The Sunspot Enigma: The Sun is “Dead”—

What Does it Mean for Earth?

Dark spots, some as large as 50,000 miles in diameter, typically move across the surface of the sun, contracting and expanding as they go. These strange and powerful phenomena are known as sunspots, but now they are all gone. Not even solar physicists know why it’s happening and what this odd solar silence might be indicating for our future.

Although periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, this current period has gone on much longer than usual and scientists are starting to worry—at least a little bit. Recently 100 scientists from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and North America gathered to discuss the issue at an international solar conference at Montana State University. Today’s sun is as inactive as it was two years ago, and solar physicists don’t have a clue as to why.

“It continues to be dead,” said Saku Tsuneta with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, program manager for the Hinode solar mission, noting that it is at least a little bit worrisome for scientists.

Dana Longcope, a solar physicist at MSU, said the sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, Longcope said. The next cycle is just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. But so far nothing is happening.

“It’s a dead face,” Tsuneta said of the sun’s appearance.

Tsuneta said solar physicists aren’t weather forecasters and they can’t predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700. Coincidence? Some scientists say it was, but many worry that it wasn’t.

Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, said pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory also show that there are currently no spots on the sun. He also noted that the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

“This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930,” Dr Chapman noted in The Australian recently.

If the world does face another mini Ice Age, it could come without warning. Evidence for abrupt climate change is readily found in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. One of the best known examples of such an event is the Younger Dryas cooling, which occurred about 12,000 years ago, named after the arctic wildflower found in northern European sediments. This event began and ended rather abruptly, and for its entire 1000 year duration the North Atlantic region was about 5°C colder. Could something like this happen again? There’s no way to tell, and because the changes can happen all within one decade—we might not even see it coming.

The Younger Dryas occurred at a time when orbital forcing should have continued to drive climate to the present warm state. The unexplained phenomenon has been the topic of much intense scientific debate, as well as other millennial scale events.

Now this 11-year low in Sunspot activity has raised fears among a small but growing number of scientists that rather than getting warmer, the Earth could possibly be about to return to another cooling period. The idea is especially intriguing considering that most of the world is in preparation for global warming.

Canadian scientist Kenneth Tapping of the National Research Council has also noted that solar activity has entered into an unusually inactive phase, but what that means—if anything—is still anyone’s guess. Another solar scientist, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, however, is certain that it’s an indication of a coming cooling period.

Sorokhtin believes that a lack of sunspots does indicate a coming cooling period based on certain past trends and early records. In fact, he calls manmade climate change “a drop in the bucket” compared to the fierce and abrupt cold that can potentially be brought on by inactive solar phases.

Sorokhtin’s advice: “Stock up on fur coats”…just in case.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

Sources:

http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/nwview.php?article=5982&log

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23584524-11949,00.html

link to article:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html

Nicolas Sarkozy plans to bypass Irish no vote

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, is working with European Union officials and diplomats to plan a special “legal arrangement” to bypass Ireland’s referendum rejection.

Mr Sarkozy takes over the EU’s rotating presidency in July and will be tasked with resurrecting, for a second time, Lisbon Treaty proposals first contained in the European Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters three years ago.

Diplomats and officials have no intention of letting the Irish no vote sink a blueprint to boost the EU’s powers on the international stage and to create a President of Europe.

Gordon Brown has already phoned Paris to promise Mr Sarkozy that Britain will ignore Ireland to continue parliamentary ratification of the EU Treaty.

Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the French Europe Minister, has hinted that Paris already has a legal “fix”, such as plans revealed in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, to keep the EU Treaty alive.

“The most important thing is that the ratification process must continue in the other countries and then we shall see with the Irish what type of legal arrangement could be found,” he said.

“We must remain within the framework of the Lisbon treaty.”

Eight countries are still engaged in parliamentary ratification of the Treaty but are expected to have finished, without any upsets by the autumn.

Plans to find a “mechanism” keeping Ireland within the EU but temporarily outside the Lisbon Treaty will then be tabled at an October or December meeting of Europe’s leaders.

“Ireland must not stop the process of getting the Treaty through. Then we can take stock,” said a diplomat close to negotiations.

Mr Brown will join Mr Sarkozy and other EU leaders at a Brussels summit next Thursday to vow that it is business as usual on pushing the Treaty through.

Brian Cowen, the Irish Taoiseach, is expected to support the calls for ratification to continue in other countries and to plead that Ireland is not left behind.

But the British Prime Minister will face strong domestic calls for Parliament’s ratification of the Treaty to be halted.

The Conservatives will revive demands for a British referendum as a ICM poll yesterday found that Britons would vote against the Lisbon Treaty by 51 per cent to 28 per cent.

Neil O’Brien, Director of Open Europe, said: “The argument for a referendum in Britain is now overwhelming. Europe’s political establishment plan to carry on regardless. Only a referendum in Britain can finally kill this thing off.”

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, argued that the EU must honour the Irish vote, the only referendum to place on the Treaty in the EU’s 27 member states.

“I suspect that the EU extremists will simply try to ignore it as they did the French and Dutch results,” he said.

“The third reading of the treaty in the House of Lords next week must be halted because the project now has no legitimacy.”

There are advanced plans in Brussels for a “bridging mechanism” to allow Ireland to be removed from the list of signatories to the Lisbon Treaty after the EU’s 26 other member states have ratified it.’

Ireland will continue to remain in the euro and be covered by existing Treaties but will be left out of the creation of an EU president and foreign minister, which would proceed as planned.

By late 2009 or early 2010, when Croatia joins the EU, an amending “Accession Treaty” will be signed by all members including Dublin.

Incorporated into it would be a series of protocol texts giving paper “opt-outs” on controversial Irish EU issues, such as taxation powers or greater military co-operation.

Ireland, like the rest of the Europe, does not hold referendums on EU enlargement treaties and with new protocol opt-outs Dublin may get the Treaty past the Irish parliament without another popular vote.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/2123816/EU-Treaty-Nicolas-Sarkozy-plans-to-bypass-Irish-no-vote.html

EU Dictators May Ram Through Lisbon Treaty Despite Irish Rejection

EU risks losing all legitimacy by circumventing its own laws in pursuit of federal superstate
Paul Joseph Watson - prisonplanet.com
Friday, June 13, 2008
|
Spearheaded by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the EU and its member states, in their relentless pursuit of a federal superstate, may break its own laws and ram through the Lisbon Treaty despite it being rejected by Irish voters today.

Under EU laws, if one of its member states rejects a treaty, the EU is mandated to scrap the bill. But the European Union’s contempt for direct democracy is likely to lead them to ignore the Irish referendum and pursue the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty anyway - underscoring the fact that the EU is nothing more than an illegitimate dictatorship of manufactured consent.

The Lisbon Treaty was merely a crude repackaging of the 2005 EU Constitution that was mothballed after being rejected by France and Holland in 2005, whose citizens were barred from voting this time around.

Since Ireland’s constitution mandates that any amendment must be put to a referendum, the country remained the only bulwark against the EU’s final stumbling block to creating a federal superstate and completely eliminating all remaining vestiges of sovereignty.

Today’s surprise rejection of the treaty has been met with total arrogance by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown whom, according to reports, called French President Nicolas Sarkozy, “to assure him that British ratification would continue.”

“The British government is expected to continue ratifying the EU Treaty despite its rejection by Irish voters,” reports the BBC.

In addition, EC President Jose Manuel Barroso urged member states to continue ratifying the treaty insisting it was “alive and we should now try to find a solution”.

Brown’s obsession with sacrificing British sovereignty on the alter of globalism led to him breaking a Labour Party manifesto promise that there would also be a referendum in the UK. Unelected EU dictators are loathe to allow referendums because they know the majority of European citizens would reject further EU integration because they are painfully aware of the destruction it has already wrought on the economy and social cohesion.

The usual tactic of the EU is simply to keep repeating a referendum until they achieve the result they desire.

As the BBC reports, “The Irish voted No to the Nice Treaty in 2001 and were asked to vote again a year later. That time they said Yes. The Danish voted No to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 - and voted Yes a year later. The French and Dutch rejected the constitution in 2005 and the leaders designed Lisbon instead.”

But this time the EU is set to go a step further and simply ignore the decision of the Irish people while breaking their own laws - proving once and for all that the body is completely illegitimate, dangerous to democracy and a de-facto federal dictatorship.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2008/061308_ram_through.htm

Antidepressants secret weapon for troops

THE US military says 12 per cent of combat personnel in Iraq and 17 per cent serving in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to battle the mental strain of extended tours of duty and the horrors of war.

A report in Time magazine said that for the first time in history a sizeable and growing number of US combat troops were taking daily doses of antidepressants, The Australian reports.

The medicines are intended not only to help troops keep their cool but also to enable the already strapped army to preserve its most precious resource: soldiers on the front lines, the report said.

Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials said.

Given the stigma associated with soldiers seeking mental help, the survey, released in March, probably underestimated antidepressant use, Time said.

But if the army numbers reflect those of other services, about 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would be on medication.

The report noted that troops had been plied with medicinal palliatives at least since George Washington ordered rum rations at Valley Forge.

During World War II, the Nazis fuelled their blitzkrieg into France and Poland with the help of an amphetamine known as Pervitin and the US army also used amphetamines during the Vietnam War.

But troops have historically been barred from using antidepressants in combat, and soldiers have been screened for mental illnesses before enlisting.

Pentagon surveys show that while all soldiers deployed to a war zone will feel stressed, 70 per cent will manage to bounce back.

But about 20 per cent will suffer from what the military calls “temporary stress injuries”, and 10 per cent will be afflicted with “stress illnesses”.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23848691-26397,00.html

Baracka Obama to Nuke Iran,

 Blames The Palestinians For The Conflict!

