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By Colin Todhunter

Indian Oil and Environment Minister Veerappa Moily has added fuel to the debate about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by approving field trials of 200 GM food crops on behalf of companies like Monsanto, Mahyco, Bayer and BASF. This is despite Supreme Court appointed Techn ical Expert Committee (TEC) recommending a ten-year moratorium on GM organism approvals until scientifically robust protocols, independent and competent institutions to assess risks and a strong regulatory system are developed.

This will involve a deliberate release of GM organisms in the open environment and a potential contamination of non-GM crops, as has been the case in the US, with GM open field trials having contaminated parts of the wheat supply (1). Despite mounting evidence appearing in peer-reviewed journals that GM and glyphosate are adversely impacting human health, the nutritional value of food crops, plant immunity, soil fertility, biodiversity, the environment and yields (2 – 15), politicians seem hell-bent on facilitating the aims of the GM biotech sector.

It was a similar story with the ‘Green Revolution’. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations backed this chemical-laden revolution in agriculture and managed to co-opt strategically placed scientists, institutions and politicians in various areas of the globe (16). With their compliance, the result has been that over the past 50 to 60 years, thanks to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, agriculture has changed more than it did during the previous 12,000 years.

We need look no further than Punjab to see the impact of the Green Revolution. Reports of water scarcities and contamination, increasing levels of cancer, farmer indebtedness and decreasing yields highlight the unsustainable and deleterious impacts of chemical-industrial agriculture (17). It all begs the question, what was wrong with agriculture in the first place that warranted this disastrous shift towards chemical agriculture and now GMOs? The answer to that is, by comparison, probably not a lot.

In 2013, researchers at the  University of  Canterbury in  New Zealand concluded that the GM strategy used in North American staple crop production is limiting yields and increasing pesticide use compared to non-GM farming in  Western Europe  (18). Led by Professor Jack Heinemann, the study’s findings were published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. The study found that  Europe is decreasing chemical herbicide use and achieving even larger declines in insecticide use without sacrificing yield gains, while chemical herbicide use in the  US has increased with GM seed. In effect,  Europe has learned to grow more food per hectare and use fewer chemicals in the process.

Moreover, a September 2013 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) states that farming in rich and poor nations alike should shift from monoculture towards greater varieties of crops, reduce the use of fertilisers and other inputs, provide greater support for small-scale farmers and move towards more locally focused production and consumption of food. More than 60 international experts contributed to the report (19).

The report states that monoculture and industrial farming methods are not providing sufficient affordable food where it is needed, while causing mounting and unsustainable environmental damage. The system actually causes food poverty, not addresses it.

As for India, Arun Shrivastava notes that the world doesn’t need modern technology of poisonous pesticides, destructive fertilizers and patented GE seeds that can’t match 1890 or even 1760 AD yields in India (12). But even if we discard the debate over yields, Shrivastava (and others) asserts that modern technology has actually destroyed the nutrition in common foods and that, failing to set any yield or nutrition standard in any food crop, it is part of an insane industry that has muddled through.

So, how did we arrive at this stage, whereby 12,000 years of conventional farming were swept aside in favour of chemical/oil-based agriculture?

As William F Engdahl argues, the Green Revolution was a Rockefeller family plan to monopolize global agriculture as it had done with oil. It was aimed at removing traditional agriculture from farmers and placing it in the hands of corporate agribusiness. As a result, large multinational seed companies were able to control seed supplies. Moreover, the introduction of modern US agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial seeds made local farmers in developing countries dependent on US agribusiness.

Developing nations could not pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This new form of agriculture was also water intensive and required large irrigation projects. Nations would therefore get credit courtesy of the World Bank and special loans made large US banks to construct huge dams and flood previously fertile farmland. The loans went mostly to the large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and other modern inputs and had to borrow money at higher rates of interest from elsewhere.

Engdahl notes that super-wheat produced greater yields only by saturating the soil with huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the Rockefeller-dominated major oil companies.

After two generations of the green revolution, is it any surprise that agriculture in India is in the grip of a combined social, financial and environmental crisis (20)?

Ordinary people, if they are not to be what Vandana Shiva calls ‘ignorant links in a malicious corporate-controlled food chain, therefore need to question why governments have kowtowed to a US-driven agenda of chemical and now GMO agriculture. Africa is now targeted for more of the same as the Gates Foundation spearheads the GMO onslaught in that continent (21).

12,000 years of traditional agriculture and biodiversity are being swept aside along with ordinary farmers by vested interests in the US whose geopolitical aim has to been to monopolize markets and ultimately use food as a weapon to control nations and people by destroying national food sovereignty and potentially using food as a means to depopulate (22,23).

“If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.” – Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (12)

Wider ‘corporate America’ is already setting the broad political, ‘development’ and economic agenda in India:

“And something Americans don’t know much about, the nuclear deal with  India  has a twin agreement, and that twin agreement is on agriculture. It’s called the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, and on the board of this agreement are Monsanto,  ADM and Wal-Mart. So a grab of the seed sector by Monsanto, of the trade sector by the giant agribusiness, and the retail sector, which is 400 million people in  India , by Wal-Mart. These are issues that are preoccupying us regarding democracy in  India  right now. ” Vandana Shiva (24).

 

It’s not just ‘American’ that don’t know about this, but most ordinary Indians too!

But even with the upcoming national elections, no one should expect self-proclaimed Hindu-nationalist party BJP to protect the country from the foreign jackals if it gains power. BJP candidate for PM Narendra Modi is fully backed by Wall Street (25).

What future Indian agriculture?

What future India?

600 million booted off the land and the further hollowing out of Indian agriculture and society at the behest of Wall Street (26)?

Colin Todhunter : Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India.

