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Leaders are typically held accountable to international criminal law when they block Western interests.

Santa Barbara, CA – From all that we know, Charles Taylor deserves to be held criminally accountable for his role in the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone during the period 1998-2002. Taylor was then president of Liberia, and did his best to encourage violent uprisings against the governments in neighbouring countries so as to finance his own bloody schemes and extend his regional influence. It was in Sierra Leone that “blood diamonds”, later more judiciously called “conflict diamonds” were to be found in such abundance as to enter into the lucrative world trade, with many of these diamonds reportedly finding their way eventually onto the shelves of such signature jewelry stores as Cartier, Bulgari and Harry Winston, and thereby circumventing some rather weak international initiatives designed to protect what was then considered the legitimate diamond trade.

It is fine that Charles Taylor was convicted of 11 counts of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity of the rebel militia that committed atrocities of an unspeakable nature, and that he will be sentenced in early May. And it may further impress liberal commentators that fair legal procedures and diligent judicial oversight led to Taylor’s acquittal with respect to the more serious charges of “command responsibility” or “joint criminal enterprise”. Surely, the circumstantial evidence sufficiently implicated Taylor in a knowing micromanagement of the crimes that it would have seemed reasonable to hold him criminally responsible for the acts performed, and not just for aiding and abetting in their commission. I share the view that it is desirable to lean over backwards to establish a reputation of fairness in dealing with accusations under international criminal law. It is better not to convict defendants involving crimes of state when strong evidence is absent to uphold specific charges beyond any reasonable doubt. In this respect, the Taylor conviction seems restrained, professional and not vindictive or politically motivated.

But as Christine Cheng has shown in a perceptive article published online on Al Jazeera, there are some elements of this conviction that feed the suspicion that the West is up to its old hypocritical tricks of seizing the moral high ground while pursuing its own exploitative economic and geopolitical goals that obstruct the political independence and sovereignty of countries that were once their colonies. As Cheng points out, the financing of the Special Court for Sierra Leone was almost totally handled by the United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada. In addition, there were pragmatic reasons to make sure that Taylor was never allowed to return to Liberia, where he retains a strong following. It was feared that if Taylor were back in Liberia he would likely again foment trouble in the Liberian sub-region, and this would make it impossible to restore stability, and begin “legitimate” mining operations, which is what the West apparently wanted to have happen in Sierra Leone.

A double standard on criminality

What is dramatically ironic about the whole picture is that the United States is the number one advocate of international criminal justice for others. President Obama has even taken the unprecedented step, on April 23, 2012, of establishing an Atrocity Prevention Board under the authority of the National Security Council, and headed by Samantha Power – a prominent human rights activist that has been serving in his administration. In his speech of April 23 at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, announcing the formation of the board, Obama said that atrocity prevention and response was a “core national interest of and core moral responsibility” of the United States. It is hard to fault such an initiative in light of the faltering US (and UN) response to recent allegations of mass atrocities in Syria and Sudan, and against the background of refusing to be more pro-active back in 1994, as a grotesque and preventable genocide unfolded in Rwanda. At the same time, there is an impression, the essence of the liberal mentality, of Uncle Sam surveying the world with a blinkered vision, seeing all that is horrible while overlooking his own deeds and those of such friends as Israel or Bahrain.

Heeding the sound of one hand clapping, it might be well to remember that the United States – more than any country in the world – holds itself self-righteously aloof from accountability on the main ground that any international judicial process might be tainted by politicised motivations. Congress has even threatened that it would use military force to rescue any US citizens that were somehow called to account by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and has signed agreements with more than 100 governments pledging them not to hand over US citizens to the ICC. And yet it is international criminal lawyers and human rights NGOs from the US that have been most loudly applauding the outcome in the Taylor case, without even a whimper of acknowledgement that there may be some issues relating to double standards. If international criminal adjudication is so benevolent when prominent Africans are convicted, why does the same not hold for US officials? Given the structure of influence in the world, there exists more reason for Africans to be suspicious of such procedures than for Americans who fund such efforts, and who are so influential behind the scenes.

If aiding and abetting is what the evidence demonstrates, then should there not be at least discussion of whether international diamond merchants and jewelry retailers making huge profits by selling these tainted diamonds should be investigated, or even prosecuted? There was a voluntary, self-regulating certification procedure was established, the Kimberly Process (2001) – named after the city in South Africa where the meeting of concerned governments, corporate leaders and civil society representatives took place. This joint initiative was especially pushed by large diamond sellers, such as the notorious De Beers cartel of South Africa, that were distressed by the downward effect on world prices by the availability of blood diamonds.

A British NGO, Global Witness, reports that almost none of the prominent diamond retailers took any notice of this cooperative effort to restrict the flow of blood diamonds, and seemingly purchased diamonds at the lowest price without enquiring too much as to their origins, or complying with the certification requirement established by the Kimberly Process. The latter process was partly developed to avoid a civil society backlash protesting this indirect support of atrocities, as well as to protect the market shares and control of the established international companies that had long dominated the lucrative trade in diamonds. But isn’t revealing that Western corporations are asked to act in a morally responsible manner by way of a voluntary undertaking, while political leaders of sovereign states in Africa are subject to the draconian rigour of international criminal law?

Overlooking atrocities

These issues are absent from the Western public discourse. Take the self-satisfied editorial appearing in the Financial Times (April 27, 2012). It starts with words affirming the larger meaning of Taylor’s conviction: “A strong message was sent to tyrants and warlords around the world yesterday. International law may be slow, but even those in the higher ranks of power can be held to account for atrocities committed against the innocent.” And the editorial ends even more triumphantly, and without noticing the elephant standing in the middle of the room, that leaders “… in states weak and strong – now know that there can be no impunity for national leaders when it comes to human rights.” Such language needs to be decoded to convey its real message as follows: “National leaders of non-Western countries should realise that if their operations henceforth stand interfere with geopolitical priorities, they might well be held criminally responsible.”

There are several observations that follow:

If non-Western leaders are supportive of Western interests, their atrocities will be overlooked, but if there is a direct confrontation, then the liberal establishment will be encouraged to start “war crimes talk” – thus Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi (killed before proceedings could be initiated) were charged with crimes, while the crimes of those governing Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Israel are ignored.

The great majority of cases dealing with international crimes have been, up to this point, associated with events and alleged criminality in sub-Saharan Africa, confirming the extent to which this region has been devastated by bitter conflicts, many of which are attributable to the remnants of colonialism (divide and rule; the slave trade; formation of arbitrary boundaries separating tribal and ethnic communities; apartheid; the continuing quest for valuable mineral resources by international business interests etc).

The Western mind is trained not to notice, much less acknowledge, either the historical responsibility of the colonial powers or the unwillingness of the West to submit to the same accountability procedures that are being relied upon to impose criminal responsibility on those who are perceived to be blocking Western economic and political interests.