By Chris Hedges

The failure by Barack Obama to chart another course in the Middle East, to defy the Israel lobby and to denounce the Bush administration’s inexorable march toward a conflict with Iran is a failure to challenge the collective insanity that has gripped the political leadership in the United States and Israel.

Obama, in a miscalculation that will have grave consequences, has given his blessing to the widening circle of violence and abuse of the Palestinians by Israel and, most dangerously, to those in the Bush White House and Jerusalem now plotting a war against Iran. He illustrates how the lust for power is morally corrosive. And while he may win the White House, by the time he takes power he will be trapped in George Bush’s alternative reality.
More from Chris Hedges:

“Humanity Does Not Change”

There is nothing in human nature or human history to justify the idea that we are progressing morally as a species.

Read the introduction to Hedges’ new book “Collateral Damage”

We need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to stay the hand of Israel, which is building more settlements—including a new plan to put 800 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem—and imposing draconian measures to physically break the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. We need, most of all, to prevent a war with Iran.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, in a letter to President Bush on May 8, threatened to open impeachment proceedings if Bush attacked Iran. The letter is a signal that planning for strikes on Iran is under way and pronounced.

“Our concerns in this area have been heightened by more recent events,” Conyers wrote. “The resignation in mid-March of Admiral William J. ‘Fox’ Fallon from the head of U.S. Central Command, which was reportedly linked to a magazine article that portrayed him as the only person who might stop your Administration from waging preemptive war against Iran, has renewed widespread concerns that your Administration is unilaterally planning for military action against that country. This is despite the fact that the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, a stark reversal of previous Administration assessments.”

The administration, in rhetoric that is eerily similar to that used to build the case for a war against Iraq, asserts that the Iranian Quds Force is arming anti-American groups in Iraq and providing them with high-tech roadside bombs and sophisticated rockets. It dismisses the National Intelligence Estimate conclusion that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program. The White House has not provided evidence to back up its claims. I suspect it never will. And when Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz tells the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth an attack on Iran is “unavoidable” if Tehran does not halt its alleged nuclear weapons program, what he is really telling us is we should prepare for war.

Conyers’ threat is too little too late, especially if the Bush White House, possibly assisted by Israel, launches airstrikes on some or all of 1,000 selected Iranian targets in the final weeks of the administration. But it is an effort. Conyers tried.

This is more than we can say for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080608_the_iran_trap/

Obama went before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Wednesday and said he will stand with the right-wing Israeli government, even if this means backing an attack on Iran.

“As president I will use all elements of American power to pressure Iran,” he said. “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything.”

Obama went on to blame the Palestinians for the conflict, although the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in 2007 was 40 to 1. This is an increase from 30 to 1 in 2006 and 4 to 1 in 2000-2005.

“I will bring to the White House an unshakable commitment to Israel’s security. That starts with ensuring Israel’s qualitative military advantage, …” Obama told AIPAC. “I will ensure Israel can defend itself from any threat, from Gaza to Tehran. …”

Obama spoke about Israelis whose houses were damaged by the crude rockets, most made out of old pipes, fired from Gaza on Israeli towns. He never mentioned the Israeli siege of Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, or that Israel was deploying fighter jets and helicopters to attack densely crowded refugee camps with missiles and iron fragmentation bombs or that it had cut off food and fuel. He ignored the steady expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. He called for Jerusalem to become the “undivided capital” of the Jewish state, erasing Arab East Jerusalem from the map in contravention of international law. East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognized as occupied Palestinian territories, which Israel took over in 1967. Obama’s stance is the moral equivalent of assuring the Johannesburg government during the apartheid era that one would support their repressive efforts to punish the restive blacks in the townships.

The deterioration of the conflict in Israel, which would be accelerated by airstrikes on Iran and an ensuring regional war, will propel us into the Armageddon-type scenario in the Middle East relished by the lunatic fringes of the radical Christian right. And so, with Obama’s enthusiastic endorsement, we barrel toward a Dr. Strangelove self-immolation. No one will be able to say we did not go out with a spectacular show of firepower, gore and death. Our European and Middle Eastern allies, who are numb with consternation over our death spiral, are frantically trying to reach out to Tehran diplomatically.

The instant we attack Iran, oil prices will double, perhaps triple. This price increase will devastate the American economy. The ensuing retaliatory strikes by Iran on Israel, as well as on American military installations in Iraq, will leave hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead. The Shiites in the region, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, will see an attack on Iran as a war against Shiism. They will turn with rage and violence on us and our allies. Hezbollah will renew attacks on northern Israel. And the localized war in Iraq will become a long, messy and protracted regional war that, by the time it is done, will most likely end the American empire and leave in its wake mounds of corpses and smoldering ruins.

The Israeli leadership, like the Bush White House, is increasingly bellicose and threatening. The Israeli prime minister, after a 90-minute meeting with Bush in the White House on Wednesday, said the two leaders were of one mind. “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat,” Ehud Olmert said. “I left with a lot less questions marks than I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term in the White House.”

This time around, unlike about the war with Iraq, the Washington bureaucracy, loathed by the Bush White House, did not remain silent and complicit. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program released last Dec. 3 distinguished Iran’s enrichment of uranium at Natanz and Arak from its formal nuclear weapons program, which it said had halted in 2003 after the American invasion of Iraq. Adm. Fallon, who put his country and his integrity before his career, spoke out against a war with Iran, tried to stop it and lost his job as the head of CENTCOM. He has been replaced with Gen. David H. Petraeus, whose devotion to his career admits no such moral impediments.

“ … There is no greater threat to Israel or peace than Iran,” Obama assured AIPAC. “This audience is made up of both Republicans and Democrats. And the enemies of Israel should have no doubt that regardless of party, Americans stand shoulder to shoulder in support of Israel’s security. … The Iran regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and … its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. … My goal will be to eliminate this threat.”

Barack Obama, when we need sane leadership the most, has proved feckless and weak. He, and the Democratic leadership, is as morally bankrupt as those preparing to ignite our funeral pyre in the Middle East.

Irish minister says EU vote lost

European leaders say they have no “plan B” if the treaty is rejected

 
Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern says substantial vote tallies across the country show the European Union Lisbon reform treaty has been rejected.

Tallies are not official, but Mr Ahern says it is clear the No vote is ahead in a vast majority of constituencies.

This would scupper the treaty, which must be ratified by all members. Only Ireland has held a public vote on it.

Mr Ahern is the first senior figure from the Irish government to admit that it looked like the treaty had failed.

“It looks like this will be a No vote,” Mr Ahern said on live television. “At the end of the day, for a myriad of reasons, the people have spoken.”

Earlier, Europe Minister Dick Roche had admitted “it is not looking good”, after state broadcaster RTE said that the Yes vote was “in difficulty”.

The BBC’s Jonny Dymond in Dublin says a rejection of the treaty, meant to streamline decision-making in the now expanded EU, could plunge the bloc into crisis.

In Irish polls, tally counters in each constituency watch votes being sorted and make their own count, giving early indications of how a vote is going.

Any Yes campaigner dropping in to the Marlborough Street polling station around midday might think the battle lost

Jonny Dymond
BBC correspondent, Dublin

European leaders have said that they have no “plan B” for how to proceed if Ireland’s electorate does vote No.

“If the Irish people decide to reject the treaty of Lisbon, naturally, there will be no treaty of Lisbon,” French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Thursday night.

Declan Ganley of the anti-treaty lobby group Libertas said that if the No vote had indeed triumphed that it was “a great day for Ireland”.

“The people of Ireland have shown enormous courage and wisdom in analysing the facts presented to them and making the decision they have,” Mr Ganley said.

The No campaign was a broad coalition ranging from Libertas to Sinn Fein, the only party in parliament to oppose the treaty.

Confusion

Our correspondent says that many voters seem to have voted No for the simple reason that they did not understand the treaty, despite a high-profile campaign led by Prime Minister Brian Cowen, which had the support of most of the country’s main parties.

The BBC’s Europe editor Mark Mardell on what a No vote would mean
Mr Cowen accused the No camp of “misrepresentation”, saying voters had voiced concern about “issues that clearly weren’t in the treaty at all”, the Irish Times reported.

Turnout is said to have been about 45%. Commentators had predicted that a low turnout figure would suggest a rejection.

The treaty, which is designed to help the EU cope with its expansion into eastern Europe, provides for a streamlining of the European Commission, the removal of the national veto in more policy areas, a new president of the European Council and a strengthened foreign affairs post.

Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, urged all EU states to back the treaty, which is due to come into force on 1 January 2009.

He said the reforms would strengthen the EU to meet global challenges.

Fourteen countries out of the 27 have completed ratification so far.

The Lisbon Treaty replaces a more ambitious draft constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

Just over three million Irish voters are registered - in a European Union of 490 million people.

In 2001, Irish voters almost wrecked EU plans to expand eastwards when they rejected the Nice treaty. It was only passed in a much-criticised second vote.

Link

Hong Kong Hospitals on H5N1 Alert

Recombinomics Commentary 21:58
June 12, 2008

Hong Kong also found that local poultry retailers chicken feces samples showed positive for the H5N1 avian flu, the Hospital Authority on the 11th night that it would further strengthen in the public hospitals under severe strain-level implementation of infection control measures,The spokesman said that if required hospitalization, will arrange for them to stay at Princess Margaret Hospital’s infectious disease centre HA treated in isolation, the Centre has been ready to receive bird flu cases.

To further enhance rapid testing laboratory support services, public hospitals network of laboratories will, in conjunction with the Department of Health Public Health Laboratory Centre, stand extended. The laboratory network including the Princess Margaret Hospital, Prince of Wales Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Queen Mary Hospital and Tuen Mun Hospital.

