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By Shamus Cooke

Why are there no serious peace talks to end the war in Syria? After robbing over 130,000 people of their lives, and evicting over 9 million refugees from their homes, the Syrian war has infected nearly every region of the Middle East. Yet among the U.S. and its regional allies there are no public discussions about a viable peace plan, only war talk.

It’s hard to talk peace when the United States is still maneuvering for war, having recently given $500 million to arm and train Syrian rebels, while also brokering a deal with Saudi Arabia to open a new Syrian rebel training camp, in addition to the one already functioning in Jordan. Instead of using Obama’s vast Middle East influence for peace he has used it to push war.

The brilliant failure of the U.S.-led Geneva peace talks on Syria was done without the seriousness demanded by the wholesale destruction of a nation. Obama used the talks to pursue “U.S. interests,” having purposely excluded Iran from the talks while trying to leverage disproportionate power for Obama’s “Free Syrian Army” rebels, who enjoy minuscule power on the ground as they used peace talks to make unrealistic demands.

Obama played a passive role in the peace talks, allowing them to flounder instead of publicly putting forth serious proposals that reflected the situation on the ground. There have been no talks since January and Geneva III is yet unscheduled, as Obama seems committed only to giving the rebels more bargaining power via more war, the logic being that if the rebels are armed and trained appropriately, they’ll eventually be able to win back enough land to force the Assad government to bargain on equal terms.

The giant void in the market for peace has opened up opportunities for Russia and Egypt, who reportedly are attempting to insert themselves as leaders in Middle East diplomacy, in part to expand their influence, in part to protect themselves from the conflagration of Islamic extremism the conflict is producing.

Mint Press reports on the still-developing story:

“Moscow and Cairo are preparing for a conference between the Syrian regime and the opposition in the hope of bringing them together in a transitional government that ‘fights terrorism’…the agenda of the conference to be held between the two sides includes establishing a transitional Syrian government with extensive powers while maintaining Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s authority over the army and security institutions.”

If such a proposal comes to fruition its merits must be seriously debated on the world stage, where Obama would very likely do his best to sabotage the peace. This is because Obama’s rebels on the ground in Syria — loosely organized under the “Free Syrian Army” banner — are powerless, and a Russia-led peace process would reveal this fact and apply it to a peace treaty, leaving little influence for the Obama administration in the new government. This is a peace deal Obama would rather kill.

Obama’s rebels are weak while the Syrian Government has made substantial military gains. Most notably a recent peace deal was won in Syria’s largest city Aleppo, modeled after the peace deal in Homs that allowed rebels to leave unarmed while giving de-facto control of the city to the government.

Interestingly, veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk recently questioned not only the relevance of Obama’s Free Syrian Army, but it’s very existence. Fisk explains:

“The Free Syrian Army I think drinks a lot of coffee in Istanbul. I have never come across it – except in the first months of the fighting, I’ve never come across even prisoners from the Free Syrian Army…You know, the FSA, in the eyes of the Syrians, doesn’t really exist. They’ve got al-Qaeda, Nusrah, various other Islamist groups, and now of course ISIS…But I don’t think they care very much about the Free Syrian Army. One officer told me that some have been accepted back into the Syrian Army, so they could go home. Others had been allowed to go home and they were not permitted to serve in the Syrian Army anymore. I think that the Free Syrian Army is a complete myth and I don’t believe it really exists and nor do the Syrians…”

Fisk’s analysis of the FSA punctuates the perspective of many who have long questioned whether the FSA had been totally absorbed by the Islamic extremist militias. At most the FSA exists in tiny irrelevant pockets, though Fisk thinks the FSA might be an Obama administration fantasy used to justify the ongoing Syrian war.

Aside from Obama’s weakness on the ground, there are broader geo-political reasons Obama would reject a Russia/Egypt-led peace. For one, the Obama Administration only recently made a long term investment in war, by giving the $500 billion to the Syrian rebels and training thousands more in Saudi Arabia, actions that effectively dismissed any meaningful reconciliation with Iran.

Obama chose instead to reinforce the close alliances with pariah states Saudi Arabia and Israel, and both are demanding that Syria be destroyed. By re-committing himself to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel, Obama has essentially abandoned peace with Syria and Iran, since Obama’s allies want Syria and Iran destroyed.

If Obama followed the lead of Russia and Egypt in the peace process, his allies would abandon him, since they’ve invested huge sums of money, arms, and their political livelihoods on making sure their governments and domestic companies profit off of the demise of the Syrian government.

This is the basis for the complete geo-political stalemate in the Middle East. Of course the giant U.S. corporations that benefit from Middle East dominance are applying maximum pressure to continue war. The stalemate has become so obvious and destructive in Syria that Russia and Egypt have inserted themselves as power brokers, which would act to bolster their political-economic leverage while pushing the U.S. out.

Regional power scrambling aside, if a rational peace deal were put forth —whether it’s brokered by Russia, Egypt, or whomever — the world must demand that peace be pursued, lest the Syrian catastrophe continue.

Obama and his regional allies have proven totally incapable of producing any realistic peace proposal — they’ve been too consumed with war. Obama has yet another chance to recognize the results of this failed proxy war and accept a peace that is a 100,000 lives overdue, or it can forge ahead to expand the killing. Stopping the war is as easy as acknowledging the reality, and to forge a treaty that reflects it.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).

14 November, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Andrea Germanos

The United States cheered on Thursday an agreement it reached with India as progress for the World Trade Organization (WTO). Critics, however, say deal is likely a win for corporations and economic loss for developing countries.

A fact sheet from the U.S. Trade Representative explains that there are two parts to the deal that broke what had been an impasse over agreements from Ministerial meeting last year in Bali. The first is that the two countries stated they would move forward on the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA)—the WTO’s first multilateral trade agreement of the body’s two-decade existence. The second is an agreement on India’s food security program, which allows for domestic “food stockpiling.”

Begging WTO for Food Security

As the Associated Press summed up: “India had insisted on its right to subsidize grains under a national policy to support hundreds of millions of impoverished farmers and provide food security amid high inflation.”

Regarding that food security program, the New York Times reports, “Indian and American officials agreed to a peace clause that protects India’s program from a legal challenge until W.T.O. members reach a permanent resolution of the dispute.” India had held out on this issue.

But as the Transnational Institute (TNI) pointed out in a report released this week: “The big question is why do governments even need the WTO to decide whether they can guarantee the right to food to their people? The right to food is a universal human right that should not be subject to trade rules.”

The report also notes that the need for such a peace clause highlights the “deep hypocrisy embedded within the WTO,” as the EU and the U.S., unlike India and other developing countries, are able to pour billions into their own agricultural subsidies.

Deborah James, Director of International Programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, echoed these points, explaining to Common Dreams: “The entire debate is outrageous.”

“The world has passed through multiple food crises since the WTO rules were written, and nearly every global agricultural agency now recognizes the dire need for developing countries to invest in agricultural production to promote food security, rather than relying on a global market rife with rich countries’ trade-distorting subsidies and speculative distortions. And due to a mass Right to Food movement, India now has a food security program that has been hailed as the most ambitious in the world,” James stated.

“It is beyond shameful that the United States blocked these negotiations all year in 2013, and that India and other developing countries were left with a peace clause as a consolation prize,” she continued.

Yet, according to Timothy A. Wise, who directs the Research and Policy Program at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute, that India and the U.S. were able to reach an agreement on this issue could be positive.

“India was under enormous pressure to settle this, and its allies were under pressure to abandon India. The good news is that India’s firm stance exacted some concessions from the United States that may lead to good-faith negotiations on the food security issues. Time will tell,” Wise explained to Common Dreams.

The TFA as Corporate Win

The agreement also moves forward the WTO’s TFA, which is also problematic, critics charge.

As CEPR’s James wrote in July:

The new agreement on “Trade Facilitation” would set binding rules on customs procedures and trade operations that would demand huge investments from developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to modernize and streamline – according to U.S. and EU standards — their port operations. This means that while we still don’t have binding international rules on, say, the right to water, corporations would have the “right” to have their products exported into developing countries quickly, easily, and cheaply. That’s why nearly 200 organizations around the world opposed the agreement when it was being negotiated last year.

The TFA would also divert limited resources away from priority development needs such as health, education, and domestic infrastructure investments in LDCs and developing countries. Developed countries refused to make binding commitments on financial support during the negotiations. The World Bank announced on July 17 that it would make available, through its Trade Facilitation Support Program (supported by Australia, the EU, the U.S., Canada, Norway and Switzerland) an embarrassingly paltry $30 million for over 100 developing countries to assist them in implementing the TFA.

As TNI’s new report puts bluntly, the TFA is a win for transnational corporations. As they “control the global supply chains across the world, [they] will gain the most from an Agreement that slashes costs and relaxes customs procedures, easing the flow of imports and exports,” the report states.

While the WTO had touted the economic gains of the Bali deal, Wise stated: “The bad news is that trade facilitation remains a largely unfunded mandate that will not produce the laughable estimate of $1 trillion in economic gains for the world, as my colleague Jeronim Capaldo has shown. And it may well create economic losses for some least developed countries.”

The WTO said Friday that the U.S./India agreement will probably be implemented by the full 160-member body within two weeks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

14 November, 2014
Commondreams.org

By Seumas Milne

Conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine will spread without effective restraint on western unilateralism.

Where is the end of history now? Across three continents, conflicts are multiplying. An arc of war, foreign intervention and state breakdown stretches from Afghanistan to north Africa.

In Iraq and Syria, the so-called Islamic State – mutant offspring of the war on terror – is now the target of renewed US-led intervention. In Ukraine, thousands have died in the proxy fighting between Russian-backed rebels and the western-sponsored Kiev government. And in the far east, tensions between China, Japan and other US allies are growing.

British troops finally finally ended combat operations in Afghanistan on Sunday after 13 years of disastrous occupation. The bizarre claim, despite al-Qaida’s global spread, is that the mission was “pretty successful” — in a country where tens of thousands have been killed, the Taliban control vast areas, violence against women has escalated and elections are a fig leaf of fraud and intimidation.

The Afghan invasion launched what would become the west’s war without end, encompassing the catastrophe of Iraq, drone wars from Pakistan to Somalia, covert support for jihadi rebels in Syria and “humanitarian” intervention in Libya that has left behind a failed state in the grip of civil war.

The Middle East is now in an unparalleled and unprecedented crisis. More than any other single factor, that is the product of continual US and western intervention and support for dictatorships, both before and after the “Arab spring”, unconstrained by any system of international power or law.

