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By Richard Falk

19 March 13

@ Al Jazeera

    The War was a serious setback for international law, the UN and world order, writes Falk.

After a decade of combat, casualties, massive displacement, persisting violence, enhanced sectarian tension and violence between Shias and Sunnis, periodic suicide bombings and autocratic governance, a negative assessment of the Iraq War as a strategic move by the United States, the United Kingdom and a few of their secondary allies, including Japan, seems unavoidable.

Not only the regionally destabilising outcome – including the blowback effect of perversely adding weight to Iran’s overall diplomatic influence – but the reputational costs in the Middle East associated with an imprudent, destructive and failed military intervention make the Iraq War the worst American foreign policy disaster since its defeat in Vietnam in the 1970s.

Such geopolitical accounting does not even consider the damage to the United Nations and international law arising from an aggressive use of force in flagrant violation of the UN Charter, embarked upon without any legitimating authorisation as to the use of force by the Security Council.

The UN hurt its image when it failed to reinforce its refusal to grant authorisation to the US and its coalition, despite great pressure from the US, to launch the attack. This post-attack failure was compounded by the fact that the UN lent support to the unlawful American-led occupation that followed.

In other words, not only was the Iraq War a disaster from the perspective of American and British foreign policy and the peace and stability of the Middle East region, but it was also a serious setback for international law, the UN and world order.

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the US was supposedly burdened by what policymakers came to call “the Vietnam Syndrome”. This was a Washington shorthand for the psychological inhibitions to engage in military interventions in the non-Western world due to the negative attitudes toward such imperial undertakings that were supposed to exist among the American public and in the government, especially among the military who were widely blamed for the outcome in Vietnam.

‘Vietnam Syndrome’

Many American militarists at the time complained that the Vietnam Syndrome was a combined result of an anti-war plot engineered by the liberal media and a response to an unpopular conscription or “draft” that required many middle class Americans to fight in a war that lacked popular support or a convincing strategic or legal rationale.

The flag-draped coffins of dead young Americans were shown on TV, leading defence hawks to contend somewhat ridiculously that “the war was lost in American living rooms”. The government made adjustments: the draft was abolished, reliance was henceforth placed on an all-volunteer professional military and renewed efforts were made to assure media support for subsequent military operations.

President, George HW Bush told the world in 1991 immediately after the Gulf War was fought to reverse the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait that “we have finally kicked the Vietnam Syndrome”. In effect, senior Bush was saying to the grand strategists in the White House and Pentagon that the role of American military power was again available for use around the world.

What the Gulf War showed was that on a conventional battlefield, in this setting of a desert war, American military superiority would be decisive, and could produce a quick victory with minimal costs in American lives. This new militarist enthusiasm created the political base for recourse to the NATO War in 1999 to wrest Kosovo from Serb control.

To ensure the avoidance of casualties, reliance was placed on air power, which took more time than expected, but further vindicated the war planners’ claim that the US could now fight and win “zero casualty wars”. In fact, there were no NATO combat deaths in the Kosovo War.

More sophisticated American war planners understood that not all challenges to US interests around the world could be met with air power in the absence of ground combat. Increasingly, political violence involving geopolitical priorities took the form of transnational violence (as in the 9/11 attacks) or was situated within the boundaries of territorial states, and involved Western military intervention designed to crush societal forces of national resistance.

The Bush presidency badly confused its new self-assurance about the conduct of battlefield international warfare and its old nemesis from Vietnam War days of counterinsurgency warfare, also known as low-intensity or asymmetric warfare.

David Petraeus rose through the ranks of the American military by repackaging counterinsurgency warfare in a post-Vietnam format relying upon an approach developed by noted guerrilla war expert David Galula. Galula contended that in the Vietnam War the fatal mistake was made of supposing that such a war would be determined 80 percent by combat battles in the jungles and paddy fields with the remaining 20 percent devoted to the capture of the “hearts and minds” of the indigenous population.

Galula argued that counterinsurgency wars could only be won if this formula was inverted. This meant that 80 percent of future US military interventions should be devoted to non-military aspects of societal well-being: restoring electricity, providing police protection for normal activity, building and staffing schools, improving sanitation and garbage removal, and providing health care and jobs.

Afghanistan, and then Iraq, became the testing grounds for applying these nation-building lessons of Vietnam, only to reveal in the course of their lengthy, destructive and expensive failures that the wrong lessons had been learned.

These conflicts were wars of national resistance, a continuation of the anti-colonial struggles against West-centric colonial domination. Regardless of whether the killing was complemented by sophisticated social and economic programmes, it still involved a pronounced and deadly challenge by foreign interests to the rights of self-determination that entailed killing Iraqi women and children, and violating their most basic rights through the unavoidably harsh mechanics of foreign occupation.

It also proved impossible to disentangle the planned 80 percent from the 20 percent as the hostility of the Iraqi people to their supposed American liberators demonstrated over and over again, especially as many Iraqis on the side of the occupiers proved to be corrupt and brutal, sparking popular suspicion and intensifying internal polarisation.

The truly “fatal mistake” made by Petraeus, Galula and all the counterinsurgency advocates who have followed this path, is the failure to recognise that when the American military and its allies attack and occupy a non-Western country – especially in the Islamic world – and start dividing, killing and policing its inhabitants, popular resistance will be mobilised.

This is precisely what happened in Iraq, and the suicide bombings to this day suggest that the ugly patterns of violence have not stopped even with the ending of America’s direct combat role.

The US was guilty of a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iraq War displayed to the world when George W Bush theatrically declared on May 1, 2003, a wildly premature victory from the deck of an American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with the notorious banner proclaiming “mission accomplished” plainly visible behind the podium as the sun sank over the Pacific Ocean.

Bush revelled in this misunderstanding by assuming that the attack phase of the war was the whole war, forgetting about the more difficult and protracted occupation phase. The real Iraq War, rather than ending, was about to begin, that is, the violent internal struggle for the political future of the country, one made more difficult and protracted by the military presence of the US and its allies.

This counterinsurgency sequel to occupation would not be decided on the kind of battlefield where arrayed military capabilities confront one another, but rather through a war of attrition waged by hit and run domestic Iraqi forces, abetted by foreign volunteers, opposed to the tactics of Washington. Such a war has a shadowy beginning and a still uncertain ending, and is often, as in Iraq, as it proved to be earlier in Vietnam, a quagmire for intervening powers.

Crime Against Peace

There are increasing reasons to believe that the current Iraqi leader, Maliki, resembles the authoritarian style of Saddam Hussein more than the supposed constitutional liberal regime that the US pretends to leave behind, and that the country is headed for continuing struggle, possibly even a disastrous civil war.

The Iraq War was a war of aggression from its inception, being an unprovoked use of armed force against a sovereign state in a situation other than self-defence. The Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals convened after World War II had declared such aggressive warfare to be a “crime against peace” and prosecuted and punished surviving political and military leaders of Germany and Japan as war criminals.

We can ask why have George W Bush and Tony Blair not been investigated, indicted and prosecuted for their roles in planning and prosecuting the Iraq War. As folk singer Bob Dylan instructed us long ago, the answer is “blowin’ in the wind”, or in more straightforward language, the reasons for such impunity conferred upon the American and British leaders is a crude display of geopolitics – their countries were not defeated and occupied, their governments never surrendered, and such strategic failures (or successes) are exempted from legal scrutiny.

These are the double standards that make international criminal justice more a matter of power politics than global justice.

There is also the question of complicity of countries that supported the war with troop deployments, such as Japan, which dispatched 1,000 members of its self-defence units to Iraq in July 2003 to help with non-combat dimensions of the occupation. Such a role is a clear breach of international law and morality.

It is also inconsistent with Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. It was coupled with Tokyo’s diplomatic support for the US/UK-led Iraq War from start to finish. Should such a record of involvement have any adverse consequences?

It would seem that Japan might at least review the appropriateness of its complicit participation in a war of aggression, and how that diminishes the credibility of any Japanese claim to uphold the responsibilities of membership in the UN. At least, it provides the people of Japan with a moment for national soul-searching to think about what kind of world order will in the future best achieve peace, stability and human dignity.

Are there lessons to be drawn from the Iraq War? I believe there are. The overwhelming lesson is that in this historical period interventions by the West in the non-West, especially when not authorised by the UN Security Council, can rarely succeed in attaining their stated goals.

More broadly, counterinsurgency warfare involving a core encounter between Western invading and occupying forces and a national resistance movement will not be decided on the basis of hard power military superiority. But rather by the dynamics of self-determination associated with the party that has the more credible nationalist credentials, which include the will to persist in the struggle for as long as it takes, and the capacity to capture the high moral ground in the ongoing struggle for domestic and international public support.

It is only when we witness the dismantling of many of America’s 700-plus acknowledged foreign military bases spread around the world, and see the end of repeated US military intervention globally, that we can have some hope that the correct lessons of the Iraq War are finally being learned.

Until then, there will be further attempts by the US government to correct the tactical mistakes that it claims explain past failures in Iraq (and Afghanistan), and new interventions will undoubtedly be proposed in coming years, most probably leading to costly new failures, and further controversies as to “why?” we fought and why we lost.

American leaders will remain unlikely to acknowledge that the most basic mistake is militarism itself, at least until challenged by robust anti-militarist political forces not currently on the political scene.

By Dahr Jamail

19 March, 2013

@ Al Jazeera

Two US-led wars in Iraq have left behind hundreds of tonnes of depleted uranium munitions and other toxic wastes.

Fallujah, Iraq – Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq.

Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. DU contamination may also be connected to the steep rise in leukaemia, renal, and anaemia cases, especially among children, being reported throughout many Iraqi governorates.

There has also been a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births among Iraqi women, particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred, such as Fallujah.

Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.

As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest.

“Cancer statistics are hard to come by, since only 50 per cent of the healthcare in Iraq is public,” Dr Salah Haddad of the Iraqi Society for Health Administration and Promotion told Al Jazeera. “The other half of our healthcare is provided by the private sector, and that sector is deficient in their reporting of statistics. Hence, all of our statistics in Iraq must be multiplied by two. Any official numbers are likely only half of the real number.”

