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By Stefan Steinberg

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stepped up pressure on the Russian government after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday.

“We expect other nations to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and avoid provocative action,” Hagel declared. “That’s why I’m closely watching Russia’s military exercises along the Ukrainian border, which they just announced yesterday.”

Hagel’s warning comes a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry issued his own threat against Russia. “Any kind of military intervention that would violate the sovereign territorial integrity of Ukraine would be a huge, a grave mistake,” he told reporters in Washington. “The territorial integrity of Ukraine needs to be respected.”

Kerry and Hagel’s threats were echoed by German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen before the NATO meeting: “The situation in Ukraine, especially in Crimea, fills us with great concern. The situation is very confusing and difficult, and it is now important that especially a breakup of Ukraine is prevented and the moderate forces will be strengthened in the country.”

US and European demands that other countries avoid “provocative action” are utterly hypocritical. It is the US and European powers, led by Germany, that have carried out a reckless and provocative policy, working with fascist groups to push Ukraine to the brink of civil war.

Their policy aims to break Ukraine from Russia’s sphere of influence and weaken Russia itself. The return to a new “cold war” between east and west, now referred to in numerous media commentaries, is the direct consequence of the reckless support given by US and European leaders in recent months to nationalist and fascist forces in western Ukraine and the country’s capital, Kiev.

In response to threats by far-right forces based in the west of Ukraine, which vowed to march into Crimea, pro-Russian militants occupied the regional parliament and government headquarters in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, on Wednesday night. A group of around 50 armed men seized the buildings and ran up the Russian flag.

Crimea has a predominantly Russian-speaking population and is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Underscoring the danger of military conflagration, a former colonel of the Russian General Staff, Igor Korotchenko, wrote in the Russian online newspaper slon.ru that “if illegal armed formations attempt to overthrow the local government in Crimea by force, a civil war will start and Russia couldn’t ignore it.”

As for the “moderate forces” in Ukraine referred to by the German Defence Minister, they are nowhere to be found in the new cabinet voted into office on Thursday by a large majority of the Ukrainian parliament. The new cabinet is reactionary to the core. All the key positions have been taken by either veterans of previous governments, fascists or the representatives of oligarchic interests. In an attempt to cloak the reactionary nature of the new regime, a number of government posts were awarded to figures active in the Independence Square protests.

As expected, the post of prime minister went to former banker Arseniy Yatseniuk, leader of the right-wing Fatherland party, founded by the oligarch and convicted embezzler Yulia Tymoschenko. Yatseniuk is a former head of the National Bank of Ukraine, foreign minister and speaker of the Ukrainian parliament.

Yatseniuk is also the chosen representative of Washington—which refers to him as “Yats”—as the infamous recording of the telephone conversation between the State Department’s top European official, Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt revealed.

No less than three posts, including that of deputy prime minister, have been given to the fascist Svoboda party, whose militants played a decisive role in attacking security forces last week and ousting President Viktor Yanukovych.

Svoboda Party deputy Oleksandr Sych was appointed deputy prime minister. In his career as a parliamentary deputy, Sych sought to introduce legislation to ban all abortions, including pregnancies caused by rape. His contribution to Svoboda’s glorification of “Ukrainian family values” was to call upon women to avoid rape by not drinking alcohol and “controversial company.”

Two other Svoboda members have taken over the ecology and agriculture ministries. The new agriculture minister, Oleksandr Myrnyi, is, according to Forbes, in the top five of Svoboda’s highest earners, with an estimated income of Hr 17 million ($1.6 million) in 2012. His main business interests are concentrated in agriculture—a blatant conflict of interests with his new appointment.

Another Svoboda member, Oleh Makhnytsky, heads the strategically important general prosecutor’s office. Appointed a week ago, Makhnytsky issued an international arrest warrant this week for the ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, who is allegedly seeking asylum in Russia.

Another key post is to be occupied by Andriy Parubiy, who was a cofounder of the forerunner of Svoboda, the Social-National Party of Ukraine. Parubiy founded the organization in 1991 together with Oleh Tyahnybok, the current head of Svoboda. Parubiy, who led the right-wing militias that conducted the assaults on Yanukovych’s security forces, has now been appointed head of the National Security Council.

According to the Libération newspaper, Dmitri Yarosh, the leader of the pro-Nazi Right Sector group, is to be Parubiy’s deputy. This means that Svoboda and other ultra-rightists head key posts in the security apparatus and will be responsible for organizing the shock troops to repress future social unrest.

The key post of Finance Ministry in the new regime has been taken by Oleksandr Shlapak , a former deputy head of PrivatBank regarded as a guarantor of the interests of finance capital.

Other nominees share close links to various oligarchs. Volodymyr Groysman, the new deputy minister for regional policy, began his career in agribusiness and real estate. He was a member of the party of former President Viktor Yushchenko, and is now reportedly close to millionaire businessman and member of parliament Petro Poroshenko. The new energy minister, Yuri Prodan, previously worked in Kyivenergo, the capital’s energy monopoly supplier, and played a central role in the creation of the National Energy Market. Prodan has been described by the Ukrainian media as close to the Privat Group of billionaire Igor Kolomoisky.

The task of the new government is to implement the “extremely unpopular steps” that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk complained had not been carried out by previous governments. i.e., hikes in energy prices, the closure of large sections of heavy industry and massive social cuts.

The country faces a financial crisis and needs an estimated $35 billion in bailout loans to be able to pay its bills for the next two years. Nearly half of this sum, $15 billion, is owed to western banks.

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde said Thursday that the IMF would send a team to Ukraine to assess the economic situation and spell out to the newly installed regime “the policy reforms that could form the basis of a Fund-supported program.” In previous dealings with the Yanukovych government, the IMF already dictated such “reforms,” i.e., extreme austerity measures, including drastic cuts in wages and pensions and an end to gas subsidies, which would send consumer prices soaring.

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, the European Union with US support has installed unelected governments in Greece and Italy to implement austerity and remunerate western banks. Now, for the first time, the same imperialist alliance mobilized extreme nationalist and fascist forces to topple an elected government and install a new pro-western regime.

28 February, 2014

WSWS.org

 

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

The US and the  EU are supporting the formation of  a coalition government integrated by Neo-Nazis which are directly involved in the repression of the Ukrainian Jewish community.

There are about 200,000 Jews living in Ukraine, most of them in Kiev. This community is described as “one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in the world, with dozens of active Jewish organizations and institutions”. A significant part of this community is made up of family members of holocaust survivors. “Three million Ukrainians were murdered by the Nazis during their occupation of Ukraine, including 900,000 Jews.” (indybay.org, January 29, 2014).

Ukrainian Jews were the target of the Third Reich’s Einsatzgruppen (Task Groups or Deployment Groups) which were supported by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators (Wikipedia). These “task forces” were paramilitary death squads deployed in occupied territories.

Contemporary Neo-Nazi Threat against Ukraine’s Jewish community

While the Western media has not covered the issue, the contemporary Neo-Nazi threat against the Jewish community in the Ukraine is real. Ukrainian Neo-Nazis pay tribute to Stepan Bandera, a World War II-era Nazi collaborator who led the pro-Nazi Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B). The contemporary Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party which is supported by Washington follows in the footsteps of the OUN-B.

Reports from Kiev confirm that the Jewish community is the target of the Right Sector and the Neo-Nazi Svoboda party, which is supported and financed through various channels by Washington and Brussels:

“Ukrainian Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman asked Kiev Jews to leave the city and, if possible, the country, due to fears that Jews might be targeted [by Svoboda Brown Shirts] in the ongoing chaos. … Some Jewish shops have been vandalized and other threats to the Jewish community have been received.