But if the Middle Eastern maelstrom is the fruit of a US-dominated new world order, Ukraine is a result of the challenge to the unipolar world that grew out of the failure of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. It was the attempt to draw divided Ukraine into the western camp by EU and US hawks after years of eastward Nato expansion that triggered the crisis, Russia’s absorption of Crimea and the uprising in the Russian-speaking Donbass region of the east.

Eight months on, elections on both sides look likely to deepen the division of the country. Routinely dismissed as Kremlin propaganda, the reality is the US and EU backed the violent overthrow of an elected if corrupt government and are now supporting a military campaign that includes far-right militias accused of war crimes — while Russia is subject to sweeping US and EU sanctions.

Last week at the Valdai discussion club near Sochi, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, launched his fiercest denunciation yet of this US role in the world – perhaps not surprisingly after Barack Obama had bracketed Russia with Ebola and Isis as America’s top three global threats. After the cold war, Putin declared, the US had tried to dominate the world through “unilateral diktat” and “illegal intervention”, disregarding international law and institutions if they got in the way. The result had been conflict, insecurity and the rise of groups such as Isis, as the US and its allies were “constantly fighting the consequences of their own policies”.

None of which is very controversial across most of the world. During a Valdai club session I chaired, Putin told foreign journalists and academics that the unipolar world had been a “means of justifying dictatorship over people and countries” – but the emerging multipolar world was likely to be still more unstable. The only answer – and this was clearly intended as an opening to the west – was to rebuild international institutions, based on mutual respect and co-operation. The choice was new rules – or no rules, which would lead to “global anarchy”.

When I asked Putin whether Russia’s actions in Ukraine had been a response to, and an example of, a “no-rules order”, Putin denied it, insisting that the Kosovo precedent meant Crimea had every right to self-determination. But by conceding that Russian troops had intervened in Crimea “to block Ukrainian units”, he effectively admitted crossing the line of legality – even if not remotely on the scale of the illegal invasions, bombing campaigns and covert interventions by the US and its allies over the past decade and a half.

But there is little chance of the western camp responding to Putin’s call for a new system of global rules. In fact, the US showed little respect for rules during the cold war either, intervening relentlessly wherever it could. But it did have respect for power. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, that restraint disappeared. It was only the failure of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – and Russia’s subsequent challenge to western expansion and intervention in Georgia, Syria and Ukraine – that provided some check to unbridled US power.

Along with the rise of China, it has also created some space for other parts of the world to carve out their political independence, notably in Latin America. Putin’s oligarchic nationalism may not have much global appeal, but Russia’s role as a counterweight to western supremacism certainly does. Which is why much of the world has a different view of events in Ukraine from the western orthodoxy – and why China, India, Brazil and South Africa all abstained from the condemnation of Russia over Crimea at the UN earlier this year.

But Moscow’s check on US military might is limited. Its economy is over-dependent on oil and gas, under-invested and now subject to disabling sanctions. Only China offers the eventual prospect of a global restraint on western unilateral power and that is still some way off. As Putin is said to have told the US vice-president, Joe Biden, Russia may not be strong enough to compete for global leadership, but could yet decide who that leader might be.

Even Obama still regularly insists that the US is the “indispensable nation”. And it seems almost certain that whoever takes over from Obama will be significantly more hawkish and interventionist. The US elite remains committed to global domination and whatever can be preserved of the post-1991 new world order.

Despite the benefits of the emerging multipolar world, the danger of conflict, including large-scale wars, looks likely to grow. The public pressure that brought western troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan is going to have to get far stronger in the years to come – if that threat is not to engulf us all.

Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor.

29 October 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

A rich country with millions of poor people. A country that prides itself on being the land of opportunity, but in which a child’s prospects are more dependent on the income and education of his or her parents than in other advanced countries. A country that believes in fair play, but in which the richest often pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than those less well off. A country in which children every day pledge allegiance to the flag, asserting that there is “justice for all,” but in which, increasingly, there is only justice for those who can afford it. These are the contradictions that the United States is gradually and painfully struggling to come to terms with as it begins to comprehend the enormity of the inequalities that mark its society—inequities that are greater than in any other advanced country.

Those who strive not to think about this issue suggest that this is just about the “politics of envy.” Those who discuss the issue are accused of fomenting class warfare. But as we have come to grasp the causes and consequences of these inequities we have come to understand that this is not about envy. The extreme to which inequality has grown in the United States and the manner in which these inequities arise undermine our economy. Too much of the wealth at the top of the ladder arises from exploitation—whether from the exercise of monopoly power, from taking advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance laws to divert large amounts of corporate revenues to pay CEOs’ outsized bonuses unrelated to true performance, or from a financial sector devoted to market manipulation, predatory and discriminatory lending, and abusive credit card practices. Too much of the poverty at the bottom of the income spectrum is due to economic discrimination and the failure to provide adequate education and health care to the nearly one out of five children growing up poor.

The growing debate about inequality in America today is, above all, about the nature of our society, our vision of who we are, and others’ vision of us. We used to think of ourselves as a middle-class society, where each generation was better off than the last. At the foundation of our democracy was the middle class—the modern-day version of the small, property-owning American farmer whom Thomas Jefferson saw as the backbone of the country. It was understood that the best way to grow was to build out from the middle—rather than trickle down from the top. This commonsense perspective has been verified by studies at the International Monetary Fund, which demonstrate that countries with greater equality perform better—higher growth, more stability. It was one of the main messages of my book The Price of Inequality. Because of our tolerance for inequality, even the quintessential American Dream has been shown to be a myth: America is less of a land of opportunity than even most countries of “old Europe.”

The articles in this special edition of the Washington Monthly describe the way that America’s inequality plays out at each stage of one’s life, with several articles focusing in particular on education. We now know that there are huge disparities even as children enter kindergarten. These grow larger over time, as the children of the rich, living in rich enclaves, get a better education than the one received by those attending schools in poorer areas. Economic segregation has become the order of the day, so much so that even those well-off and well-intentioned selective colleges that instituted programs of economic affirmative action—explicitly trying to increase the fraction of their student body from lower socioeconomic groups—have struggled to do so. The children of the poor can afford neither the advanced degrees that are increasingly required for employment nor the unpaid internships that provide the alternative route to “good” jobs.

Similar stories could be told about each of the dimensions of America’s outsized inequality. Take health care. America is unique among the advanced countries in not recognizing access to health care as a basic human right. And that means if you are a poor American, your prospects of getting adequate, let alone good, medical care are worse than in other advanced countries. Even after passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), almost two dozen states have rejected expanding vitally needed Medicaid, and more than forty million Americans still lacked health insurance at the beginning of 2014. The dismal statistics concerning America’s health care system are well known: while we spend more—far more—on health care (both per capita and as a percentage of gross domestic product) than other countries, health outcomes are worse. In Australia, for instance, spending on health care per capita is just over two-thirds that in the United States, yet health outcomes are better—including a life expectancy that is a remarkable three years longer.

Two of the reasons for our dismal health statistics are related to inequalities at the top and the bottom of our society—monopoly profits reaped by drug companies, medical device makers, health insurers, and highly concentrated provider networks drive prices, and inequality, up while the lack of access to timely care for the poor, including preventive medicine, makes the population sicker and more costly to treat. The ACA is helping on both accounts. The health insurance exchanges are designed to promote competition. And the whole act is designed to increase access. The numbers suggest it’s working. As for costs, the widespread predictions that Obamacare would cause massive health care inflation have proven false, as the rate of increase in health care prices has remained comparatively moderate over the last several years, showing once again that there is no necessary trade-off between fairness and efficiency. The first year of the ACA showed significant increases in coverage—far more significant in those states that implemented the Medicaid expansion than in those that refused to do so. But the ACA was a compromise, leaving out dental and long-term extended care insurance.

Inequities in health care, then, are still with us, beginning even before birth. The poor are more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards, and mothers have less access to good prenatal care. The result is infant mortality rates that are comparable to some developing countries alongside a higher incidence of low birth weight (systemically correlated with poor lifetime prospects) than in other advanced countries. Lack of access to comprehensive health care for the 20 percent of American children growing up in poverty, combined with lack of access to adequate nutrition, makes success in school even less likely. With the cheapest form of food often being unhealthy carbohydrates, the poor are more likely to face problems of childhood diabetes and obesity. The inequities continue throughout life—culminating in dramatically different statistics on life expectancy.

All well and good, you might say: it would be nice if we could give free health care to all, free college education to all, but these are dreams that have to be tamed by the harsh realities of what we can afford. Already the country has a large deficit. Proposals to create a more equal society would make the large deficit even larger—so the argument goes. America is especially constrained because it has assumed the costly mission of ensuring peace and security for the world.

This is nonsense, on several counts.

The real strength of the United States is derived from its “soft power,” not its military power. But growing inequality is sapping our standing in the world from within. Can an economic system that provides so little opportunity—where real median household income (half above, half below, after adjusting for inflation) is lower today than it was a quarter century ago—provide a role model that others seek to emulate, even if a few at the very top have done very well?

Moreover, what we can afford is as much a matter of priorities as anything else. Other countries, such as the nations of Scandinavia, have, for instance, managed to provide good health care to all, virtually free college education for all, and good public transportation, and have done just as well, or even better, on standard metrics of economic performance: incomes per head and growth are at least comparable. Even some countries that are far poorer than the United States (such as Mauritius, off the east cost of Africa) have managed to provide free college education and better access to health care. A nation must make choices, and these countries have made different ones: they may spend less on their military, they may spend less on prisons, they may tax more.

Besides, many of the distributional issues are related not to how much we spend but who we spend it on. If we include within our expenditures the “tax expenditures” buried in our tax system, we effectively spend a lot more on the housing of the rich than is generally recognized. Interest deductability on a mega-mansion could easily be worth $25,000 a year. And alone among advanced economies, the United States tends to invest more in schools with richer student bodies than in those with mostly poor students—an effect of U.S. school districts’ dependence on local tax bases for funding. Interestingly, according to some calculations, the entire deficit can be attributed to our inefficient and inequitable health care system: if we had a better health care system—of the kind that provided more equality at lower cost, such as those in so many European countries—we arguably wouldn’t even have a federal budget deficit today.

Or consider this: if we provided more opportunity to the poor, including better education and an economic system that ensured access to jobs with decent pay, then perhaps we would not spend so much on prisons—in some states spending on prisons has at times exceeded that on universities. The poor instead would be better able to seize new employment opportunities, in turn making our economy more productive. And if we had better public transportation systems that made it easier and more affordable for working-class people to commute to where jobs are available, then a higher percentage of our population would be working and paying taxes. If, like the Scandinavian countries, we provided better child care and had more active labor market policies that assisted workers in moving from one job to another, we would have a higher labor force participation rate—and the enhanced growth would yield more tax revenues. It pays to invest in people.