The above translation describes hospitals in Hong Kong going on alert due to the detection of H5N1 throughout the city (see satellite map).  Although Hong Kong has reported H5N1 in wild birds each year, there have been no H5N1 positive poultry reports in the past five years.  The latest outbreak is of concern because the chickens are asymptomatic.  It is unclear if the H5N1 shedding by asymptomatic chickens is due to partial immunity due to a poor match between the vaccine and H5N1, adaptive changes by the chickens, or changes by the virus.

However, one of the arguments against H5N1 poultry vaccinations is viral shedding by poultry that appear healthy.  The silent spread of H5N1 can quickly lead to a much larger genetic reservoir, creating conditions for more rapid evolution.  The asymptomatic infections also increase potential for an expanded geographical reach.

In the past several years, the H5N1 in wild birds in Hong Kong have been Fujian clade 2.3.2 and 2.3.4.  Sequences from 2007 and 2008 have been withheld, but the vaccine target for clade 2.3.2 is a wild bird isolate collected in Hong Kong in 2007.  The similarity between that isolate and the H5N1 in South Korea, Japan and Primorsky suggests that the H5N1 in Hong Kong is also the Fujian strain, which may be linked to a global expansion of the Fujian strain.

The recent reports of avian influenza in North Korea have increased concerns.  Although denied by the government, reports describe birds deaths in proximity to patient with bird flu symptoms, including at least one fatal infection (see satellite map).

Sequence information of the H5N1 in Hong Kong this year and last year, as well as more detail on the avian and human cases in North Korea would be useful.

Media Links

Recombinomics Presentations

Recombinomics Publications

Recombinomics Paper at Nature Precedings

Unusual Reactive Behavior Evidence

of Electronic Mind Control in Switzerland?

 

From: Philip Ledoux

Ken,

I’ve been trying to help a fellow in Switzerland who found me via Educate-Yourself. Rather strangely, he has been giving me a liberal education about health, and I thought I was well rounded in natural health! One of the big problems in his particular case is a cell phone tower of some type on an official building across the street. When it is turned on it affects him badly, along with his wife. I do realize that some people are ultra sensitive to special frequencies, and thought that this was applicable in this case. Recent communications indicate that we are all being affected! Apparently they are located at the beginning of a massive Beta Test of major mind control technology. The implications, via the specifics of his missive, partly reproduced below and edited, are mind-boggling to say the least. The man spells it out very clearly, no need for my comments.

Philip N. Ledoux

---

“Every week when my wife has a day off she is not able to recharge herself because of the antennas that are ON NON-stop. Because of the antenna output, she gets only 5 hours sleep every night. This has been going on for at least the last two weeks. We are both really in a struggle for survival.

She told me today that all her fellow workers are making mistake after mistake over the last two weeks, they keep complaining that they forget everything and they need so much sleep. They take orders from the customers, and a second later they forgot what was ordered. So everyone is in a struggle to keep their heads clear. Also many regular customers are not able to speak whole sentences anymore, they speak fragmented when they place an order.

We see it all around us now when we go shopping; all the shoppers including the check-out-clerks look completely zombie-like and lost. People are regularly dropping things when they try to place it in their shopping basket. The floor of the supermarket is littered with things that people have dropped. It is also interesting to observe when people stand in front of the products — it takes minutes before they made up their mind and place it in their shopping basket… They are just staring. Not only for them, but we also react the same way.

For the last few weeks people are also driving very, very slowly on the roads here, I assume because they have such a hard time concentrating. It is also interesting to see that when the antennas are ON that people don’t stop anymore when you make clear that you want to cross a zebra crossing. (Zebra refers to the horizontal stripes marking a pedestrian crossing.) They simply don’t see you when you are standing at the beginning of a Zebra !!! While normally here in Switzerland they ALWAYS stopped when you stand on the sidelines waiting and making clear that you want to cross the zebra to the other side of the road. I mean it is even a law here, everybody knows that you will get a heavy fine if a car doesn’t allow you as a pedestrian to cross on a zebra. You have to STOP, but now people don’t see you standing waiting. Everybody is really blind now, by the day it is getting more intense.

For my feeling we are getting closer and closer to a deadline that something horrible is going to happen again, it isn’t by accident the towers are putting out more and more power. “

[End of excerpt. Name withheld by request]

---

© Copyright 2008 Educate-Yourself.org 

 

B2 Crashes in Guam 

VIDEO: B2 Bomber 

Watch it. $1 billions go up in smoke.

Central bank body warns of Great Depression

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the organisation that fosters cooperation between central banks, has warned that the credit crisis could lead world economies into a crash on a scale not seen since the 1930s.

In its latest quarterly report, the body points out that the Great Depression of the 1930s was not foreseen and that commentators on the financial turmoil, instigated by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, may not have grasped the level of exposure that lies at its heart.

According to the BIS, complex credit instruments, a strong appetite for risk, rising levels of household debt and long-term imbalances in the world currency system, all form part of the loose monetarist policy that could result in another Great Depression.

The report points out that between March and May of this year, interbank lending continued to show signs of extreme stress and that this could be set to continue well into the future.

It also raises concerns about the Chinese economy and questions whether China may be repeating mistakes made by Japan, with its so called bubble economy of the late 1980s.

http://www.bankingtimes.co.uk/09062008-central-bank-body-warns-of-great-depression/

French Government decides to censor the Internet

THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT has apparently decided that it doesn’t much like being democratic, and that it would rather like to censor the Internet instead.

Not content with simply limiting itself to blocking despicable child sex abuse, a move three major ISPs in the US also agreed to today, the French government feels it necessary to go a radical step further and decide for its citizens whether or not they can view content it considers inappropriately racist and or linked to terrorism.

In fact, worse still is that any site is now game for a French blockade, as Sarkozy’s government is inviting people to send in huge long lists of sites which offend their delicate sensibilities. The French government, which will purportedly be able to receive complaints from Internet users in real time, will be able to add sites to a so called “black list”, which it will then force national ISPs to block.

The move, announced by France’s Interior Minister, Michel Alliot-Marie, is France’s way of showing it is indeed taking a strong stand against cyber-criminality, but it seems that the line between ‘strong’ and ‘authoritarian’ is a little fuzzy on this one.

Alliot-Marie, only caring to justify the block on child sex abuse sites, noted “Other democracies have done it. France could wait no longer”. She added that all of France’s Internet Service Providers had agreed to comply with the new regulations which go into effect as of September.

The minister vehemently denied that the French government was turning itself into “a Big Brother of the Internet” and promised that the “fundamental liberty that is Internet access” would continue to thrive. As long as people only see the sites the government allows them to see, of course.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/06/10/french-government-decides

Pakistan fury at deadly US strike

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has condemned an air strike by Afghanistan-based US forces that Islamabad says killed 11 of its troops.

The incident took place inside Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

The US military confirmed it had used artillery and air strikes after coming under fire from “anti-Afghan” forces.

The incident comes as relations between the US and Pakistan militaries have been hit by mounting tensions.

The soldiers’ deaths occurred overnight at a border post in the mountainous Gora Prai region in Mohmand, one of Pakistan’s tribal areas, across the border from Afghanistan’s Kunar province.

Eight Taleban militants were also killed in the clashes, a Taleban spokesman said.

‘Cowardly act’

If the 11 deaths are confirmed, it would be the worst incident of its kind since US and Nato-led forces began fighting militants in Afghanistan in 2001.

Prime Minister Gilani condemned the deaths, telling parliament: “We will take a stand for the sake of this country’s sovereignty, for the sake of its dignity and self-respect”.

“We do not allow our territory to be used. We completely condemn this, and will take it up through the foreign office.”

Pakistan’s military called it a “completely unprovoked and cowardly act”.

The US military said in a statement that coalition troops had come under fire from “anti-Afghan forces” in a wooded area near the Pakistan border.

The statement said artillery and air strikes had been co-ordinated with Pakistan, but that the incident was being investigated.

A spokesman for a pro-Taleban militant group in Pakistan said it had launched an attack on US and Afghan army troops trying to set up a border control post.

“We launched an attack on them from several sides and caused serious harm - and then the US and Nato forces began a series of air strikes,” said the spokesman, Maulvi Umar.

Lawless border

There is increasing anger in Pakistan at US strikes on its territory which have killed more than 50 people this year, says the BBC’s Barbara Plett in Islamabad.

Both US forces and Nato-led coalition forces are operating in Afghanistan, with Nato focused mainly on peacekeeping and reconstruction and the US troops working more directly to combat militant activity.

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Funerals have been held for the 11 soldiers who died

Taleban fighters have a strong presence in the border areas of the tribal districts and local administrators have little power there, although security forces keep a presence on the border.

There is rising frustration among the Afghans and foreign troops at Pakistani efforts to negotiate peace deals with pro-Taleban militants on its side of the border.

Afghan and US-led forces accuse Islamabad of not doing enough to deny Taleban militants a hiding place in Pakistan’s tribal areas and to stop them from infiltrating the border into Afghanistan.

They are worried that the Pakistan government’s recent peace talks with the militants there will only give the Taleban more room for manoeuvre.

Pakistan denies the accusations, saying it has lost about 1,000 soldiers fighting militants in the tribal border areas.

Bush Wins EU Backing for More Iranian Bank Sanctions

By Edwin Chen and Patrick Donahue

June 10 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush won backing from the European Union for tighter sanctions against Iran’s banks, another step aimed at hampering Iranian ability to build nuclear weapons.

European Commission President Jose Barroso, meeting with Bush in Slovenia, agreed to take “additional measures to ensure that “Iranian banks cannot abuse the international banking system to support proliferation and terrorism, according to a joint statement released at the end of the talks.