“I told my congregation to leave the city center or the city all together and if possible the country too… I don’t want to tempt fate…but there are constant warnings concerning intentions to attack Jewish institutions,” Rabbi Azman told Maariv. (JN, February 24, 2014)

The leaders of the Ukrainian Jewish Community contacted Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman requesting the assistance of Israel. (Edward Dolinsky, head of the umbrella organization of Ukraine’s Jews).

Israel –which is unofficially a member of the Western military alliance (US-NATO-Israel)– has remained mum on the subject: Real Politik Uber Alles. No statement has emanated from Tel Aviv.  The Israeli government has not responded to the request of the Ukrainian Jewish Community nor has it made any statements.

America’s pro-Israeli lobby The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has not taken a stance on the issue. Not a word from Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

 

The Western Media: Talking about the Neo-Nazi Threat to Ukraine’s Jewish Community is Taboo

 

Within the Western media, news coverage of the Neo-Nazi threat to the Jewish community in Ukraine is a taboo. There is a complete media blackout: confirmed by Google News search,  mainstream coverage of the threat to the Jewish community in Ukraine is virtually absent.

An article in the current issue of The New York Review of Books constitutes the pinnacle of falsehood and media distortion. The Jewish community in Ukraine is portrayed as an unbending supporter of the Maidan protest movement led by Right Sector Neo-Nazis:

The protesters represent every group of Ukrainian citizens: Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers (although most Ukrainians are bilingual), people from the cities and the countryside, people from all regions of the country, members of all political parties, the young and the old, Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Every major Christian denomination is represented by believers and most of them by clergy. The Crimean Tatars march in impressive numbers, and Jewish leaders have made a point of supporting the movement.

In its broader coverage of the Ukraine “protest movement”, the Western media has failed to acknowledge the nature of the opposition, casually referring to “radical elements”.

What is not mentioned is that these “radical elements” supported and financed by the West are Neo-Nazis who are waging a hate campaign against Ukraine’s Jewish community.

The Israeli Media and the State of Israel

The Israeli media toes the line. The hate campaign against the Ukrainian Jewish community is not the object of concern. The Jerusalem Post casually dismisses the evidence of crimes committed against Ukraine’s Jewish community under the title:

“Although there is “no information of Jews being targeted” as of yet, Jewish institutions are under self-imposed lock-down”.

According to the JP, there is no “defined threat against them”:

“There is currently “no information of Jews being targeted, but there is a danger because of vigilante groups,” Chief Rabbi Yaakov Bleich told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“We have not seen any random attacks and we hope people are basically interested in law and order and not in mayhem,” he said, expressing his hope that protesters would begin turning in their arms tomorrow as scheduled.

“We are definitely worried about security and everybody should keep their guard up,” the American-born rabbi cautioned. “That’s because of the general situation. There are no threats that we know of.”

… There is a great deal of uncertainty among Kiev’s Jews, said one community member, speaking anonymously.She said that while there has been no direct threat against Jewish institutions, two Jews were attacked during the protests and the general feeling of insecurity pervading the city has affected its Jews as well.

Things will calm down within a week, but life is still far from normal at the moment, she said.” (Ukraine’s Jews ponder their future, Jerusalem Post-Feb 24, 2014)

According to “expert opinion” quoted by the JP, the spread of swastikas in Kiev’s urban landscape should be of no concern. According to Vyacheslav Likhachev, “an expert on the far-right associated with the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress”, the Svoboda Neo-Nazi activists are not attacking Jews. In an utterly twisted logic expert Likhachev quoted by the JP intimates that the (former) Yanukovych government is responsible for anti-semitic violence;

The two incidents of anti-Semitic violence since the beginning of the protests, he alleged, were most likely provocations by the government looking for a pretext to clamp down on its political opponents.

“There is no real special danger for the Jewish community due to anti-Semitism from protesters,” he said.

According to Likhachev, the authorities tried to recruit him to take part in a propaganda campaign against the protesters and he believes that, given the lack of emphasis placed on Jews and other ethnic minorities by the opposition, including such factions as Svoboda, it is more likely that the attacks were part of this alleged campaign. (Ibid)

According to the JP, the issue is one of “transition”, which will be resolved once a new government is installed

“Despite his [Likhashov’s] optimism fear pervades the local Jewish community, as it does the entire Ukraine, during the transition period.”

Ironically, while the Israeli media dismisses the matter, the Arab media has provided a far more balanced assessment of the threat to the Jewish community in Ukraine.

Rabbis in Kiev and across Ukraine spoke out, warning their congregations to stay off the streets and remain in their homes. The Jewish Agency in Jerusalem has moved swiftly to offer aid to elderly Jews living in greater Kiev. Food-delivery men are braving gunshots and Molotov cocktails to help them. Reports from Kiev say the police have been replaced by roving bands of undetermined loyalty.

… The fresh report of the firebombing of a new synagogue in Zaporizhia, 250 miles southeast of Kiev, increased the alarm in Israel and accelerated planning for all contingencies, including evacuations. (John Batchelor, Ultranationalist neo-Nazi parties on the march in Ukraine, Al Jazeera, February 25, 2014

The Politics of Anti-Semitism:  Anti-Semitism Practiced at a Political Level

Ironically, while renowned scholars critical of the State of Israel for violating the fundamental rights of Palestinians are accused of being “anti-semitic”, nobody bats an eye lid when John McCain (see image right with the leader of the Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party Oleh Tyahnybok, centre), Victoria Nuland (image above together with Oleh Tyahnybok, left), EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton (also with Oleh Tyahnybok, left), John Kerry, Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel (among others) openly pay lip service to Neo-Nazism in the Ukraine.

Is the Western media “anti-semitic” when it fails to report crimes committed against the Jewish population in Ukraine?

Is the self-proclaimed “international community” anti-semitic when it upholds in the name of “democracy” a “protest movement” led by Neo-Nazis?

Is Netanyahu an anti-semite by tacitly supporting  US-EU-NATO geopolitical interests in Ukraine, with total disregard to the rising tide of fascism and anti-semitism?

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa.

Global Research,

February 26, 2014

The Case of Jamaat-e-Islam’s Leader Nizami

By Abdullah Al-Ahsan

On January 30, 2014 Matiur Rahman Nizami was handed the death sentence by a Bangladesh court for smuggling arms to facilitate insurgents in neighboring India. For years, the political situation in Bangladesh has been marred by deaths in imprisonment, in police custody, in the streets, and in people’s houses.

After the 1971 war for Bangladesh’s independence, it is in recent years that we have witnessed the highest number of politically motivated violent deaths, at some points in time averaging one death per day. The vast majority of the casualties are leaders and activists of the two main opposition parties, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islam (BJI).

Bangladesh is not a stranger to political deaths, as often street protests in the country go violent. However, under the current government, political turmoil has had some added features.

For example, firing live bullets upon the street protesters and killing and maiming hundreds of them, arresting opposition activists and their subsequent deaths in the name of “cross-fire” or “encounter,” and forced disappearances and the subsequent murders of opposition leaders and activists in such large numbers were previously not part of the political culture of Bangladesh.

Targets: Opposition, Women, and Army

During the time of the incumbent government, hundreds of opposition people have been killed, thousands maimed, and thousands more are languishing in the country’s prisons or in hiding or on the run.