This brings me to the final point: we could impose a fair tax system, raising more revenue, improving equity, and boosting economic growth while reducing distortions in our economy and our society. (That was the central finding of my 2014 Roosevelt Institute white paper, “Reforming Taxation to Promote Growth and Equity.”) For instance, if we just imposed the same taxes on the returns to capital that we impose on those who work for a living, we could raise some $2 trillion over ten years. “Loopholes” does not adequately describe the flaws in our tax system; “gaps” might be better. Closing them might end the specter of the very rich almost proudly disclosing that they pay a tax rate on their disclosed income at half the rate of those with less income, and that they keep their money in tax havens like the Cayman Islands. No one can claim that the inhabitants of these small islands know how to manage money better than the wizards of Wall Street; but it seems as though that money grows better in the sunshine of these beach resorts!

One of the few advantages of there being so much money at the top of the income ladder, with close to a quarter of all income going to the top 1 percent, is that slight increases in taxes at the top can now raise large amounts of money. And because so much of the money at the top comes from exploitation (or as economists prefer to call it, “rent seeking”—that is, seizing a larger share of the national pie rather than increasing its size), higher taxes at the top do not seem to have much of an adverse effect on economic performance.

Then there’s our corporate tax rate. If we actually made corporations pay what they are supposed to pay and eliminated loopholes we would raise hundreds of billions of dollars. With the right redesign, we could even get more employment and investment in the United States. True, U.S. corporations face one of the higher official corporate tax rates among the advanced countries; but the reality is otherwise—as a share of corporate income actually paid, our federal corporate taxes are just 13 percent of reported worldwide income. By most accounts, the amount of taxes actually paid (as a percentage of profits) is no higher than the average of other advanced countries. Apple Inc., Google Inc., and General Electric Co. have become the poster children of American ingenuity—making products that are the envy of the rest of the world. But they are using too much of that ingenuity to figure out how to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Yet they and other U.S. corporations make full use of ideas and innovations produced with the support of the U.S. government, starting with the Internet itself. At the same time they rely on the talent produced by the country’s first-rate universities, all of which receive extensive support from the federal government. They even turn to the U.S. government to demand better treatment from our trading partners.

Corporations argue that they would not engage in so much despicable tax avoidance if tax rates were lower. But there is a far better solution, and one that the individual U.S. states have discovered: have corporations pay taxes based on the economic activity they conduct in the United States, on the basis of a simple formula reflecting their sales, their production, and their research activities here, and tax corporations that invest in the United States at lower rates than those that don’t. In this way we could increase investment and employment here at home—a far cry from the current system, in which we in effect encourage even U.S. corporations to produce elsewhere. (Even if U.S. taxes are no higher than the average, there are some tax havens—like Ireland—that are engaged in a race to the bottom, trying to recruit companies to make their country their tax home.) Such a reform would end the corporate stampede toward “inversions,” changing a corporation’s tax home to avoid taxes. Where they claim their home office is would make little difference; only where they actually do business would.

Other sources of revenue would benefit our economy and our society. Two basic principles of taxation are that it is better to tax bad things than good; and it is better to tax factors in what economists call “inelastic supply”—meaning that the amounts produced and sold won’t change when taxes are imposed on them. Thus, if we taxed pollution in all of its forms—including carbon emissions—we could raise hundreds of billions of dollars every year, and have a better environment. Similarly, appropriately designed taxes on the financial sector would not only raise considerable amounts of money but also discourage banks from imposing costs on others—as when they polluted the global economy with toxic mortgages.

The $700 billion bank bailout pales in comparison to what the bankers’ fecklessness has cost our economy and our society—trillions of dollars in lost GDP, millions of Americans thrown out of their homes and jobs. Yet few in the financial world have been held accountable.

If we required the banks to pay but a fraction of the costs they have imposed on others, we would then have further funds to undo some of the damage that they caused by their discriminatory and predatory lending practices, which moved money from the bottom of the economic pyramid to the top. And by imposing even slight taxes on Wall Street’s speculative activities via a financial transactions tax, we would raise much-needed revenue, decrease speculation (thus increasing economic stability), and encourage more productive use of our scarce resources, including the most valuable one: talented young Americans.

Similarly, by taxing land, oil, and minerals more—and forcing those who extract resources from public land to pay the full values of these resources, which rightly belong to all the people, we could then spend those proceeds for public investments—for instance, in education, technology, and infrastructure—without resulting in less land, less oil, fewer minerals. (Even if they are taxed more, these resources won’t go on strike; they won’t leave the country!) The result: increased long-term investments in our economy would pay substantial future dividends in higher economic productivity and growth—and if the money was spent right, we could have more shared prosperity. The question is not whether we can afford to do more about our inequality; it is whether we can afford not to do more. The debate in America is not about eliminating inequality. It is simply about moderating it and restoring the American Dream.

Joseph E. Stiglitz ,a Nobel Laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University.

6 November 2014

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

Iran Trip: September – October 2014

Marcel Proust said: “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” During the past two decades, I visited Iran on numerous occasions staying 10-14 days at a time. This time around, I stayed for 2 months and heeding Proust, I carried with me a fresh pair of eyes. I discarded both my Western lenses as well as my Iranian lenses and observed with objective eyes. It was a formidable journey that left me breathless.

Part I – Women of the Islamic Republic of Iran

It is hard to know where to start a travel log and how to describe a newfound world in a few pages. However, given the obsession with the status of women, it is perhaps appropriate to start with the women in Iran as I perceived them.

Western media with help from feminists and Iranians living outside of Iran portray Iranian women as being “oppressed” — foremost because women in Iran have to abide by an Islamic dress code – hijab. Yes, hijab is mandatory and women choose to either wear either a chador or to wear a scarf. But what is crucial to understand is the role chador played in pre 1979 versus the post Revolution era.

Prior to the 1979 Revolution, the chador was indicative of a thinly veiled caste system. While a few distinguished women of high socio-economical background chose to wear the chador, the rest, the majority of Iranian women, were simply born into the habit. In short, the socio-economically disadvantaged wore the pre 1979 chador. In those days, the chador was a hindrance to a woman’s progress; she was looked down at and frowned upon. She could not move forward or up. She was oppressed. But Western feminists were blind to this oppression. After all, the Shah was modern and America’s friendly dictator.

The Revolution changed the status quo and chipped away at the caste system. A revolution, by definition, is a complete change in the way people live and work. And so it is with the Iranian Revolution. The post 1979 chador is no longer an impediment to a woman’s future. Today’s Iranian woman, the same (formerly) less privileged class, has found freedom in her chador. She has been unshackled and she marches on alongside her (formerly) more privileged colleague. This emancipation is what the Western/Westernized feminists see as oppression.

I myself come from yesterday’s tiny minority of “privileged” women, far too comfortable in my “Western” skin to want to promote hijab, but I will not allow my personal preferences to diminish the value of the progress made because of hijab. The bleeding hearts from without should simply change their tainted lenses instead of trying to change the lives of others for Iranian women do not need to be rescued, they do not follow – they lead.

On two separate occasions I had the opportunity to sit and talk with a group of PhD students at Tehran University’s Global Studies Department. Frankly, these young women charmed me. Their inquisitive and sharp minds, their keen intellect, their vast knowledge, their fluent English, and their utter confidence dazzled me. Western feminists would consider them “oppressed”. Seems to me that feminism needs rescuing, not Iranian women.

The inordinate success of women goes vastly beyond education; they participate in every aspect of society: motherhood, arts and sciences, high tech, film and cinema, research, business, administration, politics, sports, armed forces, bus and taxi drivers, fire-fighters, etc. Women’s active role in society is undeniable. What I found tantalizing was their role as cultural gatekeepers.

Women – The Cultural Warriors

Cultural imperialism is part and parcel of neocolonialism. The eradication of an indigenous culture and replacing it with a hegemonic one enables the hegemon to exert influence on the subject nation – to own it. And women are the nuclei. They hold the family together and pass on traditions. To this end, in every colonial adventure, regardless of geography, women have been the primary targets (i.e. victims of rescue). Iran has been no different. While some have indeed abandoned their culture in order to embrace that of another, the vast majority have resisted and fought back with authentic Iranian tradition.

One group of these cultural warriors left a deep impact on me. I attended a dance ensemble at the famous Roudaki Hall (Talar Roudaki). Girls aged 6 to 18 sent the packed hall into a thunderous applause when they danced to various traditional songs from around the country. Their dance was not MTV stuff. It reflected the beauty and purity of an ancient culture. Their movements and gestures were not intended to be seductive, they were graceful and poetic ushering in the ancient past and bonding it with the present, strengthening it. These were the women of Iran who would guard Iran’s precious culture and traditions against modern, Western culture deemed central to ‘civilization’ and ‘freedom’ by Western feminists.

It is not my intention to give the false impression that every woman in Iran is happy, successful, and valued. Like any other society, Iran has its share of unhappy, depressed girls and women. It has its share of women who have been abused and betrayed. It has its share of girls and women who turn to drugs, prostitution, or both. I came across these as well. I also noted that laws in Iran do not favor women, be it divorce, child custody, or inheritance. Yet women have leapt forward.

Part II – Esprit de Corps

Washington Just Doesn’t Get It

Numerous visitors have travelled to Iran and brought back reports describing the landscape, the food, the friendliness of the people, the impact of the sanctions, and so forth. For the most part, these reports have been accurate — albeit incomplete. I do not want to tire the reader with my observations on these same topics; rather, I invite the reader to share my journey into the soul of the country – the spirit of the Iranian nation.

Washington’s missteps are, in part, due to the simple fact that Washington receives flawed intelligence on Iran and Iranians. This has been a long-standing pattern with Washington. Prior to the 1979 Revolution, a plethora of US personnel lived in Iran. Thousands of CIA agents were stationed there. Their task went beyond teaching torture techniques to the Shah’s secret police; they were, after all, spies. In addition to the military personnel that came in tow with the military equipment sold to the Shah by the U.S., there were official US personnel who worked at the American Embassy in Tehran. None got it

They all failed miserably in their assessment of Iranians. These personnel were simply too busy enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Iran. As the aforementioned travellers have all repeated, Iran is beautiful, the food scrumptious, the people hospitable. These personnel attended parties thrown by those close to the Shah (or other affluent Iranians) and lived the kind of life they could not have dreamt of elsewhere. American ambassadors doled out visas to the lazy kids of these same families who would not have otherwise been able to make it to the US under normal student visa requirements.

