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Austerity not the way to go for Europe

Most economists thought that when the euro was put together, it was an incomplete task. They’d taken out too many adjustment mechanisms and had not put anything in its place.

One of the things that makes the American common currency work across the country is we have a common fiscal authority and high migration – we’re willing to allow North Dakota to become empty.

In Europe, there’s no fiscal authority, migration is more difficult and most of the countries are not willing to let themselves become empty. So the framework for allowing for an effective common currency is not there.

Now you might be able to make up for the deficiencies in one part by strengthening another part, for instance by having a stronger fiscal authority. But they don’t have that.

What they did fiscally was tie themselves to the stability and growth pact, which was a pact for recession rather than for growth because limiting deficits when you have a shock is a recipe for recession, which is what is happening in Greece.

So the question was always: when a crisis occurred would they be able to finish the task? And I think the jury is still out.

Misguided

The agreement that they made in July was a reasonably good agreement. It recognised that Greece needed help to grow but they haven’t put in any money and the process of ratification has been very slow.

So I think it’s really a question that has not yet been resolved.

There are a number of institutional ways of going about helping to resolve it. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) needs to be larger or to have more ability to leverage itself. That’s a minimum.

Over the longer term they’re going to need European bonds and a number of other actions, and they have to recognise the framework of austerity is not the way to go.

Issuing bonds should be one part of the fiscal framework.

The problem with the eurozone was the one part of the framework that they thought they needed was limiting fiscal deficits and that was just a misguided analysis.

Ireland and Spain had surpluses before the crisis. But they thought that having limited fiscal deficits was necessary and sufficient for protecting the economic framework and that was just wrong.

Politics

The July agreement was a good start if they implement it quickly. But that’s not been happening.

Let me say, for democracy it’s not been that slow. Two months to get landmark legislation through is not a long time. But markets move quickly. So I don’t criticise the fact that there’s been a deliberate pace – that’s the nature of democracy.

My criticism is they didn’t do anything in the 10 years before there was a crisis.

I suspect that we’re going to see a lot of volatility. Whether at the end the eurozone will emerge intact or not, it’s hard at this point to say.

It all depends on the politics. Even though I think the commitment of the leaders to do something is there, the political process in some ways is not in tune with the economics. The problems are deep.

I think there is a reasonably good chance that a year from now you would find the eurozone smaller than what it is today.

There’s a broad consensus among economists that the best way of doing it would be for the northern European countries to leave. That would be the easiest adjustment.

But the general view is that is not what’s going to happen. The view is that some of the weaker countries will leave and that will lead to very large trauma in the global financial markets such as freezing the credit markets, a repeat of 15 September 2008 (when Lehman Brothers collapsed).

Growth potential

If Europe insists on going forward with the kind of austerity packages in Germany and without the kind of assistance they need to help those countries with severe economic problems, such as Greece, then almost surely the eurozone will break up.

But if they come forward with that money, then it can survive, at least for a while.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the one institution that has the kind of flexibility that is necessary to deal with the crisis. It will be absolutely essential, because they will be able to step into the breach and be willing to do that.

Now the problem is that some people in Germany and elsewhere have said the ECB should not be buying Italian and Spanish bonds and that it should not be stepping into the breach. But if the ECB doesn’t do that, then the eurozone’s prospects are very, very bleak.

It’s not inevitable that Greece will default if they come forward with enough assistance for it to grow. It has enormous growth potential, so if Europe comes up with enough money, it will grow and that will enable it to manage its debts.

But so far I’ve seen nothing in the form of growth assistance as opposed to austerity assistance just to meet its budget shortfall, and I’m not very optimistic that it will avoid a default.

By  Joseph Stiglitz

3 October 2011

@ BBC News

Joseph Stiglitz is a Professor at Columbia University and also a recipient of a Nobel Prize in Economics and a former chief economist at the World Bank.

Attack on People who Struggle for Land and Future from POSCO

Today (26th Sept 2011), about 400 armed goons of POSCO attacked our villagers at Govindpur village with rod, sticks and hand-bombs at 8.30 AM.  In this sudden attack, more than  30 villagers have been injured including 6 women; two people are critically injured. These injured are not able to go for treatment to the nearest hospital in fear of arrest as police has already booked false cases against them in the earlier incidents.

This is a new trick made by the government and POSCO to enter into our area. The government made a plan to build a coastal road along the beach from the Indian Oil Refinery complex to the port near to our village for POSCO.  As you  know that we have prevented the entry of the police from the side of the land mass by peacefully sitting in Dharana, the government is considering this as an alternative  road to make entry from sea side.  The construction has been contracted to Paradeep Paribahan, a private company led by Bapi Circle.  On 19th of August 2011, the government has laid the foundation for road construction. On 20th of August, around 400 people including the contractor and workers were proceeding to the site during the day; our people protested the move and chased them away.

Today,  Bapi Circle who is also known as mafia leader from the ruling party Biju Janata Dal ( BJD),  brought armed goons from outside the area and lead the attack . Our villagers are chased with sticks and bombs are also being thrown on our unarmed villagers. The  leader of the Contractors’ association has admitted to have attacked the people in front of electronic media. Police did not arrive in the place. Now, our people are in high alert to face any imminent attack  by private militia. Our villagers are strongly determined not to allow the construction of the road.

We request all of you to strongly condemned this heinous attack and expose this unholy nexus between POSCO and the state government in a strong word. This is a very planned and calculated move to crush our peaceful democratic movement against the forceful displacement. The malicious plan of the government to project all this situation as a law and order problem in the media and accordingly police will enter in to our area. This is nothing but a very shameful act of POSCO to terrorize the villagers. We all are determined to continue our struggle democratically.

By Prashant Paikary

Spokesperson, POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti

1 October 2011

With anti-Wall Street protests spreading to over 100 US cities and towns, President Barack Obama at a White House press conference Thursday cynically sought to exploit the outpouring of spontaneous anger at the banks and big business as a vehicle for his reelection bid.

On Thursday, new Occupy Wall Street protests sprang up in a number of major cities, including Philadelphia, New Orleans, Washington, Tampa, Dallas, Houston and Austin. They came on the heels of the largest demonstration so far in New York City, where an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 marched through lower Manhattan Wednesday night.

The demonstrations are driven by a profound anger over unprecedented levels of social inequality as, three years after the financial meltdown on Wall Street, unemployment and declining wages persist and deepen alongside record profits and increasing wealth for the top one percent.

The first White House reporter who asked Obama about the anti-Wall Street protests stated the obvious about the demonstrators: “They clearly don’t think that you or Republicans have done enough, that you’re in fact part of the problem.”

Obama responded that he had “heard about” the protest movement and “seen it on TV.” He went on to acknowledge that “people are frustrated, and the protestors are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”

He followed this indication that he “felt the pain” of those who are demonstrating with an immediate affirmation of his support for “a strong, effective financial sector in order for us to grow.” Referring to his unqualified support for the $750 billion TARP bailout of the banks, he added: “I used up a lot of political capital, and I’ve got the dings and bruises to prove it, in order to make sure that we prevented a financial meltdown, and that banks stayed afloat.”

In New York, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a similar statement on Thursday, defending Wall Street against the protests. “Wall Street is a major economic engine for the state,” he said at a press conference. “When all is said and told, 20 to 25 percent of the state’s income comes from Wall Street.”

In response to a reporter who noted that no Wall Street executives “have gone to jail despite the rampant corruption and malfeasance that did take place,” Obama defended the failure to prosecute any of those responsible for triggering the deepest crisis since the Great Depression. He said that “a lot of that stuff wasn’t necessarily illegal, it was just immoral or inappropriate or reckless,” and insisted in relation to prosecutions, “that’s not my job, that’s the Attorney General’s job.”

Obama’s feigned sympathy for the protests is part of concerted attempt to channel the movement behind the Democratic Party, which, no less than the Republicans, serves and is financed by the banks and finance houses responsible for the unemployment crisis.

This effort to hijack the protest movement has been spearheaded by the trade unions, which participated in Wednesday’s mass march in New York City. The rally featured a speakers platform packed with bureaucrats who have led no fight of their own against Wall Street and are responsible for betraying the interests of the workers they purport to represent.

The presence of a number of Democratic politicians, none of whom dared to address the rally, was announced from the platform with great enthusiasm, and some of the union bureaucrats present made no bones of the fact that they want to see the Occupy Wall Street movement exploited as a vehicle for the Obama re-election campaign.

