Archives: Articles

By Dr Gideon Polya

Courageous, anti-racist social humanist and former Australian Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam (1916-2014), died on 21 October 2014 at the age of 98. Gough Whitlam was a courageous, intelligent and visionary social democrat who transformed Australia in 3 short years (1972-1975) before his removal in a US-backed Coup. Whitlam gave Australia peace, womens rights, equal pay for women, no fault divorce, Aboriginal rights, Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territory , universal free access to health services and tertiary education, rejection of explicit racism and abolition of the White Australia Policy, but his humane legacy is being attacked by the neoliberal Coalition and Labor Right [1-3].

Gough Whitlam came from a privileged upper middle class family and was a Queens Counsel (QC) barrister. A veteran of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in World War 2 he joined the Australian Labor Party (ALP) after the war and courageously crashed through to reform the ALP and make it a social democratic party for all thoughtful and aspirational Australians as a well as for trade unionists.

Pro-peace, pro-humanity, and pro-human rights Whitlam transformed Australia in a mere 3 years before his removal in a US-backed Coup by a CIA-linked Governor General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975 (The Dismissal). Tributes have flowed for Gough Whitlam and his immense, enduring social legacy but the appalling Mainstream media of Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy Australia have ignored the horrible reality that in the 4 decades since his Dismissal, both the 2 major political groups in Australia, the conservative Liberal Party and National Party Coalition and the Right-dominated Labor Party (known collectively as the Lib-Labs or Liberal-Laborals) have sought to roll back his pro-peace, pro-humanity, pro-human rights, pro-education, pro-equity and pro-opportunity legacy.

The pro-peace, pro-humanity, pro-environment, pro-equity, pro-opportunity, and pro-human rights agenda of Whitlam is in stark contrast to that of the pro-war, pro-Zionist, pro-fossil fuels, anti-science, anti-environment, climate criminal, war criminal, US lackey Lib-Labs. Indeed the Whitlam agenda very much resembles the pro-peace, pro-humanity, pro-environment, pro-equity, pro-opportunity, and pro-human rights agenda of the Australian Greens. The Labor Party was angered when the Greens published a picture of the late Gough Whitlam above the Greens logo and referred to his landmark decision to abolish university fees (a position reversed by the subsequent Hawke Labor Government).

Progressive Australian journalist Ben Eltham writing in the Alternative Australian web magazine New Matilda has stated the appalling obvious that is being resolutely ignored by the Mainstream journalist, politician and academic presstitutes, specifically that many of the great advances under Gough Whitlam are being reversed or weakened by the dominant neoliberal culture: “Since 1975, Whitlam’s achievements have never been under greater attack than today” [4].

Below is a summary of PM Gough Whitlam’s social democracy achievements (with subsequent actual or attempted roll-backs by the neoliberal, US lackey Lib-Labs in parentheses):

1. Whitlam sought greater independence from America .

Whitlam sought more balanced, peaceful and friendly relations with Developing countries, a policy that was not only humane but eminently rational with 3 billion Asians and Africans, half of them Muslims, between Australia and Mother England. Whitlam raised the ire of the Americans because of his opposition to the Vietnam War and Israeli state terrorism and his demand for clarity over the Pine Gap spying establishment in Central Australia . (After the US-backed Dismissal of PM Gough Whitlam in 1975, the Australian Labor Party recognized that its central policy must be “all the way with the USA ” and that necessarily included fervent support for genocidally racist Apartheid Israel . Deviations from Washington or Tel Aviv were subject to extreme punishment. Right wing Labor Opposition leader Mark Latham wanted to bring Australian troops home from Iraq “by Christmas” but was publicly vetoed by the US ambassador in the 2004 election. Right wing Labor PM Kevin Rudd opposed the Iraq War, proposed destruction of Afghan opium poppy crops, mildly objected to Apartheid Israeli violation of Australians and Australian sovereignty, and wanted a big Mining Tax on mostly foreign-owned mining companies – he was removed in a US-approved, Mining Company-funded and pro-Zionist -led Coup on 24 June 2010. Up to 2,500 child-killing US Marines were stationed in Darwin under Labor PM Gillard with more adumbrated by the Coalition plus more joint exercises and more nuclear-armed ship visits)

2. Whitlam opposed US Asian wars.

Whitlam opposed the horrendous US wars against Vietnam , Cambodia and Laos that were ultimately associated with deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation totalling 15 million, 6 million and 1 million, respectively [2]. (With the exception of Whitlam, all post-1990 Australian PMs variously participated in US Asian wars associated with deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation totalling 4.6 million for the Iraqi Genocide, 5.5 million for the Afghan Genocide, and 40 million in total).

3. Whitlam brought Australian troops home from Vietnam .

Whitlam’s first actions on gaining office were to arrange for the immediate return of Australian soldiers from Vietnam , the freeing of conscientious objectors from prison, and the cessation of the “birthday ballot” conscription of young Australian men for killing Asians. (All Lib-Lab PMs with the exception of Whitlam sent Australian forces to US Asian wars that since 1950 were associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation).

4. Whitlam defended Australian sovereignty over Pine Gap.

Whitlam wanted clarity over the function of the joint US-Australian spying facility at Pine Gap in Central Australia . This facility had (and still has) a key role in US nuclear terrorism and Whitlam’s concerns are among the key reasons for the US-backed Dismissal. (Under successive Lib-Lab Governments Pine Gap operations remained secret and are key to spying on everyone in the world for the US and Apartheid Israel and for targeting war criminal US drone strikes from Africa to South Asia ).

5. Whitlam defended Australians’ right to know.

Whitlam sought clarity over the function of the joint US-Australian spying facility at Pine Gap in Central Australia, this raising the ire of the US and leading in part to his Dismissal. (Successive Lib-Lab governments have been obsessively secretive and are about to pass bipartisan-supported “anti-terror” legislation that criminalizes reportage of intelligence abuses).

6. Whitlam famously visited and thence recognized China .

As leader of the Opposition and thence as Australian PM Whitlam visited China . He “got away” with visiting “Communist China” at the height of the Cold War despite howls of protest from the racist right because his visit was quickly followed by that of war criminal and mass murderer US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. China is now Australia ‘s biggest trading partner. (According to Wikileaks, Labor PM Rudd suggested US war with China to the Americans and former Labor Opposition leader and Australian Ambassador to Washington, Kim Beazley, offered Australian soldiers in that eventuality. The Coalition and Labor Right are Sinophobic and Russophobic and partners in the US policy of “containing” China and Russia . In a great irony, former Coalition PM Malcolm Fraser, who was appointed caretaker PM by Governor-General Kerr after he dismissed PM Whitlam, has become an important critic of Lib-Lab Sinophobia and other policies, stating that “Slavish devotion to the US [is] a foreign policy folly for Australia” [5] ).

7. Whitlam was pro-science and pro-intellectual.

Whitlam was a thinker and definitely pro-science as reflected in private comments, public comments and support for universities, research, the environment and intellectual pursuits. (The Lib-Labs are anti-science, in being effective climate change denialist, pro-coal, pro-gas, and anti-environment, and for variously slashing university, Australian Research Council (ARC), Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and industry research funding. The Lib-Labs recently passed draconian legislation providing for 10 years in prison for scientists who mention to non-Australians any of thousands of items in a 353-page Defence and Strategic Goods List under the terms of the US Alliance-inspired Defence Trade Controls Bill [6]).

8. Whitlam was pro-universities and pro-higher education.

Whitlam was an intellectual, funded expansion of universities, and made tertiary education accessible to everybody regardless of parental wealth (see item #9 below). (Under Labor PM Bob Hawke’s Education Minister John Dawkins, Hawke Labor “Dawkinized” and dumbed-down research-plus-teaching universities through fusing them with non-research, teaching-only Colleges of Advanced Education ( CAEs). Labor PM Julia Gillard slashed billions of dollars from the universities. The present Coalition Government is starving and deregulating higher education, with adumbrated hugely increased Federal Government funding of Mickey Mouse private tertiary institutions such as that which gave PM Abbott’s daughter a $60,000 “scholarship”).

9. Whitlam introduced free tertiary education.

Free tertiary education was variously available in Europe . Whitlam’s introduction of free tertiary education for Australia suddenly made tertiary education accessible to all Australians regardless of wealth. This was a huge advance on the social humanist agenda of maximizing human opportunity and happiness. ( Free tertiary education was reversed by the Hawke Labor Government with introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) loan system enabling the students to pay off the re-introduced fees over many years as a levy on earnings above a particular level. The current Coalition plans to greatly increase fees and hence HECS Debt, interest payments and hence the worsening wealth-based social divide. Students doing a basic Bachelor of Arts degree may now start postgraduate adult life at 21 with a HECS debt of $100,000).

10. Whitlam introduced Medibank (now called Medicare) and free health services for all.

Whitlam introduced free hospital and other medical services for everyone called Medibank (now called Medicare). This was a major social humanist advance that saved lives and suffering on a huge scale and also saved the poor from crippling penury from medical costs. (Neoliberal greed inevitably meant the growth of private medical insurance, ostensibly for “the doctor of your choice”, that enabled the well-off to avoid long delays in public hospitals and get immediate attention. The current Coalition Government proposal for co-payments for medical attention is part of a neoliberal push for a wealth-based US-style health system which sees 45,000 Americans dying from lack of medical cover each year and 1.5 million Americans dying from preventable causes each year [7]. About 80,000 Australians die from preventable causes each year [8]).

11. Whitlam stood up for Womens Rights and Equal Pay.

Gough Whitlam, backed by his marvellous and forthright wife of 70 nearly years, Margaret Whitlam, stood up for womens rights and in particular for equal pay for women. The free tertiary education reform also greatly empowered women. (Under the Lib-Labs child care is still not fully tax deductible while negative gearing costs for prosperous investors investing in equities or property are tax deductible. There is still a large gap between male and female earnings in Australia . Appallingly and appallingly ignored by Australia ‘s Mainstream media presstitutes, 34% of Australian women and 16% of Australian men have been sexually abused as children [9]).

12. Whitlam gave Australia the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act.

Whitlam Labor’s 1975 Racial Discrimination Act outlawed Federal racial discrimination and was important for human rights and Indigenous Australian human rights in particular as well as outlawing racial discrimination in immigration. (The 1975 Racial Discrimination Act was grossly violated by Lib-Labs in relation to Northern Territory (NT) Aborigines and the Coalition Intervention in the NT with the backing of racist Labor. Labor in government also subsequently violated the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act in relation to Afghan refugees fleeing the US- , Zionist- and Australia-backed Afghan Genocide and Tamil refugees fleeing the US- , Zionist- and Australia-backed Tamil Genocide) .

13. Whitlam legislated Land Rights for NT Aborigines, notably the Gurindji People.

The Indigenous Australian Gurundji People of the NT had gone on strike for many years for decent pay from the British Lord Vestey who owned the Wave Hill cattle station on Gurundji land. Whitlam legislated Land Rights for NT Aborigines, most notably the Gurindji People. (The removal of Whitlam from office forestalled further such action. In the 21st century there is big Lib-Lab pressure for Aborigines to quit traditional land in remote areas and move to towns for key services).

14. Whitlam addressed urban Australia and suburban services, notably sewerage.

Whitlam was conscious of the basic needs (e.g. sewerage, schools, roads) of ordinary suburban Australians, 90% of whom live in cities or towns. Whitlam addressed urbanization in both the city suburbs and in towns in regional Australia (Albury-Wodonga straddling the Victoria and New South Wales border being a major example). (The climate criminal Coalition favours dirty roads over badly needed rail services to outer suburbs, noting that rail transport of people is 20 times more energy efficient than car transport. Successive neoliberal Lib-Lab governments have favoured horizontal, outwards spread of Australian cities rather than vertical, centralized growth ).

15. Whitlam introduced major family law reforms and no fault divorce.

Whitlam, a Queens Counsel (QC) barrister, introduced major family law reforms and notably no fault divorce. (Under Lib-Labs forced removal of children from Aboriginal mothers has reached an historic high notwithstanding the “Sorry” to the Stolen Generations by Labor PM Kevin Rudd) [10]).

16. Whitlam attempted to buy back the farm from foreign miners.

Whitlam attempted to raise billions of dollars in loans to get Australian ownership of major mineral resources (e.g. minerals, coal and gas), Unfortunately, the Arab Oil Crisis due to Apartheid Israeli militarism lead to a worldwide economic downturn that involved higher inflation and unemployment in Australia with restricted access to capital. Whitlam Labor’s attempt to raise money from oil-rich Arab sources rather than traditional “White” European sources was a red rag to Australian racists and led to the “Khemlani Loans Scandal” beat-up that helped damage the Labor Government when the king-maker Rupert Murdoch’s Media Empire that helped install Whitlam in 1972 turned against him in 1975. (Labor PM Kevin Rudd attempted to get a better share of mining royalties in 2010 but was betrayed and removed in a US-approved, foreign Miner-funded and pro-Zionist-led Coup. PM Julia Gillard drafted a toothless Mining Tax. The Coalition opposed the Mining Tax which it abolished in 2014 with the help of the Mining billionaire Clive Palmer MP’s Palmer United Party (PUP)).

