Just International

US Builds Up Military Forces, Threatens End To Diplomacy Over Ukraine

By Chris Marsden

Washington spent the weekend ramping up pressure on its allies to intensify the provocations and threats against Russia over Ukraine.

On Friday, President Barack Obama spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. On Saturday he held talks with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. He also held a conference call with the presidents of the ex-Soviet Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia—Andris Berzins, Dalia Grybauskaite and Toomas Ilves, respectively.

A White House communication spoke of universal agreement “on the need for Russia to pull its military forces back to their base” and for “the deployment of international observers and human rights monitors to the Crimean peninsula.”

An even more threatening pose was struck by Secretary of State John Kerry. According to a State Department spokesman, Kerry warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that “continued military escalation and provocation in Crimea or elsewhere in Ukraine, along with steps to annex Crimea to Russia, would close any available space for diplomacy…”

Last Thursday, Crimea’s regional government announced a referendum for March 16 on whether to become part of Russia. Obama’s spokesman described the referendum as “a violation of Ukraine’s constitution” and a “violation of international law.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC that Europe would face the “great danger of a real shooting conflict” if Russian forces moved beyond the Crimean peninsula to enter eastern Ukraine. Diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions would not remove Russian forces from the Crimea, he told the Andrew Marr Show. Asked whether Britain and the European Union would advise the Ukrainians not to take up arms against the Russians, he replied in the negative saying, “It is not really possible to go through different scenarios with the Ukrainians and say: in these circumstances you shoot and in these you don’t.”

In Kiev, Ukraine’s US-imposed prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, pledged that his government would not give a “single centimetre” of Ukrainian land to Russia. Yatsenyuk flies to Washington on Wednesday for discussions at the White House on the military and financial situation, White House officials told CNN.

Official threats of retaliatory action usually involve economic and political sanctions, but the US has above all been busy isolating Russia through a sustained military build-up in conjunction with states on Russia’s periphery.

Last Friday, the USS Truxtun crossed into the Black Sea from Turkey’s Bosphorus in what was said to be a “previously planned” training exercise together with the Bulgarian and Romanian navies. The USS Truxton is a destroyer with a crew of 300, equipped with anti-ship missiles. It was stationed in Greece as part of a strike group headed by the aircraft carrier USS George W. Bush, the world’s largest warship, and replaced the USS Taylor, which ran aground in the Turkish port of Samsun last month—an indication of the permanent US presence in the region that is now being beefed up.

The US will send 12 F-16 fighter jets, a Boeing KC-135 refuelling Stratotanker and 300 service personnel to Poland next week for an expanded training exercise. Four F-15s currently fly air patrols over the Baltic States as part of a ten-year-old NATO mission, and the US already has a training squadron of F-16 fighters and Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport planes in Poland. NATO scrambled jets over 40 times last year in response to Russian jets approaching Baltic borders.

The Eastern European and Baltic States are playing a leading role in whipping up a pro-war atmosphere against Russia, including convening a meeting of NATO last week to discuss their “fears” of Russian expansionism.

Reuters noted that Poland is discussing modernising its military, including plans to spend $45 billion in the next decade to build a new missile defence system and upgrade its weapons systems, including transport helicopters and tanks.

Lithuanian Defence Minister Juozas Olekas told Reuters: “After the events in Ukraine, the Russian aggression, the need to increase spending will be better understood by Lithuanian people, and there will be more support for it.”

Sweden’s deputy prime minister, Jan Bjorklund, last week called for a “doctrinal shift” in Swedish defence policy in the context of discussions on whether it should fully join NATO.

Pre-arranged military manoeuvres are only one of a series of “happy coincidences” indicating that the US planned the crisis that supposedly began with “spontaneous” pro-European Union protests after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych backed away from an EU Association Agreement last November.

For example, the United States assumed control of NATO’s air policing duties over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in January, taking over from Belgium. According to Fox News, a statement issued at the time said the mission “not only protects the integrity of NATO airspace, it illustrates the alliance’s core function of collective defence.”

The US has spent the past two decades seeking to eliminate Ukraine as a strategic buffer between Russia and the West, sponsoring the “Orange Revolution” in 2004 in an ultimately abortive attempt to install a wholly pro-Western government. Washington and its allies have tried to do the same in other former Soviet states by integrating them into the structures of NATO and the European Union, encouraging Georgia, in particular, and former Soviet republics in Central Asia to take the path of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Washington has been funnelling money into the region for years and has now opened the taps all the way. According to an admission in December by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, the US had invested “over $5 billion” to “ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”

Others states involved in US machinations are no less financially beholden to Washington. Last Monday, the European Commission (EC) was involved in procedures demanding that Bulgaria abandon an agreement with the US on the provision of economic, technical and other types of assistance on the grounds that the deal was in breach of EU directives because of violations of competition principles. A report noted that between 1990 and 2007, Bulgaria received $600 million from the US under the agreement. Of this, fully 99.14 percent went to defence.

There is little wonder that Lavrov responded to Kerry’s phone call by declaring that the crisis in Ukraine was “created artificially for purely geopolitical reasons.”

In Ukraine, the newly-installed regime is relying on various oligarchs to rule the country in alliance with far-right and fascist groups. In recent days, several oligarchs have been appointed to top government jobs, including leadership of regional administrations in the east that have been the scene of pro- and anti-government demonstrations and conflicts.

Ihor Kolomoyskyi was named head of Dnepropetrovsk Regional Administration, while Sergey Taruta, the country’s 16th richest man, was appointed as the new regional governor of Donetsk. Kolomoisky, a metals, banking and media tycoon worth $2.4 billion, told the Associated Press that his task would be to quell any unrest in his region, which was, he claimed, being fomented by agents from Russia.

Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, worth an estimated $15.4 billion and until recently a major backer of Yanukvoych’s Party of Regions, has also been lined up to demand national unity.

The former US ambassador to Ukraine, John Edward Herbst, was unapologetic, telling the AP: “The oligarchs taking on this responsibility is a demonstration of their commitment to an independent, sovereign and territorially integrated Ukraine.”

Yesterday saw rallies by pro-government forces to honour the birth 200 years ago of poet Taras Shevchenko, known as the father of the Ukrainian language. The rallies led to clashes with pro-Russian groups in Sevastopol in Crimea.

 

10 March, 2014

WSWS.org

 

International Women’s Alliance Statement on International Women’s Day 2014

Women Globally Resist the Terrors of Imperialism and Capitalism

The world has become a terrifying  place for women. Imperialist powers take all opportunities to interfere and to expand their influence and control. The majority of the world’s women face the most oppressive and exploitative of conditions: low wages; part-time and casual jobs; lack of benefits; dangerous workplaces; lack of protective laws; the dwindling quantity and quality of social services and safety nets.

More than ever, women must unite and resist!

In Europe, close to one-third of the work force survive in precarious conditions.  Women, migrants and youth are hardest hit. Youth unemployment has rung a high 60% in Greece and 55% in Spain. Governments respond to strikes, mass protests and the general turmoil by scapegoating migrants and  minorities.

Imperialist aggression intensified in 2013 and early 2014 with the expansion of wars of aggression and economic interventionist strategies. Imperialists are fomenting civil wars from Venezuela to Ukraine.  The duly elected left and progressive government in Venezuela is under attack by a U.S.-backed opposition that uses inflammatory tactics to fragment the administration and “provoke” a civil war.  In Ukraine, the European Union backs riots in Kiev – a strategy to pry open the Ukrainian-Russian geopolitical relations and break a historic partnership.

This political meddling reveals the primary agenda of the imperialists: to gain geopolitical domination by blatantly wielding military might with no scruples about the safety and interests of the populations.

Women and children bear the worst from such induced unrest.  As in all unstable situations, their lives are more precarious in terms of their livelihood and access to health, food, and shelter. Above all, their general safety, well-being and security have been written off and many women and children end up as “collateral damage”.

In Asia, a special foraging ground for imperialists, the U.S.-led acceleration of international trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) also reveal priorities of plunder and exploitation. The TPPA, an underhanded multi-national trade deal prevents sovereign nations from developing policies and laws based on their domestic priorities. For women, the consequences of the TPPA are dire as they lose access to patented medicines and medicine technologies for easily treated communicable diseases, breast cancer screening and treatment, diabetes treatment, and more.

Ecological disasters directly related to corporate negligence and capitalist expansion have diminished the ability of women to support any type of self-sufficiency around food and work in their communities. Haiti is significant proof. Women and children survivors at the 4th year anniversary of the massive 7.3 earthquake in Haiti, the killer of over 220,000 people, even now still live in a state of food insecurity, malnutrition, and in terror of the current cholera epidemic.

In the wreckage caused by typhoon Haiyan (“Yolanda”) in the Philippines, many women and children lost their lives because of a severe lack of infrastructure and the Philippine government’s impotency in attending to the needs of victims. Meanwhile, more disaster looms in the areas of the Philippines where foreign corporations  mine and the extract resources, where displacement of communities continue, as do the destruction of forests, fields and rivers.

Mining and development aggression forcibly shrinks the capacity of women to work in their localities. When nation-states prioritize the extraction of natural resources, land-grabbing strategies and exploitation strategies are usually implemented to the detriment of the  welfare and security of residents. When “natural” disasters occur, the mass victimization of former residents becomes complete.

