillage of raw materials, especially petroleum resources. The experience of ‘newly independent states’ was, at best, a transitory illusion, as the ruling elite either passed directly into the orbit of Western sphere of influence or became a ‘fig leaf’ for deep structural subordination to Western-dominated circuits of commodity exports and finance.

 

Out of the break-up of the USSR , Western states allied with those republics where it suited their interests. In some cases they signed agreements with rulers to establish military base lining the pockets of a dictator through loans. In other cases they secured privileged access to economic resources by forming joint ventures. In others they simply ignored a poorly endowed regime and let it wallow in misery and despotism.

 

Separatism: Eastern Europe , Balkans and the Baltic Countries

 

The most striking aspect of the break-up of the Soviet bloc was the rapidity and thoroughness with which the countries passed from the Warsaw Pact to NATO, from Soviet political rule to US/EU economic control over almost all of their major economic sectors. The conversion from one form of political economic and military subordination to another highlights the transitory nature of political independence, the superficiality of its operational meaning and the spectacular hypocrisy of the new ruling elite who blithely denounced ‘Soviet domination’ while turning over most economic sectors to Western capital, large tracts of territory for NATO bases and providing mercenary military battalions to fight in US imperial wars to a far greater degree than was ever the case during Soviet times.

 

Separatism in these areas was an ideology to weaken an adversarial hegemonic coalition, all the better to reincorporate its members in a more virulent and aggressive empire building coalition.

 

Yugoslavia and Kosova: Forced Separatism

 

The successful breakup of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact alliance encouraged the US and EU to destroy Yugoslavia , the last remaining independent country outside of US-EU control in West Europe . The break-up of Yugoslavia was initiated by Germany following its annexation and demolition of East Germany ’s economy. Subsequently it expanded into the Slovenian and Croatian republics. The US , a relative latecomer in the carving up of the Balkans, targeted Bosnia , Macedonia and Kosova. While Germany expanded via economic conquest, the US , true to its militarist mission, resorted to war in alliance with recognized terrorist Kosova Albanian gangsters organized in the paramilitary KLA. Under the leadership of French Zionist Bernard Kouchner, the NATO forces facilitated the ethnic purging, assassination and disappearances of tens of thousands of Serbs, Roma and dissident non-separatist Kosova Albanians.

 

The destruction of Yugoslavia is complete: the remaining fractured and battered Serb Republic was now at the mercy of US and its European allies. By 2008 a EU-US backed pro-NATO coalition was elected and the last remnants of ‘ Yugoslavia ’ and its historical legacy of self-managed socialism was obliterated.

 

Consequences of ‘Separatism’ in USSR . East Europe and the Balkans

 

In every region where US sponsored and financed separatism succeeded, living standards plunged, massive pillage of public resources in the name of privatization took place, political corruption reached unprecedented levels. Anywhere between a quarter to a third of the population fled to Western Europe and North America because of hunger, personal insecurity (crime), unemployment and a dubious future.

 

Politically, gangsterism and extraordinary murder rates drove legitimate businesses to pay exorbitant extorsion payments, as a ‘new class’ of gangsters-turned-businessmen took over the economy and signed dubious investment agreements and joint ventures with EU , US and Asian MNCs.

 

Energy-rich ex-Soviet countries in south central Asia were ruled by opulent dictators who accumulated billion dollar fortunes in the course of demolishing egalitarian norms, extensive health, and scientific and cultural institutions. Religious institutions gained power over and against scientific and professional associations, reversing educational progress of the previous seventy years. The logic of separatism spread from the republics to the sub-national level as rival local war lords and ethnic chiefs attempted to carve out their ‘autonomous’ entity, leading to bloody wars, new rounds of ethnic purges and new refugees fleeing the contested areas.

 

The US promises of benefits via ‘separatism’ made to the diverse populations were not in the least fulfilled. At best a small ruling elite and their cronies reaped enormous wealth, power and privilege at the expense of the great majority. Whatever the initial symbolic gratifications, which the underlying population may have experienced from their short-lived independence, new flag and restored religious power was eroded by the grinding poverty and violent internal power struggles that disrupted their lives. The truth of the matter is that millions of people fled from ‘their’ newly ‘independent’ states, preferring to become refugees and second-class citizens in foreign states.

 

Conclusion:

 

The major fallacy of seemingly progressive liberals and NGOs in their advocacy of ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ‘self-determination’ is that these abstract concepts beg the fundamental concrete historical and substantive political question – to what classes, race, political blocs is power being transferred? For over a century in the US the banner of the racist right-wing Southern plantation owners ruling by force and terror over the majority of poor blacks was ‘States Rights’ – the supremacy of local law and order over the authority of the federal government and the national constitution. The fight between federal versus states rights was between a reactionary Southern oligarchy and a broader based progressive Northern urban coalition of workers and the middle class.

 

There is a fundamental need to demystify the notion of ‘autonomy’ by examining the classes which demand it, the consequences of devolving power in terms of the distribution of power, wealth and popular power and the external benefactors of a shift from the national state to regional local power elites.

