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CAN YOU describe how the Arab Spring that began with the overthrow of U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt has reshaped the terrain faced by those engaged in the struggle for Palestinian liberation?

I THINK it has become clear that for a long time, the major obstacle between Palestinians and freedom–as well as for other Arab peoples–is the role of U.S. hegemony and empire in the region. That’s not something new or particularly controversial. The only thing is that people call it by different names.

People who support it talk about “U.S. influence” or “the U.S. role” or “U.S. interests,” and people who tend to oppose it call it by the name of “empire.” But we’re really talking about the same thing.

The Arab Spring–or the Arab uprisings, which I think is a more descriptive term–are as much a set of uprisings against local rulers as they are against a regional order which has kept those dictatorships in place, misusing the resources of the countries in the region and generally holding back people from fulfilling their potential.

I think the uprising exists in that context, and Israel fits into it because Israel is highly dependent on U.S. support. I don’t particularly buy the argument that Israel is an enormous asset to the United States. I think Israel is, in many respects, a burden and an obstacle to smooth U.S. control of the region.

But in any case, the U.S. and Israel are intertwined, and the challenge to U.S. power is also a challenge to Israeli power. So the struggle in the long term or medium term is whether Arab countries, especially Egypt, can really gain independence and sovereignty. If so, that is a real threat to Israeli and American hegemony in the region.

I think that would generally favor the prospects for Palestinians getting their own freedom. But there is obviously a very strong U.S.-led counterrevolution, in which it has local and regional allies–Israel and Saudi Arabia, in particular). The jury is out on whether these uprisings are going to be able to really push back the frontiers of empire and create a space for people in the region to determine their own futures.

THERE SEEM to be many different ideas about how the struggle should proceed strategically and tactically–from the mass marches on the borders of Israel on the Nakba and Naksa day protests to the push for Palestinian statehood at the UN in September. What is driving these debates?

WE’RE IN the midst of an enormous paradigm shift that has been ongoing for a few years, and which I’ve spoken and written about in the past–the slow death of the paradigm of a so-called “two-state solution” and of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

What gave the Oslo Accords their legitimacy was the notion that at the end of the road, there was going to be a free and independent Palestinian state that was going to fulfill the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people. That was the carrot that was always held out–if you keep plodding along this road, eventually you’ll get there.

So the Oslo Accords heralded the creation of a Palestinian Authority (PA), but the PA was thoroughly under Israeli control. I think what people see now is that you’ll never get there, and this whole charade of the peace process has been a cover for deepening Israeli colonization and ethnic cleansing.

The PA has really become–as it was meant to be from the very beginning–an enforcement arm for Israeli occupation, suppressing any form of Palestinian resistance, whether it’s popular resistance or armed resistance, in order to permit Israel a headache-free occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.

Meanwhile, within the pre-1967 boundaries of Israel, we see increasing repression of the 1.4 million Palestinians living there. And there’s a growing resort to outright fascist and repressive measures by Israel’s ultra-national government to enforce its ideological outlook on both Arabs and Jews.

For example, there’s making kindergarten children sing the Israeli national anthem–which should really be called a Jewish nationalist anthem instead of a national anthem, because it’s a specifically sectarian anthem that is designed to instill a chauvinist ideology in children.

There’s the banning of discussion of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. There’s the recently passed law criminalizing any individual or group calling for a boycott of Israel. There’s a series of laws stripping parliamentary immunity and privileges from Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Knesset, like Haneen Zoaby.

There’s also a growing slew of laws and practices that are about residential segregation and enforcement of apartheid in order to preserve particular areas for Jews only. There are “morality patrols” that are designed to deter Jewish women from dating or marrying or seeing Arab men, which are so reminiscent of Jim Crow-era racism and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.

So we see Israeli society retreating into this increasingly racist and chauvinistic register, both at the level of official laws and policies and at a social level.

In this context, the notion of negotiations–the constant refrain that “if the Israelis and Palestinian Authority just sat down at the negotiating table”–isn’t convincing anymore. Nobody believes that the PA, which is totally under the thumb of Israel and the U.S., sitting down with an extremist government like Israel’s can come up with a reasonable and just peace.

It defies logic. It requires you to believe in all kinds of fairy tales and magic to think that those ingredients can produce any kind of a just or viable or legitimate peace settlement. So I think the struggle is shifting back toward the people from whom it was wrested by the so-called “peace process.” That’s why we see an increase in popular resistance on the ground in Palestine–for example, the mass marches to the boundaries of Palestine on Nakba day and Naksa day.

And of course, we see the growth of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which Israel perceives as an enormous threat, because it is independent of governments and independent of institutions. It’s being taken to heart by people around the world, based on their support for the principles contained in the Palestinian civil society call for BDS.

So that’s where I see the struggle shifting–and why I see the debate shifting away from partition, segregation and the creation of ethno-national states to keep people apart, and toward universal rights, justice and equality. I think historically, those ideas are impossible to resist and that’s the direction we’re heading.

WHAT ABOUT the push for Palestinian statehood, for which the PA is hoping to gain enough support to get a vote at the UN in September. I’ve talked to some activists who have expressed enthusiasm for this, saying that even if it’s only a small step forward, it should be celebrated. And I’ve talked to others who oppose it. What do you think?

I DON’T think it’s something to be celebrated, and I think we need to be very clear about that.

First of all, Palestinian civil society has not asked activists and international solidarity movements to support the UN statehood bid. On the other hand, Palestinian civil society has expressed, on many occasions, a consensus in support of BDS.

There was a statement issued a few weeks ago by the BDS National Committee about the question of statehood. It was carefully worded–it didn’t say, “We’re against this.” But it did say that regardless of the specifics of what happens, a declaration at the UN is going to make no difference at all. The struggle has to be a struggle for the rights of Palestinians everywhere, and that’s not going to change at all.

Even PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who’s supposedly behind this, said on July 21 that this won’t affect the peace process, and we’ll still have to go back to the same old negotiations–which, of course, have gone nowhere for decades–regardless of whether the UN votes to admit the state of Palestine.

So what’s really going on here? At the most, what would happen in September, if it happens at all, is that the UN would vote to admit Palestine as a state. The UN will not vote to create a state of Palestine. It will not recognize Palestine, and it will not take any enforcement action against Israel to make Palestine happen.