17. Whitlam secured welfare for single mothers.

In addition to his pro-women actions in relation to family law, free tertiary education and equal pay, Whitlam legislated for welfare for single mothers. (Labor PM Julia Gillard drastically cut welfare for single mothers and the present Coalition Government has the same callous attitude.

18. Whitlam espoused opportunity for all.

Whitlam was a social humanist who believed in maximizing the opportunity for everyone to better themselves. This is in stark contrast to the currently dominant neoliberal agenda of maximizing the freedom of the rich and advantaged to make wealth from the world’s ‘ physical and human resources with benefits “trickling down” to the poor and disadvantaged. ( Whitlam’s social humanism is utterly rejected rejected by the pro-One Percenter neoliberal Lib-Labs. The One Percenter and Ten Percenter share of national income has steadily increased in the Anglosphere countries including Australia since the Whitlam era [11] ).

19. Whitlam sought peaceful engagement with Asia .

In addition to opposing US Asian wars, Whitlam sought friendly relations with Asian countries, most notably Indonesia , Japan and China . (The cowardly and racist Lib-Lab policy of helping the US in killing Asians and devastating their countries has meant that Australia is complicit in 40 million Asian deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation in US Asian wars since 1950).

20. Whitlam abolished the White Australian Policy.

Whitlam’s predecessor as Leader of the Labor Party was Arthur Calwell a traditional Labor racist who is remembered for his appallingly racist comments about Asians e.g. “Two Wongs do not make a White”, “We can have a white Australia, we can have a black Australia, but a mongrel Australia is impossible, and I shall not take the first steps to establish the precedents which will allow the floodgates to be opened”, “We will not let the yellow hordes contaminate our golden shores”, “ Japanese women should not be allowed to pollute our shores” and “No red-blooded Australian wants to see a chocolate-coloured Australia in the 1980s”. What was popularly known as the White Australian Policy excluded non-Europeans from Australia from 1901 when Australia ‘s first Prime Minister Edmund Barton in debating the Commonwealth Immigration Restriction Bill (1901) stated “The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of an Englishman and the Chinaman.” Whitlam abolished the racist White Australian Policy in 1974 [3]. (Successive racist Lib-Lab Governments permitted the New White Australia Policy that makes acquiring visas for travelling to Australia much more difficult for non-Whites that for Whites and “Honorary Whites” like Japanese ).

21. Whitlam advanced human rights, especially for women and Aborigines.

Whitlam advanced human rights by abolishing conscription, abolishing the White Australia Policy, opposing Apartheid in South Africa, opposing Israeli state terrorism, stopping Australia’s involvement in Vietnam, promoting equal pay for women, legislating NT Aboriginal land rights and through the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act, (There has been gross Lib-Lab human rights abuse in relation to children, refugees, Muslims, subject Asian populations and Indigenous Australians).

22. Whitlam reduced the voting age to 18.

Whitlam reduced the voting age to 18 arguing that if they were old enough to die for Australia in wars then they were old enough to have a say in elections. (Lib-Labs and media presstitutes are involved in gross deception of the young in a spin-driven, look-the-other-way Australia . Thus, for example, Australian Mainstream media and Lib-Lab politicians deceive the young by steadfastly ignoring the realities that (a) Australia’s historical Carbon Debt from greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is $1.7 trillion and increasing at $300 billion each year and (b) undergraduate teaching can be provided for about 10% of the current cost using casual academics and for about 1% of the current through part-time expert accrediting assessments for top quality courses emplaced for free on the web (MOOCs) by top institutions like 152-Nobel-Laureate Harvard and 83-Nobel-Laureate MIT [12, 13]).

23. Whitlam initiated protection of wild Australia .

Whitlam was pro-environment and commenced protection of wild Australia e.g. stopping barbarians drilling for oil on the Great Barrier Reef . (In the 21st century, anti-environment, climate criminal Lib-Labs are threatening forests, ecosystems, species, and the Great Barrier Reef . Under the climate criminal Lib-Labs Australia (population 24 million) is one of the worst annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters. Australia’s annual Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution is about 2 billion tonnes CO2-e , this giving an Australian annual per capita GHG pollution of 83 tonnes CO2-e per person per year as compared to the World average of 9 tonnes CO2-e per person per year and Bangladesh’s 0.9 tonnes CO2-e per person per year [14]. The climate criminal Australian Coalition Government and Labor Right are effectively climate change denialist through resolute commitment to climate change inaction and in so doing is committed to climate criminal One Percenter and Ten Percenter wealth acquisition at the expense of young people and future generations ).

24. Whitlam fostered intellectual debate.

Whitlam achieved leadership of the Labor Party and thence of Australia by overcoming the traditional class warfare and racism of the traditional Labor Party and bringing on board educated, middle class Australians to unite with the Trade Union movement to get a better deal for all ordinary Australians. (The honest debate espoused by Whitlam has been replaced by lying Lib-Lab spin. Major matters such as Australia ‘s huge Carbon Debt, free tertiary education, and the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) perversion and subversion of Australian politicians, journalists, academics and institutions are strictly off limits for public discussion).

25. Whitlam opposed Apartheid.

In 1971 Australia hosted a tour by the South African rugby team, the Springboks. 6 Australian players refused to play against the race-based Springboks and Whitlam’s predecessor, Coalition PM Billy Mc Mahon declared that their behaviour was a disgrace and insisted the tour would continue. Whitlam placed a government ban on sporting tours involving South African teams, a policy that was retained by subsequent Coalition and Labor governments. (The Coalition and Labor are extremely pro-Zionist and are the strongest supporters after the US of nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel that excludes 72% of its Palestinian subjects from voting for the government ruling all of Palestine ).

26. Whitlam supported human rights for Palestinians.

Whitlam gave recognition to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and approved the establishment of a PLO liaison office in Canberra . Under Whitlam , Australia also voted for a resolution equating Zionism with racism at a UN women’s conference in Mexico . According to the pro-Zionist Australian Jewish News “W hitlam, the prime minister who shines brightest in Labor’s pantheon, had an “immoral, unethical and ungrateful attitude” towards Israel , his nemesis Bob Hawke allegedly said” [15]. ( The Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted Australian Lib-Labs are the most fervent supporters of Apartheid Israel after the Zionist -perverted US).

27. Whitlam supported Arab Australians.

Whitlam moved away from the US and more towards the non-aligned movement and criticized Israeli attacks on Lebanon as “terrorism”. In arguing policy of “evenhandedness and neutrality ” with the hostile Zionist Lobby Whitlam stated “You people should realise that there is a large Christian Arab community in this country”. (The Coalition and Labor Right try to outdo each other in slavish support for Apartheid Israel even when it is violating Australians and Australian sovereignty. Under the Lib-Labs Australia has proscribed 19 organizations as “terrorists”, all being Muslim in origin and including 4 Palestinian, Lebanese and Somali groups (Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Al-Shabaab) opposing violent and deadly foreign occupation of their countries, variously by Apartheid Israel, the US or the US Alliance. In contrast the Lib-Labs removed from its list of proscribed terrorist organizations the Zionist terrorist organization Irgun that killed Allied servicemen before, during and after WW2, collaborated with the Nazis, and was responsible for the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Fervent Lib-Lab support for the Zionist-promoted US War on Muslims involving 12 million Muslim deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation since 1990 is linked to widespread and entrenched anti-Arab anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Muslim terror hysteria in Australia involving verbal and physical attacks on Muslims and most appallingly on Muslim women [8, 16-18]).

28. Whitlam supported the Arts.

Whitlam supported the Arts in numerous ways and this led to a renaissance of specifically Australian culture in literature, art, music and movies . Whitlam’s famous purchase for the National Gallery of Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist painting “Blue Poles” for $1.3 million has been vindicated financially as well as aesthetically (it is now valued at $20-100 million). (Labor PM Julia Gillard took an axe to impoverished Australian artists by abolishing use of paintings as appreciating components of superannuation schemes. The Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Lib-Labs and their PC racist supporters are at the bottom of the moral, spiritual and intellectual barrel).

Conclusions.

The death of Gough Whitlam at the age of 98 has led to an outpouring of accolades from all sides of politics for this courageous social humanist who transformed Australia in his mere 3 years in Government that were terminated by a US-backed Coup. Whitlam achieved so much that is now taken for granted in principle in Australia – womens rights, equal pay for women, no fault divorce, Aboriginal rights, Aboriginal land rights in the NT , universal access to free health services and tertiary education, rejection of explicit racism, and abolition of the White Australia Policy.

Nevertheless Whitlam’s neoliberal successors – the pro-war, pro-Zionist, anti-environment, anti-science, climate criminal, warmongering, war criminal, US lackey Coalition and Labor Right (aka Lib-Labs or Liberal-Laborals) – have relentlessly chopped away at the Whitlam social humanist legacy and immediately reversed his anti-war, anti-racism and anti-imperialist stance. Unlike any of his successors as PM of Australia , Whitlam actually served Australia in war (in the Royal Australian Air Force). Yet Whitlam’s ethical pro-peace, pro-human rights position has been replaced by the racism, warmongering and war criminality of all of his US lackey successors.

While Whitlam made huge permanent changes for the betterment of Australian society, the political consequences of the US-backed Dismissal of PM Whitlam on 11 November 1975 have been dire. The cowardly, unprincipled Labor Party rapidly adopted an “all the way with the USA ” policy in concert with the position of the Coalition. The cowardice, greed, mendacity and racism of the pro-war, pro-Zionist, anti-science, climate criminal, war criminal, US lackey Lib-Labs have made Australia a terror hysteria-obsessed , war mongering, war criminal police state and are set to make White Australia an international pariah.

Whitlam has been criticized by economists for failing to handle the inflation, unemployment and credit crunch realities associated with the Oil Crisis and world economic downturn of the early 1970s but the unethical and unpatriotic Parliamentary warfare by the Coalition in blocking Supply hardly helped. Whitlam can also be criticised for apparently passively accepting the US-backed Indonesian invasion of East Timor that was to kill about 1/3 of the East Timorese population [1-3]. During the Whitlam Government period it appears that Australian Intelligence operatives were assisting the US CIA in the lead up to the bloody overthrow of the democratically –elected Allende Government in Chile on 11 September 1973, but it is likely that Whitlam was no more aware of this criminality than he was aware of US Intelligence moves leading to his own downfall on 11 November 1975.

Decent, humane, anti-racist, anti-violence, anti-war Australians will honor Gough Whitlam’s memory by rejecting the pro-war, pro-fossil fuels, anti-environment, US lackey, neoliberal Coalition and Labor Right (aka the Lib-Labs or Liberal Laborals), vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last. Decent people around the world should (a) inform everyone they can about the ongoing destruction of the social humanist Whitlam legacy in Australia , and (b) urge Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all parties, politicians, presstitutes, crooks, companies and corporations involved in neoliberal Australian human rights abuses, war crimes and climate crimes.

References.

[1]. William Blum’s ” Rogue State “.

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” that is now available for free perusal on the web : http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/ .

[4]. Ben Eltham, “Obituary: Gough Whitlam’s ideas must live on”, New Matilda, 21 October 2014: https://newmatilda.com/2014/10/21/obituary-gough-whitlams-ideas-must-live .

[5]. Malcolm Fraser. “Slavish devotion to the US a foreign policy folly for Australia”, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 2010”|: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/slavish-devotion-to-the-us-a-foreign-policy-folly-for-australia-20101213-18vec.html .

[6]. Gideon Polya, “Impact of the Defence Trade Controls Bill on academic freedom”, NTEU: 10 October 2012: http://www.nteu.org.au/article/Impact-of-the-Defence-Trade-Controls-Bill-on-academic-freedom-13461 .

[7]. Gideon Polya, “One Percenter greed & war means over 1.5 million Americans die preventably each year”, Countercurrents, 19 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190914.htm .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Australian State Terrorism – Zero Australian Terrorism Deaths, 1 Million Preventable Australian Deaths & 10 Million Muslims Killed By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 23 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230914.htm .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous child abuse by pro-war, pro-Zionist, climate criminal Australian Coalition Governments”, Countercurrents, 4 December, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya041213.htm .

[10]. Gideon Polya, “Film Review: “Utopia” By John Pilger Exposes Genocidal Maltreatment Of Indigenous Australians By Apartheid Australia ”, Countercurrents, 14 March, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya140314.htm .

[11]. Gideon Polya, “Key book review: “Capital In The Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty”, Countercurrents, 1 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya010714.htm .

[12]. Gideon Polya, “ $10 trillion annual Carbon Debt increase for Young People on a threatened Planet”, Countercurrents, 8 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya080714.htm .