“We discussed a lot of problems today, Bush said today at a press conference outside a castle in Brdo, Slovenia. “We spent a lot of time on Iran. Iran with a nuclear weapon would be incredibly dangerous to world peace. They can face isolation or they can have a better relationship with all of us.

Iran ignored demands to stop producing nuclear fuel and blocked inspectors from looking at documents claiming the government in Tehran researched atomic weapons, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said last month.

Deterring Iran’s nuclear ambitions is the overarching focus of Bush’s weeklong farewell tour of Europe this week. While Bush was having lunch today with EU leaders at a castle outside Ljubljana, a near-final draft of the U.S.-EU summit declaration was made available to reporters.

European Diplomacy

While the EU agreed to the additional measures, it also continues to press ahead with a three-year old diplomatic initiative designed to return the Iranian government to compliance with UN requests. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana plans to travel to Tehran in the coming week with a new package of incentives to persuade Iran to halt enrichment.

EU nations are divided about whether to dramatically tighten sanctions against Iran. Some want the Bush administration to engage in direct talks with Iran, something it has been loathe to do. The U.S. and EU also agreed to work together on choking off cash flows that support terrorism, focusing especially on charities and money handling companies, according to the statement.

Iran will almost have doubled the number of centrifuges, the fast-spinning machines that separate uranium isotopes for power stations and bombs, to 6,000 by September, the IAEA said in a May 26 report to the UN Security Council.

The EU also expressed anxieties on June 4 about the safety of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, scheduled to start up next year using Russian-made fuel. That was the first time the EU publicly expressed skepticism over the safety of the $1 billion plant, Iran’s only commercial nuclear reactor.

`Terrorist Organizations’

“Iran must fully restore confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program through implementation of the Additional Protocol, the agreement from the U.S. and EU said. “We reiterate our concern about Iran’s regional policies, especially its continued support for terrorist organizations, and call on Iran to play a responsible and constructive role in the region.

The U.S. president, who has seven months remaining in office, is using his trip to press for tougher sanctions against Iran while promoting global trade and the peace process in the Middle East.

Talks in Slovenia

Bush met separately this morning with Slovenian President Danilo Turk and Prime Minister Janez Jansa. He then had lunch with the leaders of the European Union, who joined him for a press conference in Brdo, north of the Slovenian capital near the foothills of the Alps.

Later in the day, the U.S. president is scheduled to go to Berlin for meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Bush this week also will visit Rome, the Vatican, Paris, London and Belfast.

Today’s summit took place less than a month before leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations are to meet in Japan, and the meeting in Ljubljana gave Bush a chance to test some of the themes he intends to raise at the G-8.

Disagreements remain over issues such as global warming, with Europeans pressing for more specific targets on reducing harmful emissions.

In additional, the World Trade Organization’s 152 governments are trying to conclude global trade talks that began in November 2001 in Doha, Qatar, within the next two months. A key obstacle to an accord is concern in wealthy countries that opening their farm markets to developing nations won’t be rewarded by better access for their industrial goods in emerging markets.

In Slovenia, an issue of contention will be the EU’s 11- year-old ban on U.S. poultry, which costs the American poultry industry some $180 million a year, according to Bush administration officials.

Trade Talks

U.S. negotiators thought a tentative agreement to end the ban had been reached within the Trans-Atlantic Economic Council, created a year ago to expedite economic integration between the U.S. and Europe.

But the EU returned with enough conditions to effectively keep the ban in place, said Dan Price, deputy National Security adviser for international economic affairs.

The ban was imposed because of European concerns over the use of chlorinated water in processing poultry, though the EU moved to end the ban after scientific data showed no associated health risks, Price said. The EU’s new conditions involve labeling requirements and would allow the entire issue to be revisited in two years.

Many view the poultry dispute as “a test case of the ability of the TEC to follow through on its commitments,” Price said.

Link

___________________________________________________________________

And put into Bank in China territory (Hong Kong), Malaysia (not in Indonesia this is US client country), Singapore or India (another great country waiting in the wing). Forget those Europe or American banks.

Traders predict British house prices will fall by 50%

in four years

The slide in house prices will continue for at least three years and crush the value of a home by almost 50% in real terms, according to a key index of property price futures. Indications from futures trading on long term property prices shows that the average UK home will recover its current value only in 2017.

By the end of this year prices will be down by 10% and by a further 10.5% in 2009, according to the index. Prices will keep dropping through 2010 and cut values by 23.5% when they hit rock bottom in 2011. House prices will then begin a slow climb back to current market values over a period of about six years.

If an average retail price inflation rate of 4% is included in the calculation and in addition the 8% drop in prices over the last eight months already registered by the Halifax index, the fall in values over almost four years will reach 47.5% in real terms.

The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Lord Oakeshott, said the figures revealed that property investors had little confidence in the market and were predicting steep and prolonged falls in prices.

“This government says this housing depression will be different from the early 1990s. Yes, that’s right. It will be worse.”

When not attacking government policy in the Lords, Oakeshott invests in property on behalf of pension funds through his investment vehicle Olim. He says he has watched the index steadily fall over recent weeks. On Friday it “fell off a cliff” after the Halifax published its latest house price survey.

Halifax said the value of a home fell by 2.4% in May, the seventh month in the past eight when prices have fallen.

The May figure spooked investors, who said prices were now falling more rapidly than at any time since the early 90s property crash. House buyers benefited from low prices until 1995 when values began to pick up.

Last week an economic consultancy, the Centre for Economics and Business Research, predicted that in 2008 almost 15,000 estate agents would lose their jobs. It said real estate output will also decline during the year by 3% in real terms, as the drop in mortgage approvals and housing transactions take its toll.

The slide is also hitting mortgage brokers, illustrated by John Charcol, which last week announced job cuts and made Katie Tucker, product specialist and one of the public faces of the broker, redundant.

The firm’s chief executive, Ian Kennedy, is also reported to be in discussion with chairman John Garfield - one of the founders of the business - about his future. In January, the broker announced it was putting itself up for sale. But no buyer turned up and instead its founders were expected to inject more funds into the business.

The residential property futures market is based on the Halifax monthly house price index, published by the bank. It is an-over-the-counter market designed for banks, pension funds, insurance companies and housebuilders to trade on the future values of property. Tradition Property, a City-based property broker, operates a derivatives futures index based on the Halifax figures.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/09/housingmarket.houseprices

Iran pulls assets out of Europe banks

Iran has withdrawn a huge sum of its foreign exchange reserves from European banks and has deposited some of it into Asian banks.

“Based on a decision made by a government working group, Iran has switched to ‘genuine’ assets like gold and shares… We have decreased our foreign currency holdings in international banks,” said Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs, Mohsen Talaei.

“A portion of Iran’s foreign exchange reserves, however, was moved to Asian banks,” he added in his interview with Borna news agency published on Monday.

According to the official, Iran keeps only the minimum currency it needs for its accounts to remain open in Europe but manages its accounts in Asia in a way that will allow trade transactions to continue.

Iran has abandoned the dollar in oil trading in favor of the yen, citing the weakness of US currency for its decision.

Iran has been selling nearly 700,000 barrels of crude oil to Japan on a daily basis in yen since mid-2007, Talaei concluded.

The US has imposed sanctions against Iranian banks and continues to persuade countries to halt their business relations with Tehran.

While some are of the opinion that sanctions have crippled Iran’s economy, the refusal of financial institutions in Russia, China and Middle Eastern countries have proven such efforts futile.

Iran’s annual international trade has reportedly exceeded 65 billion dollars and some foreign banks that had frozen Iranian assets have released the country’s holdings.

MK/AA

Source

British Foreign Office’s attempted censorship

of

Craig Murray’s book “Murder in Samarkind”

A film version of this book is supposed to be imminent. Wonder if they’ve been told to wait until after the US elections?

Craig now offers a link to the Foreign Office document:

http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/murray/FCO_Comment.pdf

RUSSIA STANDS UP for NEW WORLD WITHOUT AMERICA

The XII World Economic Forum, which took place last week in St. Petersburg, will be remembered for its daring statements made by Russia’s top economic officials. The opening speech made by President Dmitry Medvedev produced a furore.

“Today Russia is a global player. Realizing our responsibility for the fate of the world, we would like to participate in the creation of new rules of the game not because of the notorious imperial ambition, but because of the fact that we have official opportunities and resources,” Medvedev said.

Medvedev’s statement is based on the extremely unfavorable situation in the world economy. According to Medvedev, the economic crisis, which may become the hardest crisis in history, shows that the system of global financial institutes in its current state does not correspond to present-day challenges. There is virtually no international organization where decisions could be developed and made. Global institutes managing international finances are incapable of showing influence on the strategies of financial market members.

Dmitry Medvedev did not hesitate to point out the major initiator of the unfortunate situation. He believes that the formal role of the United States of America in the global economic system does not comply with its real possibilities.

Russia’s president stressed out that Russia was doing everything to let the country avoid possible economic disasters and make it become one of the world’s economic leaders.

“Turning Moscow into a strong world financial center and turning the Russian ruble into one of the leading regional reserve currencies are the key constituents aimed to provide the competitive ability to the national financial system,” Dmitry Medvedev said.

Medvedev has made a timely statement of Russia’s aspiration to become the new economic and political center in the world. The economic isolation of the USA inevitably makes many countries look for new centers of gravity. The concept of building the new economy without America, but with the help of Russia’s growing influence, may seem to be quite alluring to many. The development of USA’s internal economic problems into the global crisis may lead to significant changes in the structure of the world economy. As a result, new centers of gravity may turn out to be successful.
Russia can indeed increase its influence in the world economy if the USA’s role declines due to the developing crisis. On the other hand, it is not clear how strong the crisis will be and how exactly it will affect the USA. Specialists say that there are no reasons for the US economic system to collapse. There is also no evidence to prove that the current crisis will become the hardest crisis in history and the fatal crisis for the USA. Quite on the contrary, analysts say that the economies of developed countries, the USA and the European Union first and foremost, will start to recover next year. In addition, they will be able to avoid the development of the inflation rate.

