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Public anger at the 2008 Wall Street bailout, concerns about debt, and a deep and pervasive fear that another financial crash is just a matter of time create an important moment of opportunity for a long overdue public conversation about the purpose of financial services and the necessary steps to assure that the financial sector fulfills that purpose.

Much of the recent discussion of financial reform has centered on limiting Wall Street excesses to curb fraud and reduce the risk of another financial crash. This is vitally important, but it does not address the issue raised by Sheila Bair shortly before she stepped down last year as FDIC chair:

“In policy terms, the success of the financial sector is not an end in itself, but a means to an end—which is to support the vitality of the real economy and the livelihood of the American people. What really matters to the life of our nation is enabling entrepreneurs to build new businesses that create more well-paying jobs, and enabling families to put a roof over their heads and educate their children.”

It is very straightforward. The proper purpose of the financial services sector is to serve the real economy on which everyone depends for their daily needs, their quality of life, and their opportunity to be creative, contributing members of their communities.

By this standard of performance, Wall Street does not serve us well. Indeed, Wall Street’s most lavish rewards go not to those who enable others to create wealth, but rather to those most skilled and ruthless in expropriating the wealth of others—behavior condemned as immoral by every major religion. To justify their actions, Wall Street players and their apologists turn reality and logic on their heads by treating growth in the size and profitability of the financial sector as an end in itself, and a measure of increasing sector efficiency.

Because financial services are a means, not an end, they are properly treated as an overhead cost to be minimized. By this reckoning, growth in the size of the financial sector as a percent of GDP represents growth in Wall Street’s overhead burden on the real economy from a highly efficient one percent in 1850 to a grossly inefficient 8.5 percent in 2010:

The following graph gives us a similar perspective on the growth in Wall Street profits. From 1929 to the mid-1980s, profits of the financial sector tracked right along with those of the profits of non-financial (read real economy) corporations. As Wall Street became increasingly predatory in the 1980s, its profits relative to profits in the real economy began to grow exponentially. That may look like an increase in efficiency from a Wall Street perspective. From the perspective of the society, however, it is another measure of Wall Street’s increasing overhead burden.

Market advocates correctly note that markets have a wonderful ability to self-regulate in the public interest. When market advocates go on to argue, however, that the solution for market failure is to get government out of the way, they demonstrate remarkable ignorance of basic market economics. Markets self-organize in the public interest only if incentives align with the public interest.

As Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz correctly observes: “When private rewards are well aligned with social objectives things work well; when they are not, matters can get ugly.”

As the 2008 crash revealed, Wall Street’s reward system renders it incapable of self-regulation in the public interest. Furthermore, Wall Street financial institutions have become so over leveraged and so interconnected that the collapse of one threatens the collapse of all—and thereby potential total collapse of the global economy. Corrective action necessarily falls to government, which can deal with Wall Street’s failure to self-regulate in one of four ways.

1. Continue to bail out failed banks at taxpayer expense.

2. Build a countervailing external regulatory system equal to or greater than the size and power of the financial system, spell out detailed lists of prohibited behaviors, and impose fines and jail sentences for each violation sufficient to make good behavior more attractive than bad behavior.

3. Implement a system of taxpayer funded financial incentives for good behavior to achieve the same outcome, or

4. Create a system of incentives that drive a reorganization of the financial system and a realignment of its internal rewards to favor transparency, accountability, and public service. A basic framework for such a reorganization is spelled out in the New Economy Working Group report, Liberating Main Street from Wall Street Rule.

The first option rewards ever greater risk-taking and will ultimately bankrupt even the wealthiest government. Options two and three are enormously complex, set up an intense competition between private and public institutions, invite massive corruption, and require huge public expenditure.

Only the fourth option can create a system that is adaptive, self-regulating, and relatively inexpensive to maintain with modest government oversight. Here are two examples.

>> Basic Banking Services. This need is best met by a system of small and locally owned banks that function as well-regulated public utilities supported by deposit insurance and access to low cost credit. To provide appropriate incentives to keep individual banks relatively small, insurance fees, interest rates, and reserve & capital requirements should be based on the bank’s total assets. Larger banks will pay higher fees and interest rates and be required to maintain higher reserves and capital to loan ratios—thus giving an inherent competitive advantage to banks that remain small. Banks organized as cooperatives, such as credit unions and cooperative banks directly accountable to those they serve, might enjoy especially favorable terms to encourage cooperative ownership.

 >> Proprietary Trading. If a group of investors or money managers chose to join together to create a firm to engage in proprietary trading, they could do so. The firm must, however, be organized as a partnership with all debts and losses backed by the personal assets of the partners to provide a powerful incentive for responsible self-regulation. Propriety trading would be its only allowed function. Such firms would not enjoy any government guarantee or tax incentive and they would be prohibited from accepting investments from retirement or other funds held and managed in trust.

The Wall Street experience has demonstrated why it is important to confine different financial functions to separate smaller institutions that hold managers accountable to those who bear the risk.

Get the system’s internal incentives right and the priorities and risk calculations of the financial sector will shift dramatically, its size will shrink, real efficiency will increase, and regulatory costs and failures will plummet. Restructuring to get the internal incentives right should be a foundation of all future financial reform efforts.

By David Korten

6 February 2012

@ YES! Magazine

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, TheGreat Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.

The secret NATO report, “State of the Taliban 2012,” commissioned by the US and NATO was never supposed to see the light of day. Unfortunately for the US war party it was leaked to the press and the New York Times has published many of its observations and conclusions (“Taliban Captives Dispute U.S. View on State of War” 2-2-2012).

The report was based on information taken from 4000 prisoners, Taliban and others, that have fallen into the hands of US forces. To the surprise of the US the prisoners are rather upbeat about the progress of the war and think they are actually winning it. The report says that while the US thinks it is winning and is about to start winding down its own participation the interviews of the captives shows, according to the NYT, “a Taliban insurgency that is far from vanquished or demoralized.” The same issue of the Times reported the optimistic statement of Defense Secretary Panetta that the US would set 2013 not 2014 as the date for ending US combat in Afghanistan. This was later corrected by the ground commanders in Afghanistan– 2014 is the date– and we may still remain after that date for a long, long time. They wish.

The report says the prisoners state that in those areas where the US forces withdraw and turn over control to the Afghan Army, that army begins to cooperate with the Taliban– as do the local Afghan government officials. “Many Afghans are already bracing themselves for an eventual return of the Taliban.” The report also says that while the Afghan government says it will carry on the war after the US withdraws “many of its personnel have secretly reached out to insurgents, seeking long-term options in the event of a possible Taliban victory.” Well of course, all options should be kept on the table.

The report gives the impression that the war is lost and the government can’t deal with this reality. Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings a US-NATO spokes person had this to say about the information gotten from the prisoners. “This document aggregates the comments of Taliban detainees in a captive environment without considering the validity of or motivation behind their reflections. Any conclusions drawn from this would be questionable at best.”

Wait a minute. We captured these people and interrogated them to get information about the enemy. We don’t like the information we get so then say due to a “captive environment” the conclusions are “questionable.” But all interrogations of prisoners take place in a “captive environment” and are therefore “questionable.” So why bother? It appears that if the government likes the information it gets its credible otherwise its “questionable.” This is completely intellectually dishonest and we should not believe a word we are told by the military unless we have independent third person verification.