This will amount–at most–to symbolically changing the nameplate of the existing Palestinian Authority delegation at the UN from “Observer Mission of Palestine” to “State of Palestine.” That’s it. As I said before, you’d have to believe in magic to think that this would miraculously translate into some kind of concrete action.

The argument I’ve heard time and again is, “Well look, if Palestine is recognized as a state, this will encourage all sorts of international action and sanctions. Israel will be in violation of the rights of a sovereign state, and this will somehow increase pressure on Israel.”

But all you have to do is look at the precedents of what has happened up to this point. Israel has occupied the territory of many sovereign states–whether it’s Lebanon or Syria or Egypt–for decades, and the UN never took action to enforce international law and force Israel to withdraw.

Secondly, none of the violations on the ground–whether we’re speaking of settlements, colonization, wall construction, mass incarceration, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land in the West Bank or the siege of Gaza–will change with a UN declaration. Unless of course there were to be some concrete action taken to force Israel to comply. But we’ve seen dozens of resolutions over decades saying all of these activities by Israel are illegal and must stop, and no action has ever been taken.

So why would that change all of a sudden in September? How would the PA, which can’t even pay the salaries of its armies of civil servants and patronage payroll workers, suddenly be able to take on Israel just because it has another piece of paper from the UN?

People need to focus not on the fetish of statehood, but on actual Palestinian rights, which are expressed in the BDS call. We need to focus on a real end to the occupation of all Arab lands occupied in 1967; an end to all forms of discrimination, inequality and apartheid for Palestinians within Israel; and full respect for the rights of refugees, including the right of return.

That is the essence of equality, the essence of universal rights, and that’s actually what the Palestinian cause has been about since the beginning.

ARE THERE ways in which statehood is not only not a step forward but actually a step backward? For example, if “statehood” is achieved, could it freeze in place existing arrangements that are, as you pointed out, inherently unequal and don’t fulfill the basic rights of Palestinians?

I THINK there are dangers of that, to be honest. Part of the problem is that this is completely uncharted territory. But the danger, I think, is that by recognizing a state within boundaries that Israel doesn’t even recognize, Israel’s acquisition of land by force up to this point will be given UN recognition.

And why should Palestinians recognize Israel’s conquest of 78 percent of Palestine in 1948 when Israel doesn’t recognize any Palestinian right to any part of the land? The danger is that some governments will say, “Look, we voted for statehood, what more do you want from us? It’s time for you to give up on the laundry list of other demands”–which, of course, are basic Palestinian rights.

So there is a danger that this would legitimize the status quo–that countries would say, “We’ve fulfilled our obligation toward you, and this is now just a border dispute between two states of the kind that exists in the dozens around the world.”

The PA has a history of relying on the good will of the so-called “international community”–but the international community doesn’t have good will when it comes to enforcing Palestinian rights. So PA officials have essentially disempowered themselves as well as the popular movements, and now they again want to throw themselves on the mercy of a UN that has never acted to enforce its decisions when it comes to Palestine.

So yes–there are risks, and we don’t even know the full extent of them. This could be a very dangerous step.

COULD YOU describe what the U.S.–as a leading part of the “international community”–is doing to stand in the way of these legitimate Palestinian demands?

WHAT ISN’T the U.S. doing to frustrate Palestinian rights and crush any movement toward Palestinian liberation? That would be a shorter list than what it is doing.

Of course, Israel is dependent on the U.S.–militarily, politically and diplomatically. And as I mentioned, the U.S. is a declining power, particularly in the Arab world and in southwest Asia in general. That doesn’t mean the U.S. isn’t still very powerful. But it is also under challenge. And it certainly cannot guarantee its hegemony the way it did for many years.

So that’s on one side. Then on the other side, there is the voice of people–the kind of mass movements that we’re seeing now, which present a real challenge to the existing order.

But of course, the U.S. is helping Israel in every possible way, including using its veto at the UN to prevent even symbolic action toward accountability for Israel’s war crimes–toward actually making Israel comply with international law in any way.

Another element of this is bringing Israel’s war to the United States through the increasing criminalization of Palestine solidarity work in the U.S.–through the harassment, the subpoenas and the raids we’ve seen against Palestine solidarity activists and antiwar and labor activists under the Obama administration. This is a really ominous sign of the ongoing attempt to criminalize solidarity with Palestine.

WHY DO you think the U.S. is taking these steps?

THAT’S OF course a question that people debate. I think that the United States supports Israel, and Israel supports U.S. hegemony in the region. They’re kind of symbiotic in that sense.

I think there has been some sense among U.S. elites in the past couple years that Israel is actually starting to become a burden–a strategic burden which stands in the way of smooth American hegemony in the region. This has created a fear among some of the most pro-Israel elements in the U.S. that the U.S. may be getting ready to abandon Israel in some way.

I certainly think that the notion, agreed upon by the Israeli lobby and by some on the left, that Israel is the cat’s paw of U.S. imperialism in the region–or to put it the way the Israel lobby does that Israel is America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier–is not an obvious narrative to me. Because I think Israel makes life quite difficult for the U.S.

But as we can see, within domestic politics in the U.S., pro-Israel constituencies still have great influence, and those pro-Israel constituencies include not just the ones that are easily identified, such as American Jewish groups that support Israel, but also the large radical Christian movement that supports Zionism. Then there’s the defense, military and intelligence communities–they all have strong relationships with Israel that favor the status quo.

WHAT ARE some of the next steps for who are part of the effort to address the long-standing injustices suffered by the Palestinians?

I THINK we have to keep on with what we’re doing. We’re facing increasing resistance from pro-Israel elements in the U.S., and I think that’s because our work is effective, and it’s reaching people. It’s particularly reaching young people on university campuses.

It’s also starting to reach people in labor unions and churches and just about everywhere. The debate at the ground level is really starting to shift. At the elite level, it’s still very much a pro-Israel discussion, with an exclusion and marginalization of any other voices. But I think that the Internet and our access to creating our own media means that we’ve been able to bypass the gatekeepers of public discourse in this country and really start to reach far and wide.

We have to keep doing that–keep educating people about the BDS movement, why it’s moral, why it’s just, pro-peace and pro-human rights. We have to step up the effort, and I believe strongly that things are moving in the right direction.

Interview by Ali Abunimah 

July 26, 2011

Envoys agree on statement criticising human rights violations, as tanks continue to shell besieged city of Hama.

UN Security Council envoys have issued a statement condemning human rights violations and use of force against civilians by the Syrian government, amid a tank attack on Hama, a city of 800,000 residents.