 

Likewise, the mindless embrace by some libertarians of each and every claim for ‘self-determination’ has led to some of the most heinous crimes of the 20-21st centuries – in many cases separatist movements have encouraged or been products of bloody imperialist wars, as was the case in the lead up to and following Nazi annexations, the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the savage Israeli invasion of Lebanon and breakup of Palestine.

 

To make sense of ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ‘self-determination’ and to ensure that these devolutions of power move in progressive historic direction, it is essential to pose the prior questions: Do these political changes advance the power and control of the majority of workers and peasants over the means of production? Does it lead to greater popular power in the state and electoral process or does it strengthen demagogic clients advancing the interests of the empire, in which the breakup of an established state leads to the incorporation of the ethnic fragments into a vicious and destructive empire?

[Nur]

Written in 1995

 

U.S. State Department Policy Planning Study #23, 1948:

 

Our real task... is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity [u.S. military- economic supremacy]... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming... We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization... we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning. U.S. State Department. 1948

[Nur]

Empire and Imperialism and the USA

 

By James Petras

 

09/09/08 "ICH" -- - Modern empires and therefore imperialism which constructs them are ubiquitous: Whether through large-scale multinational corporations or through technologically advanced massive military power, the peoples and nations of the worlds confront the problem of great concentration of corporate and state power on an unprecedented scale. This stark reality and the evidence of US prolonged wars of conquest and occupation has forced a general recognition of the relevance of the concept of imperialism to understanding global power relations. Only a decade ago writers, intellectuals and academics discarded imperialism and empire in favor of ‘globalization’ – to describe the world configuration of power. But globalization with its limited focus on the movement of multinational corporations could not explain the centrality of the state in establishing and imposing favorable conditions for the ‘movement’ or expansion of multinationals. Corporate globalization could not explain wars of conquest, like the first Gulf War, or wars of occupation or colonization, such as the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor could globalization explain the large-scale, long-term expansion of Chinese public corporations throughout Africa and the vast extraction of raw materials and sale of finished goods. By the new millennium, the language of empire even entered the vocabulary of the Right, the practitioners and ideologues of imperialist power. Contemporary imperial conflicts had their effects: Imperialism and empire once again became common language on the Left, but in many cases poorly understood, at least in all of its complexities and structures.

 

This essay clarifies some of the basic theoretical and practical features of contemporary imperialism, which are poorly understood. There are at least five major aspects of the political economy of imperialism that focus our attention in this book:

 

(1) Imperialism is a political and economic phenomenon. The multinational corporations (MNC) operate in many countries, but they receive their political support, economic subsidies and military insurance from the imperial state (IS) concerned with the MNC. The IS negotiates or imposes trade and investment agreements favorable to the MNC. At the same time the IS uses the MNC to influence overseas regimes to concede military bases and submit to its sphere of influence. Imperialism is the combined forceful overseas expansion of state and corporations.

 

(2) There are multiple forms of empire building. While all imperial states possess military and economic apparatuses, the political and economic driving force behind the construction of a global empire vary according to the nature of the governing class of the imperial state. In the contemporary world there are essentially two types of empire building – the US military-driven empire building and the Chinese economic empire. The US governing class today is made up of a powerful militarist-Zionist ideological elite, which prioritizes war and military force as a way of extending its domination and constructing client/colonial regimes. China and other newly aspiring economic empire builders expand overseas via large-scale, long-term overseas investments, loans, trade, technical aid and market shares. Obviously the US militarist approach to empire building is bloodier, more destructive and more reprehensible than market-driven empire building. However the structure of power and exploitation, which result from both types of empire, is a political-economic system, which oppresses and exploits subject peoples and nations.

 

(3) Imperialism has multiple interacting facets, which mutually reinforce each other: The mass media and culture in general are weapons for securing consent and/or acquiescence of the masses in pursuit of empire building which prejudices their material and spiritual existence. Imperialism cannot be isolated and reduced to simple economic reductionism. Economic exploitation is only possible under conditions of subjective subordination and that refers to education, entertainment, literature and art as terrains of class relations and class struggle linked to the empire.

 

(4) The social, ideological and political loyalties of the political elite, which direct the imperial state, determines the tactics and strategy which will be pursued in empire building. One cannot automatically assume that the political leadership will prioritize the interests of the MNCs in every region of the world at all times. When imperial leadership has divided loyalties with another state imperial policies may not coincide with the interests of the MNCs. Under these special circumstances of rulers with divided imperial loyalties, the ‘normal’ operations of the imperial state are suspended. The case of Zionist power in the US imperial state is a case in point. Through powerful and wealthy socio-political organizations, representation on powerful Congressional committees and strong presence in senior Executive offices (Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury) and the mass media, the Zionist elite dictates US Middle East policy. The US military serves Israeli colonial-expansionist interests even at the expense of the major US oil companies which are prevented from signing billion-dollar oil contracts with Iran and other oil-rich countries at odds with Israel.