24 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Jonathan Cook

 

Nazareth: For the first time since the US launched the Middle East peace talks last summer, the Palestinian leadership may be sensing it has a tiny bit of leverage.

Barack Obama met the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Washington last week in what Palestinian officials called a “candid and difficult” meeting. The US president hoped to dissuade Abbas from walking away when the original negotiations’ timetable ends in a month.

The US president and his secretary of state, John Kerry, want their much-delayed “framework agreement” to provide the pretext for spinning out the stalled talks for another year. The US outline for peace is now likely to amount to little more than a set of vague, possibly unwritten principles that both sides can assent to.

The last thing the US president needs is for the negotiations to collapse, after Kerry has repeatedly stressed that finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is imperative.

The US political cycle means Obama’s Democratic party is heading this autumn into the Congressional mid-term elections. A humiliating failure in the peace process would add to perceptions of him as a weak leader in the Middle East, following what has been widely presented as his folding in confrontations with Syria and Iran.

Renewed clashes between Israel and the Palestinians in the international arena would also deepen US diplomatic troubles at a time when Washington needs to conserve its energies for continuing negotiations with Iran and dealing with the fallout from its conflict with Russia over Crimea.

Obama therefore seems committed to keeping the peace process show on the road for a while longer, however aware he is of the ultimate futility of the exercise.

In this regard, US interests overlap with those of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel has been the chief beneficiary of the past eight months: diplomatic pressure has largely lifted; Israeli officials have announced an orgy of settlement building in return for releasing a few dozen Palestinian prisoners; and the White House has gradually shifted ground even further towards Israel’s hardline positions.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, have nothing to show for their participation, and have lost much of the diplomatic momentum gained earlier by winning upgraded status at the United Nations. They have also had to put on hold moves to join dozens of international forums, as well as the threat to bring Israel up on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court.

Abbas is under mounting pressure at home to put an end to the charade, with four Palestinian factions warning last week that the Kerry plan would be the equivalent of national “suicide”. For this reason, the White House is now focused on preventing Abbas from quitting next month – and that requires a major concession from Israel.

The Palestinians are said to be pushing hard for Israel’s agreement to halt settlement building and free senior prisoners, most notably Marwan Barghouti, who looks the most likely successor to Abbas as Palestinian leader.

Some kind of short-term settlement freeze – though deeply unpopular with Netanyahu’s supporters – may be possible, given the Israeli right’s triumph in advancing settlement-building of late. Abbas reportedly presented Obama with “a very ugly map” of more than 10,000 settler homes Israel has unveiled since the talks began.

Setting Barghouti free, as well as Ahmad Saadat, whose PLO faction assassinated the far-right tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi, in 2001, would be an even harder pill for the Israeli government to swallow. Cabinet ministers are already threatening a mutiny over the final round of prisoner releases, due at the end of the week. But Israeli reports on Sunday suggested Washington might consider releasing Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, possibly in return for Israel freeing more Palestinians, to keep the talks going.

Simmering tensions between the US and Israel, however, are suggestive of the intense pressure being exerted by the White House behind the scenes.

Those strains exploded into view again last week when Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s defence minister, used a speech to lambast Washington’s foreign policy as “feeble”. In a similar vein, he infuriated the White House in January by labelling Kerry “obsessive” and “messianic” in pursuing the peace process. But unlike the earlier incident, Washington has refused to let the matter drop, angrily demanding an explicit apology.

The pressure from the White House, however, is not chiefly intended to force concessions from Israel on an agreement. After all, the Israeli parliament approved this month the so-called referendum bill, seen by the right as an insurance policy. It gives the Israeli public, raised on the idea of Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive and “eternal capital”, a vote on whether to share it with the Palestinians.

Washington’s goal is more modest: a few more months of quiet. But even on this reckoning, given Netanyahu’s intransigence, the talks are going to implode sooner or later. What then?

Obama and Kerry have set out a convincing scenario that in the longer term Israel will find itself shunned by the world. The Palestinian leadership will advance its cause at the UN, while conversely grassroots movements inside and outside Palestine will begin clamouring for a single state guaranteeing equality between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Israel’s vehement and aggressive opposition on both fronts will only serve to damage its image – and its relations with the US.

An unexpected voice backing the one-state solution emerged last week when Tareq Abbas, the Palestinian president’s 48-year-old son, told the New York Times that a struggle for equal rights in a single state would be the “easier, peaceful way”.

Bolstering Washington’s argument that such pressures cannot be held in check for ever, a poll this month of US public opinion revealed a startling finding. Despite a US political climate committed to a two-state solution, nearly two-thirds of Americans back a single democratic state for Jews and Palestinians should a Palestinian state prove unfeasible. That view is shared by more than half of Israel’s supporters in the US.

That would constitute a paradigm shift, a moment of reckoning that draws nearer by the day as the peace process again splutters into irrelevance.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

24 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Patrick O’Connor

Statements issued by White House and NATO officials over the weekend on the Ukrainian crisis, including allegations that Russia is poised to invade several of its neighbours, point to advanced preparations by US imperialism for a heightened military build-up across Eastern Europe.

US President Barack Obama today begins a four-day trip to Europe, beginning in The Hague, Holland. On the sidelines of a pre-scheduled Nuclear Security Summit there, Obama has convened a meeting on Ukraine involving the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan—the G8 minus Russia.