The United States is particularly vulnerable from these perspectives. When we hear the names of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the immediate association is with US war crimes. When US leaders openly endorse reliance on interrogation techniques that are generally condemned as “torture”, we should be commenting harshly on the wide chasm separating “law” from its consistent implementation. When a soldier, such as Bradley Manning, is reported to have exposed the atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he is held in humiliating prison circumstances and prosecuted for breaching secrecy, with suggestions that his intent was “treasonous”, that is, intended to help enemies. At least, if there was a measure of good faith in Washington, it should have been possible to move forward on parallel paths: hold Manning nominally responsible for releasing classified materials, mitigated by his motives and absence of private gain, but vigorously repudiate and investigate the horrible crimes being committed against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the battlefield practices and training programs that give rise to such atrocities.

Hypocritical punishers

The Western powers have gone significantly further in sculpting international law to their liking. They have excluded “aggressive war” from the list of international crimes contained in the Rome Treaty which governs the scope of ICC jurisdiction. When the defendants were the losers in World War II, aggressive war was treated at Nuremberg (and Tokyo) as the supreme war crime – as it was declared to encompass the others: war crimes and crimes against humanity. The UN Charter was drafted to reflect this outlook, by unconditionally prohibiting any recourse to force by a state except in self-defence – narrowly defined as a response to a prior armed attack. But in the decades that followed, each of the countries that sat in judgement at Nuremberg engaged in aggressive war and made non-defensive uses of force – and so the concept became too contested by practice to be any longer codified as law. This reversal and regression exemplifies the Janus face of geopolitics when it comes to criminal accountability: when the application of international criminal law serves the cause of the powerful, it will be invoked, extended, celebrated, even institutionalised, but only so long as it is not turned against the powerful. One face of Janus is that of international justice and the rule of law, the other is one of a martial look that glorifies the rule of power on behalf of the war gods.

Where does this line of reasoning end? Should we be hypocrites and punish those whose crimes offend the geopolitical gatekeepers? Or should we insist that law, to be law, must be applied consistently? At least these questions should be asked, inviting a spirit of humility to emerge, especially among liberals in the West.

By Richard Falk

1 May 2012

@ Al- Jazeera

Richard Falk is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008). He is currently serving his third year of a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

President Barack Obama used a visit to Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum Monday to unveil a set of new sanctions against Iran and Syria and to promote the administration’s use of “human rights” as a pretext for aggressive war and regime change.

The new sanctions target Syrian and Iranian intelligence agencies as well as telecommunications and Internet providers for use of information technology to monitor and repress political opposition. They have been rolled out under conditions in which the United Nations is deploying its monitors in Syria to oversee a ceasefire and as Iran prepares for a second round of negotiations next month in Baghdad with the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) over its nuclear program.

The timing of this latest round of sanctions, coming on top of a whole series of unilateral US and European Union measures aimed at crippling the Syrian and Iranian economies, strongly indicates that Washington is merely using negotiations with both countries as a cover for preparing war and regime change.

Obama’s executive order calls for Washington to impose sanctions on Syrian and Iranian officials for using information technology, including software to track cellphones and monitor Internet use and to spy upon and repress dissidents. It also would punish what the US president refers to as the “digital guns for hire,” i.e., information technology companies that sell software and equipment to targeted regimes.

“These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them,” Obama declared.

Among those named in the order are the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate, the Syriatel phone company as well as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, its Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and Datak Telekom, an Iranian Internet provider.

Left unscathed by the order are dictatorial regimes that are US allies in the region. Virtually all of them have contracted with the so-called “digital guns for hire” of Silicon Valley to carry out the same kind of operations in their countries.

As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, “McAfee Inc., acquired last month by Intel Corp., has provided content-filtering software used by Internet-service providers in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,” while Websense Inc. of San Diego, California “has sold its Web-filtering technology in Yemen, where it has been used to block online tools that let people disguise their identities from government monitors.”

The dictatorial monarchy in Bahrain, which hosts the US 5th Fleet, has installed a string of “monitoring centers” using sophisticated technology to track and eavesdrop on oppositionists, who have been rounded up, imprisoned and tortured.

For that matter the US government and the military’s National Security Agency (NSA) employ a spying apparatus that makes surveillance operations in Syria and Iran look amateurish by comparison. Congress, meanwhile, is preparing to act upon new legislation, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, that would promote the government’s ability to monitor and block Internet use.

Obama’s supposed concern that the Internet be utilized to “empower citizens, not to repress them,” is belied by his administration’s ruthless repression of WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange faces the threat of extradition to the US to face espionage charges, punishable by death, and of Private Bradley Manning, who is being prosecuted by the military for allegedly exposing US war crimes via WikiLeaks.

Obama announced the new sanctions in a speech saturated with hypocrisy and lies. The US president invoked the Holocaust as an abstract evil, whose causes were seemingly inexplicable. The words “Nazi,” “fascist,” or “Hitler” did not appear in the text. Rather, the words “never again” were mouthed as a slogan meaning unconditional support for Israel. How the death camps and the extermination of millions came to be is not explained, outside of the suggestion that it arose out of a failure to intervene militarily.

That fascism in Germany was the answer of the country’s ruling class to the desperate crisis of the capitalist system—and was able to consolidate power only through crushing the socialist movement and the working class as a whole—is of no interest in this brand of “Holocaust remembrance.” Nor for that matter is the fact—underscored by the US prosecutors of the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg—that their crime of mass murder arose out of the policy of aggressive war, described by the tribunal as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

The invocation of the Holocaust to justify wars of aggression is not merely hypocritical, but morally obscene. But this is precisely what Obama did.

He hailed the US-NATO war against Libya as a success and a model for future imperialist interventions. As a result of the eight-month war, he claimed, “the Libyan people are forging their own future, and the world can take pride in the innocent lives that we saved.” The Libyan regime installed by the US-NATO intervention has itself estimated that some 50,000 Libyans died in the war, far more “innocent lives” lost than were ever threatened by the repression of the Gaddafi regime. Meanwhile, the destabilization of not only Libya, but the entire region, threatens to claims many thousands more lives.

Obama also used the speech to announce that he is extending the deployment of US Special Operations troops in Central Africa, ostensibly to assist in the hunt for the Lord’s Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony.

Finally, he announced the creation of a new “Atrocities Prevention Board,” which is to be chaired by Samantha Power, the White House National Security Council senior director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs and a leading advocate of “humanitarian” military intervention. The new panel is supposed to coordinate actions across the US government in promoting imperialist interventions in the name of protecting civilian life and human rights.

In exploiting the Holocaust to justify a buildup to a war against Iran that could well lead to millions more deaths, Obama was merely echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last week delivered a speech on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day declaring Iran an “existential threat” to nuclear-armed Israel and equating Iran’s nuclear power program to the Holocaust.