 

(5) The world of competing imperial countries has created complex international organizations, which conflict, compete and collaborate. They operate on all levels, from the global to the cities and villages of the Third World. Imperialist powers enter and exploit through a chain of collaborator classes from the imperial center through international organizations to local ruling, economic and political classes. The imperial system is only as strong as its local collaborators. Popular uprisings, national anti-colonial struggles and radical mass movements, which oust local collaborators, undermine the empire. Anti imperialists attempt to establish diverse ties among imperial competitors and among the newly emerging powers to isolate the US military-centered empire.

James Petras is a retired Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, New York, U.S., and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada who has published prolifically on Latin American and Middle Eastern political issues.

[Nur]

Our Man in Kabul Says US Strategy is Failing

 

• French weekly reveals ambassador's dispatch

• Jihadis flooding into Afghanistan, says general

 

By Julian Borger, diplomatic editor and Simon Tisdall in Washington

 

04/10/09 "The Guardian" -- - Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan believes the US strategy there is failing, Nato reinforcements would be counter-productive and that it would be better if "an acceptable dictator" came to power in Kabul in the next few years, a French satirical weekly reported yesterday.

 

The comments attributed to Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles were included in a diplomatic dispatch sent on September 2 from a French diplomat in Kabul and published by the French weekly, Le Canard Enchaîné, which combines investigative journalism and satire.

 

The French diplomat, Jean-François Fitou, quoted Cowper-Coles as saying in a meeting: "The American strategy is destined to fail.

 

"The coalition presence - particularly the military presence - is part of the problem, not the solution," Cowper-Coles is quoted as saying. More Nato troops would have "a perverse effect".

 

"It would identify us even more clearly as an occupying force and multiply the number of targets [by insurgents]."

 

According to the published memo, he also says the elected Afghan government of Hamid Karzai had lost all trust, and that it would be a "positive thing" if in five to 10 years, after the departure of British troops, the country was governed by "an acceptable dictator".

 

A Foreign Office statement issued yesterday said: "It is not for us to comment on something that is presented as extracts from a French diplomatic telegram, but the views quoted are not in any way an accurate representation of the British government's approach. We work closely with our US allies in all aspects of decision making and regularly review our approach."

 

British officials have expressed deep concern over the security situation in Afghanistan, and have clashed with the US over elements of policy, such as counter-narcotics. The leaked memo has emerged at a time of deepening gloom over the security situation in Afghanistan. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said it had "deteriorated markedly" over the past six months, and pointed to the increasing attacks on aid workers. At least 30 have been killed so far this year.

 

General David McKiernan, the top US commander in Afghanistan, warned yesterday that militant Islamist jihadis were flooding into the country from all corners of the Muslim world to join the Taliban's fight against the Nato alliance, mostly via Pakistan. "They are very well trained. They are good at attacks on soft targets. They are Uzbeks, Chechens, Punjabis, Arabic [sic], Europeans," he said.

 

Speaking at a press conference in Washington, McKiernan said efforts were underway to improve cooperation with the Pakistani military and intelligence services to halt the flow of jihadis. While he welcomed recent changes at the top of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, he described the ISI as "historically and institutionally complicit" in Taliban activities in Pakistan's tribal areas.

 

McKiernan confirmed he was seeking an additional three US combat brigades - approximately 10,500 soldiers - to reinforce the 40-country Nato International Security Assistance Force mission. He said the troops should be deployed as quickly as possible.

 

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday October 3 2008

 

In the article below about comments attributed to Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, we said that the French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné published a diplomatic dispatch from French diplomat Jean-François Fitou, which reported on a meeting on September 2 and quoted Cowper-Coles's comments to the effect that he believes the US strategy in Afghanistan is destined to fail. In fact Le Canard Enchaîné reported that the dispatch was sent on September 2 and was about a meeting that had just happened; the date of the meeting is not clear. This has been corrected

[Nur]

Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?

 

"Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism"

 

By V. I. Lenin

LCW vol.22,

 

Lenin enumerated the following five features characteristic of the epoch of imperialism:

 

The epoch of imperialism opens when the expansion of colonialism has covered the globe and no new colonies can be acquired by the great powers except by taking them from each other, and the concentration of capital has grown to a point where finance capital becomes dominant over industrial capital. Lenin enumerated the following five features characteristic of the epoch of imperialism:

 

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;

(2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;

(3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;

(4) the formation of international monopoly capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and

(5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. [Lenin, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, LCW Volume 22, p. 266-7.]

 

"[imperialism] is something quite different from the old free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market. Concentration [of production] has reached the point at which it is possible to make an approximate estimate of all sources of raw materials (for example, the iron ore deposits)... [throughout] the whole world. Not only are such estimates made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolist associations [now called multi-national conglomerates]. An approximate estimate of the capacity of markets is also made, and the associations "divide" them up amongst themselves by agreement. Skilled labor is monopolized, the best engineers are engaged; the means of transport are captured – railways in America, shipping companies in Europe and America. Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization.

 

"Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable." (p. 205)

 

"The development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still "reigns" and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the "geniuses" of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialized production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialization, goes to benefit... the speculators." (p. 206-207)

 

Monopoly, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small and weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations – all these have given rise to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. … It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of bourgeoisie and certain countries betray… now one and now another of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before.”