According to the BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia, in January 2014 alone 242 people were killed by government forces and 60 were subjected to forced disappearances. A petition has lately been lodged with the International Criminal Court in the Hague for an independent investigation of the ongoing human rights violations in Bangladesh (Click here for more details).

Earlier, immediately after coming to power in January 2009, the government attempted to contain the army heavy-handedly. As a result, in frightful, tragic, and mysterious circumstances, 57 brilliant army officers and many of their family members were cold-bloodedly murdered in Pilkhana — which is at the heart of capital city — within a span of two days. It is widely believed that a big neighboring country stretched its hands to unleash the mayhem with a view to weakening the Bangladesh armed forces which is perceived to be independent minded.

The government did not take any effective measure to protect those lives or to rescue the female members of their families from rape and sexual assaults. Some of the narratives of those wanton murders and the crazed sexual aggression available in social media are unspeakably horrendous. After the harrowing tragedy of Pilkhana, the government sent many army officers to forced retirement and rendered many others ineffective.

After cowing the armed forces and taking preemptive measures to emasculate them, the government turned its repressive gaze, authoritarian apparatus and genocidal potential to cripple the opposition parties.

Because of a subsequent long-drawn and heavy-handed repression on the opposition parties, especially BNP and BJI, analysts say that over a thousand activists have been killed by the ruling party and government forces. In the traditionally vibrant political culture of Bangladesh, there now pervades a dead silence as not many opposition protesters dare to take to the street for fear of becoming death casualties.

Politically-motivated Death Verdicts

In terms of the number of casualties and political prisoners, the BJI is the worst sufferer. While hundreds of its leaders and activists have been killed, almost all its topmost leaders are incarcerated on various charges, especially crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the 1971 war. BJI leaders deny any such charges and have repeatedly said that these are politically motivated.

On December 12, 2013, Senior Assistant Secretary General of BJI Mr. Abdul-Quader Mollah was executed on the charge of war crimes, while some other senior BJI leaders are in death row.

The chief of BJI, Maulana Matiur Rahman Nizami, is also imprisoned with the charge of war crimes and the verdict may be delivered any day. While the verdict for his alleged war crimes related case was pending, a lower court in Chittagong gave him the death sentence for an arms haul case on January 30, 2014.

In the previous civilian government (2001-2006), BJI was a coalition partner with BNP and Mr. Nizami became Minister of Agriculture and then Minster of Industries. During his tenure as the Minster of Industries, on April 2, 2004, the police intercepted huge amount of arms and ammunitions at one of the jetties of the Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Ltd (CUFL) in Chittagong. These were allegedly being transferred through Bangladesh and were meant for the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), an Indian freedom movement fighting for the independence of Assam.

However, it has never been disclosed from where the arms and ammunitions came. A day after the incident, Mr. Ahadur Rahman, Officer-in-Charge of the local police station of Karnaphuli in Chittagong filed First Investigation Report (FIR) where Mr. Nizami was not mentioned, nor was he charge-sheeted at that time.

However, in February 2008, about four years after the incident when an army-backed interim government was in power, the Chittagong Metropolitan Judge’s Court ordered a fresh investigation to further probe into the cases following a petition from the state prosecution.

Subsequently, an intelligence police officer named Muniruzzaman Chowdhury who was also the fifth investigation officer of the case submitted two charge sheets in June 2011 and added 11 more suspects including Mr. Nizami. In the January 30, 2014 verdict, all these 11 people who held important positions during the 2001-2006 BNP-BJI administration were given the capital punishment. Such death sentences are unprecedented in any arms smuggling case. All the convicts have said that the verdict was politically motivated.

Nizami’s Case

The main reason why Mr. Nizami has been sentenced to death is that he was the minister of industries at the time when the arms haul was intercepted and he allegedly failed to carry out his responsibility.

Another high profile convict is Mr. Lutfozzaman Babar who was the state minister for home affairs at that time. Since both of them were in the government during the time of the incident, if they were involved in the arms smuggle, logically they would have used their ministerial influence to make sure that it was not seized on its way by the police. Especially, Mr. Babar was known to have exerted disproportionate influence on the police, as the police department was under the jurisdiction of his home ministry. However, neither Mr. Babar nor Mr. Nizami is known to have exerted any influence in the matter.

As regards Mr. Nizami, he has been given the death sentence for not launching an investigation into the arms smuggle. It was based only on two prosecution witnesses’ statement. They claimed that few days after the interception of the arms haul they met Mr. Nizami with a request to form an enquiry committee for investigation; but Mr. Nizami did not comply, stating that such an enquiry committee was not needed since the government had already formed a higher level inquiry committee.

Conceivably, it was not Mr. Nizami’s responsibility nor was it within the remit of his role as the minister of industries to form an enquiry committee to investigate the incident. It is true that the smugglers used a jetty of the Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Ltd (CUFL) which is under Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC). However, the BCIC functions as an autonomous body under the Ministry of Industries and its chairman is accountable to the ministry’s secretary, not to the minister.

More importantly, there are two jetties at CUFL, one is inside the CUFL boundary and exclusively for its use. The other jetty is open to the public and is patrolled by the local police and not by the CUFL security personnel. The jetty that was used to unload the arms on April 2, 2004 morning was the one open to the public. So although Mr. Nizami was the minster of industries at that time, he cannot be implicated for not forming an enquiry committee because BCIC was not under his direct jurisdiction, and secondly the jetty used was not exclusively controlled or monitored by the BCIC administration.

In view of the pros and cons of the case, it is widely believed that the death sentence verdict against Mr. Nizami is politically motivated and intended to execute leaders of BJI one after the other and thus to further weaken the opposition forces in today’s unstable Bangladesh. 

Uncontrollable Consequences

It is feared that Mr. Nizami may be another scapegoat. Like Abdul-Quader Mollah who was sentenced to death and executed for crimes he did not commit. In the district of Mirpur in Dhaka city during the 1971 war, there was a butcher named Quader who was known as Koshai Quader. He was thought to be responsible for many deaths in the area during the 1971 war. Although Abdul-Quader Mollah was not in Dhaka during the 1971 war and he never visited Mirpur before 1973, all the alleged crimes of Koshai Quader were put on Abdul-Quader Mollah who was subsequently executed on December 12, 2013.

After the death verdict against Mr. Nizami, BJI called a country-wide daylong strike. If the government decides to execute Mr. Nizami, BJI people may defy government repression, take to the streets, and get engaged in clashes with the police, which may eventually result in more deaths.

What is more, apart from Mr. Nizami and Mr. Babar, most of the other convicts sentenced to death in the arms haul case are former military officers, which can be seen as part of the government’s persistent tactic to undermine the defense forces. Their possible execution may create further discontent in the rank and file of the country’s military establishment.

Unfortunately events in Bangladesh are not receiving international media coverage. This is perhaps because of the strong support the current administration in Bangladesh receives from neighboring India.

The administration also seems to have learned from the Egyptian experience that eliminating opponents, particularly if they are “Islamist,” wouldn’t result in severe repercussions for the powers- that- be. That is why the government staged an election on January 5, 2014 with negligible turnout. However, one must not forget that in history such unjust conduct have resulted in unprecedented violent consequences.

Dr. Abdullah al-Ahsan is Vice-President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

Malaysia.

28 February 2014.

By Kim Scipes

As protests have been taking place in Venezuela the last couple of weeks, it is always good to check on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Empire’s “stealth” destabilizer. What has the NED been up to in Venezuela?