At the time, Elie Wiesel, who has made a career as Washington’s semi-official Holocaust spokesman, criticized Netanyahu’s remarks on Iran. “Iran is a threat, but can we say that it will make a second Auschwitz?” Wiesel remarked. “I don’t compare anything to the Holocaust … Only Auschwitz was Auschwitz.”

By the time of his appearance Monday, introducing Obama at the museum, Wiesel had gotten his line in sync with the war propaganda needs of Israel and Washington. “Have we learned anything?” he declared in reference to the Holocaust. “If so, how is it that Assad is still in power? How is it that the Holocaust’s No. 1 denier, Ahmadinejad, is still the president, he who threatens to use nuclear weapons … to destroy the Jewish state.”

By Bill Van Auken

25 April 2012

@ WSWS.org

President Barack Obama has issued the green light for punishing new US economic sanctions directed at forcing the Iranian government to submit to Western pressure over its nuclear program by starving the country of oil revenues.

These new sanctions, which go into effect on June 28, aim to impose a warlike blockade of the Iranian economy by penalizing any government or private entity that carries out financial transactions with the country’s central bank.

Western Europe is preparing its own new sanctions, which are to include a European embargo on Iranian oil purchases, beginning in July.

The official memorandum authorizing the US sanctions affirmed, as required by the legislation creating them, that given existing oil supplies internationally, “the market can continue to accommodate” the cutting off of petroleum from Iran.

The theory is that Saudi Arabia can make up the difference in reduced oil supplies from Iran, and that in an emergency, the US and other oil consuming countries could tap into their strategic reserves. However, such safeguards may well prove ineffective in the face of a speculative bidding up of oil prices under conditions in which the margin of excess supply has been significantly reduced. The effect could prove a dizzying rise in gasoline prices, spelling sharp reductions in living standards internationally and the threat of an intensified economic downturn.

The ratcheting up of US sanctions came together with confirmation that the so-called P5+1 talks on Iran’s nuclear program are to be renewed in the middle of this month. The talks include the Iranian government together with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—the US, Britain, China, France and Russia—plus Germany.

Washington and its allies have charged that the Iranian government is developing a nuclear weapons program, while Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes. Unlike nuclear-armed Israel, which together with Washington has continuously threatened military strikes against it, Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact and has submitted to an inspection regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Speaking in Saudi Arabia, where she was coordinating an anti-Iranian military alliance with the reactionary Persian Gulf monarchies, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear that the sole purpose of the scheduled talks would be to achieve full Iranian compliance with US demands, or to pave the way to war.

“It will soon be clear whether Iran’s leaders are prepared to have a serious, credible discussion . . . to start building the trust we need to move forward,” Clinton said.

The US secretary of state told reporters that Iran should cease all production of 20 percent enriched uranium and open up all its facilities to continuous inspection. Neither of these steps is required under international treaties and law.

“So far,” she added, “they have given little reason for confidence. What is certain is that Iran’s window to do so will not remain open forever.”

This reference to the “window” closing represents yet another US threat of war against Iran.

In her talks with the Gulf oil potentates, Clinton unveiled US plans to build a regional missile defense system. The Washington Post reported that Vice Adm. Michael Fox, the commander of the US 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, presented the dictatorial regimes with the plans for the missile shield, which will provide lucrative new contracts for the US arms manufacturers, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Clinton and the ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council regimes also reportedly discussed means of securing the shipment of their oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, which passes through Iranian territorial waters, even as Iran is faced with the choking off of its own oil exports and the threat of military attack.

Clinton praised the Saudi monarchy for pledging to increase its oil supply to make up for the supplies from Iran that Washington is attempting to keep off the international markets. “Both the United States and Saudi Arabia share an interest in ensuring that energy markets foster economic growth,” she said. “We recognize and appreciate the kingdom’s actions to respond to market demand.”

While Iran had earlier announced that its talks with the P5+1 would resume on April 13, it had not fixed a locale for the meeting. In her remarks, Clinton indicated that it would be held in Istanbul, Turkey.

It is not clear, however, whether Tehran will accept convening the negotiations in the Turkish capital. Mohsen Rezaee, the former Iranian presidential candidate and secretary of the country’s Expediency Discernment Council, said that the talks should take place in an “Iranian-friendly” country, and that Turkey was not suitable given its “failure to fulfill relevant commitments.”

Rezaee did not elaborate on his statement, but tensions between Iran and Turkey have increased following Turkey’s announcement that it will at least partially comply with US sanctions, reducing its oil imports from Iran by 20 percent. Istanbul’s hosting Sunday of the “Friends of Syria” conference, which produced a plan for issuing paychecks to elements carrying out terrorist attacks inside Syria, Iran’s principal ally in the region, as well as Turkey’s threats of military intervention inside Syria, have further soured relations.

China, which imports 20 percent of its oil from Iran, has firmly rejected the US sanctions as an extra-legal interference in international trade.

“The Chinese side always opposes one country unilaterally imposing sanctions against another according to domestic law,” a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry affirmed Saturday. “Furthermore it does not accept the unilateral imposition of those sanctions on a third country.”

India, which imports some 12 percent of its oil from Iran, has also evaded US sanctions, paying for Iranian oil in rupees and with the barter of its own manufactured goods. Washington has exerted significant pressure on the Indian government to cut its trade ties with Tehran.

The BRICS summit—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—in New Delhi last week issued a declaration recognizing “Iran’s right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy” and warning against the “disastrous consequences” of a military attack.

Meanwhile, the US, Israel and Greece are conducting war games involving at least 10 warships and combat aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean. The operation, dubbed “Noble Dina,” is led by the US Sixth Fleet and the Israeli navy. It began on March 26 and continues until April 5.

The exercise, which includes simulated defense against submarine attacks and securing offshore oil platforms as well as air combat, is, according to Israeli sources, a rehearsal for war against Iran.

By Bill Van Auken

3 April 2012

@ WSWS.org

Turkey is leading calls for a military attack on Syria on behalf of the United States. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu attended yesterday’s NATO meeting in Brussels and will attend the Paris meeting today of the Friends of Syria—the Washington-led front, encompassing the European powers and Arab League states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, that is leading the war drive against Syria. Also in attendance along with Davutoglu will be Turkish Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz.

Behind the smokescreen of the United Nations and Kofi Annnan’s ceasefire, plans are being finalised for intervention, including US involvement under the auspices of NATO. Turkey had said it would raise the issue of an alleged violation of its Syrian border at the NATO ministerial meeting and call for NATO to come to its “defence.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend today’s Friends of Syria meeting and will, according to French diplomatic sources, discuss the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The two meetings are in preparation for the NATO Heads of State and Government Summit in Chicago on May 20-21.