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, VI Lenin, Selected Works in one volume, p 260

 

(ch.7) Parasitism and the Decay of Capitalism...parasitism is characteristic of imperialism... the deepest economic foundation of imperialism is monopoly. This is capitalist monopoly, i.e., monopoly which has grown out of capitalism and which exists in the general environment of capitalism, commodity production and competition, in permanent and insoluble contradiction to this general environment. Nevertheless, like all monopoly, it inevitably engenders a tendency of stagnation and decay....Certainly, the possibility of reducing the cost of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. But the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is characteristic of monopoly, continues to operate, and in some branches of industry, in some countries, for certain periods of time, it gains the upper hand.... imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries, amounting, as we have seen, to 100,000-50,000 million francs in securities. Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by “clipping coupons”, who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies....

 

Imperialism....CH. 10... the bourgeoisie to an ever-increasing degree lives on the proceeds of capital exports and by “clipping coupons”. It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a greater or lesser degree, now one and now another of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before; but this growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in general, its unevenness also manifests itself, in particular, in the decay of the countries which are richest in capital....

 

...the tendency of imperialism to split the workers, to strengthen opportunism among them and to cause temporary decay in the working-class movement, revealed itself much earlier than the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries; for two important distinguishing features of imperialism were already observed in Great Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century—vast colonial possessions and a monopolist position in the world market. Marx and Engels traced this connection between opportunism in the working-class movement and the imperialist features of British capitalism systematically, during the course of several decades. For example, on October 7, 1858, Engels wrote to Marx: “The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.”[15] Almost a quarter of a century later, in a letter dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks of the “worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the middle class”. In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”

[13] (Engels expressed similar ideas in the press in his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, which appeared in 1892.)...

 

The distinctive feature of the present situation is the prevalence of such economic and political conditions that are bound to increase the irreconcilability between opportunism and the general and vital interests of the working-class movement: imperialism has grown from an embryo into the predominant system; capitalist monopolies occupy first place in economics and politics; the division of the world has been completed; on the other hand, instead of the undivided monopoly of Great Britain, we see a few imperialist powers contending for the right to share in this monopoly, and this struggle is characteristic of the whole period of the early twentieth century. Opportunism cannot now be completely triumphant in the working-class movement of one country for decades as it was in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century; but in a number of countries it has grown ripe, overripe, and rotten, and has become completely merged with bourgeois policy in the form of “social-chauvinism”.

[14] http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm

[Nur]

America's Secret Empire

 

Must See Video!

 

[S.O.S]

Iraqi government fuels 'war for oil' theories by putting reserves up for biggest ever sale·

BP, Shell and Exxon in meeting with minister

· Unprecedented 40bn barrels up for grabs

 

Terry Macalister and Nicholas Watt The Guardian, Monday October 13 2008

Article history

 

The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40bn barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London.

 

BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani.

 

Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40% of the Middle Eastern nation's reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by US and British forces.

 

Two smaller agreements have already been signed with Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation, but today's sale will ignite arguments over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a "war for oil" that is now to be consummated by western multinationals seizing control of strategic Iraqi reserves.

 

Al-Shahristani is expected to reveal some kind of "risk service agreements" that could run for up to 20 years, with formal offers to be submitted by next spring and agreements signed in the summer.

 

Gregg Muttitt, from the UK-based social and ecological justice group Platform, says he is alarmed that the government is pushing ahead with its plans without the support of many in Iraq.

 

"Most of the terms of what is being offered have not been disclosed. There are security, political and reputational risks here for oil companies but none of them will want to see one of their competitors gain an advantage," he said.

 

Heinrich Matthee, a senior Middle East analyst at the specialist risk consultant Control Risks Group, also believes there are many pitfalls for those considering whether to make an offer.

 

"Currently it is unclear which party in Iraq is authorised to award a contract and at the same time to deliver its side of the bargain," he said. "Any contract with an independent oil company will be subjected to opposition and possible revision after pressure by resource nationalists."

 

Oil companies will find their reputations at risk from the actions of their Iraqi counterparties, such as joint venture partners, suppliers and agents. They will also have to contend with oil smuggling and the possibility that the ruling alliance could collapse, Matthee said.

 

He said that if the conspiracy theory that western oil companies egged on US and British governments to invade Iraq were true, the plan could backfire on them and benefit rivals in Asia instead. "It is possible the American army has provided the economic stability that will encourage Malaysian, Chinese and other Asian companies to become involved," he said.

 

There is no precedent for proven oil reserves of this magnitude being offered up for sale, said Muttitt. "The nearest thing would be the post-Soviet sale of the Kashagan field [in the Caspian Sea], which had 7bn or 8bn barrels."

 

China's state-owned oil group, CNPC, has already agreed a $3bn (£1.78bn) oil services contract with the government of Iraq to pump oil from the Ahdab oil field.

 

The deal is the first major oil contract with a foreign firm since the US-led war and was followed up by an agreement with Shell, potentially worth $4bn, to develop a joint venture with the South Gas Company in Basra.