Before going into details, it is important to note what NED is and is not. First of all, it has NOTHING to do with the democracy we are taught in civics classes, concerning one person-one vote, with everyone affected having a say in the decision, etc. (This is commonly known as “popular” or grassroots democracy.) The NED opposes this kind of democracy.

The NED promotes top-down, elite, constrained (or “polyarchal”) democracy. This is the democracy where the elites get to decide the candidates or questions suitable to go before the people—and always limiting the choices to what the elites are comfortable with. Then, once the elites have made their decision, THEN the people are presented with the “choice” that the elites approve. And then NED prattles on with its nonsense about how it is “promoting democracy around the world.”

This is one of the most cynical uses of democracy there is. It’s notable even in what my friend Dave Lippmann calls “Washington Deceit.”

The other thing to note about NED is that it is NOT independent as it claims, ad nauseum. It was created by the US Congress, signed into US law by President Ronald Reagan (that staunch defender of democracy), and it operates from funds provided annually by the US Government.

However, its Board of Directors is drawn from among the elites in the US Government’s foreign policy making realm. Past Board members have included Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, General Wesley K. Clark, and Paul Wolfowitz. Today’s board can be found at http://www.ned.org/about/board; most notable is Elliot Abrams of Reagan Administration fame.

In reality, NED is part of the US Empire’s tools, and “independent” only in the sense that no elected presidential administration can directly alter its composition or activities, even if it wanted to. It’s initial project director, Professor Allen Weinstein of Georgetown University, admitted in the Washington Post of September 22, 1991, that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

In other words, according to Professor William Robinson in his 1996 book, Promoting Polyarchy, NED is a product of US Government foreign policy shift from “earlier strategies to contain social and political mobilization through a focus on control of the state and governmental apparatus” to a process of “democracy promotion,” whereby “the United States and local elites thoroughly penetrate civil society, and from therein, assure control over popular mobilization and mass movements.” What this means, as I note in my 2010 book, AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?, “is that instead of waiting for a client government to be threatened by its people and then responding, US foreign policy shifted to intervening in the civil society of a country ‘of interest’ (as defined by US foreign policy goals) before popular mobilization could become significant, and by supporting certain groups and certain politicians, then channel any potential mobilization in the direction desired by the US Government.”

Obviously, this also means that these “civil society” organizations can be used offensively as well, against any government the US opposes. NED funding, for example, was used in all of the “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and, I expect, currently in the Ukraine as well as elsewhere.

How do they operate? They have four “institutes” through which they work: the International Republican Institute (currently headed by US Senator John McCain), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (currently headed by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), the Center for International Private Enterprise (the international wing of the US Chamber of Commerce), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), the foreign policy operation of the AFL-CIO, with Richard Trumka the head of its Board of Directors.

As I documented in my book, ACILS had been indirectly involved in the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela by participating in meetings with leaders later involved in the coup beforehand, and then denying afterwards the involvement of the leaders of the right-wing labor organization (CTV) in the coup, leaders of an organization long affiliated with the AFL-CIO. We also know NED overall had been active in Venezuela since 1997.

The NED and its institutes continue to actively fund projects in Venezuela today. From the 2012 NED Annual Report (the latest available), we see they have provided $1,338,331 to organizations and projects in Venezuela that year alone: $120,125 for projects for “accountability”; $470,870 for “civic education”; $96,400 for “democratic ideas and values”; $105,000 for “freedom of information”; $92,265 for “human rights”; $216,063 for “political processes”; $34,962 for “rule of law”; $45,000 for “strengthening political institutions”; and $153,646 for Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).

Additionally, however, as found on the NED “Latin American and Caribbean” regional page, NED has granted $465,000 to ACILS to advance NED objectives of “freedom of association” in the region, with another $380,000 to take place in Venezuela and Colombia. This is in addition to another $645,000 to the International Republican Institute, and $750,000 to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

The irony of these pious claims for “freedom of association,” etc., is that Venezuela is has developed public participation to one of the highest levels in the world, and has one of the most free media in the world. Even with massive private TV media involvement in the 2002 coup, the government did not take away their right to broadcast afterward.

In other words, NED and its institutes are not active in Venezuela to help promote democracy, as they claim, but in fact, to act against popular democracy in an effort to restore the rule of the elite, top-down democracy. They want to take popular democracy away from those nasty Chavistas, and show who is boss in the US Empire. This author bets they fail.

Kim Scipes, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University North Central in Westville, IN, and is author of AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?, and KMU: Building Genuine Trade Unionism in the Philippines, 1980-1994. He can be reached through his web site at http://faculty.pnc.edu/kscipes.

26 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Alois Philby

In the events that have unfolded in Ukraine during the past weeks, the role of Israel is by far the most interesting. As far as the Americans and the European Union are concerned, it is a question of pursuing old-fashioned power politics vis-à-vis Russia with a view to minimising the latter’s influence in Europe. The role of Israel, on the other hand, can be adequately appraised only by taking into account the financial interests of the following individuals, whose plight was reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 2 July 2013:

“In the past decade, wealthy businessmen from the former Soviet Union have flocked to Israel in private planes via the Moscow-Tel Aviv route. Once here, they buy mansions in wealthy communities and get around in luxury cars. Most of them have come to Israel to escape the grasp of Russian President Vladimir Putin. They live below the radar, zealously guarding their privacy and hiding their assets and Israeli citizenship. […] Many of them fear that if their Israeli assets and citizenships were revealed, it would complicate their relations with Russian authorities or hurt their business interests.”

Gone are the days of cowboy liberalism when Western tycoons and businessmen would treat Russia with the condescension of a colonial lord towards his African subject. The economic system currently in force in Russia is corporative in nature: the state works with the businessmen, and those amongst these businessmen, Khodorkovsky being a case in point, who object to the interference of the state into their financial dealings can count on heavy reprisals.

The oligarchs of Russia are left with no choice but to cooperate with Putin, lest they suffer the same fate as Khodorkovsky. Some of these oligarchs prostrate themselves with great gusto at the feet of the ruler in Kreml, but the modus vivendi that they have found with Putin is an uneasy one. After all, these oligarchs are in possession of state assets of the Soviet Union purchased at a fraction of their actual value. At some point in time these assets will have to be returned to their rightful owners: The Russian People.

The long term aim of these these oligarchs is to determine the political culture as well as the legislative framework of Russia in such a way that their property is shielded from being expropriated by the state. The procession from liberalism towards corporatism, which in the future could lead to further centralisation, is a process that these oligarchs are at pains to reverse. The first step towards such a reversal is to prevent Putin from extending his sphere of influence into their safe havens in the former Soviet Union, of which Ukraine is the most important.

Press TV was one of the few news outlets to report on the Israeli involvement in the riots in Ukraine:

“A former Israeli army officer is playing a leading role in the anti-government protests in Ukraine […]. [This] unnamed Israeli was commanding a group of 20 Ukrainian militants while four other Israelis, who had also previously served in the army, were said to have taken part in opposition rallies in Ukraine’s capital of Kiev. They were born in Ukraine but migrated to Israel and joined its armed forces before returning [to Ukraine] for the demonstrations […]”

 

The Press TV report went on to state

“that an Israeli tycoon provided financial support to the opposition in Ukraine […]”

On 16 December 2013 Jerusalem Post reported that

“some young Jews working for international organizations such as JDC, Hillel and Limmud have taken to the barricades [in Ukraine, and they were] ‘really active’ in offering support as well as ‘organizing the barricades’.”

One may well be tempted to view these young Jews as useful idiots, but it is far more plausible that they were in fact provocateurs with a political agenda of their own. Ukraine is not just a safe haven for oligarchs on the run from Putin; it is also a country in which Israel exerts a high degree of political influence.