The text was adopted on Wednesday after three days of heated discussions by the 15-member body, as a council statement rather than as a resolution.

The statement “condemn[s] widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities”.

The diplomatic developments came as fresh explosions erupted in Hama, the venue of some of the largest demonstrations against Bashar al-Assad’s rule during the unrest.

Activists say the president has shown no signs of halting the intense military assault against the uprising, now in its fifth month.

Residents said Syrian military vehicles had occupied the main Orontes Square in Hama’s centre.

The Security Council had been struggling since Monday over how to respond to the crisis, with European powers and the US seeking a tough condemnation.

But Russia, China and some other nations so far were blocking action, saying it could lead to a Libya-style military intervention by the West.

Divisions centred on the wording of any condemnation of Assad’s crackdown on protests and whether it should be a formal resolution or a less weighty statement.

‘Does not help’

Syria’s neighbour, Lebanon, where Syrian influence is strong, disassociated itself from the statement, a rare but not unprecedented move that still allowed the statement to pass.

Lebanese envoy Caroline Ziade told the council the statement “does not help in addressing the current situation in Syria.”

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), 1,629 civilians and 374 members of the security forces have been killed since pro-democracy protests erupted on March 15.

“Something that’s missing is a call for an investigation that was in the original resolution put forth by Europeans,” Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the UN, said. “

“But there is a phrase in the text that calls fon all sides to refrain from violence, including violence against the state,” our correspondent said, referring to modifications that were strongly emphasised by Russia.

Following the latest changes, Russia lifted its objections and its UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, called the new version “balanced”.

Meanwhile, the White House hardened its stance against Assad on Wednesday.

“We do not want to see him remain in Syria for stability’s sake and, rather, we view him as the cause of instability in Syria,” Jay Carney, a spokesman, said.

More deaths reported

Syrian security forces shot and killed four civilians after evening prayers on Wednesday, Rami Abdel Rahman, the SOHR head, said.

He said one death occurred in the southwestern town of Nawa, in Deraa province, one in the central city of Palmyra, and two in Damascus, Syrian troops have tightened their siege on Hama since Sunday, sending residents fleeing for their lives.

Activists say more than 1,600 civilians have been killed in the unrest [Reuters]

“There are some 100 tanks and troop carriers on the highway leading to the central city of Hama and about 200 tanks around the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor,” Abdel Rahman said.

Telephone and internet communication were cut in Hama and nearby areas, he said.

Abdel Raman also reported that a local official in Deir ez-Zor “received advise from well-informed sources that residents should flee while they still had time before the army storms the town by Friday”.

In Hama, tanks were deployed in several districts and shelling could be heard across many neighbourhoods, other activists said.

“From the sound of the shelling, it sounds like it’s open warfare,” the Local Co-ordination Committees, which represents the protesters, said, describing plumes of smoke over the city.

“People are deserting the city and are faced by live gunfire from security forces and army troops if they don’t respond to orders to go back inside,” the committees said.

Security forces set up checkpoints in and around Hama, where a building and several homes reportedly collapsed due to the shelling.

The accounts could not be independently verified as foreign reporters are not allowed to travel in Syria to report on the unrest.

The fierce crackdown on Hama – where an estimated 20,000 people were killed in 1982 when Assad’s father Hafez crushed a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood  – has prompted solidarity protests across Syria and international condemnation.

Security Council statement

The statement adopted on Wednesday was the Security Council’s first pronouncement on Syria since the protests started.

The statement called “on the Syrian authorities to fully respect human rights and to comply with their obligations under applicable international law”.

It said that “those responsible for the violence should be held accountable”.

International pressure on the Security Council to agree on a stand had mounted since weekend violence in which an estimated 140 people were killed in a military assault on Hama and other protest towns.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, vented his anger after the killings, saying al-Assad had “lost all sense of humanity”.

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said Syrians welcomed Wednesday’s statement.

“So for the people of Syria, it’s one step forward,” she said. “They don’t want military intervention. They want more support – not just from European countries – but from neighbouring Arab countries and Turkey.”

For its part, the Syrian state news agency SANA has said the parliament will meet in an extraordinary session on Sunday to discuss “issues concerning the nation and its citizens”.

It also said funerals were held on Wednesday for seven members of the security services and army who were killed by “armed terrorist gangs” in a suburb of Damascus as well as in Homs, Hama and Deraa.

State television on Monday aired an amateur video showing corpses being thrown from a bridge into a river, and said the bodies were of security forces killed by anti-government protesters.

Rights activists, however, have challenged that account, saying the victims were pro-democracy protesters killed by the army.

4 August 2011

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate. Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.”

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth Industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM’s baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command — the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 — indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. “I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000,” he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.”

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet — mostly the industrialized nations of the global north — were considered the key areas. “But the world changed over the last decade,” he said. “Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south… certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren’t.”

To that end, Olson launched “Project Lawrence,” an effort to increase cultural proficiencies — like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs — for overseas operations. The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed “Lawrences of Wherever.”

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government. According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.

Special Operations Command won’t disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. “We’re obviously going to have some places where it’s not advantageous for us to list where we’re at,” says Nye. “Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have — it may be internal, it may be regional.”

But it’s no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while “white” forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the U.S. spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism’s National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America’s most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland. So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. “Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises.”

The Pentagon’s Power Elite

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces — like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines — a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people’s heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM’s prime contracts awarded to small businesses — those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons — have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself. As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM “is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies.”

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military. Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as “the president’s private army,” today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive’s private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once “special” for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: “I am convinced that the forces… are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer.”

Recently at the Aspen Institute’s Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that U.S. Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, “Are you talking about unattributed explosions?”

What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasized, U.S. Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada’s entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America’s elite troops now operate each year, and it’s only set to grow larger.

Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a “special” force this large, this active, and this secret — and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won’t be coming from Olson or his troops. “Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it,” he said in response to questions about SOCOM’s secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military’s secret military, said Olson, wants “to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do.”

5 August 2011

TomDispatch.com

Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist.

Chinese officials are understandably angry about the irresponsible brinkmanship demonstrated by their American counterparts in recent weeks. Unfortunately, anger counts for little in international finance. The danger facing the US is that after Tuesday’s debt deal any sense of urgency over a dire fiscal situation will dissipate. The danger for China is that it does not learn the right lesson – namely, that now is the time to end its dependency on the US dollar.

