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By Nile Bowie

As Washington pursues its rebalancing strategy, Obama’s historic four-nation tour of the Asia-Pacific has subtly altered the region’s security dynamics.

“The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay,” declared President Obama during his speech to the Australian parliament in 2011, following his announcement to deploy 2,500 marines to northern Australia to help protect American interests across Asia.

As Washington remains embroiled in domestic economic issues and conflicts throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, the Obama administration has come under great scrutiny for not living up to the promise of rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific, the world’s most economically-dynamic region. The US president’s recent trip to the region was the most significant and tangible development to occur since the rebalancing policy was unveiled.

Obama’s trip had two primary dimensions: deepening the role of the US military throughout the Asia-Pacific, and shoring up support for the faltering Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, an all-encompassing trade deal led by Washington that would embolden transnational corporate power at great public expense.

As the Obama administration moves ahead on plans to relocate some 60 percent of its navy into the region, Washington’s current Asia doctrine is grounded in the notion that no other power can be allowed to reach parity with the United States. Washington’s strategy to pivot toward the Asia-Pacific is adorned with the language of pragmatism and neutrality, and despite repeated denials, the Obama administration’s actions are quite transparently aimed at capping the influence of a rapidly developing China.

Washington has inserted itself into complicated, long-standing historical and territorial disputes under the guise of neutrality, which risks potentially setting the stage for an irreparable strategic blunder: antagonizing two major world powers simultaneously at a time when relations between the US and Russia are already deteriorating over the crisis in Ukraine.

President Obama’s milestone four-nation tour of the Asia-Pacific may have laid the foundations for the region’s local territorial disputes to grow into an increasing tense superpower stand-off.

Japan refuses to yield on trade
The US president’s visit to Japan comes at a time when the right-leaning administration of Shinzo Abe has taken controversial positions on historical and territorial issues that have inflamed relations with China and South Korea, which view the incumbent Japanese government as being openly unrepentant for past atrocities.

The White House previously expressed reservations toward Abe’s calls to consider revising official apologies over Japan’s wartime conduct, and his controversial visit to the Yasukuni shrine that honors Japan’s WWII war dead, including over a dozen convicted Class-A war criminals. Abe made a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine shortly before Obama’s arrival in Tokyo, followed by 146 Japanese lawmakers who visited the shrine en masse one day later, putting the US president in an awkward situation.

These provocative gestures did little to derail Obama’s support for Japan’s position in its tense territorial dispute with China over a chain of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. In an interview with Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, Obama affirmed that the disputed islands fell within the scope of Article 5 of the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, meaning that Washington would be obliged to back Japan in the event of a military confrontation over the islands with Beijing, which views the islands as an integral part of its territory.

Obama also enthusiastically pledged support for Abe’s moves to amend Japan’s post-war pacifist constitution, which has traditionally limited Japan’s armed forces from going beyond a self-defense role.

In the interest of expanding the US-Japan alliance to counter the growing clout of China, the US president has given Japanese rightists a green light to pursue militarization policies that will undoubtedly fuel regional antagonism. Rather than taking a neutral position and steering Tokyo toward a de-escalation with Beijing, Obama has effectively sent Abe the message that he can challenge China’s bottom line without serious repercussions, encouraging Japan to continue its inflexible position. Obama may have hoped that in exchange for backing Japan’s stance on territorial disputes and constitutional reform, Abe would have reciprocated by yielding on thorny trade issues, but he was wrong.

Obama allegedly put his chopsticks down halfway through his informal sushi dinner with Abe and jumped straight into discussions about trade. The White House is anxious to seal the TPP trade deal, but is unwilling to give significant concessions, forcing all countries to meet rigid criteria. Abe risks losing support from his conservative voter base by reducing tariffs on areas such as rice, sugar, beef, pork and dairy that would adversely affect Japanese farmers. Obama was expecting to come to a final agreement with Abe, but trade negotiators claim that there is still “considerable distance” between the US and Japan on key issues in the deal.

Trade talks are not expected to recommence anytime soon, and Obama was forced to reject suggestions that the deal is in danger over his failure to persuade Abe into making painful concessions.

Dialogue with Pyongyang ruled out?
Obama’s trip to South Korea came as the country was still reeling from the tragic sinking of the Sewol ferry, which killed scores of youngsters. Security topped the agenda as reports of increased activity at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site wrought condemnation from Seoul. President Park Geun-hye adopted a hardline stance, calling for the rejection of dialogue with Pyongyang over the nuclear issue if the North conducts a fourth nuclear test as expected.

Pyongyang proposed a framework for better relations with the South at the start of this year and urged its willingness to meet for negotiations on the nuclear issue without any preconditions. The attempted thaw in relations culminated in reunions of separated families in February, amid Pyongyang’s calls for Seoul to cancel its planned joint military drills with the US.

Given the circumstances, South Korean authorities could have toned down this year’s drills as a gesture of reciprocity following Pyongyang’s moves to host family reunions. Seoul’s response was to hold the largest amphibian landing exercise with the US in over two decades, followed by large-scale war exercises. The lack of sincere measures to cool ties with Pyongyang is evident in the actions of Seoul and Washington, who are quick to accuse the North of provocations while flexing military muscles on its doorstep, ratcheting up anxiety and insecurity.

Park and the Obama administration refuse to open dialogue with Pyongyang unless it agrees to denuclearization as a precondition, despite pressure from China that preconditions be relaxed to allow the recommencement of the Six-Party talks.

During a joint press conference, Park announced that plans to transfer operational command of South Korea’s military in time of war, or OPCON, from the US to South Korea would be further delayed, giving the Pentagon de-facto control over South Korea’s military forces beyond December 2015.

Washington has also encouraged Seoul to strengthen missile defense cooperation – which Park agreed to do – while deepening trilateral cooperation between the US, Japan, and South Korea. During his trip, Obama called for more sanctions against North Korea and spoke of America’s capacity for military might, creating every indication that Washington’s antagonistic ‘strategic patience’ policy against Pyongyang will remain unchanged.

Malaysia’s delicate balancing act
Western media have billed Obama’s trip to Malaysia – the first visit by a US president in nearly five decades – as being quite successful. Malaysia was the only Muslim-majority country on the president’s four-nation tour, and the only country not to have an existing security treaty with the United States.
Washington and Kuala Lumpur have always enjoyed strong trade relations, but political relations were known to be tense during the 22-year tenure of former PM Mahathir Mohamad, who took strong positions against US foreign policy. Prime Minister Najib Razak, a British-educated economist who assumed office in 2009 as a reformer, has been much friendlier to the US.

The New York Times described Malaysian leadership’s change of attitude as an evolution from “deep suspicion, verging on contempt, to a cautious desire for cooperation.” Suspicious attitudes toward the US are still commonplace among certain factions within the ruling party and the conservative religious establishment. Several far-right Malay rights groups share the same misgivings, lashing out at Obama following statements he made on racial equality in the country.

Trade and security topped the agenda during Obama’s visit, and although progress was made in both areas, it’s likely that the US delegation was hoping for a firmer stance on issues such as territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Malaysia is China’s largest trading partner within the ASEAN bloc, and of all the countries in the region who have territorial disputes with Beijing, the approach taken by Kuala Lumpur has been the most low-key and non-adversarial.

ino-Malaysian ties were upgraded to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ level during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Kuala Lumpur in October 2013, while Najib and Obama agreed to upgrade ties to a ‘comprehensive partnership’ at a joint news conference following their talks on Sunday.

In the joint statement prepared by the two sides, Najib called for the full implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties regarding the South China Sea disputes, which Chinese state-media welcomed, saying that Malaysia showed a balanced attitude to avoid confrontation with China.

In an interview with Malaysian newspaper The Star, Obama alluded to his administration’s commitment to ensuring the “freedom of navigation in critical waterways,” which can be understood as a euphemism for policing the Straits of Malacca, one of China’s most critical supply routes responsible for transporting much of the oil and raw materials needed by Beijing to maintain high economic growth. Malaysia allows American warships to dock at ports throughout the country, but does not host any US military bases, and does not seek a hostile relationship with Beijing.

It is unclear how deep Malaysia’s commitment to security cooperation with the US will go, although the Obama administration has pledged to assist in the development of Malaysia’s maritime enforcement capacity, setting the stage for deeper military-to-military cooperation. In the economic sphere, there were no breakthroughs on the TPP trade deal, with both sides admitting that significant differences still remain.

Najib, however, made clear that the overall benefits of the TPP would far outweigh the disadvantages of the pact; he mentioned his commitment to getting acceptance from Malaysian people, but offered no specifics on how public acceptance of the trade deal would be measured. Mahathir, who still exerts a degree of influence on traditionalists within the ruling party, commented that Malaysia should not be pressured to agree to the terms stipulated by the TPP. The former PM has routinely called for the trade deal to be dropped, and a large segment of Malaysian civil society and activists are also opposed to the deal.

As a country that has put much emphasis on a non-confrontational foreign policy, Malaysia is well suited to leverage its good ties with Washington and Beijing to promote a conciliatory solution to territorial issues. Malaysia finds itself somewhere between being a warm friend to the Obama administration but not yet a staunch US ally with deep security ties.

Philippines signs 10-year defense agreement
To coincide with the last stop of his four-nation tour, Washington and Manila inked a controversial defense agreement to allow greater numbers of US soldiers to remain in the country on a rotational basis.