If these forecasts are true, the USA will obviously preserve its dominating position in the economy of the whole world. The developed and the developing world will be holding on to the US economy as long as it will be possible. It is an open secret that any global changes in the world economic system are accompanied by colossal damage caused to its members.

That is why Dmitry Medvedev’s statements at the XII World Economic forum in St. Petersburg can be described as offensive reconnaissance rather than guidelines to action. In any case, Medvedev’s statements testify to Russia’s obvious progress in international politics.

http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/105467-0/

Israel’s confrontation with Iran may begin with an invasion of Gaza

It’s been a year since Hamas asserted its rightful role as the democratically elected government in the Gaza Strip after corrupt Fatah forces there had unsuccessfully tried to usurp Hamas’s governance of the Palestinian enclave. Hamas’s victory in the January 2006 elections was not recognised by Israel or the US, the two nations on our planet that scream loudest about the necessity of democracy in the region. Instead, they ensured that the corrupt Fatah organisation under Abbas took control of Palestinian affairs, a move that, while successful in the West Bank, was unsuccessful in the Gaza.

Ever since Hamas took control of the Gaza, the Israelis have hounded the Gazan Palestinians, in many cases, literally to death through bombing and denial of basic health access. Hundreds of men, women and children have died through indiscriminate IDF helicopter gunship and strike fighter aircraft attacks on the densely populated Gaza Strip. Tens of thousands more are suffering through the lack fuel and other supplies. Scores have died through not being allowed to leave the Gaza for proper medical treatment. Homes have been demolished and much of what little productive land remains that is able to provide food has been bulldozed bare by the Israelis. All this has been in an effort to dislodge Hamas from their position of governance. In short, the Gazan people are being collectively punished for having had the temerity to exercise their democratic rights voting in a government that the Israel and the US do not accept.

In an effort to stem and deter the Israeli attacks on the Gazan people and their government, Palestinian fighters have launched crude and largely ineffective rockets against Israel, acts that Israel simply uses as an excuse for even more attacks against the Gazan people.

During the past year the Israelis have threatened to launch a full-on invasion of the Gaza to oust Hamas from power using Hamas’s futile rocket attacks against Israel as the casus belli for such an invasion. Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister has on countless occasions threatened such action but, as yet, has not carried it out despite Hamas and other Palestinian fighters continuing to launch their rockets against Israel.

Israel has always sought to justify anything they do militarily by telling the world that they are merely acting in response to acts committed against them by their Arab enemies. They rarely strike openly without trying to find some excuse to justify their crimes, even if it is one that they have had to invent for the purpose.

As the USS Liberty Affair and the Lavon Affair demonstrated in the past, the Israelis are not above committing crimes themselves and then deflecting blame for those crimes onto others in order to get other nations to help their fight wars with them or, better still, for them. Nor are the Israelis above getting non-Israeli Diaspora Jews that support the Zionist dream to work toward those ends. Jewish-American neoconservatives whose loyalties to Israel are stronger than their loyalties to the US together with their non-Jewish supporters have orchestrated and manipulated US governmental affairs over the last eight years in such a way as to benefit Israel. As a direct result of 9/11, a crime that is now increasingly being questioned with regard to who the true perpetrators were, the US is launching an all out propaganda war against Islam. It also provided the casus belli for an attack against the peoples of Afghanistan where Israel says its enemies hide, and it also provided the casus belli for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, a country led by Saddam Hussein who financially supported the Palestinian cause but had nothing to do with 9/11.

Iran is now the only nation left that is powerful enough to stand in the way of the Zionist’s dream of a Greater Israel that includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Shebaa Farms and south Lebanon up to the Litani River. Without Iran to supply and support Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas the Israeli Zionists believe that their dream of a Greater Israel can be realised.

All they need is an excuse, a casus belli, to attack Iran but it is something that they cannot do alone; they need the US to do it for them. Hamas in the Gaza may just be the fuse they need to ignite their final confrontation against Iran. By attacking Hamas, Israel knows that Hezbollah will likely come to their aid by launching rockets against northern Israel. This, as in the last war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, will be the excuse the Israelis need to launch an all-out attack against and an invasion of Lebanon. The first sign of any Iranian weapons being used by Hezbollah against the Israelis will be all that is needed to launch a deadly aerial bombardment campaign against Iran designed to force capitulation and regime change.

The on-again-off-again threatened attack against Hamas in the Gaza that could well spark a confrontation between Israel and Iran, drawing in the US, is being threatened again.

The world should make no mistake about what is happening. Hamas and their hold on the Gaza are being used by the Israelis to provide the launch pad for their final confrontation with Iran.

http://lataan.blogspot.com/2008/06/its-all-matter-of-timing-for-israels.html

Canada’s growing support for Israel

Ron Csillag

For many Canadian Jews, the country’s prime minister has been more than just a breath of fresh air when it comes to support for Israel. They wonder whether Stephen Harper may be too good to be true.

TORONTO (JTA) — For many Canadian Jews, the country’s prime minister has been more than just a breath of fresh air when it comes to support for Israel. They wonder whether Stephen Harper may be too good to be true.

Elected with a minority Conservative government in January 2006, Harper has left an unmistakable record of solidly and unapologetically pro-Israel moves and statements, mostly to the delight of the country’s 370,000 Jews.

For example, at Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations marking Israel’s 60th birthday earlier this month, the 7,000 audience members thundered their approval when Harper declared Canada’s “unshakable support” for the Jewish state before adding, “Our government believes that those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada.”

For many Jewish observers, the warm words are a far cry from the tepid and sometimes hostile attitude of the Liberal Party, which governed Canada longer than any party and all but took the Jewish vote for granted.

Indeed, Canadian Jews have tended to vote Liberal. One informal study showed that during the 1970s, the years of Pierre Trudeau, they voted for the Liberals at a rate 20 percent higher than the national average.

The last survey of Jewish views, in 1987, found that among rabbis, Jewish academics and community leaders in Montreal and Toronto, 41 percent called themselves Liberals, 21 percent Conservatives and 15 percent aligned with the left-wing New Democratic Party.

For Rochelle Wilner, a former president of the right-leaning B’nai Brith Canada, the Conservative Tories’ pro-Israel stance has been refreshing.

“You have no idea,” she sighs, adding that the talk on the Jewish street “is definitely in support of Harper, his principles and policies.”

Wilner is running as a Conservative for a Toronto-area seat in Parliament in the next election, which is widely expected later this year or in early 2009. Currently there are no Jewish members in the Parliament in the governing party — a first since 1980.

At the United Nations, Harper’s government has continued a trend that began in the late stages of the previous Liberal government.

The Canada-Israel Committee reports that in the past three years, there have been 13 “constructive vote changes” — including shifts from a “yes” or “no” to abstentions — on issues related to Palestine and Israel.

In March, Canada provided the lone dissenting vote when the 47-seat U.N. Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly to condemn Israel for its armed incursions into the Gaza Strip.

In substance, Canada’s Middle East policy has not changed under the Conservatives. It still recognizes Israel’s “right to assure its own security,” and calls for the “creation of a sovereign, independent, viable, democratic and territorially contiguous Palestinian state as part of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace settlement.”

But like his fellow evangelical Protestants, Harper seems to be a genuine fan of Israel and Canadian Jewry. His championing of Israel “is personal and philosophical,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s Larry Zolf noted in a recent online column.

“He admires Israel’s toughness and military elan,” Zolf wrote.

As Wilner sees it, Harper’s support for Israel is a result of his living “by a code of ethics and principles. “

“He has a moral compass and he’s guided by that; I honestly think it’s that simple,” she said. “There’s nothing hidden. Often he has said he supports Israel because it’s the morally right thing to do.”

Even so, many opine that Harper and his Tories have left Canada open to accusations that its much-vaunted neutrality is gone.

“That Canadian attempt at even-handedness has utterly disappeared under Stephen Harper, who lavishly celebrated Israel’s 60th anniversary with promises of Canada’s ‘unshakeable’ support while utterly ignoring the fact that this is also an anniversary — although a very different one — for the Palestinians,” left-wing columnist Linda McQuaig wrote recently in the Toronto Star.

Harper’s seeming shift was most evident at the outset of Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon, when the prime minister said he supported Israel’s “right to defend itself” and described its military campaign in Lebanon as “measured.”

At a huge rally for Israel in Toronto that summer, well-known Jewish film producer Robert Lantos received a thunderous ovation when he thanked Harper for his government’s “principled support” and said he was doffing his “lifelong federal Liberal hat.”

Lantos was soon joined in the Tory fold by other high-profile Jewish Liberals, including Gerry Schwartz , the president of the Onex Corp., and his wife, Heather Reisman, the CEO of Indigo Books & Music.

In January, Canada provided Israel another boost when Ottawa announced it would boycott the follow-up to the 2001 anti-racism conference in South Africa. The Harper government assailed the Durban parley as a “gong show” and “a circus of intolerance” directed mainly at Israel.

The follow-up conference will take place in Geneva in April 2009.

But what do all these positions mean on the political battlefield?

“There’s been some shift” toward the Conservatives among Jews, “but it’s not as big as most people think,” says longtime Liberal pollster Martin Goldfarb. “Israel is not the only issue facing Jews. They are not a one-issue people.”

Indeed, while mainstream Canadian Jews tend to be very supportive of — and hawkish on — Israel, on domestic matters such as social policy, immigration, justice and anti-racism programs, they tend to be far more liberal, Goldfarb said.