[13]. Gideon Polya, “Letter to Young People over $220 trillion Carbon Debt: Revolt (Peacefully)”, Countercurrents, 11 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya110714.htm .

[14]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[15]. “Our “disappointing relationship” with Gough”, Australian Jewish News, 23 October 2014: http://www.jewishnews.net.au/tag/gough-whitlam .

[16]. Australian Government, Australian National Security, “Listed terrorist organizations”: http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/Listedterroristorganisations/Pages/default.aspx .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “50 Ways Australian Intelligence spies on Australia and the World for UK , Israeli and US State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya111213.htm .

[18]. Gideon Polya, “ Terror Hysteria – Draconian new Australian Anti-Terrorism Laws target journalists, Muslims and Human Rights”, Countercurrents, 8 October, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya0810114.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades.

23 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

By Federico Fuentes

Predictions by pollsters and commentators that Evo Morales would easily win Bolivia’s October 12 presidential elections were confirmed when the incumbent obtained over 60% of the vote.

Most however differ over why, after almost a decade in power, Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) continues to command such a huge level of support.

Their explanations tend to focus on specific economic or political factors, such as booming raw material prices or the MAS’s ability to control and co-opt the country’s social movements.

However, to understand why Morales will soon become the longest serving head of state in a country renowned for its history of coups and rebellions, it is necessary to start with an acknowledgement of the profound changes that Bolivia has undergone during his presidency.

Economic transformation

For some, the old saying “it’s the economy, stupid” neatly summed up the reasons for Evo’s victory.

They argue Morales simply rode the wave of high commodity prices, or promoted the ongoing expansion of lucrative extractivist industries, irrespective of social or environment costs, in order to use these funds to boost his popularity.

Yet, these views ignore (or purposely conceal) a basic truth, namely that Bolivia’s economic success is a direct result of the MAS government’s program for economic transformation.

This program has focused on weakening transnational control over the local economy and diversifying the economy away from its position of dependency on raw material exports.

A key plank of this program was Morales’ 2006 decree nationalizing the all-important gas sector.

Without this move, any increased windfall from higher commodity prices would have inevitably flowed out of the country, as it had under previous governments.

Instead, the capture and dramatic internal redistribution of Bolivia’s gas wealth helped fuel a huge surge in domestic demand, as ordinary people were lifted out of poverty and finally able to attend to their basic needs.

In fact, Bolivia’s record growth rates had more to do with a booming internal market than with external demand, which actually had a negative affect on growth during the global economic crisis.

Increased revenue derived from nationalization also enabled the Morales government to take steps towards making the local economy less dependent on raw material exports.

The government launched its industrialization program, which will soon see Bolivia go from a position of importing processed gas to exporting liquefied petroleum gas and other derivatives (for much higher returns).

Furthermore, the redistribution of gas revenue to other productive sectors has facilitated growth in non-extractive based industries.

This is particularly true for those sectors that provide livelihoods for a majority of the MAS’s social base, which is largely comprised of small-scale farmers, cooperative miners, street vendors and those employed in family businesses or micro-enterprises.

Economic diversification has also meant that growth in manufacturing outpaced both the mining and gas sectors last year.

The idea that Morales’ success is the result of external or internal economic factors such as high commodity prices or dependence on existing extractive industries is as simple as it is wrong.

The truth is that support for Morales is actually a result of the economic transformation that has taken place in Bolivia.

Political revolution

Many analyses also ignore the critical role that Bolivia’s indigenous and social movements have played in revolutionizing the country’s political set-up.

While the nationalization of Bolivia’s gas was officially decreed by the Morales government, it was in fact the direct result of years of struggle by the Bolivian people.

At the heart of these struggles was the demand to nationalize the gas in order to redirect this wealth towards meeting peoples’ needs.

Unsurprisingly, opinions differ as to what exactly should be done with this wealth.

Given the highly organized and mobilized nature of Bolivia’s popular classes, these differences have often been contested in the streets. As a result, the second Morales government (2009-2014) witnessed the highest rate of protests for any government in Bolivian history.

Only a tiny minority of these protests focused on issues to do with resource extraction.

The overwhelming bulk revolved around disputes over resource redistribution. This includes protests over access to basic services through to the redistribution of electoral boundaries and concurrent changes in funding allocation, and mobilizations against particular economic measures (for example, attempts to clamp down on contraband or impose taxes on cooperative miners).

The record number of protests would seem to go against the idea that the MAS has successfully co-opted Bolivia’s social movements. Yet, it also begs the question: if the Bolivian population is staging more protests than ever, why does Morales continue to maintain his popularity?

The explanation lies in the fact that Morales’ election heralded much more than the arrival of the first indigenous person to the presidential palace. It marked the onset of a political revolution that has gradually seen Bolivia’s old political elites dislodged from power and replaced by representatives from the country’s indigenous peoples and popular classes.

For this majority, the MAS government represents a safeguard against a return to the Bolivia of yesteryear, run by corrupt, white elites. More than that, for most indigenous people and social movements, the MAS government is “their” government.

This does not mean that the people have handed the MAS a blank check. Already on several occasions the MAS government has been forced to back down on certain policies due to popular pressure.

However, none of these protests have posed a fundamental challenge to the MAS’s overall vision for Bolivia, precisely because this vision is largely informed by the struggles and demands of the people themselves.

Instead, these conflicts have primarily been disputes over how best to make this vision a reality.

The MAS’s response to date has been to follow an approach of seeking dialogue and consensus, retreating where necessary but always attempting to continue to drive the process forward towards its goal.

Morales constantly sums up this approach using the Zapatista slogan “to govern by obeying”.

It was this approach that enabled the MAS to come into the elections with the backing of all of the country’s main indigenous, campesino, worker and urban poor organizations and to ensure its thumping victory.

The failure of opposition forces and critics to recognize or accept the fact that a political revolution has taken place and important economic transformations are underway explains why they are so far out of touch with the majority of Bolivian society.

Bolivia’s process of change is far from complete, and it may yet falter. It may also be dramatically impacted by events in the region, for example a change of government in neighboring Brazil.

For now, however, Bolivians have once again overwhelmingly chosen to push forward with their process of change.

[Federico Fuentes is co-author, together with Roger Burbach and Michael Fox, he is the co-author of Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Socialism (Zed Books 2013).]

23 October, 2014
TeleSUR English

 

By Andre Damon

Forty-seven percent of Americans have incomes under twice the official poverty rate, making half of the country either poor or near-poor, according to figures released last week by the Census Bureau.

These figures are based on the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which takes into account government transfers and the regional cost-of-living in calculating the poverty rate. According to that calculation, there were 48.7 million people in poverty in the United States, three million higher than the official census figures released last month. The US poverty rate, according to the SPM, was 15.5 percent.
Data from the Census Bureau report

The release of these figures, as well as last month’s official poverty figures, have been greeted with silence in the media, despite the fact that the US is a mere two weeks away from a midterm election. As with every major social and political question, the issues of poverty and social inequality are being totally excluded from debate and discussion in the elections and ignored by the two big business parties.

The figures follow the release of a series of reports and studies documenting the growth of social inequality in the United States. Last week, Credit Suisse reported that the top one percent of the world’s population controls nearly half of all wealth, and that the United States has nearly ten times more super-wealthy people than any other country.

The census figures “show that poverty is still a major problem in the US,” said Christopher Wimer, Co-Director of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, in a telephone interview Tuesday.

He said the SPM begins with a slightly higher poverty threshold then the official poverty figure, and then adjusts it based on the local cost of living and the prices of necessities of life.

As a result, both the poverty rate and the number of people in poverty are slightly higher than under the official poverty figure. But the biggest difference is that the more sophisticated supplemental measure shows the extent to which a much broader section of the population is struggling to make ends meet. “Because the supplemental poverty measure subtracts non-discretionary income, you get a lot more people hovering close to the poverty line,” Dr. Wimer said.

The official poverty threshold is calculated as “three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963,” adjusted for inflation. By that calculation, the poverty threshold of an adult living alone is $11,888, and an adult with two children is $18,769, both of which are absurdly low.

Since the SPM takes into account regional differences in the cost of living, it better reflects the true prevalence of poverty in high cost-of-living states, such as California, and cities, such as New York City.

“The supplemental poverty measure reflects the fact that the cost of living is much higher in many major metropolitan areas,” Dr. Wimer said. “Those areas also tend to have higher population densities, so that ends up affecting a lot of people.”

Based on the latest Census numbers, nearly one in four people in California lives below the poverty line. Using the supplemental measure, California has a poverty rate of 23.4 percent, compared with the state’s official poverty figures of about 16 percent.

Dr. Wimer said he and fellow researchers at Columbia University have followed a methodology similar to that used by the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure to study economic hardship among a representative sample of New York City residents.

They found that nearly a quarter of the city’s residents were in poverty—23 percent, compared to the official poverty rate of about 21 percent. Fifty-five percent of New York City residents had an income of below twice the poverty line.

Thirty-seven percent of New York City residents were affected by what the survey called “severe material hardships,” including “staying at a shelter, moving in with others or having utilities shut off.” The report added, “If we consider the number of New Yorkers who suffer moderate, if not truly severe, material adversity, the number climbs to 6 in 10 New Yorkers.”

Based on these findings, the report concluded, “Nearly two-thirds of New York City residents struggled to make ends meet at some point during 2012.”

The wealth of the super-rich, meanwhile, continues to soar, with the net worth of the Forbes 400 richest people in the United States surging 13 percent last year. Fifty-two members of the Forbes 400 resided in New York City, more than twice the number living in any other city.

Dr. Wimer noted that the Census SPM report shows the role played by government anti-poverty programs in keeping large sections of the population out of destitution. To the extent that there has been a decline in poverty in recent decades, “it is not driven by market income; the reduction has been coming from government policies and programs such as food stamps and unemployment insurance,” he said.

According to the Census SPM report, food stamps kept two percent of the population out of poverty in 2012, while unemployment insurance kept about one percent of the population out of poverty. The census figures reflect cutbacks in both of these programs in 2013.

With the expiration of federal extended unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed at the end of last year, together with additional cutbacks to food stamps, the number of people affected by cuts to these vital anti-poverty programs will only increase.

Cuts to these programs have been implemented and supported by both the Democrats and Republicans. The Obama administration’s 2015 budget proposal, for example, calls for slashing the budget of the Department of Health and Human Services, which funds the Head Start preschool program, and the Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program, by more than five percent.

22 October, 2014
WSWS.org

 

By Institute For Public Accuracy

On Friday, the New York Times published the article “White House to Cut Funding for Risky Biological Study,” which states: “Prompted by controversy over dangerous research and recent laboratory accidents, the White House announced Friday that it would temporarily halt all new funding for experiments that seek to study certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous.” The piece quotes Richard H. Ebright, “a molecular biologist and bioweapons expert at Rutgers University, [who has] argued that the long history of accidental releases of infectious agents from research labs made such work extremely risky and unwise to perform in the first place. Dr. Ebright called Friday’s announcement ‘an important, albeit overdue, step.’” See USA Today from Aug. 17: “Hundreds of Bioterror Lab Mishaps Cloaked in Secrecy.”

MERYL NASS, M.D., merylnass at gmail.com, @NassMeryl

Nass writes at the Anthrax Vaccine blog. She has debunked government claims from early on in the Ebola crisis, including the slowness of the response in Africa and the notion that U.S. hospitals were prepared. Her most recent post is “Is This A New, More Virulent Ebola?” She also suggests “examining the possibility of converting the excess BL4 labs to treatment centers for Ebola.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at illinois.edu

Professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, Boyle drafted the U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which is the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention. His books include Biowarfare and Terrorism.

He said today: “If, as some in the Liberian press are claiming, this outbreak of Ebola is from one of the labs in west Africa run by the CDC and Tulane University, it could be an unprecedented human disaster. That could mean it was GMOed into a ‘Fluebola.’ Recall that the 2001 weaponized anthrax attacks were traced to a U.S. government lab. It’s incredibly odd that this outbreak occurred 1,000 miles from past outbreaks and it is clearly more easily transmissible.

“Scientists like Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin have been ‘researching’ Ebola for years. Since the anthrax attacks, some $79 billion has been spent. But we still don’t have a vaccine ready to protect us. These labs have actually spent government money, including from the National Institutes of Health, to make viruses more deadly. The work done at these labs shouldn’t be curtailed or temporarily suspended as the administration seems to be talking about, but stopped. This work is criminal. It violates the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which I wrote. It was passed unanimously by both Houses of Congress and states:

“‘Whoever knowingly develops, produces, stockpiles, transfers, acquires, retains, or possesses any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system for use as a weapon, or knowingly assists a foreign state or any organization to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both. There is extraterritorial Federal jurisdiction over an offense under this section committed by or against a national of the United States.’