The reopening of foreign bases is prohibited by the 1987 Constitution, but the latest defense pact – negotiated largely in secret, and fast-tracked into law under the auspices of an executive agreement without ratification by the Philippine Congress – gives the US government de facto basing access in the country.

The US maintained large military bases in northern regions of the Philippines until the Philippines congress voted to close them down in 1991, but American forces were allowed to return in 1999 under a temporary stay agreement that saw US troops conduct joint training with the Philippines military. The new agreement is far broader, allowing the US military to establish permanent facilities within Philippine military facilities, also paving the way for American military technology to be sold to the Philippines.

Philippines President Benigno Aquino’s rationale for expanding the US presence in his country is to provide the Philippines with a powerful deterrent in the midst of Manila’s bitter territorial row with Beijing, as both countries lay claim to the Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal in the potentially oil- and gas-rich South China Sea. The Philippines and its neighbors undoubtedly have firm and legitimate grievances in the interest of protecting their sovereignty and territorial integrity.

It should be recognized that the disputed features falls within the Philippine’s 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone as recognized by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea; China has resisted applying the procedures stipulated by the law to the many reefs and islands that lie much closer to the Philippines than to China. Manila has argued that Beijing has an obligation to respect the Philippines’ rights to exercise control over areas that fall within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.

China claims that its sovereignty over the disputed areas can be supported by abundant historical and legal evidence, which also support Beijing’s maritime rights over three-quarters of the South China Sea. Beijing has consistently called for settling territorial issues through direct bilateral negotiations. Earlier this year, it offered the Philippines mutual disengagement from the contested area, trade and investment benefits, and postponement of the plans to declare an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea. The Philippines leadership rejected the proposal, and unilaterally filed a case with the tribunal that arbitrates maritime disputes under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

China has resolved territorial disputes with 12 of the 14 countries with which it shares land borders, and the immense complexities of these maritime territorial disputes require levelheaded dialogue and a commitment from negotiations by both sides.

The Philippines leadership may have legitimate grievances, but is clearly not committed to seeking a resolution through dialogue, resorting to hyperbolic name-calling. In an interview with the New York Times, Aquino compared China to Nazi Germany, causing immense harm to bilateral relations with Beijing.
Much like the Obama administration’s position on Japan’s territorial disputes, there is now a concern that backing by the US military can encourage Manila to take a provocative and reckless stance.

Washington has entered the regional fold claiming to be a neutral party and mediating force, yet it supports the territorial claims of its allies and uses them as a justification to maximize its own interests, transforming a regional dispute into a potential super-power conflict, reducing the possibility for any peaceful settlement.

The recent security developments will deepen Manila’s historic dependency on the United States, reinforcing its colonial subordination to the strategic, military and regional priorities of American hegemony.

Nile Bowie is a political analyst and photographer currently residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is also a Just member.

 

29 April 2014

RT.com

 

By Paul Craig Roberts
The Obama regime, wallowing in hubris and arrogance, has recklessly escalated the Ukrainian crisis into a crisis with Russia. Whether intentionally or stupidly, Washington’s propagandistic lies are driving the crisis to war. Unwilling to listen to any more of Washington’s senseless threats, Moscow no longer accepts telephone calls from Obama and US top officials.

The crisis in Ukraine originated with Washington’s overthrow of the elected democratic government and its replacement with Washington’s hand-chosen stooges. The stooges proceeded to act in word and deed against the populations in the former Russian territories that Soviet Communist Party leaders had attached to Ukraine. The consequence of this foolish policy is agitation on the part of the Russian speaking populations to return to Russia. Crimea has already rejoined Russia, and eastern Ukraine and other parts of southern Ukraine are likely to follow.

Instead of realizing its mistake, the Obama regime has encouraged the stooges Washington installed in Kiev to use violence against those in the Russian-speaking areas who are agitating for referendums so that they can vote their return to Russia. The Obama regime has encouraged violence despite President Putin’s clear statement that the Russian military will not occupy Ukraine unless violence is used against the protesters.

We can safely conclude that Washington either does not listen when spoken to or Washington desires violence.

As Washington and NATO are not positioned at this time to move significant military forces into Ukraine with which to confront the Russian military, why is the Obama regime trying to provoke action by the Russian military? A possible answer is that Washington’s plan to evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base having gone awry, Washington’s fallback plan is to sacrifice Ukraine to a Russian invasion so that Washington can demonize Russia and force a large increase in NATO military spending and deployments.

In other words, the fallback prize is a new cold war and trillions of dollars more in profits for Washington’s military/security complex.

The handful of troops and aircraft that Washington has sent to “reassure” the incompetent regimes in those perennial trouble spots for the West–Poland and the Baltics–and the several missile ships sent to the Black Sea amount to nothing but symbolic provocations.

Economic sanctions applied to individual Russian officials signal nothing but Washington’s impotence. Real sanctions would harm Washington’s NATO puppet states far more than the sanctions would hurt Russia.

It is clear that Washington has no intention of working anything out with the Russian government. Washington’s demands make this conclusion unavoidable. Washington is demanding that the Russian government pull the rug out from under the protesting populations in eastern and southern Ukraine and force the Russian populations in Ukraine to submit to Washington’s stooges in Kiev. Washington also demands that Russia renege on the reunification with Crimea and hand Crimea over to Washington so that the original plan of evicting Russia from its Black Sea
naval base can go forward.

In other words, Washington’s demand is that Russia put Humpty Dumpty back together again and hand him over to Washington.

This demand is so unrealistic that it surpasses the meaning of arrogance. The White House Fool is telling Putin: “I screwed up my takeover of your backyard. I want you to fix the situation for me and to ensure the success of the strategic threat I intended to bring to your backyard.”

The presstitute Western media and Washington’s European puppet states are supporting this unrealistic demand. Consequently, Russian leaders have lost all confidence in the word and intentions of the West, and this is how wars start.

European politicians are putting their countries at great peril and for what gain? Are Europe’s politicians blackmailed, threatened, paid off with bags of money, or are they so accustomed to following Washington’s lead that they are unable to do anything else? How do Germany, UK, and France benefit from being forced into a confrontation with Russia by Washington?

Washington’s arrogance is unprecedented and is capable of driving the world to destruction. Where is Europe’s sense of self-preservation? Why hasn’t Europe issued arrest warrants for every member of the Obama regime? Without the cover provided by Europe and the presstitute media, Washington would not be able to drive the world to war.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

27 April, 2014
Paulcraigroberts.org

 

 

By Countercurrents

“Brazil believes that the governing of the internet should be multi-sector, democratic and transparent. We consider the multilateral model to be the best way to govern it,” said Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian president.

Dilma Rousseff was speaking at the beginning of a global conference in Sao Paulo on governing a safer, less US centered internet.

She convened the two day meeting following revelations that she and other world leaders were spied on by the US National Security Agency.

Rousseff set the tone of the conference by signing a new bill into law safeguarding the rights of Internet users.

Government officials, industry executives, academics as well as the founder of Thought Works and promoter of the software of open code, Roy Singham, Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells and Tim Berners-Lee, considered the father of the web attended the conference.

In the conference, the inventor of the World Wide Web said: “Net neutrality means keeping the net free from discrimination, be it commercial or political. The innovative explosion, which happened across the net over the last 25 years has happened only because the net has been neutral.”

It should be mentioned that the US president Barack Obama has decided to take control away from ICANN, a California-based non-profit organization that has until now coordinated internet domains or addresses.

A new international body that has yet to be decided on will now carry out this role as of September 2015.

The two-day meeting to establish a global internet governance agreement, Net-Mundial, has concluded on April 24, 2014 in Brazil.

The meeting was initiated in the backdrop of NSA, an intelligence and surveillance organization of the US, leaks made by Edward Snowden. The leaked NSA documents show massive surveillance of the world population including heads of states and governments. Rousseff was one of the world leaders under the surveillance years of NSA.

The meeting was called as a result of a speech by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff at the UN General Assembly, in which she denounced US cyber espionage and demanded the creation of an Internet regulatory framework.

Called by the Brazilian government last year, Gilberto Carvalho, secretary general of the presidency, invited interested parties to discuss the direction of internet in Brazil and the world in this new democratic digital era.

The goal of the meeting was to develop ideas and generate discussion on the importance of internet rights, as well as seeking agreement on rules for the use of cyberspace, said Carvalho.

The agenda for the two day exchange included the development of a document to describe principles for governance and use of internet in Brazil, said the president of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee Demi Getschko.

The meeting condemned espionage on the worldwide web.

The delegates worked toward advancing multi-sector internet governance, and its development without hegemonic control.

The essential goal was agreement on a resolution to limit United States dominance in the administration of cyberspace.

According to Getschko, the idea was to promote a Universal Declaration on Internet Human Rights, which should include principles including freedom of expression, privacy, transparency and collective governance.

Internet Constitution

Ahead of the Net Mundial conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s Senate has unanimously adopted a bill which guarantees online privacy of Brazilian users and enshrines equal access to the global network.

The bill known as the “Internet constitution” or Marco Civil was first introduced in the wake of the NSA spying scandal and has now been signed into law by Dilma Rousseff.
Rousseff presented the law at the Net Mundial Internet.