What could be more comical than NATO spokespersons attempting to refute their own report once it became public. The State Department has also gotten into the act. The report mentions the fact that the Taliban has strained relations with their “Pakistani patrons.” But Pakistan is supposed to be a US “ally.” How foolish does the US look when the money it lavishes on the Pakistanis is redirected to the Taliban and used to kill US troops. How can you even dream of winning a war when you are all tied up in these contradictory circumstances? The State Department realizes how bad this looks and also played down the significance of the NATO report, saying it was “in no way designed to impact our on going efforts to be back on track with Pakistan.” Were we ever “on track” with Pakistan or just being used by the Pakistanis after they realized we didn’t know what we were doing in Afghanistan?

For example, the Pakistani government, according to the report, “is thoroughly aware of Taliban activities and the whereabouts of all senior Taliban personnel.” And, “There is a wide spread assumption that Pakistan will never allow the Taliban the chance to become independent of ISI [the CIA/FBI of Pakistan-the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate] control.” Yes, lets get back on track– the US is at “war” with the Taliban, the Taliban is controlled by Pakistan therefore….. draw your own conclusions.

An important conclusion of the report, that NATO and the US really don’t want people to know about, is the following: “Taliban commanders, along with rank and file members, increasingly believe that their control of Afghanistan is inevitable. Though the Taliban suffered severely in 2011, its strength, motivation, funding and tactical proficiency remains intact.”

Where does the funding come from? It comes from us! Money from the US to Pakistan goes to the Taliban. Trucks and weapons we give to the Afghan Army are sold off at bargain basement rates, or “donated”, to the Taliban by corrupt elements in the Karzai government. The Taliban’s strength is intact– we are withdrawing. Their motivation is intact– we just want to get out as soon as possible (sooner). Their tactical proficiency is intact, we are turning operations over to the Afghan Army many of whose troops would rather shoot us than the Taliban. Is it really too hard to see how all this is going to end? Oh, I forgot to add that besides the ISI, the report says the Afghan intelligence agency also supplies the Taliban with information about where American troops are located so that they can be attacked.

So there you have it. We are spending 2 billion dollars a week to support the war against the Taliban and both our “ally” Pakistan and the Afghan government we set up and are “defending” are on the side of the Taliban. General Petraeus retired just in time. If he runs the CIA as well he did the war in Afghanistan the decline of US imperialism will be well underway.

By Thomas Riggins

6 February 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Thomas Riggins is the associate editor of Political Affairs and also writes for the People’s World.

Hong Kong – It was somewhat cute – that Valentine’s Day get-together at the White House between US President Barack Obama and China’s likely next leader, Xi Jinping.

Tall, affable, self-confident, always ready to smile, with a pop star as second wife (People’s Liberation Army singer Peng Liyuan), a daughter studying at Harvard, and hooked on Hollywood war movies, Xi couldn’t display a more graphic contrast with the departing Hu Jintao, who always looks like he’s frozen at Madame Tussaud’s.

But what’s love got to do with it, a remixed Tina Turner would say? Not much. While Chinese media was splashing in their front pages that “the eagle and the dragon” must strive to attain “strategic mutual trust”, Xi – like a lover scolded on a blind date – was lectured by Obama on the devaluation of the yuan, human rights and the Middle East.

Obama spars with Xi over trade and Syria

In slightly over a year, Xi Jinping becomes China’s new president – in fact a first among equals among the ultra-tight, nine-member Politburo standing committee in Beijing; that is, the people who have approved all crucial policies contained in the latest Chinese five-year-plan, which started in 2011.

It’s been a long and winding road since the US fell in love with the Little Helmsman, Deng Xiaoping, during his famous 1979 trip to the US. When he came back to Beijing, Deng – inspired by Singapore but also by much of what he saw in his trip – unleashed his reforms with a bang, “crossing the river by feeling the stones”, but always with a laser-focused goal: “To get rich is glorious.”

A little over three decades later, Chairman Mao’s intellectuals forced to live as peasants were replaced by turbo-capitalist urban plutocrats. China is the second-largest economy and the factory of the world, an emerging superpower, and the United States’ top creditor. And Xi is the man either Obama or Mitt Romney – if he does not become roadkill, courtesy of a legion of irate right-wingers – will have to deal with directly. But how?

There’s the rub – because obsessed-with-China Washington elites remain eminently perplexed about the dragon. Washington demands anything and everything from China – but one never knows what Washington is willing to offer. So is this a partnership – “strategic mutual trust”, as Beijing would like it? Or is this outright strategic competition, openly confrontational? Will they shape, together, the 21st century multipolar world; or are we already in the fog of a New Cold War?

Barack’s blues

Since late last year, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been peddling the US’ Pacific Century. And in early January – in the Pentagon, no less – Obama announced the US’ new defence strategy, immediately dismissed by the War Party for being a “lead-from-behind” failure.

The new US defence strategy is cleverly deceptive. It may be easily interpreted as the blueprint for a New Cold War, this time fought in Asia. When Beijing looks at it, it sees encirclement – not mutual trust. Pentagon “power projections” abound – from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea.

As for the much-lauded “pivoting” from the Middle East to Asia, in fact it implies a long-term stop in Southwest Asia – as in Iran. The top three US Middle East mantras remain unchanged; blind support for the six monarchies/emirates of the Gulf Cooperation Council (forget about Arab Springs in the Gulf); “standing up for Israel’s security”; and most of all containment of Iran.

A “pivoting” can certainly be identified in the special emphasis on preventing Iran – as well as China – from going asymmetric, as in electronic and cyber warfare, and developing top-class ballistic and cruise missiles as well as sophisticated air defences.

What the Pentagon calls “rebalancing” towards Asia-Pacific – sometimes described as “repositioning” – centres on outright manipulation of mixed emotions, especially in India and Japan and across the South China Sea, about China’s spectacular rise.

China is described as “assertive” and also “revanchist” – in both cases implying a threat. The scene is set for Washington to come to the rescue – posing as the benign outside power providing regional security.

This will hardly be taken seriously in most parts of Asia. Not with the US national debt (now bigger than the whole US economy) at over $15tn and counting. And not with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the ten ASEAN countries being progressively integrated into China’s economy.

Moreover, Beijing is extremely flexible; its official policy is to create “win-win” trade and commercial situations all across Asia-Pacific, such as the “10+1” (ASEAN members plus China) in Southeast Asia.

As a gathering of expat bankers in Hong Kong commented, in half-jest, the overall impression is that empires don’t roll over and die; they just pivot from dominating one backyard (the Middle East) to another (East Asia).

Mitt’s opera buffa

Now let’s focus on a potential Mitt Romney presidency. Mitt is widely perceived as a candidate of the cream of the one per cent; his mega-wealthy top supporters include executives at Bain Capital (his former firm), Goldman Sachs bankers and hedge fund moguls.

Among his foreign policy team, those in charge of Asia-Pacific policy are Evan Feigenbaum, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia during the second Bush administration; Aaron Friedberg, a former deputy assistant for national security affairs and director of policy planning under Dick Cheney; and Kent Lucken, managing director at Citigroup Private Bank in Boston.

Romney’s foreign policy white paper is titled An American Century. Apart from the fact that it mirrors the exact same Obama/Hillary rhetoric, it’s a neo-con masterpiece. No wonder: Almost word for word, it repackages the neo-con agenda of the defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC) – that collection of warmongers who brought us the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The key author of Romney’s paper is no other than Eliot Cohen, currently a professor of strategic studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins – the ultimate neo-con training school.