China is worried about the possibility of a US default for obvious reasons. As the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries, either a default or a downgrade would bring huge losses. Even after this week’s debt deal, however, the risk remains that US debt will continue to grow to the point where its government is left with no option but to inflate the burden away. While there is little China can do about its existing Treasury holdings, it can rethink past policies – and ask both how it fell into this trap, and how it might free itself.

China has run a current account surplus and a capital account surplus almost uninterruptedly for more than two decades. Inevitably this has led to an accumulation of foreign reserves. It is clear, however, that running these surpluses persistently is not in China’s best interests. A developing country, with per capita income ranking below the 100th in the world, lending to the world’s richest country for decades is not reasonable. Even worse is the fact that, as one of the largest foreign direct investment-absorbing countries in the world, China essentially lends money it borrowed at a high cost back to its creditors, by buying US Treasuries, rather than importing goods and services.

China holds a large stash of dollar-denominated foreign assets, as well as significant amounts of renminbi-denominated liabilities. Clearly this currency structure of assets and liabilities makes its net international investment position very vulnerable to any devaluation of the dollar against the renminbi.

The Chinese government has admitted that its foreign-exchange reserves have already exceeded its needs. It has tried various measures to slow down the growth of these reserves and protect the value of its existing stock. This has included demand stimulation, allowing the renminbi to appreciate gradually and creating sovereign wealth funds. It has also promoted reform of international monetary systems and the internationalisation of the renminbi. Sadly, none of these has worked. With large capital inflows and a current account surplus, China’s foreign exchange reserves have continued to rise rapidly.

These policies failed because they did not address the real cause of the rapid increase in foreign exchange stocks, namely state intervention aimed at controlling the pace of renminbi appreciation. The question is: what losses is China willing to bear in its foreign exchange reserves in order to slow the pace of the renminbi appreciation?

One further factor is that any losses in the financial assets held by China will not be realised until their holders decide to cash out. If the US government continues to pay back its public debt, and China continues to pack its savings into US securities, this game may continue for a very long time. However, the situation is ultimately unsustainable. The longer it continues, the more violent and destructive the final adjustment will be.

If there is any lesson China can draw from the US debt ceiling crisis, it is that it must stop policies that result in further accumulation of foreign exchange reserves. Given that many large developed countries are simply printing money (and the recent rumours are that the US might return to quantitative easing) China must realise that it can no longer invest in the paper assets of the developed world. The People’s Bank of China must stop buying US dollars and allow the renminbi exchange rate to be decided by market forces as soon as possible. China should have done so a long time ago. There should be no more hesitating and dithering. To float the renminbi is not costless. However, its benefits for the Chinese economy will vastly offset those costs, while being favourable to the global economy as well.

4 August 2011

Source: The Financial Times

The writer is a former member of the monetary policy committee of the Chinese central bank

David KriegerWe remember the horrors of the past so that we may learn from them and they will not be repeated in the future.  If we ignore or distort the past and fail to learn from it, we are opening the door to repetition of history’s horrors.

In August, we remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took place on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. Both were illegal attacks on civilian populations, violating long-standing rules of customary international humanitarian law prohibiting the use of indiscriminate weapons (as between combatants and non-combatants) and weapons that cause unnecessary suffering.

In a just world, those who were responsible for these attacks, in violation of the laws of war, would have been held to account and punished accordingly.  They were not.  Rather, they were celebrated, as the atomic bombs themselves were celebrated, in the false belief that they brought World War II to an end.

The historical record is clear about these facts: First, at the time Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leveled, each with a single atomic bomb, Japan had been trying to surrender. Second, the US had broken the Japanese codes and knew that Japan had been trying to surrender. Third, prior to the use of the atomic bombs, the only term of surrender offered to Japan by the US was “unconditional surrender,” a term that left the Emperor’s fate in US hands.  Fourth, the precipitating factor to Japan’s actual surrender, as indicated by Japanese wartime cabinet records, was not the US atomic bombs, but the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against them.  Fifth, when Japan did surrender, after the atomic bombings, it did so contingent upon retaining the Emperor, and the US accepted this condition.

The US drew a self-serving causal link from the bombings, which was: we dropped the bombs and won the war.  In doing so, we reinforced the US belief that it can violate international law at times and places of its choosing and that US leaders can attack civilians with impunity.

Following the victory in Europe, the Allied powers held the Nazi leaders to account at the Nuremberg Tribunals for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.  The Charter creating the Nuremberg Tribunals was signed by the US on August 8, 1945, two days after it had dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.  One day after signing the Charter, the US would drop a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.  Both atomic bombings were war crimes that, if they had been committed by Nazi leaders, most certainly would have been universally denounced and punished at Nuremberg.

Upon reflection, we must come to understand Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes, if such crimes are not to be repeated.  We must resist the double standard that makes crimes committed by our enemies punishable under international law, while the same crimes committed by our leaders are deemed to be acceptable.  We must resist nuclear weapons themselves. They are city-destroying weapons whose possession should be considered prima facie evidence of criminal intent.

It has been two-thirds of a century since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs.  There remain over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  We must resist the tendency to normalize these weapons and consign them to the background of our lives. They reflect our technological skills turned to massively destructive ends and our failed responsibility to ourselves and to future generations.

Looking back at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Eisenhower said that the bombings were not necessary because Japan was already defeated; and Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, compared us to barbarians of the Dark Ages and said that he was not taught to make war by destroying women and children.  Einstein said that, looking forward, we must change our modes of thinking or face unparalleled catastrophe.  Changing our modes of thinking begins with remembrance, reflection and resistance.

5 August 2011

© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 2011

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

David KriegerWe remember the horrors of the past so that we may learn from them and they will not be repeated in the future.  If we ignore or distort the past and fail to learn from it, we are opening the door to repetition of history’s horrors.

In August, we remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took place on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. Both were illegal attacks on civilian populations, violating long-standing rules of customary international humanitarian law prohibiting the use of indiscriminate weapons (as between combatants and non-combatants) and weapons that cause unnecessary suffering.

In a just world, those who were responsible for these attacks, in violation of the laws of war, would have been held to account and punished accordingly.  They were not.  Rather, they were celebrated, as the atomic bombs themselves were celebrated, in the false belief that they brought World War II to an end.