After working with Germany to orchestrate a regime-change operation in Ukraine, Washington’s aim is to diplomatically isolate Vladimir Putin’s administration and consider further damaging economic sanctions against Russia, while also developing trade and energy mechanisms that bring Ukraine and other Eastern European states under the strategic control of the US and EU. On Wednesday, Obama will meet in Brussels with European Union officials and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, yesterday issued a bellicose denunciation of Russia. He accused the Putin administration of building up its military forces on Russia’s western borders and of preparing to intervene into Transnistria, a part of the former Soviet republic of Moldova that has a significant ethnic Russian population and which attempted to become independent following the disintegration of the USSR. Breedlove also raised the spectre of Russian troops invading the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

“The [Russian] force that is at the Ukrainian border now to the east is very, very sizeable and very, very ready,” Breedlove declared at an event held by the German Marshall Fund think-tank. “There is absolutely sufficient force postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to Transnistria if the decision was made to do that, and that is very worrisome.”

After referring to the Russian annexation of Crimea, the NATO commander asked: “How do we change our deployment? How do we change our readiness? How do we change our force structure such that we can be ready in the future? We need to think about our allies, the positioning of our forces in the alliance and our readiness of our forces in the alliance, such that we can be there to defend against them if required, especially in the Baltics and other places.”

Breedlove added that Russia was now acting as “an adversary” of NATO—underscoring the active preparations of the US and its European allies to launch a war against Russia.

Obama’s deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken, speaking on CNN yesterday, backed Breedlove’s statements, declaring that it was “deeply concerning to see the Russian troop build-up on the border.” Blinken added that “it’s possible that they’re preparing to move in [to Ukraine].”

Polish Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak declared on Saturday that Washington “must increase its [military] presence in Europe, also in Poland.” During US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the country last week, Siemoniak explained, “There was a clear expectation from our side, and also from all NATO allies [in] Eastern Europe, that we expect a larger military presence of the US and that this eastern flank of NATO must be strengthened.”

Siemoniak added that it was “natural”, given developments in Ukraine, to discuss the prospect of a permanent, major US base in Poland.

These statements, which follow the US deployment of twelve F16 fighter jets and 300 troops to Poland earlier this month, underscore the brazen hypocrisy of the White House and its allies. Washington is now drumming up a war scare over alleged Russian troop movements within the country’s own borders, while at the same time the US armed forces are being deployed in a provocative effort to cordon off Russia from its neighbours.

The installed regime in Kiev is also ratcheting up the rhetoric. Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia yesterday appeared on US television and stated that the prospect of military conflict with Russia was “very high” and “growing.” He added: “We are ready to respond… It’s very difficult to keep people restrained, and they are patriots of their homeland … [It] would be difficult for them just simply sit or stay and look at Russia invading their country.”

Deshchytsia’s reference to “patriots of their homeland” is an allusion to the extreme right-wing and nationalist forces that formed the base of the Washington-European operation in Ukraine, have been brought into top government posts and are being integrated into the armed forces.

Defence Minister Igor Tenyukh, one of several senior government figures who are members of the fascistic Svoboda party, yesterday bemoaned the failure of Ukrainian forces in Crimea to attack Russian troops. Over the weekend, Russian forces secured control of the Belbek air base, one of the few remaining bases in Crimea still occupied by Ukrainian troops.

Speaking to journalists in Kiev, Tenyukh declared that “our commanders had the authorisation to use force.” However, he complained: “Unfortunately, the commanders made decisions on the spot. They chose not to use their weapons in order to avoid bloodshed.”

Having installed a regime in Ukraine that includes forces intent on triggering a war between the US and Russia, the White House is now preparing to build up its military capacities. Republican congressman Mike Rogers, chair of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, yesterday told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Obama’s rhetoric did not “match the reality on the ground.” He demanded military aid that the Ukrainian government “can use to really protect and defend themselves.”

Obama’s deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken responded by declaring that the prospect of directly arming Ukraine was currently being reviewed.

 

24 March, 2014

WSWS.org

 

 

While Malaysians and people in other countries continue to pray for the well-being of the passengers and crew of MH370, many of us also hope that the whole truth about the missing aircraft will be known as soon as possible.

This is imperative in view of the numerous ‘theories’ that are floating around about what has really happened to the plane. Of course, to establish the truth, the aircraft’s black box would be a critical factor. We should all be patient and wait for the box to be discovered.

In the meantime, we should be concerned about the way in which theories about the disappearance of MH370 are appearing in sections of the foreign media and are being disseminated. They raise some disturbing questions. Are these theories the inevitable consequence of a tragic situation about which one knows so little? If we are ignorant about what has occurred, we are even more ignorant about the motives behind this mind-boggling incident.

Is it also possible that some of these theories are being spun as part of a massive disinformation exercise? Is false ‘evidence’ deliberately being churned out by some quarters in order to deceive us, to divert our attention, to stop us from pursuing the real leads? Are we being duped by red herrings all over the ocean?

In other words, are we witnessing some sort of cover-up, a cover-up that has larger geopolitical implications, a cover-up that goes beyond our shores?

For the sake of the crew and the passengers of MH370, for the sake of their families, for the sake of decent human beings everywhere, let us hope and pray that all of us will have the courage and the integrity to embrace the truth, when the time comes.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,

President,

International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

 

Malaysia.

23 March 2014

Justice for Romeo Capalla!

 

 

Dear President Aquino,

Once again, we are shocked by the brutal killing of another human rights defender, Romeo Capalla.  We condemn in the strongest terms, the silence of your Administration about these extrajudicial killings being committed almost every week since the beginning of 2014. The assassination of Capalla occurred 13 days after the massacre of Licuben Ligiw and his two sons, Freddie and Eddie, on March 2, 2014 in Abra.

Like the other victims of extrajudicial killing, Romeo Capalla was involved in work to improve the lives of marginalized communities. He was a Board Member of Panay Fair Trade Center (PFTC), formed by peasant women in 1991 to provide women farmers and food producers fair value for their products by engaging in post-harvest processing, opening alternative venues for marketing and establishing direct links between the farmers/producers and consumers within the country and overseas.