These same Iranians, the privileged elite, provided Americans in Iran with intelligence – inaccurate, flawed information that was passed onto Washington. Washington was content. After all, why doubt your friends, and how could possibly the secret police trained by CIA not get the facts right? To this end, Washington believed Iran would remain a client state for the unforeseen future. The success of the revolution was a slap in the face, but Washington did not alter course.

For the past several decades, Washington has continued to act on flawed intelligence. Today, it relies on the “expertise” of some in the Iranian Diaspora who have not visited Iran once since the revolution. In addition to the “Iran experts”, Washington has found itself other sources of ‘intelligence’, foremost; the Mojahedeen Khalg (MEK) terrorist cult. This group feeds Washington information provided them by Israel. Previous to this assignment, the cult was busy fighting alongside Saddam Hossein killing Iranians and Kurds. Is it any surprise that Washington is clueless on Iran.

What Washington can’t fathom is the source of Iran’s strength, its formidable resilience. Thanks to its ‘experts’, and the personal experience of some visitors, Washington continues to believe that the Iranian people love America and that they are waiting for Washington to ‘rescue’ them from their government. No doubt Iranians are generous, hospitable, and charming. They welcome visitors as guest regardless of their country of origin. This is part and parcel of their culture. They also believe a guest is a ‘blessing from God’ — mehmoon barekate khodast. Karime khodast. But this is where it ends.

While the Iranian people love people of all nationalities, including Americans, they see Washington for what it is. Over the past decades, Washington and its policies have adversely affected virtually every single family in Iran. These include those whose dreams and hopes were shattered by the CIA orchestrated coup against their nascent democracy and its popular leader, Mossadegh. Later, lives were turned upside down the Shah’s CIA/Mossad trained secret police arrested, brutally tortured, killed or simply made disappear anyone who dared venture into politics. Thanks to America’s staunch support, these stories never found their way to the papers. And then there are the millions of war widows and orphans, the maimed soldiers, the victims of chemical weapons supplied to Saddam Hossein by America to use against Iranians while the UN closed its eyes in an 8-year war. Not to forget the victims of American sponsored terrorism, and sanctions. Millions of Iranians have first hand experience of all that has been plagued upon them by Washington.

It is these victims, their families and acquaintances that fight for Iran’s sovereignty, that are the guardians of this proud nation. They are the source of Iran’s strength. Victor Hugo once said: “No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.” There simply is no army on earth which can occupy, by proxy or otherwise, the land the people have come to believe belongs to them not by virtue of birth, but because they have fought for it, died for it, kept it from harm.

I met many such families; one in particular was more memorable. During the Shah’s regime, this family worked on my father’s farm. The father and his sons worked the farm and the mother helped around the house. In those days, this family and future generations would have simply continued to work on the farm, remain ‘peasants’ with no prospects for the future. But the revolution rescued them.

Shortly after the revolution, the war started. The boys in the family all went to war. One uncle lost his life to chemical warfare. The rest survived – and thrived. They got themselves free education provided by the same government America wants to dislodge. One of these boys, the man I met after some 35 years, Kazem, once condemned to be a ‘peasant’, had become a successful businessman. I spent hours talking to the family and to Kazem in particular. What impressed me was not just his affluence and his success in business, but the wisdom that only comes with age, and yet he had acquired it in youth. He had intellect and dignity. A gentleman, I found his knowledge of global affairs to be superior to most one would meet at a college in the US. He had experienced war and witnessed death. Iran belonged to him. He would fight for it over and over without hesitating to die for it.

This is the Iran the Diaspora has left behind, the Iran that is unknown to them. This is a far superior country than the one I left behind as a child and visited throughout the years. Iran’s guardians, its keepers, are all Kazems. It has been said that the strength of an army is the support of the people behind it. The whole country is that army. As Khalil Gibran rightly observed: “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” With every wrong policy, America adds to the scars, strengthens the character and spirit of this unbreakable nation. This is what Washington is not able to grasp.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy

06 November, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Judith Bello

The news about the US in the Middle East has been focused almost exclusively on the fight in Kobane for weeks. There has been a lot of conjecture in the papers about whether the rebels can be trained, whether they are moderate, whether they can fight, whether they exist at all separate from ISIS and Jabhat Al Nusra, the local Al Qaeda front. No matter, everyone, daily news consumers and activists alike are watching the Kurds of Kobane fight for a city of 45 thousand souls, most of whom are now residing in refugee camps in Turkey along with many other Kurds from the area. A handful of Kurdish fighters are arrayed against a handful of ISIS fighters, and the US dropping bombs and supplies from the air. Unfortunately for the Kurds, ISIS has a reservoir from which it can replace those who die, replenishing it’s forces. The United States inhabits the safe zone in the air, with fighter jets and drones. Neither has invested more than a small subset of their resources in Kobane. But those Kurds are fighting for their home, and for their homeland. So they provide the lifeblood, quite literally of this scenario, which is the center of the universe from the way it is reported in the mainstream news.

But the truth is, that either ISIS or the US could, at any moment pull out, and the it would appear that either the Kurds (in the first case) or ISIS in the latter, has won. If each has a vested interest to win there, neither has a critical investment of forces. The US has won some potentially useful concessions from the Kurds in the course of this battle, but since I don’t see a meaningful end to it, I don’t know the real significance of these concessions. They actually allowed some FSA soldiers to come and fight with them. For most of the war, the FSA have treated the Kurds disrespectfully, while ISIS and al Nusra have been openly attacking them for some time.. With Turkey, which could actually hold the space which is right on it’s border, not engaged, there is no end to the battle of Kobane. But there is some real news in the region. Kobane is a frozen battle, but there are active battles in the regions with clear outcomes that are likely to have some effect on the larger picture. You know, the one where ISIS is now IS the Caliphate, and recruiting an international force of Jihadis ready to come after us once they have completely destroyed, I mean conquered, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and who knows, maybe Turkey and Jordan.

Yesterday Jason Dietz of Antiwar.com reported that Jabhat al Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria wiped out The Revolutionary Front, a coalition of native Syrian opposition forces which includes some of the charter members of the Free Syrian Army. With their some time ally, ISIS, supporting them, al Nusra made short work of the Revolutionary Front this week, and retook Idlib, a Syrian province on the Turkish border. Whomever they were at the start of this war, the fighters in the Revolutionary Front are not the butcher, the baker and they yogurt maker any longer. Some of the local fighters in Idlib were trained in Qatar in early 2011, and have been fighting ever since. Their families have been secure in Turkish refugee camps for the duration. But this isn’t the first time Idlib has been taken from the local forces. ISIS held the area for a while last year, then left, for their own reasons this spring. There’s a video on VICE News showing some rebels with the Wolves Brigade, part of the Revolutionary Front Coalition, moving from town to town, finding them abandoned and free for the taking.

Dietz says that the US presence in Syria gave al Nusra a reason to conquer the Idlib, but I don’t think that’s the point. When the Revolutionary Front capitulated, some men fled and the rest joined al Nusra. They brought with them a lot of supplies including tanks and heavy weapons that had just been provided by the US through Saudi Arabia, to aid the ‘moderate’ rebels on the ground. According to a story in International Business News , Al Nusra, whom you might remember, we bombarded with cruise missiles from the Mediterranean last summer, now has US tanks and US TOW anti-tank Missiles, numerous vehicles and lots of ammo, and a shipment of food and other aid. So, yes, I suppose if we hadn’t armed and fed these ‘moderate rebel forces’, then the bully on the block wouldn’t have come along and taken their toys and their lunch money. But leave us not forget that a significant number among these favored moderate rebels joined the Nusra Front.

This isn’t the first time that ISIS and al Nusra have carried out an attack on US supported forces to liberate their weapons and supplies. Just about a year ago, once ISIS had secured Ar Raqqa in eastern Syria as part of a coalition with local rebel groups, the US sent along a cache of arms along with food and other resources. Col Okaidi, the representative of the Syrian National Coalition was in Idlib to dispense US weapons and other forms of assistance in the fall of 2013. A few days after the supplies arrived, ISIS overran his base, rudely taking all the weapons and supplies for themselves. Col Al Okaidi then resigned, saying that the rebel groups couldn’t work together. Funny thing is, he just signed on again with the US a few months ago, promising to help build moderate rebel forces to fight ISIS. And, here we go again. The moderate forces have disappeared while the weapons and supplies have gone to the Nusra Front, and ISIS.

Foreign Policy’s latest scoop is an investigation into US funding of anti-Assad propaganda. And guess, what! It’s being cut. Yep. Here it is.

The U.S. State Department plans to cut its entire $500,000 in annual funding next year to an organization dedicated to sneaking into abandoned Syrian military bases, prisons, and government facilities to collect documents and other evidence linking Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its proxies to war crimes and other mass atrocities during the country’s brutal civil war, according to the recipient of the assistance and a senior U.S. official.

Apparently they have given up their plans to take Bashar Assad before the ICC. Given the behavior of the opposition this would seem a reasonable choice. Given the realities on the ground, it is probably the only reasonable choice. “Sneaking into abandoned Syrian military bases, prisons and government buildings” sounds pretty dangerous. Most Syrian military bases are held either by the government or by the extremists. I suppose there are some prisons and government buildings in areas governed by moderate militias, or at least ones allied with the west. It seems likely the financial commitment was ended because the task was impossible. It would only be viable if there were a moderate rebel force that was winning the war and if claims that Assad is committing war crimes were true. Neither is the case.

The latest news from Iraq is pretty grim as well. In January, ISIS overran Fallujah a city of 300 thousand, after battle that lasted a little over a week. Last summer they took over Mosul, a city of 1.8 million before half a million fled on their arrival. ISIS is just outside Baghdad, a city of just over 7 million, even after 25 years of war and sanctions. I assume the US is providing air support for the Iraqi army as well as the Kurdish Peshmerga, but we don’t hear the details very often. It appears that the much maligned Iraqi Army, with the support of local fighters is doing pretty well against ISIS in Diyala province, and not so well in Anbar. In Mosul, ISIS latest pogrom is against lawyers. Anyone who practices the old law is a criminal. It’s Sharia or die. There are complaints about Shia militias wreaking havoc in some Sunni areas, but the big stories are from the Sunni areas where the fight for control is between ISIS and local Sunnis. While in the US, day in and day out, headline after headline, Kobane is the center of the media universe and ostensibly the US strategy to put an end to ISIS. Go Figure.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Army has been fighting along the western border, liberating one town at a time, and working towards Aleppo, the next big city they want to recover. Wherever possible, they have negotiated with rebel groups and reabsorbed man of these forces into the Syrian Arab Army. They flinched when a belligerent US first announced they would be bombing in Eastern Syria and wasn’t interested in their consent, but when no bombs came their way, Bashar Assad’s top general pretty much continued to conduct the war to liberate his country according to the same strategy he has been following for the last year. No one asked the Syrian government, and they don’t have the resources to throw out another battalion here or there. in hopes of maximizing a potential support they didn’t ask for and can’t rely on. There’s been a lot of speculation about their what communications may or may not have passed, but given their actions, we have to assume it was minimal. As US officials said they told the Syrian Government they were going to bomb ISIS in the their country, but “Don’t get the idea we’re on your side.” Well, it looks like that’s about it. The long slog to recover as much of the country as they can continues. Of course we don’t hear about that in the news either.