What should be troubling to Russia is the extent of the cooperation between Ukraine and Israel in the fields of military and intelligence. During the European Championship in football in 2012, which was held in Poland and Ukraine, Mossad was partly in charge of security. And the cooperation went much farther than the overseeing of sports events:

(i) Exchange of security information between the two countries; such an exchange is most likely skewed in Israel’s favour.

(ii) Cooperation in the field of counter-terrorism.

(iii) Israel is granted wellnigh unlimited access to Ukrainian databases; this facilitates the halting of the influx of undesired elements into Israel as well as the apprehension of potential or imagined terrorists.

Indeed, the cooperation between Israel and Ukraine in the field of intelligence is so extensive that Israel saw it fit to appoint Reuven Dinel, a former Mossad agent, as ambassador to Ukraine. It is worth noting that Dinel was caught spying in Russia during the 90s and was subsequently declared persona non grata. So tarnished was Dinel’s reputation that Turkmenistan refused to grant diplomatic status to this enemy of Russia. Ukraine had no such qualms.

Ukraine is today a veritable den of russophobic Israelis. On the one hand, Israel’s interests coincide with those of the West in the sense that they both wish to limit the Russian sphere influence, whereas on the other Israel is advocating the agenda of oligarchs with dual or multiple citizenships jealously clinging on to assets stolen from the people of Russia.

Russia has no choice but to treat Israel as an enemy state.

Alois Philby is a blogger. He blogs at http://aloisphilby.blogspot.com

26 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Alex Lantier

Attempts to set up a government by the Western-backed Ukrainian opposition forces that seized power in Saturday’s fascist putsch have collapsed amid rising demands for social attacks on the working class from Washington and the European Union (EU), and military tensions with Russia.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton left Kiev yesterday after two days of fruitless talks attempting to bring the different opposition parties together in a government. The putsch, cynically hailed by the Western media as a struggle for democracy, is proving to be an operation to forcibly install a filthy dictatorship of imperialist finance capital. Opposition officials estimated this week that Ukraine needs up to $35 billion to refinance its debts. However, the major international banks have effectively cut off credit to Ukraine, charging ruinously high interest rates that it cannot afford. Meanwhile, Russia has withdrawn its offer of $15 billion in aid after the putsch toppled Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych.

EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials are demanding austerity measures, such as deep cuts to state subsidies for consumer energy prices, in exchange for a $1or 2 billion payment to stave off immediate bankruptcy. Yanukovych rejected a planned association agreement with the EU entailing such cuts last autumn—the decision which led to the opposition protests against him—fearing that the cuts might lead to social upheavals that would bring down his regime.

Now, the pro-Western opposition, supported by gangs of fascist thugs from the Svoboda party and the neo-Nazi Right Sector group, is trying to push this reactionary, anti-democratic agenda through. Arseniy Yatsenyuk of billionaire oligarch Yulya Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, whom Washington has identified as its preferred right-wing figurehead in Ukraine, called on the opposition to join government and do the banks’ bidding despite popular opposition. “This is about political responsibility. You know to be in this government is to commit political suicide, and we need to be very frank and open,” Yatsenyuk told reporters outside Parliament.

Such remarks underscore that the opposition aims to run roughshod over the Ukrainian people, trying to use violently anti-working class forces like Svoboda or Right Sector, which openly glorify Nazism and the Holocaust, to crush whatever popular opposition emerges.

Reports of broader public opinion in Ukraine indicate popular hostility not only to Yanukovych, but also to the leading opposition oligarch, Tymoshenko. One woman told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, “They are all crooks, the ones like the other, and Yulya [Tymoshenko] is no better.”

Tensions are escalating with Russia over the Western powers’ move to snatch Ukraine from Russia’s sphere of influence. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry attacked US and EU policy in Ukraine as driven “not by a concern for the fate of Ukraine, but by unilateral geopolitical calculations … A course has been set to use dictatorial and sometimes terrorist methods to suppress dissenters in various regions.”

Speaking to Interfax on Monday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev denounced the putsch in Kiev. He said, “Strictly speaking, there is no one to talk to there. The legitimacy of a whole host of government bodies raises huge doubts … If people crossing Kiev in black masks and Kalashnikov rifles are considered a government, it will be difficult for us to work with such a government.”

Medvedev added, however, that Russia would honor legally-binding energy contracts to provide Ukraine with natural gas. “Those agreements which are legally binding must be honored. We are not cooperating with personalities or isolated individuals. These are inter-state relations. We are neighbors, close nations, and we cannot run away from one another. Whatever has been signed must be honored. For us, Ukraine remains a serious and important partner.”

The opposition has abolished the status of Russian—which is widely spoken, particularly in the east of Ukraine—as an official language. There is widespread fear of possible fighting, including Russian intervention, if opposition forces in Kiev attempt to conquer the east or take over Russian military installations in the Crimea.

NATO commander in Europe General Philip Breedlove spoke with Russian Chief of General Staff General Valery Gerasimov in a tense exchange on Monday, in which both “expressed concern over the situation in Ukraine.”

Such remarks highlight the bankruptcy of the Russian regime of President Vladimir Putin, and the disastrous geo-strategic implications of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the USSR, 23 years ago. Dependent on Ukrainian pipelines to transport its natural gas to European markets, the Kremlin oligarchy has no more popular base than the corrupt Yanukovych regime. It is vulnerable to similar right-wing provocations by middle class opposition forces or internal ethnic conflicts, such as the one in Chechnya, fueled by the United States and its allies. To the extent that it tries to use its military machine to block the offensive of imperialism’s far-right proxies, Moscow only runs the risk of triggering all-out war with NATO.

The only way forward is to mobilize the working class in Ukraine and internationally against the imperialist powers’ drive to impose far-right, neo-colonial regimes throughout the former USSR. In the absence of this, the imperialist powers will simply press ahead with mobilizing right-wing, middle class forces to destabilize the entire region, ultimately aiming to dismember Russia. The ex-Soviet republic of Georgia, whose US-backed government fought a brief war with Russia in 2008 after attacking Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, is now applying for a EU association agreement like that turned down in Ukraine by Yanukovych.

In yesterday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank in Moscow indicated that pro-Western opposition forces are preparing for operations like the Ukrainian putsch throughout the territories of the former USSR, including in Russia itself.

Praising the fascist-led putsch in Kiev in Orwellian fashion as “a new form of national self-realization, with its own leaders and heroes,” and calling for Ukraine to join NATO, she wrote: “Ukraine proved to be the weakest link in the post-Soviet chain. One must keep in mind that similar uprisings are also possible in other countries.”

Pointing to the foreign policy of German President Joachim Gauck, who has called for Germany to abandon restraints on its foreign and military policies observed since the fall of the Nazi regime, Shevtsova raised the possibility that Berlin might support similar operations against Russia.

She wrote, “One can therefore hope that the Ukrainians will not be disappointed in Europe again, and also that the democratic forces in Russia will be able to overcome their current disappointment with Europe.”

26 February, 2014

WSWS.org

By Chris Marsden

The intervention of the United States, Germany, France and other European powers in Ukraine led to a putsch by far-right forces on Saturday. The negotiated settlement that Foreign Ministers Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, Laurent Fabius of France, and Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland imposed in Kiev, aiming to provide a semi-legal façade for the opposition’s power grab, did not survive for a single day.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych agreed to form a national unity government within ten days that included opposition representatives and to reinstate the 2004 constitution passed after the US-backed Orange Revolution, depriving him of control over the heads of the security services. Presidential and parliamentary elections were to be held by December, during which time Yanukovych was to remain president, though only as a powerless figurehead.