Toxic environments

Dr Haddad believes there is a direct correlation between increasing cancer rates and the amount of bombings carried out by US forces in particular areas.

“My colleagues and I have all noticed an increase in Fallujah of congenital malformations, sterility, and infertility,” he said. “In Fallujah, we have the problem of toxics introduced by American bombardments and the weapons they used, like DU.”

During 2004, the US military carried out two massive military sieges of the city of Fallujah, using large quantities of DU ammunition, as well as white phosphorous.

“We are concerned about the future of our children being exposed to radiation and other toxic materials the US military have introduced into our environment,” Dr Haddad added.

A frequently cited epidemiological study titled Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009 involved a door-to-door survey of more than 700 Fallujah households.

The research team interviewed Fallujans about abnormally high rates of cancer and birth defects.

One of the authors of the study, Chemist Chris Busby, said that the Fallujah health crisis represented “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied”.

Dr Mozghan Savabieasfahani is an environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the author of more than two dozen peer reviewed articles, most of which deal with the health impact of toxicants and war pollutants. Her research now focuses on war pollution and the rising epidemic of birth defects in Iraqi cities.

“After bombardment, the targeted population will often remain in the ruins of their contaminated homes, or in buildings where metal exposure will continue,” Dr Savabieasfahani told Al Jazeera.

“Our research in Fallujah indicated that the majority of families returned to their bombarded homes and lived there, or otherwise rebuilt on top of the contaminated rubble of their old homes. When possible, they also used building materials that were salvaged from the bombarded sites. Such common practices will contribute to the public’s continuous exposure to toxic metals years after the bombardment of their area has ended.”

She pointed out how large quantities of DU bullets, as well as other munitions, were released into the Iraqi environment.

“Between 2002 and 2005, the US armed forces expended six billion bullets – according to the figures of the US General Accounting Office,” she added.

According to Dr Savabieasfahani, metal contaminants in war zones originate from bombs and bullets, as well as from other explosive devices. Metals, most importantly lead, uranium, and mercury, are used in the manufacture of munitions, and all of these contribute to birth defects, immunological disorders, and other illnesses.

“Our study in two Iraqi cities, Fallujah and Basra, focused on congenital birth defects,” she said.

Her research showed that both studies found increasing numbers of birth defects, especially neural tube defects and congenital heart defects. It also revealed public contamination with two major neurotoxic metals, lead and mercury.

“The Iraq birth defects epidemic is, however, surfacing in the context of many more public health problems in bombarded cities,” she said. “Childhood leukemia, and other types of cancers, are increasing in Iraq.”

Fallujah babies

Doctors in Fallujah are continuing to witness the aforementioned steep rise in severe congenital birth defects, including children being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems.

Today in Fallujah, residents are reporting to Al Jazeera that many families are too scared to have children, as an alarming number of women are experiencing consecutive miscarriages and deaths with critically deformed and ill newborns.

Dr Samira Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, has taken a personal interest in investigating an explosion of congenital abnormalities that have mushroomed in the wake of the US sieges since 2005.

“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine,” Alani told Al Jazeera at her office in the hospital last year, while showing countless photos of shocking birth defects.

Alani also co-authored a study in 2010 that showed the rate of heart defects in Fallujah to be 13 times the rate found in Europe. And, for birth defects involving the nervous system, the rate was calculated to be 33 times that found in Europe for the same number of births.

As of December 21, 2011, Alani, who has worked at the hospital since 1997, told Al Jazeera she had personally logged 677 cases of birth defects since October 2009. Just eight days later, when Al Jazeera visited the city on December 29, that number had already risen to 699.

Alani showed Al Jazeera hundreds of photos of babies born with cleft pallets, elongated heads, a baby born with one eye in the centre of its face, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses and spines.

She told Al Jazeera of cases of “thanatophoric displacia”, an abnormality in bones and the rib cage that “render the newborn incompatible with life”.

“It’s been found by a coroner’s court that cancer was caused by an exposure to depleted uranium,” Busby told Al Jazeera.

“In the last ten years, research has emerged that has made it quite clear that uranium is one of the most dangerous substances known to man, certainly in the form that it takes when used in these wars.”

In July 2010, Busby released a study that showed a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in Fallujah since the 2004 attacks. The report also showed the sex ratio had become skewed to 86 boys born to every 100 girls, together with a spread of diseases indicative of genetic damage – similar to, but of far greater incidence than Hiroshima.

Dr Alani has visited Japan where she met with Japanese doctors who study birth defect rates they believe related to radiation from the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

She was told birth defect incidence rates there are between one and two per cent. Alani’s log of cases of birth defects amounts to a rate of 14.7 per cent of all babies born in Fallujah, more than 14 times the rate in the effected areas of Japan.

In March 2013, Dr Alani informed Al Jazeera that the incident rates of congenital malformations remained around 14 percent.

As staggering as these statistics are, Dr Alani points to the same problem of under-reporting that Dr Haddad mentioned, and said that the crisis is even worse than these statistics indicate.

“We have no system to register all of them, so we have so many cases we are missing,” she said. “I think I only know of 40-50 percent of the cases because so many families have their babies at home and we never know of these, and other clinics are not registering them either.”

Additionally, Dr Alani remains the only person in Fallujah registering cases, and reported that she was still seeing the same severe defects.

“We have so many cases of babies with multiple system defects in one baby,” she explained. “Multiple abnormalities in one baby. For example, we just had one baby with central nervous system problems, skeletal defects, and heart abnormalities. This is common in Fallujah today.”

Disconcertingly, Dr Alani mentioned something that Dr Savabieasfahani’s research warned of.

The hospital where Alani does her work was constructed in the Dhubadh district of Fallujah in 2008. According to Alani, the district was bombed heavily during the November 2004 siege.

Dr Savabieasfahani explained that her research proves areas of Fallujah, as well as Basra, “are contaminated with lead and mercury, two highly toxic heavy metals”, from US bombings in 1991 and during the 2003 invasion. “Exposure to metals, as well as to ionizing radiation, can lead to cancer,” she added.

She said that, when the DU munitions explode or strike their targets, they generate “fine metal-containing dust particles as well as DU-containing particles that persist in the environment. These particles can enter the food chain and enter the human body via contaminated food. Toxic particles can also become airborne with the wind and be inhaled by the public. Iraq is prone to frequent sand and dust storms. Continuous public inhalation of toxic materials can lead to cancer. Ingested or inhaled particles that emit alpha radiation can cause cancer.”

Basra and Southern Iraq

In Babil Province in southern Iraq, cancer rates have been escalating at alarming rates since 2003. Dr Sharif al-Alwachi, the head of the Babil Cancer Centre, blames the use of depleted uranium weapons by US forces during and following the 2003 invasion.

“The environment could be contaminated by chemical weapons and depleted uranium from the aftermath of the war on Iraq,” Dr Alwachi told Al Jazeera. “The air, soil and water are all polluted by these weapons, and as they come into contact with human beings they become poisonous. This is new to our region, and people are suffering here.”

According to a study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, a professional journal based in the southwestern German city of Heidelberg, there was a sevenfold increase in the number of birth defects in Basra between 1994 and 2003.

According to the Heidelberg study, the concentration of lead in the milk teeth of sick children from Basra was almost three times as high as comparable values in areas where there was no fighting.

In addition, never before has such a high rate of neural tube defects (“open back”) been recorded in babies as in Basra, and the rate continues to rise. According to the study, the number of hydrocephalus (“water on the brain”) cases among new-borns is six times as high in Basra as it is in the United States.

Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of Uranium in Iraq, has been researching the effects of depleted uranium on Iraqis since 1991. He told Al Jazeera he personally measured radiation levels in the city of Kerbala, as well as in Basra, and his geiger counter was “screaming” because “the indicator went beyond the range”.

Dr Savabieasfahani pointed out that childhood leukemia rates in Basra more than doubled between 1993 and 2007.

“Multiple cancers in patients – patients with simultaneous tumours on both kidneys and in the stomach, for example – an extremely rare occurrence, have also been reported there,” she said. “These observations collectively suggest an extraordinary public health emergency in Iraq. Such a crisis requires urgent multifaceted international action to prevent further damage to public health.”

International law and the future

There are clear international laws addressing the use of munitions such as Depleted Uranium.

Article 35 of Protocol I, a 1977 amendment of the Geneva Conventions, prohibits any means or methods of warfare that cause superfluous injuries or unnecessary suffering. Article 35 also prohibits those nations from resorting to means of war that could inflict extensive and long-term damage on human health and the environment.

The observed impacts of DU in Iraq suggest that these weapons fall under Article 35 as being prohibited, by the very nature of their suspected long-lasting effects on human health and the environment.

Article 36 (of Protocol I) also obliges any state studying, developing, or acquiring a new weapon to hold a legal review of that weapon.

Thus far, Belgium (2007) and Costa Rica (2011) have passed domestic laws prohibiting uranium weapons within their territories. In 2008, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that stated that “the use of DU in warfare runs counter to the basic rules and principles enshrined in written and customary international, humanitarian and environmental law”.

Nevertheless, DNA mutations caused by DU can, of course, be passed from parent to child. Hence, DU contamination from the US-led wars against Iraq in 1990 and 2003 appear to likely continue to cause a persistent national health crisis for future generations of Iraqis.

The remaining traces of DU in Iraq represent a formidable long-term environmental hazard, as they will remain radioactive for more than 4.5 billion years.

Dr Savabieasfahani feels that more research and studies need to be carried out in Iraq in order to obtain the full scope of damage caused by the weapons of war used in that country since 1990.

“We need large scale environmental testing to find out the extent of environmental contamination by metals and DU, and other weapons in Iraq,” she concluded.

“There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we’ve never seen them until now,” Dr Alani said. “So when I describe it, all I can do is describe the physical defects, but am unable to provide a medical term.”

Dr Haddad shared his deep concern about the future of his own, and other, Iraqi children.

“I feel fear for them,” he said, sadly. “They are encircled by so many problems like health issues, toxins, and we must work to spare them from disease, radiation, and chemical toxins. These are the silent killers, because you can’t see them until the problem grows very large. Too many Iraqis have suffered from these, and I can’t see how that suffering will not continue.”