Judith Bello is a long time peace and justice activist who blogs at The Deconstructed Globe .

06 November, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

What’s Behind Lower Gas-Prices and the Bombings of Syria and of Eastern Ukraine: Obama Represents U.S. & Arabic Aristocracies, Against Those of Russia & Iran

By Eric Zuesse

(The following report reconstructs U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, on the basis of what I have deemed to be reliable news accounts of his Administration’s actions, not of its mere words. This reconstruction is grounded in the linked-to news-sources, all of which I have investigated and verified — and some of which I wrote. The ones that I wrote are themselves sourced to the links within those reports, all of which I have, likewise, personally checked and verified. Consequently, the chain of verifications back to this reconstruction’s primary sources is available to any online reader, and every reader is encouraged to track back to its ultimate source any allegation that might appear to be at all questionable to him or her in the present article. Not only will this exercise be helpful to the reader concerning that given point at question, but it will open that person to an associated world of deeper discovery, which I hope that this news-report and analysis will do for many readers, and which is the reason I wrote it: so as to share with others what I and other careful and cautious researchers have discovered, though it might be, in some instances, starkly at variance with what our Government, and most of the press, have been more commonly presenting as ‘truth’ about these matters. At least, this exercise will provide an alternative frame of reference regarding these issues, an alternative possibility to consider, and which I have verified, from every root to every branch, in this tree of historical reconstruction of the events.)

INTRODUCTION:

Why is the Ukrainian Government, which the U.S. supports, bombing the pro-Russian residents who live in Ukraine’s own southeast?

Why is the American Government, which aims to oust Syria’s leader Bashar al-Assad, bombing his main enemy, ISIS?

I find that both bombings are different parts of the same Obama-initiated business-operation, in which the American aristocracy, Saudi aristocracy, and Qatari aristocracy, work together, to grab dominance over supplying energy to the world’s biggest energy-market, Europe, away from Russia, which currently is by far Europe’s largest energy-supplier.

Here are the actual percentage-figures on that: Russia supplies 38%, #2 Norway (the only European nation among the top 15) supplies 18%, and all other countries collectively supply a grand total of 44%. That’s it; that’s all — in the world’s largest energy-market. Russia is the lone giant. But U.S. President Obama’s team want to change that. (Unfortunately, the residents in southeastern Ukraine are being bombed and driven out to become refugees in Russia , as an essential part of this operation to choke off Russia’s gas-supply to Europe.)

Obama has initiated, and is leading, this international aristocratic team, consisting of the U.S. aristocracy and Sunni Moslem aristocracies — the Saudi and the Qatari royal families — to choke off Russia’s economic lifeblood from those European energy sales, and to transfer lots of this business, via new oil and gas pipeline contracts and new international trade-deals, over to the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Those royals, in turn, are assisting Obama in the overthrow of the key Russia-allied leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, who has performed an indispensable role in blocking any such massive expansion of Saudi and Qatari energy-traffic into Europe, and who has thus been a vital protector of Russia’s dominance in the European energy-market.

America’s aristocracy would be benefited in many ways from this changeover to Europe’s increasing dependence upon those Sunni Moslem nations, which have long been allied with U.S. oil companies, and away from the Shiite Moslem nation of Iran, and from its key backer, Russia.

The most important way that America’s aristocrats would benefit would be the continuance, for the indefinite future, of the U.S. dollar’s role as the international reserve currency, in which energy and energy-futures are traded. The Sunni nations are committed to continued dominance of the dollar, and Wall Street depends on that continuance. It’s also one of the reasons the U.S. Treasury’s sales of U.S. Federal debt around the world have been as successful as they are. This also provides essential support to the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Furthermore, Obama’s effort to force the European Union to weaken their anti-global-warming standards so as to allow European imports of oil from the exceptionally carbon-gas-generating Athabasca Canada tar sands — which are approximately 40% owned by America’s Koch brothers, the rest owned by other U.S. and allied oil companies — would likewise reduce Europe’s current dependency upon Russian energy sources, at the same time as it would directly benefit U.S. energy-producers. Obama has been working hard for those oil companies to become enabled to sell such oil into Europe .

And, finally, the extension of U.S. fracking technology into Ukraine, and perhaps ultimately even into some EU nations, where it has been strongly resisted, might likewise reduce the enormous flow of European cash into Russian Government coffers to pay for Russian gas (which doesn’t even require fracking).

In other words, the wars in both Syria and Ukraine are being fought basically in order to grab the European energy market, away from Russia, somewhat in the same way (though far more violently) as Iran’s share of that market was previously grabbed away by means of the U.S.-led sanctions against that country. The current bombing campaigns in both Syria and Ukraine are directed specifically against Iran’s chief ally, Russia.

First, will be discussed here the bombing-campaign against Iran’s and Russia’s ally Assad in Syria; then against the residents of the ethnic-Russian areas of Ukraine.

SYRIA:

As the articles that are headlined below document, there has been proposed, in order to promote Russian gas flowing into Europe, an eastbound Iran-Iraq-Syria-Turkey-Europe gas pipeline (but sanctions stopped that); and there was also proposed, in order to undercut Russian gas flowing into Europe, a northbound Qatar-Saudi-Jordan-Syria-Turkey-Europe gas pipeline — those being two different and competing ways of supplying gas into Europe.

Russia’s ally Syria is crucial to both proposed pipelines, which means that Assad has needed to be overthrown in order for the northbound pipeline from Qatar to be constructed and so to compete against Russia’s gas-supplies to Europe.

There have also been some differences between the Saudi and Qatari royal families as regards their motives for removing the Shiite Assad from leading Syria. Qatar’s royals ( and also Turkey’s aristocrats ) want him to be replaced by an anti-Iranian, Sunni Moslem Brotherhood leader (the type of person that Obama euphemistically calls by such terms as ‘moderate Moslems’ though they were hardly that in Egypt once they gained power there ). Qatar’s royals have protected themselves from being overthrown by fundamentalist Moslems; they’ve done it especially by supporting the Moslem Brotherhood as a means of displaying their own loyalty to Moslem clerics. (The public trusts the clerics, but doesn’t trust the aristocrats; and, like everywhere, aristocrats obtain their perceived ‘legitimacy’ from the local clergy, whom aristocrats buy-off with special favors.) The Moslem Brotherhood want to control Syria, and would love to approve a gas pipeline from Qatar through Syria to Europe, to reward their chief benefactor, Qatar’s royals. As for the Saudi royals, they want Assad to be replaced by an anti-Iranian, Sunni ISIS leader, who will represent the Sauds’ Wahhabist sect in Islam, which provides Saudi royals their ‘legitimacy.’ (Saudi royals say they don’t like Al Qaeda and ISIS, but that’s said mainly for public consumption in the West.) Right now, Saudi Arabia supplies less than 5% of Europe’s energy, which is a mere one-eighth of what Russia does. So: each of these two royal families relies primarily upon a different category of Islamists. Obama prefers the ‘moderate’ Muslim Brotherhood to the extremist ISIS, but Saudi royals accept his having that preference, because any way to weaken Iran and its backer Russia is fine with them, especially since it would open wide the enormous European market for their oil.

Other internal conflicts also exist within Obama’s team. For example, an expert on these matters, Felix Imonti, explained to me in a personal communication, that, “Qatar … abandoned the [pipeline] plan in 2010 for a very simple reason. Saudi Arabia will not permit a pipeline to be constructed across its territory. Qatar is interested along with Turkey in installing a MB government in Syria. … The Saudi objective is to drive out the Iranians from Syria.” The Saudis’ “objective was to establish a Wahhabi based [fundamentalist Moslem] state that would include western Iraq with Syria,” which, of course, is what ISIS is all about. Imonti also says: “Egypt [except for the brief time when it was controlled by the MB] is a bought puppet of Saudi Arabia. The Egyptians are bombing Qatari groups in Libya.” That Egyptian action is indirectly a Saudi attack against the Qatari royals’ own support-base. These issues between the two royal families are like squabbles within a family: more is shared in common than splits them apart. Obama’s decisions are often determinative on such matters.

So, America’s aristocracy supports both the Saudi and the Qatari aristocracies, despite their disagreements, in order to defeat the aristocracies in Russia, China, and the other “BRIC” countries.

Or, as President Obama’s speech at West Point, on 28 May 2014 , propagandized for this view on the part of America’s aristocracy: “Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us.” So, Obama made clear to the graduating cadets that the BRIC countries are the enemy, from the standpoint of America’s aristocracy. Ours want to crush the aristocrats in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Though it’s alright for those other countries to produce more, that’s true only if American aristocrats control the local ones, like in any other international empire — not if the local aristocrats there do. Similarly, for example, the British Empire didn’t wish for local aristocrats in India to be in control, but only for those client aristocrats to be of use . Obama added, placing a nationalistic coloration on his promotion of America’s empire: “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.” He promised to keep it that way: “That has been true for the century passed [sp.: past [[somebody at the White House didn’t know the difference between ‘past’ and ‘passed’]] and it will be true for the century to come.”

An important asset of the American aristocracy happens to be shale-gas-fracking technology, which is overwhelmingly owned by America’s aristocrats . Though Qatar is a major gas-producer, it has no need for fracking, and so is merely a gas-competitor in that regard, but they do share America’s pro-Sunni, anti-Assad goal, and also America’s anti-Russian goal. Although Qatar ships most of its gas into Asia, they’d like to have some way to pipe it more nearby, into Europe, to undercut Russia’s Gazprom. And that’s why the U.S. is working with Qatar to bump Assad from Syria.