Turkey is acting as a base of operations for the Free Syrian Army’s military attacks in Syria. The FSA is a sectarian Sunni force armed by the US, Britain and France. It includes covert troops supplied by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya.

Turkey is also home to the opposition Syrian National Council, a front made up of Islamists, CIA assets and ex-regime elements. It functions as a political proxy for Washington.

Ankara is using a border incident on April 9 in which Syrian forces are accused of wounding four Syrians and two Turkish staff working at a refugee camp to urge a military response by NATO. The Syrian regime claims that its forces had come under fire from Turkish territory. The incident is the only case to date of Syrian fire allegedly hitting people on Turkish soil.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan responded to the incident last week by insisting, “A country has rights born out of international law against border violations. … NATO has responsibilities to do with Turkey’s borders, according to Article 5.”

Article 5 of the NATO treaty declares that an armed attack against a NATO member is tantamount to an attack against all members and can be met with armed force. Invoking Article 5 would allow NATO members to take military action against Syria without a UN Security Council resolution, bypassing the objections to armed intervention of Russia and China.

To date it has been invoked only once—following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States which became the pretext for the nearly 11-year-long war against Afghanistan.

Turkish officials have repeatedly denounced Syria for not abiding by the terms of the UN ceasefire, blaming Assad personally for violations. “Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is trying to buy time. It is the reason why Turkey does not believe in a ceasefire in the country”, Erdogan said.

The Turkish prime minister held extensive discussions with President Barack Obama and CIA Director David Petraeus at the beginning of this month. He told reporters that studies were “underway” on a creating a buffer zone on Syrian territory and that “The ‘right to protection’ may be put into use, according to international rules.”

Making use of a minor border clash to declare war would be difficult, but the incident could be cited to legitimise the setting up of a buffer zone by Turkey’s military on Syrian soil. The need to defend such a bridgehead would provide an excuse for deploying NATO air power.

Turkish media reports have cited specifics regarding the preparations for a buffer zone, with 500 military personnel involved in inspecting areas close to the border as sites for a possible 20 kilometre (12.5 mile) incursion into Syria.

There have been numerous reports of the involvement on the ground of US Special Forces and troops in the planned operation, including the reassignment of troops previously stationed in Iraq. There are also reports of Saudi Arabia and Qatar training thousands of fighters in a closed-off location to boost the numbers of the FSA. The Obama administration has publicly agreed to a $12 million donation to the FSA.

A Captain Amar Wawi told CNN this week that the FSA is gathering more weapons and “preparing ourselves for the next stage if the Annan mission fails”. A Lieutenant Abdullah Oda said he was in Iraq last week brokering a deal to send weapons, including anti-tank missiles, “which we need strategically on the ground against tanks and against armour.”

In a significant political shift, the Syrian National Coordination Board (NCB), or National Coordination Committee for the Forces of Democratic Change, has come out in favour of armed intervention by the Western powers for the first time. The alliance of nominally leftist and nationalist parties previously opposed the SNC on this question. A spokesman told RIA Novosti that if the UN peace plan failed, the NCB would first call for a UN Security Council resolution to allow for “humanitarian intervention” in Syria.

Washington has repeatedly dismissed the ceasefire as a fraud and continues to push for action. US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said the Assad regime had “lied to the international community, lied to their own people”. She continued, “And the biggest fabricator of the facts is Assad himself. … His representatives are merely doing his bidding and under probably some not insignificant personal duress.”

Targeting Assad personally in this way is an attempt to encourage defectors at the top, through which the US can secure its aim of regime-change. A UN commission of inquiry on Syria issued a report February 23 accusing Syrian forces of crimes against humanity, including murder, abductions and torture carried out under orders from the “highest level” of army and government officials. A secret list of suspects was handed over to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who urged action by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani used a visit to Rome to declare that the Syrian people should not be supported through peaceful means, but “with arms”. Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti stressed the “close collaboration” between Rome and Doha on Syria.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated bluntly, “There are those who want Kofi Annan’s plan to fail. … They are doing this by delivering arms to the Syrian opposition and stimulating the activity of rebels, who continue to attack both government facilities and … civilian facilities on a daily basis.”

He called for the Syrian opposition to be pressured to comply with Annan’s plan. Instead, he said, “There are countries, there are external forces, that are … encouraging the Syrian opposition not to cooperate with the government in providing for a ceasefire and the subsequent establishment of dialogue.”

French diplomats boasted this week that Western sanctions on Syria are bleeding the country dry. A spokesman said, “We haven’t got a perfect measurement instrument to tell us when the regime will no longer be able to function, but we are seeing an extremely strong decline in foreign reserves: About half.”

“With the deteriorating economy there is a hyperinflationary context, sharp collapse of the currency and a fall in revenues. That pressure will eventually be felt”, said another source.

The European Union is set to impose a new round of sanctions after talks in Paris.

By Chris Marsden

19 April 2012

@ WSWS.org

Reform promises opportunities for overseas investors – but locals and neighbours alike are wary

Near Yangon’s historic riverfront on Monday, the buzz at the Thein Phyu Money Changer Centre came not only from the overnight news that Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition National League for Democracy party had won a landslide victory in parliamentary by-elections. It was also the first trading day at a newly liberalised market rate for the kyat, the local currency.

The opening rate of Kt818 to the dollar was a far cry from the previous official rate of Kt6.4. The shift is the most crucial of a raft of financial reforms under way in the south-east Asian country as its long-ruling generals ease their grip.

“It’s a new system, new era – and I hope, also new politics,” says one young teller at the recently opened exchange centre, a venture by six commercial banks where a shiny digital signboard takes pride of place.

Yet just outside, rusting taxis rattle past dilapidated buildings. Power cuts have kicked in again, despite Myanmar’s abundant natural gas reserves. On the broken pavements, one stall featuring ancient handsets has hot-wired public phone lines to offer local calls for the equivalent of 10 cents.

In a nation with a per capita income of barely $800 a year, mobile phones and computers are limited to the affluent classes. Sim cards for mobile telephones cost from $3,000 upwards, and most homes lack landline and internet connections. There are no cash machines for foreigners’ use, and just one or two for domestic customers. Credit cards are accepted only by a few high-end hotels. Like many other things, this is about to change – and that change will be given impetus as western governments, led on Wednesday by the US, ease sanctions that have helped to cripple the economy.

Already, however, the reformist government is reeling out changes at breakneck speed. A more liberal foreign investment law will emerge to replace the existing, restrictive code within weeks. A land use bill improving rights for farmers, who constitute about three-quarters of the nearly 60m population, has just been passed. Sweeping financial, banking and other economic reforms are in train.