In Latin America, the will of global capital is the same-  occupation of land for the food security issues or real estate investments of powerful countries.  The fatal results are the same for peasant women and indigenous peoples everywhere : loss of their land and the cultural connection to their heritage.

In servitude to global capital, decrepit governments world-wide continue to chant the hymn of privatization, deregulation and liberalization, and sing the praises of the private sector as they hand over entire sectors of the economy to it.

A turnover of social services to profit corporations is underway. Privatization of the education sector has sparked massive student strikes and movements from Quebec to Chile to the Philippines.

The health care industry, among the fastest-growing in the world, now has transnationals in it. Corporate profits of these health care moguls are on top of the pile, bringing in about 10% of the  GDP of most developed countries. For masses of people, health care has become unaffordable, and the burden on families and particularly on women have increased .

As industrial jobs decline,  the Walmart-like sales jobs in the service sector spread, and are filled mostly by women. They get the lowest-wage jobs, and the least justice.

As more people are forced to migrate to survive, the feminization of migration shows no let-up, involving the fragmentation of many families and communities, and the increase of slavery in foreign lands.

Canada, a country built by immigrants, now mainly recruits temporary workers, who are denied hope for permanent residency. In the US , the Obama administration deports 1100  aspiring Americans every day. This year, President Obama will hit the dubious landmark of having deported two million people during his presidency.

The women of the world are neither blind, nor deaf; they are neither dumb, nor still.

In the face of all odds, working peoples are rising up.  Fierce resistance by women against exploitation and oppression takes place today as part of larger militant movements for liberation and social justice.

In Venezuela, attempts to destabilize President Nicolas Maduro’s duly-elected government have been met by the mobilization of thousands of Venezuelan women taking to the streets, in support of Maduro.  Across the capital of Caracas and in other regions throughout Venezuela, demonstrations and marches of toiling women have exposed and rejected the violence incited by the U.S. backed right-wing opposition, headed by Leopoldo Lopez.

Elsewhere, women oppose the imperialist culture that serves to uphold the ruling elite by spreading ignorance and setting working class people against each other.  In Uganda, the government of President Yoweri Museveni, influenced by right wing religious groups from imperialist countries, has recently passed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, imposing  life imprisonment for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or intersexed Ugandans, and criminalizing supporters of the LGBTQ community or any person who “promotes homosexuality.”

In defiance of mounting violence, courageous women have brought international attention on this issue through campaign work, drawing media support, and linking with human rights organizations and LGBTQ allies.

In Spain, where new restrictive legislation on abortion will set back women’s reproductive rights by 25 years, thousands of women across the country have mobilized to block the legislation.

In December, 2013, women from such countries as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines joined forces for a series of activities dubbed, “Grassroots Women’s Solidarity,” during the People’s Global Camp in Bali, Indonesia. The Camp was set up in protest of the 9th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization taking place there and included many colourful and militant activities, marches and workshops to expose the bankrupt WTO. Finally, at the camp, the International Women’s Alliance (IWA) successfully launched its “US Troops Out Now” campaign, aimed to stop militarization and US intervention in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. Women from grassroots organizations led by the IWA forged their strength with other sectors, such as youth, workers, and peasants, for larger mobilizations, which collectively exposed and made its call to junk the renewed neoliberal offensives of the World Trade Organization.

Women of the World, Rise Up and Unite!!

Stop the criminalization of women migrants and their families!!

No to developmental aggression!!

Free Women Political Prisoners!!

Stop Imperialist Wars of Aggression!!

Decent Jobs and conditions for all!!

Solidarity Against Precarious Work!!

Women Unite Against the Capitalist Crisis!!

Livelihood and a Sustainable planet!!

Press statement
March 8, 2014

What Europe Should Know About US Mass Surveillance

By Edward Snowden

Whistleblower Edward Snowden delivers written testimony to European Parliament

What follows is a statement addressed to an investigative panel of the European Parliament looking into the nature and scope of U.S. surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency and its partner agencies in Europe. Subsequent to the statement are specific answers to written questions posed by the panel to Mr. Snowden. The original statement from which this was reproduced is available here as a pdf.

Introductory Statement

I would like to thank the European Parliament for the invitation to provide testimony for your inquiry into the Electronic Mass Surveillance of EU Citizens. The suspicionless surveillance programs of the NSA, GCHQ, and so many others that we learned about over the last year endanger a number of basic rights which, in aggregate, constitute the foundation of liberal societies.

The first principle any inquiry must take into account is that despite extraordinary political pressure to do so, no western government has been able to present evidence showing that such programs are necessary. In the United States, the heads of our spying services once claimed that 54 terrorist attacks had been stopped by mass surveillance, but two independent White House reviews with access to the classified evidence on which this claim was founded concluded it was untrue, as did a Federal Court.

Looking at the US government’s reports here is valuable. The most recent of these investigations, performed by the White House’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, determined that the mass surveillance program investigated was not only ineffective — they found it had never stopped even a single imminent terrorist attack — but that it had no basis in law. In less diplomatic language, they discovered the United States was operating an unlawful mass surveillance program, and the greatest success the program had ever produced was discovering a taxi driver in the United States transferring $8,500 dollars to Somalia in 2007.

After noting that even this unimpressive success – uncovering evidence of a single unlawful bank transfer — would have been achieved without bulk collection, the Board recommended that the unlawful mass surveillance program be ended. Unfortunately, we know from press reports that this program is still operating today.

I believe that suspicionless surveillance not only fails to make us safe, but it actually makes us less safe. By squandering precious, limited resources on “collecting it all,” we end up with more analysts trying to make sense of harmless political dissent and fewer investigators running down real leads. I believe investing in mass surveillance at the expense of traditional, proven methods can cost lives, and history has shown my concerns are justified.

Despite the extraordinary intrusions of the NSA and EU national governments into private communications world-wide, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “Underwear Bomber,” was allowed to board an airplane traveling from Europe to the United States in 2009. The 290 persons on board were not saved by mass surveillance, but by his own incompetence, when he failed to detonate the device. While even Mutallab’s own father warned the US government he was dangerous in November 2009, our resources were tied up monitoring online games and tapping German ministers. That extraordinary tip-off didn’t get Mutallab a dedicated US investigator. All we gave him was a US visa.

Nor did the US government’s comprehensive monitoring of Americans at home stop the Boston Bombers. Despite the Russians specifically warning us about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the FBI couldn’t do more than a cursory investigation — although they did plenty of worthless computer-based searching – and failed to discover the plot. 264 people were injured, and 3 died. The resources that could have paid for a real investigation had been spent on monitoring the call records of everyone in America.

This should not have happened. I worked for the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency. The National Security Agency. The Defense Intelligence Agency. I love my country, and I believe that spying serves a vital purpose and must continue. And I have risked my life, my family, and my freedom to tell you the truth.

The NSA granted me the authority to monitor communications world-wide using its mass surveillance systems, including within the United States. I have personally targeted individuals using these systems under both the President of the United States’ Executive Order 12333 and the US Congress’ FAA 702. I know the good and the bad of these systems, and what they can and cannot do, and I am telling you that without getting out of my chair, I could have read the private communications of any member of this committee, as well as any ordinary citizen. I swear under penalty of perjury that this is true.

These are not the capabilities in which free societies invest. Mass surveillance violates our rights, risks our safety, and threatens our way of life.

If even the US government, after determining mass surveillance is unlawful and unnecessary, continues to operate to engage in mass surveillance, we have a problem. I consider the United States Government to be generally responsible, and I hope you will agree with me. Accordingly, this begs the question many legislative bodies implicated in mass surveillance have sought to avoid: if even the US is willing to knowingly violate the rights of billions of innocents — and I say billions without exaggeration — for nothing more substantial than a “potential” intelligence advantage that has never materialized, what are other governments going to do?

Whether we like it or not, the international norms of tomorrow are being constructed today, right now, by the work of bodies like this committee. If liberal states decide that the convenience of spies is more valuable than the rights of their citizens, the inevitable result will be states that are both less liberal and less safe. Thank you.

I will now respond to the submitted questions. Please bear in mind that I will not be disclosing new information about surveillance programs: I will be limiting my testimony to information regarding what responsible media organizations have entered into the public domain. For the record, I also repeat my willingness to provide testimony to the United States Congress, should they decide to consider the issue of unconstitutional mass surveillance.

–Rapporteur Claude Moraes MEP, S&D Group–

Given the focus of this Inquiry is on the impact of mass surveillance on EU citizens, could you elaborate on the extent of cooperation that exists between the NSA and EU Member States in terms of the transfer and collection of bulk data of EU citizens?

– A number of memos from the NSA’s Foreign Affairs Directorate have been published in the press.

One of the foremost activities of the NSA’s FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance. Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK’s GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers. These efforts to interpret new powers out of vague laws is an intentional strategy to avoid public opposition and lawmakers’ insistence that legal limits be respected, effects the GCHQ internally described in its own documents as “damaging public debate.”

In recent public memory, we have seen these FAD “legal guidance” operations occur in both Sweden and the Netherlands, and also faraway New Zealand. Germany was pressured to modify its G-10 law to appease the NSA, and it eroded the rights of German citizens under their constitution. Each of these countries received instruction from the NSA, sometimes under the guise of the US Department of Defense and other bodies, on how to degrade the legal protections of their countries’ communications. The ultimate result of the NSA’s guidance is that the right of ordinary citizens to be free from unwarranted interference is degraded, and systems of intrusive mass surveillance are being constructed in secret within otherwise liberal states, often without the full awareness of the public.