The Saudis are actually doing the most of all to defeat Russia, by driving oil prices down so low as to upset Russia’s economic plans, which have been based upon minimum $100/barrel projections. We’re already around 10% below that. As Imonti writes, “The Saudis can sustain these lower prices for seven or eight years while drawing on their foreign reserves to cover the deficits. They could very well be trying to break the fracking business in the U.S. that has high production costs. [Of course, America’s gas aristocrats won’t like that, but Obama has to balance multiple sub-constituencies, including Qatar’s royals.] They might also be directing the target towards Russia that supports Assad and Iran. They could be doing all of the above with one action.” If the Sauds keep this up “for seven or eight years,” then Russia will be hit a lot harder than Russia is being hit, or is likely to be hit, by any economic sanctions.

Qatar has been the main funder of the overthrow-Assad movement, for the Moslem Brotherhood; and Saudi Arabia has been the main funder of the overthrow-Assad movement, for ISIS. Both are Sunni organizations. However, Qatar has also funded ISIS. Obama, when he decided to bomb ISIS, was acting on behalf of America’s aristocrats, but Saudi and Qatari aristocrats might have felt differently about it. He possessed the freedom to do this, which those aristocrats don’t have, because everyone in the Islamic world knows that Obama is no Moslem; everyone understands that America is in a permanent state of war against fundamentalist Islam of all sorts. Only Moslem aristocrats need the approval of Islamic fundamentalists. In America, aristocrats don’t even need the approval of Christian fundamentalists, the type of fundamentalists that might be able to threaten their authority in the West (since the West is predominantly Christian, not Moslem). And the same is true regarding Jewish aristocrats in Israel: aristocrats fear only their local majority clergy. That’s basic survival-knowledge for aristocrats, anywhere, in order to be able to get the public to accept the rightfulness of the aristocracy itself there.

So, ISIS gets money from the aristocracies of Saud, and of Qatar (and also, more recently, of Kuwait) — whatever is needed, in order for those aristocrats to retain the loyalty of their local clerics, and thus their public. It’s like aristocrats do in every country, getting “God’s approval” of their wealth, by throwing a few coins to the preacher, the local mouthpiece for “God,” thus relying upon the public’s trust in clergy. Even Mafia aristocrats do it. That has been the way of conservatism for millennia; it’s the way conservatism works. In more-recent centuries, a modified version of that trick has grown up, as liberalism, in which the aristocrats’ validation comes instead from scholars, and so aristocrats throw a few coins to them, instead of to clerics. But it’s no different — it’s authoritarianism, equally in either case. It’s purchased authority. Aristocrats don’t really fear the clergy, nor the scholars: they actually fear the public, such as what happened during the French Revolution, and during the Russian Revolution. But that’s another story altogether, going back millennia, actually.

The recent bombings in Syria, and in Ukraine, are a business-operation being carried out as a war (and also very profitable for U.S. armaments-makers, who likewise are controlled by America’s aristocrats and so this is a double-whammy for America’s aristocracy — and U.S. arms-makers have consequently been soaring on the stock market). It’s basically a grab by U.S. and Sunni aristocrats, from Russian and Shiite aristocrats, of the market to supply oil and gas into Europe. And it provides other advantages, too, for U.S. aristocrats.

Natural gas, especially of the non-fracked variety, is generally regarded as the bridge-fuel to get our planet to being able to survive long-term while fusion and renewable forms of energy come online as cost-competitive. Fracking is, as has been mentioned, an American technology, but it’s widely resisted even within American-allied nations. The U.S. Government can impose it upon the American people, because they are trusting in ‘free enterprise,’ but other governments are having a hard time trying to impose it on theirs. That public resistance in Europe is giving protection to the gas-import markets there; and this has benefited Russia, their major existing gas-supplier.

Russia has the world’s largest proven reserves of natural gas , and that’s without their even needing to use fracking-techniques in order to get at it. #2 Iran has 69% as much gas, and is allied with Russia, and it also doesn’t frack. But sanctions close them out of Europe. Then #3 Qatar, at 47%, is allied with U.S. oil companies, but has no need to frack. Then #4 Turkmenistan, 37%, is allied with Russia, and also doesn’t frack. Then #5 U.S., 20%, is allied with U.S. oil companies, and only fracks. Then #6 Saudi Arabia, 17%, is also allied with U.S. oil companies, and doesn’t need to frack.

The European Union bans fracking, because they have environmentally-concerned publics. But U.S. and other Western corporate-owned oil companies want to frack gas in Europe, just as they do in America; and the new Ukrainian Government is desperate enough to want their land to be fracked.

UKRAINE:

The main shale-gas (fracking) field in Ukraine is Yuzivska, right in the middle of the Donbass region, where the residents don’t want fracking and don’t want U.S. rule (which includes fracking). Furthermore, the people there reject the legitimacy of the Obama coup in Ukraine this year in February , and of its subsequent rulers of Ukraine , who have been bombing them , because 90% of the voters in that region had voted for the pro-Russian President whom Obama had overthrown , and because the new, anti-Russian, regime doesn’t want those people to stay (or at least to stay alive ) in Ukraine, because otherwise that post-coup regime would become ousted if any nationwide election would ever again be held throughout Ukraine. This tactic of killing unwanted voters is a variant of what the Republican Party does in the U.S., simply trimming the voter-rolls in order to create a more-favorable “voting public.” Except that it’s being done in Ukraine by bombs and bullets , rather than by limiting or restricting ballots.

“The West,” or the allies of Sunni aristocrats, are now bombing intensively, both in Ukraine and in Syria; and, in both instances, the argument for the bombings is to spread “democracy” there. It’s giving a bad name to ‘democracy,’ to anyone who misbelieves that this is it.

BACK AGAIN TO SYRIA:

Below are the main sources that describe the Middle Eastern part of this Obama-Putin power-struggle, that is the part in Syria instead of in Ukraine. This is how international business is actually carried out – it’s a perfect libertarian world, since there is no international government; this market is unregulated to so extreme an extent that even ethnic cleansings and mass-murders go unpunished — it’s a pure free market, which operates on an international scale (the only scale where libertarianism exists in even nearly this pure a form); this libertarianism is an exemplar of the conservative ideal: pure liberty for aristocrats, total lack of accountability . If anything, Barack Obama might be even more of a conservative than was George W. Bush: under Obama, the IRS specifically allows blatantly illegal tax-evasion by the mega-rich to go uninvestigated and unpunished, and concentrates virtually all its resources on pursuing two-bit tax-cheats. That’s what ‘democracy’ has come to in America. In America’s client-states, such as in the Middle East and (since February) in Ukraine, it’s even worse.

The first of these articles explains why the price of oil has been plunging, and who has been behind that:

—

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/10/24/the-secret-stupid-saudi-us-deal-on-syria/

“The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria”

WILLIAM ENGDAHL | OCTOBER 24, 20143 COMMENTS

The Kerry-Abdullah Secret Deal & An Oil-Gas Pipeline War

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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-10/why-oil-plunging-other-part-secret-deal-between-us-and-saudi-arabia

“Why Oil Is Plunging: The Other Part Of The “Secret Deal” Between The US And Saudi Arabia”

Tyler Durden on 10/11/2014 18:19 -0400

… [Excerpt:] Today’s Brent closing price: $90. Russia’s oil price budget for the period 2015-2017? $100. Which means much more “forced Brent liquidation” is in the cards in the coming weeks as America’s suddenly once again very strategic ally, Saudi Arabia, does everything in its power to break Putin. [Note: The Russian Government’s fiscal projections were based on $100/barrel, but the Saudi-forced-down price was now $89/barrel. How long would Saudis and Qataris keep this up? And how long would Assad hold off ISIS? Big bets are being made on both.]

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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-25/look-inside-secret-deal-saudi-arabia-unleashed-syrian-bombing

“A Look Inside The Secret Deal With Saudi Arabia That Unleashed The Syrian Bombing”

Tyler Durden on 09/25/2014 10:17 -0400

… [Excerpt:] Said otherwise, the pound of flesh demanded by Saudi Arabia to “bless” US airstrikes and make them appear as an act of some coalition, is the removal of the Assad regime. Why? So that, as we also explained last year, the holdings of the great Qatar natural gas fields can finally make their way onward to Europe, which incidentally is also America’s desire — what better way to punish Putin for his recent actions than by crushing the main leverage the Kremlin has over Europe?

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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-27/meet-saudi-arabias-bandar-bin-sultan-puppetmaster-behind-syrian-war

” Meet Saudi Arabia’s Bandar bin Sultan: The Puppetmaster Behind The Syrian War”

Tyler Durden on 08/27/2013 15:21 -0400

… [Excerpt:] Of course, there is Syria:

Regarding the Syrian issue, the Russian president responded to Bandar, saying, “Our stance on Assad will never change. We believe that the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters. During the Geneva I Conference, we agreed with the Americans on a package of understandings, and they agreed that the Syrian regime will be part of any settlement. Later on, they decided to renege on Geneva I. In all meetings of Russian and American experts, we reiterated our position. In his upcoming meeting with his American counterpart John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will stress the importance of making every possible effort to rapidly reach a political settlement to the Syrian crisis so as to prevent further bloodshed.”

Alas, that has failed.

So what are some of the stunning disclosures by the Saudis?

Bandar told Putin, “There are many common values and goals that bring us together, most notably the fight against terrorism and extremism all over the world. Russia, the US, the EU and the Saudis agree on promoting and consolidating international peace and security. The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya. … As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.”

—

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-08/putin-laughs-saudi-offer-betray-syria-exchange-huge-arms-deal

“Putin Laughs At Saudi Offer To Betray Syria In Exchange For ‘Huge’ Arms Deal”

Tyler Durden on 08/08/2013 11:20 -0400

—

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-16/mystery-sponsor-weapons-and-money-syrian-rebels-revealed

“Mystery Sponsor Of Weapons And Money To Syrian Mercenary ‘Rebels’ Revealed”

Tyler Durden on 05/16/2013 19:12 -0400

… [Excerpt:] So there you have it: Qatar doing everything it can to promote bloodshed, death and destruction by using not Syrian rebels, but mercenaries: professional citizens who are paid handsomely to fight and kill members of the elected regime (unpopular as it may be), for what? So that the unimaginably rich emirs of Qatar can get even richer. Although it is not as if Russia is blameless: all it wants is to preserve its own strategic leverage over Europe by being the biggest external provider of natgas to the continent through its own pipelines. Should Nabucco come into existence, Gazpromia would be very, very angry and make far less money!

—

The final source will be posted here in full, because it goes closest to the reason for our bombing Syria:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Qatar-Rich-and-Dangerous.html

“Qatar: Rich and Dangerous”

17 September 2012, by Felix Imonti

The first concern of the Emir of Qatar is the prosperity and security of the tiny kingdom. To achieve that, he knows no limits.