Cohen, a protégé of the infamous Paul Wolfowitz, was one of PNAC’s creators in 1997. Immediately after 9/11 he reportedly came up with the notorious concept of “World War IV”, connecting Saddam Hussein with 9/11 and describing Iraq as “the big prize”.

Dick Cheney helped him to land a job as counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007. Confirming once more that Washington is the eternal gift that keeps on giving, Cohen is now one of Romney’s top advisers.

Predictably, the Cohen paper – Mitt’s foreign policy roadmap – is an orgy of pristine neo-imperialism. Call it the Bush III administration. Yet to give an idea of the current Republican foul mood, it’s not even hardcore enough for those armchair warmongers who pontificate in the editorial pages of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

“Unilateralism may be over – but it’s more than alive and kicking in the official roadmaps of both Obama and Romney.”

Here is an example of the average Mitt Romney foreign policy shtick. Cohen the ventriloquist has led Mitt to stress that “the United States will apply the full spectrum of hard and soft power to influence events before they erupt into conflict” (that’s music to the practitioners of the Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine).

Mirroring Obama’s new doctrine, on China, “the United States should maintain and expand its naval presence in the Western Pacific” and should close off “China’s option of expanding its influence through coercion”.

The icing on the cake is, of course, “a robust, multi-layered national ballistic-missile defense system to deter and defend against nuclear attacks on our homeland and our allies”. It does conjure up images of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks.

Romney has not antagonised China in his campaign trail as much as the other Republican contenders, roadkill or not – at least not yet. But he’s unmistakable; a President Romney will rush to war on Iran – because Eliot Cohen said so. Of course he’s not telling unsuspecting voters that a war against Iran is a war against China – with the vortex of unpredictable consequences included.

In real life, geopolitically, a remix of the classic balance of power among a group of nations, in an arc from East to West, is already emerging. Unilateralism may be over – but it’s more than alive and kicking in the official roadmaps of both Obama and Romney. As Xi Jinping starts to cross the river by feeling the stones, the last thing he sees under these muddy waters is “strategic mutual trust”.

By Pepe Escobar

20 February 2012

@ Al Jazeera

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source:

Al Jazeera

Athens was in flames. But, stock markets felt relieved. The Greek bank-friendly elites denied to recognize people’s plight and “honorably” embraced humiliating conditions to honor debt.

People in Greece are in anger and anguish. Within 10 hours, about half a hundred buildings were set ablaze in the Greek capital, an act of desperation that germinates as public space is encroached by banks, as democracy in a society is dictated and distorted by global finance capital, and people lose breathing space. Broader section of people was protesting peacefully and violent scenes raged the capital while the Greek parliament was passing a bank-dictated austerity plan to make banks happy. The fact got exposed: bankers pushing for austerity, market welcoming austerity, people standing against austerity, and, bankers standing against people. And, austerity is, in actual sense, pressing down labor, robbing labor.

As the Greek parliament passed the austerity measures demanded by its lenders stock markets rallied. In Athens, shares in Greek banks leaped by 10%. The FTSE 100 went high, Germany’s Dax climbed, in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose up, the French Cac was up, the Italian MIB bought a higher position, and the euro took upward journey before taking a shallow dip. In the secondary bond markets, 10-year securities issued by Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Spain felt strong. In London, Lloyds Banking Group led the upward jump. The creditors felt assured that their debtor, Greece, is an obedient honorable soul that stands by promise. The Greek government will express their irreversible written assurance within days to avoid bankruptcy. A high moral standing in creditor-debtor relationship where creditor has all the rights to rob and dictate debtor!

The EU welcomed the Athenian parliamentary practice as EC Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Olli Rehn called the vote a show of Greece’s determination to address its finances. And, he condemned the violence. However, the disciplined Greek MPs’ yeah votes were not enough to make bank bosses fully happy. It failed to ensure delivery of second rescue package to Greece. A banker, according to Bloomberg TV, reminded Greece to maintain its credibility with its international partners. It was an exercise with democracy: financiers telling people’s representatives what to table and how to vote!

But that democratic practice was not enough. Athens have to initiate “Additional measures” – more cuts worth 325m euro. Germany has warned: The vote is not enough to guarantee that Greece receives its bailout money. The Bundestag, the German parliament, will take the final decision on Greece. A report on Greece from the Troika – the IMF, EU, ECB – must reach the Bundestag before it decides whether to approve the bailout fund. Moreover, the euro group finance ministers will observe Greece’s compliance with the terms, and there should be conclusive understanding with private creditors over debt restructuring. Legislature of a country supervises legislative doings and wrong doings of another country! It is financiers’ global capital-sovereign practice.

To rationalize passing of the austerity bill, the Greek prime minister Papademos warned that banks would collapse and schools and hospitals would be left without funds unless the bill passed. He straightened fact partially while a partial fact was ignored. Without the austerity measures finance capital would feel uneasy. But Greek schools and hospitals, as main stream media report regularly, are passing through problems for long.

Financial problems, in usual manner, crept into Greek politics. With appointment of unelected ministers under the premiership of unelected Papademos, a banker turned academic turned politician, in the reshuffled cabinet the Athenian bankruptcy-bail out comedy has generated a neo-democratic model in Greece. Parliament members standing against the austerity bill have been expelled. Earlier, before tabling the bill, MPs were warned of not to oppose the austerity bill. The next crisis, as conservative New Democracy party head Samaras told parliament, is likely to come with the coming election within months. He likes to renegotiate the agreements with the troika following the elections. His signing of the pledge to bankers is uncertain although he voted for the bill. Vassilis Korkidis, the head of the National Confederation of Greek Commerce, said in a statement: The country’s political system is failing.

Along with democracy-drama in Greece two interviews carried by German press revealed interesting observations by powerful actors on the world stage. George Soros in an interview has criticized German chancellor Merkel for “leading Europe in the wrong direction”. He warned of another great depression unless funds are not pumped now instead of cutting spending. He was frank. Profit margins will be under pressure, he said. Soros admitted: Markets do not correct their own excesses. He told point blank: Germany was among the first countries to break the euro-zone rules. The Germans were not exactly innocent. Everybody broke the Stability Pact rules. Germany has mishandled the rescue operation by providing the bailout at penal interest rates, which then led to an increase in the indebtedness of Greece. It is only a policy failure on the part of Europe and particularly of Germany, because Germany is in charge. That is why today Greece is beyond rescue. Soros added: People like German finance minister Schäuble don’t seem to understand that the heavily indebted countries are now at a severe disadvantage, because they have basically become heavily indebted in a foreign currency, the euro. Soros tried to identify the root: The euro crisis is a direct continuation or consequence of the 2008 crash. This crisis isn’t over yet and we will have to spend more state money in order to stop the skidding. Otherwise we will repeat the mistakes that plunged America into the Great Depression in 1929. Angela Merkel simply doesn’t understand that. He told in a simple voice: I am concerned about my own interests. Nevertheless, I think that I perhaps understand the financial system better than some of the people who are in charge. In the interview conducted by Georg Mascolo, Gregor Peter Schmitz and Martin Hesse Soros expressed his ambitious intention: I am trying to change [Angela Merkel’s] mind.

More talks are there. Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, in an interview said: Germany occasionally shows a tendency to boast. He was concerned with the attitude. Westerwelle wants a European Germany. He said: We should not believe that we will always be the strong man of Europe. Westerwelle expressed his dissatisfaction with the political impasse in Greece in recent weeks. The German minister told: Greece’s future is in the hands of the Greeks. However he advised the Greeks: [The Greeks] have to demonstrate that they are serious. It isn’t enough to adopt reform programs. Instead, [those] have to be implemented without delay – not at some point in the future, but now. In the interview conducted by Konstantin von Hammerstein and Ralf Neukirch the German minister reminded Greece in a stern voice: There will be no more advance payments. Only actions count now.