The historical record is clear about these facts: First, at the time Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leveled, each with a single atomic bomb, Japan had been trying to surrender. Second, the US had broken the Japanese codes and knew that Japan had been trying to surrender. Third, prior to the use of the atomic bombs, the only term of surrender offered to Japan by the US was “unconditional surrender,” a term that left the Emperor’s fate in US hands.  Fourth, the precipitating factor to Japan’s actual surrender, as indicated by Japanese wartime cabinet records, was not the US atomic bombs, but the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against them.  Fifth, when Japan did surrender, after the atomic bombings, it did so contingent upon retaining the Emperor, and the US accepted this condition.

The US drew a self-serving causal link from the bombings, which was: we dropped the bombs and won the war.  In doing so, we reinforced the US belief that it can violate international law at times and places of its choosing and that US leaders can attack civilians with impunity.

Following the victory in Europe, the Allied powers held the Nazi leaders to account at the Nuremberg Tribunals for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.  The Charter creating the Nuremberg Tribunals was signed by the US on August 8, 1945, two days after it had dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.  One day after signing the Charter, the US would drop a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.  Both atomic bombings were war crimes that, if they had been committed by Nazi leaders, most certainly would have been universally denounced and punished at Nuremberg.

Upon reflection, we must come to understand Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes, if such crimes are not to be repeated.  We must resist the double standard that makes crimes committed by our enemies punishable under international law, while the same crimes committed by our leaders are deemed to be acceptable.  We must resist nuclear weapons themselves. They are city-destroying weapons whose possession should be considered prima facie evidence of criminal intent.

It has been two-thirds of a century since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs.  There remain over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  We must resist the tendency to normalize these weapons and consign them to the background of our lives. They reflect our technological skills turned to massively destructive ends and our failed responsibility to ourselves and to future generations.

Looking back at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Eisenhower said that the bombings were not necessary because Japan was already defeated; and Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, compared us to barbarians of the Dark Ages and said that he was not taught to make war by destroying women and children.  Einstein said that, looking forward, we must change our modes of thinking or face unparalleled catastrophe.  Changing our modes of thinking begins with remembrance, reflection and resistance.

5 August 2011

© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 2011

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

My Commentary on New York Times article “The Rise of the Macro-Nationalists” By Thomas Hegghammer:

The problem we often face with writers like Thomas Hegghammer is that while for the most part they are rational and factual, they also inject myths and hoaxes (intentionally, unintentionally, unwittingly or without proper scholarship), so the ordinary reader is lead to believe the latter as facts.

Mr.Hegghammer makes us believe that Alqaeda is an organization “engaged in a civilizational war between Islam and the West”, but the fact remains that it is a non-existent bogus entity, an imaginary enemy, emblazoned with make-believe myths, such as, “… it is a tentacular organization with sleeper cells across the world waiting for the moment to strike with weapons of mass destruction…”. This myth is  created by the  the Neocons (‘neocons’ generally mean: ‘pro-Israeli American Jews in the US Administration’). You don’t have to take my words -please see below the BBC documentary.  (There are numerous other well researched article, but I am only mentioning here the BBC Documentary.)

As for ‘civilizational wars’, I, as a Muslim, know of no ‘civilizational war’ against the west by Muslims.

Western historians admit that it is Islamic Civilization which was the catalyst to Western Renaissance which turned Europe from the Dark Ages to modern civilization. (Wikipedia: Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe were numerous, affecting such varied areas as art, architecture, medicine, agriculture, music, language, education, law, and technology. From the 11th to 13th centuries, Europe absorbed knowledge from the Islamic civilization…..) So, there is a very close relationship between Islamic and Western civilations – but no ‘clashes’.

From theological point too, Islam is the closest faith to Christianity. The Qur’an says:  “…and nearest among them in love to the believers, will you find those who say, ‘We are Christians,’…..” (5:82).

So, where does this ‘civilizational wars’ come from?

The “Clash of Civilizations” is the concoction of neo-con pseudo scholars Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes and numerous other neo-con ideologues. This was used by American and Zionist interests to philosophically justify the so-called “war on terror”  and invasion of Arab and Muslim countries.

If you wish to have a deeper understanding of the actions of this ‘new Charles Manson of Norway’, Anders Breivik, and to know WHY HE KILLED THE YOUTH  at the Camp, and other facts which you will not find in the ‘controlled’ media, please read  Dr. K R Bolton’s article in “Foreign Policy Journal” at:

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/07/29/anders-breivik-neo-conned/

(It is an illuminating article – a must read).

As for the Alqaeda hoax:

“ Top Ranking CIA Operatives Admit Al-qaeda Is a Complete Fabrication”

-BBC’s documentary: “The Power of Nightmares“.

Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time. The Bush administration needed a reason that complied with the Laws so they could go after “the bad guy of their choice” namely laws that had been set in place to protect us from mobs and “criminal organizations” such as the Mafia.

Watch the BBC video:

BBC: The Myth ” Al-Qaida “

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FfXubhxVV8

P.S. For the benefit of readers who watched the so called “Confession Video” of Bin Laden ‘admitting’ that the 911 Attack was by AlQaeda, the CIA has admitted that it is a forgery.

8 August 2011

Tripoli, Libya.: The quality of life continues to degrade in certain areas of western Libya while public anxiety noticeably rises over missing Libyan children as the first week of an unusually stressful Ramadan passes.

The shortage of gasoline has become acute and despite government efforts to curtail price gouging, one taxi driver told this observer yesterday that while the usual price of ‘benzene’ was 3.75 liters (one gallon) for $.40 (forty US cents) he is now having to pay as much as ” 4 dinars for one liter of petrol!” That is roughly the equivalent of 13 US dollars for a gallon of gasoline, a huge price surge in a country long accustomed to cheap, heavily subsidized fuel. “Informal economy” (black market) fuel arrives in car trunks from the Tunisian border and its increasingly common to see fellows with a make shift funnel trying to get more benzene into their vehicle tanks than they splash and spill on neighborhood streets.

NATO’s war on Libya’s civilian population includes its targeting of electric power producing turbines, preventing the international banking system from accepting Libyan letters of credit for payment of petroleum products, and interdicting ships destined for Western Libyan ports. As if in coordination with NATO, Eastern Libyan rebel militias regularly sabotage fuel lines and depots.