Dr Alani simply wanted people, especially those in the United States, to know of the crisis in Fallujah, and asked one thing from them.

“I ask them to ask their government not to hurt people outside of their country,” she said. “Especially the people of Iraq.”

Dahr Jamail is an American journalist who is best known as one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 Iraq invasion. He spent eight months in Iraq, between 2003 to 2005, and presented his stories on his website, entitled Dahr Jamail’s MidEast Dispatches. Jamail writes for the Inter Press Service news agency, among other outlets. He has been a frequent guest on Democracy Now!. Jamail is the recipient of the 2008 The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

By Nile Bowie

18 March, 2013

From talk of “red lines” and cartoon bombs to having “all options on the table”, an undeniably delusional logic emanates from leadership in Washington and Tel Aviv regarding the alleged threat posted by Iran’s nuclear program. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously took to the stage of the UN General Assembly with his doodled explosive, he claimed that Iran would soon have the capability to enrich uranium to 90 percent, allowing them to construct a nuclear weapon by early-mid 2013. In his second administration, Obama, who recently said a nuclear-Iran would represent a danger to Israel and the world, appears to be seeing eye-to-eye with Netanyahu, despite previous reports of the two not being on the same page. For whatever its worth, these two world leaders have taken the conscious decision to entirely ignore evidence brought forward by the US intelligence community, as well as appeals from nuclear scientists, policy-advisers, and IAEA personnel who claim that the “threat” posed by Iran is exaggerated and politicized.

Its common knowledge that Washington’s own National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which reflects the intelligence assessments of America’s 16 spy agencies, confirmed that whatever nuclear weapons program Iran once had was dismantled in 2003. Mr. Netanyahu has not corrected his statements insinuating that Iran was nearing the red line of 90 percent enrichment, even when recent UN reports that show Tehran has in fact decreased its stockpiles of 20 percent fissile material, far below the enrichment level required to weaponize uranium. Hans Blix, former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has challenged previous IAEA reports on Iran’s nuclear activities, accusing the agency of relying on unverified intelligence from the US and Israel. Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, former Washington insiders and analysts in the Clinton and Bush administrations, recently authored a book titled “Going to Tehran”, arguing that Iran is a coherent actor and that evidence for the bomb is simply not there.

Clinton Bastin, former director of US nuclear weapons production programs, has commented on the status of Iran’s capacity to produce nuclear weapons, stating, “The ultimate product of Iran’s gas centrifuge facilities would be highly enriched uranium hexafluoride, a gas that cannot be used to make a weapon. Converting the gas to metal, fabricating components and assembling them with high explosives using dangerous and difficult technology that has never been used in Iran would take many years after a diversion of three tons of low enriched uranium gas from fully safeguarded inventories. The resulting weapon, if intended for delivery by missile, would have a yield equivalent to that of a kiloton of conventional high explosives”. Bastin’s assessments corroborate reports that show Iran’s nuclear program is for civilian purposes; he further emphasizes the impracticality of weaponizing the hexafluoride product of Tehran’s gas-centrifuges, as the resulting deterrent would yield a highly inefficient nuclear weapon.

The fact that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued several fatwas (a religious prohibition) against the production of nuclear weapons doesn’t seem to have helped much either. An unceasing combination of Islamophobia-propaganda, a repetitive insistence that Tehran is edging closer to the threshold, and devastatingly negligent misreporting of Iran and its pursuit of domestic nuclear power has created a situation where the country is viewed as an irrational actor. In the court of Western mainstream opinion, Iran is grouped in the same category as bellicose North Korea, despite the fact that it is a law-abiding signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that has consistently cooperated with the IAEA while publically renouncing the use of nuclear weapons. This leads to the current scenario, where Iran and its people are punished under an unethical barrage of economic sanctions for possessing a weapon that they do not possess.

The severity of economic sanctions against Iran and the fabricated allegations of it possessing nuclear weapons serve as a disturbing parallel to the invasion and destruction of Iraq during the Bush administration. From the perspective of this observer, the US does not actually want to go to war with Iran – such an ordeal would bring about an array of overwhelmingly negative ramifications that Obama would probably want to avoid. What the US does want to do however, is to dismantle the foundations of the Islamic Republic by completely destroying its economy through sanctions, prompting the population to rise up and overthrow the regime – so basically, Obama is happy to conduct war by other means. Ayatollah Khamenei’s recent proclamations of the US holding a gun to the head of the Iranian nation can only be perceived as entirely accurate.

Its easy to see why the Supreme Leader has doubts over the prospect of negotiations with the US; the deal put forward at the most recent meeting of the P5+1 essentially argued that the US would roll back sanctions that prevent Iran from trading gold and precious metals in exchange for Iran completely shutting down its uranium enrichment plant at Fordo. The substance of this offer appears like it was deliberately drafted to be rejected by the Iranian side, given the fact that it would mandate Iran to shutdown one of its main facilities while keeping in place the most punishing sanctions that have destroyed the Iranian currency and made life-saving medications unaffordable for most – its more of an insult than an offer. For the average Iranian business owner and worker, US-led sanctions and currency devaluation have affected everyday transactions that provide paychecks and economic viability for millions of people.

From urban shopkeepers to rural restaurant owners, many have been forced to close their businesses because they are unable to profit from reselling imported goods purchased with dollars. Isolation from the global banking system has made it increasingly more difficult for Iranian students studying abroad to receive money from their families. Sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank aim to devastate the Iranian export economy, affecting everyone from oil exporters to carpet weavers and pistachio cultivators. By crippling Iranian people’s livelihoods and hindering their ability to pursue education and afford necessities, the Obama administration believes such measures will erode public confidence in the government and challenge its legitimacy. It is important to recognize that these sanctions are not only aimed against Iran’s government, but at its entire population, especially to the poor and merchant population. An unnamed US intelligence source cited by the Washington Post elaborates, “In addition to the direct pressure sanctions exert on the regime’s ability to finance its priorities, another option here is that they will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”

These sanctions, which are Obama’s throwback to ham-fisted Bush-Cheney era policies, must be seen as part of a series of measures taken to coax widespread social discontent and unrest. US sanctions have broadened their focus, targeting large swaths of the country’s industrial infrastructure, causing the domestic automobile production to plummet by 40 percent, while many essential medical treatments have more than doubled in price. Patients suffering from hemophilia, thalassemia, and cancer have been adversely affected, as the foreign-made medicines they depend on are increasingly more difficult to get ahold of. Over the past two years, general supermarket goods have seen a price hike between 100 to 300 percent. For the first time in the world, a media ban has been imposed, on PressTV, Iran’s state-funded English language international news service. Ofcom, a UK-based communications regulator linked to the British government, spearheaded the prohibition. The European Union has also imposed a travel ban on Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz and eight other officials.

While editorials and commentators in the New York Times and Washington Post regularly accuse Iran of violating international law, the editors of these papers have shown no willingness to scrutinize the US and Israel by holding them accountable when they violate international law, namely, a prohibition of “the threat or use of force” in international relations unless a nation is attacked or such force is authorized by the UNSC, as embodied in the United Nations Charter. It is undeniable that by failing to question the brutal tactics meted out by Washington and Tel Aviv, these papers and the commentators affiliated with them endorse policies that intimidate and coerce civilian populations, in addition to employing terrorist tactics such as targeted cyber-strikes and extrajudicial assassinations – all of which the Iranian nation has been subjected to in utter defiance of the standards and rules of international law and their fundamental bedrock of protecting civilians.

The facts have been proven time and time again, Iran seeks economic development, technological advancement, and energy independence – it wants domestic nuclear power and the freedom to enrich uranium to 20 percent for the medical development of radiopharmaceuticals and industrial isotopes, as it is entitled to as an NPT signatory. Washington’s threats to impose “secondary” sanctions against third-country entities doing business with the Islamic Republic represents a mafia-mentality so characteristic of the unipolar reality in which the US sees itself. Washington has recently threatened energy-hungry Pakistan with sanctions over its partnership with Tehran in a $7.5-billion gas pipeline between the two nations, a project that would do infinite good by promoting regional stability and delivering energy to poverty stricken regions in Pakistan. Washington’s sanctions regime will collapse if the US Congress insists that China sharply cut its energy trade and relations with Iran. China will not adhere to such stringent foreign interference into its trade relationships, and Washington is in no position to sanction China because it buys oil from Iran.

If Beijing calls Washington’s bluff, other growth-focused non-Western economies like India, Malaysia, and South Korea will be less fearful of conducting business and buying oil from Tehran. Obama has taken some cues from the revolutionary students of 1979 and his administration has come up with a hostage crisis of its own, involving holding captive the civilian population of Iran – and Washington looks keen to let the sanctions bite until either the regime bows down, or the people rise up. One of the best examples of the perverted logic behind the US position on Iran comes from Vice President Joe Biden, who recently stated, “We have also made clear that Iran’s leaders need not sentence their people to economic deprivation”. Such a statement embodies the upside-down logic of Washington policy-makers who claim the moral high ground while enabling terrorism and engaging in unethical campaigns of economic and military warfare – the present state of affairs simply cannot continue.

Nile Bowie is an independent political analyst and photographer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com

Posted on Mar 18, 2013

@ Truthdig.com

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

By Dr. Elias Akleh

18 March, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

It is a well known fact to many that American Zionist Jewish groups especially AIPAC are the most influential political groups in the US. It members control the Federal Reserve and the majority of American banking and financial institutions, major American corporations especially the military industrial complex, and major media resources. AIPAC is so powerful that it greatly shapes the American foreign policy.

AIPAC wields so much financial power, whose bought stooges had been pushed to the Congress. These bought Congressmen place Israel’s interests; though colonialists, terrorist, genocidal and violating all international laws and human rights, on top of their list although on the expense of their tax-payers American Constituents. For them American interests and security have no value next to those of Israel’s. They don’t care that such unconditional blind support to an illegitimate colonial terrorist Israel gains Americans only enmity and hatred of at least half of the world population. The handful few honest Congressmen, who neither sold their souls nor their country, do not dare to oppose AIPAC since such an act has been proven in the past to be a political suicide.