As in many cases of extrajudicial killings, activities promoting the rights and welfare of marginalized people such as those undertaken by PFTC are vilified by the military. The military claims that Capalla was involved in activities (i.e. PFTC) where “funds for the rebel group could easily be laundered.”  PFTC members and member organizations are clearly targeted by the military. PFTC, its members, including Romeo Capalla, its member organizations and its partners appear in the military order of battle. In 2005, Capalla was arrested on fabricated charge of arson which was later dismissed. Even then, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police continued harassing and tagging him a commander of the New People’s Army.  An hour after Capalla was shot, a sugar rice mill and pick-up truck belonging to PFTC member organization, the Katilingban sang Magsasaka sa Dabong (KAMADA II) in Brgy. Dabong, Janiuay, Iloilo was set on fire.

• Mr. President, we are waiting to hear you publicly declaring that these killings must stop now. We are waiting for your decisive action to end impunity now.  We are looking to see concrete steps from you to give justice to the victims of extrajudicial killings and halt its escalation, including the following: The formation of an independent investigation and fact-finding team composed of representatives from human rights groups, the Church, local government, and the Commission on Human Rights to investigate the latest extrajudicial killings, including that of Romeo Capalla 
• An order from you, as  Commander in Chief of the Philippine Army, to stop the military policy and campaign of vilification under the Operation Plan Bayanihan, which gives state agents the licence to target human rights defenders and ordinary citizens
• Respond to the calls from Filipinos and human rights advocates from around the world to withdraw Operation Plan Bayanihan which is at the root of extrajudicial killings and other grievous human rights abuses

 

Mr. President, justice must be done NOW to Romeo Capalla and the other victims of extrajudicial killings! Extrajudicial killings must stop NOW! Impunity must end NOW.

 

*The International Coalition on Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP)  is a global network  of organizations  outside the Philippines who are concerned about human rights Philippines and committed to work for a just and lasting peace in the Philippines. 

John Kerry’s rhetoric is divorced from the reality on the ground, where life goes on – even at the barricades

 

By Mark Weisbrot

Images forge reality, granting a power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it. I thought that I, too, was immune to the repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a popular rebellion. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in Caracas this month: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the protests, the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city. I, too, had been taken in by media imagery.

Major media outlets have already reported that Venezuela’s poor have not joined the right-wing opposition protests, but that is an understatement: it’s not just the poor who are abstaining – in Caracas, it’s almost everyone outside of a few rich areas like Altamira, where small groups of protesters engage in nightly battles with security forces, throwing rocks and firebombs and running from tear gas.

Walking from the working-class neighborhood of Sabana Grande to the city center, there was no sign that Venezuela is in the grip of a “crisis” that requires intervention from the Organization of American States (OAS), no matter what John Kerry tells you. The metro also ran very well, although I couldn’t get off at Alta Mira station, where the rebels had set up their base of operations until their eviction this week.

I got my first glimpse of the barricades in Los Palos Grandes, an upper-income area where the protesters do have popular support, and neighbors will yell at anyone trying to remove the barricades – which is a risky thing to attempt (at least four people have apparently been shot dead for doing so). But even here at the barricades, life was pretty much normal, save for some snarled traffic. On the weekend, the Parque del Este was full of families and runners sweating in the 90-degree heat – before Chávez, you had to pay to get in, and the residents here, I was told, were disappointed when the less well-to-do were allowed to enter for free. The restaurants are still crowded at night.

Travel provides little more than a reality check, of course, and I visited Caracas mainly to gather data on the economy. But I came away skeptical of the narrative, reported daily in the media, that increasing shortages of basic foods and consumer goods are a serious motivation for the protests. The people who are most inconvenienced by those shortages are, of course, the poor and working classes. But the residents of Los Palos Grandes and Altamira, where I saw real protests happening – they have servants to stand in line for what they need, and they have the income and storage space to accumulate some inventory.

These people are not hurting – they’re doing very well. Their income has grown at a healthy pace since the Chávez government got control of the oil industry a decade ago. They even get an expensive handout from the government: anyone with a credit card (which excludes the poor and millions of working people) is entitled to $3,000 per year at a subsidized exchange rate. They can then sell the dollars for 6 times what they paid in what amounts to a multi-billion dollar annual subsidy for the privileged – yet it is they who are supplying the base and the troops of the rebellion.

The class nature of this fight has always been stark and inescapable, now more than ever. Walking past the crowd that showed up for the March 5 ceremonies to mark the anniversary of Chávez’s death, it was a sea of working-class Venezuelans, tens of thousands of them. There were no expensive clothing or $300 shoes. What a contrast to the disgruntled masses of Los Palos Grandes, with $40,000 Grand Cherokee Jeeps bearing the slogan of the moment: SOS VENEZUELA.

When it comes to Venezuela, John Kerry knows which side of the class war he is on. Last week, just as I was leaving town, the US Secretary of State doubled down in his fusillade of rhetoric against the government, accusing President Nicolás Maduro of waging a “terror campaign against his own people”. Kerry also threatened to invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the OAS against Venezuela, as well as implementing sanctions.

Brandishing the Democratic Charter against Venezuela is a bit like threatening Vladimir Putin with a UN-sponsored vote on secession in Crimea. Perhaps Kerry didn’t notice, but just a few days before his threats, the OAS took a resolution that Washington brought against Venezuela and turned it inside-out, declaring the regional body’s “solidarity” with the Maduro government. Twenty-nine countries approved it, with only the right-wing governments of Panama and Canada siding with the US against it.

Article 21 of the OAS’s Democratic Charter applies to the “unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order of a member state” (like the 2009 military coup in Honduras that Washington helped to legitimize, or the 2002 military coup in Venezuela, aided even more by the US government). Given its recent vote, the OAS would be more likely to invoke the Democratic Charter against the US government for its drone killings of US citizens without trial, than it would be to do so against Venezuela.