The speed with which the anti-Wall Street protests have spread from coast to coast is all the more extraordinary given the persistent refusal of the mass media to give them significant coverage and the attempt in many of the reports that have appeared to mock and belittle them.

“Meetups” had been established in 761 cities by Thursday night, according to the web site Occupy Together [http://www.occupytogether.org], which describes itself as “an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.”

On Thursday, thousands of people initiated an occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington before staging a march past the US Treasury and the White House. The demonstrators chanted, “We Got Sold Out.”

The march ended in front of the US Chamber of Commerce, where marchers shouted, “We Want Jobs! We Want Jobs!” While the protesters have National Park permits allowing them to occupy the plaza only through Sunday, they have vowed to stay indefinitely.

Several hundred demonstrators marched down Tulane Avenue through the financial district of New Orleans on Thursday, rallying in Lafayette Square near the New Orleans branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. WWL radio described the crowd as “racially mixed and mostly young.”

“Most people are not getting a fair shake,” Daniel Brook, one of the marchers, told WWL. “It’s a country where the top one percent controls 90 percent of the wealth, and that’s outrageous. This is supposed to be a democracy. We’re all supposed to be in this together.”

Marches also took place across Texas. Several hundred marched on the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, which was ringed with police barricades. In Houston, hundreds more marched from the JPMorgan Chase building to City Hall chanting, “Banks Got Bailed Out! We Got Sold Out!” A demonstration was also held outside City Hall in the state capital of Austin.

David Larrick Smith, 40, from the Dallas suburb of Rowlett, told the Associated Press that he was protesting “all these billionaires who have bought our government.” He added, “I voted for Obama and he punked out. He had the opportunity to stand for the American people, and he’s become a political puppet.”

Several hundred people began an Occupy Philadelphia demonstration Thursday morning outside City Hall. May Chan, 32, a science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Associated Press, “I’m outraged by the whole bailout. I think someone should go to jail.”

In a number of areas, anti-Wall Street protests have met with arrests, brutality and harassment from the police.

In New York City, toward the end of Wednesday’s mass march through lower Manhattan, police used truncheons and pepper spray against unresisting protesters and arrested 28 people after a section of the demonstration tried to march on Wall Street.

Mounted police were brought in to intimidate demonstrators and a number of people suffered injuries as cops threw them to the pavement. The New York City Police Department has met the protests with excessive force over the course of the last several weeks, including last Saturday, when some 700 demonstrators were arrested after they had been led onto the Brooklyn Bridge and then trapped there by police on either side.

In Seattle, more than two-dozen demonstrators were arrested Wednesday after refusing police orders to take down tents in Westlake Park. The protesters have vowed to stay in the park.

In St. Louis, 11 people were arrested shortly after midnight on Thursday morning after police attempted to enforce a ban on demonstrations in Kiener Plaza after 10 pm. Some 100 members of the occupation group were in the plaza at midnight when two dozen squad cars raided the area.

In San Francisco, police in riot gear raided the Occupy SF camp on Market Street Wednesday night.

Occupy SF issued a statement saying that police had warned them to “pack up our tents” or face arrest. While the demonstrators moved to comply by taking down the tents and beginning to move out supplies, “still, the police, wearing helmets and carrying batons, formed a perimeter around our goods and prevented us from saving anything while they supervised Public Works employees as they stole everything. The police stole food, water, shelter and other necessities of life from the 99 percent at Occupy SF.”

Similarly, in Chicago, harassment from the police has become a major concern of protesters. As part of a thoroughly anti-democratic attempt to stamp out and disperse the protest centered around the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Board of Trade and the local headquarters of several major banks, police officials have used a local ordinance to demand that protesters’ personal possessions be kept off of sidewalks and prevent the protesters from sleeping at the site, or even sitting down or standing still.

In response, the demonstrators have become mobile, making sure to keep moving in order to avoid arrest or ticketing, and shifted their supplies to a nearby church. They have also taken to marching around different parts of the downtown area to avoid confrontation and to publicize the protest to more city residents.

In Los Angeles Thursday, eleven protesters were arrested for the “crime” of entering a downtown Bank of America branch carrying a giant check for $673 billion made out to the “People of California.” They were seeking to present the check to the bank when they were detained by security guards and turned over to the Los Angeles police.

The police arrested the six men and five women, part of a crowd of 500 who marched through the downtown area Thursday, and led them to prison in handcuffs. Bail was set at $5,000 per person.

By Bill Van Auken

7 October 2011

WSWS.org

When the think-tank chappies ponder “decline,” they tend to see it in geopolitical terms.

Great powers gradually being shunted off the world stage have increasing difficulties getting their way: Itsy-bitsy colonial policing operations in dusty ramshackle outposts drag on for years and putter out to no obvious conclusion.

If that sounds vaguely familiar, well, the State Department reported that the last Christian church in Afghanistan was razed in 2010. This intriguing factoid came deep within their “International Religious Freedom Report.”

It is not, in any meaningful sense of that word, “international.” For the last decade, Afghanistan has been a U.S. client state; its repulsive and corrupt leader is kept alive only by NATO arms; according to the World Bank, the Western military/aid presence accounts for 97% of the country’s economy.

American taxpayers have spent nearly half a trillion dollars and lost many brave warriors in that benighted land, and all we have to show for it is a regime openly contemptuous of the global sugar daddy that created and sustained it.

In another American client state, the Iraqi government is publicly supporting the murderous goon in Syria and supplying him with essential aid as he attempts to maintain his dictatorship. Your tax dollars at work.

As America sinks into a multitrillion-dollar debt pit, it is fascinating to listen to so many of my friends on the right fret about potential cuts to the Pentagon budget. The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan is not that we are spending insufficient money, but that so much of that money has been utterly wasted.

Dominant powers often wind up with thankless tasks, but the trick is to keep it within budget. London administered the sprawling, fractious tribal dump of Sudan with about 200 British civil servants for what, with hindsight, was the least worst two-thirds of a century in that country’s existence.

These days I doubt 200 civil servants would be enough for the average branch office of the Federal Department of Community Organizer Grant Applications. Abroad as at home, the U.S. urgently needs to learn to do more with less.

As I said, these are common symptoms of geopolitical decline: Great powers still go through the motions, but increasingly ineffectually.

What the Council of Foreign Relations types often miss is that, for the man in the street, decline can be very pleasant.

In Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands, the average citizen lives better than he ever did at the height of Empire. Today’s Europeans enjoy more comfortable lives, better health and take more vacations than their grandparents did. The state went into decline, but its subjects enjoyed immense upward mobility.

Americans might say if this is decline, bring it on. But it won’t be like that for the U.S.; unlike Europe, geopolitical decline and mass downward mobility will go hand in hand.

Indeed, they’re already under way. Whenever the economy goes south, experts talk of the housing bubble, the tech bubble, the credit bubble. But the real bubble is the 1950 American moment, followed by our failure to understand that moments are not permanent.

The U.S. emerged from the Second World War as the only industrial power with its factories intact and its cities not reduced to rubble, and assumed that that unprecedented pre-eminence would last forever: We would always be so far ahead and so flush with cash that we could do anything and spend anything and we would still be No. 1. That was the thinking that Detroit’s automakers made when they figured they could afford to buy off the unions.

The industrial powerhouse of 1950 is now a crime-ridden wasteland with a functioning literacy rate equivalent to West African basket cases. And yes, Detroit is an outlier, but look at the assumptions its rulers made, and then wonder whether it will seem an outlier in the future.

Take the complaints of the young Americans “occupying” Wall Street who’ve said “it’s our Arab Spring.”

Put aside the differences between brutal totalitarian dictatorships and a republic of biennial elections, and simply consider it in economic terms: At the Wall Street demonstrations, not-so-young college students are demanding that their tuition debt be forgiven. In Egypt, half live in poverty; the country imports more wheat than any other nation, and the funds to do that will dry up in a couple of months. They’re worrying about starvation, not how to fund half a decade of Whatever Studies at Complacency U.

One sympathizes. When college tuition is $50,000 a year, you can’t “work your way through college” — because, after all, an 18-yearold who can earn 50 grand a year wouldn’t need to go to college, would he?

Nevertheless, it’s not the same as some guy halfway up the Nile living on $2 a day. One is a crisis of the economy, the other a crisis of decadence. Generally, the former are easier to solve.

My colleague Rich Lowry correctly notes that many of the beleaguered families on the “We are the 99%” websites have real problems.

However, the “occupy” movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable, lethargic pseudo university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole.