Some banks have recently gained permission to install cash machines. One company has proposed introducing a Kt5,000 ($7) Sim card. Businesses, from foreign-owned hotels to local department stores, hope that credit cards, like other aspects of a modern financial system, will accompany the easing of sanctions. “It will be a watershed moment,” says Craig Powell, general manager of Traders, a leading downtown hotel.

The “managed” float of the kyat enables the government to intervene to influence the exchange rate, something experts – including the International Monetary Fund and Joseph Stiglitz, the US economist who has taken a close interest in Myanmar – say is essential. The aim is to create a cushion against the impact of expected heavy inflows of aid and investment that could push up inflation.

At the same time, the government is planning to liberalise current account transactions and develop capital markets – including allowing the entry of foreign banks – and to encourage banks to lend rather than holding government bonds.

Together, the measures form the economic frontline of bold reforms unleashed by the government of President Thein Sein since it took power just over a year ago. Mr Thein Sein, a former general known for his low-key approach and lack of cosy business ties, has astonished compatriots and the world with his determination to bring Myanmar into the 21st century.

Driving this push, say government insiders, was a growing realisation among the generals that decades of economic mismanagement and diplomatic isolation under their harsh rule had brought the country to its knees by 2010.

By then, Myanmar had for some years been ranked one of the poorest countries in global indices. It is difficult to imagine it was Asia’s rising star in the early 1960s, the world’s biggest rice exporter with an educated workforce and a well-functioning economic and legal system. One UN agency described it at the time as the nation “most likely to become fully industrialised” before its neighbours.

However, the 1962 coup that brought the generals to power put paid to that, leading instead to decades of stagnation. During a 2003 domestic banking and financial crisis, one of the economy’s lowest points, private banks were shuttered and mortgages banned. Even today, it is hard to obtain housing finance, and farmers are forced to turn to often predatory private lenders for credit.

In one of the frankest assessments yet, U Myint, the president’s most senior economic adviser, told a recent gathering of foreign aid officials: “We have to acknowledge that over half a century since we gained independence, it has not been lack of resources but rather misconceived ideas and flawed policies that have been our undoing.”

That message underlines the view among local analysts that the impetus for change came – perhaps inadvertently – from Than Shwe, the previous leader and military strongman. In an effort to redeem his stained legacy, he chose Mr Thein Sein, a loyal, quiet military professional, to run in 2010 elections to succeed him.

Western sanctions had by then brought Myanmar to the point where it was more than 70 per cent reliant on China for foreign direct investment: “Not a happy place to be,” remarks an expatriate executive. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the value of approved foreign investment projects reached nearly $20bn in the 2010-11 financial year, leaping more than 60-fold from the previous year. But 99 per cent of it was in oil and gas, mining and power-related projects. The consumer economy remained moribund.

Government actions have now begun to reflect a keener appreciation of public needs – in a way that has also affected foreign governments and businesses. The abrupt suspension last September of a $3.6bn Chinese hydropower dam project in Myanmar’s north telegraphed the changing attitude. The decision followed a public outcry over the environmental impact and terms that meant 90 per cent of the power generated would go to China.

The decision, though applauded by many, shocked China and would-be investors, putting pressure on the government to accelerate a new foreign investment code to assure investors that suspension of a mega-project was a one-off. Through a series of bilateral visits, the government also discreetly assured China that its other projects – including up to six dams and a massive pipeline and port development, remained on track.

A few months later, however, a Thai-led project to build a coal-fired power plant in the planned $56bn Dawei port development in the country’s south was suspended. One Yangon-based economist says the government again used the decision to signal to investors that big projects would be welcome only if they fitted with its new-found concerns about the environment and local impact. Both issues are addressed in new environmental laws.

Cross-border trade with Thailand, China and India is huge and largely unofficial. Other countries, including South Korea and Malaysia, have invested too. The significance of Myanmar’s re-emergence is noted most of all by Thailand, which regards it with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, Thailand has benefited from open access to Myanmar’s natural resources – more than half of Bangkok’s electricity supply relies on gas piped from its western neighbour. Thai companies have also moved into property development and service industries there.

On the other hand, Myanmar is drawing a steady stream of tourists, one of Thailand’s mainstay service industries, and is targeting close to 1m visitors in 2014, up from about 300,000 in 2011.

Other south-east Asian countries will also have justifiable concerns. Myanmar’s labour force is largely unskilled. However, with wages as low as Kt700 a day for a worker in a garment factory, it could compete with many of the low-cost manufacturing destinations.

The IMF said in January that it saw “high growth potential” for the country. Citing stronger commodity exports and higher investment, supported by robust credit growth and improved business confidence, it estimated economic growth of 5.5 per cent in the 2011-12 fiscal year and forecast a rise to 6 per cent in the current year to March 2013. The government recently raised its estimate to close to 7 per cent in the current fiscal year.

Inflation, projected at 4.2 per cent for the 2011 financial year, is on the rise, however, and expected to pick up to 5.8 per cent or higher given the likely increase in foreign investment and aid flows. That in turn has lent greater urgency to financial reforms, including the kyat’s managed float and moves to grant the central bank independence from the finance ministry.

The currency reforms are not only fundamental to a more open economy, they are “a key to western investment”, notes Prof Stiglitz. Indeed, says Rajiv Biswas of IHS Global Insight: “This monetary transition will encourage a significant upturn in trade and investment flows over the medium-term, helped by major new legislation to encourage foreign investment.”

For western investors, the “look-see” phase is likely to intensify with the lifting of sanctions. Before then, however, companies are eyeing opportunities to sell goods and are investigating potentially lucrative infrastructure and transport contracts. Big investment banks are arranging client visits. Some, including Nomura of Japan and Switzerland’s UBS, have issued reports cautiously endorsing Myanmar as a possible “Asian tiger” – even as they all warn that developments will take time.

“Myanmar is in the same place China was in early 1979, when Deng Xiaoping said: ‘We have to do something new.’ Myanmar is opening up,” Jim Rogers, the billionaire US investor, told a recent conference in Singapore. “If I could put all my money into Myanmar, I would.” The country, as Mr Rogers noted, is “right between China and India, 60m people, massive natural resources, agriculture … they have metals, they have energy, they have everything.”

As for Myanmar’s own companies: “We’re jittery,” says one local executive with a pharmaceuticals importer. “Big foreign investors have economic scale and access to markets – they can easily overwhelm us … We have had discussions with the government about this; we can’t compete with multinationals.”

After local business fiercely opposed initial government proposals to give foreigners eight-year tax breaks, the incentive was watered down to five years in the forthcoming foreign investment code, he says.

“Even so, it will be a struggle for us. In the end, though, we have lived through so many systems – and have faced the worst scenarios. We can survive, we can handle anything.”