Kerry’s “terror campaign” rhetoric is equally divorced from reality, and predictably provoked an equivalent response from Venezuela’s foreign minister, who called Kerry a “murderer”. Here’s the truth about those charges from Kerry: since the protests in Venezuela began, it appears that more people have died at the hands of protesters than security forces. According to deaths reported by CEPR in the last month, in addition to those killed for trying to remove protesters’ barricades, about seven have apparently been killed by protesters’ obstructions – including a motorcyclist beheaded by a wire stretched across the road – and five National Guard officers have been killed.

As for violence from law enforcement, at least three people appear to have been killed by the National Guard or other security forces – including two protesters and a pro-government activist. Some people blame the government for an additional three killings by armed civilians; in a country with an average of more than 65 homicides per day, it is entirely possible these people acted on their own.

A full 21 members of the security forces are under arrest for alleged abuses, including some of the killings. This is no “terror campaign”.

At the same time, it is difficult to find any serious denunciation of opposition violence from major opposition leaders. Polling data finds the protests to be deeply unpopular in Venezuela, although they do much better abroad when they are promoted as “peaceful protests” by people like Kerry. The data also suggest that a majority of Venezuelans see these disturbances for what they are: an attempt to remove the elected government from power.

The domestic politics of Kerry’s posturing are pretty simple. On the one hand, you have the right-wing Florida Cuban-American lobby and their neo-conservative allies screaming for overthrow. To the left of the far right there is, well, nothing. This White House cares very little about Latin America, and there are no electoral consequences for making most of the governments in the hemisphere more disgusted with Washington.

Perhaps Kerry thinks the Venezuelan economy is going to collapse and that will bring some of the non-rich Venezuelans into the streets against the government. But the economic situation is actually stabilizing – monthly inflation fell in February, and the black-market dollar has fallen sharply on the news that the government is introducing a new, market-based exchange rate. Venezuela’s sovereign bonds returned 11.5% from 11 February (the day before the protests began) to 13 March, the highest returns in the Bloomberg dollar emerging market bond index. Shortages will most likely ease in the coming weeks and months.

Of course, that is exactly the opposition’s main problem: the next election is a year-and-a-half away, and by that time, it’s likely that the economic shortages and inflation that have so increased over the past 15 months will have abated. The opposition will then probably lose the parliamentary elections, as they have lost every election over the past 15 years. But their current insurrectionary strategy isn’t helping their own cause: it seems to have divided the opposition and united the Chavistas.

The only place where the opposition seems to be garnering broad support is Washington.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC.

 

20 March 2014

theguardian.com

By Kourosh Ziabari

The representative of the Jewish minority in Iran’s parliament (Majlis) has recently given an extensive interview to one of Iranian news agencies and discussed his different viewpoints regarding the Israeli regime and the way the Jewish community of Iran see the entity which proclaims to be representing the global Jewry.

According to Siamak Mareh Sedq who has talked to the Fars News Agency, Tel Aviv needs to create crisis in the Middle East in order to survive. “If Israel faces no threat it will be destroyed within one month. Israel needs (regional) crises in a bid to continue its existence,” he said.

This wise and precise analysis is exactly what the audacious commentators, intellectuals and journalists in the West who dare to criticize the policies and practices of the Israeli regime without fear of losing their jobs or being vilified as “anti-Semites” agree on. This is something that even the Israelis know well and confess to. An anonymous Israeli official once had privately told the president of the National Iranian American Council Trita Parsi, “You have to recognize that we Israelis need an existential threat. It is part of the way we view the world. If we can find more than one, that would be preferable, but we will settle for one.”

The fact that Israel needs a serious existential threat to secure its survival and depends on regional crises to make sure that its existence will not be undermined and can go ahead with its colonial, expansionistic projects and ambitions is no closed book to anyone studying the history of this regime.

Israel has always been at odds with its neighbors and has intentionally failed to live with the countries surrounding it in peace and friendly coexistence, even though some of them, for the sake of cajoling the United States and earning some benefits, have pretended that they have recognized the existence of this regime and have no problems with it! Since its inception, Israel has been constantly waging attacks or creating troubles for others, and unfortunately, those who worked hands in glove with the United States, Britain, Canada and others to establish a land for the homeless in 1948 are now figuring out that their magnum opus has turned into a lawless, authoritarian, racist and apartheid regime that even finds it convenient to go beyond the continental borders to launch bomb attacks on a country 2,060 kilometers away: Tunisia, in the Operation Wooden Leg on October 1, 1981.

But what I want to touch upon today is not Israel’s illegitimate and unlawful military attacks on Jordan, Egypt and Syria in 1967 or the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, even though all of these events need investigation and contemplation as the crises which Israel has nimbly created in order to consolidate its position in the Middle East and secure its fragile survival by the use of military force. What I want to allude to is the crisis which Israel manufactured around one decade ago to make sure that the international community will be busy dealing with the different aspects of the crisis until finding a solution, and in this period, it can work to build more settlements, kill or imprison more Palestinian leaders and fortify the castle of its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East.

The crisis that Israel manufactured was the controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. This is the topic which the prominent American investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter skillfully discusses in his recently published book “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.” Although Gareth Porter does not concur with me on all points I have mentioned, he generally shed a light on “how Israel and the George W. Bush administration successfully portrayed the various actions taken by Western nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as responses to a long history of Iranian covert work on militarization of its nuclear program.”