Walking around the “medina” off Omar Muktar Street near my hotel yesterday afternoon, the angst over deteriorating conditions is apparent. Shops, like homes, are now subject to rolling blackouts and quickly become hot and stuffy, discouraging would be customers from entering. Some food stores have to discard milk and other perishable items given the up to 11 hour power cuts that send temperatures above 100F. One gentleman on Rashid Street in downtown Tripoli said his family had not had power for five days and the pump that supplies water to his apartment building stopped working so they lack two essential utilities.

NATO’s arguable act of piracy earlier this week in commandeering the fuel tanker ship Cartagena off the coast of Malta that was bringing gasoline to Tripoli and sending it instead to rebel militia based close to Benghazi is yet again explained from NATO HQ as necessary for “protecting the civilian population of Libya.”

According to Libya’s Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim, “The age of piracy is coming back to the Mediterranean because of NATO.”

Some frustrated shop keepers just shutter their shops and seek relief at the beach or take a nap waiting for sundown and their Ramadan Iftar (feast) to begin. But lack of electricity even affects its preparation. (note: 15 minutes ago NATO bombed the public beach near my hotel as three other bombs landed nearby—targets unknown)

Every time a bomb blast is heard, a chorus of passersby and kids invariably point toward the bomb site and watch the rising white or black smoke (the color depending on the type of bomb or missile) and some shout, “F— NATO! F—Obama!” Etc.

If a foreigner is confronted by angry citizens who may blame Americans for NATO’s bombing, a sure fire way to quickly reduce crowd tension is for the foreigner to make the peace sign and make a fist with his other hand and chant a few times: “Allah! Mohammad! Muammar! Libye! Abass!” (God!, Mohammad!, Qadaffi!, Libya!, that’s all we need!”) The locals appreciate the sentiment and pre-teens often join the popular chant and dance.

As of the morning of 8/7/11 NATO statistics show that since 3/31/11, NATO forces have launched 18,270 sorties, mainly against Western Libya, including 6,932 bomb/missile strike sorties. Last night (8/6/11) there were 115 sorties including 45 bombings of which 12 were in central Tripoli starting a 10 p.m.

To their great credit, some Congressional staffers on the US Senate Armed Services Committee who liaise with the Pentagon, have acted on constituent complaints and have criticized NATO’s incomplete description of its bombing of Libyan civilians.

For example earlier this week NATO reported its bombing of the village on Zlitan, about 160 miles east of Tripoli in the Western Mountains as follows: “In the vicinity of Zlitan:1 Ammunition Storage Facility, 1 Military Facility, 2 Multiple Rocket Launchers.”

However, still absent from this particular NATO report on its website is the fact that its bombing attack killed the wife and two children of Mustafa Naji, a local Zlitan physics teacher. Mustafa’s wife Ibtisam, and their two children, Mohammad 5 and Muttasim, were pulverized. Once again, NATO said it could not confirm the “accidental killings” but would investigate.

Where are the children?

Also of growing public and government concern in Western Libya is the whereabouts of 53 female and 52 male children aged one to 12 years and another group ranging from 12 to 18 years, both part of a government-run home for orphans and abused children that until February was operating in Misrata, now under rebel control. According to several reports over the past three months and testimony presented last Thursday evening to the international media gathered at the Tripoli Rexis Hotel, by the General Union for Civil Society Organizations:

The 105 children, part of more than 1000 missing, were “kidnapped” by rebel forces as they entered Misrata and went on a killing spree, some of which has been documented by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International among other groups. There is no question that the children are no longer in their sheltered facility. But from there what became of them remains a mystery.

The Libyan government claims the youngsters were kidnapped by rebels who went on a rampage in late February. Several reports from eyewitnesses claim that the children were last seen being put onto either a Turkish, Italian, or French boat. More than one witness claimed to have witnessed some of the children being sold in Tunisia. On his tweeter page, the local Russian Telesur reporter said that “several sources have affirmed that the 105 children were taken out of the country in a ship that could be Turkish, French or Italian.”

Libyan Social Affairs Minister Ibrahim Sharif told reporters in Tripoli this week that, “We want the truth and we hold those countries responsible for the well-being of these children who are neither soldiers nor combatants.” Sharif added that a rebel doctor captured by government troops testified that some of the orphans had been taken to France and Italy.
Given Misrata’s history as a main North African slave trading port, a fact that today partially explains tensions among the one third of Libya’s population that is black and who are descendants of slaves and many of whom live in western Libya in villages now fighting the Misrata and Benghazi based rebels, concern is acute.

While Libya has had perhaps the most strictly enforced child protection laws in the Middle East and Africa, people here remember clearly that France was at the center of a scandal in 2007 when aid workers from the Zoe’s Ark charity attempted to fly 103 children out of Chad, to the south of Libya, who they said were orphans from neighboring Sudan. International aid staff later found that the children were in fact Chadian and had at least one living parent. People here fear a similar fate for the Libyan youngsters.

Also on people’s minds in Libya is what happened two years ago in Haiti when “orphans,” according to local authorities, were kidnapped. Given the epidemic of human trafficking in this region, especially of children, fears are well founded.

NATO has not replied to inquiries demanding information about the disappeared children nor has UNICEF, Save the Children or Secretary of State Clinton’s office. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has agreed to demand that the White House order an immediate investigation and of course any human rights advocate could raise this issue in the West and demand an urgent inquiry from her/his government.

The Libyan government as well as both the Roman Catholic Papal representative Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, and Father Daoud of the Anglican Church of Christ the King, in Tripoli have demanded that the UN investigate and find the children.

As for the National Transition Council, its spokesman denied charges that they have sold the children and claim that the Libyan government in Tripoli have all the children and that they are using them as human shields at the now five times bombed Bab al Azizya complex in central Tripoli. No known human rights organization or journalist who has investigated this claim has reported seeing any sign of the children at Bab al Azizya. The General Union, noted above, has photos and names and ages of all the missing children and have widely publicized them.

More than a dozen social welfare organizations, women’s groups and Libya’s Lawyer syndicates have launched an intensive media and public involvement campaign to find the children who have now been missing for nearly six months.

8 August 2011

Countercurrents.org

Speaking to CNN en Espanol on July 27, Bolivian President Evo Morales said “When presidents do not submit to the United States government, to its policies, there are coups.”

His comments are backed by attempts by the US and Bolivia’s right wing to bring down his government.

Recently released WikiLeaks cables prove the US embassy was in close contact with dissident military officers only months before a coup attempt was carried out in September 2008.

But the close relationship between the US and Bolivia’s military has a long history.