Sanctions impact: ‘Reformers need help to address heightened expectations’

The orderly conduct of Myanmar’s April 1 by-elections appears to have met an important western benchmark for easing sanctions. The upshot is a frenzy of diplomatic manoeuvring both from within and outside the country.

In Myanmar, the issue has acquired a new political dimension after the resounding electoral defeat of the government-backed Union Solidarity and Development party. People close to Mr Thein Sein warn of mounting pressure on the former general from conservatives within his government and party who opposed his ambitious reform agenda.

Since coming to power just over a year ago, he has played a delicate balancing act between competing political agendas – including from a core of retired military officers who were reluctant to make concessions that could threaten their power.

While praised abroad for his moves to release political prisoners, resolve ethnic conflicts and ensure clean elections, the president is facing internal criticism, says one government adviser. “He fought the hardliners in order to try to meet the west’s demands; they complain it has brought nothing but humiliation and now he’s under pressure to deliver economic benefits – the first and most visible thing would be a significant gesture from the west.”

Charles Petrie, a former UN resident representative in Myanmar, warns that people’s expectations have been raised and that the west should move quickly.

“Everything hinges on three things: the democratisation process, ongoing efforts to fully resolve conflicts in ethnic zones, and economic reform efforts. When you are dealing with the first two, and even if you are successful, the fragility of the economy means that third leg of the stool may not be strong enough,” says Mr Petrie. “They [government reformers] need support to help address heightened expectations that have been raised by the reforms.”

Many argue in favour of a phased easing of sanctions, to maintain pressure on the government for further reform. Others warn of economic disruption from a flood of foreign investment that could accompany a broad lifting of restrictions.

Western business is keen to access the resource-rich country. Reforms include a foreign investment code, now being finalised, that is understood to offer strong incentives for companies to set up in Myanmar. Their worry is that regional rivals may get in first. “Many Asian firms are already investing and operating in Myanmar,” says Rajiv Biswas at IHS Global Insight, a forecaster. “Asian companies are definitely positioning for more rapid economic growth in Myanmar as economic reforms are implemented.”

By Gwen Robinson

4 April 2012

@ Financial Times

“One of Lula’s foreign policy advisors told a friend of mine that when Brazil looks at Iran, it doesn’t see just Iran, it also sees Brazil.” – Larry Rohter, New York Times Reporter

Barack Obama recently visited with current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. President Obama didn’t receive her, however, with the kind of pomp and circumstance, that has been given to nations like India and China. President Rousseff only met with Obama in a brief meeting, she did not receive a state dinner, and Obama spent most of the day rolling Easter eggs on the South Lawn. While CEOs, university presidents, and even the Chamber of Commerce — were literally chomping at the bit to meet with her — Obama seemed to be very low key and nonplussed, about his meeting with this extraordinarily capable and singular woman. What could be the reasons/reasoning for such a cold shoulder, from our 44th and current president and commander-in-chief?

Could it be that Brazil has advocated for the cause of Palestinian statehood, that it has traditionally had amicable relations with Iran, that it is a member of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and UNASUR (Union of South American Nations), or that it has pressured the US to include Cuba in the meetings of the OAS (Organization of American States)? [1] Indeed, Brazil is currently involved in an $800 million modernization project of the western harbor of Havana. [2]

Additionally, Brazil has inquired to the US government about a permanent position on the United Nations Security Council, and the US — has not responded in the affirmative, that it is interested in supporting that. Brazil also gave refuge to Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in its embassy, after the takeover (of the US-supported) coup regime. Furthermore, President Rousseff has been a cutting and incisive critic of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy, and moreover China has still fairly recently emerged as Brazil’s chief, cardinal — number one and foremost — trading partner/associate. A writer in the Financial Times, has even likened Brazil to the France of Latin America. Not obstructing US hegemony, and an attempted unimpeded global power monopoly; out of any sound principle, or deeply held belief or vision, but according to this bourgeois analyst, “[Brazil is] undermining our initiatives in Iran or over trade talks…[as a] way of forcing us to pay attention to them.” [3]

Perhaps Obama thinks that Brazil, should be like a child bouncing on his leg (like the aforementioned FT “pundit”)? And is Brazil’s insufficient fealty to the Monroe Doctrine, and diktats coming from its “superior” northern nation, actually what ails this bilateral rapport/interrelationship? Perhaps, it’s simple envy as Rousseff enjoys a 77% approval rating, she has been seen as an effective battler of corruption, and Brazil’s economy — under her watch — is now considered to be the sixth largest in the world. [4]

In comparison, Obama is trying to sell a non-existent recovery, and that the Republicans are absolutely, totally, and utterly batshit crazy, in order to win himself a reelection/second term. Rather than languid then, however, perhaps Obama should have been absolutely ecstatic, at the prospect of meeting — with the categorically more than serviceable Brazilian President. Unequivocally, Obama is far from Rousseff’s popularity, dynamism and overall effectiveness, but seemingly, it was far more important to him — to be rolling multi-colored Easter eggs on the White House South Lawn — than to be meeting with such an acute, capable, effectual and resultant; world leader, stateswoman, dignitary, and noteworthy head of government.

By Sean Fenley

14 April 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Notes:

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/05/opinion/gomez-iran-brazil-chill/index.html

[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/us-brazil-cuba-idUSTRE80O1QX20120125

[3] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9311c644-7da4-11e1-bfa5-00144feab49a.html#axzz1rlYGh9Hj

[4] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/08/144532/what-could-obama-learn-from-brazil.html

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.

Part of the story of Holy Week is how the forces of the Roman Empire conspired against the Prince of Peace in the last days.  It is not only a lesson of history, but it is central to the witness of Jesus that we should exercise faithfulness to God and justice toward all people in the face of whatever powers, principalities and structures of violence would dominate and divide us.  Global Ministries is blessed to be in partnership with many communities around the world who continue to demonstrate a faithful witness against such forces today.

The residents of Jeju Island off the southern coast of South Korea are such an example. For months protests have been building against the construction of a new naval base on Jeju in the village of Gangjeong. Given historic security agreements between the U.S. and Republic of Korea, analysts surmise Korea is building the deepwater base at the behest of the U.S. military.  However locals from the area around Gangjeong oppose the militarization of their serene island and the threat to the environment and to their distinct culture that the base poses. Protesters have reached out to allies throughout Korea, including our Korean church partners, to ask the international community to join them in protesting the base and the escalating arms race throughout the region.

The villagers of Gangjeong have repeatedly rejected the decision to build the base adjacent to their homes and on land Koreans have long regarded as a national treasure for its natural and cultural significance.  Jeju Island was listed in 2007 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Its beautiful landscape is marked by unique rock formations and fragile ecosystems.  Traditional practices like the haenyho  women who dive while holding their breath under water are distinctive to the island culture.  A major lava-formed rock structure juts into the sea beside Gangjeong and has been revered by Koreans as a sacred site for pilgrimage and devotion. But the Gureombi or “Living” Rock has been cordoned off and access to it restricted by the military for construction of the base.