The bill promotes freedom of information, making service providers not liable for content published by their users, but instead forcing the companies to obey court orders to remove any offensive material.

The principle of neutrality, calling on providers to grant equal access to service without charging higher rates for greater bandwidth use is also promoted. The legislation also limits the gathering and use of metadata on Internet users in Brazil.

Approval of the Senate was assured after the government dropped a provision in the legislature requiring Internet companies such as Twitter and Facebook to store data on Brazilian users at home.

The final version bill states that companies collecting data on Brazilian accounts must obey Brazilian data protection laws even if the data is collected and stored on servers abroad.

NSA was also involved on spying on Brazil’s strategic business sector, particularly on a state-run oil company Petrobras. In response to US spying, Rousseff canceled a state visit to Washington in October and called on UN, together with Germany, to adopt a UN resolution guaranteeing internet freedoms.

The event is not expected to result in any binding policy decisions, but Almeida said it will facilitate a debate that will “sow the seeds” for future reforms of internet governance.

27 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Countercurrents 

Photographs presented as proof of Russian involvement in Ukraine by the US and Kiev junta has been exposed as unverified and contradictory to the claims.

Freelance photographer Maxim Dondyuk said photos were taken without permission from his Instagram account.

The photographs were published on Monday by the New York Times.

The US State department acknowledged the error and the New York Times back-tracked its story, which claimed “photographs and descriptions from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration … suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and intelligence forces”.

The proof was this particular picture with an inscription “Group photograph taken in Russia ”.
“It was taken in Slavyansk [ Ukraine ],” Maxim Dondyuk told NYT over the phone. “Nobody asked my permission to use it.”

The picture was amongst others Kiev gave the OSCE mission to Ukraine to ‘prove’ Russian involvement in the massive unrest gripping the Donetsk region.

The State Department repeated the claims, citing ‘confirmation’ of Moscow involvement.

“We see in the photos that have been again in international media, on Twitter, publicly available is that there are individuals who visibly appear to be tied to Russia . We’ve said that publicly a countless number of times,” Jen Psaki, State Dept spokeswoman said.

The New York Times eventually published a climbdown Wednesday, “Scrutiny Over Photos Said to Tie Russia Units to Ukraine ”, where it admitted failing to properly verify the Kiev photo dossier.
The NYT also cited the State Dept’s Psaki admitting “the assertion that the photograph in the American briefing materials had been taken in Russia was incorrect”. She explained the picture was only part of a draft packet that wasn’t used by Kerry at the talks.

Psaki then claimed to have other evidence connecting “the Russians and the armed militants” in eastern Ukraine but would not provide details.

The NYT climbdown by Michael R. Gordon and Andrew E. Kramer ( April 22, 2014 ) said:

The photographs have come under scrutiny.

It said:

The photographs were submitted by Ukraine last week to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe , an organization in Vienna that has been monitoring the situation in Ukraine .

Some of the photographs were also provided by American officials to Secretary of State John Kerry so he could show them when he met in Geneva last Thursday with his counterparts from the European Union, Russia and Ukraine .

One series of photographs depicts what Ukraine described as a “soldier of the Russian Special Forces identified in Slovyansk and Kramatorsk during the assault of administration buildings.”

Vyachislav Ponomaryov, the de facto mayor of Slovyansk, who was ushered into office by pro-Russian militants, acknowledged in a news conference on Tuesday that armed men had come to his town from outside Ukraine but vociferously denied that they were Russian Special Forces.

Another series of photographs in the Ukrainian presentation shows a uniformed man with a long beard who was photographed this year in Slovyansk and Kramatorsk and who, the Ukrainians assert, was also photographed during Russian combat operations in Georgia in 2008, wearing a Special Forces patch.

Asked about the soldier, Mr. Ponomaryov said he was a close friend but added that he did not know if the man, whom he declined to name, had fought in Georgia .

“I cannot rule it out,” he said in an interview. “He has a good background. He is one of my old friends. I have good friends in South Ossetia and in Grozny .”

The NYT report added:

Another question has been raised about a group photograph of uniformed men who are identified in the Ukrainian submission as a “sabotage-reconnaissance group” that reports to the “General Staff of the Russian armed forces.”

The Ukrainian submission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe does not identify where the group photograph was taken but asserts that one prominently featured soldier was involved in operations in eastern Ukraine .

A packet of American briefing materials that was prepared for the Geneva meeting asserts that the photograph was taken in Russia . The same men are also shown in photographs taken in Ukraine . Their appearance in both photographs was presented as evidence of Russian involvement in eastern Ukraine . The packet was later provided by American officials to The New York Times, which included that description of the group photograph in an article and caption that was published on Monday.

It said:

Maxim Dondyuk, a freelance photographer who was working in Slovyansk principally for the Russian newsmagazine Russian Reporter, said that he had taken the group photograph there and posted it on his Instagram account.

“It was taken in Slovyansk,” he said in a telephone interview. “Nobody asked my permission to use this photograph.”

Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, acknowledged that the assertion that the photograph in the American briefing materials had been taken in Russia was incorrect.

A version of the climbdown article appeared in print on April 23, 2014 , on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Scrutiny Over Photos Said to Tie Russia Units to Ukraine .

France to send fighter planes to the Baltics

France is sending four fighter jets to join NATO’s air patrols over the Baltics, General Pierre de Villiers, France ‘s chief of defense staff said on a visit to Washington .

The four jets will be sent to eastern Poland on April 28 on a double mission to train the Polish air force and to be on standby for air patrols over the Baltic States under NATO command.

However, the French general told reporters Wednesday French political leaders had not ordered further steps to support alliance members.

“For the moment, the guidance is very clear, we do not go beyond that,” he said.

On the other hand, Russia ‘s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said that NATO exercises will do nothing to help solve the crisis in Ukraine .

“War games by NATO in Poland and the Baltic states are also not helping the normalization of the situation. We are forced to react to the situation,” he said during an official meeting in Moscow .

In response Russia has started military drills near the Ukrainian border, as the situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate.

25 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Countercurrents

In an unprecedented move for a peaceful, nuclear arms free-world, the Marshall Islands, a Pacific nation, has sued nine nuclear-armed powers including the US. The country has also sued the US president Barack Obama and three US secretaries.

Media reports said:

The tiny Pacific country was used for 67 US nuclear tests after World War II over a 12-year period.

The tiny country’s lawsuit demands that the nuclear armed powers meet their obligations toward disarmament.

It accuses them of ‘flagrant violations’ of international law.

The island group-country filed suit on April 24, 2014 against each of the nine countries in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

It also filed a federal lawsuit against the United States in San Francisco, naming President Barack Obama, the departments and secretaries of defense and energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The Marshall Islands claims the nine countries are modernizing their nuclear arsenals instead of negotiating disarmament, and it estimates that they will spend $1 trillion on those arsenals over the next decade.

“I personally see it as kind of David and Goliath, except that there are no slingshots involved,” David Krieger, president of the California-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, told the news agency AP. He is acting as a consultant in the case. There are hopes that other countries will join the legal effort, he said.
The countries targeted also include Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. The last four are not parties to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but the lawsuits argue they are bound by its provisions under “customary international law.”

None of the countries had been informed in advance of the lawsuits.

The US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said he was unaware of the lawsuit, however “it doesn’t sound relevant because we are not members of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.”

“Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons, and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities,” the country’s foreign minister, Tony de Brum, said in a statement announcing the lawsuits.

The country is seeking action, not compensation.

It wants the courts to require that the nine nuclear-armed states meet their obligations.

“There hasn’t been a case where individual governments are saying to the nuclear states, ‘You are not complying with your disarmament obligations,” John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, part of the international pro bono legal team, told the AP. “This is a contentious case that could result in a binding judgment.”

Several Nobel Peace Prize winners are said to support the legal action, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Iranian-born rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi.

“We must ask why these leaders continue to break their promises and put their citizens and the world at risk of horrific devastation,” Tutu said in the statement announcing the legal action.

The Marshall Islands is asking the countries to accept the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction in this case and explain their positions on the issue.

The court has seen cases on nuclear weapons before. In the 1970s, Australia and New Zealand took France to the court in an effort to stop its atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific.

The idea to challenge the nine nuclear-armed powers came out of a lunch meeting in late 2012 after the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation gave the Marshall Islands foreign minister a leadership award, Krieger said.

“I’ve known Tony long time,” he said. “We both have had a strong interest for a long time in seeing action by the nuclear weapons states.”
Frustration with the nuclear-armed states has grown in recent years as action toward disarmament appeared to stall, Burroughs and Krieger said.

“One thing I would point to is the US withdrawal in 2002 from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; that cast a shadow over future disarmament movement,” Krieger said. The treaty originally had bound the U.S. and the Soviet Union. “One other thing, in 1995, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty had a review and was extended indefinitely. I think the nuclear states party to the treaty felt that once that happened, there was no longer pressure on them to fulfill their obligations.”

In 1996, the International Court of Justice said unanimously that an obligation existed to bring the disarmament negotiations to a conclusion, Burroughs said.

Instead, “progress toward disarmament has essentially been stalemated since then,” he said.

Some of the nuclear-armed countries might argue in response to these new lawsuits that they’ve been making progress in certain areas or that they support the start of negotiations toward disarmament, but the Marshall Islands government is likely to say, “Good, but not enough” or “Your actions belie your words,” Burroughs said.