 

This deal has also triggered controversy. Issam al-Chalabi, Iraq's oil minister between 1987 and 1990, questioned why there had been no competitive tendering for the gas-gathering contract and claimed it had gone to Shell as the spoils of war.

 

"Why choose Shell when you could have chosen ExxonMobil, Chevron, BG or Gazprom?" he asked. "Shell appears to be paying $4bn to get hold of assets that in 20 years could be worth $40bn. Iraq is giving away half its gas wealth and yet this work could have been done by Iraq itself."

 

The Baghdad government says it aims to increase crude oil production from 2.5m barrels a day to 4.5m by 2013, but faces internal opposition from regional governors and political opponents.

 

The sale today comes as oil prices have plummeted after stockmarket turmoil on Friday. The price of crude fell by more than $4 at one point to $75 a barrel - the lowest point since September last year and a sharp drop from its peak of $147 in July. Opec, the oil producers' cartel, has called an emergency meeting to agree a cut in output to bolster prices in spite of protestations from politicians including Gordon Brown. Brown said on Friday: "We've had some success in getting the price of oil down: the price this morning is roughly $80, about half what it was a few months ago. I want these price cuts passed on to the consumer as quickly as possible.

 

"I'm concerned when I hear that the Opec countries are meeting, or are about to meet, to discuss cutting production - in other words, making the price potentially higher than it should be.

 

"I'm making it clear to Opec it would be wrong for the world economy and wrong for British people who are paying high petrol prices and high fuel prices to cut production and therefore keep prices high."

 

A government source said: "The one chink of light has been the fall in the price of oil. The last thing we want is to head into a difficult period with a return to high oil prices. People need to act responsibly."

[Nur]

Ethiopia, America and Somalia: Staggering Stoopidity!

 

Cheney-Zenawi Award for Gross Political Stoopidity

Posted By Gwynne Dyer

 

 

 

Statesmen ought to have a special prize just for themselves, like fools have the Darwin Awards. The Darwin Awards commemorate very stoopid people who did a service to human evolution by accidentally removing themselves from the gene pool. The statesman's equivalent could be called something like the Cheney-Zenawi Award.

 

I mention this because the shining stoopidity of the US Vice-President and the Ethiopian Prime Minister are on special display this week, as the Ethiopian army prepares to withdraw from Somalia two years after its foredoomed invasion, leaving the country in the hands of precisely the people whom they wanted to eliminate. We need negative role models too, and you couldn't ask for worse than this pair.

 

I can't actually prove that getting Ethiopia to invade Somalia was Dick Cheney's brainchild, but it smells exactly like a Dick Cheney idea: crude, violent, and barking up entirely the wrong tree. Just like invading Iraq, in fact.

 

As for Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, he had already distinguished himself by becoming obsessed with the stupidest border war in modern African history. It wasn't his fault to start with: Ethiopia was attacked out of the blue in 1998 by the insanely aggressive regime in Eritrea, but Ethiopian troops drove the Eritreans back. By the ceasefire in mid-2000, Ethiopia had recovered all the ground it lost at the start.

 

An international commission found Eritrea guilty of aggression, and another one arbitrated all the disputed stretches of border, granting Ethiopia most of its claims. Both sides said they would accept the rulings - and then Zenawi walked away from the deal. He has been getting ready for another war with Eritrea ever since.

 

Going to war with Eritrea again would mean defying the United Nations ruling, so Zenawi needed the backing of some great power that could protect him from the UN's censure. Who better than the United States, which has assiduously ignored and belittled the UN under the Bush administration? Now what could Ethiopia do for the Bush administration in return?

 

Well, it could invade Somalia. Washington didn't want to put American troops into Somalia again, having had its nose bloodied in 1993, but it did want to overthrow the civilian regime that was restoring peace in southern Somalia and put its favourite warlord in power instead. Ethiopian troops would do the job just as well.

 

I think I can see the self-satisfied smirk on Cheney's face as he closed the deal: another triumph for the subtle master of geopolitics. I can't make out the look on Zenawi's face, but maybe he was smiling too. Too clever by half, as the saying goes.

 

The job was to overthrow the Union of Islamic Courts, a mass movement funded by local merchants in Mogadishu who wanted to end the constant robberies and kidnaps that made life impossible in the Somali capital. The UIC mobilized the desire of ordinary Somalis for an end to the violence that had ravaged the country for fifteen years, and the peace they brought to Mogadishu soon spread over most of southern Somalia.

 

Unfortunately the courts were "Islamic" and they wanted to enforce sharia law, which in Washington's book made them practically terrorists . They did have a few unsavoury allies, notably an extremist militia called al-Shebab, but they gave people in Mogadishu their first real hope of security and justice. They should not have been destroyed .

 

The Ethiopian army invaded Somalia in December 2006, drove the Islamic Courts out of Mogadishu, and installed Abdullahi Yusuf, the president of the "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG) of Somalia, in power. Well, not exactly in power, since the citizens and militias of Mogadishu immediately began attacking the hated Ethiopians, who only controlled whatever was in their gunsights. As for Abdullahi Yusuf, he only controlled a suite of rooms and some telephones .

