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By Oliver Campbell & Peter Symonds

Violent clashes between police and protesters yesterday in Kiev mark an escalation of the campaign by the pro-Western opposition to oust Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The opposition, backed by the United States and German governments, aims to install a far-right regime committed to integrating Ukraine within the European Union and implementing its demands for austerity measures.

Bloody street-fighting erupted when opposition protesters marched on parliament, demanding it pass a planned law to decrease Yanukovych’s powers. When the vote went against them, the opposition supporters attacked the headquarters of the ruling Party of the Regions. Clashes between police and protesters erupted and spread throughout the city.

The unrest has been the bloodiest since the pro-EU protests began some three months ago. Latest reports indicate that at least 19 people have been killed, including police and protesters. Hundreds, possibly thousands, have been injured, at least 200 people seriously.

The opposition demonstrators, many of whom are affiliated with the neo-fascist Svoboda party and other extreme right-wing groups, appeared to be heavily armed. One of the fascistic organisations involved, Right Sector, called for all those with arms to take them to Independence Square and engage in combat with the authorities.

Media footage shows anti-government protesters, some wearing helmets emblazoned with fascist symbols, firing rifles and small arms at riot police, as well as throwing molotov cocktails. During the storming of the Party of Regions headquarters, they killed at least one office worker. Several interior troops were reportedly taken as “prisoners” before government forces secured control of the building.

Opposition leaders called on supporters to continue fighting. Vitali Klitschko, head of the UDAR (Punch) party, which has close ties to the German state, demagogically told demonstrators: “We will not leave here. This is an island of freedom. We will defend it.” Violent clashes continued throughout the night and early Wednesday morning, paralysing the city.

The bloody scenes in Kiev are the direct result of the campaign waged by the US and Germany to oust Yanukovych after he rejected proposals for closer EU ties and signed a deal with Russia accepting financial aid. In their efforts to prise Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit and isolate Russia, the Washington and Berlin are openly working with the extreme-right parties.

Top US State Department official Victoria Nuland has repeatedly visited opposition leaders in Ukraine, including the head of the Svoboda party, Oleh Tyahnybok. Leaked phone calls between Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, exposed the extent of Washington’s micro-management of opposition leaders as it seeks to install a new client regime. (See: “Leaked phone call on Ukraine lays bare Washington’s gangsterism”)

The protests and violence in Kiev followed a meeting in Berlin on Monday in which opposition leaders Klitschko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk called on top German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, for greater support, including to press for sanctions on the Ukrainian government.

Also on Monday, Russia agreed to purchase $2 billion in Ukrainian bonds, giving the Yanukovych regime a financial breathing space that would have been unwelcome in opposition circles as well as in Berlin and Washington.

In the wake of the clashes in Kiev, the US, Germany and the EU immediately blamed Yanukovych and ratcheted up the pressure for his removal. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared: “Whoever is responsible for decisions that may lead to further bloodshed in the center of Kiev and other parts of Ukraine should expect Europe to reconsider its previous reservation on imposing sanctions on individuals.”

According to a White House statement, Vice President Joe Biden contacted the Ukrainian regime to express Washington’s “grave concern” over the violence, and “made clear that the United States condemns violence by any side, but that the government bears special responsibility to de-escalate the situation.”

The US and German responses signal an intensification of the imperialist drive to install a puppet regime in Kiev and transform the Ukraine into a bastion for further provocations and intrigues aimed at dismembering Russia itself and reducing it to a dependent semi-colony. The promotion of right-wing Ukrainian nationalists is part of a broader strategy of exploiting the many ethnic, national and religious divisions within the former Soviet Union to secure dominance over the region.

The subordination of Ukraine is one of the longstanding geo-strategic ambitions of German imperialism, stretching back to World War I. Germany’s current aggressive policy toward Ukraine coincides with the revival of German militarism. At the recent Munich Security Conference, top German officials stated that the time had come when Berlin had to abandon the post-war restraints and restrictions on the use of military force.

US imperialism has pursued a relentless strategy of weakening and isolating Russia for more than two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Starting with the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Washington has encouraged and supported so-called colour revolutions in the former Soviet republics. It invaded Afghanistan to establish a base of operations into Central Asia and sought, through sanctions and military threats, to carry out regime-change in Iran and Syria, Russia’s closest allies in the Middle East.

The ability of imperialism to intervene aggressively is the direct outcome of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the restoration of capitalism and the opening up of the former Soviet republics to the plunder of global transnational corporations. In opposing the present imperialist intervention in Ukraine, no political support should be given to Yanukovych or Russian President Vladimir Putin, who represent corrupt, grasping oligarchs who have enriched themselves at the expense of the working class.

The only social force capable of opposing the imperialist intrigues, military threats and drive to war is the international working class. The starting point is a rejection of all forms of nationalism and a political fight to unify workers in Ukraine with their class brothers and sisters throughout Europe, Russia and internationally. That requires a common struggle to abolish the bankrupt profit system and establish a planned world economy to meet the pressing social needs of all.

19 February, 2014

WSWS.org

 

 

 

 

By Palestine News Network

More than 120 Irish academics have signed a pledge to boycott Israeli institutions until Palestinian rights are respected, Academics for Palestine said in a press release Friday.

It added, the number is expected to increase as more lecturers learn about the growing campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel – a campaign led by Palestinians that is gaining global support.

“The conflict in Palestine has now reached its ‘South African moment’ – the point at which Israeli apartheid has been recognised as such by the international community,” Prof Haim Bresheeth, a noted London-based film-maker and academic from Israel, said Friday.

Prof Bresheeth and Dr. Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian doctor of medicine, scholar and lecturer at the University of Exeter, will be in Belfast and Dublin next week to help launch a new Irish campaign to support the academic-boycott pledge, Academics for Palestine declared.

Dr. Karmi emphasised that the boycott does not target Israeli individuals but institutions. Far from being a threat to academic freedom, she said, BDS affirms its importance for Palestinians.

“Israel’s well-documented repression of Palestinian academic life and victimisation of Palestinian teachers and students is a scandal to be denounced by all those who claim to care about academic freedom,” she said.

Dr. Conor McCarthy, lecturer in English in NUI Maynooth and a long-time campaigner for Palestinian rights, welcomed the initiative.

“The recent endorsement of the boycott campaign by the 5,000-member American Studies Association in the US, along with positive moves by the Modern Language Association and the controversy over Scarlett Johansson, showed that BDS is now very much part of a mainstream international debate,” Dr McCarthy said.

Nearly a year ago the Teachers Union of Ireland, which represents lecturers at institutes of technology across the State, became one of the first academic unions in the world to endorse the boycott.

“The TUI’s historic decision was the impetus for building a broader academic-boycott campaign in Ireland,” AFP chair Jim Roche said today. Roche, who teaches architecture at DIT, was instrumental in securing passage of the TUI motion.

EU-funded research partnerships involving Israeli institutions and worth billions of euro mean that this boycott campaign is not mere posturing: many Irish researchers are involved in such projects, including ones with military/security applications. AFP will be providing detailed information about these partnerships.

“The US, EU and other states have protected Israel and financed its occupation ever since 1967, making it impossible to resolve the conflict through the UN or international diplomatic channels,” Prof Bresheeth said. “It puts a special responsibility on international civil society, and BDS is its main tool to resolve the conflict in a just and peaceful way.”

The text of the boycott pledge reads:

“In response to the call from Palestinian civil society for an academic boycott of Israel, we pledge not to engage in any professional association with Israeli academic, research and state institutions and with those representing these institutions, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.”

14 February 2014

 

 

Deutsche Bank includes Israeli bank on a list of companies whose conduct is ethically questionable, Israeli website Walla reports.

By Haaretz

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, has included Israel’s Hapoalim Bank on a list of companies who are ethically questionable for investment, Israel’s Walla website reported on Monday.

According to the report, the bank launched a “moral investment plan” for investors who wish to make sure their funds are not put to unethical use, and which includes companies who are involved in problematic areas such as mines production and nuclear weapons manufacturing.

Estimates in Israel, the report adds, are that Hapoalim was targeted because of its activity in the settlements.

Earlier this month, Denmark’s largest bank decided to blacklist Hapoalim because of its involvement in the funding of settlement construction.

Danske Bank added Bank Hapoalim to its list of companies in which the company cannot invest due to its corporate accountability rules.

In January, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance announced that it decided to exclude Israeli firms Africa Israel Investments and Danya Cebus from its Government Pension Fund Global.

According to the announcement, the Ministry of Finance received a recommendation on November 1 from the Council of Ethics to exclude the two companies from the fund “due to contribution to serious violations of individual rights in war or conflict through the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem.”

Likud MK Ofir Akunis called on the German bank to reverse its decision. “A German bank boycotts Jews? Could it be? These things have happened before,” he wrote in his Facebook account. “In light of history, this bank better reverse its unethical decision!”