AIPAC had pushed in the past so many anti-American resolutions for approval by the Congress. The latest anti-American resolution is the Senate Resolution S.R. 65 authored by the pro-Israel Senators Lindsay Graham and Robert Menendez that was introduced to the Senate in February 28th. This resolution is called “The Iran Nuclear Prevention Act” and is similar to that of the H.R.850 in the House of Representatives. This is a very dangerous and a warmongering resolution calling for strong support to the full implementation of US and international sanctions on Iran urging Obama to continue to strengthen enforcement of sanctions legislation.

This resolution is based on the false premises that Iran pursues a “nuclear weapons capability” and an American policy “… to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon capability”. It has been declared several times that the Israeli and American intelligence as well as the IAEA know that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and is geared towards civilian use. Despite this knowledge the resolution urges the US that “if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military and economic support.”

This is actually a declaration of war against Iran dependent on Israeli whim. This resolution basically states that if Israel starts a war against Iran for any reason, the US must automatically support it including the use of its own military and naval forces. As Senator Graham admitted in an interview, “If Israel acts in its own defense – even pre-emptively – we will support Israel economically, diplomatically, and politically.” Such a resolution, if approved, would make it easier for the obsessed-with-Iran Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to convince his government to attack Iran guaranteeing American support.

Through their ardent Zionist stooges, such as Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Democratic Ted Deutch, AIPAC is pushing another anti-American House resolution H.R. 938 to be approved by the Congress. H.R. 938 is the “United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013” calling for strengthening what is termed “the strategic alliance” between US and Israel. It calls for the Congress to declare that Israel is a major strategic partner to the US, and to declare its intentions to upgrade “the framework of the US-Israel strategic and military relationships.”

This resolution calls for extending the time length and scope of the many forms of assistance and technological sharing programs the US had entered into with Israel. This includes Israel’s access to and use of equipment from American military stockpiles.

What is even more concerning is that this resolution specifically gives Israel the full authority to re-export and re-sell any technology, military or otherwise, it obtains from the US. This frees Israel to sell American technology to any other country including its enemies. Israel has a long track record of stealing proprietary American defense technology and selling it to former Soviet Union and to China.

Another specific area the resolution focuses on is the various Israeli missile defense systems it is developing. The bill mandates that the US “… should provide assistance upon request by the Government of Israel for the procurement and enhancement” of these systems. This means providing financial, technological, and training assistance to Israel in this industry.

Another dangerous aspect of this resolution is its calling for the State Department to include Israel in the visa waiver program granting Israelis complete free of any monitoring travel to the US. This would be a welcomed gift to Israeli organized crimes trafficking with white slavery, body organs, and drugs such as ecstasy, which is already prevalent in the US. Such a visa waiver program usually requires reciprocity on the other party. The Israeli visa access program is the most stringent in the world denying visa to many nationalities including American citizens, who are of Arab descent, especially Palestinians, and those of Islamic religion.

This is an unfair, biased and dangerous resolution threatening American interests and standing in the international community. Unlike any other regular strategic alliance agreement, there is nothing in this alliance that benefits the US. On the contrary it puts the US under un-necessary financial and military obligations. The resolution is strictly unidirectional; does not state any Israeli obligation towards the US and does not pose any conditions or restraint on Israeli behavior.

It is so dangerous to single out and to grant Israel the status of a major strategic ally when American soldiers, joined by troops from other countries like Canada, UK, France and Spain, had fought Israel’s proxy wars in the Middle East while Israeli army was cheering up from the safety of their homes.

Then there is AIPAC’s attempt to determine the results of the sequestration; a forced deficit reduction that Congress had agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011. AIPAC’s lobbying soldiers were sent to the House and the Senate office buildings urging their congressmen not to cut Israel’s $3.2 billion a year in aid no matter what the sequester calls for and no matter what domestic programs have to be eliminated. Once again the Congressmen are told to ignore the dire needs of the tax-paying American citizens in favor of satisfying the needs of colonial genocidal Israel.

The American citizens need to understand that the $3.2 billion is not an accurate figure and does not reflect the whole amount they are paying to Israel. Any interested American citizen can obtain charts and records about American financial aid to foreign countries from the Congressional Research service within the library of Congress, or by visiting the library of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Rosslyn, Virginia. The records show that Israel received in the last few years the sum of $3 billion annually; $1.8 billion in military aid and $1.2 billion in economic aid. In addition to that Israel received in 1997 alone at least $525.8 million from a variety of other American federal budgets, and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the total of American grants and loan guarantees to Israel for 1997 was $5,525,800,00.

Investigations done by freelance writer Frank Collins and “Washington Reportnews” editor Shawn Twing revealed that between 1949 – 1998 Israel had received a total of $83,204,827,200 in American foreign aid grants and loans. Besides that the American administration pays Israel this amount at the beginning of the fiscal year in lump sum amount. To do that the US borrows money to pay Israel and then pays interest on the loan. The grand total of foreign aid to Israel including the interest comes to about $85 billion. This amount does not include American loan guarantees to Israel with greatly reduced interest rate. These loans amounted to further $10 billion up to date. Such loans and interests are never paid back to US due to the Cranston Amendment of 1983.

It should be noted that during the period between 1949-1996 American aid to tiny Israel was greater that American aid to all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean combined. Countries receive foreign aid because they host American military bases, or due to some type of environmental catastrophe. They are also expected to use the funds for the purchase of American arms, ammunition, training and other services. As for Israel, the US does not get one single benefit in return.

Does all that incense American citizens, who are jobless, homeless, hungry, tired, and without any health benefits?

Dr. Elias Akleh is a writer living in Corona, CA., eakleh@ca.rr.com

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By James Petras

17 March, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

President Hugo Chavez was unique in multiple areas of political, social and economic life. He made significant contributions to the advancement of humanity. The depth, scope and popularity of his accomplishments mark President Chavez as the ‘Renaissance President of the 21st Century’.

Many writers have noted one or another of his historic contributions highlighting his anti-poverty legislation, his success in winning popular elections with resounding majorities and his promotion of universal free public education and health coverage for all Venezuelans.

In this essay we will highlight the unique world-historic contributions that President Chavez made in the spheres of political economy, ethics and international law and in redefining relations between political leaders and citizens. We shall start with his enduring contribution to the development of civic culture in Venezuela and beyond.

Hugo Chavez: The Great Teacher of Civic Values

From his first days in office, Chavez was engaged in transforming the constitutional order so that political leaders and institutions would be more responsive to the popular electorate. Through his speeches Chavez clearly and carefully informed the electorate of the measures and legislation to improve their livelihood. He invited comments and criticism – his style was to engage in constant dialogue, especially with the poor, the unemployed and the workers. Chavez was so successful in teaching civic responsibilities to the Venezuelan electorate that millions of citizens from the slums of Caracas rose up spontaneously to oust the US backed business-military junta which had kidnapped their president and closed the legislature. Within seventy-two hours – record time – the civic-minded citizens restored the democratic order and the rule of law in Venezuela, thoroughly rejecting the mass media’s defense of the coup-plotters and their brief authoritarian regime.

Chavez, as all great educators, learned from this democratic intervention of the mass of citizens, that democracy’s most effective defenders were to be found among the working people – and that its worst enemies were found in the business elites and military officials linked to Miami and Washington.

Chavez civic pedagogy emphasized the importance of the historical teachings and examples of founding fathers, like Simon Bolivar, in establishing a national and Latin American identity. His speeches raised the cultural level of millions of Venezuelans who had been raised in the alienating and servile culture of imperial Washington and the consumerist obsessions of Miami shopping malls.

Chavez succeeded in instilling a culture of solidarity and mutual support among the exploited, emphasizing ‘horizontal’ ties over vertical clientelistic dependency on the rich and powerful. His success in creating collective consciousness decisively shifted the balance of political power away from the wealthy rulers and corrupt political party and trade union leaders toward new socialist movements and class oriented trade unions. More than anything else Chavez’ political education of the popular majority regarding their social rights to free health care and higher education, living wages and full employment drew the hysterical ire of the wealthy Venezuelans and their undying hatred of a president who had created a sense of autonomy, dignity and ‘class empowerment’ through public education ending centuries of elite privilege and omnipotence.

Above all Chavez speeches, drawing as much from Bolivar as from Karl Marx, created a deep, generous sense of patriotism and nationalism and a profound rejection of a prostrate elite groveling before their Washington overlord, Wall Street bankers and oil company executives. Chavez’ anti-imperial speeches resonated because he spoke in the language of the people and expanded their national consciousness to identification with Latin America, especially Cuba’s fight against imperial interventions and wars.

International Relations: The Chavez Doctrine

At the beginning of the previous decade, after 9/11/01, Washington declared a ‘War on Terror.’ This was a public declaration of unilateral military intervention and wars against sovereign nations, movements and individuals deemed as adversaries, in violation of international law.

Almost all countries submitted to this flagrant violation of the Geneva Accords, except President Chavez, who made the most profound and simple refutation against Washington: ‘You don’t fight terrorism with state terrorism’. In his defense of the sovereignty of nations and international jurisprudence, Chavez underlined the importance of political and economic solutions to social problems and conflicts – repudiating the use of bombs, torture and mayhem. The Chavez Doctrine emphasized south-south trade and investments and diplomatic over military resolution of disputes. He upheld the Geneva Accords against colonial and imperial aggression while rejecting the imperial doctrine of ‘the war on terror’, defining western state terrorism as a pernicious equivalent to Al Qaeda terrorism.

Political Theory and Practice: The Grand Synthesizer

One of the most profound and influential aspects of Chavez’ legacy is his original synthesis of three grand strands of political thought: popular Christianity, Bolivarian nationalist and regional integration and Marxist political, social and economic thought. Chavez’ Christianity informed his deep belief in justice and the equality of people, as well as his generosity and forgiveness of adversaries even as they engaged in a violent coup, a crippling lockout, or openly collaborated and received financing from enemy intelligence agencies. Whereas anywhere else in the world, armed assaults against the state and coup d’états would result in long prison sentences or even executions, under Chavez most of his violent adversaries escaped prosecution and even rejoined their subversive organizations. Chavez demonstrated a deep belief in redemption and forgiveness. Chavez’s Christianity informed his ‘option for the poor’, the depth and breadth of his commitment to eradicating poverty and his solidarity with the poor against the rich.