“After the law was passed, the government has claimed that it’s not violating it because it is creating these more deadly viruses to help protect against them should they develop elsewhere. It’s a ridiculous argument to get around the blanket prohibition in the law. This policy has been a catastrophe waiting to happen — a statistical certainty.”

BARRY KISSIN, barrykissin at hotmail.com

Kissin is a researcher, lawyer and activist in Frederick, Maryland, where Fort Detrick, a major facility of the United States Army Medical Command installation, is based. He has closely monitored the expansion of the facility. He said today: “The fear is that the government is doing things in the biolabs in west Africa that it might be reluctant to do at Fort Detrick and other facilities inside the U.S.”

In 2010, Kissin wrote a piece that noted: “The [Frederick] News-Post has published articles that reflect Fort Detrick has already aerosolized plague, and looks forward to a new facility, only recently announced, that plans on aerosolizing Ebola. Why in the world would we be aerosolizing plague and Ebola? The official answer is that this is necessary to the development of our defenses. Left out of the answer is the plain fact that these purported defenses are against ghastly threats that we ourselves are originating.”

Earlier in 2010, the Frederick News-Post reported in “New facility to test drugs, vaccines for FDA approval” that “George Ludwig, civilian deputy principal assistant for research and technology at Fort Detrick, said the project will represent a new level of research there. … Ludwig said researchers at the facility will likely start out working on vaccines for filoviruses such as Ebola and Marburg, as well as new anthrax vaccines. … The facility will have the capability to produce viruses in aerosolized form that would simulate a potential biological attack on the test animals. Ludwig said aerosol is the means of exposure researchers are most concerned with given its implications to battlefield and homeland defense.” [This particular facility was never built.]

See from the Global Security Newswire: “Obama Seeks $260M Boost for Protecting African Disease Labs” from 2011, which notes: “The Obama administration has requested $260 million in fiscal 2012 funding to bolster protective measures at African research sites that house lethal disease agents, the Examiner reported on Sunday.” The piece noted they “hold potential biological-weapon agents such as anthrax, Ebola and Rift Valley fever.” From Vice in 2013: “Why the U.S. Is Building a High-Tech Bubonic Plague Lab in Kazakhstan.”

See Guardian piece from earlier this year: “Scientists condemn ‘crazy, dangerous’ creation of deadly airborne flu virus” about the work of Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin, who has worked on Ebola and reconstituted the Spanish Flu, which killed over 50 million people in 1918.” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just ran a positivity piece on Kawaoka on Oct. 17: “UW-Madison scientist Kawaoka on front lines in fight against Ebola.”

See overview article from 2007 from in The Humanist: “America the Beautiful’s Germ Warfare Rash.”

See 2006 piece in the Washington Post: “The Secretive Fight Against Bioterror,” which states: “The government is building a highly classified facility to research biological weapons, but its closed-door approach has raised concerns. … “‘If we saw others doing this kind of research, we would view it as an infringement of the bioweapons treaty,’ said Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar and weapons expert at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. ‘You can’t go around the world yelling about Iranian and North Korean programs — about which we know very little — when we’ve got all this going on.’”

See “Russia Rejects Bioweapons Talk in U.S. Congress as ‘Propaganda’” from May 14, 2014. The piece states: “Russia issued the remarks in reaction to a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, where University of Maryland senior scholar Milton Leitenberg said the existence of a Russian biological-arms program cannot be ruled out because Moscow does not permit outside access to key facilities of concern. According to the ministry, ‘It is surprising that certain representatives of the U.S. establishment continue demanding unilateral access to the Russian biological facilities amid the U.S. refusal from such a fair and clear [verification] mechanism. Such demands are inappropriate and unacceptable.’”

The Institute for Public Accuracy is a Washington, D.C.-based organization that encourages mainstream news media to interview alternative sources. It was founded in 1997 by Norman Solomon, who serves as executive director; its communications director is Sam Husseini.

22 October, 2014
Accuracy.org

Dr. Muzaffar gave an interview to EIR’s Mike Billington on Oct. 1, 2014, during his visit to the U.S. The interview was videotaped by La- RouchePAC and can be viewed at [http://larouchepac.

com/node/31876]]. Here are excerpts.

Michael Billington: Chandra, you’ve long led efforts in Malaysia and internationally to end war, and bring justice to all nations and to all peoples. You share with our organization the idea that peace and justice are only possible through development, and that ending poverty for all is addressing the most fundamental human right of all. So, how would you describe Just and its goals? Chandra Muzaffar: Thank you, Mike, for this interview.I am very happy to be here at the headquarters of the LaRouche movement, and I’m also very pleased that we have a chance to explore some issues in this interview. Let me respond to your question about Just by first stating what Just’s principle aims are. Just is an organization anchored in Malaysia, but international in its scope.

We have a small membership, but a big portion of our members actually are non-Malaysians, and they come from something like 42 countries. . . . We are very concerned about global hegemony, which is one of the reasons why Just was established in the first instance.

Because when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union collapsed, that was in 1990-1991, some of us felt that we should be vigilant about the emerging unipolar world: the dangers posed by this unipolar world, by the politics of the sole superpower of the day. And this is the rationale behind Just: to critique the hegemony that has emerged from this unipolar world, and to see how we can offer an alternative, which is the second dimension of our mission.

We feel that that alternative has to emerge from the shared spiritual and moral values of the human family. We believe that the unipolar world, and hegemony in all its manifestations—political, economic, social, cultural, intellectual, spiritual—that this hegemony is a threat to the enduring perennial spiritual and moral values of the human family. Values of love, justice, and compassion, caring for one another, empathy for one another, kindness as a human trait. These are perennial values. And institutions that are part of this value system: the family, respect for the environment, for instance, as again a principle of living is part of that value system. . . .

‘We See Hope on the Horizon’

Billington: The world has changed quite dramatically this past year, I think you could say; it begins in a sense with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s trip to Kazakstan, and his announcement of the New Silk Road. And then, visiting Indonesia and Malaysia, and announcing the new Maritime Silk Road; and now the very dramatic development by the BRICS nations this past Summer in Brazil, announcing enhanced cooperation amongst themselves and much of the world: a New Development Bank, China’s new Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, creating truly a new paradigm where we see all over the world nations launching new rail connections, canals, enhanced agriculture, nuclear power, joining in the space program—the opposite of what you see here in the United States and Europe, where everything is falling apart. So, I wonder how you would read this global situation, the emergence of this new paradigm?

Muzaffar: You and I, Mike, we are able to see what’s emerging on the horizon, and we are thrilled by it. We see hope on the horizon. But lots of people don’t see these changes. They don’t interpret these changes as important developments, as milestones, in the human journey. And I think there’s a reason for it, why peopledon’t see things the way we see them, or the way we feel they should be seen. It is largely because of the media. The media has downplayed all these major developments that you referred to. I can’t think of any newspaper in Malaysia, or television station, radio program, that has highlighted the Maritime Silk Road, which involves us directly in Malaysia. Or any media that has highlighted the land Silk Road, or the BRICS, for that matter, even though that is a development which impacts on us; all the other things that are happening, infrastructure development program that China is involved in, in so many parts of the world, in Africa, in Latin America, in various parts of Asia. . . .

Billington: And of course while the media is not presenting that, what they are presenting is, the fact that the old imperial forces in London, and New York, and Washington, are continuing their self-destruction, as well as their destruction globally. And that to preserve this bankrupt financial system, it’s clear they’re willing to risk a global war, perhaps a war of annihilation. You can see that in the developments around Ukraine, around Syria and Iraq, and in Asia as well, around the South China Sea and so forth. And the wars that President Obama has continued to wage, unilaterally, without even appealing to the UN for support, or even to the U.S. Congress.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called for a new, inclusive world security architecture, for all nations, based on these great development projects, which are now in the process of coming into being around the BRICS. I wonder if you can comment on that, on the continuing disaster in the West, and how we can turn the United States around, or what’s needed from the rest of the world, like from Malaysia, in order to help to turn America around.

Muzaffar: Let me begin with trying to wake up the American population, because I think that is what is most important. American citizens should realize what is happening. You have a society where there are multiple channels of communication, and yet, the truth is not known. People don’t know, for instance, why Ukraine is in crisis. They just believe what the mainstream media has told them. They don’t know the truth behind this façade. So, we’ll have to find ways and means of reaching people, of informing them, of educating them, or enlightening them about what is happening. For instance, if you take Ukraine: What is the root cause of what is happening in Ukraine? Is it because of Crimea? Is it because [Russian President] Putin decided that he would act? Is this the reason behind the crisis? Or is it because he was reacting, rather than just igniting a crisis? He was reacting to a situation? And what was the situation he was reacting to?

Wasn’t he reacting to the eastward push of NATO? Something that should not have happened at all. Because the President of the United States of America in 1991-1992, George Bush, Sr., he had agreed with Mikhail Gorbachov, the Soviet leader at that time, that once the Warsaw Pact was dissolved (and the Russians had agreed to dissolve the Warsaw Pact established in 1955), NATO would not expand eastwards. NATO would not gobble up states that were part of the old Soviet Union, or part of Eastern Europe, which was linked to the old Soviet Union. This was the understanding.

But the U.S. leadership went back on its word, and they started expanding eastwards. And you expand eastwards to a point where you are, there in Russia, and there is Crimea, Russia’s warm-water port. Crimea is so much a part of Russia’s history. And we know that the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, was actually once the capital of Russia. So we’re not talking of any other state. We’retalking of a state which is so much a part of the heart and soul of Russia. And you expand to that point and say, “Well, we want Ukraine to be a part of NATO, and part of the European Union.” What is a Russian leader supposed to do in such circumstances? He was bound to react. So it was the West that created this crisis. But this is something that a lot of Americans are not aware of. So, making Americans aware of what is really happening is critical.

ISIS Grew Out of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq

And same thing with ISIS. The impression given is, this is some sort of monster that has suddenly emerged, and is threatening human civilization. But what is the history behind ISIS? It grew out of the American invasion/ occupation of Iraq. It was created, al-Qaeda was created, because we know that during Saddam Hussein’s time, there wasn’t a single terrorist organization in Iraq; al-Qaeda was created in order to fight what the U.S. itself, in a sense, helped to create, a Shi’a-led government in Baghdad, which emerged as part of the democratic process, with Shi’as as the majority. They came to power as a consequence of the invasion, and the Shi’as had very good relations with Iran, every Shi’a leader of consequence in Baghdad, very good relations with Tehran, which the Americans are not happy about. So, what do they do? They decide to strengthen al-Qaeda, the Sunnis against the Shi’as; first the Shi’as against the Sunnis, now the Sunnis against the Shi’as.

And you create al-Qaeda, a group that was brutal, violent, but there was a faction that felt that al-Qaeda was not radical enough. They broke away and formed ISIL, at that time; moved to Syria to fight a very similar war against Shi’as, the so-called Shi’a minority in power, and what they saw as a secular government.

The funding for these terrorists came from within the region, we know that: Saudi Arabia, from some of the other monarchies; Turkey played a very big role in terms of facilitating the growth of this group. In other words, Turkey was helping to transport weapons and other military hardware to this ISIL group training ground, headquarters, or political activities. Jordan was a very important training ground; the CIA was involved, MI6 was involved. So they created this huge monster. And suddenly, when the monster decides to move into Irbil, where all the oil companies are . . . they decided to respond.

And then, of course, the beheadings take place and all the rest of it. And they decided they must now start bombing the ISIS, or what is now known as IS group in Iraq and in Syria.

Now, what the ending is, we don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to topple the Bashar Assad regime [in Syria], perhaps. Or, maybe some faction around President Obama wants to do this. Perhaps there is resistance from others within the U.S. establishment who know the situation and they feel that this should not be done, to stop that bombing of IS centers in Syria. But whatever it is, they created a huge crisis, a crisis of their own making, with the help of their allies and their agents, their proxies.

Malaysian Airliner MH370

Billington: As a leading political-strategic analyst in Malaysia, you’ve been quite outspoken about the failures to investigate the shootdown of the Malaysian airliners—both the one that disappeared somewhere [MH370]; and the more outrageous shootdown of the MH17 over Ukraine. What have you—and I understand Dr. Mahathir [bin Mohamad, former prime minister], also—had to say and do about this, and what do you propose?

Muzaffar: You’re right, they’re both shrouded in mystery. The case of MH370, which happened on the 8th of March, 2014: that particular aircraft is supposed to have crashed in the southern part of the Indian Ocean. They had searched for something like two months, and now the search is at a different stage. But they’ve not come up with anything substantial so far, to indicate that the wreckage is in the southern part of the Indian Ocean. There’s been a lot of speculation about who did it, why, and so on. I don’t have to go through the whole lot of speculations that have been floating around, that some people link it with the pilot; and some people say that it is something to do with an accident that took place on the aircraft; others think that there is something else that happened, it could be some sort of shooting, perhaps—we don’t know. But there is also this other theory that’s going around, that someone outside the aircraft had deliberately turned it around; that the capacity to turn around an aircraft from outside—in other words, you turn off the transponder, you turn off the communications system, without being in the aircraft itself—that this is something that can be done now, and this is what Dr. Mahathir raised, in a blog article of his, about three months ago.