The breakthrough book which is the product of Gareth Porter’s six years of close investigation of Iran’s nuclear standoff and the developments of Iran’s foreign policy tries to show that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been used as a pretext by the United States in unison with Israel to put pressure on Iran and extinguish its technological and political progress. Porter says that the IAEA used documents as the reference of its allegations and accusations against Iran that were provided to it either directly by Israel or through the terrorist cult Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO or MEK) which was just recently removed from the U.S. Department of State’s list of foreign terrorist organizations in an attempt to provide political shelter for this miserable and wretched group of traitors and serial killers which sees Tel Aviv as one of its main benefactors and sponsors.

The book provides reliable and confirmable evidence showing that Israel was one of the main culprits behind the complication of Iran’s nuclear dossier through forging false documents and evidence and presenting them to the IAEA.

Porter’s book published by the “Just World Books” is a must read and is praised by such figures as the renowned American director Oliver Stone, leading investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, prominent Middle East expert Juan Cole and former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles W. Freeman.

Gareth Porter’s book inspired me to think about the crisis that has been manufactured in the most wicked way by Israel and its patrons and led to years of animosity and acrimony between Iran and the West, and in particular the United States. The controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program soared when the IAEA Board of Governors, under the pressure by the United States, voted in 2006 to refer Iran’s nuclear file to the UN Security Council. It was after then that the economic sanctions began being shot at Iran one after the other. The sanctions, as inhumane, illegal and unjustifiable they were, created different hardships for the ordinary Iranian citizens, including the patients suffering from chronic disorders in need of foreign-imported medical equipments and pharmaceutical products.

The “manufactured crisis” not only embittered Iran’s trade with the United States and the European Union, but also imposed costs on the European firms that sustained significant damages as a result of cutting their business with Iran, and there are credible statistics showing that in such countries as Germany and France, thousands of people lost their jobs due to the direct or indirect consequences of the economic sanctions. The sanctions which were pioneered and cheered by Tel Aviv also caused serious irregularities in international banking systems and protocols and brought about disastrous outcomes for the global economy.

However, after almost one decade of dispute and quarrel, Iran and the six world powers have once again sat at the negotiation table, and the first outcome of their intense negotiations became evident in November 24, 2013 when they reached an interim agreement in Geneva known as the “Joint Plan of Action” by which Iran would limit certain portions of its nuclear activities and will receive relief from some of the important parts of the sanctions it has been enduring in the recent years. This is what dissipates and fritters away more than one decade of Israel’s day and night efforts to hamper Iran’s relations with the world and embroil it in a stalemate over its nuclear program.

As the negotiations for a comprehensive and final agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) get started in Vienna, Israel finds itself in an awkward position that will be costing it a lot if the talks lead to substantive and successful results.

Israel has been pulling all the stops to foil the endeavors of Iran and the international community to settle their dispute, and that is why the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Geneva accord a “historic mistake” and the “deal of century” for Iran.

The fact that Iran’s nuclear file was passed to the Security Council by the IAEA, that the Security Council decided to impose four rounds of sanctions on Iran in its eight resolutions regarding Iran’s nuclear program, and also the fact that the United States, in the past ten years, went through fire and water to make sure that Iran will remain under huge economic and political pressures indicate that Israel was pleased and somehow relieved as it could see that its efforts to manufacture a new crisis in the region were bearing fruits. No conscious mind would accept the claim that Israel didn’t play a central role in Iran’s nuclear standoff.

However, the new turn in Iran’s relations with the international community and the possibility of a final agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group (Britain, China, France, Russian, the United States and Germany) during the Vienna talks sound to Israel like an elegy and an extremely sorrowful funeral song.

Although Israel is reliant on the regional crisis to make sure that it will not cease to exist, the obliteration of one of the crises it has produced through diligent work will not be a promising sign for the people in Tel Aviv who should think of new ways for prolonging the lifespan of their apartheid entity.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist and a writer.

By Mickey Z.

Holocaust (noun): destruction or slaughter on a mass scale

One of the least discussed obstacles we face in the struggle against speciesism is language.

While most of us will flippantly toss off callous phrases like “more than one way to skin a cat” or “kill two birds with one stone,” perhaps the biggest issue is the way some words — “rape” and “slavery,” for example — are often reserved solely for human references.

In an even tighter example of restriction, the term “holocaust” has become uniquely associated with and thus limited to humans of Jewish ethnicity or heritage.

While the scores of communists, Roma, homosexuals, and dissidents murdered in Nazi concentration camps would obviously not concur with such a qualification, what are we to say of the ubiquitous packed trains, warehousing, experimentation, gassing, and targeted slaughter of non-human earthlings?

It’s been estimated that in all the wars and genocides in recorded history, a total of 619 million humans have been killed by humans. That same number — 619 million non-humans — are murdered every five days for “food” by an industry that consumes and destroys one-third of the planet’s land surface and is the No. 1 source of human-created greenhouse gases (read: climate change).

Each and every day, somewhere between 150 and 200 animal and plant species go extinct thanks to human behavior and roughly 32 trillion insects are killed by automobiles in the United States alone!

Is this not a holocaust, as in “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale”?

How would it disrespect the nightmarish experiences of humans to use the same word to describe practices that are threatening all life on the planet?

“Auschwitz,” wrote sociologist Theodor Adorno, “begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.”

To declare otherwise is to betray one’s speciesist bias and expose a glaring lack of holistic compassion.

FYI: To declare otherwise is to also to betray the original meaning of the word: “A holocaust is a religious animal sacrifice that is completely consumed by fire. The word derives from the Ancient Greek holocaustos.”

So how about we eschew the fascism of speciesist semantics and focus more on the fact that non-humans are being killed by the trillions? This frighteningly and sad reality is not the result of some unstoppable force of nature or preordained theology. Non-humans are being wiped out thanks to specific and identifiable human decisions.