17 February,2014

 

By Nile Bowie

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has placed himself at the helm of countries that seek to counter China’s rise, as Tokyo’s right-wing leadership looks intent to ramp up its aggressive nationalistic stance with US support.

Since returning to power in late 2012, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has emerged as one of Japan’s most influential prime ministers in decades.

Abe has attempted to put an end to the cycle of weak executive leadership with his long-standing nationalist vision of a more militarily assertive Japan, in addition to his efforts to pull the country out of a two-decade-long economic slump with an array of neoliberal reforms collectively referred to as ‘Abenomics.’ He has played upon nationalistic sentiment to accumulate an unusually strong grip on power in contrast to former Japanese prime ministers, leading his right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to gain unified control of parliament last year.

His visit to the Yasukuni war shrine last December, to a memorial site honoring convicted war criminals that died for the cause of Imperial Japan, strained ties with neighboring countries that once bore the brunt of a ruthless and unyielding Japanese occupation. Under Abe’s watch, high-level diplomatic contact with China has virtually dried up since Tokyo has more assertively defended its claims over the disputed chain of islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Shinzo Abe has also extended his support for a controversial state secrets law that could punish leakers, whistleblowers, and journalists with hefty prison sentences if the state determines wrongdoing. More than half of Japanese voters oppose the law and its negative effects on press freedom, while others have likened it to Imperial Japanese laws that ruthlessly curbed dissent.

One of his key goals is a national education overhaul designed to more effectively propagate government-sanctioned views onto young generations, including an emphasis on Japan’s territorial claims and a shamelessly sanitized wartime history. Abe has purchased advanced weapons systems, ramped up military spending for the first time in a decade, and has called for revising Japan’s post-war pacifist constitution that may see the omission of Article 9, which forbids the use of force to settle international disputes.

Abe has put himself at the forefront of regional efforts to counter China’s rise with the full backing of the Obama administration, which views Japan as an indispensible asset in the strengthening of an anti-China security regime in Asia.

Hostages of history

The growing tension in northeast Asia today is linked to national identities that have been founded upon varying perspectives and interpretations of historical narratives. China endured well-documented atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking and a brutal occupation that saw the mass slaughter and enslavement of civilians, and territorial annexations linked to present-day conflicts, such as the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute. Beijing has routinely accused Japan of whitewashing its record of atrocities and revising its imperial history to suit Tokyo’s present day political ambitions.

The four-decade occupation of the Korean peninsula by Japanese forces and the country’s anti-colonialist resistance play a central role in the foundational narratives of both Korean nations, which remain in strong opposition to Japan. Throughout the occupation, tens of thousands of Korean women and girls were used as sex slaves to Japanese forces, leaving an indelible stain on Korea-Japan relations even in the present day. Shinzo Abe’s visit to Yasukuni shrine and his previous calls to revise Japan’s 1995 war apology can only be seen as a deeply offensive and reckless provocation from the perspectives of countries that that suffered most under Japanese imperialism.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the defeat in World War II have allowed Japan to cultivate a victim complex, which is used in contemporary politics to downplay atrocities and dismiss perceptions of it being an aggressor.

Nobusuke Kishi – Abe’s grandfather – was a former prime minister and was detained as a candidate for Class A War Criminal status until his release in 1948; his LDP government relied heavily on US support, while subsequent LDP governments have only very reluctantly issued formal apologies for Japan’s war crimes. Abe’s nationalist agenda is a revival of this legacy, which is today championing views that are usually relegated to the right-wing fringe. His administration’s willingness to take control over major media outlets to promote a distorted and bigoted view of history can only deepen ongoing regional tensions.

An illustration of Abe’s hubris is his promotion of four hard-right figures to the board of governors of Japan’s public broadcaster NHK. Katsuto Momii, the new NHK chairman, made waves by justifying the systematic abuse of comfort women and for his refusal to retract his remarks. Naoki Hyakuta, another Abe appointee, declared that the Rape of Nanking “never happened,” and that the atrocity was fabricated in order to cover up the crimes of the US atomic bombing.

Abe’s political gamble

Japan’s historical revisionism and the prevalence of high-profile atrocity deniers are as odious as the hypothetical equivalent of German leaders honoring Nazi war criminals and denying the Holocaust. Much like the resurgence of right-wing and fascist movements in present day Europe, jingoistic nationalism is a product of Japan’s deepening economic stagnation and population demographic crisis. Wages have been on the decline since 1998, and Japan has the highest debt-to-GDP levels in the developed world.

Abe’s solution is quantitative easing, currency inflation, the deregulation of energy and financial sectors, the privatization of public assets and industries, tax-free havens to lure in multinationals, and structural reforms that serve big business. ‘Abenomics’ has caused the Japanese stock market to soar because money is being injected into the financial sector, but money velocity remains low because it is not trading hands in the real economy; demand and activity remain stagnant. Abe’s nationalism can be relied upon to assuage the masses as tax hikes, belt-tightening, and austerity measures are introduced to assist the Japanese government in servicing its massive debt.

Abe has not tried to obscure his intentions to revive Japanese military muscle and despite tarnishing his image abroad, the visit to the Yasukuni shrine went ahead anyway with the principle intention being to generate an aggressive response from China. Fanning the war of words with China and Korea serves Abe’s interests by heightening the Japanese public’s sense of threat from abroad, allowing Abe to build greater support for revising his country’s constitution.

The Yasukuni visit also boosted Abe’s credentials among parliamentarians and hard-liners that may have accused him of being too soft on foreign policy issues. For further context, it should also be noted that even Japan’s current Emperor Akihito has abstained from visiting the Yasukuni shrine precisely because of the inclusion of war criminals after 1978 and the ensuing politicization of the site.

 

The Obama administration has publicly expressed disappointment over Abe’s visit to the shrine, but remains steadfast on supporting its security commitments to Japan, including support for Tokyo’s disputed territorial claims. Washington’s consent for Japan to play a more assertive military role in the region ties into the Obama administration’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ intentions to maintain dominance in the Asia-Pacific by encircling China and curbing its growing influence.

The new 1914?

Shinzo Abe told audiences at the recent Davos conference in Switzerland that present-day tensions between China and Japan reflect circumstances between Germany and Britain prior to World War I.

Abe challenged notions that strong economic ties between Japan and China would decrease the possibility of confrontation, citing how the strong trade relationship between Germany and Britain failed to negate a cataclysmic conflict. Parallels to 1914 certainly exist with growing naval antagonisms between China and Japan, the increasing propagation of hostility and nationalism, and in a rise of inequality amid unfettered international trade.

However, such similarities can only go so far. The German leadership under the Kaiser and his military cabal bares little similarity to the non-interventionist policies and meritocratic governance of modern China, which is focused primarily on reform and reducing corruption; there is also no clear modern comparison to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The current scenario – the hyper-modern reemergence of a civilizational state like China – is unprecedented in history, making 1914 comparisons lopsided and superficial at best.

Unlike the relationship between Germany and Britain in 1914, the present-day tension between China and Japan has its roots in history. Since resistance to colonialism (especially Japanese colonialism) is so deeply interwoven into Chinese and Korean nationalistic narratives, overcoming the present day challenges are all but impossible in the midst of an unrepentant and chauvinistic Japan.

If the leadership in China and South Korea were seen as yielding to Japanese pressure on territorial disputes, the domestic political consequences would be staggering; likewise, it would be political suicide for Shinzo Abe if Japan’s leadership to lose face by taking a soft stance on disputes.

Despite the war of words, there is no immediate indication of a hot war over Japan’s territorial disputes with China and South Korea; its potential to spark a large-scale military conflict is still hypothetical. The United States is in a position where it could be a mediator, but instead has opted to take sides by supporting Japan while letting an odious brand of nationalism fester unchecked. If a misstep occurs, the US administration could set in motion a security crisis that it cannot easily control.

Nile Bowie is a Kuala Lumpur-Based political analyst and columnist with Russia Today. He is also a Just member.

February 18, 2014

 

 

By Christa Case Bryant,

For years, boycott efforts in Europe seemed to be only symbolic gestures. But several major efforts announced in the past year, including one by the EU, are raising alarm.

Jerusalem; and Rotterdam, Netherlands

Drive down the steep road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, and as the desert hills unfold toward the Jordan River the eye meets hundreds of rows of lush palms laden with succulent dates.

More than a third of the world’s Medjool dates are grown here in the Jordan Valley, a narrow strip of the West Bank where Israeli agriculture is flourishing. Nearly all Israeli grape exports, as well as abundant crops of peppers and herbs, also come from this arid region.

The European Union, Israel’s No. 1 trading partner, accounts for about a third of its total trade, and was long the favored destination for Jordan Valley produce. But these fruits and vegetables are grown on land that Israel has occupied since 1967. For a growing number of European consumers, that’s a problem. They say that buying such produce is supporting the illegal confiscation and control of land and water resources that should be in Palestinian hands.