The Marshall Islands foreign minister has approached other countries about filing suit as well, Krieger said. “I think there has been some interest, but I’m not sure anybody is ready.”

25 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Yale Environment 360
This month, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report on steps the world can take to avoid the worst impacts of future climate change. The report by the panel’s Working Group III was the final interim report before the IPCC’s major Fifth Assessment Report due to be released in October. Yale Environment 360 asked Rajendra Pachauri, who has served as IPCC chairman since 2002, five questions about the latest report and about the prospects that the international community will finally take decisive action to address climate change.

1. The most recent IPCC report suggests that the political will to tackle the climate issue seems to be growing around the world. Can you give some specific examples of that?

There is nothing that I am aware of in the Working Group III report that speaks to the political will to tackle climate change. But I can say that in my personal view I have been encouraged by a growing level of awareness and concern about climate change among senior government officials, including presidents and cabinet ministers, across the globe. I can’t say whether this will translate into global action, but it is an encouraging sign. I think there is a realization that failure to act on climate change will become a political liability at some point – and that point is rapidly drawing nearer. Besides, the cost of taking action in order to keep [global] temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius is so low that the merit of this will not be lost on the global community. Nor would they remain unaware of the numerous co-benefits of both the adaptation and mitigation measures detailed in our reports.

2. The latest report cites the steady drop in prices and increases in efficiency in solar and wind power. Do you think this is evidence that the real solution to the climate problem may come not from governments, but from scientists and business people?

I think the scientific and business communities are certainly a growing part of the solution and will become an even more decisive change agent if governments fail to act decisively. But the fact is we still need good government policies to tackle climate change. And there is much to be done in the development and dissemination of renewable energy technologies as well, which requires initiatives by all stakeholders. At the global level, scenarios [to hold the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to] 450 ppm (parts per million) are characterized by more rapid improvements of energy efficiency, nearly a quadrupling of the share of zero- and low-carbon energy supply from renewables, nuclear energy, and fossil energy with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) or bioenergy with CCS by the year 2050.

This is a global challenge and it needs global cooperation. That can occur to some extent on a business-to-business level, but only governments can bring about global change in the time frame we need to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

3. What do you believe is the single most important step that could be taken worldwide to begin reversing the rapid rise of greenhouse gas emissions?

There is no single step that is most important. This is a problem that can only be solved from a variety of perspectives. The solutions will include not only measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but adaptation measures that help us cope with the climate change that is already locked into the system and which we will have to deal with regardless of how effectively we reduce future emissions… Climate change is too big and complex a problem to solve with anything short of our full response capability.

4. What is your strategy between now and next year’s meeting in Paris to build support and consensus for a comprehensive climate treaty?

My primary task in the next six months is to ensure that we bring out a good Synthesis Report as part of the Fifth Assessment cycle. That would complete what I hope would turn out to be a remarkable scientific assessment. I think – and certainly hope – this year will be remembered as the one in which we regained the initiative on climate change. Part of that will be a function of the amount of information being released and the initiatives undertaken this year that are raising public awareness.

The challenge for the IPCC will be to maintain the momentum we are building this year through the release of the Fifth Assessment Report. I can’t get into too many details at this point, but we are planning to hold a series of events in 2015 to highlight what climate change means to different regions around the world. We are very mindful that we need to take additional measures to ensure that the wealth of information from the report does not fade away before the meeting in Paris.

5. Given the track record of past climate conferences, how likely is it that the world community will approve a meaningful treaty in Paris in 2015?

I certainly hope it leads to a meaningful outcome, but I am not in the position to give odds. However, I do think it would be a mistake to underestimate the chances of success. While it is tempting to conclude that [the Paris conference] will be a failure because it has been so difficult to reach an agreement in the past, we have to remember that ambitious global agreements typically take years, even decades, to finalize. Given the threat of climate change, we have to forge ahead with as much determination and energy as possible regardless of the odds. The stakes are much too high to give up.

 

23 April, 2014
Yale Environment 360

 

By Prof. James Petras

During the beginning of his first term in office President Obama promised “to remake the Middle East into a region of prosperity and freedom”. Six years later the reality is totally the contrary: the Middle East is ruled by despotic regimes whose jails are overflowing with political prisoners. The vast majority of pro-democracy activists who have been incarcerated, have been subject to harsh torture and are serving long prison sentences. The rulers lack legitimacy, having seized power and maintained their rule through a centralized police state and military repression.Direct US military and CIA intervention, massive shipments of arms,military bases, training missions and Special Forces are decisive in the construction of the Gulag chain from North Africa to the Gulf States.

We will proceed by documenting the scale and scope of political repression in each US backed police state. We will then describe the scale and scope of US military aid buttressing the “remaking of the Middle East” into a chain of political prisons run by and for the US Empire.
The countries and regimes include Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan and Turkey . . . all of which promote and defend US imperial interests against the pro-democracy majority, represented by their independent social-political movements.

Egypt: Strategic Vassal State

A longtime vassal state and the largest Arab country in the Middle East, Egypt’s current military dictatorship, product of a coup in July 2013, launched a savage wave of repression subsequent to seizing power. According to the Egyptian Center for Social and Economic Rights, between July and December 2013, 21,317 pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested. As of April 2014, over 16,000 political prisoners are incarcerated. Most have been tortured. The summary trials, by kangaroo courts, have resulted in death sentences for hundreds and long prison terms for most. The Obama regime has refused to call the military’s overthrow of the democratically elected Morsi government a coup in order to continue providing military aid to the junta.In exchange the military dictatorship continues to back the Israeli blockade of Gaza and support US military operations throughout the Middle East.

Israel: The Region’s Biggest Jailer

Israel, whose supporters in the US dub it the “only democracy in the Middle East”, is in fact the largest jailer in the region.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselm, between 1967 and December 2012, 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned at some point, over 20% of the population. Over 100,000 have been held in “administrative detention” without charges or trial. Almost all have been tortured and brutalized. Currently Israel has 4,881 political prisoners in jail. What makes the Jewish state God’s chosen… premier jailer, however, is the holding of 1.82 million Palestinians living in Gaza in a virtual open air prison. Israel restricts travel, trade, fishing, building , manufacturing and farming through air, sea and ground policing and blockades. In addition, 2.7 million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (West Bank) are surrounded by prison-like walls, subject to daily military incursions, arbitrary arrests and violent assaults by the Israeli armed forces and Jewish vigilante settlers engaged in perpetual dispossession of Palestinian inhabitants.

Saudi Arabia: Absolutist Monarchy

According to President Obama’s ‘remaking of Middle East’ Saudi Arabia stands as Washington’s “staunchest ally in the Arab world”. As a loyal vassal state, its jails overflow with pro-democracy dissidents incarcerated for seeking free elections, civil liberties and an end to misogynist policies. According to the Islamic Human Rights Commission the Saudis are holding 30,000 political prisoners, most arbitrarily detained without charges or trial.
The Saudi dictatorship plays a major role bankrolling police state regimes throughout the region. They have poured $15 billion into the coffers of the Egyptian junta subsequent to the military coup, as a reward for its massive bloody purge of elected officials and their pro-democracy supporters. Saudi Arabia plays a big role in sustaining Washington’s dominance, by financing and arming ‘jailer-regimes’ in Pakistan, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt.
Bahrain: Small Country – Many Jails

According to the local respected Center for Human Rights, Bahrain has the dubious distinction of being the “top country globally in the number of political prisoners per capita”. According to the Economist (4/2/14) Bahrain has 4,000 political prisoners out of a population of 750,000. According to the Pentagon, Bahrain’s absolutist dictatorship plays a vital role in providing the US with air and maritime bases, for attacking Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. The majority of pro-democracy dissidents are jailed for seeking to end vassalage , autocracy, and servility to US imperial interest and the Saudi dictatorship.
Iraq: Abu Ghraib with Arab Characters

Beginning with the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 and continuing under its proxy vassal Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens have been tortured, jailed and murdered. Iraq’s ruling junta, has continued to rely on US military and Special Forces and to engage in the same kinds of military and police ‘sweeps’ which eviscerate any democratic pretensions. Al-Maliki relies on special branches of his secret police, the notorious Brigade 56, to assault opposition communities and dissident strongholds. Both the Shi’a regime and Sunni opposition engage in ongoing terror-warfare. Both have served as close collaborators with Washington at different moments.

The weekly death toll runs in the hundreds. The Al-Maliki regime has taken over the torture centers (including Abu Ghraib), techniques and jails previously headed and run by the US and have retained US ‘Special Forces’ advisers, overseeing the round-up of human rights critics, trade unionists and democratic dissidents.

Yemen:A Joint US-Saudi Satellite

Yemen has been ruled by US-Saudi client dictators for decades. The autocratic rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh was accompanied by the jailing and torture of thousands of pro-democracy activists, secular and religious, as well as serving as a clandestine torture center for political dissidents kidnapped and transported by the CIA under its so-called “rendition” program. In 2011 despite prolonged and violent repression by the US backed Saleh regime, a mass rebellion exploded threatening the existence of the state and its ties to the US and Saudi regimes. In order to preserve their dominance and ties to the military, Washington and Saudi orchestrated a ‘reshuffle’ of the regime: rigged elections were held and one Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi, a loyal crony of Saleh and servant of Washington, took power. Hadi continued where Saleh left off: kidnapping, torturing, killing pro-democracy protestors… Washington chose to call Hadi’s rule “a transition to democracy”. According to the Yemen Times (4/5/14) over 3,000 political prisoners fill the Yemen prisons. “Jailhouse democracy” serves to consolidate the US military presence in the Arabian Peninsula.