From the film, Earthlings: “Like us, (animals) are the psychological centers of a life that is uniquely their own. What these animals are due from us, how we morally ought to treat them, are questions whose answer begins with the recognition of our psychological kinship with them.”

These animals are also due some linguistic honesty.

#shifthappens

Note: To continue conversations like this, come see Mickey Z. in person at Hunter College on March 26.

Order Occupy this Book: Mickey Z. on Activism here.

Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green.

 

21 March, 2014

World News Trust

By Rajesh Makwana

At a time when the risk of civilizational collapse is widely forewarned, it is time to recognise that the call for sharing is a cause that can unite concerned citizens working on a diverse range of interconnected global issues.

More than ever before, analysts and organisations are advocating for the process of sharing to guide our response to pressing global issues. One recent example is a research project sponsored by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which modelled a range of scenarios “closely reflecting the reality of the world today” and found that civilizational collapse will be “difficult to avoid”. Although the research is yet to be published, Nafeez Ahmed (executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development) recently outlined the report’s dramatic findings in the Guardian, which led to a flurry of activity on the blogosphere as the content went viral. Putting aside the prospect of collapse that most commentators inevitably focussed on, the research adds further weight to the notion that only an international process of economic sharing can guarantee a just and sustainable future for humanity.

For many, any talk of civilizational collapse is viewed as an overreaction to world problems. But even without the historical references to failed empires mentioned in the NASA-funded report, it is now widely accepted that today’s perfect storm of socio-economic, environmental and geopolitical crises means humanity is already in the midst of a global emergency . The study emphasises two distinct factors that most often lead to collapse. The first of these is “the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity” of planet earth, which is already widely visible in the pervasive and increasingly harsh impacts of climate change. The second element is the economic stratification of society into a small group of powerful ”elites” and the rest of society – the “masses”. As the Occupy movement’s infamous 1% vs the 99% slogans encapsulate, such polarisation is now almost universal, even though the evidence suggests that inequality is detrimental to economic growth and causes widespread social disruption and disenfranchisement.

A common response to this toxic mix of social and environmental dynamics is to look towards technological innovation to provide the necessary solutions. But according to the NASA report’s authors, relying on technology is an evasive way of maintaining business as usual – a familiar tendency in civilisations on the verge of collapse, where decision making is exercised by elites who are temporarily shielded from the devastating impacts of their policy decisions.

Equitably distributing the earth’s resources

The potential triggers for civilizational collapse outlined in the report are already well-documented; people have long been calling for a more equal world , more sustainable global consumption patterns, and a shift away from techno-fixes and palliative economic reforms. But the solutions emphasised by the team of scientists who worked on the NASA paper demand further consideration. They suggest that collapse can be avoided “if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion”. Their conclusion essentially points to the need for a new paradigm for human progress that is broadly in line with the principle of sharing , and for this process of economic sharing to take place on an international scale. Unless nations can agree on a framework for sharing the world’s natural resources in a sustainable manner, it will remain impossible to achieve the reductions in per capita resource use or the equitable distribution proposed by the authors.

However, within the current political and economic paradigm – characterised by national self-interest and fierce international competition – attaining agreement on how to share planetary resources is an almost insurmountable challenge. Given the enormity of this task, it is important to recognise that the demand for sharing is actually a common cause that connects a diverse range of local, national and global issues. Moreover, the call for a fairer sharing of wealth, power or resources is becoming more explicit by the day, and is now evident in numerous countries across the world.

Sharing in its multiple dimensions

For example, within local communities and cities, millions of people and organisations are embracing the sharing economy , which – if properly understood in relation to concerns for global equity and sustainability – has the potential to revolutionise our economic systems from the ground up. Similarly, many local initiatives that prioritise self-sufficiency work towards sharing available resources more fairly and sustainably, and the increasingly popular commons movement also draws on a conceptual framework that is based on the principle of sharing.

At the national level, the call for wealth and power to be shared more equally and democratically was popularised during the Arab Spring and Occupy protests, and is still making headlines . There is a growing movement of people calling for a proportion of revenues from the use of land and natural resources to be shared among citizens . And countless campaigns for tax justice , an end to austerity and the strengthening of social welfare are all predicated on the notion of sharing national resources more equitably.

Demands for sharing are also well established in relation to global issues. Given that half the world still has limited access to sufficient food, water and healthcare, many campaigns focus on the need for a just redistribution of the world’s financial resources. Long established campaigns call for political power to be shared more inclusively in global governance bodies, and sharing is advocated as a key solution in international climate change negotiations. In recent years, a debate on fair shares in a constrained world has also emerged, in which major NGOs are investigating the complex issues around equity that arise in the context of resource limits and environmental boundaries.

Acknowledging the common ground

Innumerable other instances of individuals, organisations, businesses and people’s movements calling for sharing in different ways could be mentioned. As yet, many of these campaigns exist in isolation, which is often a strategic necessity. But in light of the challenge articulated in the NASA-funded study, it may be time for those involved in sharing-related initiatives to explicitly acknowledge their common cause.

In an economic paradigm geared towards maintaining business as usual, it stands to reason that averting a civilisational collapse can only be possible if the demand for change connects disparate peoples’ movements and informs public opinion beyond national borders. This does not mean abandoning the goals of existing initiatives, but rather supporting the emergence of a common platform for change that can be explicated in the simplest terms and embraced by the greatest number of people. With support for the principle of sharing rapidly growing across the globe, a united call for sharing the earth’s resources could ultimately hold the key to safeguarding human progress in the 21st Century.

Rajesh Makwana is STWR’s director and he can be contacted at rajesh [at] sharing.org

21 March, 2014

Sharing.org

By Johannes Stern & Alex Lantier

Continuing its well-prepared campaign to exploit the Ukrainian crisis as a pretext for a vast expansion of imperialist operations in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Washington and its European Union (EU) allies responded yesterday to Russia’s official annexation of Crimea by calling for a military buildup that would put NATO on a perpetual war footing against Moscow.