Chavez deep-seated aversion and effective opposition to US and European imperialism and brutal Israeli colonialism were profoundly rooted in his reading of the writings and history of Simon Bolivar, the founding father of the Venezuelan nation. Bolivarian ideas on national liberation long preceded any exposure to Marx, Lenin or more contemporary leftist writings on imperialism. His powerful and unwavering support for regional integration and internationalism was deeply influenced by Simon Bolivar’s proposed ‘United States of Latin America’ and his internationalist activity in support of anti-colonial movements.

Chavez’ incorporation of Marxist ideas into his world view was adapted to his longstanding popular Christian and Bolivarian internationalist philosophy. Chavez’ option for the poor was deepened by his recognition of the centrality of the class struggle and the reconstruction of the Bolivarian nation through the socialization of the ‘commanding heights of the economy’. The socialist concept of self-managed factories and popular empowerment via community councils was given moral legitimacy by Chavez’ Christian faith in an egalitarian moral order.

While Chavez was respectful and carefully listened to the views of visiting leftist academics and frequently praised their writings, many failed to recognize or, worse, deliberately ignored the President’s own more original synthesis of history, religion and Marxism. Unfortunately, as is frequently the case, some leftist academics have, in their self-indulgent posturing, presumed to be Chavez’ ‘teacher’ and advisor on all matters of ‘Marxist theory’: This represents a style of leftist cultural colonialism, which snidely criticized Chavez for not following their ready-made prescriptions, published in their political literary journals in London, New York and Paris.

Fortunately, Chavez took what was useful from the overseas academics and NGO-funded political strategists while discarding ideas that failed to take account of the cultural-historical, class and rentier specificities of Venezuela.

Chavez has bequeathed to the intellectuals and activists of the world a method of thinking which is global and specific, historical and theoretical, material and ethical and which encompasses class analysis, democracy and a spiritual transcendence resonating with the great mass of humanity in a language every person can understand. Chavez’ philosophy and practice (more than any ‘discourse’ narrated by the social forum-hopping experts) demonstrated that the art of formulating complex ideas in simple language can move millions of people to ‘make history, and not only to study it’..

Toward Practical Alternatives to Neoliberalism and Imperialism

Perhaps Chavez greatest contribution in the contemporary period was to demonstrate, through practical measures and political initiatives, that many of the most challenging contemporary political and economic problems can be successfully resolved.

Radical Reform of a Rentier State

Nothing is more difficult than changing the social structure, institutions and attitudes of a rentier petro-state, with deeply entrenched clientelistic politics, endemic party-state corruption and a deeply-rooted mass psychology based on consumerism. Yet Chavez largely succeeded where other petro-regimes failed. The Chavez Administration first began with constitutional and institutional changes to create a new political framework; then he implemented social impact programs, which deepened political commitments among an active majority, which, in turn, bravely defended the regime from a violent US backed business-military coup d’état. Mass mobilization and popular support, in turn, radicalized the Chavez government and made way for a deeper socialization of the economy and the implementation of radical agrarian reform. The petrol industry was socialized; royalty and tax payments were raised to provide funds for massively expanded social expenditures benefiting the majority of Venezuelans.

Almost every day Chavez prepared clearly understandable educational speeches on social, ethical and political topics related to his regime’s redistributive policies by emphasizing social solidarity over individualistic acquisitive consumerism. Mass organizations and community and trade union movements flourished – a new social consciousness emerged ready and willing to advance social change and confront the wealthy and powerful. Chavez’ defeat of the US-backed coup and bosses’ lockout and his affirmation of the Bolivarian tradition and sovereign identity of Venezuela created a powerful nationalist consciousness which eroded the rentier mentality and strengthened the pursuit of a diversified ‘balanced economy’. This new political will and national productive consciousness was a great leap forward, even as the main features of a rentier-oil dependent economy persist. This extremely difficult transition has begun and is an ongoing process. Overseas leftist theorists, who criticize Venezuela (‘corruption’, ‘bureaucracy’) have profoundly ignored the enormous difficulties of transitioning from a rentier state to a socialized economy and the enormous progress achieved by Chavez.

Economic Crisis Without Capitalist Austerity

Throughout the crisis-wracked capitalist world, ruling labor, social democratic, liberal and conservative regimes have imposed regressive ‘austerity programs’ involving brutal reductions of social welfare, health and education expenditures and mass layoffs of workers and employees while handing our generous state subsidies and bailouts to failing banks and capitalist enterprises. Chanting their Thacherite slogan, ‘there is no alternative’, capitalist economists justify imposing the burden of ‘capitalist recovery’ onto the working class while allowing capital to recover its profits in order to invest.

Chavez’ policy was the direct opposite: In the midst of crisis, he retained all the social programs, rejected mass firings and increased social spending. The Venezuelan economy rode out of the worldwide crisis and recovered with a healthy 5.8% growth rate in 2012. In other words, Chavez demonstrated that mass impoverishment was a product of the specific capitalist ‘formula’ for recovery. He showed another, positive alternative approach to economic crisis, which taxed the rich, promoted public investments and maintained social expenditures.

Social Transformation in a ‘Globalized Economy’

Many commentators, left, right and center, have argued that the advent of a ‘globalized economy’ ruled out a radical social transformation. Yet Venezuela, which is profoundly globalized and integrated into the world market via trade and investments, has made major advances in social reform. What really matters in relation to a globalized economy is the nature of the political economic regime and its policies, which dictate how the gains and costs of international trade and investment are distributed. In a word, what is decisive is the ‘class character of the regime’ managing its place in the world economy. Chavez certainly did not ‘de-link’ from the world economy; rather he has re-linked Venezuela in a new way. He shifted Venezuelan trade and investment toward Latin America, Asia and the Middle East — especially to countries which do not intervene or impose reactionary conditions on economic transactions.

Anti-Imperialism in a Time of an Imperialist Offensive

In a time of a virulent US—EU imperialist offensive involving ‘pre-emptive’ military invasions, mercenary interventions, torture, assassinations and drone warfare in Iraq, Mali, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan and brutal economic sanctions and sabotage against Iran; Israeli colonial expulsions of thousands of Palestinians financed by the US; US-backed military coups in Honduras and Paraguay and aborted revolutions via puppets in Egypt and Tunisia, President Chavez, alone, stood as the principled defender of anti-imperialist politics. Chavez deep commitment to anti-imperialism stands in marked contrast to the capitulation of Western self-styled ‘Marxist’ intellectuals who mouthed crude justifications for their support of NATO bombing Yugoslavia and Libya, the French invasion of Mali and the Saudi-French (‘Monarcho-Socialist’) funding and arming of Islamist mercenaries against Syria. These same London, New York and Paris-based ‘intellectuals’ who patronized Chavez as a mere ‘populist’ or ‘nationalist’ and claimed he should have listened to their lectures and read their books, had crassly capitulated under the pressure of the capitalist state and mass media into supporting ‘humanitarian interventions’ (aka NATO bombing)… and justified their opportunism in the language of obscure leftists sects. Chavez confronted NATO pressures and threats, as well as the destabilizing subversion of his domestic opponents and courageously articulated the most profound and significant principles of 20th and 21st Marxism: the inviolate right to self-determination of oppressed nations and unconditional opposition to imperial wars. While Chavez spoke and acted in defense of anti-imperialist principles, many in the European and US left acquiesced in imperial wars: There were virtually no mass protests, the ‘anti-war’ movements were co-opted or moribund, the British ‘Socialist’ Workers Party defended the massive NATO bombing of Libya, the French ‘Socialists’ invaded Mali- with the support of the ‘Anti-Capitalist’ Party. Meanwhile, the ‘populist’ Chavez had articulated a far more profound and principled understanding of Marxist practice, certainly than his self-appointed overseas Marxist ‘tutors’.

No other political leader or for that matter, leftist academic, developed, deepened and extended the central tenets of anti-imperialist politics in the era of global imperialist warfare with greater acuity than Hugo Chavez.

Transition from a Failed Neo-Liberal to a Dynamic Welfare State

Chavez’ programmatic and comprehensive reconfiguration of Venezuela from a disastrous and failed neo-liberal regime to a dynamic welfare state stands as a landmark in 20th and 21st century political economy. Chavez’ successful reversal of neo-liberal institutions and policies, as well as his re-nationalization of the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ demolished the reigning neo-liberal dogma derived from the Thatcher-Reagan era enshrined in the slogan: ‘There is no alternative’ to brutal neo-liberal policies, or TINA.

Chavez rejected privatization – he re-nationalized key oil related industries, socialized hundreds of capitalist firms and carried out a vast agrarian reform program, including land distribution to 300,000 families. He encouraged trade union organizations and worker control of factories – even bucking public managers and even his own cabinet ministers. In Latin America, Chavez led the way in defining with greater depth and with more comprehensive social changes, the post neo-liberal era. Chavez envisioned the transition from neo-liberalism to a new socialized welfare state as an international process and provided financing and political support for new regional organizations like ALBA, PetroCaribe, and UNASUR. He rejected the idea of building a welfare state in one country and formulated a theory of post-neo-liberal transitions based on international solidarity. Chavez’ original ideas and policies regarding the post-neo-liberal transition escaped the armchair Marxists and the globetrotting Social Forum NGO pundits whose inconsequential ‘global alternatives’ succeeded primarily in securing imperial foundation funding.

Chavez demonstrated through theory and practice that neo-liberalism was indeed reversible – a major political breakthrough of the 21st century.