Indeed, for all their youthful mien, the protestors are as mired in America’s postwar moment as their grandparents. One of their demands is for a trillion dollars in “environmental restoration.” Hey, why not? It’s only a trillion.

Beneath the allegedly young idealism are very cobwebbed assumptions about societal permanence. The agitators for “American Autumn” think that such demands are reasonable for no other reason than that they happen to have been born in America, and expectations that no other society in human history has ever expected are just part of their birthright.

But a society can live on the accumulated capital of a glorious inheritance for only so long. In that sense this bloodless, insipid revolution is just a somewhat smellier front for the sclerotic status quo.

Middle-class America is dying before our eyes. The job market is flat-lined, college fees soar, the property market is underwater, and ObamaCare is already making medical provision more expensive and more restrictive.

That doesn’t leave much else — although no doubt, as soon as they find something else, the statists will fix that, too.

As more and more middle Americans are beginning to notice, they lead more precarious and vulnerable lives than did their blue-collar parents and grandparents without the benefit of college “education” and health “benefits.”

For poorer Americans, the prospects are even glummer, augmented by grim statistics on obesity, childhood diabetes and much else. Potentially, this is not decline, but a swift, devastating downward slide, far beyond what postwar Britain and Europe saw and closer to Peronist Argentina on a Roman scale. It would be heartening if more presidential candidates understood the urgency. But there is a strange lack of boldness in most of their proposals. They, too, seem victims of that 1950 moment and assumptions of its permanence.

By MARK STEYN

14 October 2011

@ Investors.com

Its full extent revealed for the first time

They increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about.

And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide. Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous — until now.

Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and their proxies, these bases — some little more than desolate airstrips, others sophisticated command and control centers filled with computer screens and high-tech electronic equipment — are the backbone of a new American robotic way of war. They are also the latest development in a long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad — in this case, remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign “footprint” and little accountability.

Using military documents, press accounts, and other open source information, an in-depth analysis by TomDispatch has identified at least 60 bases integral to U.S. military and CIA drone operations. There may, however, be more, since a cloak of secrecy about drone warfare leaves the full size and scope of these bases distinctly in the shadows.

A Galaxy of Bases

Over the last decade, the American use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has expanded exponentially, as has media coverage of their use. On September 21st, the Wall Street Journal reported that the military has deployed missile-armed MQ-9 Reaper drones on the “island nation of Seychelles to intensify attacks on al Qaeda affiliates, particularly in Somalia.” A day earlier, a Washington Post piece also mentioned the same base on the tiny Indian Ocean archipelago, as well as one in the African nation of Djibouti, another under construction in Ethiopia, and a secret CIA airstrip being built for drones in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. (Some suspect it’s Saudi Arabia.)

Post journalists Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock reported that the “Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen.” Within days, the Post also reported that a drone from the new CIA base in that unidentified Middle Eastern country had carried out the assassination of radical al-Qaeda preacher and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.

With the killing of al-Awlaki, the Obama Administration has expanded its armed drone campaign to no fewer than six countries, though the CIA, which killed al-Awlaki, refuses to officially acknowledge its drone assassination program. The Air Force is less coy about its drone operations, yet there are many aspects of those, too, that remain in the shadows. Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Haynes recently told TomDispatch that, “for operational security reasons, we do not discuss worldwide operating locations of Remotely Piloted Aircraft, to include numbers of locations around the world.”

Still, those 60 military and CIA bases worldwide, directly connected to the drone program, tell us much about America’s war-making future. From command and control and piloting to maintenance and arming, these facilities perform key functions that allow drone campaigns to continue expanding, as they have for more than a decade. Other bases are already under construction or in the planning stages. When presented with our list of Air Force sites within America’s galaxy of drone bases, Lieutenant Colonel Haynes responded, “I have nothing further to add to what I’ve already said.”

Even in the face of government secrecy, however, much can be discovered. Here, then, for the record is a TomDispatch accounting of America’s drone bases in the United States and around the world.

The Near Abroad

News reports have frequently focused on Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas as ground zero in America’s military drone campaign. Sitting in darkened, air-conditioned rooms 7,500 miles from Afghanistan, drone pilots dressed in flight suits remotely control MQ-9 Reapers and their progenitors, the less heavily-armed MQ-1 Predators. Beside them, sensor operators manipulate the TV camera, infrared camera, and other high-tech sensors on board the plane. Their faces are lit up by digital displays showing video feeds from the battle zone. By squeezing a trigger on a joystick, one of those Air Force “pilots” can loose a Hellfire missile on a person half a world away.

While Creech gets the lion’s share of media attention — it even has its own drones on site — numerous other bases on U.S. soil have played critical roles in America’s drone wars. The same video-game-style warfare is carried out by U.S and British pilots not far away at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base, the home of the Air Force’s 2nd Special Operations Squadron (SOS). According to a factsheet provided to TomDispatch by the Air Force, the 2nd SOS and its drone operators are scheduled to be relocated to the Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field in Florida in the coming months.

Reapers or Predators are also being flown from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, March Air Reserve Base in California, Springfield Air National Guard Base in Ohio, Cannon Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas, the Air National Guard base in Fargo, North Dakota, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, and Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York. Recently, it was announced that Reapers flown by Hancock’s pilots would begin taking off on training missions from the Army’s Fort Drum, also in New York State.

Meanwhile, at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, according to a report by the New York Times, teams of camouflage-clad Air Force analysts sit in a secret intelligence and surveillance installation monitoring cell-phone intercepts, high-altitude photographs, and most notably, multiple screens of streaming live video from drones in Afghanistan. They call it “Death TV” and are constantly instant-messaging with and talking to commanders on the ground in order to supply them with real-time intelligence on enemy troop movements. Air Force analysts also closely monitor the battlefield from Air Force Special Operations Command in Florida and a facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.

CIA drone operators also reportedly pilot their aircraft from the Agency’s nearby Langley, Virginia headquarters. It was from here that analysts apparently watched footage of Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, for example, thanks to video sent back by the RQ-170 Sentinel, an advanced drone nicknamed the “Beast of Kandahar.” According to Air Force documents, the Sentinel is flown from both Creech Air Force Base and Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.

Predators, Reapers, and Sentinels are just part of the story. At Beale Air Force Base in California, Air Force personnel pilot the RQ-4 Global Hawk, an unmanned drone used for long-range, high-altitude surveillance missions, some of them originating from Anderson Air Force Base in Guam (a staging ground for drone flights over Asia). Other Global Hawks are stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, while the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio manages the Global Hawk as well as the Predator and Reaper programs for the Air Force.

Other bases have been intimately involved in training drone operators, including Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and New Mexico’s Kirtland Air Force Base, as is the Army’s Fort Huachuca in Arizona, which is home to “the world’s largest UAV training center,” according to a report by National Defense magazine. There, hundreds of employees of defense giant General Dynamics train military personnel to fly smaller tactical drones like the Hunter and the Shadow. The physical testing of drones goes on at adjoining Libby Army Airfield and “two UAV runways located approximately four miles west of Libby,” according to Global Security, an on-line clearinghouse for military information.

Additionally, small drone training for the Army is carried out at Fort Benning in Georgia while at Fort Rucker, Alabama — “the home of Army aviation” — the Unmanned Aircraft Systems program coordinates doctrine, strategy, and concepts pertaining to UAVs. Recently, Fort Benning also saw the early testing of true robotic drones — which fly without human guidance or a hand on any joystick. This, wrote the Washington Post, is considered the next step toward a future in which drones will “hunt, identify, and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans.”

The Army has also carried out UAV training exercises at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and, earlier this year, the Navy launched its X-47B, a next-generation semi-autonomous stealth drone, on its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California. That flying robot — designed to operate from the decks of aircraft carriers — has since been sent on to Maryland’s Naval Air Station Patuxent River for further testing. At nearby Webster Field, the Navy worked out kinks in its Fire Scout pilotless helicopter, which has also been tested at Fort Rucker and Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, as well as Florida’s Mayport Naval Station and Jacksonville Naval Air Station. The latter base was also where the Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial system was developed. It is now based there and at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington State.

Foreign Jewels in the Crown

The Navy is actively looking for a suitable site in the Western Pacific for a BAMS base, and is currently in talks with several Persian Gulf states about a site in the Middle East. It already has Global Hawks perched at its base in Sigonella, Italy.

The Air Force is now negotiating with Turkey to relocate some of the Predator drones still operating in Iraq to the giant air base at Incirlik next year. Many different UAVs have been based in Iraq since the American invasion of that country, including small tactical models like the Raven-B that troops launched by hand from Kirkuk Regional Air Base, Shadow UAVs that flew from Forward Operating Base Normandy in Baqubah Province, Predators operating out of Balad Airbase, miniature Desert Hawk drones launched from Tallil Air Base, and Scan Eagles based at Al Asad Air Base.

Elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, according to Aviation Week, the military is launching Global Hawks from Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, piloted by personnel stationed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, to track “shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Arabian Sea.” There are unconfirmed reports that the CIA may be operating drones from the Emirates as well. In the past, other UAVs have apparently been flown from Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem Air Base and Al Jaber Air Base, as well as Seeb Air Base in Oman.

At Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the Air Force runs an air operations command and control facility, critical to the drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The new secret CIA base on the Arabian peninsula, used to assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki, may or may not be the airstrip in Saudi Arabia whose existence a senior U.S. military official recently confirmed to Fox News. In the past, the CIA has also operated UAVs out of Tuzel, Uzbekistan.

In neighboring Afghanistan, drones fly from many bases including Jalalabad Air Base, Kandahar Air Field, the air base at Bagram, Camp Leatherneck, Camp Dwyer, Combat Outpost Payne, Forward Operating Base (FOB) Edinburgh and FOB Delaram II, to name a few. Afghan bases are, however, more than just locations where drones take off and land.

It is a common misconception that U.S.-based operators are the only ones who “fly” America’s armed drones. In fact, in and around America’s war zones, UAVs begin and end their flights under the control of local “pilots.” Take Afghanistan’s massive Bagram Air Base. After performing preflight checks alongside a technician who focuses on the drone’s sensors, a local airman sits in front of a Dell computer tower and multiple monitors, two keyboards, a joystick, a throttle, a rollerball, a mouse, and various switches, overseeing the plane’s takeoff before handing it over to a stateside counterpart with a similar electronics set-up. After the mission is complete, the controls are transferred back to the local operators for the landing. Additionally, crews in Afghanistan perform general maintenance and repairs on the drones.

In the wake of a devastating suicide attack by an al-Qaeda double agent that killed CIA officers and contractors at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost in 2009, it came to light that the facility was heavily involved in target selection for drone strikes across the border in Pakistan. The drones themselves, as the Washington Post noted at the time, were “flown from separate bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Both the Air Force and the CIA have conducted operations in Pakistani air space, with some missions originating in Afghanistan and others from inside Pakistan. In 2006, images of what appear to be Predator drones stationed at Shamsi Air Base in Pakistan’s Balochistan province were found on Google Earth and later published. In 2009, the New York Times reported that operatives from Xe Services, the company formerly known as Blackwater, had taken over the task of arming Predator drones at the CIA’s “hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Following the May Navy SEAL raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, that country’s leaders reportedly ordered the United States to leave Shamsi. The Obama administration evidently refused and word leaked out, according to the Washington Post, that the base was actually owned and sublet to the U.S. by the United Arab Emirates, which had built the airfield “as an arrival point for falconry and other hunting expeditions in Pakistan.”

The U.S. and Pakistani governments have since claimed that Shamsi is no longer being used for drone strikes. True or not, the U.S. evidently also uses other Pakistani bases for its drones, including possibly PAF Base Shahbaz, located near the city of Jacocobad, and another base located near Ghazi.

The New Scramble for Africa

Recently, the headline story, when it comes to the expansion of the empire of drone bases, has been Africa. For the last decade, the U.S. military has been operating out of Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign Legion base in the tiny African nation of Djibouti. Not long after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it became a base for Predator drones and has since been used to conduct missions over neighboring Somalia.

For some time, rumors have also been circulating about a secret American base in Ethiopia. Recently, a U.S. official revealed to the Washington Post that discussions about a drone base there had been underway for up to four years, “but that plan was delayed because ‘the Ethiopians were not all that jazzed.’” Now construction is evidently underway, if not complete.

Then, of course, there is that base on the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. A small fleet of Navy and Air Force drones began operating openly there in 2009 to track pirates in the region’s waters. Classified diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks, however, reveal that those drones have also secretly been used to carry out missions in Somalia. “Based in a hangar located about a quarter-mile from the main passenger terminal at the airport,” the Post reports, the base consists of three or four “Reapers and about 100 U.S. military personnel and contractors, according to the cables.”

The U.S. has also recently sent four smaller tactical drones to the African nations of Uganda and Burundi for use by those countries’ militaries.

New and Old Empires

Even if the Pentagon budget were to begin to shrink, expansion of America’s empire of drone bases is a sure thing in the years to come. Drones are now the bedrock of Washington’s future military planning and — with counterinsurgency out of favor — the preferred way of carrying out wars abroad.

During the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, as the U.S. was building up its drone fleets, the country launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and carried out limited strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, using drones in at least four of those countries. In less than three years under President Obama, the U.S. has launched drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. It maintains that it has carte blanche to kill suspected enemies in any nation (or at least any nation in the global south).

According to a report by the Congressional Budget Office published earlier this year, “the Department of Defense plans to purchase about 730 new medium-sized and large unmanned aircraft systems” over the next decade. In practical terms, this means more drones like the Reaper.

Military officials told the Wall Street Journal that the Reaper “can fly 1,150 miles from base, conduct missions, and return home… [T]he time a drone can stay aloft depends on how heavily armed it is.” According to a drone operator training document obtained by TomDispatch, at maximum payload, meaning with 3,750 pounds worth of Hellfire missiles and GBU-12 or GBU-30 bombs on board, the Reaper can remain aloft for 16 to 20 hours.

Even a glance at a world map tells you that, if the U.S. is to carry out ever more drone strikes across the developing world, it will need more bases for its future UAVs. As an unnamed senior military official pointed out to a Washington Post reporter, speaking of all those new drone bases clustered around the Somali and Yemeni war zones, “If you look at it geographically, it makes sense — you get out a ruler and draw the distances [drones] can fly and where they take off from.”

Earlier this year, an analysis by TomDispatch determined that there are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases scattered across the globe — a shadowy base-world providing plenty of existing sites that can, and no doubt will, host drones. But facilities selected for a pre-drone world may not always prove optimal locations for America’s current and future undeclared wars and assassination campaigns. So further expansion in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is a likelihood.

What are the Air Force’s plans in this regard? Lieutenant Colonel John Haynes was typically circumspect, saying, “We are constantly evaluating potential operating locations based on evolving mission needs.” If the last decade is any indication, those “needs” will only continue to grow.

By Nick Turse

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a senior editor at Alternet.org. He is the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives and The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan. Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute.

Towering above Mumbai’s skyline, the 27-storey new home of India’s richest man has become a symbol of both the fabulous wealth of the country’s business elite and of the gulf between them and those at the bottom.

Yet for all the building’s finery, there appears to be one thing still missing: Mukesh Ambani himself.

People close to the industrialist say that he and his wife entertain at their cantilevered property, known as Antilia, but they and their three children never stay the night there.

One person close to Mr Ambani’s group said he was now in residence, although a neighbour with a view of the building told the Financial Times that the lights were seldom on, and only when Mr Ambani was hosting guests.

Those who have enjoyed the tycoon’s hospitality speak of lavish parties featuring musical acts flown in from overseas. One guest said the home was divided into private and public areas, the latter of which seemed to share more in common with a large hotel than a family home. Staff at the home were trained by India’s luxury Oberoi hotel chain.

Others have been surprised to see a man renowned for his reserve and ruthlessness indulge in a project to erect what has been described as a “vertical palace” and “the Taj Mahal of the 21st century”, reportedly complete with helipads, cinema and billion-dollar pricetag.

Indeed, the entire venture has become a source of disquiet for Mr Ambani, whose fortune, estimated this year by Forbes at $27bn, made him the ninth wealthiest man on the planet.

Controversy began even before construction, when a dispute broke out over the acquisition of the land from a Muslim charity.

People close to the family said a senior US diplomat visiting Mumbai recently had asked to meet Mr Ambani at the celebrated home but later requested a change of venue when reminded of the controversy.

The tower has also served as a lightning rod for ill-feeling about the yawning gap between India’s billionaires and its have-nots, rising as it does above the sprawling slums that are home to millions of Mumbai’s poor.

A spokesman for Reliance Industries, Mr Ambani’s oil-to-retail conglomerate, said the managing director’s living arrangements were “a private matter” and declined to comment. He categorically denied suggestions Mr Ambani, whose group recently acquired a stake in the owner of the Oberoi, might convert the building to another use, such as a hotel.

Mr Ambani’s previous home, a residence in city’s waterside Colaba district where he is still said to stay at least some of the time, is shared with other members of the extended first family of Indian commerce.