Thus, many Jews in Canada, Goldfarb included, find themselves torn between the Conservatives’ support for Israel and the rest of their agenda.

“I like what Mr. Harper is doing with respect to his Middle East policy, but I am not yet prepared to vote for the Conservatives” because of a series of other issues that affect the middle class and lower middle class, he said.

As examples, Goldfarb cited tax policies, post-secondary education, crumbling cities, and health and child care.

McGill University sociologist Morton Weinfeld, Canada’s pre-eminent watcher of Jewish trends, agrees.

“Those Jews who see the security of Israel at the heart of their political agenda might tend to be more supportive of the Conservatives,” he said, noting that the trend is mirrored among the slight increase in support for Republicans among U.S. Jews, who still vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

“If the security of Israel is your No. 1 defining concern, then you’re less torn,” Weinfeld said. “But if it’s a concern along with other domestic concerns and you are a progressive supporter of Israel, then you are more torn.”

Apart from anecdotal evidence that many Jews “have been struck by the clarity of the Conservative government’s position on Israel,” Weinfeld says there is no hard data to show a large-scale rightward Jewish shift.

http://jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/print/20080528canada05272008.html

British MI6 ‘wants to control EU political institutions’

MOSCOW, June 9 (RIA Novosti) - British intelligence is making attempts to establish control over EU political institutions by means of a series of accusations that allege widespread Russian spying, a high-ranking Russian security official said on Monday.

An article titled ‘Can the EU defend itself?’ published in the prominent business weekly The Economist on May 29 said: “Russian spying in Brussels and Strasbourg…is far better financed, better aimed and better coordinated than ever before.”

It said the efforts of Russia’s elite foreign-intelligence services were now supplemented by the Federal Security Service (FSB), which used to deal solely with internal issues, and involved not only intelligence officers, but also journalists, consultants, and even students.

Commenting on the article, a Russian security expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “It is not a coincidence that the article was released almost immediately after EU foreign ministers had approved a mandate for talks on a deal to replace the current Partnership and Cooperation treaty on May 26.”

The negotiations on the new partnership pact are expected to be launched at a Russia-EU summit in Khanty-Mansiisk, Western Siberia, on June 26-27. The old agreement expired in December 2007 and was extended for a further year.

The expert said that after Russia had resolved its disputes with Poland over meat exports and Lithuania over energy supplies, London decided to fuel paranoia and fear of Russia with “Cold-War type spy stories.”

“The British are not happy with the fact that Russia maintains a constructive dialogue with the main European capitals, including Paris, Berlin and Rome,” he said.

In his opinion, London has long been trying to strengthen its positions in the European Union by placing British officials in key posts in the EU’s political structures, while opposing the main mechanisms of European integration, including common currency, free travel and a draft European constitution.

He said London was pursuing its own political agenda and was attempting “to impose on European officials a system of loyalty checks and constant surveillance in the best traditions of the Cold War” to protect its regional interests and promote far-reaching ambitions.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080609/109661433.html

WARNING PROPAGANDA!!!

The Economist

Can the EU defend itself?

http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/europeview/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11443152

Credit crisis expands, hitting all kinds of consumer loans

By: By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers via Rubber

WASHINGTON — The credit crisis triggered by bad home loans is spreading to other areas, forcing banks to tighten credit and probably extending the credit crisis that’s dragging down the economy well into next year, and perhaps beyond.

That means consumers are going to have an increasingly difficult time getting bank loans for car purchases, credit cards, home equity credit lines, student loans and even commercial real estate, experts say.

When financial analyst Meredith Whitney wrote in a report last October that the nation’s largest bank, Citigroup, lacked sufficient capital for the risks it had assumed, she was considered a heretic.

However, Whitney was proved correct: Citigroup pushed out its CEO, sought foreign investors and slashed its dividend. Her comments now carry added weight on Wall Street, and she has a new warning for ordinary Americans: The crisis in credit markets is far from over, and it increasingly will affect consumers.

“In fact, we believe that what lies ahead will be worse than what is behind us,” Whitney and colleagues at Oppenheimer & Co. wrote in a lengthy report last month about threats faced by big national banks, including Bank of America, Wachovia and others.

The warning is scary considering what’s already behind us in the credit crisis — the resignation or firing since last August of CEOs at almost every large commercial or investment bank; the Federal Reserve lowering its benchmark lending rate by 3.25 percentage points; a Fed-brokered deal to sell investment bank Bear Stearns; and weekly auctions of short-term loans from the Fed worth billions of dollars to keep credit markets functioning.

Whitney argues that the worst is still ahead because the financial tools that enabled credit to flow so freely to homeowners and consumers for most of this decade are likely to remain in a prolonged shutdown indefinitely.

“After years of inherently flawed underwriting, banks face the worst yet of the credit crisis — over $170 billion in write-downs and charge-offs from consumer loans,” Whitney told McClatchy. The same kind of losses from housing may be ahead for credit extended to consumers, she said.

At the heart of the nation’s lending boom from 1996 to 2006 was a process called securitization. In housing, this process involved pooling mortgages for sale to investors as special bonds called mortgage-backed securities. Monthly mortgage payments were also pooled and served as the return to investors.

Securitization meant that most home loans no longer sat on a bank’s balance sheet. Instead, they were sold into a secondary market, where they were sliced and diced in a process that was supposed to spread investment risk a mile wide and an inch deep.

For every dollar of mortgage loans that banks kept on their balance sheets since 2000, another $7 of these loans were sold to the secondary market and securitized. This led to the industry joke that “a rolling loan gathered no loss.” Risk was passed along to the next holder of the debt. Securitization added what bankers call liquidity, a fancy term for having more money on hand to lend.

Now, the structured finance that enabled Americans to borrow cheaply has gone away, at least in the housing market.
“With that source of liquidity removed, the sheer number of buyers who can qualify for mortgages and therefore buy homes will decline dramatically,” Whitney told McClatchy. “It stands to reason, therefore, that less demand and more supply will drive home prices down well below current expectations.”

In addition, interest is waning in other areas of lending where securitization has also been common — car loans, credit cards, home equity lines of credit, student loans and even commercial real estate. It means that lending in those areas is growing tighter.

“There are still many areas where people aren’t going to be able to do transactions that they were able to a year ago,” said Sean Davys, managing director of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the trade association for big finance. “We do expect that it will take a significant amount of time for the market to return to any sense of normalcy. What’s your reference to normalcy? It’s going back several years, not just a couple of years.”

These other areas of lending are suffering through a buyer’s strike. Investors just don’t have much interest in buying anything whose underlying asset are pooled loans.

Because there are no buyers, banks are taking an accounting hit as they mark down the value of the securitized mortgages they own, and Whitney believes they’ll have to do so with other types of securitized loans, such as car loans and credit card debt.

That’s likely to result in a large pullback in bank lending. She forecasts tighter lending standards, banks with increasingly limited capital, a growing need for banks to set aside more money to offset losses and tough new federal regulations to protect borrowers, which would reduce lending further.

If the positive side of securitization was that it let banks lend more by passing loans into a secondary market, the inverse is now true. Banks are less willing or able to lend — they collectively set aside more than $10 billion to shore up their balance sheets in the first quarter of 2008. That’s meant that consumers must pay more to borrow to buy a car or fix a home, and it’s harder to get loans.

“There are a lot of businesses and individuals that are going to find that their access to credit is a lot more limited than it used to be and it’s a lot more expensive,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist with Wachovia, a large national bank headquartered in Charlotte, N.C. “And the reason why is the lessened ability to securitize these loans and sell them in the secondary market. That lack of liquidity is being priced into all new loans.”

Higher borrowing costs are on top of tighter lending. The Whitney report estimated that by 2010 credit card issuers would withdraw more than $2 trillion in credit that they’ve been extending to consumers.

“We’re already seeing examples of people seeing their credit limits reduced,” said Joseph Ridout, a spokesman for Consumer Action, a consumer rights group based in San Francisco.

More troubling, he said, some banks are doubling interest rates on customers who are current on payments but considered a credit risk because of changes in their credit profile. The hikes apply to credit-card debt already racked up.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke worried about the state of the credit markets in a June 3 speech. Financial institutions already have taken $300 billion in write-downs and credit losses, he said, noting that “balance sheet pressures and the relatively high cost of new bank capital have reduced the willingness and ability of these institutions to make markets and extend credit.”

Translation: Expect less credit for consumers and businesses and higher borrowing costs.

It’s a bad omen for a sluggish economy struggling to stay out of recession.

Still, not everyone is so downbeat.

Bert Ely, a banking consultant who was prominent during the savings and loan crisis, thinks that once the economy rebounds, banks will look a lot stronger. That’s because the loans they’re bringing back on their balance sheets will look better over time.

“Many of the losses financial institutions have reported will essentially reverse out (and become accounting gains) . . . that’s why large institutions have been raising capital to hang on to these securities so they don’t have to sell them at what would be unrealistically high losses,” said Ely.

He nonetheless agreed with Whitney that “there are still some serious issues with securitization” and the credit markets are unlikely to bounce back within two or three years.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/40246.html

US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan

WASHINGTON, Jun 6 (IPS) - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier “launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran”, citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make “a policy decision about how far the administration would go — what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks.”

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of the Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East.

Carpenter suggested that DoD officials were shifting the debate on a limited strike from the Iraq-based rationale, which they were not contesting, to the much bigger issue of the threat of escalation to full-scale war with Iran, knowing that it would be politically easier to thwart the proposal on that basis.

The former State Department official said DoD “knew that it would be difficult to get interagency consensus on that question”.

The Joint Chiefs were fully supportive of the position taken by Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the Cheney proposal, according to Carpenter. “It’s clear that the military leadership was being very conservative on this issue,” he said.