Beyond Social Liberalism: The Radical Definition of Post-Neo-Liberalism

The US-EU promoted neo-liberal regimes have collapsed under the weight of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Massive unemployment led to popular uprisings, new elections and the advent of center-left regimes in most of Latin America, which rejected or at least claimed to repudiate ‘neo-liberalism’. Most of these regimes promulgated legislation and executive directives to fund poverty programs, implement financial controls and make productive investments, while raising minimum wages and stimulating employment. However few lucrative enterprises were actually re-nationalized. Addressing inequalities and the concentration of wealth were not part of their agenda. They formulated their strategy of working with Wall Street investors, local agro-mineral exporters and co-opted trade unions.

Chavez posed a profoundly different alternative to this form of ‘post-neoliberalism’. He nationalized resource industries, excluded Wall Street speculators and limited the role of the agro-mineral elites. He posed a socialized welfare state as an alternative to the reigning social-liberal orthodoxy of the center-left regimes, even as he worked with these regimes in promoting Latin American integration and opposing US backed coups.

Chavez was both a leader defining a more socialized alternative to social liberation and the conscience pressuring his allies to advance further.

Socialism and Democracy

Chavez opened a new and extraordinarily original and complex path to socialism based on free elections, re-educating the military to uphold democratic and constitutional principals, and the development of mass and community media. He ended the capitalist mass media monopolies and strengthened civil society as a counter-weight to US-sponsored para-military and fifth column elites intent on destabilizing the democratic state.

No other democratic-socialist president had successfully resisted imperial destabilization campaigns – neither Jagan in Guyana, Manley in Jamaica, nor Allende in Chile. From the very outset Chavez saw the importance of creating a solid legal-political framework to facilitate executive leadership, promote popular civil society organizations and end US penetration of the state apparatus (military and police). Chavez implemented radical social impact programs that ensured the loyalty and active allegiance of popular majorities and weakened the economic levers of political power long held by the capitalist class. As a result Venezuela’s political leaders, soldiers and officers loyal to its constitution and the popular masses crushed a bloody right-wing coup, a crippling bosses’ lockout and a US-financed referendum and proceeded to implement further radical socio-economic reforms in a prolonged process of cumulative socialization.

Chavez’s originality, in part the result of trial and error, was his ‘experimental method’: His profound understanding and response to popular attitudes and behavior was deeply rooted in Venezuela’s history of racial and class injustice and popular rebelliousness. More than any previous socialist leader, Chavez traveled, spoke and listened to Venezuela’s popular classes on questions of everyday life. His ‘method’ was to translate micro based knowledge into macro programed changes. In practice he was the anti-thesis of the overseas and local intellectual know-it-alls who literally spoke down to the people and who saw themselves as the ‘masters of the world’ …at least, in the micro-world of left academia, ingrown socialist conferences and self-centered monologues. The death of Hugo Chavez was profoundly mourned by millions in Venezuela and hundreds of million around the world because his transition to socialism was their path; he listened to their demands and he acted upon them effectively.

Social Democracy and National Security

Chavez was a socialist president for over 13 years in the face of large-scale, long-term violent opposition and financial sabotage from Washington, the local economic elite and mass media moguls. Chavez created the political consciousness that motivated millions of workers and secured the constitutional loyalty of the military to defeat a bloody US-backed business-military coup in 2002. Chavez tempered social changes in accordance with a realistic assessment of what the political and legal order could support. First and foremost, Chavez secured the loyalty of the military by ending US ‘advisory’ missions and overseas imperial indoctrination while substituting intensive courses on Venezuelan history, civic responsibility and the critical link between the popular classes and the military in a common national mission..

Chavez’ national security policies were based on democratic principles as well as a clear recognition of the serious threats to Venezuelan sovereignty. He successfully safeguarded both national security and the democratic rights and political freedoms of its citizens, a feat which has earned Venezuela the admiration and envy of constitutional lawyers and citizens of the US and the EU.

In stark contrast, US President Obama has assumed the power to assassinate US citizens based on secret information and without trial both in and out of the US. His Administration has murdered ‘targeted’ US citizens and their children, jailed others without trial and maintains secret ‘files’ on over 40 million Americans. Chavez never assumed those powers and never assassinated or tortured a single Venezuelan. In Venezuela, the dozen or so prisoners convicted of violent acts of subversion after open trials in Venezuelan courts, stand in sharp contrast to the tens of thousands of jailed and secretly framed Muslims and Latin American immigrants in the US. Chavez rejected state terror; while Obama has special assassination teams on the ground in over 70 countries. Obama supports arbitrary police invasions of ‘suspect’ homes and workplaces based on ‘secret evidence’ while. Chavez even tolerated the activities of known foreign (CIA)-funded opposition parties. In a word, Obama uses ‘national security’ to destroy democratic freedoms while Chavez upheld democratic freedoms and imposed constitutional limits on the national security apparatus.

Chavez sought peaceful diplomatic resolution of conflicts with hostile neighbors, such as Colombia which hosts seven US military bases – potential springboards for US intervention. On the other hand, Obama has engaged in open war with at least seven countries and has been pursuing covert hostile action against dozens of others.

Conclusion

Chavez’s legacy is multi-faceted. His contributions are original, theoretical and practical and universally relevant. He demonstrated in ‘theory and practice’ how a small country can defend itself against imperialism, maintain democratic principles and implement advanced social programs. His pursuit of regional integration and promotion of ethical standards in the governance of a nation – provide examples profoundly relevant in a capitalist world awash in corrupt politicians slashing living standards while enriching the plutocrats.

Chavez’ rejection of the Bush-Obama doctrine of using ‘state terror to fight terror’, his affirmation that the roots of violence are social injustice, economic pillage and political oppression and his belief that resolving these underlying issues is the road to peace, stands as the ethical-political guide for humanity’s survival.

Faced with a violent world of imperial counter-revolution, and resolved to stand with the oppressed of the world, Hugo Chavez enters world history as a complete political leader, with the stature of the most humane and multi-faceted leader of our epoch: the Renaissance figure for the 21st century.

James Petras a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books).

If the US stops Genie Energy from going ahead with oil contract, it invites the wrath of myriad pro-Israel groups.

Even as it plans to illegally drill for oil in the occupied Golan Heights, “Israel appears to have its eye on the occupied West Bank oil”, according to a classified Foreign Office correspondence [Reuters]

The schedule for President Barack Obama’s first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories next week has just been released and it is no surprise that the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is not on his travel agenda.

And yet Israel put it on the international agenda less than a month ago with its award of a licence to a US energy firm to explore for oil in the Golan Heights. Oil drilling by the New Jersey-based Genie Energy Ltd in the occupied Golan Heights could well result in a lawsuit claiming that Israel is engaged in an illegal act of pillage as defined in the Hague Convention. Perhaps Israel is now so used to living off the fat of other people’s land – Palestinian and Syrian soil and water, among other resources – it has seemingly thrown caution to the wind.

The award puts the US on the spot. If the Obama administration tries to stop Genie from going ahead with the contract, it invites the wrath of myriad pro-Israel groups and their neocon allies, whose strength was most recently on display in the battle to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

And if the administration ignores the oil deal, it leaves US corporations exposed to potential lawsuits for profiteering from Israel’s violations of human rights and international law.

An additional worry for the Obama administration is the cast of characters involved in Genie Energy. The company is headed by former Israeli minister of infrastructure Effie Eitam, who lives in one of the illegal settlements on the Golan Heights, and includes former vice president Dick Cheney as an adviser and Rupert Murdoch as a shareholder.

Of course, Israel thinks it can get away with it. It has violated international law with impunity since it prevented the Palestinian refugees’ return, annexed East Jerusalem, and extended Israeli law to the Golan Heights, among other transgressions. Moreover, although Israel’s settlement building in the territories is regularly condemned, international sanctions have yet to be imposed.

In fact, the US, the European Union and other donor nations effectively subsidise Israel’s exploitation of Palestinian resources. Their aid to the Palestinian Authority enables Israel to get on with its colonisation at little or no cost to its budget, and to make a handsome profit from the Golan-based wine industry, beauty products from the Dead Sea, and other natural resources. This ignores the limitations on such exploitation of occupied territory clearly set out in the Annex to the Fourth Geneva Convention and widely recognised as applying to the territories occupied in 1967.

Follow the latest developments in the ongoing conflict

A further irony is that Israel makes donor aid necessary by blocking sovereign Palestinian development of their own resources, especially water, but also others such as the potentially lucrative gas field off the Gaza Strip.

Furthermore, even as it plans to illegally drill for oil in the occupied Golan Heights, Israel appears to have its eye on the occupied West Bank’s oil, as revealed by classified Foreign Office correspondence obtained through the United Kingdom’s Freedom of Information Act. As one staffer in Jerusalem wrote, it was “hard enough” to justify to British taxpayers “spending 100 million pounds a year on an economy that would be self-sufficient if able to exploit its own natural resources. Harder still if those resources included oil”.

However, the tide is turning though perhaps too slowly for Israel to notice. EU member states are increasingly nervous about their implication in international law violations. For example, some EU states have been labelling settlement goods as coming from occupied territory. Most recently, EU consuls general in East Jerusalem and Ramallah issued an unprecedented report recommending sanctions on bodies involved in construction in Israeli settlements and much stricter application of the EU-Israel free trade agreement.

These recommendations have yet to be translated into policy, but the EU consuls’ report has pushed the “S” in BDS – the Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel’s violations of international law – further into the mainstream.

Israel’s drilling award is certainly a gift to the global BDS movement, which has scored many successes against companies doing business in the Palestinian territories. So far, campaigns on the Golan Heights have largely focused on Eden Springs water and Golan wines with good results. A US company breaking international law in the Golan Heights would be an obvious target.

The oil contract will also spotlight the racism of a growing number of Israelis toward Palestinians. Genie Energy’s Eitam provides particularly rich fodder. In a 2006 interview, he called for most Palestinians to be expelled from the occupied territories and for Palestinian citizens of Israel to be removed “from the political system”.

Israel may be betting that the international community’s preoccupation with Syria will not extend to the Syrian Golan Heights and that it will get away with it again. But it would do well to remember that even slow grinding wheels can produce justice.

Nadia Hijab is Director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.