One theory as to why the family appears cool on residing at Antilia holds that the building has violated the principles of vastu shastra, a traditional Indian design rubric.

Another suggests that Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani, widow of the self-made founder of the Reliance group and mother of Mukesh and his fierce rival and younger brother Anil, would not accede to her elder son’s intention to move away from the Sea Wind home – even though the animosity between Mukesh and Anil, himself a billionaire, saw them occupying different floors there.

Shares in Reliance Industries have fallen by 22 per cent this year, tracking a general decline in Indian stocks. Yet Mr Ambani’s position as the nation’s foremost tycoon appears secure. In February he was at Downing St to ink a $7.2bn oil and gas deal with BP and the year has seen half a dozen investments as the group diversifies.

Additional reporting by James Lamont in New Delhi, Amy Kazmin in New Delhi and James Fontanella-Khan in Rome.

18 October 2011

By Tom Burgis

@ The Financial Times

REPORTING FROM SEOUL –- Three violent attacks on South Korean residents were allegedly committed in recent weeks by off-duty U.S. servicemen here, including the assault of a 70-year-old grandmother and the unconnected rapes of two other women, Seoul officials say.

Park Kyungsoo, 30, director of the National Campaign for the Eradication of Crimes by U.S. Troops in Korea, knew the public outrage to the crimes would be swift.

“There’s a degree of perversion to the attacks that I knew South Koreans wouldn’t stand for,” said Park.

A 21-year-old U.S. Army private is in South Korean custody after being indicted in the alleged rape of an 18-year-old girl. U.S. officials, including top East Asian diplomat Kurt Campbell, apologized for “pain” caused by allegations that American soldiers sexually assaulted citizens here, and the military has imposed a temporary curfew on its soldiers across South Korea.

Still, attitudes toward the 28,500 U.S. servicemen and women stationed in South Korea have deteriorated. Many residents call for the South Korean government to end its diplomatic agreement that allows for the U.S. troop presence, claiming that they’re more afraid of the U.S. military peacekeepers than the North Korean regime they are supposed to be protected them from.

Seoul dance clubs once frequented by U.S. military now bar admission to American soldiers after concern expressed by female patrons, according to local press reports here. South Korea also created a task force to seek revisions to the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, that governs the legal status of U.S. troops in South Korea and elsewhere.

Activists here say that the SOFA, signed in 1965 and amended in 1995 and 2001, is unjust because it goes too far in protecting U.S. soldiers. Many want the police here to be given more legal jurisdiction to investigate sex crimes involving American soldiers.

These developments are the latest in rising tensions between the U.S. military and foreign governments that include controversies over SOFA agreements with both Iraq and Japan.

Many insist that such disagreements pose little threat to overall relations between Washington and ally nations. But such squabbles also suggest an often competing interest between the legal rights of its foreign-based troops and a local citizenry that wants to insure that the visitors are subject to native laws.

“I understand the U.S. wants to protect its soldiers from kangaroo courts overseas, but Koreans also have a right to safeguard their own citizens,” Park said. “The perception among many here is that U.S. soldiers commit crimes and then run back to the protection of their base.”

South Korean authorities cite a rising crime rate among U.S. servicemen. There were 377 alleged crimes last year, up from 306 in 2009, according to national police statistics. Between 2000 and 2010, rapes rose from zero to 11; burglaries from 9 to 24 and violent crime in general from 118 to 154, according to officials.

U.S. officials say the crime rate is low considering the size of the troop presence here.

“A high, high percentage of our service members do the right thing. They abide by the law, make the right choices and conduct themselves professionally,” said Col. Jonathan Withington, a spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea.

He added that South Korean police have quick access to crime suspects under the present SOFA. The Army private indicted in the recent rape was handed over to South Korean police the same day they requested to have him in custody, he said.

“In the last five years, how many times have we said no to such requests? Zero,” Withington added. “The system is working fine just the way it is.”

But an editorial in a Seoul newspaper criticized the U.S. military for delaying access by investigators to the 21-year-old rape suspect before the indictment was filed.

“More than a week has since passed -– enough time to change evidence or statement -– but law enforcement officials could not have access to the suspect, as he is in virtual U.S. territory in Korea,” the editorial read.

Others say the SOFA does not need to be changed.

“Sexual assault is a terrible crime and it draws very emotional reactions, but revising the SOFA cannot prevent it from happening,” said Daniel Pinkston, the North East Asia deputy project director with the nonprofit International Crisis Group in Seoul.

“South Korea has the authority and the right to prosecute U.S. military personnel for crimes committed [there.] And they do,” he added. “And the U.S. military prosecutes them as well.”

Yet experts on U.S. military law warn that such tensions can erode overall diplomatic relations if left unchecked.

“We actually have a well-behaved military –- it’s a fact,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches U.S. military law at Yale Law School. “What makes any amount of crime intolerable are the very high stakes involved.”

Decades have changed the scope and reasoning behind the U.S. presence in nations like Japan and South Korea, where some believe the need for foreign soldiers has greatly diminished.

“Any crime is one too many when you have an occupying force that many believe has outlived its usefulness,” Fidell added. “With the endless trickle of quite appalling crimes in places like Okinawa, it’s not surprising the population is going crazy.”

While South Korea “has dangerous neighbors,” it’s not Iraq or Afghanistan, Fidell said. Continued crime could seriously fray public opinion. “When countries get ticked off, they can find ways to vent their frustration. They can make life easy on Uncle Sam, or not.”

The recent South Korean rapes are the subject of talk among U.S. servicemen here. “G.I. Joe goes out in the real Korea where there are no controls … and he causes unmanaged irritation,” one person wrote on a website frequented by U.S. soldiers, “which [causes] unnecessary complications for the alliance.”

South Korea has a history of waging violent protests against perceived U.S. military wrongdoers. Park’s watchdog group was formed in 1992 following the torture and murder of a 28-year-old Korean woman by an American soldier.

In 2002, riots spread across Seoul after two middle-school aged girls were run over by a U.S. armored vehicle.

Activists like Park insist that South Korea will not back down on its desire to see the SOFA revisited.

“Korean public sentiment no longer remains tolerant of sexual crimes, either by locals or foreigners,” one newspaper editorial read. “This has nothing to do with anti-Americanism…. Ten years is a long enough period to check and update any international treaties.”

By John M. Glionna

20 October 2011

@ Los Angeles Times

Beirut, Lebanon: For westerners, and particularly Americans who have watched Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad up fairly close as he delivers speeches in the US and elsewhere including during last year’s visit to Lebanon, his charisma and populist connection with the public are evident and often powerful.

And President Barack Obama is normally no slough either on the stump when he woes voters and inspires them to support his point of view. But last week’s UN appearance by the two leaders left a Matthew 13:24-30 type image of the wheat being separated from the chaff. Both countries are juxtaposed menacingly in the Middle East, one pressuring the region in an all-out sustained NATO utilized effort to maintain its hegemony and the other actively trying to lead the region in a very different direction. Consequently the public was presented with an interesting contrast in styles and substance.

The two appearances could be handicapped along the lines that Obama’s tough job was to try to shore up Israel whose days as a dominate force in the Levant rapidly grow fewer as history corrects the nearly incalculable injustice that resulted from the West’s implantation of the racist state and as history inexorably deconstructs the world’s last 19 th Century colonial enterprise.

From the UN podium, Ahmadinejad knew in advance that approximately 15 minutes into his speech began AIPAC would signal the launch of its churlish and infantile 30 country walkout and most of the delegations in the audience knew that the White House had given its ok. The Iranian President also knew that there would be the pro-Zionist tabloid media blitz against him complete with the now expected degrading and offensive cartoons and the Persian visitor being labeled in the US media, what else, but an “anti-Semite”, “a clown”, “weirdo”, “crackpot”. “the new Hitler” and the usual moronic libels. It is hard to imagine that the New York Times editors actually read his speech since they not only failed it analyze it but simply dismissed it as a “tirade” the same description they applied last year.

But this year, the AIPAC/White House walk-out backfired and it was roundly condemned not only among the American public but among the publics of each of the countries that agreed to rudely interrupt the proceedings. The Zionist controlled US government failed to realize that the international public, like most Americans, by and large retain respect for the values of open dialogue, common hospitality and respect for leaders from other countries. Moreover, they understand that the raison d’etre of the United Nations is to provide its members with an open forum. This includes Iran and each of the 192 other UN Member States. When Obama spoke the Iranian delegation listened respectfully.