 

 

He was originally chosen as president of the TFG, with ample US support, at a conclave of Somali warlords dignified with the name of "parliament" in Kenya in 2004. He would never have made it back to Mogadishu without the help of the Ethiopian army, and accepting that help made him deeply suspect in the eyes of most Somalis.

The resistance has driven the Ethiopian army out of most of southern Somalia in the past two years, and now the Ethiopians are going home. Abdullahi Yusuf will have to leave too, since he has no supporters except the Ethiopians and the Americans. Which will leave Mogadishu in the hands not of the Union of Islamic Courts, alas, but rather of the extremist militias that have pushed the UIC aside during their struggle against the foreign troops.

It's almost as perverse as the Bush administration's decision to eliminate Iran's two great enemies in the Gulf, Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ethiopia and the United States have not only plunged Somalia needlessly back into war. They have made it possible for the nastiest, craziest extremists, people who think it is their duty to kill other Muslims with "un-Islamic" haircuts, to take power in Mogadishu. (???????????????????????????????, This part is far fetched, writer went Waco here, Moderator )

 

The world needs a Cheney-Zenawi Award for Gross Political Stoopidity, and I know who the first nominees should be.

 

Gwynne Dyer's new book, "Climate Wars", has just been published in Canada by Random House

[S.O.S]

Robert Fisk’s World: One missing word sowed the seeds of catastrophe

No one in 1967 thought the Arab-Israeli conflict would still be in progress 41 years later

 

Saturday, 20 December 2008

 

A nit-picker this week. And given the fact that we're all remembering human rights, the Palestinians come to mind since they have precious few of them, and the Israelis because they have the luxury of a lot of them.

And Lord Blair, since he'll be communing with God next week, might also reflect that he still – to his shame – hasn't visited Gaza. But the nit-picking has got to be our old friend United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. This, you'll recall, was supposed to be the resolution that would guide all future peace efforts in the Middle East; Oslo was supposed to have been founded on it and all sorts of other processes and summits and road maps.

It was passed in November 1967, after Israel had occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai and Golan, and it emphasises "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict".

Readers who know the problem here will be joined by those who will immediately pick it up. The Israelis say that they are not required to withdraw from all the territories – because the word "all" is missing and since the definite article "the" is missing before the word "territories", its up to Israel to decide which bits of the occupied territories it gives up and which bits it keeps.

Hence Israel can say it gave up Sinai in accordance with 242 but is going to keep East Jerusalem and much of the West Bank for its settlers. Golan depends on negotiations with Syria. And Gaza? Well, 242 doesn't say anything about imprisoning one and a half million civilians because they voted for the wrong people. No one in 1967 dreamed that the Israeli-Arab conflict would still be in ferocious progress 41 years later. And as an Independent reader pointed out a couple of years ago, the Security Council clearly never intended the absence of a definite article to give Israel an excuse to stay in the West Bank. Alas, our reader was wrong.

I've been going back through my files on 242 and discovered a most elucidating paper by John McHugo, who was a visiting fellow at the Scottish Centre for International Law at Edinburgh University. He points out that pro-Israeli lawyers have been saying for some years that "Resolution 242 unanimously called for withdrawal from 'territories' rather than withdrawal from 'all the territories'. Its choice of words was deliberate... they signify that withdrawal if required from some but not all the territories".

McHugo is, so far as I know, the only man to re-examine the actual UN debates on 242 and they make very unhappy reading. The French and Spanish versions of the text actually use the definite article. But the Brits – apparently following a bit of strong-arm tactics from the Americans – did not use "the". Lord Caradon, our man at the UN, insisted on putting in the phrase about the "inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war" in order to stop the Israelis claiming that they could cherry-pick which lands to return and which to hand on to. Britain accepted Jordan's rule over the West Back – the PLO were still shunned as super-terrorists at the time – but it did no good. Abba Eban, Israel's man on the East River, did his best to persuade Caradon to delete both "the" and the bit about the inadmissability of territory through war. He won the first battle, but not the second.

That great American statesman George Ball was to recount how, when the Arabs negotiated over 242 in early November of 1967 – at the Waldorf Astoria (these guys knew how to pick the swankiest hotels for political betrayal) – the US ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, told King Hussein that America "could not guarantee that everything would be returned by Israel". The Arabs distrusted Goldberg because he was known to be pro-Zionist, but Hussein was much comforted when US Secretary of State Dean Rusk assured him in Washington that the US "did not approve of Israeli retention of the West Bank". Hussein was further encouraged when he met President Johnson who told him that Israeli withdrawal might take place in "six months". Goldberg further boosted his confidence. "Don't worry. They're on board," he said of the Israelis. Ho ho.