The campaign is starting to bite. Last year, Jordan Valley farmers lost an estimated $29 million, or 14 percent of revenue, because they were forced to find alternative markets for their exports, such as Russia, where prices are 20 to 60 percent lower. Pepper exports to Western Europe have stopped completely, and grape exports are likely to be phased out this year because of consumer pressure, says David Elhayani, mayor of the Jordan Valley Regional Council and a farmer himself.

Israeli leaders have for years scoffed at the notion that fewer dates or peppers in European shopping carts could put a dent in the Israeli economy. But in the past six months, a flurry of European banks, pension funds, engineering firms, and lawmakers have driven home their displeasure with Israeli settlements, and Israeli leaders are taking the threat more seriously.

On Feb. 9, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

convened a special meeting of government ministers to formulate a strategy against the growing economic boycott. One minister reportedly pushed for a $28 billion budget to counter the movement with aggressive media and legal campaigns.

It’s not so much that their pocketbook is starting to feel the pressure – last year’s drop in Jordan Valley exports represents a mere 0.01 percent of total Israeli exports for 2013. But there’s concern that rising opposition to Israeli policies signals increasing displeasure with the very idea of Israel. “Sanctions are also what we Israelis should fear most – disenchantment of the world with the very idea that Jews are entitled to have a state of their own,” says Yitzchak Mayer, who served as the Israeli ambassador to Belgium and Switzerland in the 1990s.

 

Discontent on the rise

According to a 2013 BBC poll, public opinion of Israel is worsening. Favorability ratings dropped 8 percent in both Spain and Germany, to the single digits. Even in Britain, the first European country to formally support the establishment of a Jewish state, only 14 percent of citizens have a positive view of Israel today.

EU citizens and lawmakers alike have long opposed Israeli policies, but popular discontent – cultivated by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement since 2005 – is increasingly pressuring businesses and governments to take more concrete action.

Dutchman David Ross says he supports such moves. “What it accomplishes is putting more focus on the problem,” he says. “People will ask, ‘What are we really doing there?’ It brings the problem to the streets.”

Nothing brought the issue to the streets quite like Scarlett Johansson’s recent endorsement of the home sodamaker SodaStream, which operates a factory in the West Bank. Ms. Johansson refused calls to stop supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands with her endorsement, instead praising the factory as a haven of coexistence that provides some 500 Palestinians with badly needed jobs. The Hollywood star’s step into the fray gave the BDS movement new currency.

“[The SodaStream boycott] has … led to mass education of the public everywhere about the illegality of Israel’s settlements, Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights, and, crucially, the need to boycott companies producing in settlements as a minimal measure of ending complicity in grave violations of human rights,” says human rights activist and BDS cofounder Omar Barghouti.

Many of the nongovernmental organizations in Israel that challenge the government’s policies in the West Bank have long been funded by European governments, but the fact that lawmakers are now making their own moves ups the ante.

“The language has become sharper, and the instruments are sharper,” says Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor, which tracks European funding of NGOs with a critical eye. “Diplomatically Israel has lived without Europe for 15 years, if not longer. Militarily, Europe isn’t much of a power. So most of this is about economics.”

Last summer the EU said it would refuse to provide funds from Horizon 2020 – the largest EU research and innovation program, with €80 billion ($109 billion) in funding over seven years – to entities operating in East Jerusalem or West Bank settlements.

Then European institutions stepped up demands for verification and guarantees that none of their business was happening over settlement lines.

One of the most significant moves came in January. A $200 billion Dutch pension firm, among the world’s largest, divested from five top Israeli banks. The fund, PGGM, said it would be almost impossible for the banks to “end their involvement in the financing of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

 

In September a Dutch engineering firm, under pressure from the government, dropped plans to build a sewage treatment plant in East Jerusalem, and in December, a Dutch water company cut ties with Israel’s national water carrier over its operations in the West Bank.

But it’s not just the Dutch. Germany announced in January that it would not renew research grants to Israeli companies that do business over the Green Line, the de facto border before Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 war. That was the first move by an individual EU member to apply standards for academic research to the private sector. The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz called it “a significant escalation in European measures against the settlements.”

Germany’s move prompted concern that if Israel’s best friend in Europe, still burdened by the guilt of the Holocaust, takes such steps, every other EU country could follow suit.

“I think there is a danger that one should not underestimate, which is the snowball effect that once someone starts, the others begin to adopt the same kind of policy,” says Oded Eran, the Israeli ambassador to the EU from 2002 to 2007.

Why now?

For years Europe tried to use incentives on Israel, eliminating trade tariffs and enhancing cooperation in other areas. But Israel’s 2008-09 war against Hamas-run Gaza sparked demonstrations in Europe and pushed EU lawmakers to adjust, wrote Claire Spencer, head of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the London-based think tank Chatham House, in an April 2009 report. Still, last year, Israel was the only non-EU country invited to join Horizon 2020.

Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London, says the flurry of activity of European firms is not a reaction to any specific Israeli action. Rather, it comes at a time when companies are more accountable to consumer and civil society groups, whether it’s human rights violations in Bangladeshi garment factories or logging in the Amazon.

“What you are seeing is this slow accumulation of a sense that there are legal and reputational risks for companies to engage in business activities which involve the settlements,” he says.

But retiree Pieter Duistermaat of Rotterdam, whose job in the chemicals industry took him to Israel a few times, says that his opinion of Israel has worsened over time because of Israeli actions toward Palestinians.

“I don’t like their attitude,” he says. “No one deserves that.”

He says he would not support a large-scale boycott of Israeli products or companies doing business in Israel, however, because it punishes the wrong culprits. “I have nothing against Israelis. It is the Israeli government that is very tough towards these people.”

Sacha Stawski, who runs a media watchdog called Honestly Concerned in Frankfurt, says some Germans are increasingly moving in an “extremely critical, if not anti-Israel” direction.

Mr. Stawski says that he considers German Chancellor Angela Merkel – who is visiting the Jewish state on Feb. 24 – to be pro-Israel but says she’s surrounded by a new generation of politicians and voters who increasingly are trying to “rid themselves of their past.”

“There is this new generation that is saying, ‘We have nothing to do with [the Holocaust].’ They are not understanding the relationship between guilt and responsibility. The new generation is not guilty, but they still have a responsibility to make sure nothing of the sort ever happens again.”

Mr. Mayer, the former ambassador to Belgium and Switzerland, sees the rise of terrorism and intractable conflicts as one of the factors driving opposition to Israeli policies. The perception that the world has become ungovernable – bolstered by crises like Syria, where world leaders have failed to curb violence – is causing citizens and governments to act out of fear to reduce such instability.

“One of those ways is to believe that part of the global problem is … the unfinished problem between Palestinians and Israelis,” he says. “And therefore the pressure of the world to bring about a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians is increasing.”

Pocketbook pain

Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, acknowledged a movement to label products from West Bank settlements, which do not enjoy the exemption from trade tariffs that is granted to farmers in Israel proper. But he denied a wider campaign.

“There is no boycott, and in the European Parliament there is for sure no majority for a potential boycott,” he said in a speech about the future of EU-Israel relations in Jerusalem on Feb. 11. “My personal view, a boycott is not a solution for anything.”

Numerous leaders, from US Secretary of State John Kerry to Israel’s own minister of finance, Yair Lapid, have warned that a collapse of current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians could bring increasing diplomatic and economic consequences for Israel.

“There is a risk that you will face increasing isolation [if talks fail],” EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen told Israel’s Channel 2 recently. “Not necessarily as a result of European Union policy, but Israel has to realize that economic relations are established by private economic actors – be it consumers, be it companies – and we, as a government, have no influence on the private decisions that private citizens and companies are making.”

That has Mr. Lapid worried, especially given that pocketbook issues were one of the primary issues of the latest Israeli elections.

“If the negotiations with the Palestinians get stuck, and we enter the reality of a European boycott, even a partial one, the Israeli economy will retreat; every Israeli citizen will be hit directly in his pocket; the cost of living will rise; budgets for education, health, welfare, and security will be cut; and many international markets will be closed to us,” he said last month.

But Mr. Netanyahu has refused to be cowed by an economic boycott, and some of his ministers have dismissed it, pointing to increasing trade relations with developing countries from Mexico to China. Last year, exports to Asia pulled nearly even with US-Israel trade.

“Attempts to impose a boycott on the State of Israel are immoral and unjust. Moreover, they will not achieve their goal,” Netanyahu said, who made it the first order of business at his weekly cabinet meeting Feb. 2, amid the Soda-Stream firestorm.

Still, some Europeans say they’d like to see their governments take stronger action – and that’s a role Europe can play, Mr. Levy says.

“If anything, I think Europe’s role is to be a little more demanding than Americans can be because of their politics,” he says, adding Europe has to wield a stick rather than allowing Israel to keep “feasting” on carrots from both parties. “Europe has to be able to have relations, but also hold its ground.”

February 16, 2014

By Franklin Lamb

Al Nebek, Syria: Who authored the seemingly designed-to-fail UN Security Council Draft Resolution on delivering urgent humanitarian aid into the Old City of Homs and other besieged areas of conflict-torn Syria? When we know this, much may become clearer with respect to the cynical politicization of the continuing civilian suffering.