Jordan: A Client Police State of Longstanding Duration

For over a half century, three generations of reigning Jordanian absolutist monarchs have been on the CIA payroll and have served US interests in the Middle East. Jordan’s vassal rulers savage Arab nationalists and Palestinian resistance movements; signed off on a so-called “peace agreement” with Israel to repress any cross-border support for Palestine; provide military bases in support of US, Saudi and EU training, arming and financing of mercenaries invading Syria.

The corrupt monarchy and its crony oligarchy oversee an economy perpetually dependent on foreign subsidies to keep it afloat: unemployment is running over 25% and half the population is subsisting in poverty. The regime has jailed thousands of peaceful protestors. According to a recent Amnesty International Report (Jordan 2013), King Abdullah’s dictatorship “has detained thousands without charges”. The jailhouse monarchy plays a central role in buttressing US empire-building in the Middle East and facilitating Israeli land grabbing in Palestine.

Turkey: NATO Bulwark and Jailhouse Democracy

Under the reign of the self-styled “Justice and Development Party” led by Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has evolved into a major military operational base for the NATO backed invasion of Syria. Erdoğan has had his differences with the US; especially Turkey’s cooling relations with Israel over the latters’ seizure of a Turkish ship in international waters and the slaughter of nine unarmed Turkish humanitarian activists. But as Turkey has turned toward greater dependence on international capital flows and integration into NATO’s international wars, Erdoğan has become more authoritarian. Facing large scale public challenges to his arbitrary privatization of public spaces and dispossession of households in working class neighborhoods, Erdoğan launched a purge of civil society ,class based movements and state institutions. In the face of large scale pro-democracy demonstrations in the summer of 2013, Erdoğan launched a savage assault on the dissidents. According to human rights groups over 5,000 were arrested and 8,000 were injured during the Gezi Park protests.
Earlier Erdoğan established “Special Authorized Courts” which organized political show trials based on falsified evidence which facilitated the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of military officers, party activists, trade unionists, human rights lawyers and journalists, particularly those critical of his support for the war against Syria. Despite conciliatory rhetoric, Erdogan’s jails contain several thousand Kurdish dissidents, including electoral activists and legislators (Global Views 10/17/12).

While Erdoğan has served as an able and loyal Islamist anchor against popular democratic and nationalist movements in the Middle East, his pursuit of greater Turkish influence in the region, has led the US to deepen its political ties with the more submissive and pro-Washington , pro-Israel Gulenist movement embedded in the state apparatus ,business and education. The latter has adopted a permeationist-strategy: purging adversaries in its quiet march to power from within the state. The US still relies on Erdoğan’s “jailhouse democracy” to repress anti-imperialist movements in Turkey; to serve as a military anchor for the war against Syria; to back sanctions against Iran and to support the pro-NATO Maliki regime in Iraq.

The Middle East Gulag and US Military Aid

The police state regimes and the long-term authoritarian political culture in the Arab world is a product of long-term US military support for despotic rulers. The absence of democracy is a necessary condition for expanding and advancing the US imperial military presence in the region.
A small army of US Islamophobic academics, “experts”, journalists and media pundits totally ignore the role of the US in promoting, sustaining and strengthening the ruling dictators and repressing the profoundly democratic mass movements which have erupted over a prolonged period of time. Spearheaded by long-time pro-Israel Middle East scribes and scholars, in Ivy League universities, these propagandists, claim that Arab dictatorships are a product of “Islamic culture”,or the “authoritarian personality of Arabs” in search of a ‘strongman’ to guide and rule them. Ignoring or distorting the history of working class struggles, pro-democracy protests and affirmations, in all of the major Arab countries, these scholars justify the US ties to the dictatorships as “realistic policies” given the “available options”.

Wherever real democracy begins to emerge, where political rights begin to be exercised, Washington provokes coups and intervenes to bolster the repressive apparatus of the state (Bahrain 2011-14, Yemen 2011 to 2014, Egypt 2013, Jordan 2012 among numerous other cases). While the bulk of the Middle East “experts” blame the Arab citizens for authoritarian rule, they completely ignore and cover-up Israel’s racist majority which solidly backs the incarceration and torture of hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy Palestinians.
To understand the Middle East gulag requires a discussion of US ‘aid policy’ which is central to sustaining the ‘jailhouse regimes’.

US Aid to Egypt: Billions for Dictators

The Egyptian police state anchors the US ‘arc of empire’ from North Africa to the Middle East. Egypt has been actively engaged in destabilizing Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria and collaborating with Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians. The Mubarak dictatorship received $2 billion dollars a year from Washington – nearly $65 billion for its imperial services. US aid strengthened its capacity to jail, and torture pro-democracy and trade union activists. Washington continued its military support of dictatorial rule after the military coup against Egypt’s first democratically elected government, to the tune of $1.55 billion dollars for 2014 .

Despite “expressions of concern” over the murder of thousands of pro-democracy protestors by the new military strongman General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, there was no cut in funding for so-called “counter-terrorism” and “security”. To continue funding the dictatorship under US Congressional legislation, Washington refused to characterize the violent seizure of power as a coup . . . referring to it as a “transition to democracy”. The key role of Egypt in US foreign policy is to protect Israel’s ‘eastern flank’. US aid to Egypt is product of the pressure and influence of the Zionist power configuration in Congress and the White House: US aid is conditioned on Egypt’s ‘policing’ of the Gaza border, ensuring that Israel’s blockade is effective. The White House supports Cairo’s repression of the majority of nationalist, anti-colonial Egyptians opposed to Tel Aviv’s dispossession of the Palestinians. Insofar as Israel’s interests’define US Middle East policy, Washington’s financing of Egypt’s jailhouse dictatorship is in accord with Zionist Washington’s strategy.

Israel: The US “Pivot” in the Middle East

Most independent and knowledgeable experts agree that US Middle East policy is largely dictated by a multitude of Zionist loyalists occupying key policymaking positions in Treasury, State Department, the Pentagon and Commerce as well as Congressional dominance by the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations and their 171,000 full time paid activists. While there is some truth in what some critics cite as the divergence of the ‘real’ US ‘national interest’ from Israel’s colonial ambitions, the fact is that US leaders in Washington perceive a convergence between imperial dominance and Israeli militarism. In point of fact a submissive Egypt serves wider US imperial and Israeli colonial interests.
Israel’s war on Lebanon against the anti-imperialist Hezbollah movement served US efforts to install a docile client as well as Israeli’s effort to destroy a partisan of Palestinian self-determination. Washington’s divergence with Israel over Israel’s dispossession of all Palestine does run counter to Washington’s interest in a Palestinian mini-state run by neo-colonial Arab officials. As a result of Zionist influence, Israel is the biggest per-capita US aid recipient in the world, despite having a higher standard of living than 60% of US citizens. Between 1985-2014, Israel received over $100 billion dollars, of which 70% was military, including the most advance high technology weaponry. Israel ,the country which has the world record for political prisoners and military attacks on its neighbors over the past forty years, holds the record for US military aid. Israel as the premier ‘jailhouse democracy’ is a key link in the chain of gulags extending from North Africa to the Gulf States.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia competes with Israel as an incarceration center of pro-democracy dissidents; the Saudi’s recycle hundreds of billions of petro-rents through Wall Street, enriching local Saudi despots and overseas pro-Israel investment bankers. The Saudi-US-Israeli convergence is more than incidental. They share military interests in warring against pro-independence, pro-democracy Arab movements throughout the Middle East. Saudi houses the major US military base and the biggest intelligence operations in the Gulf. It backed the US invasion of Iraq. It finances thousands of Islamic mercenaries in the US-NATO proxy war against Syria. It invaded Bahrain to smash the pro-democracy movement. It intervenes with Washington in support of the Yemen police state. It is the biggest and most lucrative market for the US military-industrial complex. US military sales between 1951 – 2006 totaled $80 billion. In October 2010 it signed off on a $60.5 billion purchase of US arms and services.

Bahrain: A US Aircraft Carrier called a Country

Bahrain serves as the naval base for the US Fifth fleet – and an operative base for attacking Iran. It has been servicing the occupation of Afghanistan and US control of oil shipping routes. The Al-Khalifa dictatorship is extremely isolated, highly unpopular and faces constant pressure from the pro-democracy majority. To bolster their vassal rulers, Washington has increased its military sales to the tiny statelet from $400 million between 1993-2000 to $1.4 billion in the subsequent decade. Washington has increased its sales and military training program in direct proportion to the growth of democratic discontent, resulting in the geometrical growth of political prisoners.