By Countercurrents.org

15 March 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The number of people living in extreme poverty could increase by up to 3 billion by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to tackle environmental challenges, a major UN report warned on March 14, 2013. Claire Provost reported [1]:

The 2013 Human Development Report hails better than expected progress on health, wealth and education in dozens of developing countries but says inaction on climate change, deforestation, and air and water pollution could end gains in the poorest countries and communities.

“Environmental threats are among the most grave impediments to lifting human development … The longer action is delayed, the higher the cost will be,” warns the report, which builds on the 2011 edition looking at sustainable development.

“Environmental inaction, especially regarding climate change, has the potential to halt or even reverse human development progress. The number of people in extreme poverty could increase by up to 3 billion by 2050 unless environmental disasters are averted by co-ordinated global action,” said the UNDP.

“Far more attention needs to be paid to the impact human beings are having on the environment. Climate change is already exacerbating chronic environmental threats, and ecosystem losses are constraining livelihood opportunities, especially for poor people. A clean and safe environment should be seen as a right, not a privilege.”

The proportion of people living under $1.25 a day is estimated to have fallen from 43% in 1990 to 22% in 2008, driven in part by significant progress in China. As a result, the World Bank last year said the millennium development goal to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 had been met ahead of schedule.

The report says more than 40 countries have done better than previously expected on the UN’s human development index (HDI), which combines measures of health, wealth and education, with gains accelerating over the past decade.

Norway and Australia are highest in this year’s HDI, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger are ranked lowest.

Some of the largest countries – including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey – have made the most rapid advances, it says, but there has also been substantial progress in smaller economies, such as Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Mauritius, Rwanda and Tunisia.

This has prompted significant rethinking on routes to progress, says the report: “The south as a whole is driving global economic growth and societal change for the first time in centuries.”

The report points to cash-transfer programs in Brazil, India and Mexico as examples of where developing countries have pioneered policies for advancing human development, noting how these efforts have helped narrow income gaps and improve the health and education prospects of poor communities. The presence of proactive “developmental states”, which seek to take strategic advantage of world trade opportunities but also invest heavily in health, education and other critical services, emerges as a key trend.

The rise of China and India, which doubled their per capita economic output in fewer than 20 years, has driven an epochal “global rebalancing”, argues the report, bringing about greater change and lifting far more people out of poverty than the Industrial Revolution that transformed Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. “The Industrial Revolution was a story of perhaps 100 million people, but this is a story about billions of people,” said Khalid Malik, lead author of the report.

The report singles out “short-sighted austerity measures”, inaction in the face of stark social inequalities, and the lack of opportunities for citizen participation as critical threats to progress – both in developing countries and in European and North American industrial powers. “Social policy is at least as important as economic policy,” Malik told the Guardian. “People think normally you’re too poor to afford these things. But our argument is you’re too poor not to.”

He said more representative global institutions are needed to tackle shared global challenges. China, with the world’s second largest economy and biggest foreign exchange reserves, has only a 3.3% share in the World Bank, notes the report, less than France’s 4.3%. Africa, with a billion people in 54 nations, is under-represented in almost all international institutions. “If institutions are not seen as legitimate, people don’t play, or don’t play nice,” Malik said.

Developing countries now hold two-thirds of the world’s $10.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, including more than $3tn in China alone, and nearly three-quarters of the $4.3tn in assets controlled by sovereign wealth funds worldwide, notes the report, adding: “Even a small share of these vast sums could have a swift measurable impact on global poverty and human development.”

An AFP report said:

China and India doubled their per capita economic output in less than 20 years, a rate twice as fast as Europe and North America experienced during the Industrial Revolution.

The proportion of people living in extreme poverty worldwide fell from 43 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008, with more than 500,000 million people rising above the poverty line in China alone.

The Rise of the South

A release by the UNDP said [2]:

The UNDP report – “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World” was launched on March 14, 2013 in Mexico City by President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark. The report examines the profound shift in global dynamics driven by the fast-rising new powers of the developing world and its long-term implications for human development.

China has already overtaken Japan as the worlds second biggest economy while lifting hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty. India is reshaping its future with new entrepreneurial creativity and social policy innovation. Brazil is lifting its living standards through expanding international relationships and antipoverty programs that are emulated worldwide.

But the “Rise of the South” analyzed in the report is a much larger phenomenon: Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, South Africa, Indonesia and many other developing nations are also becoming leading actors on the world stage.

The report identifies more than 40 countries in the developing world that have done better than had been expected in human development terms in recent decades, with their progress accelerating markedly over the past ten years.

The UNDP report analyzes the causes and consequences of these countries achievements and the challenges that they face today and in the coming decades.

Each of these countries has its own unique history and has chosen its own distinct development pathway. Yet they share important characteristics and face many of the same challenges. They are also increasingly interconnected and interdependent. And people throughout the developing world are increasingly demanding to be heard, as they share ideas through new communications channels and seek greater accountability from governments and international institutions.

The report identifies policies rooted in this new global reality that could promote greater progress throughout the world for decades to come.

The report calls for far better representation of the South in global governance systems and points to potential new sources of financing within the South for essential public goods. With fresh analytical insights and clear proposals for policy reforms, the Report helps chart a course for people in all regions to face shared human development challenges together, fairly and effectively.

Failure to fight climate crisis could reverse developing countries’ gains in cutting poverty, says UNDP

The rise of developing nations has cut poverty while the combined economies of Brazil, China and India are on a path to overtake wealthy nations, but failure to act on climate change could reverse those gains, said the latest edition of Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on March 14, 2013 [3].

Developing nations are now driving economic growth, helping to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and bringing billions more into a new middle class, said the report.

The report sees a “dramatic rebalancing of global economic power” and forecasts that the combined economic output of Brazil, China and India will surpass the aggregate production of the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Italy by 2020. “The rise of the South is unprecedented in its speed and scale,” the report said.

“Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast,” said the report presented in Mexico City.

But the South faces similar long-term challenges as the leading industrialized nations, from an aging population to environmental pressures and social inequalities. Lack of action against climate change could even halt or reverse human development progress in the world’s poorest countries, pushing up to three billion people into extreme poverty by 2050 unless environmental disasters are prevented, the report said.

Irreversible melting of the Canadian glaciers

At the same time, Geophysical Research Letters study said ice melt in Canada’s glaciers would be irreversible for the foreseeable future.

Raveena Aulakh reported [4]:

Canada’s glaciers are heading for a likely irreversible melt that will push up sea levels, a new study shows.

As much as 20 percent of glacier ice in the Canadian Arctic could vanish by the end of this century; it would add 3.5 centimeters to sea levels.

“We believe the mass loss is irreversible in the foreseeable future,” wrote authors of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The Canadian Arctic is the world’s third largest store of glacier ice after Greenland and Antarctica — about 155,000 square kilometers of ice spread across 36,000 islands.

Using computer models, scientists in Netherlands and the U.S. demonstrated how glaciers would respond to future climate change: they say it is “highly likely” the ice is going to melt at an alarming rate even if global warming slows down.

The projection of a 20 percent loss is based on a scenario in which world temperatures will rise by 3C this century and by 8C in the Canadian Arctic due to global warming. It is consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s projections.

The scientists calculated that by 2100, when the Arctic is eight degrees Celsius warmer, the rate of ice loss will be a whopping 144 gigatons per year, up from the present rate of 92 gigatons. One gigaton is one billion metric tonnes.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) summer melts on the Arctic ice sheet have recently been breaking records and once the glaciers are gone, they are unlikely to make a comeback.

A complete melt of the glaciers would take many centuries but climate change is warming the Arctic faster than the global average.

In September 2012, scientists revealed that sea ice in the Arctic had shrunk to its smallest extent ever recorded. Frozen sea had decreased to about 3.5 million square kilometers — less than half what it was just four decades ago.

Glaciers in the Canadian Arctic are not studied as much as the ice in Alaska and Russia.

“Most attention goes out to Greenland and Antarctica which is understandable because they are the two largest ice bodies in the world,” Michiel van den Broeke, a co-author of the study at Utrecht University, told Reuters.

Canadian ice should also be included in calculations, he said.

Observations from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites show that this massive sheet of ice shed approximately 580 gigatons.

Japan’s action plan on climate crisis

Chisaki Watanabe reported [5]:

Japan plans to compile an action program to tackle climate change with a new greenhouse gas emissions target.

The government aims to put together the action plan before U.N. climate talks to be held in Poland in November, Kentaro Doi, an official at the Ministry of the Environment in charge of climate change, said on March 15, 2013.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, which took power in late December, is currently reviewing energy and climate change policy.

A statement said, the new action plan will map out measures to achieve a new emissions target.

UNDP praises Cuba’s climate action initiatives

A Havana datelined Xinhua report carried by chinadaily.com [6] said:

Cuba was among the world’s best prepared countries to meet the challenges of climate change, Grisel Acosta, regional representative of the UNDP said on March 14, 2013.

Speaking to local reporters, Acosta said Cuba had implemented climate change programs in various sectors and periodically evaluated their progress.

Acosta praised Cuba’s conservation program, where biodiversity is preserved through people’s interaction with their environment.

The conservation mechanisms are essential to addressing coastal flooding, rising sea levels, increased rainfall, damage to mangrove swamp ecosystems, beaches and coral reefs, as well as general environmental vulnerability.

To mitigate the impact of climate change and natural disasters, Cuba has in place 15 projects, starting at the local level, related to the integral management of coastal zones.

Cuban researchers have found climate change may increase desertification and diminish water supplies on the Caribbean island. It might also push Cuba’s southern coastline inland by 7 kms, which would affect coastal communities, pollute freshwater sources and decrease or even wipe out certain species and wetlands.

Source:

[1] guardian.co.uk, March 14 2013, “Environmental threats could push billions into extreme poverty, warns UN”,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/mar/14/environmental-threats-extreme-poverty-un

[2] http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/humandevelopmentreportpresskits/2013report/

[3] An AFP report carried by THE RAW STORY, March 14, 2013, “United Nations: Developing countries imperiled by climate change”,

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/14/united-nations-developing-countries-imperiled-by-climate-change/

[4] thestar.com, March 14 2013, “Canadian glacier ice melt will push up sea levels: Study”,

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/03/14

/canadian_glacier_ice_melt_will_push_up_sea_levels_study.html

[5] March 15, 2013 “Japan to Compile Climate Change Action Plan With Emission Target”,

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/japan-to-compile-climate-change-action-plan-with-emission-target.html

[6] 2013-03-15, “UNDP praises Cuba’s climate change program”,

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2013-03/15/content_16311154.htm

By Countercurrents.org

15 March, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

More than half of Britons believe Tony Blair was wrong to invade Iraq, while 22% tell he should be tried as a war criminal. A poll conducted to mark the 10th anniversary of the war finds[1].