He argued that, based upon an article that had appeared in a scientific journal that talked about Boeing’s capacity to turn aircraft around from outside, that this was something that was developed as a way of ensuring that 9/11-type incidents don’t happen; that you should be able to prevent it, by turning an aircraft around from outside. And Dr. Mahathir asked whether this is true, whether it’s something that could be done. Is there such a technology that’s available? And who has access to this sort of technology? Is it possible that some intelligence networks had access to this sort of technology, the CIA, perhaps, or MI6, Mossad, whoever, has access to this sort of technology? And why would they have wanted to turn the plane around?

Now, as far as the technology is concerned, I’d hope that Boeing would have responded to Dr. Mahathir. We waited and waited and waited; Boeing has not really responded to him. They came out with a very general statement saying they are cooperating with the authorities.

But that is a specific allegation, about a certain technology, an invention, which has horrendous implications for aviation, travel. . . .

There’s nothing from Boeing, which makes us very suspicious. . . . So MH370, very suspicious, to this day, and the suspicion remains.

And MH17

MH17, different set of circumstances. Everyone now says: Well, the plane was shot out of the sky [July 2014]. But how exactly do they know? There are people who say it was the Buk system from the ground, that brought the plane down. Others say that the plane was shot by a jet fighter that was trailing the aircraft, in other words, air-to-air. They really don’t know.

The investigations are incomplete at this moment. I think if one had a comprehensive reading of the fuselage, one would be able to come up with answers, though there are former pilots who have gone to the site, and experts, who say it looks as if it was shot in the air. There is a former Lufthansa captain, and also a Ukrainian-Canadian pilot, who was the first on the site, actually; he’s not employed by any of the airlines as such, but he was with one of the airlines before, and he also came to the same conclusion about the aircraft, how it was shot down.

So there are suspicions of this sort, but the Russians have produced data, satellite evidence and evidence from their radar, which say that this is what happened, the sequence of events, known result. They haven’t said firmly that “X” did it, or “Y” did it. They haven’t gone that far, but they say that these are the facts that we want to consider. The Ukrainian government also has radar information, but they’ve not made it public; neither has the United States, which also has access to satellite information, but won’t make it public.

So people are very concerned, this is from all sides, in both cases of course. Hundreds of people killed in each case, and in the case of MH17, apart from the Malaysians killed, a lot of Dutch citizens were also killed in that crash. I hope the Dutch public, like the Malaysian public, would pressure their governments, to make sure that there is no attempt to hide the truth. Don’t ever try to conceal or camouflage the truth. It involves lives that will be on our conscience forever. Not just of this generation, but of future generation, if this is not resolved satisfactorily. Even if you don’t provide all the answers, at least, indicate very clearly that these are, perhaps, some of the clues that point to a particular answer. We have a right to know this much.

Malaysian scholar Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the president and founder of Just International (http://www.justinternational.org/); he is a political analyst, specializing on the Islamic world.

17 October 2014

Tom Engelhardt Interviews Laura Poitras

Here’s a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! stat from our new age of national security. How many Americans have security clearances? The answer: 5.1 million, a figure that reflects the explosive growth of the national security state in the post-9/11 era. Imagine the kind of system needed just to vet that many people for access to our secret world (to the tune of billions of dollars). We’re talking here about the total population of Norway and significantly more people than you can find in Costa Rica, Ireland, or New Zealand. And yet it’s only about 1.6% of the American population, while on ever more matters, the unvetted 98.4% of us are meant to be left in the dark.

For our own safety, of course. That goes without saying.

All of this offers a new definition of democracy in which we, the people, are to know only what the national security state cares to tell us. Under this system, ignorance is the necessary, legally enforced prerequisite for feeling protected. In this sense, it is telling that the only crime for which those inside the national security state can be held accountable in post-9/11 Washington is not potential perjury before Congress, or the destruction of evidence of a crime, or torture, or kidnapping, or assassination, or the deaths of prisoners in an extralegal prison system, but whistleblowing; that is, telling the American people something about what their government is actually doing. And that crime, and only that crime, has been prosecuted to the full extent of the law (and beyond) with a vigor unmatched in American history. To offer a single example, the only American to go to jail for the CIA’s Bush-era torture program was John Kiriakou, a CIA whistleblower who revealed the name of an agent involved in the program to a reporter.

In these years, as power drained from Congress, an increasingly imperial White House has launched various wars (redefined by its lawyers as anything but), as well as a global assassination campaign in which the White House has its own “kill list” and the president himself decides on global hits. Then, without regard for national sovereignty or the fact that someone is an American citizen (and upon the secret invocation of legal mumbo-jumbo), the drones are sent off to do the necessary killing.

And yet that doesn’t mean that we, the people, know nothing. Against increasing odds, there has been some fine reporting in the mainstream media by the likes of James Risen and Barton Gellman on the security state’s post-legal activities and above all, despite the Obama administration’s regular use of the World War I era Espionage Act, whistleblowers have stepped forward from within the government to offer us sometimes staggering amounts of information about the system that has been set up in our name but without our knowledge.

Among them, one young man, whose name is now known worldwide, stands out. In June of last year, thanks to journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras, Edward Snowden, a contractor for the NSA and previously the CIA, stepped into our lives from a hotel room in Hong Kong. With a treasure trove of documents that are still being released, he changed the way just about all of us view our world. He has been charged under the Espionage Act. If indeed he was a “spy,” then the spying he did was for us, for the American people and for the world. What he revealed to a stunned planet was a global surveillance state whose reach and ambitions were unique, a system based on a single premise: that privacy was no more and that no one was, in theory (and to a remarkable extent in practice), unsurveillable.

Its builders imagined only one exemption: themselves. This was undoubtedly at least part of the reason why, when Snowden let us peek in on them, they reacted with such over-the-top venom. Whatever they felt at a policy level, it’s clear that they also felt violated, something that, as far as we can tell, left them with no empathy whatsoever for the rest of us. One thing that Snowden proved, however, was that the system they built was ready-made for blowback.

Sixteen months after his NSA documents began to be released by the Guardian and the Washington Post, I think it may be possible to speak of the Snowden Era. And now, a remarkable new film, Citizenfour, which had its premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 10th and will open in select theaters nationwide on October 24th, offers us a window into just how it all happened. It is already being mentioned as a possible Oscar winner.

Director Laura Poitras, like reporter Glenn Greenwald, is now known almost as widely as Snowden himself, for helping facilitate his entry into the world. Her new film, the last in a trilogy she’s completed (the previous two being My Country, My Country on the Iraq War and The Oath on Guantanamo), takes you back to June 2013 and locks you in that Hong Kong hotel room with Snowden, Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian, and Poitras herself for eight days that changed the world. It’s a riveting, surprisingly unclaustrophic, and unforgettable experience.

Before that moment, we were quite literally in the dark. After it, we have a better sense, at least, of the nature of the darkness that envelops us. Having seen her film in a packed house at the New York Film Festival, I sat down with Poitras in a tiny conference room at the Loews Regency Hotel in New York City to discuss just how our world has changed and her part in it.

Tom Engelhardt: Could you start by laying out briefly what you think we’ve learned from Edward Snowden about how our world really works?

Laura Poitras: The most striking thing Snowden has revealed is the depth of what the NSA and the Five Eyes countries [Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the U.S.] are doing, their hunger for all data, for total bulk dragnet surveillance where they try to collect all communications and do it all sorts of different ways. Their ethos is “collect it all.” I worked on a story with Jim Risen of the New York Times about a document — a four-year plan for signals intelligence — in which they describe the era as being “the golden age of signals intelligence.” For them, that’s what the Internet is: the basis for a golden age to spy on everyone.

This focus on bulk, dragnet, suspicionless surveillance of the planet is certainly what’s most staggering. There were many programs that did that. In addition, you have both the NSA and the GCHQ [British intelligence] doing things like targeting engineers at telecoms. There was an article published at The Intercept that cited an NSA document Snowden provided, part of which was titled “I Hunt Sysadmins” [systems administrators]. They try to find the custodians of information, the people who are the gateway to customer data, and target them. So there’s this passive collection of everything, and then things that they can’t get that way, they go after in other ways.

I think one of the most shocking things is how little our elected officials knew about what the NSA was doing. Congress is learning from the reporting and that’s staggering. Snowden and [former NSA employee] William Binney, who’s also in the film as a whistleblower from a different generation, are technical people who understand the dangers. We laypeople may have some understanding of these technologies, but they really grasp the dangers of how they can be used. One of the most frightening things, I think, is the capacity for retroactive searching, so you can go back in time and trace who someone is in contact with and where they’ve been. Certainly, when it comes to my profession as a journalist, that allows the government to trace what you’re reporting, who you’re talking to, and where you’ve been. So no matter whether or not I have a commitment to protect my sources, the government may still have information that might allow them to identify whom I’m talking to.

TE: To ask the same question another way, what would the world be like without Edward Snowden? After all, it seems to me that, in some sense, we are now in the Snowden era.

LP: I agree that Snowden has presented us with choices on how we want to move forward into the future. We’re at a crossroads and we still don’t quite know which path we’re going to take. Without Snowden, just about everyone would still be in the dark about the amount of information the government is collecting. I think that Snowden has changed consciousness about the dangers of surveillance. We see lawyers who take their phones out of meetings now. People are starting to understand that the devices we carry with us reveal our location, who we’re talking to, and all kinds of other information. So you have a genuine shift of consciousness post the Snowden revelations.

TE: There’s clearly been no evidence of a shift in governmental consciousness, though.

LP: Those who are experts in the fields of surveillance, privacy, and technology say that there need to be two tracks: a policy track and a technology track. The technology track is encryption. It works and if you want privacy, then you should use it. We’ve already seen shifts happening in some of the big companies — Google, Apple — that now understand how vulnerable their customer data is, and that if it’s vulnerable, then their business is, too, and so you see a beefing up of encryption technologies. At the same time, no programs have been dismantled at the governmental level, despite international pressure.

TE: In Citizenfour, we spend what must be an hour essentially locked in a room in a Hong Kong hotel with Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Ewan MacAskill, and you, and it’s riveting. Snowden is almost preternaturally prepossessing and self-possessed. I think of a novelist whose dream character just walks into his or her head. It must have been like that with you and Snowden. But what if he’d been a graying guy with the same documents and far less intelligent things to say about them? In other words, how exactly did who he was make your movie and remake our world?

LP: Those are two questions. One is: What was my initial experience? The other: How do I think it impacted the movie? We’ve been editing it and showing it to small groups, and I had no doubt that he’s articulate and genuine on screen. But to see him in a full room [at the New York Film Festival premiere on the night of October 10th], I’m like, wow! He really commands the screen! And I experienced the film in a new way with a packed house.

TE: But how did you experience him the first time yourself? I mean you didn’t know who you were going to meet, right?

LP: So I was in correspondence with an anonymous source for about five months and in the process of developing a dialogue you build ideas, of course, about who that person might be. My idea was that he was in his late forties, early fifties. I figured he must be Internet generation because he was super tech-savvy, but I thought that, given the level of access and information he was able to discuss, he had to be older. And so my first experience was that I had to do a reboot of my expectations. Like fantastic, great, he’s young and charismatic and I was like wow, this is so disorienting, I have to reboot. In retrospect, I can see that it’s really powerful that somebody so smart, so young, and with so much to lose risked so much.

He was so at peace with the choice he had made and knowing that the consequences could mean the end of his life and that this was still the right decision. He believed in it, and whatever the consequences, he was willing to accept them. To meet somebody who has made those kinds of decisions is extraordinary. And to be able to document that and also how Glenn [Greenwald] stepped in and pushed for this reporting to happen in an aggressive way changed the narrative. Because Glenn and I come at it from an outsider’s perspective, the narrative unfolded in a way that nobody quite knew how to respond to. That’s why I think the government was initially on its heels. You know, it’s not everyday that a whistleblower is actually willing to be identified.

TE: My guess is that Snowden has given us the feeling that we now grasp the nature of the global surveillance state that is watching us, but I always think to myself, well, he was just one guy coming out of one of 17 interlocked intelligence outfits. Given the remarkable way your film ends — the punch line, you might say — with another source or sources coming forward from somewhere inside that world to reveal, among other things, information about the enormous watchlist that you yourself are on, I’m curious: What do you think is still to be known? I suspect that if whistleblowers were to emerge from the top five or six agencies, the CIA, the DIA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and so on, with similar documentation to Snowden’s, we would simply be staggered by the system that’s been created in our name.

LP: I can’t speculate on what we don’t know, but I think you’re right in terms of the scale and scope of things and the need for that information to be made public. I mean, just consider the CIA and its effort to suppress the Senate’s review of its torture program. Take in the fact that we live in a country that a) legalized torture and b) where no one was ever held to account for it, and now the government’s internal look at what happened is being suppressed by the CIA. That’s a frightening landscape to be in.