Iraq: War, Occupation,and the Killing Fields of a Jailhouse Democracy

The US invasion and occupation of Iraq led to the slaughter of nearly 1.5 million Iraqis (mostly civilians, non-combatants) at a cost of $1.5 trillion dollars and 4,801 US military deaths. In 2006 the US engineered ‘elections’ led to the installation of the Maliki regime, buttressed by US arms, mercenaries, advisers and bases. According to a recent study for the Congressional Research Office (February 2014), by Kenneth Kilzman, there are 16,000 US military personnel and “contractors” currently in Iraq. Over 3,500 US military contractors in the Office of Security Cooperation bolster the corrupt Maliki police state. The jailhouse democracy has been supplied with US missiles and drones and over $10 billion dollars in military assistance :this includes $2.5 billion in aid and $7.9 billion sales between 2005 – 2013. For 2014 -2015 Malaki has requested $15 billion in weapons, including 36 US F-16 combat aircraft and scores of Apache attack helicopters. In 2013 the Malaki regime registered 8,000 political deaths resulting from its internal war.
Iraq is a crucial center for US control of oil, the Gulf and as a launch pad to attack Iran. While Maliki makes ‘gestures’ toward Iran, its role as an advanced link in the US imperial gulag defines its real ‘function’ in the Gulf region.

Yemen: The Desert Military Outpost for the American Gulag

Yemen is a costly military outpost for Saudi despotism and US power on the Arabian Peninsula. According to a study, Yemen: Background and US Relations by Jeremy Sharp for the Congressional Research Service (2014), the US has supplied $1.3 billion in military aid to Yemen between 2009-2014. Saudi Arabia donated $3.2 billion in 2012 to bolster the Saleh dictatorship in the face of a mass popular anti-dictatorial uprising. Washington engineered a transfer of power from Saleh to “President” Hadi and ensured his continuity by doubling military aid to keep the jails full and the resistance in check. According to the New York Times (6/31/13) Hadi was “a carry-over of dictator Saleh”. The continuity of a jailhouse democracy in Yemen is a crucial link between the Egypt-Israel-Jordan axis and the Saudi-Bahrain imperial gulag.

Jordan: Eternal Vassal and Mendicant Monarchy

Jordan’s despotic monarchy has been on the US payroll for over a half century. Recently it has served as a torture center for kidnapped victims seized by US Special Forces engaged in the “rendition” program. Jordan has collaborated with Israel in assaulting and arresting Palestinians in Jordan engaged in the freedom struggle. Currently Jordan along with Turkey serves as a training and weapons depot for NATO backed mercenary terrorists invading Syria. For its collaboration with Israel, Washington and NATO, the corrupt jailhouse monarchy receives large scale long-term military and economic aid. The monarchy and its extended network of cronies, jailers and family, skim tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid, laundered in overseas accounts in London, Switzerland, Dubai and New York. According to a Congressional Research Service Report (January 27, 2014), US aid to the Jordanian royal dictatorship amounts to $660 million per year. An additional $150 million for military aid was channeled to the regime with the onset of the NATO intervention in Syria. The fund was directed to build-up the infrastructure around the Jordan-Syria border. In addition, Jordan serves as a major conduit for arms to terrorists attacking Syria: $340 million destined for “overseas contingencies” probably is channeled through Amman to arm the terrorists invading Syria. In October 2012, Jordan signed agreements with the US allowing a large contingent of Special Forces to establish airfields and bases to supply and train terrorists.

Turkey: A Loyal Vassal State with Regional Ambitions

As the southern military bulwark of NATO, on Russia’s frontier, Turkey has been on the US payroll for over 66 years. According to a recent study by James Zanotti Turkey – US Defense Co-Operation: Prospects and Challenges (Congressional Research Service, April 8, 2011) in exchange for bolstering the military power of Turkey’s “jailhouse democracy”, the US secured a major military presence including a huge air base in Incirlik a major operational center housing 1,800 US military personnel. Turkey collaborated with the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and supported the NATO bombing of Libya. Today Turkey is the most important military operational center for jihadist terrorists invading Syria. Despite President Erdoğan’s periodic demagogic nationalist bombast, the US empire builders continue to have access to Turkish bases and transport corridors for its wars, occupations and interventions in the Middle East and South and Central Asia. In exchange the US has stationed missile defense systems and vastly increased arms sales, so-called “security assistance”. Between 2006 – 2009 US military sales exceeded $22 billion dollars. In 2013-14, tensions between Turkey and the US increased as Erdoğan moved to purge the state of the Gulenists, a US backed fifth column, which permeated the Turkish state and used its position to support closer collaboration with Israel and US military interests.

Conclusion

The expansion of the US Empire throughout North Africa and the Middle East has been built around arming and financing vassal states to serve as military outposts of the empire. These vassal regimes, ruled by dictatorial monarchies, and authoritarian military and civilian rulers, rely on force and violence to sustain their rule. The US has supplied the weapons, advisers, and financing allowing them to rule. The US arc of imperial military bases stretching from Egypt through Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq , Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, is protected by a chain of prison camps containing tens of thousands of political prisoners.
The US engagement, its pervasive presence throughout the region, is accompanied by a chain of jailhouse democracies and dictatorships. Contrary to liberal and conservative policy pundits and academics, US policy for over 50 years has actively sought out, installed and protected bloody tyrants who have pillaged the public treasury, concentrated wealth, surrendered sovereignty and underdeveloped their economies.
Pro-Israel academics at prestigious US universities have systematically distorted the structural bases of violence, authoritarianism and corruption in the Islamic world: blaming the victims, the Turkish and Arab people, and ignoring the role of US empire builders in financing and arming the authoritarian civilian and military rulers and absolutist monarchies and their corrupt military, judicial and police officials.
Contrary to the mendacious tomes published by the prestigious University presses and written mostly by highly respected pro-Israel political propagandists, the remaking of the Middle East depends on the strength of the democratic currents in Islamic society. They are found in the student movements, among the trade unionists and unemployed, the nationalist intellectuals and Islamic and secular forces who oppose the US Empire for very practical and obvious reasons. Along with Israel the US is the main organizer of the vast chain of political prison camps that destroy the most creative and dynamic forces in the region. Greater Arab vassalage provokes the periodic explosion of a vibrant democratic culture and movement; unfortunately it also results in greater US military aid and presence. The real clash of civilizations is between the democratic aspirations of the Eastern popular classes and the deeply embedded authoritarianism of Euro-American- Israeli imperialism.

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies.

23 April, 2014

Globalresearch.ca

 

By Countercurrents

Former US president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday the West should not impose sanctions that would hurt the Russian people over their leaders’ actions in Ukraine . And, hours after the US vice-president Joe Biden’s Kiev visit, the Kiev authority has relaunched military assaults against the federationists in the east of Ukraine . The federationists are opposing the authority that has seized parliament and usurped power in Kiev .

Media reports on Ukraine said:
Carter told AFP on the sidelines of a discussion in Paris on climate crisis: “I don’t think we would go so far as to impose sanctions that would hurt the Russian people.”

Carter was taking part in a meeting with students as a member of The Elders group set up to promote human rights around the world.
Carter said Russia ‘s takeover of Crimea had been “inevitable”.
“I don’t think anything could have been done by the US or European countries or anyone else to prevent that eventuality.
” Russia has always considered Crimea to be part of Russia .”
He said: “my hope and my belief is that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is not going to use military force” in eastern Ukraine .
“He is going to try to use other means to convince those people who live there that their best option is to cast their lot more towards Russia than towards the West. So I don’t think there is anything we can do that is going to deter Putin.”
Carter said Ukrainians must be allowed to decide their own fate.
He hoped they would be supported by Russia from the East and the US and Europe from the West so as to “not be torn between the two.”

Kiev relaunches military assault

The Kiev authority has relaunched military assaults against its pro-Kremlin separatists, hours after US Vice President Joe Biden ended a two-day visit to Kiev in which he warned Russia over its actions in the former Soviet republic.
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Already the US has started sending 600 troops to Poland and to Baltic countries – Estonia , Lithuania and Latvia – for “exercises”.
The latest moves underscored the severity of the crisis that has brought East-West relations to their most perilous point since the end of the Cold War.
The acting president in Kiev , Oleksandr Turchynov, said on Tuesday he was ordering the military to restart operations against the rebels.
In a further slide back towards violence, which many fear could tip into civil war, a Ukrainian reconnaissance plane was hit by gunfire while flying above Slavyansk . However, the Antonov An-30 propellor-driven plane safely made an emergency landing and none of its crew members were hurt.
The federationists had taken over Kramatorsk ‘s police station late Monday, extending their grip from the already occupied town hall.
Russia is claiming Kiev ‘s new leaders are to blame for the collapse of the accord, which was reached recently in Geneva .
Russia says ultra-nationalists who were involved in months of protests that ousted Ukraine ‘s president Viktor Yanukovych in February killed rebels in an attack Sunday near the eastern town of Slavyansk .
“We in the United States stand with you and the Ukrainian people,” Biden said in a joint news conference with Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the prime minister claimant in Kiev .

$5 billion regime change-investment

The US is to blame for the events in Ukraine as it invested $5 billion in regime change in the country, taking a more radical stance that its EU allies, said Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s envoy to the UN.
“It seems it was the Americans, who tried to push through the most radical scenario,” Churkin said in an interview with Rossiya 24 channel. “They didn’t want any sort of compromise between Yanukovich and the opposition. And, I think, they came to the conclusion that it was time to cash in those $5 billion and handle the matter towards abrupt regime change, which, eventually, happened.”
This explains why the US , but not the European Union, took center stage when the coup resulted in legal vacuum in Kiev , he added.
US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland told CNN on Monday that Washington has invested around $5 billion into supporting democracy in Ukraine since the fall of Soviet Union .
But Churkin has doubts about Nuland’s claims, saying that “any sane person would, at least, say that those investments didn’t pay off.”