The draft resolution was put forward by Australia, Luxembourg, and Jordan, and according to a UN/US congressional source—one who actually worked on rounding up the three countries to front for the US and its allies—none was pleased with the decidedly raw and undiplomatic pressure they received from the office of US UN Ambassador Samantha Power.

When this observer inquired how such a poorly drafted, one-sided, adversary-bashing draft resolution could actually have seen the light of day and been submitted to the UN Security Council, the reply he received was terse: “Ask Samantha.”

Suspicions are being raised in Geneva, in Syria, and among certain UN aid agencies, in Homs and elsewhere, that efforts on behalf of those they are trying to save from starvation were ‘set-up’ to fail as a result of power politics and influences emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv.

This observer is not a big fan of conspiracy theories. No doubt it’s a personal congenital defect of some sort that makes him want to hear at least a modicum of relevant, prohibitive, material, non-hearsay evidence to support some of the wilder and internet-fueled claims ricocheting around the globe. However, some things are becoming clear as to what happened at the UNSC last week and why certain specific language was included in the resolution.

Ms. Power, it has been claimed by two Hill staffers who monitor AIPAC, owes her position as UN Ambassador to Israeli PM Netanyahu, who views her and her husband, AIPAC fund raiser, Cass Sunstein, as Israel-first stalwarts. Congressional sources claim the White House went along with her appointment so as not to provoke yet another battle—either with AIPAC’s congressional agents or the wider US Zionist lobby. As part of her continuing gratitude for her “dream job,” as she told an American Jewish Committee convention on 2/10/14 in New York, Ms. Power assured the AJC that the United States “strongly supports Israel’s candidacy for a seat on the UN Security Council, and we have pushed relentlessly for the full inclusion of Israel across the UN system.” Ms. Power is said to have assured AIPAC officials in private that evening that “one of Israel’s few survival reeds may be to grasp, in the face of rising anti-Semitism, a seat on the council.” Insisting that “there is growing and rampant hostility towards Israel within the UN, where a large number of member states are not democratic,” Ms. Power, continued” “I will never give up and nor should you.”

Following the standing ovation from her adoring audience, she repeated, according to one eye witness: “We have also pushed relentlessly for the full inclusion of Israel across the UN system.” What the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine knows, as does no doubt Ms. Power, is that the American public and increasingly even the US Congress is finally pulling back from the regime in favor of justice for Palestine. Thus the lobby’s strange reasoning that the UN system, where the American public is essentially absent, is increasingly important.

So what’s the problem with the US-mission-spawned Security Council draft resolution on Syria so dutifully submitted by three chummy and faithful allies?

Well, for starters, the resolution is DOA, as presumably every sophomore poli-sci, civics, or governance student would have recognized from the outset. The aggressive language—demanding the UNSC immediately take action by targeting only one claimed violator with yet more international sanctions—would have caused chaff and cringing among many, probably most. But even beyond that, Moscow, with a UNSC veto ready to use, sees the US-initiated draft as a bid to lay the groundwork for military strikes against the Syrian government, interpreting the language as an ultimatum: that if all this isn’t solved in two weeks then the Security Council will automatically follow with sanctions against the Syrian government.

As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov told the media on 2/10/14, “Instead of engaging in everyday, meticulous work to resolve problems that block deliveries of humanitarian aid, they see a new resolution as some kind of simplistic solution detached from reality.”

The draft text, obtained by this observer from Reuters, expresses the intent to impose sanctions—on individuals and entities obstructing aid—if certain demands are not met within the next two weeks.

“It is unacceptable to us in the form in which it is now being prepared, and we, of course, will not let it through,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov.

One diplomat in Syria, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, had told the Security Council on 2/11/14 that Moscow opposes some 30 percent of the original draft, but did not specify what which parts. He added, “We’re not aiming for a Russian veto, we’re aiming for a resolution that everybody can agree. That is what we want.”

For his part, President Obama, speaking at a joint news conference in Washington with French President Francois Hollande, kept up the pressure for the Security Council to accept the US resolution. He insisted that there is “great unanimity among most of the Security Council” in favor of the resolution and “Russia is a holdout.” Secretary of State John Kerry and others have “delivered a very direct message” pressuring the Russians to drop their opposition.

“It is not just the Syrians that are responsible” for the plight of civilians, but “the Russians as well if they are blocking this kind of resolution,” Kerry claimed. “How you can object to humanitarian corridors? Why would you prevent the vote of a resolution if, in good faith, it is all about saving human lives?”

Among international observers, the draft resolution is widely viewed as one-sided, condemning rights abuses by Syrian authorities, demanding Syrian forces stop all aerial bombardment of cities and towns as well as indiscriminate use of bombs, rockets and related weapons. It also, parenthetically and somewhat obliquely, condemns “increased terrorist attacks,” and calls for the withdrawal of all foreign fighters from Syria, but the latter language is believed to be aimed mainly at Hezbollah. Sources in Syria claim that the draft heaps all the blame on the Syrian government without devoting the necessary attention to the humanitarian problems created by the actions of the rebels.

These gratuitous draft elements are not only aggressive, but frankly appear calculated to end serious discussion and to undermine a solution of the problem.

Being new on the job is one thing for Ms. Power (she has served as UN ambassador only since August of last year), but politicizing relief from starvation for a besieged civilian population is quite another. Likewise for promoting a draft resolution focusing all blame on one side. Such things violate a broad range of applicable and mandatory international norms, and if Ms. Power is hazy on this subject, the State Department’s Office of International Organization Affairs is not—or at least was not when this observer interned there following law school years ago.

Language that would have stood a much better chance of ending the siege of Homs, Yarmouk and other areas under siege was drafted this week by a Syrian law student at the Damascus University Faculty of Law. The widely esteemed university witnessed the death of 17 of its students, along with the serious injuring of more than 20 others, when rebel mortar bombs, on 3/28/13, targeted the canteen of the College of Architecture. Those responsible for the shelling later admitted they were trained and armed by agents of the US government.

The DU law student’s draft resolution on unfettered humanitarian aid into besieged areas of Syria will hopefully be widely discussed over the weekend at a news conference tentatively scheduled on campus. Perhaps the next UN draft resolution will reflect the student’s homework assignment.

The starving victims besieged in Syria, and all people of goodwill, are demanding immediate, non-politicized humanitarian aid without further delay. Virtually every American voter is in a position to pressure his or her congressional representative, and would possibly achieve much good by making the White House aware of their demands to end playing international ‘gotcha’ politics, and to cooperate to end the needless deaths by starvation that continue today.

Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com).

16 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rarely been so politically embattled. His travails indicate the Israeli right’s inability to respond to a shifting political landscape, both in the region and globally.

The context for his troubles was his commitment in 2009, under great pressure from a newly elected US president, Barack Obama, to support the creation of a Palestinian state. It was a concession he never wanted to make and one he has regretted ever since.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has exploited that pledge by imposing the current peace talks. Now Netanyahu faces an imminent “framework agreement” that may require him to make further commitments towards an outcome he abhors.

Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, is not helping. Rather than digging in his own heels, he offers constant accommodation. Last week Abbas told the New York Times that Israel could take a leisurely five years removing its soldiers and settlers from a key piece of Palestinian territory, the Jordan Valley. The Palestinian state would remain demilitarised, while Nato troops could stay “for a long time, and wherever they want”.

The Arab League is another thorn. It has obliged by renewing its offer from 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative, that promises Israel peaceful relations with the Arab world in return for its agreement to Palestinian statehood.

Meanwhile, the European Union is gently turning the screws on the occupation. It regularly trumpets condemnation of Israel’s settlement-building frenzies, including last week’s announcement of 558 settler homes in East Jerusalem. And in the background sanctions loom over settlement goods.

European financial institutions are providing a useful barometer of the mood among the 28 EU member states. They have become the unexpected pioneers of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, with a steady trickle of banks and pension funds pulling out their investments in recent weeks.

Pointing out that boycotts and “delegitimisation” campaigns are only going to gather pace, Kerry has warned that Israel’s traditional policy is “unsustainable”.

That message rings true with many Israeli business leaders, who have thrown their weight behind the US diplomatic plan. They believe that a Palestinian state is the key to Israel gaining access to lucrative regional markets and continued economic growth.

Netanyahu must have been disconcerted by the news that among those meeting Kerry to express support at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month was Shlomi Fogel, the prime minister’s long-time intimate.

 

Pressure on these various fronts may explain Netanyahu’s hasty convening last weekend of his senior ministers to devise a strategy to counter the boycott trend. Proposals include a $28 million media campaign, legal action against boycotting institutions, and intensified surveillance of overseas activists by the Mossad.

On the domestic scene, Netanyahu – who is known to prize political survival above all other concerns – is getting a rough ride as well. He is being undermined on his right flank by rivals inside the coalition.