The government’s treatment of protestors has led to charges of human rights violations by the Asia Human Rights Commission. Christine Ahn, columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, has reported that “[t]he government and construction contractors are attempting to stamp out the outcry by arresting, beating, fining, and threatening villagers and activists.” This attack on dissent echoes a dark moment in Korea’s history, the government’s massacre in 1948 of over 30,000 Jeju residents in an attempt to put down a popular uprising against the division between North and South Korea.  In 2005 the late President Roh Moo Hyun declared Jeju an “Island of World Peace” in commemoration of the event, making the current dispute over the military base and official crackdown a tragic irony.

 But the Jeju Island controversy represents a larger drama being played out in the age-old struggle against the forces of empire. Why does the U.S. want South Korea to build this new naval base?  U.S. foreign policy is undergoing a major “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region, heralding what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called “America’s Pacific Century.” Under pretext of defense against North Korea, the Gangjeong naval base is at the forefront of a U.S. strategy of increased militarization designed to counterbalance China’s growing economic and military sphere of influence.  Not only does Jeju put the most advanced U.S. military might on China’s doorstep, but it is the top edge of a new U.S. theatre of military operations that includes a new U.S. Marine base in Australia, increased troop rotations through the Philippines, and pressure on Japan to increase military funding and cooperation with U.S. bases in Okinawa.

 During Holy Week we are invited to identify in our lives the powers and principalities that threaten war over peace and death over life. For many in the world this is not an act of spiritual imagination, but a matter of everyday struggle. The people of Jeju are right not only to want to protect the sanctity of their island, but to fear the threats of violence—indeed of nuclear war—being amassed around them.  What is the role of the church in bearing witness to the Prince of Peace against the structures of violence amassing in the Pacific? As Easter people what have we to say to the forces of empire today?

Derek Duncan, M.Div.

April 5, 2012

Associate for Global Advocacy and Education

Recently, I had published at Asia Times Online an exclusive investigation, Insider Trading 9/11 … The Facts Laid Bare (March 21, 2012).

In this article I presented evidence of informed trading activities prior to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 on areas of New York City and Washington that resulted in the death of 2,996 people, including the 19 hijackers of four commercial jets. (The four aircraft hijacked on September 11 were American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 and UAL flights 175 and 93.)

On the same subject matter, Asia Times Online now presents an interview that I have conducted with United States economist Paul Zarembka.

Professor Zarembka is a professor of economics at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. He has been the general editor for Research in Political Economy since 1977, and is the author of Toward a Theory of Economic Development, editor of Frontiers in Econometrics, and co-editor of Essays in Modern Capital Theory.

He is working on the concept and application of accumulation of capital. Furthermore, he is an expert on Marxist theory and economic development. In 2008, Zarembka edited the book The Hidden History of 9-11, a serious reference volume that examines 9/11 and its background, showing how much remains unknown and where further investigation and debate is needed. His own chapter in the book includes investigation of insider trading before 9/11 and was updated in 2011 [1].

Lars Schall: Professor Zarembka, how did you as an economist became interested in the topic of insider trading activities prior to the terror attacks of 9/11?

Paul Zarembka: Well, I did not got directly interested in it, I got directly interested in 9/11 itself. That eventually led to insider trading, and since I specialized in econometrics it was the natural thing for me to jump unto and investigate for myself.

LS:Right after the attacks, a fair amount of mainstream financial media articles surfaced suggesting that there was informed trading going on related to 9/11. Why do you believe this reporting disappeared soon after and was never seen again?

PZ: That’s a good question, and I’ll tell you what I think, but it’s kind of speculative, I can’t know for sure. What I think happened was that many people who were not involved in any way whatsoever with 9/11 noticed the extreme levels of put options in certain securities before 9/11.

That is publicly available information, particularly if you have the services that provide that data to you. Some of these people noticed the extreme volumes and they thought, I believe, that it would lead to nailing [al-Qaeda leader] Osama bin Laden as responsible for 9/11. So we’ve got a lot of news coverage for about a month or two after 9/11, and then suddenly it died. I think the reason why it died – and that’s speculation – is that somehow the word got out that it’s not going to lead to Osama bin Laden.

LS: And so said the 9/11 Commission in its report.

PZ: Right, but that was much later after it died, and I mean it really died very quickly. On the other hand, the fact that it got out there at all meant that the 9/11 Commission report had to say something about it. They said something very minimal, but they said something, and if hadn’t been for those news stories nothing would have probably got out about it.

LS: What was the position of the 9/11 Commission relating to insider trading, and why do you think its conclusions are unconvincing?

PZ: That’s a big question, perhaps bigger than you anticipated. Let me go back a little bit to the history of discussions about insider trading connected with 9/11.

The first scientific paper that came out about it was from Professor Allen Poteshman, who was at that time working at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His article was published in the Journal of Business which nobody can criticize for its respectability and the integrity of its peer-review process, and yet he came to the conclusion that there was insider trading with high probability (nothing is ever certain in statistics) in American Airlines stock options and to a lesser extent in United Airlines [2].

It was accepted for publication, I think, around 2004, well before the 9/11 Commission report came out, but they did not make any reference to it. I am not sure if they knew or didn’t know about it, but my guess would be that they would have been informed that that study had been done.

Now the 9/11 Commission made its reports and said that they did investigations throughout the financial world, I mean not just only in the United States but also abroad, and not just in put option trading but in other financial instruments, and they concluded that they could not find any evidence of irregular financial transactions.

In its report, only two cases are actually cited, the two cases that Poteshman had studied and written about, namely in American Airlines put option trading and United Airlines. However, the commission provided almost no direct evidence of what its finding was, but rather just made assertions. So what the 9/11 Commission said is basically worthless because it didn’t give us any evidence for its statement.

The drama is magnified when two more studies were done which again confirmed that insider trading took place. Where it also gets dramatic is that in 2009, some parts of the investigation fed into the 9/11 Commission were released, and frankly I have to tell you that at least for American Airlines the report is convincing that there wasn’t insider trading in American Airlines.

I say this not because it changes the final result very much, but I think it is a deep warning to everybody working on these kind of issues that these issues are complicated, and that in the final analysis the government has the data and has knowledge we don’t have – so some of what we are doing is based upon hard facts, but some of it speculates around things we don’t have the hard facts about.

LS: And then the label “conspiracy theorist” raises its ugly head very fast when you do speculate.

PZ: Yes, and that’s why I am not interested in speculating. I try to say truthfully whatever I discover. For example, Poteshman’s results were never a certainty, they were always stated as a high probability. But from an econometric point of view when you get results which have a probability of 99% you take them very seriously.