War on drugs

In recent years, the “war on drugs” provided the US with cover to extend its control over Bolivia’s armed forces.

As a coca grower union leader from the Chapare region, Morales faced the direct and brutal consequences of the US “war on drugs”.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Chapare region, nestled in the heart of Bolivia, became the site of bloody massacres carried out by US and Bolivian anti-narcotic forces.

As part of its attempts to destroy coca, seen by indigenous Bolivians as a “sacred leaf” and part of their traditional way of life, the US established and funded the Mobile Units for Rural Patrolling (UMOPAR) in the Chapare.

Under the command of US soldiers and working closely with US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents, UMOPAR was responsible for massacres of local peasants.

This included the gunning down of 12 cocaleros (coca farmers) during a peaceful protest in June 1988.

One year later, Morales was brutally beaten by UMOPAR troops, who tried to drag his body into the mountains, believing he was dead.

Protests by fellow cocaleros ensured soldiers left his unconscious body behind.

Morales told Telesur on July 27 that the DEA never operated in Bolivia to “fight against drug trafficking, [but] for political ends”.

In late 2008, his government expelled the DEA from the country.

The cocaleros, whoses organisations were forged in the struggle against US militarisation, became the backbone of the anti-imperialist Movement Towards Socialism (MAS).

Morales narrowly lost the 2002 presidential elections, during which the US ambassador threatened retaliation if he won. Morales went on to win the December 2005 poll.

Morales concluded his election night speech with: “Long live coca, death to the Yankees!”

Divided military

One of the biggest challenges the Morales government has faced is its attempt to reassert sovereignty over Bolivia’s military while ensuring it did not turn against the president as so often had happened to leftist governments in Latin America.

The government was aided by two important factors.

Rising anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist sentiment at the start of the century found its reflection among nationalist sectors within the military.

In the February 2006 Le Monde Diplomatique , Maurice Lemoine said that during a May-June 2005 uprising, nationalist officers asked the MAS to support a civic-military coup that would nationalise gas and organise a constituent assembly two key demands of the rising.

The MAS rejected the proposed coup.

Instead, popular mobilisation forced then-president Carlos Mesa to step down.

After Mesa’s resignation, there were two options: either a constitutional handing over of power to the hated right-wing president of the Senate or the calling of early elections.

Lemoine said that when a group of generals met to decide which option to support, “a colonel entered the room, clicked his heels and announced: ‘I think you should know that many officers regard the MAS as the only fit representative of our nation’s dignity.’”

Differences within the military over how to relate to a possible Morales government, and direct US intervention, led to a second important event.

During his election campaign, Morales revealed the depth of control that the US exercised over the Bolivian military.

Young soldiers supplied him with evidence that the US had successfully decommissioned Bolivia’s entire anti-aircraft arsenal without government knowledge or consent.

The evidence came from soldiers who made up part of the Joint Counterterrorism Force (FCTC), set up and funded by the US.

They revealed how US military and embassy officials had ordered the replacement of various heads of battalions, withheld the true nature of the operation to soldiers involved and provided US embassy vehicles to transport the anti-aircraft missiles.

Commenting on the incident in November 2005, shortly before being named Morales’ first energy minister, Andres Soliz Rada wrote: “This operation of control over the Bolivian military also included the cleansing and marginalisation of soldiers who demonstrated sympathy to the [call for] nationalisation of hydrocarbons and the anti-imperialist struggle.”

Soliz Rada said in the months leading up to the incident, at least a dozen high ranking military officers had either retired, been relieved of duties or relocated.

A January 18, 2006 online BBC article said that Army Commander Marcel Antezana Ruiz admitted Washington had requested the repatriation of the missiles to destroy them because the US feared Morales would win the elections.

Transforming the military

Once in power, Morales moved quickly to try to turn this situation around. Within a few months, almost 60 generals and admirals, many of them either directly involved in the missile crisis or aligned with US interests, were forced into retirement.

In their place, newer commanders were promoted, bypassing the traditional promotions system.

The notorious FCTC was restructured and a new commander appointed.

This caused a stir within the military and in Washington.

Addressing a peasant congress in March 2006, Morales said “some generals were upset” and had put up “resistance” to the government’s attempts to name new military authorities.

He also said the US Military Group in Bolivia sent a letter to his government requesting it replace a military commander.

The letter was later released. It said that in response to government moves to restructure the FCTC, the US military had “decertified” the unit and demanded the return of all military hardware it had provided to it.

Morales said the Bolivian military had an obligation to not hand over any arms to the US. He told the peasant gathering: “We will never change a minister or a commander due to US demands.”

“Neoliberalism used the Armed Forces at the service of the transnationals, at the service of external interests,” Morales said.

“Now, in this process of change, our Armed Forces is willing to guarantee the Constituent Assembly and above all, to support and help us with the nationalisation of hydrocarbons.”

On May 1, 2006, as part of a secret plan involving Morales, the military high command, FCTC and select government ministers, the army occupied Bolivia’s gas fields and the offices of transnationals involved in their exploitation.

Morales announced the return of state control over gas.

On February 9, 2007, these scenes were repeated as the military took over the newly nationalised Vinto tin smelter in Oruro.

The Morales government also put the military in charge of 25 technical centers to train future technicians for the mining industry. It also involved the institution in social programs such as tackling illiteracy, providing health care and building infrastructure.

In 2006, the military academy was also opened to indigenous and female cadets for the first time in its history.

Having already announced that Bolivia would stop sending troops to the US Schools of the Americas training camp, in June 2011 Morales inaugurated a new military training school in Bolivia for soldiers from countries such as Cuba and Venezuela that make up the Bolivarian Alliance of Our Americas (ALBA).

Through such actions, the government has tried to “knitting together a military-campesino alliance”, as Argentine journalist Pablo Stefanoni put it.

It is an attempt to forge closer relations between the military and the people, while strengthening the nationalist sectors within the military.

This growing bond was critical to overcoming internal resistance within the military and defeating a coup attempt in September 2008.

The combined mobilisation of the people and the military crushed the fascist uprising and dealt the opposition a blow from which they are yet to recover.

A socialist army?

This process of internal restructuring and transformation was reflected in the Bolivian military’s adoption in March 2010 of the slogan: “Fatherland or death, we shall overcome!”

Later that year, the commanding general of the army declared the military to be “socialist”, “anti-capitalist” and “anti-imperialist”. More recently, he stated the need for closer military ties with Cuba.