Stuck between Iran and Saudi Arabia is Qatar with the third largest natural gas deposit in the world. The gas gives the nearly quarter of a million Qatari citizens the highest per capita income on the planet and provides 70 percent of government revenue.

How does an extremely wealthy midget with two potentially dangerous neighbors keep them from making an unwelcomed visit? Naturally, you have someone bigger and tougher to protect you.

Of course, nothing is free. The price has been to allow the United States to have two military bases in a strategic location. According to Wikileaks diplomatic cables, the Qataris are even paying sixty percent of the costs.

Having tanks and bunker busting bombs nearby will discourage military aggression, but it does nothing to curb the social tumult that has been bubbling for decades in the Middle Eastern societies. Eighty-four years ago, the Moslem Brotherhood arose in Egypt because of the presence of foreign domination by Great Britain and the discontent of millions of the teaming masses yearning to be free. Eighty-four years later, the teaming masses are still yearning.

Sixty-five percent of the people in the Middle East are under twenty-nine years of age. It is this desperate angry group that presents a danger that armies cannot stop. The cry for their dignity, “I am a man,” is the sound that sends terror through governments. It is this overwhelming force that the Emir of Qatar has been able to deflect.

A year after he deposed his father in 1995, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani established the Al-Jazeera television satellite news network. He invited some of the radical Salafi preachers that had been given sanctuary in Qatar to address the one and a half billion Moslems around the world. They had their electronic soapbox and the card to an ATM, but there was a price.

The price was silence. They could speak to the world and arouse the fury in Egypt or Libya, but they would have to leave their revolution outside of Qatar or the microphone would be switched off and the ATM would stop dispensing the good life.

The Moslem Brotherhood, that is a major force across the region, dissolved itself in Qatar in 1999. Jasim Sultan, a member of the former organization, explained that the kingdom was in compliance with Islamic law. He heads the state funded Awaken Project that publishes moderate political and philosophical literature.

How Qatar has benefited from networking with the Salafis is illustrated by the connections with Tunisia where Qatar is making a large investment in telecommunications. Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafiq Abdulsalaam was head of the Research and Studies Division in the Al Jazeera Centre in Doha. His father-in-law Al Ghanouchi is the head of the Tunisian Moslem Brotherhood party.

Over much of the time since he seized power, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani has followed the policy of personal networking, being proactive in business and neutral on the international stage. The Emir is generous with the grateful, the Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund bargains hard in the board room and the kingdom makes available Qatar’s Good Offices to resolve disputes.

Qatar’s foreign policy made an abrupt shift when the kingdom entered the war against Qaddafi. The kingdom sent aircraft to join NATO forces. On the ground, Qatari special forces armed, trained, and led Libyans against Qaddafi’s troops.

The head of the National Transition Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil attributed much of the success of the revolution to the efforts of Qatar that he said had spent two billion dollars. He commented, “Nobody traveled to Qatar without being given a sum of money by the government.”

Qatar had ten billion dollars in investments in Libya to protect. The Barwa Real Estate Company alone had two billion committed to the construction of a beach resort near Tripoli.

While the bullets were still flying, Qatar signed eight billion dollars in agreements with the NTC. Just in case things with the NTC didn’t work out, they financed rivals Abdel Hakim Belhaj, leader of the February 17 Martyr’s Brigade, and Sheik Ali Salabi, a radical cleric who had been exiled in Doha.

If Qatar’s investments of ten billion dollars seem substantial, the future has far more to offer. Reconstruction costs are estimated at seven hundred billion dollars. The Chinese and Russians had left behind between them thirty billion in incomplete contracts and investments and all of it is there for the taking for those who aided the revolution.

No sooner had Qaddafi been caught and shot, Qatar approached Bashar Al-Assad to establish a transitional government with the Moslem Brotherhood. As you would expect, relinquishing power to the Brotherhood was an offer that he could refuse. It didn’t take long before he heard his sentence pronounced in January 2012 on the CBS television program, 60 Minutes by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.

The Emir declared that foreign troops should be sent into Syria. At the Friends of Syria conference in February, Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said, “We should do whatever necessary to help [the Syrian opposition], including giving them weapons to defend themselves.”

Why would Qatar want to become involved in Syria where they have little invested? A map reveals that the kingdom is a geographic prisoner in a small enclave on the Persian Gulf coast.

It relies upon the export of LNG, because it is restricted by Saudi Arabia from building pipelines to distant markets. In 2009, the proposal of a pipeline to Europe through Saudi Arabia and Turkey to the Nabucco pipeline was considered, but Saudi Arabia that is angered by its smaller and much louder brother has blocked any overland expansion.

Already the largest LNG producer, Qatar will not increase the production of LNG. The market is becoming glutted with eight new facilities in Australia coming online between 2014 and 2020.

A saturated North American gas market and a far more competitive Asian market leaves only Europe. The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income. Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas. Only Al-Assad is in the way.

Qatar along with the Turks would like to remove Al-Assad and install the Syrian chapter of the Moslem Brotherhood. It is the best organized political movement in the chaotic society and can block Saudi Arabia’s efforts to install a more fanatical Wahhabi based regime. Once the Brotherhood is in power, the Emir’s broad connections with Brotherhood groups throughout the region should make it easy for him to find a friendly ear and an open hand in Damascus.

A control centre has been established in the Turkish city of Adana near the Syrian border to direct the rebels against Al-Assad. Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud asked to have the Turks establish a joint Turkish, Saudi, Qatari operations center. “The Turks liked the idea of having the base in Adana so that they could supervise its operations” a source in the Gulf told Reuters.

The fighting is likely to continue for many more months, but Qatar is in for the long term. At the end, there will be contracts for the massive reconstruction and there will be the development of the gas fields. In any case, Al-Assad must go. There is nothing personal; it is strictly business to preserve the future tranquility and well-being of Qatar.

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I wish to express my appreciation to Mr. Imonti for his allowing me to publish here the entirety of that article.

———-

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .
06 November, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Bill Van Auken

There are new indications that Washington is moving toward a wider and protracted military intervention in the Middle East in the name of combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In the wake of last weekend’s collapse of US-backed Syrian “rebels” in the face of an offensive by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, plans are being prepared to extend the three-month-old US-led bombing campaign deeper into Syria. The ostensible purpose of these air strikes would be to provide air support for the Western-backed militias formed to prosecute the war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The concern within US military and intelligence circles is that the Nusra Front fighters appear poised to seize control of the strategic Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, which has served as a key conduit for funneling arms and other aid to the Syrian “rebels.”

A substantial portion of that aid, including heavy weapons such as TOW anti-tank missiles and GRAD rockets, fell into the hands of the Nusra Front last weekend as the American-backed groups—the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm (Steadfastness Movement)—surrendered without a shot being fired. Many of the members of these groups then joined the Nusra Front.

“The recent fighting in northwestern Syria has been taking place a long way from areas farther east where US and Arab warplanes have been pounding Islamic State positions,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday. “But US concern has grown rapidly in recent days amid fears about the [Bab al-Hawa] border crossing, according to senior administration officials who spoke about internal discussions on the condition of anonymity.”

The report cited discussions about likely “complications” arising from air strikes in the area, in particular whether the Syrian government would “tolerate an expansion” of the war beyond Iraq and areas of Syria near the Iraqi border, which have fallen under ISIS control.

There are, however, multiple demands that Washington carry out such an expansion with the aim of directing the US-led war precisely at toppling the Assad regime.

This is the position being advanced by the governments of both France and Turkey. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius wrote an opinion column published by several media organizations earlier this week calling on the US and its allies to shift the military intervention away from the Kurdish border town of Kobane, where there have been regular US bombings, to the city of Aleppo. Previously Syria’s industrial capital, Aleppo has been the scene of stepped up fighting as the Syrian government seeks to consolidate its control by defeating the so-called rebels.

“France cannot resign itself to the breakup of Syria or to the abandonment of the Aleppans to this fate,” Fabius wrote. “That is why—together with our coalition partners—we must focus our efforts on Aleppo, with two clear objectives: strengthening our support for the moderate Syrian opposition, and protecting the civilian population from the twin crimes of the regime and Daesh [ISIS]. After Kobane, we must save Aleppo.”

Just two days later, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned that if Aleppo were to fall to the government forces, Turkey could face a major new refugee crisis. “This is why we called for a safe zone as well as taking measures against not only the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS] but also the Assad regime,” he said. Turkey has called for the creation of a “buffer zone” inside Syria along the Turkish border. Such a “buffer” would serve the dual purpose of providing a safe haven for the Western-backed “rebels” and breaking up the autonomous zones created in the border area by Syrian Kurds, which Ankara sees as a threat in terms of its own conflict with the country’s Kurdish population.

Turkey has also advocated the imposition of a “no fly zone,” which would entail a massive bombing campaign against Syria’s air force and air defenses.

These same positions find support within Washington from, among others, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who, after Tuesday’s midterm election, will become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, giving him access to a significant lever for shifting the US toward a more aggressive policy.

On the eve of the election, McCain charged that the collapse of the American-backed “rebels” to the Nusra Front constituted proof that “the administration’s current strategy in Syria is a disaster.” He demanded a greater military intervention to “protect the Syrian people.”

An escalation of the war is a virtual certainty now the US midterm elections are over. As Foreign Policy commented Wednesday: “When it comes to foreign policy, a GOP win could make it easier for Obama … if the president decided to shift his strategy against the Islamic State, [to] win Congressional backing for sending ground troops to Iraq or Syria.”

A revealing indication of the intense and protracted character of the war that US imperialism is preparing in the Middle East was provided by the Washington Post ’s well-connected national security correspondent, Walter Pincus.

“The Defense Department is certainly preparing for a long fight,” Pincus wrote, citing a recent notice to military contractors of department plans for an eight-year contract for the Air Combat Command of the US Air Force, set to begin in October 2016. The contract is for operating and supporting the command’s “major war reserve materiel facilities in Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.”

Among the items to be pre-positioned at these sites are mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs), massive amounts of ammunition and “medical contingency hospitals for expeditionary medical support.” The plan also calls for creating “facilities and equipment that could house 3,300 airmen and 72 fighter aircraft at expeditionary locations.”

In the meantime, the Pentagon’s Central Command announced Wednesday it had carried out four air strikes in Syria and 10 in Iraq since Monday. A CENTCOM spokesman said the strikes had hit various ISIS vehicles, bunkers and small units.