The agreement signed was worthless.

France, Germany and Poland, with the United States operating in the background, had worked hand-in-glove with opposition leaders Vitali Klitschko of the Udar party, Arseniy Yatsenyuk of oligarch Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, and Oleh Tyahnybok of the fascistic Svoboda. As the opposition had relied on fascist thugs to provide the muscle for its street protests, a negotiated settlement with them was impossible.

After signing the deal Friday night, Yanukovych fled the capital Kiev, clearly fearing that if he stayed he would meet the same fate as Muammar Gaddafi, who was murdered at the end of the NATO war in Libya.

Opposition protesters, numbering around 25,000, are led by far right groups including the overtly fascist Right Sector, led by Dmitry Yarosh. They had formed militias who had taken control of the capital, surrounding the president’s administration and parliament.

Parliament—dominated by the opposition parties and supported by the former ruling Party of Regions, which disowned Yanukovych—voted to free Tymoshenko, who became prime minister in the Orange Revolution. It annulled her seven-year prison sentence for embezzlement. She flew from the eastern city of Kharkiv to Kiev to address protesters.

Legislators ousted Yanukovych in extra-legal fashion. Parliament voted 328-0 to impeach him, which was treated as an accomplished fact even though it requires approval by the Constitutional Court. Parliament then appointed Arsen Avakov as Interior Minister and Oleksandr Turchynov as speaker of the parliament, both from Fatherland. Turchynov was given temporary presidential powers. He told MPs they have until Tuesday to form a government.

An order has been given to arrest former ministers and for state security and the prosecutor’s office to investigate “grave crimes against the Ukrainian people, including those by former state leaders.”

In a further indication of the rightist character of the regime that has been installed, parliament voted that Ukrainian is the only official language, disenfranchising around one fifth of its population, which mainly speaks Russian.

The atmosphere is so poisonous that Ukrainian Chabad Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman has called on Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and even the country if possible. He cited “constant warnings concerning intentions to attack Jewish institutions.”

Yanukovych reportedly flew to Kharkov, near the border with Russia late Friday, when his private plane was reportedly stopped by security forces. The president’s own spokesman said Sunday that he does not know where Yanukovych is.

He released a pre-recorded television address, describing events in the Ukraine as a coup and a “repeat of the 1930s, when Nazis came to power in Germany and Austria.” MPs had been “beaten, pelted with stones and intimidated,” he added, and the parliamentary speaker, Volodymyr Rybak, forced to resign because he had been physically beaten.

The European powers and Washington were the driving forces behind this putsch, aiming to break Ukraine from Russia’s sphere of influence. They have gone very far towards fulfilling longstanding geostrategic ambitions—firstly those of Germany, which has repeatedly sought to bring Ukraine under its control, and then of the US, which has sought to weaken and isolate Russia ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Ukraine’s central government has now been seized by fascistic elements in alliance with various sections of the oligarchy, including some of those who were loyal to Yanukovych until last week.

It was possible to successfully organise such a putsch, utilising a few thousand fascist thugs and an “opposition” united by little more than a common desire for money and power, because Yanukovych’s regime proved corrupt and devoid of any popular support. It represented no one save that wing of the oligarchy that considered an alliance with Russia to be more conducive to its own self-enrichment than membership in the EU.

Yanukovych’s reliance on Russia to fend off the hostile moves of Washington, Berlin and Paris failed miserably. Last November, Russia agreed to buy $15 billion worth of Ukrainian bonds signed after Yanukovych cancelled the signing of an association agreement with the EU. Russian negotiator Vladimir Lukin refused to sign the agreement drawn up by Germany, France and Poland, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov calling on the EU powers to “rein in the opposition” that has “following the lead of armed extremists and pogromists who pose a direct threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty and constitutional order.”

However, Moscow has been almost permanently on a back foot since the onset of the Ukraine crisis. Its various manoeuvres are dictated by the fact that the regime headed by Vladimir Putin articulates nothing other than the interests of Russia’s own oligarchs, who are richer, but just as rotten as their Ukrainian counterparts.

Ukraine’s eastern districts, including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, the Crimea and Sevastopol have threatened to seek autonomy, if not outright independence. They have been in meetings with the Russian Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee Chief, Alexei Pushkov.

These are the most economically vital industrial areas in the country. The Crimea is particularly sensitive for Russian national security and is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, in Sevastopol.

The crisis in Ukraine testifies to two historically determined and essential political issues that must now be resolved.

Firstly, at no point in the unfolding crisis has the Ukrainian working class had the chance to take an independent stand in defence of its own interests. This has left events to be dominated by competing oligarchs and the imperialist powers, who are now threatening to divide the country, which could end in civil war and even a great-power war for control of Ukraine.

The only social force capable of halting the intrigues of the imperialist powers and defeating their fascist hirelings is the international working class.

Secondly, the absence of a fight-back in the working class is bound up with the decades-long attack on its political consciousness by Stalinism. The ability of the US and its European allies to dictate events is the direct outcome of the dissolution of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.

This laid the basis for the rule of Russia’s mafia cliques under Putin and opened up the former Soviet republics to the predatory ambitions of the imperialist powers.

24 February, 2014

WSWS.org

 

By Farooque Chowdhury

Violence has again placed Venezuela on news headlines. And, it has exposed the source of the violence: vested interests, the rich with imperialist connections. Propaganda based on lies is also being exposed. Politics in Venezuela is polarized by class interests.

To many, the situation in Venezuela appears confusing. Reports of protests by “millions” and “violence” by authorities cloud perceptions of a part of Venezuela news-audience.

But a careful look takes away confusion created by a part of mainstream media.

In today’s Venezuela, it’s not possible to perceive incidents without considering a major line of contradiction moving through the society: politics of the poor and of the rich. Political divide in Venezuela is now based on poor-rich interests. Incidents and interpretations, actors and their role are now being governed by the conflicting interests.

The two – the poor and the rich – stand opposed to each other. Societies going through transition process can’t escape the reality of the contradictions related to this divide, which is fundamental. Failure to identify the contradictions complicates interpretation of incidents.

Venezuelan media network controlled by the native rich has an edge: propagate whatever they like, manipulate in whatever way they like. Then, they have their external class-allies. Their money power, experience and efficiency turn stronger with their connections. “As the US political scientists Ronald Sylvia and Constantine Danopoulos explain, the availability of such cultural capital is restricted: ‘Weekend shopping trips to Miami were the order of the day for the bourgeois classes.” (Lee Salter “What’s going on in Venezuela?”, February 21, 2014)

It’s an economic connection, a financial connection, a cultural connection, a political connection of the few native rich with their global masters. Propaganda appears “factual” with images and news reports craftily concocted by this connection.

Dr. Salter, an academic from the UK, describes an incident experienced personally: “So, when a story needs to get out about the dramatic abuse of journalists (in one occasion I noted a human rights group release a story about such an abuse, which I investigated to find the original footage of a camera operator being jostled on a picket line), the lines of communication are open, and a primed international media is ready to accept anything that conforms to expectations.”