Once the NSA has successfully subverted or helped repeal legal restrictions against unconstitutional mass surveillance in partner states, it encourages partners to perform “access operations.” Access operations are efforts to gain access to the bulk communications of all major telecommunications providers in their jurisdictions, normally beginning with those that handle the greatest volume of communications. Sometimes the NSA provides consultation, technology, or even the physical hardware itself for partners to “ingest” these massive amounts of data in a manner that allows processing, and it does not take long to access everything. Even in a country the size of the United States, gaining access to the circuits of as few as three companies can provide access to the majority of citizens’ communications. In the UK, Verizon, British Telecommunications, Vodafone, Global Crossing, Level 3, Viatel, and Interoute all cooperate with the GCHQ, to include cooperation beyond what is legally required.

By the time this general process has occurred, it is very difficult for the citizens of a country to protect the privacy of their communications, and it is very easy for the intelligence services of that country to make those communications available to the NSA — even without having explicitly shared them. The nature of the NSA’s “NOFORN,” or NO FOREIGN NATIONALS classification, when combined with the fact that the memorandum agreements between NSA and its foreign partners have a standard disclaimer stating they provide no enforceable rights, provides both the NSA with a means of monitoring its partner’s citizens without informing the partner, and the partner with a means of plausible deniability.

The result is a European bazaar, where an EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn’t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn’t search for Germans. Yet the two tapping sites may be two points on the same cable, so the NSA simply captures the communications of the German citizens as they transit Denmark, and the Danish citizens as they transit Germany, all the while considering it entirely in accordance with their agreements. Ultimately, each EU national government’s spy services are independently hawking domestic accesses to the NSA, GCHQ, FRA, and the like without having any awareness of how their individual contribution is enabling the greater patchwork of mass surveillance against ordinary citizens as a whole.

The Parliament should ask the NSA and GCHQ to deny that they monitor the communications of EU citizens, and in the absence of an informative response, I would suggest that the current state of affairs is the inevitable result of subordinating the rights of the voting public to the prerogatives of State Security Bureaus. The surest way for any nation to become subject to unnecessary surveillance is to allow its spies to dictate its policy.

The right to be free unwarranted intrusion into our private effects — our lives and possessions, our thoughts and communications — is a human right. It is not granted by national governments and it cannot be revoked by them out of convenience. Just as we do not allow police officers to enter every home to fish around for evidence of undiscovered crimes, we must not allow spies to rummage through our every communication for indications of disfavored activities.

Could you comment on the activities of EU Member States intelligence agencies in these operations and how advanced their capabilities have become in comparison with the NSA?

– The best testimony I can provide on this matter without pre-empting the work of journalists is to point to the indications that the NSA not only enables and guides, but shares some mass surveillance systems and technologies with the agencies of EU member states. As it pertains to the issue of mass surveillance, the difference between, for example, the NSA and FRA is not one of technology, but rather funding and manpower. Technology is agnostic of nationality, and the flag on the pole outside of the building makes systems of mass surveillance no more or less effective.

In terms of the mass surveillance programmes already revealed through the press, what proportion of the mass surveillance activities do these programmes account for? Are there many other programmes, undisclosed as of yet, that would impact on EU citizens rights?

– There are many other undisclosed programs that would impact EU citizens’ rights, but I will leave the public interest determinations as to which of these may be safely disclosed to responsible journalists in coordination with government stakeholders.

–Shadow Rapporteur Sophie Int’Veld MEP, ALDE Group–

Are there adequate procedures in the NSA for staff to signal wrongdoing?

– Unfortunately not. The culture within the US Intelligence Community is such that reporting serious concerns about the legality or propriety of programs is much more likely to result in your being flagged as a troublemaker than to result in substantive reform. We should remember that many of these programs were well known to be problematic to the legal offices of agencies such as the GCHQ and other oversight officials. According to their own documents, the priority of the overseers is not to assure strict compliance with the law and accountability for violations of law, but rather to avoid, and I quote, “damaging public debate,” to conceal the fact that for-profit companies have gone “well beyond” what is legally required of them, and to avoid legal review of questionable programs by open courts. (http://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2013/oct/25/leaked-memos-gchq-mass-surveillance-secret-snowden) In my personal experience, repeatedly raising concerns about legal and policy matters with my co-workers and superiors resulted in two kinds of responses.

The first were well-meaning but hushed warnings not to “rock the boat,” for fear of the sort of retaliation that befell former NSA whistleblowers like Wiebe, Binney, and Drake. All three men reported their concerns through the official, approved process, and all three men were subject to armed raids by the FBI and threats of criminal sanction. Everyone in the Intelligence Community is aware of what happens to people who report concerns about unlawful but authorized operations.

 

The second were similarly well-meaning but more pointed suggestions, typically from senior officials, that we should let the issue be someone else’s problem. Even among the most senior individuals to whom I reported my concerns, no one at NSA could ever recall an instance where an official complaint had resulted in an unlawful program being ended, but there was a unanimous desire to avoid being associated with such a complaint in any form.

Do you feel you had exhausted all avenues before taking the decision to go public?

– Yes. I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them. As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the US government, I was not protected by US whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process.

It is important to remember that this is legal dilemma did not occur by mistake. US whistleblower reform laws were passed as recently as 2012, with the US Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, but they specifically chose to exclude Intelligence Agencies from being covered by the statute. President Obama also reformed a key executive Whistleblower regulation with his 2012 Presidential Policy Directive 19, but it exempted Intelligence Community contractors such as myself. The result was that individuals like me were left with no proper channels.

Do you think procedures for whistleblowing have been improved now?

– No. There has not yet been any substantive whistleblower reform in the US, and unfortunately my government has taken a number of disproportionate and persecutory actions against me. US government officials have declared me guilty of crimes in advance of any trial, they’ve called for me to be executed or assassinated in private and openly in the press, they revoked my passport and left me stranded in a foreign transit zone for six weeks, and even used NATO to ground the presidential plane of Evo Morales – the leader of Bolivia – on hearing that I might attempt to seek and enjoy asylum in Latin America.

What is your relationship with the Russian and Chinese authorities, and what are the terms on which you were allowed to stay originally in Hong Kong and now in Russia?

– I have no relationship with either government.

–Shadow Rapporteur Jan Philipp Albrecht MEP, Greens Group–

Could we help you in any way, and do you seek asylum in the EU?

 

– If you want to help me, help me by helping everyone: declare that the indiscriminate, bulk collection of private data by governments is a violation of our rights and must end. What happens to me as a person is less important than what happens to our common rights.

As for asylum, I do seek EU asylum, but I have yet to receive a positive response to the requests I sent to various EU member states. Parliamentarians in the national governments have told me that the US, and I quote, “will not allow” EU partners to offer political asylum to me, which is why the previous resolution on asylum ran into such mysterious opposition. I would welcome any offer of safe passage or permanent asylum, but I recognize that would require an act of extraordinary political courage.

Can you confirm cyber-attacks by the NSA or other intelligence agencies on EU institutions, telecommunications providers such as Belgacom and SWIFT, or any other EU-based companies?

– Yes. I don’t want to outpace the efforts of journalists, here, but I can confirm that all documents reported thus far are authentic and unmodified, meaning the alleged operations against Belgacom, SWIFT, the EU as an institution, the United Nations, UNICEF, and others based on documents I provided have actually occurred. And I expect similar operations will be revealed in the future that affect many more ordinary citizens.

–Shadow Rapporteur Cornelia Ernst MEP, GUE Group–

In your view, how far can the surveillance measures you revealed be justified by national security and from your experience is the information being used for economic espionage? What could be done to resolve this?

– Surveillance against specific targets, for unquestionable reasons of national security while respecting human rights, is above reproach. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a growth in untargeted, extremely questionable surveillance for reasons entirely unrelated to national security. Most recently, the Prime Minister of Australia, caught red-handed engaging in the most blatant kind of economic espionage, sought to argue that the price of Indonesian shrimp and clove cigarettes was a “security matter.” These are indications of a growing disinterest among governments for ensuring intelligence activities are justified, proportionate, and above all accountable. We should be concerned about the precedent our actions set.

The UK’s GCHQ is the prime example of this, due to what they refer to as a “light oversight regime,” which is a bureaucratic way of saying their spying activities are less restricted than is proper (http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/legal-loopholes-gchq-spy-world). Since that light oversight regime was revealed, we have learned that the GCHQ is intercepting and storing unprecedented quantities of ordinary citizens’ communications on a constant basis, both within the EU and without http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret- world-communications-nsa). There is no argument that could convince an open court that such activities were necessary and proportionate, and it is for this reason that such activities are shielded from the review of open courts.

In the United States, we use a secret, rubber-stamp Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that only hears arguments from the government. Out of approximately 34,000 government requests over 33 years, the secret court rejected only 11. It should raise serious concerns for this committee, and for society, that the GCHQ’s lawyers consider themselves fortunate to avoid the kind of burdensome oversight regime that rejects 11 out of 34,000 requests. If that’s what heavy oversight looks like, what, pray tell, does the GCHQ’s “light oversight” look like?