OBAMA the compleat politician?

President Obama, embarrassingly for the American public proved once more his habit of assuming the role of the groveling US politician for the pariah Israeli UN Member. This latest speech was no exception and once more Obama made plain that he will support Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestine as a quid pro quo for the Israeli lobby funding and supporting his 2012 Presidential re-election bid.

Birzeit University Professor Hanan Ashrawi, spoke for many in the audience and across America after Obama finished: “I did not believe what I heard. It sounded as if the Palestinians were occupying Israel.  There was no empathy for the Palestinians; he only spoke of the Israeli problems. He told us that it isn’t easy to achieve peace, thanks, we know this.  He spoke about universal rights, Good; those same rights apply to Palestinians. The White House is applying

enormous pressure on everybody at the UN and they are using threats and coercion.  I wish they would invest the same energy in an attempt to promote peace, not threats.”

Has Iran have produced a Statesman or a sycophant?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is at his best when he is engaged in dialogue and debate according to people in Lebanon and Iran who know him well. But he gets to the point quickly and it sometimes catches his interlocutors off-guard if they aren’t prepared.

Devoutly religious, Iran’s President is unerringly polite and respectful, and never fails to mention the positive and the necessity of dialogue and seeking common ground.

But he speaks frankly and also noted that President Obama never made good on a pledge to try to improve US-Iranian relations and to open a dialogue with Iran, and said he still hopes for a face-to-face meeting. “I don’t believe that this is a chance that has been completely lost,” Ahmadinejad said.

He told Iran’s fellow UN Members “You all know that the nuclear issue has been turned and manipulated into a political issue,” and he added that Iran remains ready to negotiate over its disputed nuclear program, and repeated the country’s position that the program is for the peaceful production of energy

Following the 2009 disputed Iranian elections, he stated “ We were very much in support of change. I sent a personal message to President Obama, but we never received a response .

His UN speech theme was that most nations of the world are unhappy with the current international circumstances. “And despite the general longing and aspiration to promote peace, progress, and fraternity, wars, mass-murder, widespread poverty, and socioeconomic and political crises continue to infringe upon the rights and sovereignty of nations, leaving behind irreparable damage worldwide.” He continued, “Approximately, three billion people of the world live on less than 2.5 dollars a day, and over a billion people live without having even one sufficient meal on a daily basis. Forty-percent of the poorest world populations only share five percent of the global income, while twenty percent of the richest people share seventy-five percent of the total global income. More than twenty thousand innocent and destitute children die every day in the world because of poverty.”

He challenged the United Nations to reform itself and he urged honest debate on the vital issues confronting the world community. He asked the UN to bear in mind who imposed colonialism for over four centuries, who occupied lands and massively plundered resources of other nations, destroyed talents, and alienated languages, cultures and identities of nations?

He asked the UN members to join in solutions to the World’s problems but asked that we not hide the facts of:

· Who triggered the first and second world wars, that left seventy millions killed and hundreds of millions  injured or homeless. Who created the wars in Korean peninsula and in Vietnam?

· Who imposed through Zionism and over sixty years of war, homelessness, terror and mass murder on the Palestinian people and on countries of the region?

· Who imposed and supported for decades military dictatorship and totalitarian regimes on Asian, African, and Latin American nations?

· Who used nuclear bomb against defenseless people, and stockpiled thousands of warheads in their arsenals?

· Whose economies rely on waging wars and selling arms?

· Who provoked and encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade and impose an eight-year war on Iran, and who assisted and equipped him to deploy chemical weapons against our cities and our people?

· Who used the mysterious September 11 incident as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, killing, injuring, and displacing millions in two countries with the ultimate goal of bringing into its domination the Middle East and its oil resources?

· Who nullified the Breton Woods system by printing trillions of dollars without the backing of gold reserves or equivalent currency? A move that triggered inflation worldwide and was intended to prey on the economic gains of other nations?

· Which country’s military spending exceeds annually a thousand billion dollars, more than the military budgets of all countries of the world combined?

· Who dominates the policy-making establishments of the world economy?

· Who are responsible for the world economic recession, and are imposing the consequences on America, Europe and the world in general?

· Who are the ones dominating the Security Council which is ostensibly responsible for safeguarding the international security?

This month’s Iran-U.S Presidential addresses at the United Nations have given its members a clear choice for the challenges quickly engulfing the Middle East. Ultimately, as the popular awakenings in this region teach us, it is the citizens of each country who have the power to decide how to deal with these crises.

Iran’s President demonstrated at Turtle Bay this month that he understands the problems, offers rational solutions and is ready for constructive dialogue. The next move is up to President Obama to extricate him and his country from the jaws of Zionism and to join with Iran and the community of nations with constructive proposals to help alleviate the challenges Iran’s President enumerated.

By Franklin Lamb

On July 1, 2002, US planes bombed an Afghan wedding in the small village of Deh Rawud. Located to the north of Kandahar, the village seemed fortified by the region’s many mountains. For a few hours, its people thought they were safe from a war they had never invited. They celebrated, and as customs go, fired intermittently into the air.

The joyous occasion however, turned into an orgy of blood that will define the collective memory of Deh Rawud for generations.

It was reported that the US air force used a B-52 bomber and an AC-130 helicopter gunship in a battle against imagined terrorists. According to Afghan authorities, 40 people were killed and 100 wounded (The Guardian, July 2, 2002). Expectedly, the US military refused to apologize.

The bombing of Deh Rawud was a microcosm of the war – and equally lethal occupation – that followed. While al-Qaeda was not an imagined enemy, the invasion and destruction of Afghanistan was a morally repugnant – and self-contradictory – response to terrorism.

The war remains repulsive ten years after the US began attacking the poorest country on earth. This latest crime against humanity in Afghanistan is a continuation of a trend that has spanned decades. Unfortunate Afghanistan was designated a pawn in a Great Game between powerful contenders vying for strategic control and easy access to natural resources. Throughout history, Afghanistan has been brutalized simply because of its geographical location.

The people of Afghanistan should not expect an apology for the war either. “The United States invaded Afghanistan to crush an al-Qaeda base of operations whose leader, Osama bin Laden, oversaw the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and to make sure Afghanistan would not be a haven for Muslim terrorists to plot against the West,” wrote Carmen Gentile and Jim Michaels in USA Today, October 6. Such justification has permeated mainstream media like a mantra.

Malalai Joya, a former Afghan MP and human rights activist, dared to challenge this dubious rationale. In a video message recorded on the tenth anniversary of the war and occupation of Afghanistan, she said:

“Ten years ago the U.S. and NATO invaded my country under the fake banners of women’s rights, human rights, and democracy. But after a decade, Afghanistan still remains the most uncivil, most corrupt, and most war-torn country in the world. The consequences of the so-called war on terror has only been more bloodshed, crimes, barbarism, human rights and women’s rights violations, which has doubled the miseries and sorrows of our people” (Monthly Review, October 7).

Army commanders and neoconservative think-tanks are frantically trying to find reasons for celebration. Neither has been able to accept moral responsibility for the crimes committed in Afghanistan under their command.

Marine Gen. John Allen, for example, still sees “real gains, particularly in the south,” as a result of counterinsurgency efforts which he supposedly mastered in Iraq. “Insurgencies are effective when they have access to the population,” he said. “When they are excluded from the population, then insurgencies have a very hard time.”

A strange assessment, considering the fact that the Taliban are not alien bodies from outer space, and worse, seem to still be effectively controlling the country. When the Paris-based research group, the International Council on Security and Development claimed that Taliban controlled 72 percent of Afghanistan, NATO commanders dismissed the allegation as simply untrue (Bloomberg, December 8, 2008).

“The Taliban are now dictating terms in Afghanistan, both politically and militarily,” said Paul Burton, ICOS Director of Policy. “There is a real danger the Taliban will simply overrun Afghanistan.”

Concurrently, there are those who argue that this was in the past, and since then President Obama (in 2009) approved a surge of more than 30,000 troops with the very aim of pushing the Taliban back. Such a move would allow state-building efforts to commence, thus preparing Afghanistan for the withdrawal of foreign troops in December 2014.

Such claims are backed by the latest Department of Defense biannual report to Congress on Afghanistan. The surge has produced “tangible security progress”, claimed the report, and the “coalition’s efforts have wrested major safe havens from the insurgents’ control, disrupted their leadership networks and removed many of the weapons caches and tactical supplies they left behind at the end of the previous fighting season.”