Naftali Bennett, the settlers’ leader, provoked a chafing public feud with Netanyahu this month, accusing him of losing his “moral compass” in the negotiations. At the same time, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister from the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, has dramatically changed tack, cosying up to Kerry, whom he has called “a true friend of Israel”. Lieberman’s unlikely statesmanship has made Netanyahu’s run-ins with the US look, in the words of a local analyst, “childish and irresponsible”.

It is in the light of these mounting pressures on Netanyahu that one should understand his increasingly erratic behaviour – and the growing rift with the US.

A damaging falling-out last month, following insults from the defence minister against Kerry, has not subsided. Last week Netanyahu unleashed his closest cabinet allies to savage Kerry again, with one calling the US secretary of state’s pronouncements “offensive and intolerable”.

Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, tweeted her displeasure with a shot across the bows. The Israeli government’s attacks were “totally unfounded and unacceptable”, she noted. Any doubt she was speaking for the president was later dispelled when Obama praised Kerry’s “extraordinary passion and principled diplomacy”.

But despite outward signs, Netanyahu is less alone than he looks – and far from ready to compromise.

He has the bulk of the Israeli public behind him, helped by media moguls like his friend Sheldon Adelson who are stoking the national mood of besiegement and victimhood.

But most importantly he has a large chunk of Israel’s security and economic establishment on side too.

The settlers and their ideological allies have deeply penetrated the higher ranks of both the army and the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret intelligence service. The Haaretz newspaper revealed this month the disturbing news that three of the four heads of the Shin Bet now subscribe to this extremist ideology.

Moreover, powerful elements within the security establishment are financially as well as ideologically invested in the occupation. In recent years the defence budget has rocketed to record levels as a whole layer of the senior military exploits the occupation to justify feathering its nest with grossly inflated salaries and pensions.

There are also vast business profits in the status quo, from hi-tech to resource-grabbing industries. Indications of what is at stake were illuminated recently with the announcement that the Palestinians will have to buy from Israel at great cost two key natural resources – gas and water – they should have in plentiful supply were it not for the occupation.

With these interest groups at his back, a defiant Netanyahu can probably face off the US diplomatic assault this time. But Kerry is not wrong to warn that in the long term yet another victory for Israeli intransigence will prove pyhrrhic.

 

These negotiations may not lead to an agreement, but they will mark a historic turning-point nonetheless. The delegitimisation of Israel is truly under way, and the party doing most of the damage is the Israeli leadership itself.

 

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

14 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

Hans M. Kristensen

Robert S. Norris

Abstract

The United States has an estimated 4,650 nuclear warheads available for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft. Approximately 2,700 retired but still intact warheads await dismantlement, for a total inventory of roughly 7,400 warheads. The stockpile includes an estimated 2,130 operational warheads, about 1,150 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 470 on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Roughly 300 strategic warheads are located at bomber bases in the United States, and nearly 200 nonstrategic warheads are deployed in Europe. Another 2,530 warheads are in storage. To comply with New START, the United States is expected to eliminate land-based missile silos, reduce the number of launch tubes on its missile submarines, and limit its inventory of nuclear-capable bombers in coming years. Coinciding with a revised nuclear weapons strategy, the Obama administration is also planning an upgrade of all nuclear weapons systems. The three-decade-long plan would cost more than $200 billion in the first decade alone.

The US Defense Department maintains a stockpile of an estimated 4,650 nuclear warheads for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft. The stockpile did not decline significantly over the last year, but has shrunk by roughly 460 warheads compared with May 2010, when the United States announced that the Defense Department’s stockpile contained 5,113 warheads.

The current stockpile includes an estimated 2,130 operational warheads, of which approximately 1,620 strategic warheads are deployed on ballistic missiles—1,150 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and 470 on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); roughly 300 strategic warheads are located at bomber bases in the United States; and nearly 200 nonstrategic warheads are deployed in Europe (see Table 1). The remaining 2,530 warheads are in storage as a so-called hedge against technical or geopolitical surprises.

In addition to the warheads in the US stockpile, approximately 2,700 retired, but still-intact warheads are in storage and await dismantlement, for a total inventory of roughly 7,400 warheads.

Implementing New START

As of September 1, 2013, the United States nuclear arsenal was counted under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with 1,688 strategic warheads attributed to 809 deployed missiles and bombers—an increase of 34 warheads and 17 launchers compared with the previous count in March 2013. The increase is an anomaly, however, reflecting fluctuations in launchers in overhaul rather than an actual increase of strategic forces. Since the treaty entered into force in February 2011, the United States has reduced a total of 146 strategic warheads and 90 launchers counted under the treaty (Kristensen, 2013a).

To meet the treaty limit on non-deployed launchers, the Air Force plans to eliminate 104 empty ICBM silos. This includes 50 silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, which until 2008 housed the 50 Minuteman III missiles of the 564th Missile Squadron; 50 silos at F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, which was until 2005 used by MX/Peacekeeper ICBMs of the 400th Missile Squadron; and one MX/Peacekeeper and three Minuteman III test-launch silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The 50 silos at Malmstrom will be destroyed in 2013–2014, the 50 silos at Warren in 2015–2016, and the four test-launch silos at Vandenberg in 2017.

The next step will be the reduction of missile tubes from 24 to 20 on each US nuclear missile submarine in 2015–2016. The third and final step will be the denuclearization of excess bombers to reduce the accountable inventory to 60.

Nuclear weapons employment guidance

The Obama administration’s long-awaited nuclear weapons employment guidance was announced in June 2013 after more than two years of internal deliberations. The administration published a nine-page report and a fact sheet that described the employment guidance—known as Presidential Policy Directive 24—setting four overall principles for the role of US nuclear forces.

Under the directive, the fundamental role of US nuclear weapons remains to deter nuclear attack on the United States and its allies and partners. The United States will only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners. The United States will maintain a credible nuclear deterrent capable of convincing any potential adversary of the adverse consequences of attacking the United States or its allies and partners. And US policy seeks to achieve a credible deterrent with the lowest possible number of nuclear weapons, consistent with its current and future security requirements (Defense Department, 2013).

These planning principles are based on the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, and the guidance report describes an employment strategy that contains a mix of constraints on and reaffirmations of nuclear planning.

In terms of constraining nuclear plans, the guidance document declares that the United States can safely pursue up to a one-third reduction in deployed nuclear weapons from the level established in New START in negotiated cuts with Russia; directs the Defense Department to focus planning only on those objectives and missions that are necessary for deterrence; and tells the department to examine further options to reduce the role Launch Under Attack plays in US planning. The guidance also directs the Defense Department to take concrete steps toward reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US national security by increasing planning for non-nuclear strike options and assessing what objectives and effects could be achieved through them; declares that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their non-nuclear obligations;1 declares that the United States will not intentionally target civilian populations or civilian objects; reiterates the intention to work toward the goal of making deterrence of nuclear weapons the sole purpose of US nuclear weapons; and outlines a more efficient strategy for hedging against unanticipated risks with fewer non-deployed nuclear weapons (Defense Department, 2013; White House, 2013).

The reaffirmations contained in the guidance document in some cases simply confirm that long-held principles for nuclear war planning still are in force. In other cases, however, the reaffirmations appear to contradict the constraints asserted in the same document. Among other things, the document declares that the new guidance is consistent with the fundamentals of deterrence that have long undergirded US nuclear weapons policy, and that the United States will retain a nuclear triad so it can credibly threaten “a wide range” of nuclear responses if deterrence should fail; these responses could include nuclear attacks against adversaries armed with chemical, biological, and conventional weapons. The guidance also states that the United States will maintain significant counterforce capabilities against potential adversaries and rejects countervalue or minimum deterrence as the basis for US nuclear strategy. It also directs the Defense Department to retain the ability to Launch Under Attack; declares that the new employment strategy does not direct any changes to currently deployed nuclear forces; decides to continue to keep a reserve of non-deployed warheads to increase the deployed force if needed; calls for retaining the ability to forward-deploy nuclear weapons with heavy bombers and dual-capable fighter aircraft in support of extended deterrence; says that the United States should continue a forward-based nuclear posture in Europe; and declares that non-nuclear strike options are not a substitute for nuclear weapons (Defense Department, 2013; White House, 2013).

Based on the new employment guidance, the Office of the Secretary of Defense will update the Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy, and the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will update the nuclear supplement to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan. These documents will in turn guide Strategic Command’s revision of the strategic nuclear war plan (Kristensen, 2013b). Some changes will be implemented quickly, while others (such as increasing the role of non-nuclear forces) could take years to achieve.

Nuclear modernization plan

Coinciding with the revised nuclear weapons employment strategy, the Obama administration is planning an extensive upgrade of all nuclear weapons systems: missiles, bombers, submarines, fighters, warheads, and the supporting complex and factories. The plan extends three decades into the future and costs more than $200 billion in the first decade and hundreds of billions of dollars more in the next two decades.