For a military whose only victorious war was that waged against Che Guevara and his band of left-wing guerrillas, such statements, while symbolic, represent a stark change from the days of right-wing dictatorships.

However, there is also little doubt that there is still much to do to deepen this process within the military.

Among other things, the military is still part of United Nations forces occupying Haiti, despite official government concerns of US interests behind the mission.

A big factor why this continues is the important financial contribution the military receives from the UN for its services something it does not want to lose.

The military also used its weight to ensure that the section dedicated to the armed forces in the new constitution, adopted in 2009, remained the same.

The military has also been slow to open up its archives to help investigations into the cases of disappeared activists during past dictatorships.

Activists involved in these cases have criticised the government for siding with the military on this issue.

Many social movements who support and defend the government have taken an approach to the government of pushing their sectoral interests. The military seems to have followed this route.

Given its weight and influence, in many cases it has been in a privileged position to ensure its demands are met.

There is little doubt that changes have occurred. These have been vital to ensuring the survival of the process of change led by the Morales government.

At the same time, there is evidence that there is a long path ahead in the process of transforming the army into one that truly represents the people.

8 August 2011

Greenleft.org.au

WASHINGTON—More than 90 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Barack Obama pressing him to sanction Iran’s central bank, with some threatening legislation to force the move, an outcome that would represent a stark escalation in tensions between the two countries.

Such a measure, if effectively implemented, could potentially freeze Iran out of the global financial system and make it nearly impossible for Tehran to clear billions of dollars in oil sales every month, said current and former U.S. officials.

Many American officials view the blacklisting of Bank Markazi as the “nuclear option” in Washington’s financial war against Tehran. Some Iranian leaders have said they would view such a move by the Obama administration as an act of war.

The letter was co-sponsored by Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) in a sign of the bipartisan support for tougher financial measures against Iran. The U.S. fears Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

“In our view, the United States should embark on a comprehensive strategy to pressure Iran’s financial system by imposing sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran,” said the letter that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal and will be delivered to the White House on Tuesday. “If our allies are willing to join, we believe this step can be even more effective.”

A senior U.S. official said the Obama administration is studying all measures to increase pressure on Iran, including potential moves against Bank Markazi.

“We are working really hard on the Iran challenge and have made unprecedented progress in mobilizing international pressure and sanctions,” the official said.

Last year, Congress passed legislation barring from the U.S. financial system any foreign firm doing business with sanctioned Iranian banks, Iran’s energy sector, or the businesses of Tehran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The law also has a provision allowing the White House to sanction Bank Markazi, a step that President Obama has so far decided not to take.

In an interview, Mr. Kirk said he would introduce a law by year’s end to enforce sanctions on Bank Markazi if the White House doesn’t move independently.

“The administration will face a choice of whether it wants to lead this effort or be forced to act,” Mr. Kirk said.

Mr. Schumer said the White House needed to utilize current legislation.

“It’s time for the administration to use the tools Congress has provided and choke off the money spigot,” he said in a statement.

Both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations have discussed the merits of targeting Iran’s central bank going back at least four years, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The U.S. and European governments believe Bank Markazi has facilitated trade for sanctioned Iranian banks and businesses by masking the names of the parties involved in international transactions.

U.S. officials also worry Iran’s central bank has provided funds to organizations designated as terrorist groups by Washington, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

Iranian officials have said in recent interviews that they view all U.S. and United Nations sanctions as illegal and that their country is entitled to conduct international trade.

Current and former U.S. officials who have taken part in the sanctions debate said that targeting Bank Markazi presents significant hurdles.

In recent years, American allies in Europe and Asia have worried that any blacklisting of Iran’s central bank will inhibit their ability to purchase Iranian oil and potentially lead to higher global energy prices. Iran is the third-largest oil exporter among the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Nations including China, South Korea and India have experienced trouble purchasing Iranian oil.

New Delhi alone has been unable to pay Iran $5 billion for oil purchases, according to Indian officials.

U.S. officials have worried that unilateral Americans sanctions against Bank Markazi might not be respected by even some American allies. This could place Washington into the difficult position of either backing down or theoretically trying to ban important foreign companies and governments from using the U.S. financial system.

An American official involved in the discussions said any U.S. decision would require months of prior discussions with countries such as South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia in order to get their buy-in.

Congress and the Obama administration have tussled over the issue of Bank Markazi for a number of months. Senators placed holds on the confirmation of two key U.S. officials—Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Under Secretary of Treasury David Cohen—seeking assurances the White House would take steps to sanction the bank.

Mr. Kirk said in the interview these holds were eventually lifted because both Messrs. Burns and Cohen offered assurances the issue was being seriously studied. “They cited an August to September point of action,” Mr. Kirk said, acknowledging there were no promises made.

Officials at the State Department and Treasury Department said they couldn’t comment on private conversations held with members of Congress.

Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com

Senators’ Letter to President Obama

August 9, 2011

President Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President:

Following the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear program and recent Iranian missile tests, we remain seriously concerned that Iran continues to accelerate its uranium enrichment and ballistic missile programs. Meanwhile, the regime refuses to answer questions posed by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog regarding evidence Iran is working toward the development of nuclear weapons.

We must do more to increase the economic pressure on the regime. In our view, the United States should embark on a comprehensive strategy to pressure Iran’s financial system by imposing sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), or Bank Markazi. If our key allies are willing to join, we believe this step can be even more effective.

As you know, the Iranian regime continues to pursue avenues to circumvent both U.S. and multilateral sanctions. In the banking sector, the Central Bank of Iran lies at the center of Iran’s circumvention strategy. In May, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen stated that “the activities of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) have been, and continue to be, a focus of the Treasury Department. Treasury has noted previously that the CBI and Iranian commercial banks have requested that their names be removed from international payment messages to make it more difficult for intermediary financial institutions to determine the true parties to the transaction, and we remain concerned that the CBI may be facilitating transactions for sanctioned Iranian banks.”

The time has come to impose crippling sanctions on Iran’s financial system by cutting off the CBI. There is strong bipartisan support in Congress for the imposition of sanctions on the CBI. As recently as consideration of the FY10 National Defense Authorization Act, the Senate unanimously supported an amendment urging you to impose such sanctions. We urge you to strongly consider imposing U.S. sanctions against the CBI and to encourage key allies to join us in this important action.

8 August 2011

The Wall Street Journal