In terms of sources coming forward, I really reject this idea of talking about one, two, three sources. There are many sources that have informed the reporting we’ve done and I think that Americans owe them a debt of gratitude for taking the risk they do. From a personal perspective, because I’m on a watchlist and went through years of trying to find out why, of having the government refuse to confirm or deny the very existence of such a list, it’s so meaningful to have its existence brought into the open so that the public knows there is a watchlist, and so that the courts can now address the legality of it. I mean, the person who revealed this has done a huge public service and I’m personally thankful.

TE: You’re referring to the unknown leaker who’s mentioned visually and elliptically at the end of your movie and who revealed that the major watchlist your on has more than 1.2 million names on it. In that context, what’s it like to travel as Laura Poitras today? How do you embody the new national security state?

LP: In 2012, I was ready to edit and I chose to leave the U.S. because I didn’t feel I could protect my source footage when I crossed the U.S. border. The decision was based on six years of being stopped and questioned every time I returned to the United States. And I just did the math and realized that the risks were too high to edit in the U.S., so I started working in Berlin in 2012. And then, in January 2013, I got the first email from Snowden.

TE: So you were protecting…

LP: …other footage. I had been filming with NSA whistleblower William Binney, with Julian Assange, with Jacob Appelbaum of the Tor Project, people who have also been targeted by the U.S., and I felt that this material I had was not safe. I was put on a watchlist in 2006. I was detained and questioned at the border returning to the U.S. probably around 40 times. If I counted domestic stops and every time I was stopped at European transit points, you’re probably getting closer to 80 to 100 times. It became a regular thing, being asked where I’d been and who I’d met with. I found myself caught up in a system you can’t ever seem to get out of, this Kafkaesque watchlist that the U.S. doesn’t even acknowledge.

TE: Were you stopped this time coming in?

LP: I was not. The detentions stopped in 2012 after a pretty extraordinary incident.

I was coming back in through Newark Airport and I was stopped. I took out my notebook because I always take notes on what time I’m stopped and who the agents are and stuff like that. This time, they threatened to handcuff me for taking notes. They said, “Put the pen down!” They claimed my pen could be a weapon and hurt someone.

“Put the pen down! The pen is dangerous!” And I’m like, you’re not… you’ve got to be crazy. Several people yelled at me every time I moved my pen down to take notes as if it were a knife. After that, I decided this has gotten crazy, I’d better do something and I called Glenn. He wrote a piece about my experiences. In response to his article, they actually backed off.

TE: Snowden has told us a lot about the global surveillance structure that’s been built. We know a lot less about what they are doing with all this information. I’m struck at how poorly they’ve been able to use such information in, for example, their war on terror. I mean, they always seem to be a step behind in the Middle East — not just behind events but behind what I think someone using purely open source information could tell them. This I find startling. What sense do you have of what they’re doing with the reams, the yottabytes, of data they’re pulling in?

LP: Snowden and many other people, including Bill Binney, have said that this mentality — of trying to suck up everything they can — has left them drowning in information and so they miss what would be considered more obvious leads. In the end, the system they’ve created doesn’t lead to what they describe as their goal, which is security, because they have too much information to process.

I don’t quite know how to fully understand it. I think about this a lot because I made a film about the Iraq War and one about Guantanamo. From my perspective, in response to the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. took a small, very radical group of terrorists and engaged in activities that have created two generations of anti-American sentiment motivated by things like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Instead of figuring out a way to respond to a small group of people, we’ve created generations of people who are really angry and hate us. And then I think, if the goal is security, how do these two things align, because there are more people who hate the United States right now, more people intent on doing us harm? So either the goal that they proclaim is not the goal or they’re just unable to come to terms with the fact that we’ve made huge mistakes in how we’ve responded.

TE: I’m struck by the fact that failure has, in its own way, been a launching pad for success. I mean, the building of an unparallelled intelligence apparatus and the greatest explosion of intelligence gathering in history came out of the 9/11 failure. Nobody was held accountable, nobody was punished, nobody was demoted or anything, and every similar failure, including the one on the White House lawn recently, simply leads to the bolstering of the system.

LP: So how do you understand that?

TE: I don’t think that these are people who are thinking: we need to fail to succeed. I’m not conspiratorial in that way, but I do think that, strangely, failure has built the system and I find that odd. More than that I don’t know.

LP: I don’t disagree. The fact that the CIA knew that two of the 9/11 hijackers were entering the United States and didn’t notify the FBI and that nobody lost their job is shocking. Instead, we occupied Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. I mean, how did those choices get made?

Laura Poitras is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and artist. She has just finished Citizenfour, the third in a trilogy of films about post-9/11 America that includes My Country, My Country, nominated for an Academy Award, and The Oath, which received two Emmy nominations. In June 2013, she traveled to Hong Kong with Glenn Greenwald to interview Edward Snowden and made history. She has reported on Snowden’s disclosures about the NSA for a variety of news outlets, including the Guardian, Der Spiegel, and the New York Times. Her NSA reporting received a George Polk award for National Security Reporting and the Henri Nannen Prize for Services to Press Freedom.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com.

20 October, 2014
TomDispatch.com

By Garikai Chengu

This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Western-backed assassination of Libya’s former president, Muammar Gaddafi, and the fall of one of Africa’s greatest nations.

In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.

After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As the government’s control slips through their fingers and into to the militia fighters’ hands, oil production has all but stopped.

The militias variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal, that have plagued Libya since NATO’s intervention, have recently lined up into two warring factions. Libya now has two governments, both with their own Prime Minister, parliament and army.

On one side, in the West of the country, Islamist-allied militias took over control of the capital Tripoli and other cities and set up their own government, chasing away a parliament that was elected over the summer.

On the other side, in the East of the Country, the “legitimate” government dominated by anti-Islamist politicians, exiled 1,200 kilometers away in Tobruk, no longer governs anything.

The fall of Gaddafi’s administration has created all of the country’s worst-case scenarios: Western embassies have all left, the South of the country has become a haven for terrorists, and the Northern coast a center of migrant trafficking. Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya. This all occurs amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture that complete the picture of a state that is failed to the bone.

America is clearly fed up with the two inept governments in Libya and is now backing a third force: long-time CIA asset, General Khalifa Hifter, who aims to set himself up as Libya’s new dictator. Hifter, who broke with Gaddafi in the 1980s and lived for years in Langley, Virginia, close to the CIA’s headquarters, where he was trained by the CIA, has taken part in numerous American regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1996.

In 1991 the New York Times reported that Hifter may have been one of “600 Libyan soldiers trained by American intelligence officials in sabotage and other guerrilla skills…to fit in neatly into the Reagan Administration’s eagerness to topple Colonel Qaddafi”.

Hifter’s forces are currently vying with the Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia for control of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia was armed by America during the NATO campaign against Colonel Gaddafi. In yet another example of the U.S. backing terrorists backfiring, Ansar al-Sharia has recently been blamed by America for the brutal assassination of U.S. Ambassador Stevens.

Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital.

Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.

In 2011, the West’s objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya’s natural resources.

For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.

One group that has suffered immensely from NATO’s bombing campaign is the nation’s women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi’s Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights.

When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law.

Nowadays, the new “democratic” Libyan regime is clamping down on women’s rights. The new ruling tribes are tied to traditions that are strongly patriarchal. Also, the chaotic nature of post-intervention Libyan politics has allowed free reign to extremist Islamic forces that see gender equality as a Western perversion.

Three years ago, NATO declared that the mission in Libya had been “one of the most successful in NATO history.” Truth is, Western interventions have produced nothing but colossal failures in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Lest we forget, prior to western military involvement in these three nations, they were the most modern and secular states in the Middle East and North Africa with the highest regional women’s rights and standards of living.

A decade of failed military expeditions in the Middle East has left the American people in trillions of dollars of debt. However, one group has benefited immensely from the costly and deadly wars: America’s Military-Industrial-Complex.

Building new military bases means billions of dollars for America’s military elite. As Will Blum has pointed out, following the bombing of Iraq, the United States built new bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Following the bombing of Afghanistan, the United States is now building military bases in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Following the recent bombing of Libya, the United States has built new military bases in the Seychelles, Kenya, South Sudan, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Middle Eastern and European worlds, Western control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.

NATO’s military intervention may have been a resounding success for America’s military elite and oil companies but for the ordinary Libyan, the military campaign may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest failures of the 21st century.

Garikai Chengu is a research scholar at Harvard University.

19 October, 2014

Countercurrents.org

By Joaquin Flores

Cheered by tens of thousands of citizens, columns of Serbian tanks, armored cars, and thousands of infantry men paraded down Nikola Tesla Boulevard, Thursday, in New Belgrade. The parade’s destination was the Palace of Serbia, where international leaders, dignitaries and high ranking generals of foreign militaries stood in bleachers to look on. Among them, most importantly, was Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a ceremonial event surrounding this occasion, he was awarded the Order of the Republic of Serbia, the nation’s highest honor [1].

Today marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade from occupying Nazi forces. A few of the remaining WWII veterans also stood in the dignitaries section, to remember fallen comrades in the great anti-fascist war of liberation.

The event was not just one commemorative, it was in its own right quite historic. For one, it was the first Serbian military parade since 1918, and the first military parade in Serbia since 1985, when it was the core republic of the Socijalistička Federativna Republika Jugoslavija (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or SFRY). A “Strizhi” air show of Russian MiG fighters over the Belgrade skies captivated the audience below, while Serbian armoured personnel carriers crawled in formation to the WWII partisan march, Po Šumama i Gorama (“In the Forests and Mountains”)

But the event’s significance was greater—much greater than a historical reflection and national celebration of a great victory of its people over the most powerful, aggressive, war machine in Europe at the time. This event’s significance went beyond being just a display of national resolve and remembrance. It was symbolic of a turn that Serbia was taking in the direction of its historic ally, Russia. With Putin as honored guest, Serbia seemed to be announcing a new course forward, while overtly and unashamedly celebrating the past.

In fact, To the certain dismay of NATO, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic announced in a joint press conference with Putin, after the ceremony, that Serbia would never join the EU sanctions against Russia[2] . With this we can see that Serbia is making an ‘Eastward’ turn to the Eurasian sphere.

As polls indicate, the vast majority of Serbs oppose EU policy and dictates, and entry. They would like increased trade with European nations, as long as it respects the fundamental democratic principle of national sovereignty, and self-determination of the Serbian people. Brussels dictates are, in the view of many analysts, at odds with the concept of sovereignty. EU policy, combined with the economic crisis and increased austerity measures, has led to an ever increasing rise of Euro-skepticism within EU and Eurozone countries.

One can only imagine the frustration of the US, NATO and EU Atlanticists who had hoped to coerce Serbia into eventual EU integration. It is not lost on them that, as it stands, Serbia has observer status in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), considered by NATO to be something like the reincarnation of the Warsaw Pact. It also has a free trade agreement with Russia, similar to one that Ukraine has [3]. The US backed coup in Ukraine, justified to its European partners as a necessary step to get Ukraine into an EU association agreement, has shown the world already where an increased effort upon Serbia will lead. Unlike Ukraine, however, Serbian nationalism is firmly pan-Slavic and anti-Hitlerian in its orientation.

That Thursday’s events were not merely an exercise in formalized remembrance, but were vigorous, optimistic, and militarized, which sent a stronger message in imagery than should ever responsibly be said in words. It is additionally troubling for NATO that Serbia is to hold the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE ) chairmanship next year [4]. What will that mean for the OSCE mission in the south Serbian region of Kosovo, presently under US occupation?

Indeed, Thursday’s momentous occasion were as close to a signed Russia-Serbia alliance as one could have without signing one. Responding in a condescending and paternalistic tone, European Parliament Rapporteur on Serbia, David McAllister, expressed concerns over Thursday’s events, reiterating that the EU and NATO did not look favorably upon 4,500 Serbian soldiers saluting Vladimir Putin. He also stated that he expected Serbia to stay on its path to EU accession. [5]

The Serbian state headed by Tomislav Nikolic of the Progressive Party had previously formally positioned its policy on eventual EU integration. Before his election, support for integration was at a high of 70% [6]. Apart from Serberia’s concern for a declining euro-dollar, numerous setbacks and frustrations on critical negotiating points have caused Brussels to push back further talks. In the meanwhile, Serbian support has dropped to perhaps below 40% [7]. This has left EU analysts to wonder if Serbia’s stated intention to join the EU is genuine. Serbia continues to affirm its intention to join the EU, but it simultaneously holds firm to a growing number of deal-breaking policies.

Perhaps to help clarify the confusion, Nikolic said the following at today’s event:

“I share in the glory of the history of Serbia and Russia, a permanent and unbreakable bond of brotherhood, a friendship that has always been, now and forever the pride of our countries and peoples, to the benefit of any well-intentioned man of the world.