Let’s explore it. We learned only days ago that the GCHQ compromised a popular Yahoo service to collect images from web cameras inside citizens’ homes, and around 10% of these images they take from within people’s homes involve nudity or intimate activities (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-inte…). In the same report, journalists revealed that this sort of webcam data was searchable via the NSA’s XKEYSCORE system, which means the GCHQ’s “light oversight regime” was used not only to capture bulk data that is clearly of limited intelligence value and most probably violates EU laws, but to then trade that data with foreign services without the knowledge or consent of any country’s voting public.

We also learned last year that some of the partners with which the GCHQ was sharing this information, in this example the NSA, had made efforts to use evidence of religious conservatives’ association with sexually explicit material of the sort GCHQ was collecting as a grounds for destroying their reputations and discrediting them (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html). The “Release to Five Eyes” classification of this particular report, dated 2012, reveals that the UK government was aware of the NSA’s intent to use sexually explicit material in this manner, indicating a deepening and increasingly aggressive partnership. None of these religious conservatives were suspected of involvement in terrorist plots: they were targeted on the basis of their political beliefs and activism, as part of a class the NSA refers to as “radicalizers.”

I wonder if any members of this committee have ever advocated a position that the NSA, GCHQ, or even the intelligence services of an EU member state might attempt to construe as “radical”? If you were targeted on the basis of your political beliefs, would you know? If they sought to discredit you on the basis of your private communications, could you discover the culprit and prove it was them? What would be your recourse?

And you are parliamentarians. Try to imagine the impact of such activities against ordinary citizens without power, privilege, or resources. Are these activities necessary, proportionate, and an unquestionable matter of national security? A few weeks ago we learned the GCHQ has hired scientists to study how to create divisions amongst activists and disfavored political groups, how they attempt to discredit and destroy private businesses, and how they knowingly plant false information to misdirect civil discourse (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/).

To directly answer your question, yes, global surveillance capabilities are being used on a daily basis for the purpose of economic espionage. That a major goal of the US Intelligence Community is to produce economic intelligence is the worst kept secret in Washington.

In September, we learned the NSA had successfully targeted and compromised the world’s major financial transaction facilitators, such as Visa and SWIFT, which released documents describe as providing “rich personal information,” even data that “is not about our targets” (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-exclusive-nsa-spies-on… transactions-a-922276.html). Again, these documents are authentic and unmodified – a fact the NSA itself has never once disputed.

In August, we learned the NSA had targeted Petrobras, an energy company (http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents-show-united… brazilian-oil-giant.html). It would be the first of a long list of US energy targets. But we should be clear these activities are not unique to the NSA or GCHQ. Australia’s DSD targeted Sri Mulyani Indrawati, a finance minister and Managing Director of the World Bank (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/18/australia-tried-to-monitor-… presidents-phone). Report after report has revealed targeting of G-8 and G-20 summits. Mass surveillance capabilities have even been used against a climate change summit.

Recently, governments have shifted their talking points from claiming they only use mass surveillance for “national security” purposes to the more nebulous “valid foreign intelligence purposes.” I suggest this committee consider that this rhetorical shift is a tacit acknowledgment by governments that they recognize they have crossed beyond the boundaries of justifiable activities. Every country believes its “foreign intelligence purposes” are “valid,” but that does not make it so. If we are prepared to condemn the economic spying of our competitors, we must be prepared to do the same of our allies. Lasting peace is founded upon fundamental fairness.

The international community must agree to common standards of behavior, and jointly invest in the development of new technical standards to defend against mass surveillance. We rely on common systems, and the French will not be safe from mass surveillance until Americans, Argentines, and Chinese are as well.

 

The good news is that there are solutions. The weakness of mass surveillance is that it can very easily be made much more expensive through changes in technical standards: pervasive, end-to-end encryption can quickly make indiscriminate surveillance impossible on a cost- effective basis. The result is that governments are likely to fall back to traditional, targeted surveillance founded upon an individualized suspicion. Governments cannot risk the discovery of their exploits by simply throwing attacks at every “endpoint,” or computer processor on the end of a network connection, in the world. Mass surveillance, passive surveillance, relies upon unencrypted or weakly encrypted communications at the global network level.

If there had been better independent and public oversight over the intelligence agencies, do you think this could have prevented this kind of mass surveillance? What conditions would need to be fulfilled, both nationally and internationally?

– Yes, better oversight could have prevented the mistakes that brought us to this point, as could an understanding that defense is always more important than offense when it comes to matters of national intelligence. The intentional weakening of the common security standards upon which we all rely is an action taken against the public good.

The oversight of intelligence agencies should always be performed by opposition parties, as under the democratic model, they always have the most to lose under a surveillance state. Additionally, we need better whistleblower protections, and a new commitment to the importance of international asylum. These are important safeguards that protect our collective human rights when the laws of national governments have failed.

European governments, which have traditionally been champions of human rights, should not be intimidated out of standing for the right of asylum against political charges, of which espionage has always been the traditional example. Journalism is not a crime, it is the foundation of free and informed societies, and no nation should look to others to bear the burden of defending its rights. Shadow Rapporteur Axel Voss MEP, EPP Group

Why did you choose to go public with your information?

– Secret laws and secret courts cannot authorize unconstitutional activities by fiat, nor can classification be used to shield an unjustified and embarrassing violation of human rights from democratic accountability. If the mass surveillance of an innocent public is to occur, it should be authorized as the result of an informed debate with the consent of the public, under a framework of laws that the government invites civil society to challenge in open courts.

That our governments are even today unwilling to allow independent review of the secret policies enabling mass surveillance of innocents underlines governments’ lack of faith that these programs are lawful, and this provides stronger testimony in favor of the rightfulness of my actions than any words I might write.

Did you exhaust all possibilities before taking the decision to go public?

– Yes. I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them. As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the US government, I was not protected by US whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process.

It is important to remember that this is legal dilemma did not occur by mistake. US whistleblower reform laws were passed as recently as 2012, with the US Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, but they specifically chose to exclude Intelligence Agencies from being covered by the statute. President Obama also reformed a key executive Whistleblower regulation with his 2012 Presidential Policy Directive 19, but it exempted Intelligence Community contractors such as myself. The result was that individuals like me were left with no proper channels.

Are you aware that your revelations have the potential to put at risk lives of innocents and hamper efforts in the global fight against terrorism?

– Actually, no specific evidence has ever been offered, by any government, that even a single life has been put at risk by the award-winning journalism this question attempts to implicate.

The ongoing revelations about unlawful and improper surveillance are the product of a partnership between the world’s leading journalistic outfits and national governments, and if you can show one of the governments consulted on these stories chose not to impede demonstrably fatal information from being published, I invite you to do so. The front page of every newspaper in the world stands open to you.

Did the Russian secret service approach you?

– Of course. Even the secret service of Andorra would have approached me, if they had had the chance: that’s their job.

But I didn’t take any documents with me from Hong Kong, and while I’m sure they were disappointed, it doesn’t take long for an intelligence service to realize when they’re out of luck. I was also accompanied at all times by an utterly fearless journalist with one of the biggest megaphones in the world, which is the equivalent of Kryptonite for spies. As a consequence, we spent the next 40 days trapped in an airport instead of sleeping on piles of money while waiting for the next parade. But we walked out with heads held high.

I would also add, for the record, that the United States government has repeatedly acknowledged that there is no evidence at all of any relationship between myself and the Russian intelligence service.

Who is currently financing your life?

– I am.

–Shadow Rapporteur, Timothy Kirkhope MEP, ECR Group–

You have stated previously that you want the intelligence agencies to be more accountable to citizens, however, why do you feel this accountability does not apply to you? Do you therefore, plan to return to the United States or Europe to face criminal charges and answer questions in an official capacity, and pursue the route as an official whistle-blower?

– Respectfully, I remind you that accountability cannot exist without the due process of law, and even Deutsche Welle has written about the well-known gap in US law that deprived me of vital legal protections due to nothing more meaningful than my status as an employee of a private company rather than of the government directly (http://www.dw.de/us-whistleblower-laws-offer- no-protection/a-17391500). Surely no one on the committee believes that the measure of one’s political rights should be determined by their employer.

Fortunately, we live in a global, interconnected world where, when national laws fail like this, our international laws provide for another level of accountability, and the asylum process provides a means of due process for individuals who might otherwise be wrongly deprived of it. In the face of the extraordinary campaign of persecution brought against me by my the United States government on account of my political beliefs, which I remind you included the grounding of the President of Bolivia’s plane by EU Member States, an increasing number of national governments have agreed that a grant of political asylum is lawful and appropriate.

Polling of public opinion in Europe indicates I am not alone in hoping to see EU governments agree that blowing the whistle on serious wrongdoing should be a protected act.

Do you still plan to release more files, and have you disclosed or been asked to disclose any information regarding the content of these files to Chinese and Russian authorities or any names contained within them?

As stated previously, there are many other undisclosed programs that would impact EU citizens’ rights, but I will leave the public interest determinations as to which of these may be safely disclosed to responsible journalists in coordination with government stakeholders. I have not disclosed any information to anyone other than those responsible journalists. Thank you.

Whistleblower Edward Joseph Snowden is a US former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who leaked details of top-secret US and British government mass surveillance programs to the press.

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

07 March, 2014

CommonDreams.org

The Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun

By Paul Craig Roberts

According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. http://www.kommersant.ua/doc/2424454 It is Greece all over again.

Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated coup against the legitimate, elected Ukraine government, the Western looters are already at work. Naive protesters who believed the propaganda that EU membership offered a better life are due to lose half of their pension by April. But this is only the beginning.

The corrupt Western media describes loans as “aid.” However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev’s acceptance of an IMF austerity plan.

Remember now, gullible Ukrainians participated in the protests that were used to overthrow their elected government, because they believed the lies told to them by Washington-financed NGOs that once they joined the EU they would have streets paved with gold. Instead they are getting cuts in their pensions and an IMF austerity plan.

The austerity plan will cut social services, funds for education, layoff government workers, devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, thus electricity, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations.

Ukraine’s agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness.

One part of the Washington/EU plan for Ukraine, or that part of Ukraine that doesn’t defect to Russia, has succeeded. What remains of the country will be thoroughly looted by the West.

The other part hasn’t worked as well. Washington’s Ukrainian stooges lost control of the protests to organized and armed ultra-nationalists. These groups, whose roots go back to those who fought for Hitler during World War 2, engaged in words and deeds that sent southern and eastern Ukraine clamoring to be returned to Russia where they resided prior to the 1950s when the Soviet communist party stuck them into Ukraine.

At this time of writing it looks like Crimea has seceded from Ukraine. Washington and its NATO puppets can do nothing but bluster and threaten sanctions. The White House Fool has demonstrated the impotence of the “US sole superpower” by issuing sanctions against unknown persons, whoever they are, responsible for returning Crimea to Russia, where it existed for about 200 years before, according to Solzhenitsyn, a drunk Khrushchev of Ukrainian ethnicity moved southern and eastern Russian provinces into Ukraine. Having observed the events in western Ukraine, those Russian provinces want to go back home where they belong, just as South Ossetia wanted nothing to do with Georgia.

Washington’s stooges in Kiev can do nothing about Crimea except bluster. Under the Russian-Ukraine agreement, Russia is permitted 25,000 troops in Crimea. The US/EU media’s deploring of a “Russian invasion of 16,000 troops” is either total ignorance or complicity in Washington’s lies. Obviously, the US/EU media is corrupt. Only a fool would rely on their reports. Any media that would believe anything Washington says after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN to peddle the regime’s lies about “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,” which the weapons inspectors had told the White House did not exist, is clearly a collection of bought-and-paid for whores.

In the former Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine, Putin’s low-key approach to the strategic threat that Washington has brought to Russia has given Washington a chance to hold on to a major industrial complex that serves the Russian economy and military. The people themselves in eastern Ukraine are in the streets demanding separation from the unelected government that Washington’s coup has imposed in Kiev. Washington, realizing that its incompetence has lost Crimea, had its Kiev stooges appoint Ukrainian oligarchs, against whom the Maiden protests were partly directed, to governing positions in eastern Ukraine cities. These oligarchs have their own private militias in addition to the police and any Ukrainian military units that are still functioning. The leaders of the protesting Russians are being arrested and disappeared. Washington and its EU puppets, who proclaim their support for self-determination, are only for self-determination when it can be orchestrated in their favor. Therefore, Washington is busy at work suppressing self-determination in eastern Ukraine.

This is a dilemma for Putin. His low-key approach has allowed Washington to seize the initiative in eastern Ukraine. The oligarchs Taruta and Kolomoyskiy have been put in power in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk, and are carrying out arrests of Russians and committing unspeakable crimes, but you will never hear of it from the US presstitutes. Washington’s strategy is to arrest and deep-six the leaders of the secessionists so that there no authorities to request Putin’s intervention.

If Putin has drones, he has the option of taking out Taruta and Kolomoyskiy. If Putin lets Washington retain the Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine, he will have demonstrated a weakness that Washington will exploit. Washington will exploit the weakness to the point that Washington forces Putin to war.

The war will be nuclear.

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

07 March, 2014

Paulcraigroberts.org

 

US, European Union Impose Sanctions Against Russia

By Alex Lantier

Western powers ratcheted up sanctions against Russia Thursday, while the US mounts a major military buildup in Eastern Europe.

The immediate pretext for sanctions from both the US and Europe was the vote in the regional parliament of the Crimean Peninsula to prepare secession from Ukraine and association to Russia, subject to a popular referendum later this month. Russian-backed forces have taken over the strategic peninsula, which hosts a major Russian naval base at Sevastopol and where most of the population is Russian speaking.

Installed by a Western-backed, fascist-led putsch on February 22, the Kiev regime faces broad hostility in more pro-Russian parts of the country. Its first act was to eliminate Russian as an official language in Ukraine.

Thursday morning, as European Union (EU) officials prepared to meet to discuss actions against Russia, US President Barack Obama unilaterally issued an executive order authorizing sanctions and visa bans against Russian officials. Later yesterday, EU officials announced a similar, three-step plan for sanctions on Russia, echoing Obama’s arguments.

Obama’s order described Russian actions in Crimea as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” Obama’s message to Congress announcing the executive order said it would target “persons—including persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the government of Ukraine—who undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine.”

In a press statement later in the day, Obama added, “The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law. Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine.” He added, “In 2014, we’re well past the days when borders can be drawn over the heads of democratic leaders.”

Like every statement coming from top US officials, and parroted in the media, these statements reek of hypocrisy and are full of contradictions. In fact, it is Washington and its allies who are trampling on the Ukrainian constitution, backing a right-wing regime they helped install via an extra-legal putsch. If anyone should be detained and their fortunes seized because they were “destabilizing Ukraine” and violating its constitution, it is top officials in Washington and the European capitals.

And in criticizing “borders…drawn over the heads of democratic leaders,” Obama spoke as the chief executive of a state that has been engaged in endless war and has elevated the violation of national sovereignty to a principal of foreign policy. Western powers themselves unilaterally redrew the borders of a European country, Yugoslavia—separating Kosovo from Serbia and declaring it independent in a move aimed at undermining Serbian and Russian influence in the Balkans.

More broadly, Washington and the EU reserve the right to occupy other countries and carry out drone murder in violation of the sovereignty of countries across the Middle East and Africa.

Obama’s reference to “legitimate” and “democratic” government is used in reference to a government that is based on right-wing and anti-Semitic forces like the Right Sector militia and the Svoboda party, which have praised Ukrainian SS units who carried out the Holocaust during World War II.

The reliance of the US and European operation on fascistic forces was revealed in the EU negotiations over sanctions. During the discussions, Eastern European regimes such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Baltic states pressed for harsher terms against Russia. A proposal emerged to call for “quick steps towards the dissolution of any paramilitary structures”— a demand aimed at pro-Russian self-defense groups in Crimea.

However, this demand was dropped, Britain’s Daily Telegraph noted, “because it would also apply to Kiev groups, particularly the far-right nationalist groups that are the backbone of the new government here.”

Washington is also deepening its military buildup against Russia in Eastern Europe. US officials announced Thursday that they would send 12 F-16 fighters to Poland and the guided missile destroyer USS Truxtun to the Black Sea, which borders Ukraine and Russia. According to US Navy web sites, the Truxtun is part of the battle group of the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush, which recently arrived in the region.

Moscow responded with massive air defense drills in Western Russia. Military spokesman Colonel Oleg Kochtkov called it the “largest-ever exercise” by air defense units in the region.

Western powers are also dispatching military observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to Ukraine, trying to send them into the Crimea.

Washington and the EU are embarking on an unprecedented confrontation with Russia, aimed at forcing a humiliating Russian climb-down in Ukraine, discrediting President Vladimir Putin’s regime, and undermining Russian influence in the region.

Media portrayals of this policy as motivated by the Western powers’ alleged love of democracy are lies. It is bound up with the concerns of imperialism. These include Russia’s role as an obstacle to US war plans, such as its plans to attack Syria last September, and its decision to grant asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden after he exposed unconstitutional mass spying on the people by US and European spy agencies.

A media silence prevails on the significance of the Sevastopol base, which Kiev is now trying to seize from the local Crimean authorities and place under Western control. It played a key role in Russian naval deployments to the Mediterranean during last year’s Syrian war scare.

As they stir up military tensions at the heart of Europe and threaten to cut off Russia’s $2 trillion economy from world markets, the imperialist powers are apparently calculating that the Russian ruling elite will ultimately back down. Later on Thursday, Obama had a telephone call with Putin in which he outlined a deal that would involve the pullback of Russian troops and the installation of international monitors in Crimea.

Having seen one unpopular post-Soviet regime collapse in Ukraine, they anticipate that personal concerns of Russian oligarchs desperate to save their bank accounts in London and Zurich will again trump everything and everyone else.

The reaction of Russia in Crimea was anticipated by US officials and has been used to immensely intensify tensions against the nuclear power. There is at least a section of the ruling class that is clearly prepared for war.

By moving towards an all-out clash with Russia, moreover, the US and European powers are risking vast unintended consequences and economic, military, and political shocks.

Economic commentators underlined that a policy of sanctions with Russia threatens to shut down large portions of the European economy, which relies on Russia as a key source of oil and gas. An anonymous US official remarked, “Russia is now a two-trillion-dollar economy, if you’re going to sanction them across the board, you have to be very careful not to kill yourself while doing it.”

07 March, 2014

WSWS.org

 

Reporting Africa: In defence of a critical debate

The challenge for journalists covering Africa is telling African stories in their full human dimension.