It's intriguing to note that several other nations at the UN were troubled by the absence of "the". The Indian delegate, for example, pointed out that the resolution referred to "all the territories – I repeat all the territories – occupied by Israel..." while the Soviet Union (which knew all about occupying other people's countries) stated that "we understand the decision to mean the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all, and we repeat, all territories belonging to Arab states and seized by Israel...". President Johnson rebuffed the Soviets and bluntly refused to put the word "all" in the resolution. Bulgaria, not surprisingly, said much the same as the Soviets. Brazil expressed reservations – rightly so – about "the clarity of the wording". The Argentinians "would have preferred a clearer text". In other words, the future tragedy was spotted at the time. But we did nothing. The Americans had stitched it up and the Brits went along with it. The Arabs were not happy but foolishly – and typically – relied on Caradon's assurances that "all" the territories was what 242 meant, even if it didn't say so. Israel still fought hard to get rid of the "inadmissability" bit, even when it had got "the" out.

Ye gods! Talk about sewing the seeds of future catastrophe. Well, Colin Powell, when he was George W Bush's secretary of state, gutlessly told US diplomats to call the West Bank "disputed" rather than "occupied" – which suited the Israelis just fine although, as McHugo pointed out, the Israelis might like to consider what would happen if the Arabs talked about those bits of Israel which were not included in the original UN partition plan as "disputed" as well. Besides, George W's infamous letter to Ariel Sharon, saying he could, in effect, keep large bits of the West Bank, set the seal on Johnson's deception.

McHugo mischievously adds that a mandatory warning in a city that says "dogs must be kept on the lead near ponds in the park" clearly means that "all" dogs and "all" ponds are intended. These days, of course, we use walls to keep dogs out. Palestinians, too.

[Nur]

U.S. War Privatization Results in Billions Lost in Fraud, Waste and Abuse--Report

 

 

Half of the personnel the US has working on its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are private contractors. A new report reveals how much of a rip-off this system has been to US taxpayers.

 

By Jeremy Scahill

 

June 10, 2009 "RebelReports" -- At a hearing in Washington today, the federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan is releasing a 111-page report that represents its “initial investigations of the nation’s heavy reliance on contractors.” According to a release on the hearing:

 

More than 240,000 contractor employees, about 80 percent of them foreign nationals, are working in Iraq and Afghanistan to support operations and projects of the U.S. military, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Contractor employees outnumber U.S. troops in the region. While contractors provide vital services, the Commission believes their use has also entailed billions of dollars lost to waste, fraud, and abuse due to inadequate planning, poor contract drafting, limited competition, understaffed oversight functions, and other problems.

 

These statistics support a recent DoD report on the extent of the US reliance on contractors. That report also found that there has been a 23% increase in the number of “Private Security Contractors” working for the Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009 and a 29% increase in Afghanistan, which “correlates to the build up of forces” in the country. In Iraq, the Pentagon attributes the increase to better accounting. There are currently more private contractors (counting both armed and unarmed) in Afghanistan (68,197) than US troops (40,000). In Iraq, the number of contractors (132,610) is basically equal to the number of US troops.

 

(NOTE: I recently discussed this issue on Bill Moyers Journal)

 

The single greatest beneficiary of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary. KBR has been paid nearly $32 billion since 2001. In May, April Stephenson, director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, testified that KBR was linked to “the vast majority” of war-zone fraud cases and a majority of the $13 billion in “questioned” or “unsupported” costs. According to Agency, it sent the inspector general “a total of 32 cases of suspected overbilling, bribery and other violations since 2004.”

 

According to the Associated Press, which obtained an early copy of the commission’s report, “billions of dollars” of the total paid to KBR “ended up wasted due to poorly defined work orders, inadequate oversight and contractor inefficiencies.”

 

KBR is at the center of a lethal scandal involving the electrocution deaths of more than a dozen US soldiers, allegedly as a result of faulty electrical work done by the company. The DoD paid KBR more than $80 million in bonuses for the very work that resulted in the electrocution deaths.

 

Among the other scandals involving KBR that the commission is investigating is a questionable contract to rebuild a large dining facility at Camp Delta in Iraq:

 

In July 2008, the Army said a new dining facility was badly needed at the Camp Delta forward operating base because the existing one was too small, had a saggy ceiling, poor lighting and an unsanitary wooden floor.

 

KBR was awarded a contract in September. Work began in late October as American and Iraqi officials negotiated the agreement setting the dates for the U.S. troop withdrawal.

 

But during an April visit to Camp Delta, the commission learned that the existing mess hall had just been renovated. The $3.36 million job was done by KBR and completed in June 2008. Commission staff toured the renovated hall “without seeing or hearing of any problems or shortfalls,” the report says.

 

Here’s the kicker:

 

The decision to push ahead with the new hall was based on paperwork that was never updated and a failure to review the need for the project after the security agreement was signed. Most of the materials have been ordered and construction is well under way. That means canceling the project would save little money because KBR would have a legitimate claim for payment based on the investment it has already made.

 

So, are all these investigations and scandals hurting KBR? Apparently not:

 

Today, neither Halliburton nor KBR are suffering from their divorce. Halliburton reported $4 billion in operating profits in 2008, while KBR recently said its first quarter revenues in 2009 were up 27%, for a total of $3.2 billion. Its sales in 2008 were up 33%, and according to the Financial Times, the company had $1 billion in cash, no debt, and was looking for acquisitions.