“If those $5 billion were spent on support of democracy, but not overthrow of the existing government and regime change, then no democracy has triumphed there [in Ukraine],” he explained.
The Maidan standoff was “a head-on attack” by the US and its Western allies aimed at distancing Russia and Ukraine from each other, Russia ‘s envoy to the UN said.
However, it failed and “led to a completely unexpected result for them when Crimea was reunited with Russia ,” he stressed.
“One has to be naïve to suggest that it all happened fast,” Churkin said of the deal on the de-escalation of the Ukraine crisis, which Kiev agreed with Russia , the US and EU on April 17.
“Despite all their recurrent adventurism, they [the US ] realize that peace is rather fragile and too many crises, too much unrest has been created in different parts of the world. I don’t think they’re interested in the emergence of a new serious crisis, with non-obvious consequences for them,” the envoy said.
According to Churkin, one of those steps should be the confiscation of 3 million items of weapons, which are currently illegally held by the “radical nationalists” in Ukraine .
Kiev calls for the disarmament of federalization supporters in eastern Ukraine, but “how will the radicals [from Western Ukraine] lay down their arms as they are sometimes declared the National Guard and thus obtain official status?” he wondered.
The envoy has ruled out the possibility of a UN peacekeeping operation in Ukraine , calling it “unrealistic.”
“ Ukraine is a very big country and from political point of view there’s no frontline there. And, thank God, it can’t be drawn,” he said.
The presence of observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) “is just enough to monitor what’s happening there,” Churkin stressed.
The envoy also said the EU has begun realizing there’s “a considerable danger” in the rise of far-right forces in Ukraine .
“It’s not a secret that Europe has radicals of its own. Giving such a boost to the nationalist radicalism in Europe … I think that serious politicians understand this,” he said.
But those concerns are only shared during personal contacts, but “nobody talks openly about it,” he added.

Russia dismisses US threat

In Moscow , Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the US threat of new sanctions.
“I am sure we will be able to minimize their consequences,” he said in a televised speech to the Russian parliament.
However he acknowledged that Russia ‘s economy was facing an “unprecedented challenge”.

A divided EU

The European Union is divided on going further with its own sanctions on Moscow , with some member states worried that increased punishment could jeopardize supplies of Russian gas.
Sweden , which is not a NATO member, announced Tuesday it was increasing defense spending because of the “deeply unsettling development in and around Ukraine “. It plans to boost its fleets of fighter jets and submarines.

Lugansk plans referendum

In the eastern part of Ukraine , the federationists remain firmly entrenched in public buildings they have occupied for more than a week.
In the town of Lugansk , protesters pledged to hold their own local referendum on autonomy on May 11.

23 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Bill Van Auken

 

Vice President Joseph Biden’s two-day visit to Ukraine has ended with a resumption of the Kiev regime’s military crackdown against its political opponents in the southeast of the country and a dangerous escalation of US threats against Russia.

Oleksandr Turchynov, who is both acting president and chairman of the parliament following the US-backed, fascist-led coup of February 22, announced Tuesday that he had ordered the country’s security forces to “carry out effective counterterrorist activities aimed at defending Ukrainian citizens living in the country’s east from terrorists.”

Troops have reportedly been massed in the town of Izyum, on the border between Ukraine’s Kharkov region and Donetsk, the country’s most industrialized region. Donetsk has been the center of protests against the US-backed ultranationalists who seized power in Kiev.

Government buildings and police stations have been seized in over a dozen cities and towns. Local councils that have been elected are demanding autonomy for the region and a federalized form of government. In Lugansk, a local popular assembly has announced it will hold a two-stage referendum on May 11 and May 18, asking voters whether the region should be autonomous in the first round and, in the second, whether it should be independent or seek annexation by Russia. Other areas are preparing similar votes.

Izyum is about 50 kilometers northeast of Slavyansk, a center of the protests in Donetsk. The troops that have been deployed there reportedly include National Guard units that are heavily populated by fascist thugs from the Right Sector.

The Kiev regime initially launched its “antiterrorist” offensive early last week, seizing control of a military airfield in Kramatorsk and sending an armored column rolling toward Slovyansk. Halted by a crowd of local people, however, the Ukrainian soldiers refused to take action against them, instead turning over their armored vehicles and weapons to anti-Kiev militiamen.

It was in the aftermath of this humiliating fiasco that the Ukrainian regime’s foreign minister joined his counterparts from the US, Russia and the European Union in drafting an agreement in Geneva to halt all violence and de-escalate tensions by disarming illegal groups, ending occupations of public buildings and spaces, freeing political prisoners and initiating a dialogue between the regions.

Shortly afterwards, the regime in Kiev added that it was observing an “Easter truce.” It was during this supposed truce that a column of four cars carrying Right Sector gunmen attacked a roadblock on the outskirts of Slovyansk on Easter Sunday, killing three local men.

It is now apparent that the Kiev regime and its patrons in Washington were only playing for time with the negotiations in Geneva. It hardly seems a coincidence that the first abortive “counterterrorist” offensive was launched after a secret visit to Kiev by CIA Director John Brennan, while the second attempt was initiated immediately after Vice President Biden’s trip to the country.

Turchynov claimed the resumption of the crackdown was triggered by the discovery in Slovyansk of the body of a local politician and member of his own right-wing Batkivshchyna, or “Fatherland,” party, who had been abducted earlier. Another body found in the town has yet to be identified. Turchynov charged that “these crimes are being committed with the full support and connivance” of Russia.

This is all merely a pretext for an aggressive operation planned and directed from Washington. This was made clear in an interview published by the Washington Post Tuesday with the Kiev regime’s minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov. Asked by the Post whether the regime was going “to fight the terrorists,” Avakov replied, “Tomorrow the holidays will be finished and the announced Easter truce will be finished… We will act… We will start liberating people from the terrorists.”

The US-backed crackdown against the population of southeastern Ukraine threatens to plunge the country into a bloody civil war. At the same time, the launching of such an operation within miles of the Russian border poses the immediate threat of a catastrophic conflict between a nuclear-armed Russia and the Western powers.

In tandem with the turn toward armed repression in Ukraine, Washington is escalating its reckless and provocative military actions in the region directed against Russia. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that a first contingent of US paratroopers will arrive in Poland today to begin months of joint infantry exercises with Polish troops. Similar company-sized units will be dispatched to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in the coming days in what the US military describes as “land force training activities in the Baltic region scheduled to take place this year and possibly into next year.”

“Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has renewed our resolve to strengthening NATO’s defense plans and capabilities, and to demonstrate our continued commitment to collective defense in reinforcing our NATO allies in Central and Eastern Europe,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

Also announced was the dispatch of another warship to the Black Sea in what is being described as a “reassurance mission.”

This supposed response only points to the real motivation behind the US-backed coup in Ukraine: to escalate the military encirclement of Russia, bringing NATO to its borders and eliminating Moscow as an impediment to US geostrategic hegemony over the Eurasian landmass.

Victoria Nuland, the US undersecretary of state for Eurasian affairs and the designated “point person” on operations in Ukraine, made clear the scale of the US investment in the drive to impose a US puppet regime in Kiev in an interview Monday on CNN news.

Nuland is a former chief of staff to Dick Cheney and the wife of Robert Kagan, the founding chairman of the Project for a New American Century, the rightwing think tank that was the leading advocate for wars for regime change in Iraq and elsewhere. She boasted to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington has “invested” $5 billion in promoting “democracy” in Ukraine. She followed this admission with the preposterous claim that no US aid had been funneled to the fascist-led violence in Kiev’s Maidan, which she described as “a spontaneous movement.”

Nuland concluded by issuing marching orders to the Kiev regime, insisting that it must “negotiate a deal with the IMF, where they would institute real reform,” i.e., austerity measures that will spell mass unemployment and a devastating decline in living standards for Ukrainian workers. She also affirmed Washington’s backing for elections being staged by the illegitimate regime in Kiev on May 25 and demanded that the regime “ensure that the country is peaceful enough for those elections to go forward.” This was a clear directive to launch bloody repression against those in southeastern Ukraine who have opposed the US-orchestrated coup.

Moscow responded to the latest US threats and provocations in a Tuesday telephone conversation between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry that had been initiated from Washington. Lavrov insisted that the US-backed Ukrainian regime had to take “urgent steps” to implement the April 17 agreement reached in Geneva. This meant reversing the order to send troops into southeastern Ukraine and freeing dissidents arrested there. He also demanded that the regime disarm neo-fascist groups such as the Right Sector.

What has become clear is that while Russia’s regime, representing the interests of the country’s capitalist oligarchs, hoped that Geneva could prove a path to peaceful accommodation with US imperialism, Washington saw the agreement as a means to an entirely different end. It used it to gain time to reorganize a military crackdown in Ukraine, while at the same time claiming that Russia was in violation of the deal because of the refusal of the opponents of the Kiev regime in southeastern Ukraine to halt their protests. This provides the pretext for intensified sanctions and stepped-up military provocations against Moscow.