By Solomon Dersso

Not unexpectedly, the tragic events in South Sudan and the Central African Republic received much attention in the mainstream international media. As much as it drew world attention to the plight of those affected by the conflicts in these countries, the nature of the coverage of such events also triggered a heated debate.

In an article titled “In defence of western journalists in Africa” published on 21 February 2014, Michela Wrong took issue with recent articles such as Nanjala Nyabola’s Al Jazeera piece lamenting the failings of western media in covering Africa.

While Wrong’s piece raises various pertinent issues, close scrutiny of the three major points reveal that it defends what does not need defending instead of addressing the very issues that merit attention, namely critical debate on mainstream western coverage of Africa.

First, she suggested that these writers, whom she considers to be academic, “seem to have little idea how journalists actually work”. Although not true for all journalists, Wrong is right that journalists, who report from war zones, have a lot to worry about. One, however, cannot help wondering how this can be an excuse for anything.

Given that reporting, whatever its form, serves as the most powerful vehicle for shaping public opinion and eventually the action of various actors, the question should be whether one-dimensional reporting would do justice to the subjects of the report.

Politics of coverage

To put it differently, the issue is the risk that such reporting could lead to misconceived conclusions culminating in unhelpful policy responses.

On this, Mahmood Mamdani, one of Africa’s foremost critical thinkers and public intellectuals, observed in his “Saviours and survivors: Darfur, politics and the War on Terror”: “No wonder those who rely on the (western) media for their knowledge of Africa come to think of Africans as peculiarly given to fighting over no discernible issues and why the standard remedy for internal conflicts in Africa is not to focus on issues but to get adversaries to ‘reconcile’, regardless of the issues involved.”

Second, Wrong said: “[M]ost fundamentally, those writers (attacking western journalists) seem to have lost sight of the definition of news, which aims to convey distant events to a non-specialist audience, as succinctly as possible.” In so doing, she suggested that the resultant limitation of time and space necessitates one-dimensional reporting and restricts the luxury of nuance available to academics.

While one understands the limitation of time and space, once again this fails to be a convincing argument for defending “one-dimensional” coverage of African events, which often tends to be reductionist and superficial in their content and negative in their scope  (focusing mainly on the tragedy, violence, despair and devastation).

The issue is, therefore, about the possibility of telling African stories in their full human dimension within those limitations of space and time.

Wrong’s point on the failure of academics to understand how journalists work brings us to her third major point that being; “articles attacking the western media’s one-dimensional coverage” take the reader for being stupid.

She briskly made the argument that most readers understand the nuances of one-dimensional reporting of African events in the same way they “grasp the notion that their true causes are rich and diverse” when they come across one-dimensional reporting of WWII, the Northern Ireland conflict or the Yugoslav civil war.

Here, two issues immediately arise: First, is the reporting of violence in the west ordinarily one-dimensional? Second, whether one-dimensional reporting of western events, if it ever was common, was  the same as one-dimensional reporting of African events?

Corporate media drama

A simple review of reports on incidents of violence in the west reveals that they are not commonly one-dimensional. In his March 12, 2013 piece titled “Kenya vote: How the west was wrong” published in The Guardian, writer Mukoma Wa Ngugi wrote: “In the West, tragedy after tragedy, the journalist does not forget the agency of the victims, and their humanity.”

To illustrate this he noted: “The 2010 London riots …in equal measure the rioters and the fed-up shop owners who started cleaning up after the rebellion; the heroic street sweepers. The August 2012 Sikh massacre: Yes, the violence but also how a rainbow community came together to stand against extremism…”

The long racist history of propagating a negative image of Africa, the Conradian “Heart of Darkness” or the Economist’s “Hopeless Continent” image of Africa, also means that one-dimensional reporting of Africa could not be the same as one-dimensional reporting of western events.

Ngugi Wa Thiongo, one of Africa’s great literary giants, in a speech delivered on Africa Day on May 25, 2012 at the University of the Free State in South Africa, said that this negative image of Africa “is spread and intensified in the images of everyday: In the West, TV clips to illustrate famine, violent crimes, and ethnic warfare, tend to draw from dark faces (ordinarily African).

In commercials, TV dramas, in the cinema, one hardly ever sees a really dark person portraying beauty and positivity. This has created a psychological disposition such that, as the late Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s most renowned literary giants, put it; ‘the automatic response that people have when you mention Africa is something which has been fixed in the mind for a long time’, a negative image of Africa a subject on which he wrote one of his widely recognized essays An image of Africa.

Viewed in this light, one-dimensional coverage of African events inevitably tends to perpetuate this racially-charged denigrating and dehumanizing negative image.

In defence of debate

It is apparent from the foregoing that what needs defending is a critical debate on mainstream western reporting of Africa and the critical voice of Africanist writers like Nanjala Nyabola, Ngugi, and Lucy Hovil. This can draw on works of Africanist scholars, but also such important works addressing the same subject in a different context as Edward Said’s Covering Islam: How the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world.

Surely, there are western journalists who report  Africa in all its dimensions and diversity and with nuances.These journalists should be celebrated and commended. Not because they deserve commendation for doing their work the right way. It is because they should serve as model to be emulated by others.

This is not a request for a politically correct reporting that skirts the truth to avoid offending.It is about telling the facts in all its manifestations.

Perhaps this is not a matter about which we should complain against western journalists only. Indeed, what we should lament about more is the role that we, Africans, have played and continue to play for the dominance of the negative and stereotypical mainstream western reporting of Africa.

Because, as Thiongo rightly pointed out, the “biggest sin …is not that certain groups of white people, and even the West as a whole, may have a negative view of blackness embedded in their psyche, the real sin is that the black bourgeoisie in Africa and the world should contribute to the negativity and even embrace it by becoming participants or shareholders in a multi-billion industry built on black negativity”.

Rather than just ‘talking about knocking down the other story’, as Achebe pointed out, ‘create a situation in which there is evenness’. To this end, ‘We (Africans) have got to do that kind of thing on a large scale – to change the dominant image of Africa which has been there for hundreds of years’.

This we should do as part of  – and in defence of –  the critical debate on mainstream western coverage of Africa.

Solomon Ayele Dersso, a legal academic and analyst of African affairs who regularly writes on African Union issues.

6 March 2014

Al-Jazeera.com

Terrorist Attack On India’s Maulana Usaidul-Haq Qadri In Iraq And Wanton Killing Of Sufi-Minded Ulema By Extremists In The Muslim World: A Probe Into The Ideological Links

By Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi

Before we proceed into the subject matter, let’s have a look at these two nefarious instances of ruthless killing of Sufi ideologues and Ulema at the hands of extremist goons:

(1) Mufti Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi (May God be please with him) was a Sufi-minded Pakistani Islamic cleric noted for his moderate vision of Islam and staunch and outspoken opposition of terror activities in Pakistan. On June 12, 2009, he was suicide bombed during the Jum’a prayer that he was leading in his mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. This terrorist attack was launched on him, after his publicly denouncing the Tehrik-e-Taliban’s terrorist ideologies and activities as un-Islamic.

(2) Shaikh Ramadan Al-Buti, an erudite Islamic scholar of global standing with Sufi background, was popularly known as a “moderate Islamic scholar”. Through his extensive and hard-hitting writings and religious sermons, he openly denounced and refuted the literalist Salafist interpretations of Islamic postulates. In his rigorous efforts to refute the views of Salafist extremism explaining its literalism and incoherence to the modern era, he authored a highly relevant book: “As-Salaf was a blessed epoch, not a school of thought”. His views severely opposed the militant and political ideologies and activities of the Islamist extremists actively engaged in different parts of the Muslim world, as outlined in his famous book: Al-Jihad Fil Islam (1993). He believed in a spiritual Islamic system of belief that unites all people regardless of their different confessions. While delivering a religious sermon to his students at the Iman Mosque in the central Mazraa district of Damascus, Syria, he was suicide bombed by the Salafist terrorists.

The nefarious series of deadly attacks, wanton killing and suicide bombing of Sufi-minded Ulema and spiritually-inclined Islamic scholars, at the hands of the neo-Kharijites, Salafists, Wahhabis and other religious goons of extremist ideological strains, continues today unabated. To my horror, Maulana Usaid ul Haq Qadri Badayuni, who many of us adored as a source of intellectual and spiritual inspiration, was targeted and martyred on the 4th March of this year in a terrorist attack during his visit to the Sufi shrines in Baghdad, Iraq. He went there to visit particularly the shrines of the most revered Sufi saint Hazrat Syed Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) and Imam Abu Hanifa (r.a).

We received this shocking news in India just a few hours after Maulana had posted the recent snaps of his visit to the Iraqi Sufi shrines on his Facebook page, as he was actively engaged in his online Islamic literary pursuits, with thousands of friends and followers on Facebook from all over the world, with whom he shared links to his books and trips to historical Islamic places and Sufi shrines.

Maulana was travelling with his father Hazrat Qazi Abdul Hameed Muhammad Salim Qadri (the head of the Quadria Sufi shrine, in Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, India) and his younger brother Maulana Mohammed Lateef Qadri in an Indian delegation of 26 spiritually-inclined people who left Mumbai for Iraq on February 25 to visit the Sufi shrines in Baghdad. They were scheduled to return to India next week. In Iraq, when they reached Sulaimania town, around 300km from Baghdad, an armed terrorist group started firing the car and left the Maulana shot dead.