Dr. Salter cites two more experiences. The first one is with now world-“famous” Venezuelan “darkness”:

“It is thus that I heard from an ‘exile’, a really cool, funky hippie-type whose plight had caught the sympathy of everyone in her wide network of English friends: (paraphrased) ‘Chavez hates the people, he hates anyone with money. He is trying to stop the dams from producing electricity so that rich people can’t have televisions and things. In Caracas they only have 4 hours of electricity per day’. My response: I’ve just come back from ten days in Venezuela, and there was one power cut of about 20 minutes.”

And, the other one is:

 

“Another time I was stuck with rather scary English-speaking Venezuelan in a cable car in Caracas. She and her partner began talking to me and my friend about lightbulbs: ‘you know anything about Venezuela, about Chavez? He’s a communist you know? He’s trying to destroy the country. He’s trying to force everybody to have energy saving lightbulbs…but this isn’t Cuba’. After 5 minutes of ranting, my friend in his inimitable Irish accent gently explained that they have energy saving lightbulbs in Ireland and he doesn’t feel particularly oppressed by them.”

A long drought, as Salter describes the background of energy saving lightbulbs, reduced water levels in hydropower dams in Venezuela that, in turn, reduced power generation. There were no required number of engineers with the expertise of working with the dams and rivers. At the same time, there was the increase in the sales of consumer electrical good including refrigerators, which was encouraged by the government to improve the quality of life. “So, drought + lack of care for hydroelectric plants + increase demand on electricity = power cuts. The short-term solution: energy saving items.” This was a Chavez-“sin” in the world of the rich.

The current of propaganda turns a laughingstock as is exposed by a researcher:

“When quizzing Thomas Muhr, a researcher on Venezuela at the University of Bristol, about the mania over lightbulbs, he told me that it was all led by a rumor that Chavez was placing video cameras in them so he could spy on them in their homes. Quite.”

Salter, an expert on media coverage of Venezuela, makes a comparison:

“It is worth reflecting how other states of emergency are mediated. After the 2011 riots in the UK, 3000 young people were swept up in a dragnet and sent to kangaroo courts for what would no doubt be called in Venezuela, a protest against an out of touch and corrupt government. The repressive clampdown was cheered on by the British media.”

Then a hard fact is told by him:

“Yet if the current President Maduro or Chavez before him had received as small a proportion of the vote as Cameron, Venezuela would probably have been invaded by now.”

Doesn’t a perspective, of biasness of mainstream propaganda, emerge? It’s a perspective of, broadly, interest of hegemony, and, actually, a class interest. The view based on class interest is described by Salter:

“The most recent protests are indeed about a lot of things, and no doubt reflect a plethora of voices …. Indeed, Venezuela still has … a lot of problems. Yet the ‘opposition’ is as concerned with poverty as its leaders were when they presided over massive levels of poverty. They are as concerned with human rights as they were during the Caracazo Massacre. They are as concerned with democracy as they were when there was de facto exclusion of most of the population from political life. The big fear is the change in this latter. And it is this fear of the ‘plebs’ that drives the ‘opposition’.”

The opposition is not only driven by the fear of the plebs struggling to take control of their own lives to improve their life, whose 67% had to live on less than $2 a day in 1997. The super-rich like to regain their lost hegemony.

To counter the plebs, a part of mainstream media plays its role as it’s owned by the ‘opposition’, the super-propertied absolute minority of the population. They have backing of the external masters. The minority of the population was skimming oil profit to fuel their wasteful ultra-luxury in Miami and New York, in London, Paris and Geneva, was engaged with land-hoarding, keeping idle thousands of hectares of land in the hope of pocketing a huge profit in future, while the country could not produce enough to feed its population. The majority, the poor, challenged this “democratic” land hoarding practice of the minority. The mode of challenge was closer to the mode of Lincoln.

The mainstream media stories ridicule their creators as it’s exposed as cooked.

So, stories about and photographs of “brutality unleashed” by Chavez followers are circulated on Twitter and picked up by a part of mainstream media.

So, one finds photographs of protest and oppression from “Venezuela”, as Dr. Dawg has presented in a blog on February 17, 2014: “Some brutal cops, with nice woolly caps and fur collars … guard against the 24°C Caracas weather, [they are] visiting police officers from Bulgaria”, “a re-purposed photo taken in Argentina”, “a photo from Chile”, “an unfortunate fellow, shot in April and then again in the exact-same way during the current protests”, “a iconic photo, which CNN had to admit that the graphic photo was actually taken in Singapore”, “one from Greece”, “an absolutely shameless steal from Egypt: this photo became known world-wide during the Arab Spring”, “a heart-wrenching picture of babies in laundry-baskets, with the question, What kind of revolution is this? A photo from Honduras”, “a religious procession, reincarnated as an anti-government protest”. (“Constructing ‘Venezuela’ Protests: a Photo Gallery (fixed)”, February 17, 2014)

These photographs from other countries have been spread as photographs of violence unleashed by the Venezuelan authorities. There are also similar photographs from Brazil, Catalonia and Syria.

This “objectivity” in news and photographs as tools of mainstream politics is not only a Venezuela case. This is an old practice mainstream politics resorts to in other countries and societies. History is replete with this type of examples. A very recent example is Syria. Prior to Syria, there was Iraq: Saddam’s WMD, actually a long tube. There are countries in South Asia that also bear stark example of this practice.

This practice finds sudden emergence of writers preferring alternate media. They capitalize credibility of alternate media, sell biased political stories by blurring major questions in concerned society, and wage, as part of a long-term intervention plan, media and psychological war against the society. A part of alternate media “wisely” lends its space to these newly emergent writers. And, attempts to befool audience move on. And, plans are being implemented to manufacture heroes with long and “valuable” experience as Leopoldo Lopez in Venezuela is being made although Wikileaks cables don’t portray him favorably.

It’ll be befooling none but self to assume that the doctoring or “mistaken” use of photographs and distortion of facts are work of a few young boys and students. These can’t be done without expert service and resource. A very few in this world has that resource and capacity.

Dr. Dawg writes: The present “manufactured crisis is a re-run. Anyone remember the massive demo/counter-demo at the Miraflores palace in 2002, the lead-up to a short-lived coup against Hugo Chavez.”

“There is no flabby pretense of ‘objectivity’ on the part of the international media when it comes to Venezuela. That country poses a stark threat to the hegemonic order … Having enough oil wealth to say No to all that, Venezuela created its own counter-hegemonic partnership … And domestically, while all we hear about is toilet-paper shortages and inflation, there has been substantial progress on a number of fronts for years now – a sharp reduction of dire poverty, major advances in education, reduced child mortality, and rapid steps taken towards gender equality, maternal health, and environmental protection.”

Jack Johnston, a science teacher from England, recently experienced a situation in San Cristobal, Venezuela, first hand as he was spending nine days there. A group of students, according to Johnston, was complaining about insecurity, but was demanding the fall of the government. When asked about the response he had observed from the authorities to the situation, he replied, “Inexplicably non-existent. It’s far from a repressive crackdown, the exact opposite. They’ve allowed a small number of students to occupy a main crossroads and dozens of blocs without any opposition…I explained to them [opposition activists] that there’s no way this would be allowed to continue for more than one day in my country”. (Ewan Robertson, “Venezuelan Government Sends Army to Combat ‘Grave’ Opposition Disorder near Colombian Border”, February 22, 2014)

This type of “objective” news reporting happens and political “protests” are organized when one tries to move outside of the Empire’s hegemony. Decades ago, Tehran experienced engaging of hired hoodlums to overthrow Mosaddegh.

Plans are drawn for destabilization and intervention. It’s part of regular work by the world capital. Today’s Venezuela-violence reiterates this part of politics by forces of hegemony.