Speaking yesterday at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a different world than we did less than a month ago… The annexation of Crimea through a so-called referendum held at gun point is illegal and illegitimate.”

Were it not for the potentially catastrophic consequences of NATO’s actions, Rasmussen’s statements would have a grotesquely farcical character. Nothing he said bore any relation to reality.

The portrayal of NATO as a peaceful opponent of Russian aggression is a political fraud. The majority-Russian Crimean population voted overwhelmingly to join Russia principally due to fear of the anti-Semitic, anti-Russian forces the West unleashed in Ukraine when it backed the February 22 fascist-led putsch in Kiev. This regime now rules Kiev with appeals to anti-Russian chauvinism and by relying on violence to intimidate its opponents.

Rasmussen is outlining a policy of continually stoking war hysteria against Russia, in order to isolate Moscow and shift US and European politics dramatically to the right. This includes increasing military spending and the US military presence in Europe—a continent already bankrupted by five years of budget cuts and austerity measures.

Rasmussen told the Washington Post there is now “no doubt that Europe has to invest more in defense and security.” He added that “many Europeans would like a reaffirmation of the US commitment to European security… Developments in Ukraine are a stark reminder that security in Europe cannot be taken for granted,” Rasmussen said. “We need to focus on the long-term strategic impact of Russia’s aggression on our own security.”

This policy is being closely coordinated with Washington. Before his speech, Rasmussen attended a “working dinner” hosted by US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, together with Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Hagel is preparing for a meeting with the Business Roundtable, an influential US business lobby, to discuss Ukraine and US military spending.

These policies aim to transform NATO into an anti-Russian military alliance, with outposts in ex-Soviet states all along Russia’s borders in a campaign of permanent military pressure on Moscow that threatens to escalate into war. US Vice President Joe Biden outlined a policy of militarily isolating and threatening Russia in his remarks delivered to officials of the Baltic states in Vilnius, Lithuania. He also had a phone call with the prime minister of the Kiev regime, former banker Arseniy Yatseniuk.

Biden stressed the broad military guarantees Washington is offering Eastern European regimes amid the ongoing US military buildup in the region—which involves surveillance flights over Poland and Romania, warplane deployments to Poland and the Baltics, and stepped-up training exercises in the region.

 

He said, “We stand resolutely with our Baltic allies in support of the Ukrainian people and against Russian aggression. As long as Russia continues on this dark path, they will face increasing political and economic isolation.”

He added, “The reason I traveled to the Baltics was to reaffirm our mutual commitment to collective defense. President Obama wanted me to come personally to make it clear what you already know, that under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, we will respond. We will respond to any aggression against a NATO ally.”

According to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, member states “agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

These moves to inflame military tensions reflect a broad, aggressive shift in imperialist policy that finds fullest expression in escalation of the military operations of Germany—the power that, together with the United States, is pushing most aggressively for a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine.

The German media is unleashing a campaign for harsh economic sanctions and a more aggressive military build-up against Russia. Today’s lead comment in the Süddeutsche Zeitung calls upon Obama to take “a lesson in Cold War history,” lamenting: “The world will not improve by itself, simply because Obama extends his hand to everyone. And crises like in Syria or Ukraine do not disappear simply because they bore Obama.”

The Süddeutsche then praises NATO as the “foundation of a basic international order. Whoever, like Ukraine, belongs neither to NATO nor exactly either to the West or to the East rapidly becomes a victim of the appetites of neighboring autocrats. The Baltic states and Poland, on the other hand, can be fairly sure that they are protected from Putin’s Special Forces.”

For the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, NATO’s response is not nearly enough. It complains, “Putin knows that NATO is not a threat to Russia; in the Crimean crisis, only the Fiji Islands could have reacted in a more restrained way than the NATO leadership.”

The level of aggressiveness, distortions and outright lying in the German media has not been heard since Goebbels ran the propaganda ministry under Hitler. The media is supporting an increase in German military activity called for by President Joachim Gauck at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year.

The Ukrainian crisis, which Chancellor Angela Merkel and other key figures in the German state played a major role in instigating, provides the pretext for the implementation of a carefully planned militaristic reorientation of the country’s foreign policy.

Almost exactly one month ago, on February 21, 2014, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a major Washington think tank, published a statement, “Is Germany Ready to Lead?” It explained: “For over a year, senior German officials have been carefully preparing the way for a shift towards a more assertive foreign and security policy.”

The analysis noted that the removal of former Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle had been necessary to implement the new policy. The CSIS also welcomed the signs in the “public debate” conducted in the media—that is, the unending stream of militaristic propaganda—“that a new consensus may be emerging among the German elite,” and expressed the hope that “over time, the public may follow.”

Now, after Berlin played a leading role in orchestrating the fascist-led putsch in Kiev on February 22, the German ruling elite feels that the time is right to repudiate the military restraints placed on Germany after the end of the Second World War and the horrible crimes of the Nazis. It is fueling the conflict with Russia to resume its traditional role as the dominant power in Eastern Europe.

Ahead of the EU summit taking place today and tomorrow in Brussels, the German cabinet has approved the EU Association Agreement with Ukraine that, according to its preamble, seeks “Ukraine’s gradual integration in the EU internal market…and to support Ukrainian efforts to complete the transition into a functioning market economy.”

That is, Berlin and the EU are deepening their ties with outright fascists in the Ukrainian government to turn the country into a cheap labor platform for European finance capital and an outpost of the EU and NATO for military provocations against Russia.

 

20 March, 2014

WSWS.org