Serbia and Russia are tied in origin, language, customs, religion, history, culture, a sublime love for freedom and heroic pride, common mounds and nameless graves, abandoned orphans and women, young lives cut short, a lost generation that remembers our joint struggle.

How many of us would there be if there were no wars that we didn’t start?” [8]

A strong majority of Serbs also support President Putin [9], many viewing him as being a surrogate president. The successes of Russia and Putin are, in the collective Serbian psyche, also theirs to share in. In part through their affinity with Russia, the Serbs feel themselves as part of a larger world of geopolitical relevance. But this majority view hasn’t until recently found an expression in their own government, even while anti-NATO sentiments are considered part and parcel of the Serbian identity.

This contradiction has been bubbling for quite some time, now finding tangible signs of a real resolution. Serbia has been slowly emerging from a neo-colonial Western occupation following several tragedies. Western powers backed a nearly decade long civil war, claiming the lives of over 100,000 people. This criminal and illegal proxy war of divide and conquer, by the US led NATO on Yugoslavia, was followed by a 76 day NATO bombing campaign in 1999 that culminated in the ouster of the democratically elected Slobodon Milosevic in October of 2000.

On the ground, this was coordinated with “Otpor!”, a US supported astroturf movement funded by George Soros’s NED. Stemming in large part from the work of Gene Sharp, it is widely considered to be one of the first modern uses of what has now been called the combined Arab Spring and Color Revolution tactic.

When the lion kills, the jackal prospers; and the following dozen years saw Serbia mis-ruled by a puppet government, supported by a corrupt pro-EU and NATO-tolerant oligarchy. Some like Kostunica were recruited directly from the same “Otpor!”. But now this regrettable story, filled with betrayal and heartache, is but the prologue of a new book about a renewed Eurasian Serbia.

Putin’s momentous and historic visit, then, are not just about the past but about the present and the future. The joint struggle against Nazism in the past finds no lack of allusion in Putin’s comments today about Ukraine and Novorossyia. During his visit, he gave a revealing interview to Serbia’s Politika newspaper. When asked about US-Russia bilateral relations , he stated

“ Washington has actively supported the “Majdan” in Kiev, and as a result of their moves in Kiev a nationalism was unleashed that provoked resentment in a significant part of Ukraine, and threw the country into civil war, (the US) began to blame Russia, that she provoked the crisis. Then President Barack Obama stands in front of the UN General Assembly and included “Russian aggression in Europe” in the list of the three main threats to mankind today, along with the deadly Ebola fever and terrorist group “ISIS”.

Together with the restrictions directed against entire sectors of our economy, such an approach is difficult to name other than hostile.” [10]

The fight against Nazism is not one of mere historical significance, but one which points clearly to the fight in Novorossiya today against a US backed junta. While Serbia has recently proposed legislation to ban individuals from volunteering in foreign conflicts, more than 200 Serbs, and growing, are actively involved on the pro-Russian side in the emergent Federation of Novorossiya [11]. It is too soon to tell whether Putin’s visit will have any effect on the outcome of this vote, or conversely if passed, its serious enforcement. The civil war in the former Ukraine has relied in part on foreign volunteers involved in an anti-Nazi or anti-Fascist resistance.

Thursday’s agreements signed between Putin and Nikolic were also notable. Among the most important surrounds a Russian governmental organization in Niš, in southern Serbia. An agreement was signed to grant full legal immunity to employees of the organization.

The Russian-Serbian Humanitarian Center in Niš has been under increased scrutiny from the minority pro-western liberals, and representatives of the US embassy have urged a thorough investigation. The accusations are that the Russian-Serbian Humanitarian Center, also called the Emergency Situations Center, is operating today as an FSB hub, with the ultimate aim of establishing a Russian military base. This has been denied by Serbian authorities [12]. There is a growing memetic movement calling for Russian military bases in southern Serbia. Niš is 80 miles from US Camp Bondsteel, in the US occupied South Serbian region of Kosovo.

Putin also, during the visit, reiterated his unwavering position on the necessary end to the occupation of Kosovo, and its lawful return to Serbia [13].

All South-stream proposals have the pipeline traveling through, or next to, Niš.

The Emergency Situations Center has been ostensibly set up as a command center for ‘emergency responses’, such as the flash floods that rocked Serbia last May, claiming scores of lives. It is a popular conspiracy theory in Serbia that these floods were caused by the US’s HAARP program, meant to punish Serbia for ignoring EU calls to cease the South-stream gas pipeline project. The completion of the pipeline is a critical piece for Russian access to European markets, as well as a counter-measure against the US created instability in Ukraine, where presently between 65% and 70% of Russian gas to Europe travels through.

On the issue of South-stream, Putin also underlined the importance of the project during today’s visit. He said:

“The South-stream cannot be realized unilaterally. Like in Love, there is a need for two sides. We cannot build the pipeline worth several billions on our own. Similar discussion was led for Nordstream, so now everybody is satisfied. The problems with South-stream are political, and they are damaging the economy. We do not want to have an energy crisis this winter. It certainly will not be our fault.”

One can easily read between the lines of the last sentence, and what this means for Ukraine.

Other areas of talks revolved around the export of Serbian goods to Russia. Serbian exports, mostly agricultural, to Russia have increased over 60% since the NATO/EU imposed sanctions last January [14]. Discussions were also held surrounding dairy.

But this may just be the beginning, and Russian agribusiness consultants may be involved in future projects. A problem with Serbian exports involve their lack of organization, and the agricultural producers are not in a union of producers which export together. For these reasons things are not moving as fast as they could. This reflects some elements of the Serbian culture, which takes a casual approach to business matters and timelines.

Additionally, there was more detailed talks surrounding the export of Serbian made cars, under the Zastava label (formerly Yugo, using the Fiat platform), to Russia. As stated, Serbia enjoys a free trade agreement with Russia.

Germany has indicated that it too may be looking for a loophole to the EU’s sanctions and tariff regime, by having Serbia operate as a middle-man between themselves and their Russian partners. Germany has also felt stifled by EU regulations, having already openly debated leaving the EU [15]. In light of the EU sanctions imposed on Russia over Novorossiya, a serious hindrance to Germany, this may be looking more appealing than ever before. Serbia is a prime candidate due to its proximity to central Europe alongside its non-EU status. Serbia’s holding out as the ‘Lone Star State’ in the Balkans may, in fact, pay serious dividends in the end.

All of this indicates a very real and growing shift, not only for Serbia, but for all of Europe. As the conflict between the CSTO and NATO intensifies, Russia is shoring up its traditional allies and reaffirming its support for the ‘Pink Tide’ Latin American allies in MERCOSUR. Russia does not oppose Serbia’s potential to join the EU, seeing it as another asset within the EU, which can help to maintain its position in bilateral relations.

With all of this in mind, we know at least this: the pouring rain did not deter a single Serb from attending Thursday’s massive events, which caused traffic jams throughout Belgrade that, for the first time in a long time, were ones to be happy about.

Joaquin Flores is an American expat living in Belgrade. He is a full-time analyst at the Center for Syncretic Studies, a public geostrategic think-tank.

19 October, 2014
Greanvillepost.com

By Kate Randall

United Nations officials said Thursday that the UN trust fund for Ebola has only $100,000 on hand, a fraction of the nearly $1 billion the world body says is needed to contain the spread of the deadly virus. While the UN fund has received pledges of about $20 million from various governments, it has received only $100,000 in actual cash deposits, and that from only one country, Colombia.

The failure of the US, Western Europe and other wealthier nations to provide needed resources to confront the Ebola outbreak is indicative of governmental indifference, as the crisis intensifies in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and cases are diagnosed outside West Africa. While donor countries have given about $376 million in cash and non-cash contributions to other UN programs, the trust fund itself—a flexible cash resource vital to fighting Ebola—remains scandalously underfunded.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that as many as 10,000 new cases of Ebola a week could develop in the three hardest-hit West African countries by December 1. At a news conference Tuesday, WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward said the death toll now exceeds 4,400, with more than 8,900 confirmed cases since March.

Aylward said that while there were fewer cases in some of the worst affected areas, there were troubling signs that new areas of West Africa were reporting cases. There are also an increasing number of Ebola cases in the capital cities of the three countries most severely hit. The outbreak continues to wreak economic havoc on the region.

Food prices have risen by an average of 24 percent across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, with some families forced to reduce their intake to one meal a day, the World Food Program reported Friday. In Monrovia, the Liberian capital, prices of the main staple foods, Cassava and imported rice, have risen by 30 percent.

Food producing regions in the three countries have some of the highest infection rates, and hundreds of farmers have died. Quarantines and restricted movement of the population—introduced by government authorities to contain the virus—have led to food scarcity and panic buying, further pushing up prices.

Supplies vital to fight the spread of the hemorrhagic fever are in woefully short supply. In a grim statement, the health ministry in Liberia reported that in the next six months it will need more than 85,000 body bags, which are crucial in preventing the spread of the virus, but it has less than 5,000 on hand. The country also has a severe shortage of other vital supplies, including protective suits, facemasks, gloves and goggles.

The governmental response to this dire situation in West Africa—and reports of a handful of new cases in Senegal, Nigeria, Spain and the US—has been particularly reprehensible in the US. The Obama administration is not making available the billions of dollars needed to provide human resources and supplies to the disease-ravaged region. Rather, it has seized on the humanitarian crisis as an opportunity to order the dispatch of active-duty troops to Liberia to secure a base for its African Command (AFRICOM).

On Thursday, Obama issued an executive order allowing the Pentagon to call up Reserve and National Guard troops to be sent to West Africa “to augment the active Armed Forces of the United States for the effective conduct of Operation United Assistance, which is providing support to civilian-led humanitarian assistance.”

The White House has come under increasing criticism over the authorities’ response to the first three cases of Ebola in the US. Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian, died October 6 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas. He was initially released from the hospital despite having a fever and other symptoms and telling staff he had recently arrived from West Africa.

Two nurses who treated Duncan, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, have been diagnosed with Ebola and have now been transferred to two of the nation’s four state-of-the-art Ebola treatment centers. Nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian have come forward to criticize the unpreparedness of hospital authorities to treat Ebola patients, including lack of staff training, protective suits that left nurses’ necks exposed, and reckless handling of contagious bodily fluid waste.

Before being diagnosed, Vinson contacted the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), reporting an elevated fever, and was nevertheless given the go-ahead to board a commercial airline flight. People on that flight, and others on subsequent flights on the same aircraft, may have been exposed to Ebola. Relatives of Vinson and some of those on these flights have now been placed in voluntary 21-day quarantine.

On Friday, another Texas Health Presbyterian worker, who reportedly processed Duncan’s lab specimens, was quarantined in a cabin aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean on the recommendation of the CDC. The ship can carry 3,690 passengers and 1,367 crew members. Mexico and Belize refused to allow the ship to dock and it is returning to the US.

Facing mounting criticism over his administration’s incompetent and negligent response to the virus outbreak, President Obama on Friday named Ron Klain to serve as an “Ebola czar,” in charge of coordinating the government’s anti-Ebola efforts. The choice of Klain highlights the cynical and politically-driven concerns that dominate the administration’s actions in regard to the Ebola crisis.

Klain has no experience in health care or medical science. He is a Democratic Party insider who previously served as Vice President Joseph Biden’s chief of staff. He also served as chief of staff to Al Gore during the Florida ballot recount in the 2000 presidential election, when the former vice president acceded to the decision of the US Supreme Court to halt the recount and hand the presidency to George W. Bush.

The appointment of Klain confirms that Obama’s actions are driven not by what is needed to protect the population, either in the US or Africa, but rather by a desire to cover up the criminally negligent role of government agencies such as the CDC and of hospital officials, and limit the political damage to his administration.

With the mid-term elections less than three weeks away, the White House hopes the token appointment will prevent the Ebola crisis from becoming a significant issue on Election Day. Obama is coming under pressure from leading Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner and Texas Governor Rick Perry, to impose a ban on travel from West Africa.

Leading health experts, including CDC Director Thomas Frieden, warn that such an action would lead to the economic collapse of West African nations stricken by the disease, worsening the epidemic and making its global spread more, rather than less, likely.

Obama said Friday he supports present airport screening measures but is not “philosophically opposed” to a travel ban. Federal Aviation Administration head Michael Huerta told reporters Thursday that the government was assessing whether to issue a travel ban “on a day-to-day basis.”

A serious response to the Ebola crisis requires taking control of the effort out of the hands of corporate-dominated governments. What is needed is a massive, coordinated effort mobilizing an international team of doctors, scientists and health care professionals equipped with whatever supplies and resources are required—at whatever cost—to save as many people as possible in the disease-stricken nations and prevent an outbreak on a global scale.