Greece, its elites, has to discipline itself, in the manner bank capital likes. But, there is another voice, the voice of the people. Graffiti on Athens walls said: “No IMF-no new [austerity] measures”, “No more IMF! Stop the intervention in Greek sovereignty. If you don’t give democracy a chance, you should expect US!”, “Bosses are killers of the people”. This voice will complicate finance capital’s democratic politics in Greece.

Dhaka-based freelancer Farooque Chowdhury contributes on socioeconomic issues.

14 February 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Over the last month, the Bahraini police have been using tear gas almost every night against protesters in residential areas. Specifically, the police have been targeting the Shi’a neighborhoods of Iker, Sitra, Nuwadrat, and Ma’ameer. While there are international guidelines for the proper use of tear gas, victims of such attacks describe the police using tear gas inappropriately – including firing into homes and other closed spaces. Such inappropriate use can have disastrous consequences. Since the start of the unrest in February 2011, at least 13 civilians have died from exposure to the tear gas, according to Bahraini civil society groups. They note that those who die from tear gas inhalation are usually people who are already vulnerable due to old age or disease, which make the gas’s effects more deadly.

One of these victims was a newborn baby who was in her own home when she was exposed to the gas. She died on December 11th when she was just 6 days old. 14-year-old Yasseen Al Asfoor was the most recent victim of government misuse of tear gas against protestors; he suffered from respiratory problems and tear gas killed him on January 22nd.

A Bahraini doctor told Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) that she believes that the government is using a new kind of tear gas that is more dangerous. But without knowing the active ingredient, she has been struggling to treat patients:

“I was exposed to different types of gas when I went to (the village of) Sitra—a white gas and a yellow one, but I also saw a third gas of a blue color from a distance. The gas felt like a poison, like a thousand knives and needles all over your body; what kind of tear gas is supposed to affect people this way? I have seen tear gas patients who are in a state of convulsion that never ends, like a prolonged seizure… Before the tear gas that was being used had ‘Pennsylvania, USA’ written on it, now the canisters are just blank with no labels. It is impossible to know what the contents are.”

Other Bahraini doctors also noted that the symptoms of the tear gas were unusual. When they asked the Ministry of Health to run tests on the gas canisters, their requests were denied. Since the long-term effects of prolonged and repeated exposure to tear gas has never been studied, physicians in Bahrain have begun to worry about the impact that repeated exposure to these chemicals may have on the general population.

Because the Bahraini government has demonstrated it cannot be trusted to use riot-control materials in a manner consistent with international guidelines, the U.S. should not authorize additional sales of tear gas and related materials to Bahrain. PHR urges the U.S. Administration to ensure that it does not grant export licenses for tear gas and other materials that may be improperly used against civilians. The Administration should also ensure comprehensive end-use monitoring of all U.S. items sent to Bahrain that may be used during the ongoing attacks. Additionally, PHR welcomes the U.S. Administration’s decision to delay a pending $53 million arms sale to Bahrain, and encourages the Administration to continue to block such a sale absent significant human rights improvements in the country. There is a resolution in both the House and Senate (H.J. Res. 80/S.J. Res. 28) that would block this sale absent enumerated improvements including ending attacks on civilians and holding any perpetrators of these attacks accountable, dropping politically-motivated criminal charges, and reinstating dismissed public employees.

The Government’s continued attacks on civilians demonstrate that there has been little improvement in Bahrain since the release of the report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, chaired by international law expert Cherif Bassiouni. The report detailed instances of torture, killings, arbitrary detention, and excessive use of force. Included in the report were key recommendations, some of which involve establishing an impartial accountability mechanism to bring those responsible for human rights violations to justice, investigating alleged acts of torture using forensic experts, and dropping charges against those wrongly convicted. The Government of Bahrain is considering methods of implementing the recommendations, and announcements of its action plan are expected next month. The U.S. and the rest of the international community should approach those announcements with full knowledge of the Government’s ongoing attacks against civilian populations. In the meantime, the international community must demand an end to attacks on civilians, a thorough investigation of incidents since the release of the Commission of Inquiry report, and accountability for all those responsible.

By Abdulrazzaq al-Saiedi

28 January 2012

@ Physiciansforhumanrights.org

Physicians for Human Rights shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize

© Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) 2011

“This is about whether this council, during a time of sweeping change in the Middle East, will stand with peaceful protesters crying out for freedom, or with a regime of thugs with guns that tramples human dignity and human rights.” – Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the UN

Bahrain continues to undergo an uprising against the extremely authoritarian monarchy that enduringly, and unenlightenedly continues to rule that country. It is an Arab Spring, that we probably shouldn’t forget about or negate. We shouldn’t forget about this important Arab uprising, that is occurring within the homeland, and in fact the veritable stomping grounds of the US Naval Fifth Fleet. Indeed, the US corporate “mainstream” mass media has probably blacked out, this important Arab uprising of the majority Shia — of this iron-fisted Sunni Kingdom — for precisely this very reason.

While the United States has condemned Russia for its arms sales to Syria, it has not condemned its own “error” in continuing to arm the profoundly backward, and deeply retrograde Kingdom of Bahrain. And furthermore, the US has even — with a straight face — urged restraint in recent Bahraini protests, after it has already armed this vulgar, spiteful, uncouth, and indeed tyrannical Middle Eastern regime! [1] So, now how’s that for after the fact/Monday morning quarterbacking!!? And as faint hisses can still be heard, from Susan Rice’s tantruming over the UN Russian Veto [2]; US supplied guns and other munitions, are likely preparing to make short work of some Shia Bahraini protestors, in their recently erected Freedom Square. [3]

After martial law was lifted in June of last year, tensions in the Kingdom of Bahrain did not fully dissipate or subside. Police continued to clash with disaffected youth — in Shia neighborhoods — who complain of political and economic marginalization, at the hands of the US/Saudi-backed Al Khalifa regime. At least 25 have died since last June, and the government and the opposition expect a stormy February — as the initial uprising’s anniversary is actually February 14th. [4] Bahrain as a real democracy, or with an empowered Shiite community, represents a mortal threat to the Saudis and the greater GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). The felling of an important domino in the region, which could perhaps give greater resolve and invigoration to Saudi Arabia’s own native Shiite community, and potentially extend an opening to Iran.

The wider goal of boxing in Iran, while it (the US) prepares for bellicose, and aggressive military action against them, is put in peril by the democratic impulses, and aspirations of the majority Shia people of Bahrain. The United States clearly stands firmly and resolutely against human rights, and human dignity in the invidious, loathsome, and wholly detestable Sunni-led Sheikdom of Bahrain. As the Pentagon has noted, “[Bahrain] has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability in the Middle East.” It seems that those regimes allied with the US/GCC/Sunni Kingdoms, is rather the standard that the US goes by — as opposed to any concern for human dignity, universal values, democracy, or human rights.

The fork-tongued rants and diatribes of Susan Rice at the United Nations, are really yammerings and vituperations, that fundamentally do not yield, add up to, demonstrate or evince very much! It’s just once again evidence of the empire, and it subordinates — via shrill screams — attempting to cow other governments, and sovereign nation-states that are not 100% supine/on board them. Browbeating them (essentially) into complete and total fealty, and “harmonizing” with a fierce, disagreeable, nasty and imperious regime.