But reality on the ground tells a different story. The Taliban is in control of the vast majority of the country’s provinces (according to Al Jazeera, October 7). Their near-complete control of the east and south, and constant encroachment elsewhere are only cemented by the regular news of their highly coordinated targeting of Afghanistan officials and foreign forces, even in the heart of Kabul. The Taliban’s behavior hardly suggests that it’s a militant movement on the retreat, but rather a shadow government in waiting. In fact, ‘shadow governors’ is the term being used to refer to Taliban officials administering much of the country.

“Recent events strongly suggest that the US and its NATO allies are losing the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban: top collaborator officials are knocked off at the drop of a Taliban turban,” wrote US professor James Petras. (Global Research, October 11).

As for the claim that Afghanis are better off as a result of the US military invasion, the numbers tell a different story. Sadly, few kept count of Afghani causalities in the first five years of the war. According to modest UN estimates, “11,221 civilians have been killed since 2006, 1,462 of them in the first six months of this year” (LA Times, October 7).

Three photographs were published by the German news organization, Der Spiegel last March. They were of US soldiers (known as the Kill Team) posing with mutilated Afghani civilians from Kandahar last year. They were horrifying to say the least, and scarcely have the impression of any kind of ‘tangible progress’.

“It was during Obama’s administration that civilian death tolls increased by 24%,” said Malalai Joya. “And the result of the surge of troops of Obama’s administration is more massacres, more crimes, violence, destruction, pain, and tragedy.”

And yet, there is no apology. It is almost as though the sons and daughters of Afghanistan are mere numbers, dispensable and extraneous.

Ten years after the war on Afghanistan, we stand in solidarity with the war’s victims; with Malalia Joya and her ever-proud people.

By Ramzy Baroud

– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.

Good News First

New York City’s financial district, notorious for devious deals that crash economies, witnessed a more harmonious transaction last week. Hundreds of people came together with distinct goals in mind, and shared in a more democratic, dialogic, and egalitarian cultural exchange than what is ordinarily experienced in our society. In just twenty-four hours, the hallmarks of a true people’s movement began to develop: medical centers, media centers, food delivery, sub-committees, affinity groups, and a General Assembly.

When I first heard that there was going to be a week-long demonstration of people’s power in downtown Manhattan, I decided I’d go if it lasted more than one day. On the first day, the demonstrators were blockaded from Wall Street and settled in Liberty Plaza’s Zuccotti Park, where they stayed overnight.

On day two, the organizers of the movement called to order a General Assembly, a forum for participants to propose ideas, set an agenda, and establish demands. The demonstration, which had been advertised online months in advance, had yet to articulate specific demands. I had hoped that the movement would echo what is presently the most popular and credible demand in the world right now: “ash-sha’ab yurid isqat an-nizam” (“the people demand an end to the regime”). Demanding this is not a cry to the oppressors to be kinder to the oppressed, but a call for action from the oppressed to overthrow their oppressors.

The First General Assembly

I arrived on day two, Sunday, September 18—in time for the first General Assembly. The General Assembly mostly consisted of the individuals who felt the movement should take unified action—roughly half of those in the square. Most of the other half had formed smaller “direct-action committees” that marched through the Financial District separately. Had the cops felt that the marches represented a threat, this division would have been extremely dangerous for everyone participating in the movement.

A group of “facilitators,” a dozen or so people who were instrumental in mobilizing protesters in the first place, addressed the assembly through megaphones and wrote down the names of individuals who raised their hands for a chance to speak, on a list known as “the stack.” Through the course of the discussion, it became clear that two goals dominated the General Assembly: one was to create a Tahrir Square-like movement in New York. The other goal—the one espoused by the facilitators—was to disrupt Wall Street for the sake of disrupting Wall Street. The main tactic for achieving this, at the time, was to gain media-acknowledgement of their agitation.

In an effort to push through their agenda, the facilitators used the typical anarchist organizing-tool: forging “consensus.” With over a hundred participants in the General Assembly, total agreement on the issues at stake would seem impossible. Here’s how they did it:

One of the first items on the agenda was where the movement would go should the police attempt mass arrests in Liberty Plaza. Instead of putting it to a vote, the facilitators concluded that the decision should not be left to the General Assembly, but to an “action committee” that would meet separately. Decision-making authority on most issues was siphoned away from the General Assembly into smaller committees.

This decision led to a debate about whether the action committee should keep the secondary location secret from the rest of the movement in order to avoid tipping off the surrounding police. I pointed out that—as a practical matter—there would be no secrets when it came to mobilizing hundreds of people. Another participant gave an impassioned speech about how our power came from unity and openness, whereas internal divisions and secrets were the tactics of our enemies on Wall Street. Veering somewhat from the topic at hand, he urged those in the crowd wearing bandanas and masks to remove them, saying they scared away potential allies. His speech drew more applause than any other during my four days in Liberty Plaza. Shortly after he finished speaking, however, about a hundred marchers returned from Wall Street, stealing all the momentum.

While everyone was distracted, the facilitators—who evidently disapproved of the direction of the General Assembly—huddled together for a couple minutes, telling eavesdroppers to go away. They subsequently abandoned their attempt to resolve how to prevent the entire movement’s arrest and “switched gears” into a discussion on what the next “direct action” should be.

Within minutes, the discussion turned to who was willing to be arrested and how. Many felt that the quickest way to make the news was to get arrested, and that this alone would make the movement more socially relevant. Most people at the square understood that arrests are a consequence of any significant social movement; some seemed to believe, however, the converse was true: if there are arrests, it will be a significant social movement.

When the facilitators realized that the General Assembly did not approve of this, they tried to disband the General Assembly by asking if everyone needed a break. The participants made it clear that they did not need a break. When the floor reopened, I suggested that the reason for the crowd’s unrest was that the leaders of the movement seemed more interested in getting on television than creating an alternative society based on equality, dialog and democracy in the square. I argued that this itself would attract the amount of people needed to remove the institutions that hold together a society based on domination. Shortly afterward, another participant gave an eloquent speech about the foolishness of trying to occupy Wall Street with only three hundred people, and the need to first occupy the hearts and minds of our fellow New Yorkers, fellow Americans, and fellow humans.

After nearly five hours, only one motion had been brought to a vote: that the “consensus” be modified to require a mere ninety percent majority. Spirits, however, remained high.

In the end, there was to be one big vote on whether or not we should march on Wall Street, yet again, the next morning. Most participants seemed to want to stay in Liberty Plaza to develop the culture of a mass movement.

The opposing position was—shockingly—to confront the police on Wall Street. At one point, the lead facilitator pled that we occupy Wall Street because “it’s pretty clear everybody wants to.” When the suggestion received little support, the facilitator exhorted, “but the name of this movement is ‘occupy Wall Street”’: a name chosen by the facilitators, not the General Assembly.

To forge a consensus in their favor, the facilitators engaged in creative “synthesizing.” Instead of voting between the two contradictory proposals, a facilitator announced that the General Assembly would vote on a synthesis of the two: those who wanted to hold down Liberty Plaza could stay, while the “majority” (which was actually a minority) would march on Wall Street.

The General Assembly was clear about its hostility to this proposal. Overwhelmingly, the participants demanded unity. Instead of deciding which proposal the entire group should follow, the facilitators came up with a “new synthesis.” The great majority of the movement would stay in Liberty Square, while a small group of direct actioneers would occupy Wall Street. The Facilitators then put this second formulation of their first proposal to a vote.

The “everybody just do what they want” proposal was liberal enough to appeal to the liberals, and anarchical enough to appeal to the anarchists. About fifty-seven people voted in favor. I think I was the only person who bothered voting against. The final decision was so uninspiring that about one-third of the people in the square paid no attention to it, and most of those who were involved didn’t bother voting.

Even though those advocating the march were a minority, the procedural coup was complete. I predicted that—in the heat of the moment—everybody would end up marching, simply because it was the only mass action available.

The Direct Action Committee

After the General Assembly, I sat in on the direct-action committee. Like I had done at the General Assembly, I let everyone in the action-committee know that if the point was to get media attention at the cost of dwindling the numbers of the movement through mass arrests, the direct-actioneers should confront the police on Wall Street, one of the most militarized parts of the first world since 9/11. Then I suggested marching north along Broadway. This would get the attention of actual New Yorkers and possibly build the movement.