From Iraq itself, however, came a different account of the US bombing runs. In al-Qaim, in western Anbar province near the Syrian border, security officials told the National Iraqi News Agency that a US warplane fired two missiles into a popular market in the center of the city. The explosions ripped through the crowded market, leaving at least seven Iraqi civilians dead and 27 others wounded, many of them critically.

06 November, 2014
WSWS.org

 

By Paul Craig Roberts & Dave Kranzler

As we have demonstrated in previous articles, the bullion banks (primarily JP Morgan, HSBC, ScotiaMocatta, Barclays, UBS, and Deutsche Bank), most likely acting as agents for the Federal Reserve, have been systematically forcing down the price of gold since September 2011. Suppression of the gold price protects the US dollar against the extraordinary explosion in the growth of dollars and dollar-denominated debt.

It is possible to suppress the price of gold despite rising demand, because the price is not determined in the physical market in which gold is actually purchased and carried away. Instead, the price of gold is determined in a speculative futures market in which bets are placed on the direction of the gold price. Practically all of the bets made in the futures market are settled in cash, not in gold. Cash settlement of the contracts serves to remove price determination from the physical market.

Cash settlement makes it possible for enormous amounts of uncovered or “naked” futures contracts — paper gold — to be printed and dumped all at once for sale in the futures market at times when trading is thin. By increasing the supply of paper gold, the enormous sales drive down the futures price, and it is the futures price that determines the price at which physical quantities of bullion can be purchased.

The fact that the price of gold is determined in a paper market, in which there is no limit to the supply of paper contracts that can be created, produces the strange result that the demand for physical bullion is at an all time high, outstripping world production, but the price continues to fall! Asian demand is heavy, especially from China, and silver and gold eagles are flying off the shelves of the US Mint in record quantities. Bullion stocks are being depleted; yet the prices of gold and silver fall day after day.

The only way that this makes sense is that the price of bullion is not determined in a real market, but in a rigged paper market in which there is no limit to the ability to print paper gold.

The Chinese, Russians, and Indians are delighted that the corrupt American authorities make it possible for them to purchase ever larger quantities of gold at ever lower prices. The rigged market is perfectly acceptable to purchasers of bullion, just as it is to US authorities who are committed to protecting the dollar from a rising price of gold.

Nevertheless, an honest person would think that the incompatibility of high demand with constrained supply and falling price would arouse the interest of economists, the financial media, financial authorities, and congressional committees.

Where are the class action suits from gold mining companies against the Federal Reserve, its bullion bank agents, and all who are harming the interest of the mining companies by short-selling gold with uncovered contracts? Rigged markets–especially on the basis of inside information–are illegal and highly unethical. The naked short-selling is causing damage to mining interests. Once the price of gold is driven below $1200 per ounce, many mines become uneconomical. They shut down. Miners are unemployed. Shareholders lose money. How can such an obviously rigged and manipulated price be permitted to continue? The answer is that the US political and financial system is engulfed with corruption and criminality. The Federal Reserve’s policy of rigging bond and gold prices and providing liquidity for stock market speculation has damaged the US economy and tens of millions of US citizens in order to protect four mega-banks from their mistakes and crimes. This private use of public policy is unprecedented in history. Those responsible should be arrested and put on trial and they should simultaneously be sued for damages.

US authorities use the Plunge Protection Team, the Exchange Stabilization Fund, currency swaps, Federal Reserve policy, and purchases of S&P futures to support an artificial exchange value of the dollar and to provide the liquidity needed to support stock and bond prices, with the latter so artificially high that savers receive negative real interest rates on their saving.

The authorities have created a financial system totally out of sync with reality. When the authorities can no longer keep the house of cards standing, the collapse will be extreme.

It is a testament to the complicity of economists, the incompetence of financial media, and the corruption of public authorities and private institutions that this house of cards was constructed. The executives of the handful of mega-banks that caused the problem are the people who are running the US Treasury, the New York Fed, and the US financial regulatory agencies. They are using their control over public policy to protect themselves and their institutions from their own reckless behavior. The price for this protection is being paid by the economy and ordinary Americans – and that price is rising.

The latest orchestrated takedown of the gold price is related to two events (see the graphs below). One is that the Federal Reserve decided to boost the upward spike in the dollar’s exchange rate from the Fed’s announcement of the end of Quantitative Easing (QE). The Fed’s announcement of the end of dollar creation in order to support bond prices lessened the rising anxiety in the world about the US dollar’s value when the supply of new dollars continued to increase faster than the US output of goods and services. The Fed reinforced the boost that its announcement gave to the dollar by having its bullion bank agents drive down the gold price with naked short-selling.
Naked short selling was also used to offset the effect on the gold price by the Bank of Japan’s surprise announcement on October 31 of a massive new program of QE. Apparently, the Bank of Japan either has been pressured by Washington to inflate Japan’s currency in order to support the dollar’s value or is applying a policy based on the Keynesian Phillips Curve that 2-3% inflation stimulates economic growth. Japan has been in the economic doldrums for a long time and is now reduced to pre-Reagan “snake oil” prescriptions in a desperate attempt to revive its economy.

Japan’s announcement of infinite money creation should have caused the price of gold to rise. To prevent a rise, at 3:00 AM US Eastern Time, during one of the least active trading periods for gold futures, the electronic futures market (Globex) was hit with a sale of 25 tonnes of uncovered Comex paper gold contracts, which dropped the gold price $20 dollars. No legitimate seller would destroy his own capital by selling a position in this way.

The gold price stabilized and moved higher, but at 8 AM US Eastern Time, and 20 minutes prior to the opening of the New York futures market (Comex), another 38 tonnes of uncovered paper gold futures were sold. The only possible purpose of such a sale is to drive down the price of gold. Again, no legitimate investor would unload a huge amount of his holdings in this way, thereby wiping out his own wealth.

Allegedly, the United States is the home of scientific economics with the predominance of winners of the Nobel Prize in economics. Despite these high qualifications, the price of gold, silver, equities, and bonds that are set in the US bear no relationship to economic reality, and American economists do not notice.

The divergence of markets from economic reality disturbs neither public policymakers nor economists, who promote the interests of the government and its allied interest groups. The result is an economy that is a house of cards.

For additional reading see: http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/the-system-is-terminally-broken/

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

05 November, 2014
Paulcraigroberts.org

By Ram Puniyani

Caste hierarchy is the major obstacle to the goal of social justice and it continues to be a major obstacle to social progress even today. There are many theories, which have tried to understand its origin. The latest in the series is the attempt of RSS to show its genesis due to invasion of Muslim kings. Three books written by RSS ideologues argue that Islamic atrocities during medieval period resulted in emergence of untouchables and low castes. The books are “Hindu Charmakar Jati”, “Hindu Khatik Jati” and “Hindu Valmiki Jati”.

The Sangh leaders claimed that these castes had come into existence due to atrocities by foreign invaders and did not exist in Hindu religion earlier. According to Bhaiyyaji Joshi, number two in RSS hierarchy, ‘shudras’ were never untouchables in Hindu scriptures. ‘Islamic atrocities’ during the medieval age resulted in the emergence of untouchables, Dalits. Joshi further elaborated, “To violate Hindu swabhiman (dignity) of Chanwarvanshiya Kshatriyas, foreign invaders from Arab, Muslim rulers and beef-eaters, forced them to do abominable works like killing cows, skinning them and throwing their carcasses in deserted places. Foreign invaders thus created a caste of charma-karma (dealing with skin) by giving such works as punishment to proud Hindu prisoners.”

The truth is contrary to this. The foundations of the caste system are very old and untouchability came as an accompaniment of the caste system. The Aryans considered themselves superior, they called non-Aryans krshna varnya (dark skinned), anasa (those with no nose), and since non-Aryans worshipped the phallus, they were considered non-human or amanushya. (Rig Veda: X.22.9) There are quotes in the Rig Veda and Manusmriti to show that low castes were prohibited from coming close to the high castes and they were to live outside the village. While this does not imply that a full-fledged caste system had come into being in Rig Vedic times, the four-fold division of society into varnas did exist, which became a fairly rigid caste system by the time of the Manusmriti.

Untouchability became the accompaniment of the caste system sometime around the first century AD. The Manusmriti, written in the second–third centuries AD, codifies the existing practices which show with utmost clarity the type of despicable social practices that the oppressor castes were imposing upon the oppressed castes. The first major incursions of Muslim invaders into India began around the eleventh century ad, and the European conquests of India began in the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries.

Over time, the caste system became hereditary. The rules for social intercourse as well as establishing marriage relations were laid down by the caste system. Caste hierarchies also became rigid over time. The shudras began to be excluded from caste society, and ‘upper’ castes were barred from inter-dining or inter-marrying with them. Notions of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ were enforced strictly to maintain caste boundaries. Shudras became ‘untouchables’. It is this rigid social division that Manu’s Manav Dharmashastra (Human Law Code) codified.

Golwalkar, the major ideologue of RSS ideology defended it in a different way, ‘If a developed society realizes that the existing differences are due to the scientific social structure and that they indicate the different limbs of body social, the diversity (i.e. caste system, added) would not be construed as a blemish.’ (Organiser, 1 December 1952, p. 7) Deendayal Upadhyaya, another major ideologue of Sangh Parivar stated, ‘In our concept of four castes (varnas), they are thought of as different limbs of virat purush (the primeval man)… These limbs are not only complimentary to one another but even further there is individuality, unity. There is a complete identity of interests, identity, belonging… If this idea is not kept alive, the caste; instead of being complimentary can produce conflict. But then that is a distortion.’ (D. Upadhyaya, Integral Humanism, New Delhi, Bharatiya Jansangh, 1965, p. 43)

Social struggles to oppose this system and the struggles to escape the tyrannies of caste system are presented by Ambedkar as revolution and counter-revolution. He divides the ‘pre-Muslim’ period into three stages: (a) Brahmanism (the Vedic period); (b) Buddhism, connected with rise of first Magadh-Maurya states and representing the revolutionary denial of caste inequalities; and (c) ‘Hinduism’, or the counter revolution which consolidated brahmin dominance and the caste hierarchy.

Much before the invasion of Muslim kings, shudras were treated as untouchables and were the most oppressed and exploited sections of society. The rigidity and cruelty of the caste system and untouchability became very intense from the post-Vedic to Gupta period. Later, new social movements like Bhakti, directly, and Sufi, indirectly, partly reduced the intensity of the caste oppression and untouchability. This doctoring of the history by Sangh ideologues is motivated by their political agenda and tries to hide the truth

Ram Puniyani was a professor in biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and took voluntary retirement in December 2004 to work full time for communal harmony in India.

04 November, 2014
Countercurrents.org