As for disarming the Right Sector, neither Washington nor its puppets in Kiev had the intention of doing any such thing. They recognize the need to use these fascist elements as a battering ram against not only the anti-Kiev protests, but also against resistance from the working class as a whole to the drastic IMF-dictated social and economic attacks that are to come.

23 April, 2014
WSWS.org

 

By Nile Bowie
Washington’s drone program isn’t making Yemen safer – it is traumatizing and radicalizing communities, and swelling the ranks of Al-Qaeda.

The Obama administration has recently taken part in a joint operation with Yemeni forces that has produced the highest death toll of any confirmed drone strike in Yemen so far this year, according to sources from the Associated Press (AP).

Yemen’s state media claims that the victims of the attack were among the most dangerous elements of Al-Qaeda, and that the strike was based on confirmed intelligence that the targeted individuals were planning to target Yemen’s civil and military institutions. Yemeni officials claim that the target site, located in remote mountainous regions in the country’s troubled south, was one of the few examples of permanent infrastructure setup by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to train fighters and store armaments.

The strike allegedly took place with regional cooperation and assistance from Saudi Arabia, and due to official secrecy provisions, the United States does not have a legal obligation to acknowledge or comment on the strikes undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The exact death toll varies from source to source, but more than a dozen people have been killed at minimum, with at least three civilian causalities. Witnesses say that a car carrying the alleged militants was hit with a missile as it drove by a vehicle carrying civilians, who were also killed. A second strike on the area was launched shortly after.

Yemen’s government officially claims that 55 alleged militants have been killed so far, and the Supreme Security Committee – which includes the country’s intelligence chief, defense and interior ministers – and President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi approved the strike.

Hadi, who came to power in February 2012 after he stood unopposed in elections, is a staunch supporter of the US drone program, despite the high number of civilian casualties incurred by the strikes. AQAP, active in the south-central regions of the country, is a small but pervasive organization whose tactics include using sophisticated car bombs and suicide attacks that have been bold and deadly in their fight against the government in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.

Criminalizing drones
Yemen, the only state on the Arabian Peninsula to have a purely republican form of government, is in the midst of an ongoing political and security crisis prompted by divisions between various movements and factions, who are themselves divided between Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam. The central government in Sanaa commands little authority outside the capital, and faces a widely popular secessionist movement in the south, an entrenched Shiite rebel movement in the north, and a scattered AQAP insurgency campaign that has succeeded in gathering adherents largely due to their resentment of the Obama administration’s drone warfare campaign throughout the country.

Yemen has the youngest population in the world, with an unemployment rate as high as 40 percent, while half the population still lives below the poverty line.

Longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh submitted his resignation in 2011, following nationwide protests calling for an end to corruption and greater representation. The collective vision for reform shared by nearly all sides of this highly polarized country failed to progress following Saleh’s removal, and like other Arab nations who experienced a change in power during the period known as the Arab Spring, militias and extremist elements took advantage of the precarious security situation to embolden themselves.

In an effort to reconstruct Yemeni society and assuage various movements and communities who feel unrepresented throughout the country, Hadi has channeled his administration’s efforts into UN-backed reconciliation talks known as the National Dialogue Conference (NDC), which impressively brought together over 500 activists and representatives from a diverse array of backgrounds to reform the security apparatus and administrative structure of the country, and draft a new constitution that would be the basis for both presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014.

In a rare show of consensus, participants at the conference voted to criminalize the use of drones for extrajudicial killing, which have enraged average Yemenis from all walks of life. Drone strikes were made technically illegal since 2013, but their continued prevalence in partnership with Yemeni security forces dangerously delegitimizes the government in Sanaa and puts Hadi in an exceedingly awkward position at a time when the government is distrusted for colluding with foreign powers.

The message sent by the delegates of the NDC, which is the most democratic and representative reflection of Yemeni society that currently exists, is that the use of drones are an affront to the sovereignty and dignity of the state, opening the possibility that President Hadi may be criminally persecuted if the current policy continues.
Killing with impunity
President Obama’s speech on his administration’s drone warfare program in 2013 was widely perceived as a convincing and compelling defense of an otherwise controversial policy.

In describing the elaborate precautions and high standards taken prior to launching a strike, Obama claimed, “there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” The president acknowledged how any US military activity risks creating animosity and enemies in the target country, and spoke of the high threshold set for taking lethal action, in respect for the dignity of every human life.

According to the rules in place under the Obama administration, targeted strikes can only take place when capturing a suspect would not be feasible, when the authorities of the country in question could not or would not address the threat, and when no other reasonable alternatives were available.

In the six months since Obama delivered his speech on the rules for using armed drones, reports indicate that covert strikes in Yemen and Pakistan incurred more casualties when compared to the six months before the speech was given.

Behind the US president’s carefully-selected language and various moral assurances, is a covert assassination program that has operated under an accountability and transparency vacuum, where basic statistical data is withheld under the blanketing justification of protecting national security, and hundreds of innocent civilians have been targeted and killed with near-total impunity.

The facts that have been established about the Obama administration’s program are profoundly disturbing. The United States is bound to abide by international human rights law outside of a defined conflict zone, which would apply for its operations in Yemen and Pakistan, where war has not been declared. In such a legal environment, targeted killings can only take place when strictly unavoidable and necessary to protect life, and due to the official secrecy policies surrounding the Obama administration’s drone program, US officials are not legally obliged to acknowledge strikes or provide evidence needed to substantiate alleged threats to the degree that would satisfy the law enforcement standards that govern the intentional use of lethal force outside armed conflict.

The legal criterion to justify a strike is determined in secret by the White House with advice from the Justice Department, but with no oversight or accountability. Obama’s so-called ‘near-certainty’ standard and his administration’s definition of an ‘imminent threat’ are not open to independent review, and are taken unilaterally by the executive branch. As noted by UN Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson, the United States violates international law by targeting of persons directly participating in hostilities who are located in non-belligerent states.

The known criteria for justifying lethal force has proven to be shockingly indiscriminate, to the point where the president’s ‘near-certainty’ standards can never logically be met. The Obama administration, according to investigations, targets individuals based on their exhibiting of ‘behavioral characteristics’ that are deemed typical of militants, rather than making strikes based on the confirmed identity of a target.

Such use of ‘signature strikes’ has resulted in the arbitrary targeting of any military-age male in a given strike vicinity on the presumption that he is a combatant, and directly targetable. The ‘double tap’ technique involves launching an initial drone strike, which is followed by a second strike that targets rescuers and first responders, a tactic that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist outfits have made use of in the past.

The double tap relies on the assumption that the initial target is a militant, and all those who converge on the scene of the initial strike must be militants themselves. Such a strategy cannot possibly meet the stringent requirements needed to avoid the killing of civilians, and can only result in actions that can be described as war crimes or extrajudicial killings.
An undeclared war
Obama’s speech marked the first formal public acknowledgement of a US citizen’s death in a drone strike. Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric of Yemeni descent and a US citizen, was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in May 2011. In describing his criteria for an extrajudicial targeted strike, Obama claims there is no difference between a foreign terrorist and a terrorist with US citizenship.

Al-Awlaki’s assassination and the subsequent killing of his 16-year-old son, also an American national, sets an alarming precedent. At one time, Anwar al-Awlaki was known to be a moderate cleric who denounced terrorism and violence. At some stage between the events of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Anwar al-Awlaki underwent a profound change in his political orientation and began to preach jihad, in response to what he viewed as the United States engaging in a war against Islam and Muslim civilians.

Just as Anwar al-Awlaki’s views morphed toward the violent fringe as a reaction to US policy, the radicalization of communities and traumatized survivors of drone strikes throughout Yemen provides AQAP with a steady flow of militants seeking to avenge their families’ deaths by harming the United States. The Obama administration and the Yemeni political elite may view drone strikes as a short-term fix, but the radicalization of growing swathes of society will prove to be a major liability for any future government in power.

Washington has assured the public that the American role in Yemen is highly constrained, and held in accordance with a mandate to target members of Al-Qaeda approved by Congress after 9/11. The scope and breadth of covert operations undertaken by the CIA and secretive paramilitary unit Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are impossible to ascertain, but Washington’s role in Yemen’s civil wars are much deeper than what the public imagines.

The inhumanity of this war comes to the fore in incidents such as the US bombing of a wedding convoy in December 2013, killing 12 civilians. Consider the vile injustice meted out in 2009 to the people of al-Majalah, a Bedouin village that became the target of US cluster-bombing, killing 41 civilians, including nine women and 21 children. Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist who exposed the American slaughter at al-Majala, was jailed by authorities and framed as an Al-Qaeda collaborator. His original release from prison was blocked by the personal intervention of President Obama, who phoned former Yemeni President Saleh and lobbied for Shaye to remain in custody.

Contrary to claims that drones only target those high-level figures who pose an imminent threat to the US homeland, reports indicate that low-level fighters, local commanders, and even figures in Yemen’s own military have been targeted by US drones – not because they present any risk to US national security, but because they are political opponents of the current US-backed regime in Sanaa.

The Obama administration’s dirty wars and covert operations in Yemen represent a glaring evasion of justice and accountability that will continue to sow wanton killing and perpetual conflict if left unchecked.
Nile Bowie is a political analyst and photographer currently residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is also a Just member.
24 April, 2014
rt.com