By Sean Fenley

13 February 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Notes:

[1]http://news.antiwar.com/2012/02/09/us-urged-restraint-in-bahrain-after-sending-arms-to-the-dictatorship/

[2]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPVDuTbdKT0

[3]http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/bahrain-roundabout-rallies-idINDEE8180GJ20120209

[4]http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-bahrain-violencetre81713m-20120208,0,7616020,full.story

Sean Fenley is an independent progressive, who would like to see some sanity brought to the creation and implementation of current and future, US military, economic, foreign and domestic policies. He has been published by a number of websites, and publications throughout the alternative media.

Iran has an ancient and beautiful civilization, which dates back to 7,000 BC, when the city of Susa was founded. Some of the earliest writing that we know of, dating from from approximately 3,000 BC, was used by the Elamite civilization near to Susa. Today’s Iranians are highly intelligent and cultured, and famous for their hospitality, generosity and kindness to strangers.

Over the centuries, Iranians have made many contributions to science, art and literature, and for hundreds of years they have not attacked any of their neighbors. Nevertheless, for the last 90 years, they have been the victims of foreign attacks and interventions, most of which have been closely related to Iran’s oil and gas resources. The first of these took place in the period 1921-1925, when a British-sponsored coup overthrew the Qajar dynasty and replaced it by Reza Shah.

Reza Shah (1878-1944) started his career as Reza Khan, an army officer. Because of his high intelligence he quickly rose to become commander of the Tabriz Brigade of the Persian Cossacks. In 1921, General Edmond Ironside, who commanded a British force of 6,000 men ghting against the Bolsheviks in northern Persia, masterminded a coup (nanced by Britain) in which Reza Khan lead 15,000 Cossacks towards the capital. He overthrew the government, and became minister of war. The British government backed this coup because it believed that a strong leader was needed in Iran to resist the Bolsheviks. In 1923, Reza Khan overthrew the Qajar Dynasty, and in 1925 he was crowned as Reza Shah, adopting the name Pahlavi.

Reza Shah believed that he had a mission to modernize Iran, in much the same way that Kamil Ata Turk had modernized Turkey. During his 16 years of rule in Iran, many roads were built, the Trans-Iranian Railway was constructed, many Iranians were sent to study in the West, the University of Tehran was opened, and the first steps towards industrialization were taken. However, Reza Shahs methods were sometimes very harsh.

In 1941, while Germany invaded Russia, Iran remained neutral, perhaps leaning a little towards the side of Germany. However, Reza Shah was sufficiently critical of Hitler to oer safety in Iran to refugees from the Nazis. Fearing that the Germans would gain control of the Abadan oil fields, and wishing to use the Trans-Iranian Railway to bring supplies to Russia, Britain invaded Iran from the south on August 25, 1941. Simultaneously, a Russian force invaded the country from the north. Reza Shah appealed to Roosevelt for help, citing Iran’s neutrality, but to no avail. On September 17, 1941, he was forced into exile, and replaced by his son, Crown Prince Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Both Britain and Russia promised to withdraw from Iran as soon as the war was over. During the remainder of World War II, although the new Shah was nominally the ruler of Iran, the country was governed by the allied occupation forces.

Reza Shah, had a strong sense of mission, and felt that it was his duty to modernize Iran. He passed on this sense of mission to his son, the young Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi . The painful problem of poverty was everywhere apparent, and both Reza Shah and his son saw modernization of Iran as the only way to end poverty.

In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh became Prime Minister of Iran through democratic elections. He was from a highly-placed family and could trace his ancestry back to the shahs of the Qajar dynasty. Among the many reforms made by Mosaddegh was the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s possessions in Iran. Because of this, the AIOC (which later became British Petroleum), persuaded the British government to sponsor a secret coup that would overthrow Mosaddegh. The British asked US President Eisenhower and the CIA to join M16 in carrying out the coup, claiming that Mosaddegh represented a communist threat (a ludicrous argument, considering Mosaddegh’s aristocratic background). Eisenhower agreed to help Britain in carrying out the coup, and it took place in 1953. The Shah thus obtained complete power over Iran.

The goal of modernizing Iran and ending poverty was adopted as an almost-sacred mission by the young Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and it was the motive behind his White Revolution in 1963, when much of the land belonging to the feudal landowners and the crown was distributed to landless villagers. However, the White Revolution angered both the traditional landowning class and the clergy, and it created fierce opposition. In dealing with this opposition, the Shahs methods were very harsh, just as his fathers had been. Because of alienation produced by his harsh methods, and because of the growing power of his opponents, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The revolution of 1979 was to some extent caused by the British-American coup of 1953.

One can also say that the westernization, at which both Shah Reza and his son aimed, produced an anti-western reaction among the conservative elements of Iranian society. Iran was falling between two stools”, on the one hand western culture and on the other hand the country’s traditional culture. It seemed to be halfway between, belonging to neither. Finally in 1979 the Islamic clergy triumphed and Iran chosed tradition.

Meanwhile, in 1963, the US had secretly backed a military coup in Iraq that brought Saddam Husseins Baath Party to power. In 1979, when the western-backed Shah of Iran was overthrown, the United States regarded the fundamentalist Shiite regime that replaced him as a threat to supplies of oil from Saudi Arabia. Washington saw Saddams Iraq as a bulwark against the Shiite government of Iran that was thought to be threatening oil supplies from pro-American states such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

In 1980, encouraged to do so by the fact that Iran had lost its US backing, Saddam Husseins government attacked Iran. This was the start of an extremely bloody and destructive war that lasted for eight years, inicting almost a million casualties on the two nations. Iraq used both mustard gas and the nerve gases Tabun and Sarin against Iran, in violation of the Geneva Protocol. Both the United States and Britain helped Saddam Husseins government to obtain chemical weapons.

The present attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States, both actual and threatened, have some similarity to the war against Iraq, which was launched by the United States in 2003. In 2003, the attack was nominally motivated by the threat that nuclear weapons would be developed, but the real motive had more to do with a desire to control and exploit the petroleum resources of Iraq, and with Israel’s extreme nervousness at having a powerful and somewhat hostile neighbor. Similarly, hegemony over the huge oil and gas reserves of Iran can be seen as one the main reasons why the United States is presently demonizing Iran, and this is combined with Israel’s almost paranoid fear of a large and powerful Iran. Looking back on the successful” 1953 coup against Mosaddegh, Israel and the United States perhaps feel that sanctions, threats, murders and other pressures can cause a regime change that will bring a more compliant government to power in Iran – a government that will accept US hegemony. But aggressive rhetoric, threats and provocations can escalate into full-scale war.

I do not wish to say that Iran’s present government is without serious faults. However, any use of violence against Iran would be both insane and criminal. Why insane? Because the present economy of the US and the world cannot support another large-scale conflict; because the Middle East is already a deeply troubled region; and because it is impossible to predict the extent of a war which, if once started, might develop into World War III, given the fact that Iran is closely allied with both Russia and China. Why criminal? Because such violence would violate both the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles. There is no hope at all for the future unless we work for a peaceful world, governed by international law, rather than a fearful world where brutal power holds sway.

By John Scales Avery

29 January 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

References

1. Sir Percy Sykes, A History of Persia – 2nd edition, MacMillan, (1921).

2. Paula K. Byers, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Encyclopedia of World Biography (1998).

3. Roger Homan, The Origins of the Iranian Revolution, International Affairs 56/4, 673-7, (Autumn 1980).

4. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, Simon and Schuster, (1991).