But the marchers refused to look past Wall Street. I tried convincing them that they weren’t going to disrupt the capitalist system, that the police outnumbered us, were heavily armed, and were quite experienced in dealing with marches on Wall Street. I pointed out that most people who worked on Wall Street showed up at five in the morning, so marching at nine was useless. I pointed out that Wall Street is a mere symbol of capitalism, and that the movement was currently occupying one of the most strategic and symbolic locations in Manhattan, and perhaps the world. Whenever I brought up practical matters, the response was that the action was supposed to be symbolic. When I said the symbolism of occupying Liberty Plaza was powerful enough, the response was that it was important to disrupt the capitalist system, if even for a minute.

My last attempt to sway the action committee was by sharing my opinion that it should not be our goal to disrupt the capitalist system with no alternative solution. I argued that Wall Street represented just one group within the global capitalist system, and disrupting it would only benefit America’s capitalist enemies. I argued, furthermore, that if they didn’t have something better to put in its place, even if they destroyed the capitalist system completely, it would rise violently from its ashes.

There was no way for me to know what most participants thought of my ideas. Shortly after I made my point, the direct action committee’s facilitators decided there was enough of a “consensus” made on the strategy of marching to Wall Street, and it was time to talk tactics.

The Facilitation and Process Workshop

Later, I sat in on the first “facilitation and process workshop.” This was organized to train individuals to replace the current facilitators of the General Assembly, who wanted a break from their self-imposed duties while ensuring the continuity of the hierarchy.

When I sat down, I learned that the facilitators had obtained a consensus that gave them the power to interject at any moment, whereas everybody else would have to take turns to speak. This procedure was, in theory, starkly different from the prevailing method of the General Assembly—taking turns to raise arguments or proposals through “the stack.” Effectively, there wasn’t much difference.

The General Assembly—like every anarchist meeting I’ve ever attended—left loopholes to avoid taking turns. A person could circumvent the stack’s order by making one of several specified hand gestures to signify either a “point of procedure,” a “clarifying question,” or a “direct response.” The keeper of the stack could choose whether or not to acknowledge the interruption. These rules all but guaranteed that the insiders, those who were least open to a diversity of viewpoints, most impatient, and traditionally empowered would dominate the conversation.

During the hour or so that I participated in the workshop, four non-facilitators addressed the group for about ninety seconds each. The remainder of the hour consisted of the facilitators talking among themselves, extrapolating on how vague procedural rules might apply to hypothetical situations and congratulating themselves by repeating that their process for the General Assembly was the most decentralized, democratic one imaginable.

In fact, the procedure for bringing anything to a vote in the General Assembly was highly centralized and hugely inefficient. First, a “working group” had to be formed to demonstrate that a participant’s proposal had some support. The working group had to reach a consensus on the proposal’s final form, which was then rearticulated before the General Assembly. The facilitator then asked whether there was a consensus from the General Assembly, at which point supporters would raise their hands and wiggle their fingers. The facilitator next asked whether there were any “blocks”—a sort of individual veto, expressed by crossing one’s arms. The blocker could then explain his or her opposition to the proposal. If there was a block, the facilitator was supposed to put the proposal to a vote that required a 90% majority to pass. In practice, however, the facilitators’ affinity for consensus often caused them to give in to the block without further voting, sacrificing the majority’s will in the name of democracy.

Frustrated by this, I proposed to the workshop a democratic, decentralized and more efficient procedure for the General Assembly, free of any designated facilitators:

Instead of someone “in charge” scanning the crowd to see whose hands were raised and writing down the order in which participants would speak, the “stack” would be formed by whoever wanted to talk forming a line. This was the only part of my proposal that was implemented.

My proposal also prohibited “direct responses” and other means of circumventing the stack. Addresses to the General Assembly would be limited to concrete proposals; those who seconded a proposal could speak briefly in its favor; those who opposed could speak against it. Then the proposal would be put to a majority vote. The next person in line would then get a chance to speak. No facilitators. No stack-takers. Equal rights and opportunities for all participants.

As I spoke, several of the facilitators wiggled their hands at me in a way I hadn’t seen before: hands down, wiggling fingers toward the ground. This apparently meant they disagreed with my proposal. About sixty seconds into my proposal, the facilitators started rolling their fingers at me, a signal that they wanted me to hurry up, or risk getting cut off. I ignored this and completed my proposal. When the facilitators did this to the woman who spoke after me, another woman chastised them for this demeaning scare tactic.

The facilitators’ failure to articulate their objections to my proposal except through sloganeering betrayed their fundamental distrust in a truly democratic process. They accused me of advocating for the “tyranny of the majority,” the counter to which is easily the tyranny of the minority. They said that facilitators were needed in case somebody came up with a bad proposal, further proof that they did not trust the General Assembly to vote for themselves.

The workshop ended with plans for a second workshop, after which the participants would be given authority to facilitate the General Assembly. I decided to maintain opposition to the process.

Revolutionary or Bourgeois Democracy

A revolutionary mass movement needs a set of unifying goals, and a unified body that can carry out the necessary actions to reach these goals. If these conditions are not met, the mass movement is merely a collection of groups that happen to be carrying out somewhat similar actions in the same place, at the same time. This type of mass movement is quite susceptible to harsh suppression by a modern nation-state.

The General Assembly is the natural place for the movement as a whole to decide upon actions to be carried out together. Because of the extreme procedural flaws of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the General Assembly became the main place for public dialog, even though it was the least conducive place for dialog, being that only one person could speak at a time.

The smaller organizations, action committees, informal dialogue circles and duos are the natural place for dialog, where politicking happens, where the mood is set, where the culture is created, where people synthesize their ideas into concrete proposals, where people who are prepared to propose a plan of action to the General Assembly gather enough popular support for it to be passed. The action committees, however, became the primary vehicles for deciding upon and carrying out action, in spite of the fact that their diminished size made them the least effective bodies for carrying out mass action.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was supposed to be a revolt against a hierarchal, dehumanizing oligopoly. In reality, all that was created was a microcosm of the same system, but with new leaders. Like our nation’s leaders, Occupy Wall Street’s leaders listened to everyone’s grievances, then decided upon a pre-determined plan of action that cleverly borrowed the language of their constituency. The leaders then allowed the participants to decide between this plan of action and an even worse proposal: in this case, marching on Wall Street to an unspecified end, or doing nothing. When this failed, less democratic methods were used to mobilize people.

The Morning March

I didn’t sleep in Liberty Plaza Sunday night. I was confident I could make it back for the 9 AM General Assembly, before the 9:30 march on Wall Street. A friend of mine texted me at 7:09 AM, letting me know that the General Assembly was starting surprisingly early. By the time I got there—before 8 AM—it looked like ninety percent of the people had already left Liberty Plaza.

From what I was able to gather from the disheartened people left in the square, the leaders woke everybody up at around 6:30 AM with the promise of a General Assembly. After everybody was assembled, a couple announcements were made. At one point, somebody got up in front of the General Assembly and shouted that they should march on Wall Street immediately. Instead of voting on this proposal, those in favor started marching. As I predicted, almost everybody followed.

Forgetting, for a moment, the movement’s complete ineffectiveness, I tried imagining what would happen if it succeeded in shutting down Wall Street. I couldn’t help looking north, to Ground Zero, where ten years ago a small group of people carried out a highly successful operation that disrupted Wall Street for an entire week. What good came of that? The destroyed buildings are still being rebuilt. The families are broken forever. The culprits were not just vilified by the American public, but by those they considered their allies—the international Muslim community, including Islamic nation-states in militant opposition to the US.

I was wrong in my prediction that the police would use the movement’s internal division to commence mass arrests. The marchers were so non-threatening to the police and to the capitalist system that instead of blockading Wall Street, the police spent the night organizing a maze of barricades for the march to proceed through. A convergence of interests took place whereby the protestors got to prove to the world that the USA is not entirely comprised of war-and-financial-criminals; whereas our nation’s rulers got to prove to the rest of the world, as a backdrop to the General Assembly of the United Nations, that the United States is still the one place in the world which allows its citizens to protest: as long as they’re predominantly white, middle-class, male citizens.

The police’s facilitation of the protest didn’t stop the marchers from claiming, upon their triumphant, yet exhausted return, that the cops were scared of them—these two-hundred unarmed, untrained, unorganized, somewhat disenfranchised youths. One marcher gave a speech about how nobody could tell them that six of their comrades had been arrested for nothing; for they had disrupted trading, if only for a minute. The bell on the stock exchange, after all, had rung at 9:31.

With the current state of the people’s movement, America is in for a long winter.

By Fritz Tucker

02 October, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Fritz Tucker is a native Brooklynite, writer, activist, theorist and researcher of people’s movements the world over, from the US to Nepal. He blogs at fritztucker.blogspot.com