At least some DoD and military officials suggested that Iran had more and better options for hitting back at the United States than the United States had for hitting Iran, according to one former Bush administration insider.

Former Bush speechwriter and senior policy adviser Michael Gerson, who had left the administration in 2006, wrote a column in the Washington Post Jul. 20, 2007 in which he gave no hint of Cheney’s proposal, but referred to “options” for striking Iranian targets based on the Cheney line that Iran “smuggles in the advanced explosive devices that kill and maim American soldiers”.

Gerson cited two possibilities: “Engaging in hot pursuit against weapon supply lines over the Iranian border or striking explosives factories and staging areas within Iran.” But the Pentagon and the military leadership were opposing such options, he reported, because of the fear that Iran has “escalation dominance” in its conflict with the United States.

That meant, according to Gerson that, “in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs.”

Carpenter’s account of the Pentagon’s position on the Cheney proposal suggests, however, that civilian and military opponents were saying that Iran’s ability to escalate posed the question of whether the United States was going to go to a full-scale air war against Iran.

Pentagon civilian and military opposition to such a strategic attack on Iran had become well-known during 2007. But this is the first evidence from an insider that Cheney’s proposal was perceived as a ploy to provoke Iranian retaliation that could used to justify a strategic attack on Iran.

The option of attacking nuclear sites had been raised by President Bush with the Joint Chiefs at a meeting in “the tank” at the Pentagon on Dec. 13, 2006 and had been opposed by the Joint Chiefs, according a report by Time magazine’s Joe Klein last June. After he become head of the Central Command in March 2007, Adm. William Fallon also made his opposition to such a massive attack on Iran known to the White House, according Middle East specialist Hillary Mann, who had developed close working relationships with Pentagon officials when she worked on the National Security Council staff.

It appeared in early 2007, therefore, that a strike at Iran’s nuclear programme and military power had been blocked by opposition from the Pentagon. Cheney’s proposal for an attack on IRGC bases in June 2007, tied to the alleged Iranian role in providing both weapons — especially the highly lethal explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) — and training to Shiite militias appears to have been a strategy for getting around the firm resistance of military leaders to such an unprovoked attack.

Although the Pentagon bottled up the Cheney proposal in inter-agency discussions, Cheney had a strategic asset which could he could use to try to overcome that obstacle: his alliance with Gen. David Petraeus.

As IPS reported earlier this week, Cheney had already used Gen. David Petraeus’ takeover as the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq in early February 2007 to do an end run about the Washington national security bureaucracy to establish the propaganda line that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and shipping them to the Mahdi Army militiamen.

Petraeus was also a supporter of Cheney’s proposal for striking IRGC targets in Iran, going so far as to hint in an interview with Fox News last September that he had passed on to the White House his desire to do something about alleged Iranian assistance to Shiites that would require U.S. forces beyond his control.

At that point, Adm. Fallon was in a position to deter any effort to go around DoD and military opposition to such a strike because he controlled all military access to the region as a whole. But Fallon’s forced resignation in March and the subsequent promotion of Petraeus to become CENTCOM chief later this year gives Cheney a possible option to ignore the position of his opponents in Washington once more in the final months of the administration.

• Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

http://www.ipsnews.org/news.asp?idnews=42696

Thousands clash with police in Egyptian bread riot

Thousands clash with police over flour rations in town in northern Egypt

SALAH NASRAWI
AP News

The state-owned daily Al-Ahram said some 8,000 protesters sealed off the main Cairo-Mediterranean highway for seven hours Saturday and burnt tires to stop traffic. Police fired tear gas and arrested dozens to disperse the crowd,

A security official said police were questioning 87 suspects.

The protesters were angered by the decision of authorities in Burullus to stop distributing subsidized flour directly to residents and instead deliver it exclusively to bakeries, the official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to give statements.

Fishermen in Burullus prefer to bake a type of bread suited to long fishing voyages instead of buying the standard subsidized bread from bakeries.

There have also been accusations by the government that people are selling the subsidized flour on the black market for a profit, leading to shortages.

Like much of the rest of the world, Egypt has been wracked by rising food prices and stagnant wages, resulting in protests and demonstrations.

There has also been a shortage of the subsidized bread relied on by vast segments of this impoverished country of 76.5 million.

Some 10 people were reported killed since the beginning of the year after scuffles in bread lines.

Bernanke Cries “It’s all China’s Fault!”

He’s at it again. Bernanke, that is. Thursday the Fed chief delivered a rambling 45 minute speech at the International Monetary Conference in Barcelona, Spain laying out all the reasons why the Federal Reserve is NOT responsible for the present crisis in the financial markets. Here’s what he said:

“In the financial sphere, the three longer-term developments I have identified are linked by the fact that a substantial increase in the net supply of saving in emerging market economies contributed to both the U.S. housing boom and the broader credit boom. The sources of this increase in net saving included rapid growth in high-saving East Asian countries and, outside of China, reduced investment rates in that region; large buildups in foreign exchange reserves in a number of emerging markets; and the enormous increases in the revenues received by exporters of oil and other commodities. The pressure of these net savings flows led to lower long-term real interest rates around the world, stimulated asset prices (including house prices), and pushed current accounts toward deficit in the industrial countries–notably the United States–that received these flows.”

Whew. That’s a pretty long-winded way of saying the Chinese are to blame for everything that’s gone wrong in the markets for the last 10 months. But is it true?

Ask yourself this, dear reader; do “savings” cause massive equity bubbles or are bubbles the result of low interest rates and rotten monetary policy? It is universally agreed that Greenspan created the housing bubble by dropping rates below the rate of inflation for 31 months following the dot.com bust. This sparked a multi-trillion dollar speculative frenzy in real estate. Artificially low interest rates distort the market; bubbles appear. “Savings” had nothing to do with it; Bernanke is just trying to dodge responsibility by blaming the Chinese. It’s the old “dog ate my homework” routine.

The Fed is also responsible for the surge in oil prices. As Frank Shostak points out in his recent article “The Oil Price Bubble”:

“There is a high likelihood that the massive increase in the price of oil that we are currently observing is the manifestation of a severe misallocation of resources — a large increase in nonproductive activities. It is these activities that have laid the foundation for the oil-market bubble, which has become manifest in the explosive increase in the price of oil. The root of the problem here is the Fed’s very loose monetary policy between January 2001 and June 2004. (The federal funds rate was lowered from 6% to 1%.)”

As far as Bernanke’s contention that the “unprecedented growth in developing and emerging market economies (China, again)…made the Fed’s job of managing inflation easier”; that’s true. But whose interests did that serve? Certainly not the American people who’ve seen their factories closed and jobs outsourced by a handful of wealthy US industrialists who gutted their country for a pocketful of silver. Globalization is just the public relations mask that conceals the avarice of its main proponents; upper-class parasites. That’s who Bernanke speaks for not the American people.

Besides, the Fed knew from the very beginning that the Chinese were manipulating their currency so they could offload their cheap manufactured goods onto the American market and crush US industry in the process. What’s wrong with that? That’s what America used to do when we had leaders who operated in the national interest rather than serving a global corporate oligarchy and their madcap scheme for a New World Order. It’s called capitalism; and America used to be pretty good at it.

The Fed never cared that the game was being rigged. Why would Bernanke care? After all, China and Japan were reinvesting their massive trade surplus’ in US Treasuries and equities which kept interest rates artificially low while providing Wall Street with a steady flow of cheap capital. It was a “win-win” situation for the investment moguls and their buddies at the hedge funds. They were busy getting rich while the nation was being handed over to foreign creditors lock, stock and barrel. Neither Greenspan or Bernanke ever made a peep of protest while the looting continued for more than a decade.

Bernanke doesn’t even deny this. In his speech he says:

“These net savings flows led to lower long-term real interest rates around the world, stimulated asset prices (including house prices), and pushed current accounts toward deficit in the industrial countries–notably the United States–that received these flows.”

Correct. The $800 billion current account deficit was recycled into US Treasuries and securities creating phony prosperity which the Fed knew was “unsustainable”, but they refused to fulfill their regulatory role. Instead, Greenspan and his Fed-brothers rubber-stamped every hare-brain scheme that Wall Street cooked up including the myriad complex derivatives contracts which ballooned from less than $1 trillion in 2000 to over $580 trillion today; a monstorous bubble which is large enough to send the entire global economy into a decades-long tailspin.

Did anyone at the Fed speak up?

No way.

Bernanke’s speech: “And, in preparation for the new Basel II capital regulations, supervisors required more-demanding standards for the measurement and management of risk.”

More lies. Basel II allowed the banking giants to estimate their asset values according to their own internal models, in other words, by picking a number out of a hat. It’s a joke. After Glass Steagall was repealed, the whole system was turned over to the crooks in pinstripe suits who quickly ran it into the ground. Booyah Reagan! Hurray for Milton Friedman!

Bernanke again: “The housing and credit booms were driven to some extent by global savings flows, but they also reflected domestic factors, such as weaknesses in risk management and lax standards in subprime lending. Higher commodity prices are for the most part a global phenomenon, but U.S. dependence on oil imports makes this country quite vulnerable on that score.”

“Risk management? Lax lending standards”?!?

What risk management; what lending standards? Does he mean lending hundreds of billions of dollars to mortgage applicants with no job, no collateral, no down payment and bad credit? Those standards? The whole scam was engineered by the investment banks who thought they could peddle mortgage-backed slop to gullible investors without any risk to themselves. They never expected that Bear Stearns hedge funds would blow up (in July 2007) and leave them holding hundreds of billions in toxic “subprime” bonds.