The plan envisions the production of significantly modified nuclear weapons, including the addition of a guided tail kit to the B61 bomb to increase its accuracy, broaden strike options against underground targets, and reduce radioactive fallout. The new B61 bomb (B61-12) is already being designed and is expected to cost around $10 billion for 400 to 500 bombs—the most expensive nuclear bomb project ever.

The plan also envisions building a family of so-called interoperable warheads that could be used on both land- and sea-based missiles. Little is known about the precise configuration of these warheads, but even though they would incorporate components from previously tested warhead designs, each could differ significantly from warheads currently in the stockpile and potentially increase uncertainty about warhead performance. Each interoperable warhead will be extremely expensive, with IW1 projected at $14.7 billion. The plan is known as the 3 + 2 plan because it envisions the entire future stockpile containing three warhead types for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and two warheads for bombers, compared with seven warhead types today (see Figure 1). The high cost will likely result in significant modification, even cancelation, of the 3+2 plan.

Land-based ballistic missiles

The US Air Force operates a force of 450 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs split evenly across three wings: the 90th Missile Wing at F. E. Warren Air Force Base; the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota; and the 341st Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Each wing has three squadrons, each with 50 missiles controlled by five launch-control centers. Under New START, the Air Force plans to reduce the ICBM force to 400 missiles, probably by retiring one of three missile squadrons at one of the three bases, leaving two bases with 150 missiles each and one with 100 missiles.

Each missile carries either the 335-kiloton W78 warhead or the 300-kiloton W87 warhead. A few missiles still carry multiple warheads but are being downloaded in order for the United States to meet the limits of New START. Despite the download, the ICBM force will retain a re-MIRVing capability that could increase warhead loading if directed.

The Air Force is in the final phase of a multibillion-dollar, decade-long modernization program to extend the service life of the Minuteman III to 2030. Although the United States has not officially announced deployment of a new ICBM, the upgraded Minuteman IIIs “are basically new missiles except for the shell” (Pampe, 2012). The total modernization program will be completed in 2015.

In mid-2014, the Air Force is scheduled to complete an analysis of alternatives for replacing the Minuteman III missiles. Options being studied range from extending the existing missile to beyond 2030 to more exotic options, such as a mobile ICBM to increase survivability. Three Minuteman IIIs were test-launched in 2013.

Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines

The US Navy operates 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (eight based in the Pacific and six in the Atlantic), all equipped with Trident II D5 SLBMs. Normally 12 of the subs are considered operational, with a 13th and 14th boat in overhaul at any given time. The aggregate New START data show that normally fewer than 12 of these submarines are fully equipped with missiles. Of the 14 boats, 10 or 11 are normally capable of deploying with their missiles.

The deployed submarines carry approximately 1,150 warheads—or an average of 4.8 warheads per missile. In practice, each missile probably has three, four, or five warheads, depending upon the requirement of the war plan. Loading with fewer warheads increases a missile’s range.

Three versions of two basic warhead types are deployed on the SLBMs: the 100-kiloton W76-0, the 100-kiloton W76-1, and the 455-kiloton W88. The W76-1 is a refurbished version of the W76-0, with the same yield but with an added safety device, a dual strong link detonation control. Moreover, a new arming, fuzing, and firing unit provides improved targeting capabilities. Full-scale production of an estimated 1,200 W76-1 s is under way at the Pantex plant in Texas. So far, roughly 500 W76-1 s have replaced W76-0 s on Trident II SLBMs, and production is scheduled to continue through 2019. W76-1 s are also being supplied to Britain’s missile submarines (Kristensen, 2011a).

US submarine nuclear deterrent patrols have decreased significantly over the past decade from 64 patrols in 1999 to 28 in 2011. As a result, each sub now conducts an average of 2.5 patrols per year compared with 3.5 patrols a decade ago. The average duration of a patrol is 70 days, with a few lasting more than 100 days. More than 60 percent of the patrols take place in the Pacific Ocean, reflecting nuclear war planning against China, North Korea, and eastern Russia.

At any given time, eight or nine of the 12 operational nuclear missile submarines are at sea. Four or five of the at-sea boats are on “hard alert,” which means they are in designated patrol areas within range of the targets specified in their assigned target package in accordance with the strategic war plan. The other three or four subs at sea are in transit to or from their patrol areas, and the remaining boats are in port, some with their missiles removed.

Starting in 2015, the number of missile tubes on each Ohio-class boat will be reduced by four, from 24 to 20. The reduction is intended to reduce the number of deployed SLBMs to no more than 240 at any given time, to meet the 2018 limit on deployed strategic delivery vehicles set by New START.

The Navy has ambitious modernization plans to replace the Ohio-class subs with a new design, a submarine that is 2,000 tons larger than the Ohio-class submarine, but with 16 missile tubes instead of the current 24—four fewer than the 20 planned under New START. Twelve replacement boats (tentatively known as SSBNX) are planned, a reduction of two compared with the current fleet of 14, at an estimated cost of approximately $100 billion. Construction of the first new submarine is scheduled for 2021, with deployment on deterrent patrol starting in 2031.

The plan is that during the first decade of its service life, this new class of submarine will be armed with a life-extended version of the current Trident II D5 SLBM. This upgraded missile, the D5LE, has a guidance system designed to “provide flexibility to support new missions” (Draper Laboratory, 2006: 8) and make the missile “more accurate” (Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division, 2008: 14); it will also be backfitted onto existing Ohio-class subs for the remainder of their service life, starting in the Pacific in October 2017. The D5LE will also be deployed on Britain’s missile submarines.

The US submarine force conducted eight SLBM test-launches in 2013. In April, following completion of its reactor-refueling overhaul, the Pennsylvania launched four missiles including the second flight test of the D5LE guidance package. And in September, another submarine launched two salvos of two missiles in the Atlantic Ocean.

Strategic bombers

The Air Force operates a fleet of 20 B-2 and 93 B-52H bombers at three bases. Of those, 18 B-2 s and 76 B-52Hs are nuclear-capable. An estimated 60 bombers (16 B-2 s and 44 B-52Hs) are assigned nuclear weapons under the strategic nuclear war plan.

Each dedicated B-2 can carry up to 16 nuclear bombs (B61-7, B61-11, and B83-1). The dedicated B-52Hs are assigned air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) but are no longer assigned gravity bombs. From the 2020s, the B-2 is scheduled to receive the planned B61-12 precision-guided nuclear bomb, a program currently estimated to cost in excess of $10 billion. It is estimated that approximately 1,000 nuclear weapons, including 528 ALCMs, are assigned to the bombers. Most of these weapons are in central storage at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, but a small number (we estimate 200 to 300) are stored at Minot Air Force Base and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri; nuclear weapons are no longer stored at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana (Air Force Magazine, 2011; Ferrell, 2012). The weapons are not deployed on the bombers under normal circumstances but could be loaded on short notice.

From the mid-2020s, the Air Force plans to begin replacing B-52 and B-1 (and later also B-2) bombers with a new long-range bomber. Procurement of 80 to 100 aircraft is envisioned; some of the new bombers are planned to be nuclear-capable, at a total cost of well over $55 billion. The new bomber will be equipped to deliver the planned B61-12 precision-guided bomb, as well as a new nuclear ALCM that is currently known as the Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) missile. The current ALCM is scheduled to remain operational through the 2020s. The administration has promised that it will not produce “new” nuclear warheads, so the LRSO could either use a life-extended version of the ALCM’s W80-1 warhead or a life-extended version of the retired W84 warhead that once armed the Ground-Launched Cruise Missile. The LRSO warhead could cost as much as $12 billion, with billions more needed to produce the missile itself.

Nonstrategic nuclear weapons

The US inventory of nonstrategic nuclear weapons includes approximately 500 warheads, all B61 gravity bombs. Nearly 200 of the bombs are deployed in Europe at six bases in five NATO countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. The Belgian, Dutch, and Turkish air forces (with F-16 s) and German and Italian air forces (with PA-200 Tornado aircraft) are assigned nuclear strike missions with the US nuclear weapons (Kristensen and Norris, 2011). The weapons in Europe no longer serve a military purpose and are not tasked with providing the ultimate security guarantee to NATO, a mission that is assigned to strategic weapons.

Although the May 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago approved the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review conclusion that the existing “nuclear force posture currently meets the criteria for an effective deterrence and defense posture” (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 2012: paragraph 8), NATO has approved modernization in Europe through the addition of a guided tail kit to the B61 bomb to increase its accuracy, and the deployment of the stealthy F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter in Europe. Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey have decided to buy the F-35A, and it is under consideration in Belgium. The modified bomb, known as the B61-12, will also be carried on other fighter aircraft (F-15E, F-16, and PA-200 Tornado) as well as strategic bombers (B-2 and the new long-range bomber), potentially complicating future arms control agreements (Kristensen, 2011b, 2012).

Funding

This research was carried out with grants from the New-Land Foundation and the Ploughshares Fund.

 

Hans M. Kristensen is the director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington, DC.

Robert S. Norris is a senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington, DC.