Farooque Chowdhury is Dhaka-based freelancer.

25 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Alan MacLeod

In recent days, angry anti-government protests have erupted in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. If we are to believe some influential Venezuelan bloggers, the government is sending teams of motorbike-riding death-squads roaming around rich neighbourhoods looking for people to kill. Social media is awash with pictures of children, apparently having been beaten to within an inch of their life by government thugs. All this, the New York Times eagerly reports, is making Secretary of State John Kerry “increasingly concerned.” Surely this must be the beginning of a democratic uprising against an authoritarian dictator?

All this does not sit easily with the reaction elsewhere, however. President Morales of Bolivia alleged that, far from being a spontaneous democratic uprising, this was a US-financed coup d’etat which was trying to destroy Hugo Chavez’s humanist legacy. Morales went on to say that “on behalf of the Bolivian people, we send our energy and support to the courageous Venezuelan people and president Nicolás Maduro. ” President Fernandez de Kirchner sent her solidarity to the President and people of Venezuela in the face of violent attacks on its sovereignty. Similar statements have been made by the Presidents of Ecuador and Nicaragua and even from political parties in Europe. Indeed, Unasur, the Union of South American Nations, has stood firmly behind President Maduro, while even the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs praised the government for its moderation in dealing with violent protesters and castigated the White House for its “misguided policy toward South America.”

But what on Earth has the White House got to do with all this? And why are so many respected international bodies talking about imperialism? You would be forgiven for not knowing, as no New York Times or Washington Post article has revealed the fact that Washington has been funding and training the heads of these protests for at least 12 years. Indeed, the US government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to overthrow the Venezuelan, Bolivian and Ecuadorean governments. Those leading the protests, Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, are not students, but two of the wealthiest people in South America; Machado is a personal friend of George W. Bush. She was also involved in the last three opposition attempts to overthrow the government: in 2002, 2002-2003 and 2004. In 2002, with the financial, technical and political help of the US government, she and her co-conspirators kidnapped President Hugo Chavez and installed Pedro Carmona as President. He immediately suspended the constitution, sacked all politicians, sacked all judges in the country, suspended human rights, gave himself power to rule by decree, and even changed the name of the country . They were only stopped by a massive revolt, some 25-50 times the size of the current protests, of ordinary, poor Venezuelan citizens.

Prominent among the current protesters are students from Caracas’ elite, fee-paying universities, who wish for change in the country. And yet Venezuela has changed enormously since Hugo Chavez’s election in 1998. Poverty was reduced by 50%, extreme poverty by 72% . The bottom 40% of Venezuela’s population have seen their slice of the economic pie expand by nearly half and those in the economic percentile 40-70 have also seen their incomes rise. How did the government manage this? By destroying the middle class? In fact, those in percentiles between 70-90 have seen their comparative income stay virtually the same. It is only the top 10% of Venezuelan society, and in particular, the top 1% who have seen their incomes fall. It is from these groups that these young Venezuelans disproportionately come from. In 1998, Venezuela was the most unequal country in the most unequal region in the world, with some of the highest proportions of private jet ownership and child malnutrition in the world. Thanks to massive social programs, a national health service was created and UNESCO hailed Venezuela’s achievements in reducing illiteracy. Very little of this has ever been reported by the media.

But the government was far from winning universal support. Chief among their adversaries were the Venezuelan middle and upper classes, who use their power in business, finance and the media to put pressure on the government. Venezuela still faces a host of pressing social and economic problems, some of which have been highlighted by protesters as key issues. But to characterize these protests as democratic movements against an illegitimate government is altogether misleading. Let us not forget that Maduro’s party has won 18 elections since 1998, elections which have drawn near-universal praise for their fairness, with Jimmy Carter stating that Venezuelan elections are “the best in the world. ”This latest attempt at revolution can only be seen as an attempt by the upper-classes to regain their power lost under the Chavez government.

It turns out those death squads and the pictures of tortured children were manipulated , as were our emotions. But triflings such as this matter little to the media, who will continue to bang the drum for regime change. They are unlikely to get their wish. For all its faults, and there are many, the majority are standing behind the government, with only  23% of Venezuelans supporting the protests (not that one would guess this given the media coverage) .Tread carefully through the minefield of Venezuelan politics.

Alan MacLeod is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow, studying the media’s portrayal of Bolivia and Venezuela.

25 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

 

By Reuters

According to UN special rapporteur, Israel violates Palestinians’ rights in West Bank, Gaza through occupation, confiscation of land, ‘ethnic cleansing’ of East Jerusalem.

Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip appear to amount to apartheid due to its systematic oppression of the Palestinian people and de facto expropriation of their land, a United Nations investigator said in a report.

Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said that Palestinian rights are being violated by Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory and “ethnic cleansing” of East Jerusalem.

Gaza, despite the disengagement of Israel in 2005, remains “occupied” under an unlawful Israeli blockade that controls borders, airspace and coastal waters, and especially hurts farmers and fishermen, he said. The humanitarian situation in the Hamas-ruled enclave is dire amid fuel shortages, he added.

UN member states should consider imposing a ban on imports of produce from Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Falk said in his final report to the UN Human Rights Council after serving six years in the independent post.

In a section entitled “acts potentially amounting to segregation and apartheid”, he analyzed Israeli policies, including “continuing excessive use of force by Israeli security forces” and unlawful killings that he said are “part of acts carried out in order to maintain dominance over Palestinians”.

Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to military laws, while Jewish settlers face a civil law system, he said. Israel also violates their rights to work and education, freedoms of movement and residence, and of expression and assembly, he said.

Ten years ago the UN’s International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s separation wall inside the West Bank is illegal, he noted. Israel says it is a security barrier.

“It seems incontestable that Israeli measures do divide the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory along racial lines, create separate reserves for Palestinians and expropriate their land,” Falk wrote in his 22-page report.

“The combined effect of the measures designed to ensure security for Israeli citizens, to facilitate and expand settlements, and, it would appear, to annex land is hafrada (the Hebrew word for separation), discrimination and systematic oppression of, and domination over, the Palestinian people.”

There was no immediate reaction from Israel, which boycotted the council it accuses of bias for 19 months, returning in October 2013. The Jewish state left after accusing the forum of bias when it set up a fact-finding mission on the settlements.

Controversy

Falk, an American law professor who is Jewish, has long been a controversial figure. After taking up the post in May 2008, he compared Israeli forces’ actions in the Gaza Strip to those of the Nazis in wartime Europe.

Months later, he was detained at Ben Gurion airport and deported by Israeli authorities after being barred from crossing into Palestinian areas to carry out his investigation.

Last June he said he would not resign and accused critics of calling him anti-Semitic to divert attention from his scrutiny of Israeli policies. UN Watch, an activist group that Falk labels as a ‘pro-Israel lobbying organization’, and the United States had called for him to quit.

Falk said in his latest report that businesses and countries should examine who profits from the “settlements of Israel and other unlawful Israeli activities” and take appropriate steps.

“Considering the fact that the European Union remains one of the most important trading partners for the settlements, with annual exports worth $300 million, a ban on settlement produce would have a significant impact,” he said.

His previous appeals for divestment have brought results and have encouraged governments to be more vigilant, he said.

Royal HaskoningDHV, a Dutch company, ended a contract with Jerusalem’s municipality to build a wastewater treatment plant in East Jerusalem and a Swedish-Norwegian bank Nordea excluded Cemex from its investment portfolio due to its extraction of non-renewable natural resources from Palestine, according to Falk.

 

24 February 2014