As far as escalating commodities prices, that all started with the Fed, too. Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, clarified this point earlier this week when he accused the Fed triggering inflation around the world by “reducing interest rates” and forcing commodities to rise sharply. (Yes, China does understand the game the Fed is playing)Bernanke pretends that he doesn’t grasp why oil prices are rising even though he’s pegged the Fed Funds rate below the rate of inflation. What’s the mystery? When the dollar is traded below its “after inflation” value; how can oil do anything except go up? This isn’t rocket science.

But the Fed doesn’t give a hoot about inflation anyway. That’s just another myth.The Wall Street Journal summed it up like this on Tuesday:

“Inflation can’t get entrenched without rising wages, which won’t happen in a weak labor market.” That’s what this is really all about; making sure the working stiff never gets another farthing for his labor. That’s why the consumer price index (CPI) is the most “class oriented” of all the economic gages. It purposely factors out food, energy, housing (except rental value) so that the only time the inflation alarm blinks red is when salaries go up; then all hell breaks loose! It doesn’t make a bit of difference to the Fed what working people are paying at the grocery store or the gas pump; just as long as they NEVER get a raise.

The Fed also cares about “Capital flight” which is accelerating because of the Central Bank’s mismanagement of the financial markets. Confidence in US markets is at its nadir and private investors are headed for the exits. That puts more strain on the battered dollar, which is likely to lose its position as the world’s “reserve currency”. That’s why Henry Paulson was in the Middle East on Monday pleading with the oil producing countries not to break their peg with the dollar. If the dollar is delinked from petroleum; the Empire wither overnight; the war will end, the troops will come home, and the United States will have to pay its bills like everyone else.

Is there a downside?

Paulson said, “I am committed to promoting policies that enhance the underlying competitiveness of the U.S. economy and ensure that the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency. The dollar has been the world’s reserve currency since World War II and there is a good reason for that. The U.S. has the largest, most open economy in the world, and our capital markets are the deepest and most liquid. The long-term health and strong underlying fundamentals of the U.S. economy will shine through and be reflected in currency values.

Paulson is a certifiable nutcase. The underlying US economy may be strong but the financial system is built on pure quicksand and is sinking fast. The only thing keeping the dollar afloat is the secret maneuvering of the G-7 and the loyalty of a few venal Arab sheiks who would rather see their people face 14 per cent inflation then cut the umbilical cord to Uncle Sam.

Earlier this year, author Bill Wilby explained the benefits of being the world’s “reserve currency”:

“If America were to lose its reserve currency status because of a continued loss of confidence in the dollar, the cost in terms of jobs and growth would be significant. The real economic benefit conveyed by the right to print the accepted global currency is called seignorage, which results in part from the lower capital cost we derive from foreigners’ willingness to hold dollar cash. This country has taken for granted the benefits of our global seignorage for many years, and it is one of the reasons the U.S. has maintained a higher growth rate than the world’s other mature economies.” (”The Dollar and the Market Mess”, Bill Wilby, Wall Street Journal)

Wilby’s right, foreign investors and central banks would have no reason to keep their treasure-trove of $6 trillion in USD and dollar-backed assets if oil is no longer denominated in greenbacks. That means a flood of dollars would reenter the US causing an inflationary spiral that would make Wiemar, Germany look like a breezy day on the strand.

Thanks to the Fed’s ham-fisted monetary policies, a Force-5 economic hurricane is presently looming right offshore and there’s nothing Bernanke or Paulson can do to stop it from touching down. If Bernanke cuts rates; commodities (and oil) will skyrocket and foreign investors will ditch the dollar. If he raises rates, banks will fail and the housing crash will accelerate. There are no good options.

Economist Nouriel Roubini summed it up like this:

“A contracting economy, falling employment, the worst US housing recession since the Great Depression, collapsing home values, millions of households underwater with an incentive to walk away, a shopped out and saving-less and debt-burdened US consumer buffeted by falling home prices, falling HEW, falling stock prices, rising debt servicing ratios, oil at $130 a barrel and gasoline at $4 a gallon, collapsing consumer confidence and falling employment are taking the toll on the economy, on financial markets, on banks, on the shadow financial system and on money markets and credit markets. We were in the eye of the storm rather than past the storm; and the recent events and developments suggest that the worst is ahead of us, for the economy, for equity markets, for credit markets and for money markets.”

That’s right; doomsday, dead ahead.

You’re doin’ a “heck’uva job, Benny!”
By Mike Whitney

Email: fergiewhitney@msn.com

Mike is a well respected freelance writer living in Washington state, interested in politics and economics from a libertarian perspective.

Link

Separatism and Empire Building in the 21st Century

James Petras 

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.

Introduction: The Historical Context

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?.-

Link: petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1738&more=1&c=1

James Petras 

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.

I

Introduction: The Historical Context

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?.-

Link: petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1738&more=1&c=1

It’s not a dollar crisis, it’s a gold crisis

Venezuela’s progressive, new intelligence reform.

 The NYT attack vs. the facts.

VIO Venezuela News and Action

Dear Friends,

Today’s article by the New York Times, “Chávez Decree Tightens Hold on Intelligence”, demonstrates the Times’ ongoing attempt to mislead the general public about the intentions of the Venezuelan government.

While one might have expected the article to describe the content of Venezuela’s new intelligence law and discuss a range of reactions to it, the scope was limited only to criticisms by the opposition.

Here are the facts:

The law eliminates Venezuela’s 50 year old secret political police, known as DISIP, created during the dictatorship of Perez Jimenez. It also eliminates Venezuela’s agency of Military intelligence (DIM). In their place, the General Intelligence Office and the General Counterintelligence Office have been created, both overseen by the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Defense.

Refining the intelligence capacity of the state does not allow for a “tightening control” by President Chavez; rather, for the first time Venezuela is providing a legal framework for carrying out and monitoring intelligence activities of the nation. Many actions that once were left to the discretion of the DISIP and the DIM are now subject to oversight. Moreover, the existence of this law provides a level of transparency that was lacking before.

The dissolution of the DISIP and DIM was long overdue. For decades. Venezuelans feared these agencies for their involvement in nefarious activity and repression, including incidents involving the escape of notorious criminals. Most importantly, from 1967 to 1974, terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was a high level official at the DISIP. This very important point was passed over by the Times.

As opposed to what the Times implies, the new law guarantees the rights of Freedom of Expression and Due Process under the Law, as established in Venezuela’s Constitution. In Article 21, for instance, it is clearly outlined that those prosecuted are guaranteed the right to a public defense.

Venezuela has recently experienced threats to its national security, this is best exemplified by the unsuccessful 2002 coup d’etat that was supported by the Bush administration. Moreover, just last month, a U.S. fighter jet violated Venezuela’s airspace and to date the U.S. has not provided an adequate explanation. Venezuela is reorganizing its intelligence community not only to guarantee the security of its democratic institutions but also to guarantee that intelligence operations are carried out under the legal framework of the Constitution.

President Chavez passed this law using the Enabling Law, granted to him for 18 months by the National Assembly in January 2007.

Finally, the biased article by the Times, even states that the Chavez’s government “has already used voter registration data to purge employees deemed disloyal to the president.” The Times needs to be reminded that Venezuela’s elections are among the most heavily scrutinized in the world and to make such accusations today are misleading. While one incident of this occurred in the past, initiated by the opposition (not the Chavez government), this practice has been condemned and never tolerated by the President.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_26966.shtml

Conspiracy of Silence:

Corporate Media Refuses to Cover Bilderberg Confab

Iran to launch gas pipeline construction under Nabucco project

Iran will start work this year to build a pipeline as part of the Western-backed Nabucco project designed to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe bypassing Russia, an Iranian oil official said.

The Nabucco project is intended to pump 20-30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Central Asia, under the Caspian Sea, then through Azerbaijan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline is expected to begin in 2010 and be completed by 2013. “The study of Iran’s possibilities in this project has almost been concluded. The Iranian gas pipeline will become a part of the Nabucco project, to supply natural gas to Europe from Iran’s largest Southern Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf,” Deputy Oil Minister Reza Kasai Zadeh said on Monday.

Meanwhile, the board of the Nabucco Gas Pipeline Company decided on May 31 to raise the project’s cost from €5 billion ($7.8 billion) to €7.9 billion ($12 billion) due to growth in oil prices and strong demand for steel for the implementation of large-scale international projects.

Some analysts say that without the support of Turkmenistan, a major natural gas producer in Central Asia, the Nabucco project is unrealistic. Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and more recently Iraq, have been seen as possible suppliers for the project. Iraq’s bid is backed by the United States.

Russia is skeptical over the Nabucco pipeline, saying that in the foreseeable future it will have insufficient gas supplies. In what was widely seen as a major blow to the Nabucco project, Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan signed a deal in December to supply the Asian states’ Caspian gas via Russia. Moscow also reached deals with Bulgaria and Serbia earlier this year on the South Stream pipeline to pump Central Asian gas to Europe. (rian.ru)

http://www.bbj.hu/news/news_40134.html

Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors

By Patrick Cockburn

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military “surge” began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. “It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty,” said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: “This is just a tactical subterfuge.” Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its “war on terror” in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called “strategic alliance” without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create “a permanent occupation”. He added: “The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans.”

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.

The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.

Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now. The one Iraqi with the authority to stop deal is the majority Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2003, he forced the US to agree to a referendum on the new Iraqi constitution and the election of a parliament. But he is said to believe that loss of US support would drastically weaken the Iraqi Shia, who won a majority in parliament in elections in 2005.

The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.

The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.

The signature of a security agreement, and a parallel deal providing a legal basis for keeping US troops in Iraq, is unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis. But the Kurds, who make up a fifth of the population, will probably favour a continuing American presence, as will Sunni Arab political leaders who want US forces to dilute the power of the Shia. The Sunni Arab community, which has broadly supported a guerrilla war against US occupation, is likely to be split.

Link