17 December, 2014

 

 

By Nicola Nasser

International, regional and internal players vying for interests, wealth, power or influence are all beneficiaries of the “al-Qaeda threat” in Iraq and in spite of their deadly and bloody competitions they agree only on two denominators, namely that the presence of the U.S.-installed and Iran–supported sectarian government in Baghdad and its sectarian al-Qaeda antithesis are the necessary casus belli for their proxy wars, which are tearing apart the social fabric of the Iraqi society, disintegrating the national unity of Iraq and bleeding its population to the last Iraqi.

The Iraqi people seem a passive player, paying in their blood for all this Machiavellian dirty politics. The war which the U.S. unleashed by its invasion of Iraq in 2003 undoubtedly continues and the bleeding of the Iraqi people continues as well.

According to the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq, 34452 Iraqis were killed since 2008 and more than ten thousand were killed in 2013 during which suicide bombings more than tripled according to the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk’s recent testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The AFP reported that more than one thousand Iraqis were killed in last January. The UN refugee agency UNHCR, citing Iraqi government figures, says that more than 140,000 Iraqis have already been displaced from Iraq’s western province of Anbar.

Both the United States and Russia are now supplying Iraq with multi–billion arms sales to empower the sectarian government in Baghdad to defeat the sectarian “al-Qaeda threat.” They see a casus belli in al–Qaeda to regain a lost ground in Iraq, the first to rebalance its influence against Iran in a country where it had paid a heavy price in human souls and taxpayer money only for Iran to reap the exploits of its invasion of 2003 while the second could not close an opened Iraqi window of opportunity to re-enter the country as an exporter of arms who used to be the major supplier of weaponry to the Iraqi military before the U.S. invasion.

Regionally, Iraq’s ambassador to Iran Muhammad Majid al-Sheikh announced earlier this month that Baghdad has signed an agreement with Tehran “to purchase weapons and military equipment;” Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen defense and security agreements with Iran last September.

Meanwhile Syria, which is totally preoccupied with fighting a three –year old wide spread terrorist insurgency within its borders, could not but coordinate defense with the Iraq military against the common enemy of the “al-Qaeda threat” in both countries.

Counterbalancing politically and militarily, Turkey and the GCC countries led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in their anti-Iran proxy wars in Iraq and Syria, are pouring billions of petrodollars to empower a sectarian counterbalance by money, arms and political support, which end up empowering al–Qaeda indirectly or its sectarian allies directly, thus perpetuating the war and fueling the sectarian strife in Iraq, as a part of an unabated effort to contain Iran’s expanding regional sphere of influence.

Ironically, the Turkish member of the U.S.–led NATO as well as the GCC Arab NATO non–member “partners” seem to stand on the opposite side with their U.S. strategic ally in the Iraqi war in this tragic drama of Machiavellian dirty politics.

Internally, the three major partners in the “political process” are no less Machiavellian in their exploiting of the al-Qaeda card. The self–ruled northern Iraqi Kurdistan region, which counts down for the right timing for secession, could not be but happy with the preoccupation of the central government in Baghdad with the “al–Qaeda threat.” Pro-Iran Shiite sectarian parties and militias use this threat to strengthen their sectarian bond and justify their loyalty to Iran as their protector. Their Sunni sectarian rivals are using the threat to promote themselves as the “alternative” to al-Qaeda in representing the Sunnis and to justify their seeking financial, political and paramilitary support from the U.S., GCC and Turkey, allegedly to counter the pro-Iran sectarian government in Baghdad as well as the expanding Iranian influence in Iraq and the region.

Exploiting his partners’ inter-fighting, Iraqi two–term Prime Minister Nouri (or Jawad) Al-Maliki, has maneuvered to win a constitutional interpretation allowing him to run for a third term and, to reinforce his one-man show of governance, he was in Washington D.C. last November, then in Tehran the next December, seeking military “help” against the “al-Qaeda threat” and he got it.

U.S. Continues War by Proxy

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has pledged to support al-Maliki’s military offensive against al–Qaeda and its offshoot the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

24 Apache helicopter with rockets and other equipment connected to them, 175 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, ScanEagle and Raven reconnaissance drones have either already been delivered or pending delivery, among a $4.7 billion worth of military equipment, including F-16 fighters. James Jeffrey reported in Foreign Policy last Monday that President Barak Obama’s administration is “increasing intelligence and operational cooperation with the Iraqi government.” The French Le Figaro reported early this week that “hundreds” of U.S. security personnel will return to Iraq to train Iraqis on using these weapons to confirm what the Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Steve Warren, did not rule out on last January 17 when he said that “we are in continuing discussions about how we can improve the Iraqi military.”

Kerry ruled out sending “American boots” on the Iraqi ground; obviously he meant “Pentagon boots,” but not the Pentagon–contracted boots.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) online on this February 3 reported that the “U.S. military support there relies increasingly on the presence of contractors.” It described this strategy as “the strategic deployment of defense contractors in Iraq.” Citing State Department and Pentagon figures, the WSJ reported, “As of January 2013, the U.S. had more than 12,500 contractors in Iraq,” including some 5,000 contractors supporting the American diplomatic mission in Iraq, the largest in the world.

It is obvious that the U.S. administration is continuing its war on Iraq by the Iraqi ruling proxies who had been left behind when the American combat mission was ended in December 2011. The administration is highlighting the “al-Qaeda threat” as casus belli as cited Brett McGurk’s testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on this February 8.

The Machiavellian support from Iran, Syria and Russia might for a while misleadingly portray al-Maliky’s government as anti – American, but it could not cover up the fact that it was essentially installed by the U.S. foreign military invasion and is still bound by a “strategic agreement” with the United States.

 

Political System Unfixable

However the new U.S. “surge” in “operational cooperation with the Iraqi government” will most likely not succeed in fixing “Iraq’s shattered political system,” which “our forces were unable to fix … even when they were in Iraq in large numbers,” according to Christopher A. Preble, writing in Cato Institute online on last January 23.

“Sending David Petraeus and Ambassador (Ryan) Crocker back” to Iraq, as suggested by U.S. Sen. John McCain to CNN’s “State of the Union” last January 12 was a disparate wishful thinking.

“Iraq’s shattered political system” is the legitimate product of the U.S.–engineered “political process” based on sectarian and ethnic fragmentation of the geopolitical national unity of the country. Highlighting the “al-Qaeda threat” can no more cover up the fact that the “political process” is a failure that cannot be “fixed” militarily.

Writing in Foreign Policy on this February 10, James Jeffrey said that the “United States tried to transform Iraq into a model Western-style democracy,” but “the U.S. experience in the Middle East came to resemble its long war in Vietnam.”

The sectarian U.S. proxy government in Baghdad, which has developed into an authoritarian regime, remains the bedrock of the U.S. strategic failure. The “al-Qaeda threat” is only the expected sectarian antithesis; it is a byproduct that will disappear with the collapse of the sectarian “political process.”

Iraq is now “on the edge of the abyss,” director of Middle East Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), professor Gareth Stansfield, wrote on this February 3. This situation is “being laid at the door of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,” who “is now portrayed as a divisive figure,” he said.

In their report titled “Iraq in Crisis” and published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on last January 24, Anthony H. Cordesman and Sam Khazai said that the “cause of Iraq’s current violence” is “its failed politics and system of governance,” adding that the Iraqi “election in 2010 divided the nation rather than create any form of stable democracy.” On the background of the current status quo, Iraq’s next round of elections, scheduled for next April 30, is expected to fare worse. Writing in Al-Ahram Weekly last August 14, Salah Nasrawi said that more than 10 years after the U.S. invasion, “the much-trumpeted Iraqi democracy is a mirage.” He was vindicated by none other than the Iraqi Speaker of the parliament Osama Al Nujaifi who was quoted by the Gulf News on last January 25 as saying during his latest visit to U.S.: “What we have now is a facade of a democracy — superficial — but on the inside it’s total chaos.”

Popular Uprising, not al-Qaeda

Al-Maliki’s government on this February 8 issued a one week ultimatum to what the governor of Anbar described as the “criminals” who “have kidnapped Fallujah” for more than a month, but Ross Caputi, a veteran U.S. Marine who participated in the second U.S. siege of Fallujah in 2004, in an open letter to U.S. Secretary Kerry published by the Global Research last Monday, said that “the current violence in Fallujah has been misrepresented in the media.”

“The Iraqi government has not been attacking al Qaeda in Fallujah,” he said, adding that Al-Maliki’s government “is not a regime the U.S. should be sending weapons to.” For this purpose Caputi attached a petition with 11,610 signatures. He described what is happening in the western Iraqi city as a “popular uprising.”

Embracing the same strategy the Americans used in 2007, Iran and U.S. Iraqi proxies have now joined forces against a “popular uprising” that Fallujah has just become only a symbol. Misleadingly pronouncing al-Qaeda as their target, the pro-Iran sectarian and the pro-U.S. so-called “Awakening” tribal militias have revived their 2007 alliance.