According to Mohammad Wajihuddin’s report in Times of India, brother of the deceased, Mohammed Lateef Qadri said on phone from Iraq:

“We had covered half the distance of the destination when some gunmen suddenly stopped our car and started firing indiscriminately. The driver, who was also injured, speeded up and we reached a check post from where an ambulance was called. Usaid died in the attack while the driver has been hospitalised,”

On the next day, the late Maulana Usaid’s body was brought to Baghdad where it was buried in a graveyard adjacent to the shrine of Hazrat Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a).

One of the most acclaimed Sunni Islamic scholars of the modern India, Maulana Usaidul Haq, also known as “Sheikh Sahab”, was a Sufi-minded theologian par excellence, spiritual poet, prolific writer, social thinker and, above all, a great humanitarian. He was noted for his deep inclination towards spiritual, intellectual and social efforts for peace-building and human welfare, following in the footsteps of our revered Sufi saints of India. He was an erudite Islamic scholar in Indian soil with greater popularity among the Sufi-minded Muslims across the globe. In a very young age (37), Maulana touched the sky and made Herculean efforts for the betterment of the Indian community at large.

Maulana Usaid-ul-Haq believed that in a multicultural, multi-faith and pluralistic county, India, Muslims need a system of faith that ensures its relevance to the country’s composite culture, pluralistic nature, different life styles and myriad ethos. He held that Sufism has remarkably been an unopposed ambassador of love and harmony among the different Indian religious communities: Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, in the ancient India and even today. So, he believed, the mystical foundation of Islam should be strengthened so as to serve the masses of the country irrespective of caste, creed and religious confession.

In his lifetime, Maulana organised several conferences and seminars aimed at establishing religious harmony among the followers of different religions in India.

A historic peace conference titled “Shanti Sammelan” organised by his Khanqah Quadriya in Budaun, India, on the occasion of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)’s birthday will remain unforgotten in the history of modern Indian Sufis. In this conference, Maulana Usaid-ul-Haq brought together prominent Ulema and Muslim scholars like the famous Sufi-minded Islamic writers and scholars Maulana Yaseen Akhtar Misbahi, Maulana Khushtar Noorani, Dr. Khwaja Muhammad Ikram (Director of NCPUL), Bekal Utsahi, a famous Urdu-Hindi poet along with non-Muslim leaders and clergy such as Swamy Agnivesh, a famous Hindu cleric, Father M.D. Thomas (Director, Commission of Religious Harmony, Delhi), Pundit Anil Shastri and Sardar Gurmeet etc. All these leading figures of different religions spoke in unison, on an Islamic stage, for establishing peace and eradicating the epidemic of terrorism. This noble effort of Maulana Usaid-ul-Haq proved that Indian Sufi shrines, in all ages, have preached Islam through peaceful efforts and selfless services to humanity and that the Khanqah of Badayun is no exception to this.

Just recently, on February 10, when he was preparing to travel to Iraq in New Delhi, I got a chance to meet him along with other prominent Sufi-minded Ulema in my locality. We were having a discussion on different religious issues, particularly on incorporating moderate, sophisticated and cordial ways to serve Islam and humanity. He expressed great concerns over the importance of humanitarian activities and social work in Islam, spiritual solace, love for the prophets and Sufia-e-Kiram (the holy Sufi saints) and most importantly promoting peace and harmony between people of all denominations and speaking up against acts of terror and violence in the name of Islam.

Maulana Usaid-ul-Haq had laid down his life in refuting the terror ideologies and had devoted his illuminating knowledge and sources to the service of humanity through his intellectual and social contributions. He emerged as a real Mujahid and, therefore, we believe he attained martyrdom in the land of the spiritual guide of the Sufi saints Hazrat Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a). Maulana had gone there to especially visit the Sufi shrines and was planning to travel to Turkey for the very purpose before he was martyred. By his sheer good luck, he has been blessed with a resting place among the family members of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) within the premises of his shrine in Baghdad.

The wanton killing of the Sufi clerics, Ulema and scholars is substantial evidence that those involved in global terrorism in the name of Islam, Jihad and Istishhad (martyrdom) have no ideological endorsement from the Sufi-minded Muslims. Terrorism has absolutely no ideological link with Sufi shrines and monastery system of Islam, which is entirely based on universal brotherhood, global peace, inclusiveness and religious tolerance.

At a time when essential concepts, basic tenets and many beautiful doctrines of Islam are being misused, misinterpreted and radicalised by the Salafi-Wahabi extremists, exclusivists and totalitarians, who now falsely claim be the mainstream Sunnis, the world thinkers should take an inquisitive look at all the different ideologies and strains of Islam with more focus on mystical interpretation of Islam. I am sure it will help them discover the truth that Sufism and its followers represent the only and true version of Islam: peaceful, pluralistic and moderate. This is precisely why its followers, in general, and Ulema and ideologues, in particular, are suffering the gravest attacks from the terror ideologies and activities creeping into the Muslim world under the grab of Islamism.

Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is an Alim and Fazil (classical Islamic scholar) with a Sufi background.

07 March, 2014

 

MH 370: multi-ethnic, multi-national bonding in the face of tragedy

The MH 370 tragedy has brought Malaysians of all ethnic backgrounds together in sadness — and in anxiety. Though the feelings generated by tragedies of this kind are often ephemeral, they have an impact upon the soul of the nation.

MH 370 is part of our collective consciousness today. It will be etched forever on our collective memory.

The 38 Malaysian passengers on board MH 370 come from different religious and cultural communities. The rest of the passengers are of different nationalities, a majority of whom are from China.

The 12 member Malaysian crew of MH 370 is also truly multi-ethnic.

Malaysia’s varied religious groups are offering prayers for the safety of the passengers and crew of the ill-fated flight. It is commendable that former Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, joined Buddhists at a special prayer session at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

In the larger ASEAN context, in spite of an ongoing squabble over competing maritime claims in the South China Sea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines have joined Malaysia in the search and rescue operation. Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia which are not part of that tiff are also rendering a lot of assistance. From outside the region, the United States and Australia are providing valuable help. Indeed, experts from all over the world are working together with the able and competent Malaysian search and rescue operation team to solve the perplexing mystery of the missing aircraft.

It is noteworthy that a number of air-safety analysts and media commentators from abroad have acknowledged that Malaysian Airlines (MAS), widely regarded as a five star airline, has an outstanding air-safety record.

When nations pool their resources together in a common humanitarian effort directed towards people of different faiths and cultures, it becomes an act of great spiritual significance.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,
Chairman,
Yayasan 1Malaysia.
Petaling Jaya.
10 March 2014.

America Can Learn From Venezuela’s Democracy

By Garikai Chengu

Wednesday marked the anniversary of the death of one of the developing world’s greatest heroes: Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

In 2002, Washington backed a failed coup against Mr. Chavez’s democratically elected government. Twelve years on, history appears to be repeating itself: the rightwing, which cannot get elected, is trying to depose the elected government with violent protests and Washington’s assistance.

What may have begun as peaceful student-driven protests in Venezuela, have now descended into a crude Washington-backed attempt at regime change.

So what makes Venezuela so important to Washington? Any real estate agent could tell you: location. Given that Venezuela sits atop the strategic intersection of the Caribbean, South and Central American worlds, control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. At the heart of Venezuela’s current turmoil is Washington’s anger that Venezuela’s oil money is going to help its people and not into American shareholders’ pockets. The issue inVenezuela is not democracy, it is oil.

Over the past half century, America has descended from popular democracy to corporate dictatorship. Enthusiasm and voter participation have declined immensely and corporate control over politics has increased markedly.

In fact, over the last few years, the top thirty American companies spent more money on lobbying politicians than they paid in federal taxes, according to a report from the non-partisan reform group Public Campaign.

The “democratic” process is slowly but surely breaking down in the United States. American voter turnout is less than 50%, this is the lowest of all countries in the entire developed world. Most Americans do not even bother to vote anymore because they realize that neither party actually represents the interest of a majority of the U.S. voters, but merely those of corporate lobby groups and, of course, Wall Street.

America has made it her mission to spread democracy around the world, often at the expense of much blood and treasure. How can a country claim to be the role model for democracies around the globe, and yet have the worst participation in one of the key elements of democratic rule, namely voting?

Elections in America, consist in presenting the population with two variants of the same pre-designed policy to vote for: free-market neoliberal capitalism. This policy benefits the elite at the expense of the majority by promoting further privatization of public services, frozen wages, job losses, and reduced social benefits.

Nobody should have any illusions. The United States essentially has a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.

The narrowing gap between the policies of major political parties in America reflects a widening of an on-going decay in the liberal democratic system.

From 1958 to 1998 Venezuela also had a two-party “democracy” whereby two indistinguishable parties took turns governing the country, whilst left wing activists were persecuted.

This so-called “Punto Fijo” system suffered a legitimacy crisis in 1989 when then president Carlos Andrez Perez put in place IMF neoliberal austerity policies. These neoliberal policies put the interests of foreign capital over local labour.

This created a wave of riots and protests, which resulted in the pro-Washington government of Mr. Andres Perez killing four thousand innocent civilians.

Disgruntled by policies that favored the local elite and foreign corporations, the people stood behind Hugo Chavez, and in 1998 he was elected president and the Bolivarian Revolution was born.