5. A. Sampson, The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies of the World and How They Were Made,  Hodder and Staughton, London, (1988).

6. James Risen, Secrets of History: The C.I.A. in Iran, The New York Times, April 16, (2000).

7. Mark Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, Mohammad Mosaddegh and the 1953 Coup in Iran, National Security Archive, June 22, (2004).

8. K. Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran, McGraw- Hill, New York, (1979).

9. E. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, Princeton University Press, Princeton, (1982).

10. M.T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conict, Owl Books reprint edition, New York, (2002).

11. J.M. Blair, The Control of Oil, Random House, New York, (1976).

John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist noted for his research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. Since the early 1990s, Avery has been an active World peace activist. During these years, he was part of a group associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. Presently, he is an Associate Professor in quantum chemistry at the University of Copenhagen

The veto by Russia and China of a United Nations Security Council resolution will not halt ongoing preparations for Western-backed intervention against Syria. The discussion on the resolution was a political manoeuvre from the outset, designed either to force Moscow and Beijing into agreeing to a UN cover for a Libya-style operation against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, or justify a predetermined alternative route to regime-change.

This goal has nothing to do with the humanitarian posturing of the US, France, the UK and the various despots that make up the Arab League. The aim is to install a pro-Western government dominated by Sunni forces close to the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, thus further isolating Iran, the main ally of the current Syrian regime.

Iran is seen as the only regional obstacle to total US hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and Caspian Basin. Eliminating the Assad regime and weakening Tehran would also serve to push Russia and China out of their remaining bases of influence.

The US, Britain and France sought to use a demand from the Arab League, supposedly based upon the report of its observer mission to Syria, to condemn the crackdown by the Assad regime and call for Assad to hand over power to his deputy in preparation for a new government that would include the opposition. According to the proposed resolution, this would be followed by new elections.

The invocation of the League’s mission was thoroughly dishonest. The observers had found that the violence was abating and that the Syrian government was complying with most of the Arab League’s requirements. They had called for an extension of their mission in Syria. The response of Saudi Arabia was to end its participation while the Emir of Qatar went on CNN to call for Arab military intervention.

Qatar assumed the role of Arab League chair by paying off the Palestinian Authority, whose turn it was to hold the post, with $400 million in aid. It used its position to suppress the observers’ report, demand that Assad quit, and call off the mission. It then forwarded the “recommendation” that Assad step aside to the UN.

While some aspects of the Arab League’s proposals were omitted from the final draft, the resolution, if passed, would have still provided the US with a cover for action against Syria. It welcomed the League’s demands, including for Assad to leave, while not detailing them as in earlier drafts of the resolution.

As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointed out, the resolution’s call to “withdraw all Syrian military and armed forces from cities and towns and return them to their original home barracks” was an ultimatum the regime could not possibly accept, given that it faces an armed insurrection (backed by the West). That demand was inserted for the purpose of creating a casus belli for more direct military intervention.

Moscow also objected to the resolution’s placing the entire blame for the violence on the regime. It stated that “measures must be taken to influence not only the government…but also the armed groups, because unless you do it both ways, you are taking sides in a civil war.”

As the debate on the vote reached its belated deadline, the Syrian opposition was mobilised. The Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Free Syrian Army, which are backed by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as well as the London-based Syrian Observatory, went on a propaganda offensive.

Reports flooded the media that Syrian security forces had bombarded districts of the city of Homs. The figures on alleged casualties increased with each passing hour, first 200, then 260, then 300-plus, with reported injuries of more than 1,000. Seven Syrian embassies were attacked, including in the UK, France and Australia, in a coordinated campaign meant to highlight what was denounced as the worst massacre yet.

Homs became the pulpit from which the US, France and Britain posed as outraged defenders of human rights.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Russia and China were complicit in atrocities perpetrated by the Assad regime. “To block this resolution is to bear the responsibility for the horrors that are occurring on the ground in Syria,” she declared.

President Barack Obama issued a statement condemning what he called “the Syrian government’s unspeakable assault against the people of Homs” and accusing Assad of having “murdered hundreds of Syrian citizens, including women and children.”

Washington’s UN envoy Susan Rice said that Russia and China aimed to “sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant.” She later wrote on Twitter, “Disgusted that Russia and China prevented the UN Security Council from fulfilling its sole purpose.”

None of the establishment media even hinted at the cynical and hypocritical character of these statements of supposed moral revulsion from officials who have praised the US intervention in Iraq, which involved atrocities such as the destruction of Fallujah that go far beyond anything committed by the Syrian regime, and who bear political responsibility for massacres, targeted assassinations and torture in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe proclaimed, “Those who block the adoption of such a resolution will bear a heavy responsibility in history… the massacre in Homs is a crime against humanity and those responsible will have to answer for it.”

The highly belligerent tone of the US, French and British denunciations of Russia and China was a noteworthy and ominous indication of mounting intrigues directed against Moscow and Beijing. The latter undoubtedly have taken note.

It is impossible at this stage to know precisely what happened in Homs. The Assad regime has denied reports of shelling, stating that the only film of casualties made available, showing eight bodies in a room, revealed no signs of mortar fire. The government claims that the corpses were of “citizens who were kidnapped and killed by armed gunmen.”

The New York Times in an account published Sunday that echoes the line of the Obama administration and the Syrian opposition nevertheless acknowledged that the renewed fighting in Homs was provoked by the opposition. Citing oppositional “activists,” the newspaper reported that Syrian Army “defectors” attacked two military checkpoints Friday and abducted between 13 and 19 Syrian soldiers. This attack coincided with the negotiations in the UN Security Council on the Western-backed resolution.

But nothing could stop the media from reporting in chorus and uncritically the claims of the opposition. Only Reuters made the obvious point that “It was not immediately clear what had prompted Syrian forces to launch such an intense bombardment, just as diplomats at the Security Council were discussing the draft resolution supporting the Arab League demand for Dr. Assad to step aside.”

The BBC was alone in reporting that whereas “Early accounts of the casualties in Homs on Saturday talked of as many as 200 deaths… one of the main activist groups [the Local Coordinating Committees] later revised its confirmed toll down to 55.”

The US and France now appear set to proceed outside of the UN, forming a new version of the “coalition of the willing” that pursued the 2003 war against Iraq—with the Arab League and Turkey providing political cover.

“Faced with a neutered Security Council, we have to redouble our efforts outside of the UN with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people’s right to have a better future,” Clinton stated.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would work with its European and Arab partners to create what he called a “group of friends of the Syrian people.”

With Arab League foreign ministers slated to meet in Cairo next Saturday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr called for a solution in Syria “within an Arab context.”

By Jean Shaoul & Chris Marsden

6 February 2012

@ WSWS.org

In late December, the lot was just a big blank: a few burgundy metal shipping containers sitting in an expanse of crushed eggshell-colored gravel inside a razor-wire-topped fence. The American military in Afghanistan doesn’t want to talk about it, but one day soon, it will be a new hub for the American drone war in the Greater Middle East.

Next year, that empty lot will be a two-story concrete intelligence facility for America’s drone war, brightly lit and filled with powerful computers kept in climate-controlled comfort in a country where most of the population has no access to electricity. It will boast almost 7,000 square feet of offices, briefing and conference rooms, and a large “processing, exploitation, and dissemination” operations center — and, of course, it will be built with American tax dollars.