 

One last note for context: While the Wartime Contracting Commission is doing very important work revealing the scope of the corruption, shoddy work and abuses within this system, it also includes several members who are either pro-war or have worked for major war contractors. This is the composition of the commissioners:

 

Co-chair Michael J. Thibault, a former deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, was appointed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Former Republican Congressman Co-Chair Shays was appointed by House Minority Leader John Boehner. The other six commissioners are Clark Kent Ervin, Grant S. Green, Linda J. Gustitus, Robert J. Henke, Charles Tiefer, and Dov S. Zakheim.

© 2009 Jeremy Scahill

[Nur]

War Privatization means Mercenaries!

 

 

Nur

[Muriidi]

me,being just a technician don't know much about sociology,politics etc, but there are parallels. we meet sometime in the cafeteria and i think those sciences have reached a dangerous level!

 

have you heard of this phenomenon called "mad scientist" ?

 

all day long:"but freud said..."

"what is wrong with everyone?"

"why isn't this working anymore?"

"where is the government ?"

 

they're runnig out of concepts...

even more dangerous because these human sciences thrive on their mass-appeal.

 

don't get too comfy ..it's just dunya...

don't do anything that you wouldn't want to continue next life

 

 

but you as a muslim,what are your plans for this post-info revolution era ?

[Nur]

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

 

US should help itself first

By Walter Rogers, Christian Science Monitor

 

 

The assessment of the war in Afghanistan from the top US general there is grim. Without more troops, Stanley McChrystal warned in a report that was leaked recently, "The conflict will likely result in failure."

 

His candour should be applauded. It gives the US President Barack Obama and the American public - nearly half of whom now oppose the war there - an opportunity to ask themselves how we are going to save Afghanistan when we have not figured out how to engage in successful nation-building at home.

 

There's no question Americans need it. Thirty per cent of American pupils drop out before finishing high school. The country's border with Mexico is awash in drugs and violence. Mexican and Russian mafias have strong criminal footholds in American cities.

 

Some of the US Rust Belt cities have unemployment levels on par with Third World countries. Michigan, once America's industrial heart, is on government life support. California, once the country's dynamo, is near bankruptcy.

 

Taking on these tough challenges will require US leaders, both Democrat and Republican, to relinquish the idea they can remake much of the world in America's image and likeness.

 

Giving up that idea is hard to do in Washington, even for presidents. It requires them to defy powerful pressure.

 

Obama should recall that in 1962 president John Kennedy instinctively resisted Defence and State Department pressure to send more troops to Vietnam. President Johnson was also wary of a troop buildup in Vietnam, but he fell prey to his own fears that Republicans would accuse him of being soft on communism if he flinched in the face of a festering Viet Cong insurgency.

 

America has a poor record of nation-building abroad. The George H.W. Bush administration and Clinton White House failed in Somalia. The most recent Bush administration bungled it in Iraq, where Iraqis continue to blow one another up now that Americans are increasingly out of reach as targets.

 

And now, bright as he is, Obama is showing us he learned next to nothing from the nine-year Soviet attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan that helped hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 

Not long ago, a friend, a high Canadian government official, met with his Chinese government counterparts. The discussion turned to the subject of the United States. My Canadian friend told me that the Chinese delegate coolly observed, "We always expected the American empire to collapse, but we had no idea it would collapse so quickly."

 

The Pentagon and the US military command in Afghanistan now find themselves caught in a trap inadvertently set by their own politicians.

 

The US military speaks of winning the hearts and minds of Afghans when it's almost certainly the case that the Americans will always be seen as 'infidel outsiders' occupying a Muslim country, just as the Russians were seen on the same real estate in the l980s.

 

Even if the Obama administration were to send half a million troops, the results would be little different. Just as the Communist Vietnamese enjoyed havens in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam, so the Taliban and the rabidly anti-American Islamists in Afghanistan would enjoy similar sanctuaries in Pakistan and Iran.

 

Few US politicians have had the courage to tell the public that Afghanistan has a corrupt, tribal government, too weak to go it alone without US troops. Obama unwisely made Afghanistan his problem by escalating, rather than winding down, US involvement upon taking office. Now, the US is committed to policing it, creating a modern infrastructure out of a medieval society, while providing Afghans security and jobs.

 

How does this count as an intelligent investment when the administration is struggling to do the same thing in the US? American political leaders have a moral obligation to repair their own republic before they try to re-engineer Afghanistan. Nation-building at home will be at least as challenging as in Iraq or Afghanistan and far more important.

 

A prerequisite for this domestic ­nation-building is a spirit of goodwill with civil discourse that scorns rabid political posturing. Members of Congress must see themselves as colleagues, not enemies, and the public must not let buffoons with megaphones shape the debate at the expense of serious-minded observers.

 

No matter how great their material wealth, democratic nations cannot long survive, let alone mend themselves, without a spirit of public goodwill in the body politic. The run-up to the American Civil War demonstrated this.

 

Today, a similar ideological malice stalks the land. It is arguably more destructive than any terrorist threat spawned in Afghanistan. And this malevolent public rancour needs to be addressed with far greater urgency than Afghanistan, which is probably too broken to fix.

 

Walter Rodgers is a former senior international correspondent for CNN.