One of Mr. Chavez’s first major moves was to enact arguably one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It provided a framework for widespread bottom up democratic reform and gave Venezuelans new political, civil and social rights.

As it stands, Venezuelans are able to recall elected representatives from their posts, and directly submit laws for discussion in the National Assembly, among other rights.

Perhaps one of the most outstanding aspects of Venezuelan democratic reform is the electoral system and the technology used to record, verify, and transmit votes. Voters touch a computer screen to cast their vote and then receive a paper receipt. This system makes vote-rigging nearly impossible. Former US President Jimmy Carter won a Nobel Peace prize for election monitoring and he called Venezuela’s recent election “the most democratic in the world.”

Venezuela’s “21st-century socialism” is a unique experiment in the pages of history. It stands in stark contrast with past socialist examples, like the Soviet Union, where the state seized control of the means of production and one revolutionary party had top down control of society. What makes Venezuela’s experience original is its it’s emphasis on participatory democracy, the exercise of power from the community level. As Hugo Chávez proclaimed in 2007, “pure socialism has to be rooted in communal power, the communal councils.”

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have been organizing tens of thousands of consejos comunales (communal councils). The councils are involved in everything from housing, education, forming cooperatives to supervising health care facilities.

Democracy is not merely about holding elections simply to choose which particular representatives of the elite class should rule over the masses. True democracy is about democratizing the economy and giving economic power to the majority.

Truth is, the West has shown that unfettered free markets and genuinely free elections simply cannot co-exist. Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. How can capitalism and democracy co-exist if one concentrates wealth and power in the hands of few, and the other seeks to spread power and wealth among many?

Venezuela’s socialist system however, seeks to spread economic power amongst the majority rather than just the privileged few. The richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the majority of 150,000,000 Americans combined.

In stark contrast, under Chavez, Venezuela has gone from being one of the most unequal countries in Latin America to the most equal one in terms of income. Mr. Chavez, has funneled Venezuela’s oil revenues into social spending such as free healthcare, education, subsidized food networks, and housing construction. In Venezuela, poverty has been reduced and pensions have expanded. In America it has been the absolute reverse.

Democracy is not merely about elections. True democracy is also about equal opportunity through education and the right to life through access to health care. In Venezuela, the masses enjoy free health care and free education.

In America, education is increasingly becoming a privilege, not a right and ultimately, a debt sentence. If a talented child in the richest nation on earth cannot afford to go to the best schools, society has failed that child. In fact, for young people the world over, education is a passport to freedom. Any nation that makes one pay exorbitant amounts for such a passport is only free for the rich, but not the poor.

In Venezuela, education is human right and it is free for all Venezuelans.

For millions of Americans, health care is also increasingly becoming a privilege not a right. A recent study by Harvard Medical School estimates that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 excess deaths annually in America. In Venezuela, health care is a human right and it is free for all Venezuelans. Thus, with regards to health care, education and economic justice, is America in any position to lecture Venezuela about democracy or should America take a leaf out of Venezuela ‘s playbook?

Nothing is perfect of course, and all of these successes of Venezuelan democracy do not mean that the system is without failure. Corruption and bureaucracy are phenomena that slow further radical democratization and erode support for the Bolivarian revolution as a whole.

With that said, while the West’s corporate-controlled media have chosen to perpetuate an Orwellian illusion whereby America and Britain are models of democracy and Venezuela is a backward country run by an “autocratic regime”, in the real world the reality is clearly otherwise.

Voter participation and trust in government in America is at an all-time low, because Americans are increasingly realizing that both political parties serve the interests of a small elite. Clearly, America can learn a great deal from Venezuela’s unique and profound democratic experience.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University.

06 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

The “Mysterious” Kiev Snipers

By Farooque Chowdhury

With accusation of surveillance and espionage “mysterious” snipers in Kiev are coming out to light as diplomacy is unfolding over uncertain Ukraine.

The snipers were, as media from Moscow reported, hired by pro-Western predator leaders in the Kiev Independence square dubbed Maidan. Mainstream media is “missing” the information. The sniper-incident demonstrates the old formula for intervention: engineer, fabricate, manipulate, create confusion and chaos, and spill blood.

Citing a leaked phone conversation between Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign affairs chief, and Urmas Paet, the Estonian foreign minister, which has emerged online, the Russian media report said: “The snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Maidan leaders”. The file was reportedly uploaded to the web by officers of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) loyal to ousted president Yanukovich. The SBU officers hacked the conversation over phone.

According to the media reports, Paet said during conversation with Ashton: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” Ashton’s response was: “I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh.” (“Kiev snipers hired by Maidan leaders – leaked EU’s Ashton phone tape”, March 5, 2014)

The call took place after Paet visited Kiev on February 25, following the peak of clashes between the pro-EU protesters and security forces in the Ukrainian capital.

Paet recalled his conversation with Olga Bogomolets, the main physician for the Maidan mobile clinic when protests turned violent. She treated the seriously injured and helped organize their transportation to neighboring countries that were willing to treat the critically wounded. She said that both protesters and police were shot at by the same people.

The Estonian minister stressed: “All the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.” Ashton reaction was: “Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.” Olga showed Paet a few photos. According to Paet, Olga said that as a medical doctor she can say that it is the “same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.”

Olga, the media reports said, blamed the injuries and deaths on snipers. She turned down the position of vice prime minister of Ukraine for humanitarian affairs offered by the coup-appointed regime.

The Estonian minister has described the sniper issue as “disturbing” and added, “it already discredits from the very beginning” the new Ukrainian power. His overall impressions of what he saw during his one-day trip to Kiev are “sad,” Paet said during the conversation.

He stressed that the Ukrainian people don’t trust the Maidan leaders, with all the opposition politicians slated to join the new government “having dirty past.” (ibid.)

Estonian foreign ministry has confirmed the recording of the conversation with Ashton is authentic. Paet told RIA-Novosti news agency that he talked to Ashton last week right after retiring from Kiev, but refrained from further comments, saying that he has to “listen to the tape first.” (“Estonian Foreign Ministry confirms authenticity of leaked call on Kiev snipers”, March 5, 2014)

“It’s very disappointing that such surveillance took place altogether. It’s not a coincidence that this conversation was uploaded [to the web] today,” the minister stressed. “My conversation with Ashton took place last week right after I returned from Kiev. At that time I was already in Estonia,” said Paet. In a press conference about the leaked tape on Wednesday, Paet said the Kiev incidents must become the subject of an independent investigation.

“We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition’s involvement in the violence”, said an Estonian foreign ministry statement. It added that the minister was only providing an overview of what he had heard during his Kiev visit.

Russian news outlet RT contacted Ashton’s spokesperson, Maja Kocijancic, who said “we don’t comment on leaked phone conversations.” The US government declined to comment on the leaked phone conversation. According to ITAR-TASS, the US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she had nothing to say on the issue. However, she did accuse Russia of leaking the tape, stating that “this was another example of how the Russians work.” (ibid.)

Citing the Estonian minister’s leaked phone conversation RIA Novosti said in a report from Tallinn: Snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly linked to “somebody from the new coalition”. The minister added: “Distorted versions of the record, which are intended to discredit the Ukrainian government, have also emerged. I was only speaking about versions of what was going on in Ukraine.

Observation of a US politician has added more questions after the claim on Kiev snipers.

Dennis Kucinich, former Ohio congressman and Democratic presidential candidate said the Ukraine incident was driven by covert action by the US. Kucinich made the comments only a few days ago while speaking to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, arguing US meddling in Ukraine’s affairs is what sparked the current situation in the first place and that Ukrainians were being exploited by Western powers.

Asked how he’d handle the tense standoff if he were president, Kucinich said the following: “What I’d do is not have USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy working with US taxpayers’ money to knock off an elected government in Ukraine, which is what they did. I wouldn’t try to force the people of Ukraine into a deal with NATO against their interest or into a deal with the European Union, which is against their economic interest.” “So, it’s the USA’s fault that Putin rolled in? We made them do it?” O’Reilly asked. “Bill O’Reilly, if you don’t believe in cause and effect, I don’t know what I can do for you,” Kucinich said.

The observation can’t be easily ignored.

The sniper-incident and the claimed involvement of NED and other external actors expose brutal and dirty tricks employed for preparing ground for intervention. Broadly similar tricks were visible in Iraq, Syria and Venezuela. The role of NED has been discussed by Dr. Kim Scipes, Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University North Central in Westville, US, in the article “National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Venezuela”. Some other countries have also experienced similar tricks and different levels of intervention in the recent past.

It should not be imagined that the nasty tricks will not be employed in other societies in future. Rather imperial powers will vigorously resort to employing similar tricks the more they face rejections in other societies. There will be destabilization campaigns in societies.

To make the incidents appear genuine, the first phase implemented by the imperial powers is to initiate a propaganda war using credible media outlets. A number of societies face the threat.

In the propaganda war, one-sided, distorted and negative picture is repeatedly presented. Writers posing as credible and organizations posing as standing for rights are employed for this purpose. The assigned writers resort to fabrication and use the tact of disinformation instead of being factual and objective. They completely hide imperialist role in respective society.

The hired writers’ attempts gain ground as the political forces opposing imperial intervention relies on bureaucratic measures instead of informing and mobilizing people. With increased competition among the major economies and people searching progressive way of life poor societies face more incidents of intervention.

Farooque Chowdhury is Dhaka-based freelancer.

06 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org