Nor is it an anomaly. Despite all the talk of drawdowns and withdrawals, there has been a years-long building boom in Afghanistan that shows little sign of abating. In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had nearly 400 bases in Afghanistan. Today, Lieutenant Lauren Rago of ISAF public affairs tells TomDispatch, the number tops 450.

The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility at the massive air base in Kandahar is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway in Afghanistan. While some U.S. bases are indeed closing up shop or being transferred to the Afghan government, and there’s talk of combat operations slowing or ending next year, as well as a withdrawal of American combat forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the U.S. military is still preparing for a much longer haul at mega-bases like Kandahar and Bagram airfields. The same is true even of some smaller camps, forward operating bases (FOBs), and combat outposts (COPs) scattered through the country’s backlands. “Bagram is going through a significant transition during the next year to two years,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Gerdes of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bagram Office recently told Freedom Builder, a Corps of Engineers publication. “We’re transitioning… into a long-term, five-year, 10-year vision for the base.”

Whether the U.S. military will still be in Afghanistan in five or 10 years remains to be seen, but steps are currently being taken to make that possible. U.S. military publications, plans and schematics, contracting documents, and other official data examined by TomDispatch catalog hundreds of construction projects worth billions of dollars slated to begin, continue, or conclude in 2012.

While many of these efforts are geared toward structures for Afghan forces or civilian institutions, a considerable number involve U.S. facilities, some of the most significant being dedicated to the ascendant forms of American warfare: drone operations and missions by elite special operations units. The available plans for most of these projects suggest durability. “The structures that are going in are concrete and mortar, rather than plywood and tent skins,” says Gerdes. As of last December, his office was involved in 30 Afghan construction projects for U.S. or international coalition partners worth almost $427 million.

The Big Base Build-Up

Recently, the New York Times reported that President Obama is likely to approve a plan to shift much of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan to special operations forces. These elite troops would then conduct kill/capture missions and train local troops well beyond 2014. Recent building efforts in the country bear this out.

A major project at Bagram Air Base, for instance, involves the construction of a special operations forces complex, a clandestine base within a base that will afford America’s black ops troops secrecy and near-absolute autonomy from other U.S. and coalition forces. Begun in 2010, the $29 million project is slated to be completed this May and join roughly 90 locations around the country where troops from Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan have been stationed.

Elsewhere on Bagram, tens of millions of dollars are being spent on projects that are less sexy but no less integral to the war effort, like paving dirt roads and upgrading drainage systems on the mega-base. In January, the U.S. military awarded a $7 million contract to a Turkish construction company to build a 24,000-square-foot command-and-control facility. Plans are also in the works for a new operations center to support tactical fighter jet missions, a new flight-line fire station, as well as more lighting and other improvements to support the American air war.

Last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered that the U.S.-run prison at Bagram be transferred to Afghan control. By the end of January, the U.S. had issued a $36 million contract for the construction, within a year, of a new prison on the base. While details are sparse, plans for the detention center indicate a thoroughly modern, high-security facility complete with guard towers, advanced surveillance systems, administrative facilities, and the capacity to house about 2,000 prisoners.

At Kandahar Air Field, that new intelligence facility for the drone war will be joined by a similarly-sized structure devoted to administrative operations and maintenance tasks associated with robotic aerial missions. It will be able to accommodate as many as 180 personnel at a time. With an estimated combined price tag of up to $5 million, both buildings will be integral to Air Force and possibly CIA operations involving both the MQ-1 Predator drone and its more advanced and more heavily-armed progeny, the MQ-9 Reaper.

The military is keeping information about these drone facilities under extraordinarily tight wraps. They refused to answer questions about whether, for instance, the construction of these new centers for robotic warfare are in any way related to the loss of Shamsi Air Base in neighboring Pakistan as a drone operations center, or if they signal efforts to increase the tempo of drone missions in the years ahead. The International Joint Command’s chief of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) operations, aware that such questions were to be posed, backed out of a planned interview with TomDispatch.

“Unfortunately our ISR chief here in the International Joint Command is going to be unable to address your questions,” Lieutenant Ryan Welsh of ISAF Joint Command Media Outreach explained by email just days before the scheduled interview. He also made it clear that any question involving drone operations in Pakistan was off limits. “The issues that you raise are outside the scope under which the IJC operates, therefore we are unable to facilitate this interview request.”

Whether the construction at Kandahar is designed to free up facilities elsewhere for CIA drone operations across the border in Pakistan or is related only to missions within Afghanistan, it strongly suggests a ramping up of unmanned operations. It is, however, just one facet of the ongoing construction at the air field. This month, a $26 million project to build 11 new structures devoted to tactical vehicle maintenance at Kandahar is scheduled for completion. With two large buildings for upkeep and repairs, one devoted strictly to fixing tires, another to painting vehicles, as well as an industrial-sized car wash, and administrative and storage facilities, the big base’s building boom shows no sign of flickering out.

Construction and Reconstruction

This year, at Herat Air Base in the province of the same name bordering Turkmenistan and Iran, the U.S. is slated to begin a multimillion-dollar project to enhance its special forces’ air operations. Plans are in the works to expand apron space — where aircraft can be parked, serviced, and loaded or unloaded — for helicopters and airplanes, as well as to build new taxiways and aircraft shelters.

That project is just one of nearly 130, cumulatively valued at about $1.5 billion, slated to be carried out in Herat, Helmand, and Kandahar provinces this year, according to Army Corps of Engineers documents examined by TomDispatch. These also include efforts at Camp Tombstone and Camp Dwyer, both in Helmand Province as well as Kandahar’s FOB Hadrian and FOB Wilson. The U.S. military also recently awarded a contract for more air field apron space at a base in Kunduz, a new secure entrance and new roads for FOB Delaram II, and new utilities and roads at FOB Shank, while the Marines recently built a new chapel at Camp Bastion.

Seven years ago, Forward Operating Base Sweeney, located a mile up in a mountain range in Zabul Province, was a well-outfitted, if remote, American base. After U.S. troops abandoned it, however, the base fell into disrepair. Last month, American troops returned in force and began rebuilding the outpost, constructing everything from new troop housing to a new storage facility. “We built a lot of buildings, we put up a lot of tents, we filled a lot of sandbags, and we increased our force protection significantly,” Captain Joe Mickley, commanding officer of the soldiers taking up residence at the base, told a military reporter.

Decommission and Deconstruction

Hesco barriers are, in essence, big bags of dirt. Up to seven feet tall, made of canvas and heavy gauge wire mesh, they form protective walls around U.S. outposts all over Afghanistan. They’ll take the worst of sniper rounds, rifle-propelled grenades, even mortar shells, but one thing can absolutely wreck them — the Marines’ 9th Engineer Support Battalion.

At the beginning of December, the 9th Engineers were building bases and filling up Hescos in Helmand Province. By the end of the month, they were tearing others down.

Wielding pickaxes, shovels, bolt-cutters, powerful rescue saws, and front-end loaders, they have begun “demilitarizing” bases, cutting countless Hescos — which cost $700 or more a pop — into heaps of jagged scrap metal and bulldozing berms in advance of the announced American withdrawal from Afghanistan. At Firebase Saenz, for example, Marines were bathed in a sea of crimson sparks as they sawed their way through the metal mesh and let the dirt spill out, leaving a country already haunted by the ghosts of British and Russian bases with yet another defunct foreign outpost. After Saenz, it was on to another patrol base slated for destruction.