The Washington Post on this February 9 reported that the “Shiite militias” have begun “to remobilize,” including The Badr Organization, Kataib Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army; it quoted a commander of one such militia, namely Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as admitting to “targeted” extrajudicial “killings.”

This unholy alliance is the ideal recipe for fueling the sectarian divide and inviting a sectarian retaliation in the name of fighting al-Qaeda; the likely bloody prospects vindicate Cordesman and Khazai’s conclusion that Iraq is now “a nation in crisis bordering on civil war.”

Al – Qaeda is real and a terrorist threat, but like the sectarian U.S.-installed government in Baghdad, it was a new comer brought into Iraq by or because of the invading U.S. troops and most likely it would last as long as its sectarian antithesis lives on in Baghdad’s so–called “Green Zone.”

“Al-Maliki has more than once termed the various fights and stand-offs” in Iraq “as a fight against “al Qaeda”, but it’s not that simple,” Michael Holmes wrote in CNN on last January 15. The “Sunni sense of being under the heel of a sectarian government … has nothing to do with al Qaeda and won’t evaporate once” it is forced out of Iraq, Holmes concluded.

A week earlier, analyst Charles Lister, writing to CNN, concluded that “al Qaeda” was being used as a political tool” by al–Maliki, who “has adopted sharply sectarian rhetoric when referring to Sunni elements … as inherently connected to al Qaeda, with no substantive evidence to back these claims.”

Al–Qaeda not the Only Force

“Al–Qaeda is “not the only force on the ground in Fallujah, where “defected local police personnel and armed tribesmen opposed to the federal government … represent the superior force,” Lister added.

The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) had reported that the “Iraqi insurgency” is composed of at least a dozen major organizations and perhaps as many as 40 distinct groups with an estimated less than 10% non-Iraqi foreign insurgents. It is noteworthy that all those who are playing the “al-Qaeda threat” card are in consensus on blacking out the role of these movements.

Prominent among them is the Jaysh Rijal al-Tariq al-Naqshabandi (JRTN) movement, which announced its establishment after Saddam Hussein’s execution on December 30, 2006. It is the backbone of the Higher Command for Jihad and Liberation (HCJL), which was formed in October the following year as a coalition of more than thirty national “resistance” movements. The National, Pan-Arab and Islamic front (NAIF) is the Higher Command’s political wing. Saddam’s deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, is the leader of JRTN, HCJL and NAIF as well as the banned Baath party.

“Since 2009, the movement has gained significant strength” because of its “commitment to restrict attacks to “the unbeliever-occupier,” according to Michael Knights, writing to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) on July1, 2011. “We absolutely forbid killing or fighting any Iraqi in all the agent state apparatus of the army, the police, the awakening, and the administration, except in self-defense situations, and if some agents and spies in these apparatus tried to confront the resistance,” al-Duri stated in 2009, thus extricating his movement from the terrorist atrocities of al-Qaeda, which has drowned the Iraqi people in a bloodbath of daily suicide bombings.

The majority of these organizations and groups are indigenous national anti-U.S. resistance movements. Even the ISIL, which broke out recently with al-Qaeda, is led and manned mostly by Iraqis. Playing al-Qaeda card is a smokescreen to downplay their role as the backbone of the national opposition to the U.S.-installed sectarian proxy government in Baghdad’s green Zone. Their Islamic rhetoric is their common language with their religious people.

Since the end of the U.S. combat mission in the country in December 2011, they resorted to popular peaceful protests across Iraq. Late last December al-Maliki dismantled by force their major camp of protests near Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar. Protesting armed men immediately took over Fallujah and Ramadi.

Since then, more than 45 tribal “military councils” were announced in all the governorates of Iraq. They held a national conference in January, which elected the “General Political Council of the Guerrillas of Iraq.” Coverage of the news and “guerrilla” activities of these councils by Al-Duri’s media outlets is enough indication of the linkage between them and his organizational structure.

No doubt revolution is brewing and boiling in Iraq against the sectarian government in Baghdad, its U.S. and Iranian supporters as well as against its al-Qaeda sectarian antithesis.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com

 

12 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Ramzy Baroud

“When they first put the electricity on me, I gasped; my body went rigid and the bag came off my head,” Israa Salah, a detained Iraqi woman told Human Rights Watch (HRW) in her heartrending testimony.

Israa (not her real name) was arrested by US and Iraqi forces in 2010. She was tortured to the point of confessing to terrorist charges she didn’t commit. According to HRW’s “No One is Safe” – a 105-page report released on Feb 06 – there are thousands of Iraqi women in jail being subjected to similar practices, held with no charges, beaten and raped.

In Israa’s case, she received most degrading, but typical treatment. She was handcuffed, pushed down on her knees, and kicked in the face until her jaw broke. And when she refused to sign the confession, it was then that electric wires were attached to her handcuffs.

Welcome to the ‘liberated’ Iraq, a budding ‘democracy’ which American officials rarely cease celebrating. There is no denial that the brutal policies of the Iraqi government under Nouri al-Maliki is a continuation of the same policies of the US military administration, which ruled over Iraq from 2003 until the departure of US troops in Dec. 2011.

It is as if the torturers have read from the same handbook. In fact, they did.

The torture and degrading treatment of Iraqi prisoners – men and women – in Abu Ghraib prison was not an isolated incident carried out by a few ‘bad apples.’ Only the naïve would buy into the ‘bad apples’ theory, and not because of the sheer horrendousness and frequency of the abuse. Since the Abu Ghraib revelations early in 2004, many such stories emerged, backed by damning evidence, not only throughout Iraq, but in Afghanistan as well. The crimes were not only committed by the Americans, but the British as well, followed by the Iraqis, who were chosen to continue with the mission of ‘democratization.’

“No One is Safe” presented some of the most harrowing evidence of the abuse of women by Iraq’s criminal ‘justice system’. The phenomenon of kidnapping, torturing, raping and executing women is so widespread that it seems shocking even by the standards of the country’s poor human rights record of the past. If such a reality were to exist in a different political context, the global outrage would have been so profound. Some in the ‘liberal’ western media, supposedly compelled by women’s rights would have called for some measure of humanitarian intervention, war even. But in the case of today’s Iraq, the HRW report is likely to receive bits of coverage where the issue is significantly deluded, and eventually forgotten.

In fact, the discussion of the abuse of thousands of women – let alone tens of thousands of men – has already been discussed in a political vacuum. A buzzword that seems to emerge since the publication of the report is that the abuse confirms the ‘weaknesses’ of the Iraqi judicial system. The challenge then becomes the matter of strengthening a weak system, perhaps through channeling more money, constructing larger facilities, and providing better monitoring and training, likely carried out by US-led training of staff.

Mostly absent are the voices of women’s groups, intellectuals and feminists who seem to be constantly distressed by the traditional marriage practices in Yemen, for example, or the covering up of women’s faces in Afghanistan. There is little, if any, uproar and outrage, when brown women suffer at the hands of western men and women, or their cronies, as is the situation in Iraq.

If the HRW report remerged in complete isolation from an equally harrowing political context created by the US invasion of Iraq, one could grudgingly excuse the relative silence. But it isn’t the case. The Abu Ghraib culture continues to be the very tactic by which Iraqis have been governed since March 2003.

Years after the investigation of the Abu Ghraib abuses had begun, Major General Antonio Taguba, who had conducted the inquiry, revealed that there were more than 2,000 unpublished photos documenting further abuse. “One picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee,” reported the Telegraph newspaper on May 2009.

Maj Gen Taguba had then supported Obama’s decision not to publish the photos, not out of any moralistic reasoning, but simply because “the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.” Of course, the British, the builders of security in Afghanistan, wrote their own history of infamy through an abuse campaign that never ceased since they had set foot in Afghanistan.

Considering the charged political atmosphere in Iraq, the latest reported abuses are of course placed in their own unique context. Most of the abused women are Sunni, and their freedom has been a major rallying cry for rebelling Sunni provinces in central and western Iraq. In Arab culture, dishonoring one through occupation and the robbing of one’s land comes second to dishonoring women. The humiliation that millions of Iraqi Sunni feel cannot be explained by words, and militancy is an unsurprising response to the government’s unrelenting policies of dehumanization, discrimination and violence.

While post-US invasion Iraq was not a heaven for democracy and human rights, the ‘new Iraq’ has solidified a culture of impunity that holds nothing sacred. In fact, dishonoring entire societies has been a tactic in al-Maliki’s dirty war. Many women were “rounded up for alleged terrorist activities by male family members,” reported the Associated Press, citing the HRW report.

“Iraqi security forces and officials act as if brutally abusing women will make the country safer,” said Joe Stork, deputy MENA director at HRW. It was the same logic that determined that through ‘shock and awe’ Iraqis could be forced into submission.

Neither theory proved accurate. The war and rebellion in Iraq will continue as long as those holding the key to that massive Iraqi prison understand that human rights must be respected as a precondition to a lasting peace.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.

12 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org