18 October, 2014
WSWS.org

By Colin Todhunter

The corporate jargon surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal is about ‘protecting’ investment’, reducing ‘unnecessary’ barriers and ‘harmonising’ regulations that supposedly deter free trade between the US and the EU.

In principle, the notion of trade that is free and fair sounds ideal. But, across the world, the dominant ideological paradigm allows little scope for either. Markets are rigged [1], commodity prices subject to manipulation [2] and nations are coerced [3], destabilised [4] or attacked [5] in order that powerful players gain access to resources and markets.

On 11 October, over 400 groups across Europe took to the streets to demonstrate against the TTIP, which has just ended its seventh round of talks in Washington . While some groups are accused by supporters of the TTIP of being ideologically driven in their opposition, it is not ideology that drives this opposition. It is sceptism and suspicion fuelled by the prevailing pactices and actions of powerful corporations and their brand of neoliberalism and rampant privatisation. The secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding the TTIP fuels this suspicion. The public has not been allowed to know who set the agenda for the negotiations or what specifically is being negotiated supposedly its our behalf?

The public is expected to put up and shut up and leave it all to those who know best: EU officials with their deep-seated conflicts of interest [6,7,8] and big business. It has been mainly through leaked documents and recourse to freedom of information legislation that the public has gained insight into the nature of the negotiations.

The origins of the TTIP and the absence of transparency

The deal was masterminded by the ‘High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth’ (HLWG), which was set up in 2011 and chaired by European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht and the then US Trade Representative Ron Kirk [9]. In its final report, the Group not only recommended entering into the negotiations but went into some detail as to what should be put on the table, with the far-reaching aim of moving towards a “transatlantic marketplace.”

When questioned about the nature of the group, the European Commission (EC) said it had no identifiable members and stated that “several departments” contributed to the discussion and the reports of the (memberless) group. It even stated that there was no document containing the list of authors of the reports. A request by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) to disclose membership/report authors was met with the response: “Unfortunately we (the EC) are not in a position to provide you with the information requested.” [10]

CEO argued that the group should be subject to the transparency requirements set up in EC’s rules on ‘expert groups ‘ , including transparency about who participated.

When asked about the ‘outside expertise’ (as the EC called it) that had influenced the reports produced by the HLWG, CEO was told that the impact assessment of the proposed EU-US trade deal contained a summary of the expert evidence gathered since its inception. CEO was also directed to the Commission’s overview page for public consultations, where it is stated that more than 65 percent of the input to the first two consultations on the proposed EU-US deal came from companies and industry associations.

European Commissioner De Gucht claimed that “there is nothing secret” about the ongoing talks. In December 2013 in a letter published in The Guardian [11], he argued that “our negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are fully open to scrutiny.”

If that was the case, why then were notes of Commission meetings with business lobbyists released to Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) under the EU’s freedom of information law heavily censored? [12]

The public is not allowed to know the positions held by the EU (unlike business interests) in these talks, who is being given access to whom and who is lobbying for what on whose behalf. High-minded platitudes referring to protecting the integrity of industry and the sensitive nature of negotiations have been used in an attempt to subvert democracy, prevent public scrutiny and secure the continued privileged positions and influence that big business has held in the talks. The arguments being used to justify the secrecy were thinly veiled disguises to try to hoodwink the public into the accepting the legitimacy of these negotiations without question.

Documents received by CEO showed that De Gucht’s officials invited industry to submit wishlists for ‘regulatory barriers’ they would like removed during the negotiations. However, there was no way for the public to know how the EU incorporated this into its negotiating position as all references had been removed.

CEO received 44 documents about the EC’s meetings with industry lobbyists as part of preparations for the EU-US trade talks. Most of the documents, released as a result of a freedom of information (FOI) request , were meeting reports prepared by Commission officials.

The documents arrived almost a full ten months (!) after the FOI request was tabled and 39 of the 44 documents were heavily censored. The documents covered only a fraction of the more than 100 meetings which De Gucht’s officials had with industry lobbyists in the run-up to the launch of the TTIP negotiations.

Were no notes taken during closed-door meetings with corporate lobbyists from, for example, the US Chamber of Commerce, the German industry federation BDI, chemical lobby groups CEFIC and VCI, pharmaceutical industry coalition EFPIA, DigitalEurope, the Transatlantic Business Council, arms industry lobby ASD, the British Bankers Association and corporations like Lilly, Citi and BMW?

In the 39 documents which were “partially released”, large parts of text (“non releasable” or “not relevant”) had been hidden. In some cases, every single word had been removed from the document.

Not only was the text of the EU’s negotiating position secret, the public was even denied access to sentences in meeting reports that referred to the EU negotiating position. These were minutes from meetings with industry lobbyists who were clearly given information about the EU’s negotiating position in the TTIP talks, unlike the public. The sharing of information about the EU’s negotiating position with industry while refusing civil society access to that same information was a case of unacceptable discrimination.

In many cases, parts of text were removed because they contained the views of industry lobby groups “on particular aspects of the EU/US trade negotiations.” “Release of that information could have a negative impact on the position of the industry”, the Commission argued. It was unclear why the views of the lobby groups should be hidden from public scrutiny.

The Commission had also removed all names of lobbyists from the 44 documents arguing that “disclosure would undermine the protection of […] privacy and the integrity of the individual”. According to CEO, this was an absurd line of argument as these were professional lobbyists who are not acting in an individual capacity. There is clear public interest in transparency around who is lobbying on whose behalf and who is getting access to EU decision-makers.

What the corporations really want

Despite being heavily censored, the documents showed clearly that removing differences in EU and US regulations is the key issue in the TTIP talks, with ‘regulatory barriers’ coming up in a large majority of the meetings. For example, in a meeting with the European Services Forum in February 2013, a lobby group for global service players such as Deutsche Bank, IBM and Vodafone, the Commission suggested various options for regulatory cooperation such as ‘compatibility’, ‘mutual recognition’ and ‘equivalence’.

In another meeting in February 2013, BusinessEurope (the most powerful business lobby in Brussels ), stressed “its willingness to play an active role in the upcoming negotiations, in particular on the regulatory front”. The Commission noted the importance of EU industry “submitting detailed ‘Transatlantic’ proposals to tackle regulatory barriers”.

A leaked EU document from the winter of 2013 showed the Commission proposing an EU-US Regulatory Cooperation Council [12], a permanent structure to be created as part of the TTIP deal. Existing and future EU regulation would then have to go through a series of investigations, dialogues and negotiations in this Council. This would move decisions on regulations into a technocratic sphere, away from democratic scrutiny. Policies could be presented to the public as ‘done deals’, all worked out behind closed doors between pro-business officials and business leaders. There would also be compulsory impact assessments for proposed regulation, which will be checked for their potential impact on trade. What about whether they protect people’s health or are good for the environment?

This would be ideal for big business lobbies: creating a firm brake on any new progressive regulation in the very first stage of decision-making.

Even without access to various sources of information, some of the main players that originally supported the deal included the biotech sector, Toyota, General Motors, the pharmaceutical industr y , IBM and the Chamber of Commerce of the US , one of the most powerful corporate lobby groups in the US. Business Europe, the main organization representing employers in Europe, launched its own strategy on an EU-US economic and trade partnershipin early 2012 [13]. Its suggestions were widely included in the draft EU mandate.

Over the past couple of years or so, an increasing number of politicians and citizens groups have demanded that the negotiations be conducted in an open way, not least because t here are concerns that the deal will open the floodgate for GMOs ( food multinationals, agri-traders and seed producers have had more contacts with the EC’s trade department than lobbyists from the pharmaceutical, chemical, financial and car industry put together [14]) and shale gas (fracking) in Europe, threaten digital and labour rights and will empower corporations to legally challenge a wide range of regulations which they dislike.

One of the key aspects of the negotiations is that both the EU and US should recognize their respective rules and regulations, which in practice could reduce regulation to the lowest common denominator: a race to the bottom. The official language talks of “mutual recognition” of standards or so-called reduction of non-tariff barriers. For the EU, that could mean accepting US standards in many areas, including food and agriculture, which are lower than the EU’s.

The US wants all so-called barriers to trade, including highly controversial regulations such as those protecting agriculture, food or data privacy, to be removed. Even the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, made it clear that any agreement must also reduce EU restrictions on genetically modified crops, chlorinated chickens and hormone-treated beef [15].

Demands include an “a mbitious liberalisation of agricultural trade barriers with as few exceptions as possible”. Similarly, food lobby group Food and Drink Europe , representing the largest food companies (Unilever, Kraft, Nestlé, etc.), has welcomed the negotiations, with one of their key demands being the facilitation of the low level presence of unapproved genetically modified crops. This is a long-standing industry agenda also supported by feed and grain trading giants, including Cargill, Bunge, ADM, and the big farmers’ lobby COPA-COGECA. Meanwhile, the biotech industry on both sides of the Atlantic is offer ing its “ support and assistance as the EU and the US government look to enhance their trade relationship.” [13]

There is also the highly contentious investor-trade dispute settlement provision. It would enable US companies investing in Europe to bypass European courts and challenge EU governments at international tribunals whenever they find that laws in the area of public health, environmental or social protection interfere with their profits. EU companies investing abroad would have the same privilege in the US .

Across the world, big business has already used such settlement provisions in trade and investment agreements to claim massive sums from sovereign states in compensation [16]. Tribunals, consisting of ad hoc three-member panels hired from a small club of private lawyers riddled with conflicts of interest, have granted billions of euros to companies, courtesy of taxpayers.

EU and US companies have already used these lawsuits across the globe to destroy any competition or threats to their profits by for example challenging green energy and medicine policies, anti-smoking legislation, bans on harmful chemicals, environmental restrictions on mining, health insurance policies and measures to improve the economic situation of minorities. Even the threat of litigation can mean governments shelving socially progressive policies.

Any form of state intervention that does not work to the advantage of big business is increasingly regarded as a ‘barrier’ to trade, a potential curb on profits.

The TTIP is therefore also designed to undermine public sector service provision. That’s right, the public sector is regarded as a ‘barrier’ too. Private corporations could gain access to the lucrative government procurement market under the banner of free trade. We could well see an irreversible privatisation fest as US private interests bid to run state services such as the UK ‘s public sector National Health Service: patient care rights would give way to corporate business rights [17].

A report published by the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B) revealed the true human and environmental costs of the proposed deal. ‘ A Brave New Transatlantic Partnership ‘ [18] highlighted how the EC’s promises of up to one percent GDP growth and massive job creation as a result of the trade deal were not supported even by its own studies, which predict a growth rate of just 0.01% GDP over the next ten years and the potential loss of jobs in several economic sectors, including agriculture.

The report also explained how corporations were lobbying negotiators to use the deal to weaken food safety, labour, health and environmental standards as well as undermine digital rights. Attempts to strengthen banking regulation in the face of the financial crisis could also be jeopardised as the financial lobby uses the secretive trade negotiations to undo financial reforms, such as restrictions on the total value of financial transactions or the legal form of its operations.

When the report was released, Kim Bizzarri, the author of the report, argued:

“Big business lobbies on both sides of the Atlantic view the secretive trade negotiations as a weapon for getting rid of policies aimed at protecting European and US consumers, workers and our planet. If their corporate wish-list is implemented, it will concentrate even more economic and political power within the hands of a small elite, leaving all of us without protection from corporate wrongdoings.”
TTIP in context

Despite sections of the mainstream corporate media glibly presenting the TTIP as a well thought out recipe for free trade, job creation and economic growth, albeit with a few minor glitches, such claims do not stack up. The TTIP is a mandate for corporate plunder, the bypassing of democratic procedures and the erosion of ordinary people’s rights and national sovereignty. It represents a pro-privatisation agenda that enshrines the privileges of the world’s most powerful corporations at the expense of ordinary people.

Ordinary people want powerful corporations to be held to account. They want business practices regulated by elected representatives and public officials in order to protect the public good. However, why so many continue to blithely place such trust in certain EU institutions stretches the imagination: democracy in the EU has been sold to the highest bidder; the EC is a captive but willing servant of a corporate agenda [8]. And now the TTIP presents an ideal opportunity for corporations to force through wholly unpopular policies.

Ultimately, the TTIP could draw Europe even closer to the US and consolidate the power of Anglo-US financial-corporate interests centred in the City of London and on Wall Street. If events surrounding Ukraine tell us anything, it is that these interests have been instrumental in driving a wedge between Europe and Russia to prevent closer economic alignment between the two. By placing economic sanctions on Russia and, according to US Vice President Joe Biden, “embarrassing” the EU to force it go along with them, Europe ‘s trade with Russia will suffer. As a result, Europe now has added incentive to ‘embrace’ the TTIP.

The TTIP is thus part of the broader geopolitical game plan to weaken Western Europe and divide the European continent by sidelining Russia . While the TTIP may appear to have nothing to do with what is happening in Ukraine or Syria , it must be regarded as another cog in the wheel to cement US global hegemony and weaken Russia [19].

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

17 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org