Not all rural outposts are being torn down, however. Some are being handed over to the Afghan Army or police. And new facilities are now being built for the indigenous forces at an increasing rate. “If current projections remain accurate, we will award 18 contracts in February,” Bonnie Perry, the head of contracting for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Afghanistan Engineering District-South, told military reporter Karla Marshall. “Next quarter we expect that awards will remain high, with the largest number of contract awards occurring in May.” One of the projects underway is a large base near Herat, which will include barracks, dining facilities, office space, and other amenities for Afghan commandos.

Tell Me How This Ends

No one should be surprised that the U.S. military is building up and tearing down bases at the same time, nor that much of the new construction is going on at mega-bases, while small outposts in the countryside are being abandoned. This is exactly what you would expect of an occupation force looking to scale back its “footprint” and end major combat operations while maintaining an on-going presence in Afghanistan. Given the U.S. military’s projected retreat to its giant bases and an increased reliance on kill/capture black-ops as well as unmanned air missions, it’s also no surprise that its signature projects for 2012 include a new special operations forces compound, clandestine drone facilities, and a brand new military prison.

There’s little doubt Bagram Air Base will exist in five or 10 years. Just who will be occupying it is, however, less clear. After all, in Iraq, the Obama administration negotiated for some way to station a significant military force — 10,000 or more troops — there beyond a withdrawal date that had been set in stone for years. While a token number of U.S. troops and a highly militarized State Department contingent remain there, the Iraqi government largely thwarted the American efforts — and now, even the State Department presence is being halved.

It’s less likely this will be the case in Afghanistan, but it remains possible. Still, it’s clear that the military is building in that country as if an enduring American presence were a given. Whatever the outcome, vestiges of the current base-building boom will endure and become part of America’s Afghan legacy.

On Bagram’s grounds stands a distinctive structure called the “Crow’s Nest.” It’s an old control tower built by the Soviets to coordinate their military operations in Afghanistan. That foreign force left the country in 1989. The Soviet Union itself departed from the planet less than three years later. The tower remains.

America’s new prison in Bagram will undoubtedly remain, too. Just who the jailers will be and who will be locked inside five years or 10 years from now is, of course, unknown. But given the history — marked by torture and deaths — of the appalling treatment of inmates at Bagram and, more generally, of the brutality toward prisoners by all parties to the conflict over the years, in no scenario are the results likely to be pretty.

By Nick Turse

13 February, 2012

@ Tomdispatch.com

is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. This article is the sixth in his new series on the changing face of American empire, which is being underwritten by Lannan Foundation. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 Nick Turse

UN-Sponsored Papers Predict Sustained Ecological and Social Meltdown

“The current system is broken,” says Bob Watson, the UK’s chief scientific advisor on environmental issues and a winner of the prestigious Blue Planet prize in 2010. “It is driving humanity to a future that is 3-5°C warmer than our species has ever known, and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on for our health, wealth and senses of self.”

“We cannot assume that technological fixes will come fast enough. Instead we need human solutions. The good news is that they exist but decision makers must be bold and forward thinking to seize them.”

Watson’s comments accompanied a new paper released today by 20 past winners of the Blue Planet Prize – often called the Nobel Prize for the environment, and comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Rio+20 conference – which takes place in June this year – where world leaders will (it is hoped) seize the opportunity to set human development on a new, more sustainable path.

Civilization Faces ‘Perfect Storm of Ecological and Social Problems’

The Guardian’s John Vidal reports:

In the face of an “absolutely unprecedented emergency”, say the […] past winners of the Blue Planet prize – the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has “no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us”.

The stark assessment of the current global outlook by the group, who include [Watson]… US climate scientist James Hansen, Prof José Goldemberg, Brazil’s secretary of environment during the Rio Earth summit in 1992, and Stanford University Prof Paul Ehrlich. […]

Apart from dire warnings about biodiversity loss and climate change, the group challenges governments to think differently about economic “progress”.

“The rapidly deteriorating biophysical situation is more than bad enough, but it is barely recognized by a global society infected by the irrational belief that physical economies can grow forever and disregarding the facts that the rich in developed and developing countries get richer and the poor are left behind.

“The perpetual growth myth … promotes the impossible idea that indiscriminate economic growth is the cure for all the world’s problems, while it is actually the disease that is at the root cause of our unsustainable global practices”, they say.

The group warns against over-reliance on markets but instead urges politicians to listen and learn from how poor communities all over the world see the problems of energy, water, food and livelihoods as interdependent and integrated as part of a living ecosystem.

The paper urges governments to:

>> Replace GDP as a measure of wealth with metrics for natural, built, human and social capital – and how they intersect.

>> Eliminate subsidies in sectors such as energy, transport and agriculture that create environmental and social costs, which currently go unpaid.

>> Tackle over-consumption, and address population pressure by empowering women, improving education and making contraception accessible to all.

>> Transform decision making processes to empower marginalized groups, and integrate economic, social and environmental policies instead of having them compete.

>> Conserve and value biodiversity and ecosystem services, and create markets for them that can form the basis of green economies.

>> Invest in knowledge – both in creating and in sharing it – through research and training that will enable governments, business, and society at large to understand and move towards a sustainable future.

“Sustainable development is not a pipe dream,” says Dr Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development. “It is the destination the world’s accumulated knowledge points us towards, the fair future that will enable us to live with security, peace and opportunities for all. To get there we must transform the ways we manage, share and interact with the environment, and acknowledge that humanity is part of nature not apart from it.”

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “The paper by the Blue Planet laureates will challenge governments and society as a whole to act to limit human-induced climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services in order to ensure food, water energy and human security. I would like to thank Professor Watson and colleagues for eloquently articulating their vision on how key development challenges can be addressed, emphasizing solutions; the policies, technologies and behavior changes required to grow green economies, generate jobs and lift people out of poverty without pushing the world through planetary boundaries.”

***

A second UNEP report was also released today in Kenya. Though separate from the assessment of the Planet Blue laureates, it echoes many of their themes and concerns.

Capital FM News in Kenya reports:

A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned of a continued deterioration in the state of the global environment due to failure by governments to implement internationally agreed goals.

The summary report released at the sidelines of a UNEP Governing Council meeting in Nairobi stated that out of the 90 internationally agreed goals, only 40 were in progress, 32 had insufficient progress while 13 were not in development at all.

“We have failed to meet agreed goals,” Peter Gilruth Director Division of Early Warning Assessment (DEWA) UNEP said.

“The internationally agreed goal of avoiding the adverse effects of climate change is presenting the global community with one of its most serious challenges that is threatening overall development goals,” he noted.

He added that the rate at which forest loss, particularly in the tropics was taking place remained alarmingly high.

“Today, 80 percent of the world’s population live in areas with high levels of threat to water security, affecting 3.4 billion people mostly in developing countries,” he stated.

The Fifth Global Environment Outlook (GEO 5) assessed progress and gaps in the implementation of internationally agreed goals on environment and the full report would be released in June ahead of the Rio+20 Summit on sustainable development.

The report recommended that policy makers focus on the underlying drivers of environmental change such as the negative aspects of population growth, consumption and production, urbanisation rather than just concentrating on reducing environmental pressures or symptoms.

“The solutions put on the table are not intended to be prescriptive in nature but rather a menu of options that you (governments) might want to look at for your own use. It is just a potential source of information to assist in decision making,” Gilruth said.

By Common Dreams Staff

21 February 2012

@ Commondreams.org