Richard Norton-Taylor reported:

A majority (56%) of the public believe the war has increased the risk of a terrorist attack on Britain. More than half, (53%), of those questioned think the invasion was wrong, while just over a quarter (27%) think it was right, according to the YouGov survey.

The poll registered a marked gender difference, with almost a third (32%) of men approving the invasion compared with less than a quarter (23%) of women.

Half of those questioned said they believed Blair deliberately set out to mislead the British public about the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Less than a third (31%) say he genuinely believed Saddam Hussein possessed a stockpile of WMD.

More than a fifth (22%) believes Blair knowingly misled parliament and the public and should be tried as a war criminal over the conflict, according to the poll. The figure compares with almost three in 10 (29%) who say he was right to warn of dangers of the Hussein regime, 18% who think he misled people but we should move on and 15% who believe he did not intend to give false information about the threat.

The poll records that a decade after the invasion 41% thinks Iraqis are better off than they would have been under Hussein, and just over a fifth (21%) believe the Iraqis would have been better off under the dictator. However, more than seven in 10n (71%) say Iraq is likely to be a permanently unstable country over the next few years.

In 2010, as the Chilcot inquiry was under way, hearing highly critical evidence about how Britain went to war, 37% thought Blair should be tried for war crimes, according to a ComRes poll at the time.

At the time of the invasion, 53% of those polled said they believed military action against Iraq was right.

The cost of Iraq War could be higher

A report [2] said:

The US war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion (£1.1tn) with an extra $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6tn (£4tn) over the next four decades with interest, a new study has found.

The war killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have led to the deaths of four times that number, said the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, ahead of the tenth anniversary of the US-led invasion on March 19.

Cost of the war

An AFP report carried by Khaleej Times said [3]:

At least 116,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,800 coalition troops died in Iraq between the outbreak of war in 2003 and the US withdrawal in 2011, researchers estimated on March 15, 2013.

Its involvement in Iraq has so far cost the US $810 billion (625 billion euros) and could eventually reach $3 trillion, they added.

The estimates come from two US professors of public health, reporting in the British peer-reviewed journal The Lancet.

They base the figures on published studies in journals and on reports by government agencies, international organizations and news media.

The paper is authored by Barry Levy of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and Victor Sidel of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

It appears in a package of investigations into the health consequences of the Iraq War, published by The Lancet to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the conflict.

‘We conclude that at least 116,903 Iraqi non-combatants and more than 4,800 coalition military personnel died over the eight-year course’ of the war from 2003 to 2011, they said. ‘Many Iraqi civilians were injured or became ill because of damage to the health-supporting infrastructure of the country, and about five million were displaced.

‘More than 31,000 US military personnel were injured and a substantial percentage of those deployed suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and other neuropsychological disorders and their concomitant psychosocial problems.’

Citing figures from the website costofwar.com, which looks at funding allocated by Congress, the study said that as of January 15 this year, the Iraq War had cost the United States about $810 billion, ‘not including interest on debt.’ ‘The ultimate cost of the war to the USA could be $3 trillion,’ it said.

‘Clearly, this money could have been spent instead on domestic and global programs to improve health. The diversion of human resources was also substantial, in Iraq, the USA, and other coalition countries.’

In 2006, estimates by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, also published in The Lancet, said 655,000 people had died in the first 40 months of the war. That figure was widely contested.

In 2008, a study by the Iraqi government and World Health Organisation (WHO), published in The New England Journal of Medicine, said between 104,000 and 223,000 Iraqis had died violent deaths between March 2003 and June 2006.

Those figures were based on home visits to around 1,000 neighborhoods across the country.

Source:

[1] guardian.co.uk, March 14, 2013, “53% of Britons think Iraq invasion was wrong, poll shows”,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/14/britons-iraq-invasion-wrong-poll

[2] scotsman.com, March 15, 2013, “Iraq war could cost US $6tn”,

http://www.scotsman.com/news/international/iraq-war-could-cost-us-6tn-1-2838892

[3] March 15, 2013, “Iraq war killed 120,000, cost $800 billion”,

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=

data/middleeast/2013/March/middleeast_March181.xml&section=middleeast&col

By Vilani Peiris & Sarath Kumara

15 March, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Amid US threats to impose sanctions on his country, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari joined Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a ceremony breaking ground on construction of the Pakistani portion of a planned Iran-Pakistan pipeline on Monday.

With national elections due in May, Zardari and his ruling Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) will seek to gain electoral advantage by using the pipeline to posture as being independent from Washington. Iran sees the project as a way to counter the crippling economic sanctions the US has imposed on it, based on unsubstantiated allegations that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Pakistan faces a shortfall of 2 billion cubic of natural gas feet per day and a serious energy crisis, which has seen mass electricity riots in Lahore and other cities. Pakistan is in the dark for up to six hours a day—resulting in the loss of export revenue, the closure of tens of thousands of factories, and the loss of millions of jobs.

The reactivation of the much-delayed US$7.5 billion gas pipeline project was agreed when Zardari visited Iran in late February. Iran has almost finished its 900-kilometre portion of the pipeline. Pakistan now has to lay around 750 kilometres of pipeline. If completed, the pipeline could transport over 21.5 million cubic metres daily from Iran’s South Pars gas field.

Iran will provide $500 million of the $1.5 billion cost of building the pipeline inside Pakistan, which has to come up with the rest of the funds.

At the ceremony held in Iranian border city of Chabahar, the Pakistani president declared the project was “very important” and stated it was not against any other country, the Dawn reported. His remarks seemed to be a signal to allay US concerns.

In an apparent jab at Washington, Ahmadinejad declared that the “gas pipeline is a sign of show of resistance against domination.”

On Monday US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland threatened that “if this project actually goes forward, that the Iran Sanctions Act would be triggered.” However, she expressed doubts about whether it would actually materialize: “We’ve heard this pipeline announced about 10 or 15 times before in the past.”

The BBC wrote that Washington sees “a good measure of domestic Pakistan politics in all of this—elections are looming—and it may be for a future government in Islamabad to face the moment of truth: either to risk US sanctions by switching the gas on or to risk domestic criticism by being seen to cave in to US pressure.”

There are some indications that Washington believes it can more effectively torpedo the project by helping Pakistan find other sources of gas. To quash plans of an Iran-Pakistan pipeline, Washington has repeatedly proposed an alternative pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan. This has proved impossible due to the fighting in Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, however, Qatar announced that it would agree to supply Pakistan with natural gas at a low price of $18 per million British thermal units (mmbtu).

US imperialism has repeatedly bullied countries in the region to block the Iran pipeline project, which the US sees as an obstacle to its plans to isolate Iran and dominate Central Asia. Initially dubbed the “peace pipeline,” the project aimed to carry gas from Iran to Pakistan and through Pakistan to India, thus reducing the explosive tensions between Pakistan and India. Discussion of the project began in 1994, but India withdrew from it under US pressure in 2009, a year after Washington signed a nuclear pact with New Delhi.

As pipeline work started, Zardari said, “Nobody has the power to halt this project,” adding: “Pakistan is a sovereign and independent country that is acting in its national interests by going ahead with the pipeline.”

In fact, in the run-up to the May elections, the PPP is desperate to cover up its deeply unpopular role as one of the main client regimes of the US “war on terror.” Mass opposition is directed not only at the US but also at the PPP for its backing for the NATO occupation of Afghanistan and the resulting bloodshed in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Islamabad has sanctioned CIA drone attacks in Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas aimed at the Taliban and other anti-occupation fighters, killing thousands. The Pakistani military has carried out operations in Pakistan’s western tribal areas under US pressure, displacing millions of people and creating a desperate internal refugee crisis in Pakistan.

US drone strikes in Pakistan have also provoked sharp opposition. When 24 Pakistani border guards were killed in a NATO attack in 2011, Zardari closed down US supply routes into Afghanistan in an attempt to calm public fury, promptly re-opening them a few months later. This was the result of US pressure, and of Islamabad’s financial dependence on US and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans.

Zardari is also trying to show he is serious to address the country’s energy problems, which have provoked both mass anger and criticisms from big business. Mentioning violent protests over power cuts, The News wrote: “Pakistan needs to enter into a serious diplomatic discourse with the US to try to convince it of how important” Iran’s gas is for Pakistan.

However, the Pakistani ruling elite above all fears US sanctions. On Monday the Karachi Stock Exchange’s benchmark 100-share index ended 2.46 percent, or 441.62 points, lower.

Pakistan is mired in deep economic crisis from the impact of global economic meltdown centred in the US and Europe. The rupee has already declined 0.8 percent against the US dollar this year after declining by 7.6 percent in 2012. Pakistan’s economic growth rate is predicted to fall to 3.5 percent for this fiscal year, and then to 3 percent next year. Currently Pakistan only has enough foreign exchange reserves to pay for two months of imports.

Pakistan has approached the (IMF) to obtain another loan, for $5 billion. If Washington decides to twist Islamabad’s arm to halt the gas pipeline, it will seek to use its influence at the IMF to block the loan.

The US has other concerns on Pakistan, as well. The Obama administration did not publicly express concern over Pakistan’s transfer of operational control of the deep-sea port at Gwadar to China. However, Washington has in the past noted that the port was part of China’s “string of pearls” plan to increase its influence in the Indian Ocean.

Iran also recently agreed to build a $4 billion oil refinery at the Gwadar port with a capacity of 400,000 barrels per day—making it Pakistan’s largest. Islamabad’s deals with China and Iran will be carefully followed in Washington, which is hostile to Beijing and Tehran, and is carrying out a so-called “pivot to Asia” to contain China.