And that leads us to something else. I have enough experience in econometric issues which were controversial to know that typically, when you got controversial results, somebody else comes along with a series of objections to the methodology that you have used and you get a big controversy.

No one ever responded to Poteshman’s article from a critical perspective, and this is very curious. It’s a major piece of work, and he got the data actually from the Chicago Board Option Exchange [CBOE] in a way that the rest of us don’t have; he got confidential data for his work.

I suspect that the CBOE wanted to find out if a methodology could be developed which would be useful for checking into insider trading in other incidents, not only in this one, and I think that’s why the CBOE gave him the data. Whatever the reason is, he had data the rest of us don’t have. So it really was something to investigate further, but his work was never challenged. And then we get two other papers which actually more than reinforced what Poteshman said.

One of those papers came from two professors and a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who studied abnormal trading in the S&P 500 index options prior to the 9/11 attacks. [3] Their study came to the conclusion that there was a high probability of insider trading in S&P 500 index options prior to September 11.

What is very interesting about their results is that the underlying reports that were made available to the 9/11 Commission (which we didn’t see until later) say that they could not examine the S&P 500 index options because trading in it is too extensive. Now why that becomes interesting is because the 9/11 Commission report had said that they made a wide-ranging study and they found no evidence of any sort of financial irregularities before 9/11, but also said the S&P 500 index options couldn’t even be investigated – so the commission is kind of contradicting itself. And more than that, when some did investigate the S&P 500 index options, they find out that in fact it did have abnormal trading before 9/11, with high probability.

The other paper, the third one, is from Professor Marc Chesney and two of his colleagues at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. [4] They are engaged in a long-term project which has been ongoing now for about five years, continually improving their work and it’s getting larger and larger. What they do is they look at 14 corporations – five airlines, five banks and four other stocks. They also find that there was insider trading prior to 9/11 in a number of stocks, for example in Boeing and Merrill Lynch.

We can discuss this further, but the basic message now is that there are three studies showing high probability of insider trading prior to 9/11, while there are no reports out there which are showing the opposite. We only have the 9/11 Commission report saying something different.

Also interesting from Chesney’s work is this: Michael Ruppert [author of Crossing the Rubicon] made a lot of noise about the enormity of the profits that were made on put options before 9/11 and he also talks about options that were not exercised after 9/11, suggesting that some people were afraid of exercising their options. [5]

But if you look carefully at Chesney’s paper, the detail in Chesney’s paper indicates that every single put option was exercised by the time of its expiration day. So there wasn’t anything left over. And in fact I have learned something along the way: If a put option is in the money on the day of the expiration date, it is automatically exercised. It isn’t allowed to just expire.

The other thing that came from Chesney that I wouldn’t know otherwise: he is calculating the actual gains from exercising the put options, and you can add up his numbers, and he comes up to about US$15 million just on the put options that he has looked at.

And if you double that in order to kind of add the other put options he didn’t examine, it would be $30 million that could have been earned as a result of exercising the put option trades. The point I am making is that, for the put option trades, while important, we are not talking about billions of dollars here. There are other things that happened before and after 9/11 that were worth much more than $30 million.

LS: Am I right that the paper about the S&P 500 Index and the study by Professor Chesney are both not challenged either?

PZ: That’s correct.

LS: In light of these econometric findings, what do you think about the performance of the SEC [Securities Exchange Commission] and the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], since their investigations have been the basis for the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission?

PZ: Well, let us go back to the implications for Poteshman because that indicates where the weaknesses of the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission are and what they might have gotten away with. First of all, the report that was released in 2009 cites a guy from the SEC by the name of Joe Cella, and that report basically gave the evidence of what the 9/11 Commission report asserted without stating how they came to that assertion. [6]

Cella said that they found a financial advisory service that sent out on September 9, 2001, a fax to its subscribers that they should buy American Airlines put options at the current price. Cella reports that his investigators went out and got the list of the 2,000 subscribers to this newsletter, Options Online.

They found out that 55 of those subscribers had purchased put options on American Airlines. And they contacted about half of them and were told by them that they purchased the put options on September 10 because of the recommendation of the newsletter. So Cella was claiming that they nailed down 50 plus subscribers of that newsletter who bought put options on American Airlines.

That number is not dramatic, representing about 2.5% of the subscribers who received the recommendation. But it is a convincing report and would seem to account for a majority of the put option purchases on September 10.

LS: There were also purchases of put options on American Airlines and other stocks the days before, so maybe Options Online was only reacting to those.

PZ: That’s where it gets interesting. We don’t know exactly the motivations for the advice of Options Online. What you are mentioning means that we need to trace those other put options that Professor Chesney and his colleagues found, namely Boeing, Merrill Lynch, Morgan, Citigroup, and so forth.

In other words, there could well have been a climate being created of buying put options before September 11 by people in the know, by people who had insider knowledge about what was going to happen, and that it spun off to some people who did not have that insider knowledge, for example maybe the editor of Options Online who made the recommendation of buying put options on American Airlines.

There’s another reason to think why this might makes sense. The article by Wong, Thompson and Teh [economists Wong Wing-Keung, Howard E Thompson and Kweehong Teh], whose findings were published in April 2010 under the title “Was there Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?” notes that actually buying put options on American Airlines and United Airlines was kind of the most stupid thing to do if you knew what was coming down and you knew that airplanes of American Airlines and United Airlines would be involved on 9/11, because buying put options on exactly those airlines would have meant the risk of exposing yourself.

Also, I have to point out that I’m defending as an econometrician my profession in a certain way. I have looked very carefully at all these econometric works and I didn’t find a substantial weakness in them. They are not crazy pieces of research, but solid ones. And from their work we get also into internal contradictions of the Cella report when it is said that every avenue was investigated, but then said: “Oh, by the way, we didn’t investigate the S&P 500 index options.” When it was investigated by those people at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, they find that there was in fact high evidence for insider trading in put options on the S&P 500 index.

LS: Wong, Thompson and Teh also said that they would need better trading data to nail it really down.

PZ: That’s actually a factor in all of the three studies.

LS: I think another problem here with nailing down the evidence of 9/11 insider trading is that if the government had any interest in prosecuting this, they would offer protection to some people who know about the insider trading firsthand, correct?

PZ: Yes, right. I mean, a very common method of criminal investigation is to offer protection to certain individuals to get to others.

LS: You are calling for an international investigation. Why?

PZ: Because I don’t feel at all satisfied with the study that was done by United States authorities. They don’t give us the truth about what happened, for example, with Merrill Lynch insider trading before 9/11, or with Boeing. They had the opportunity and they don’t provide the information. They provided it only for American Airlines, that’s the only one that is convincing.

LS: Isn’t it also an important reason due to fact that it is connected to mass murder, which isn’t time-barred, and thus it still needs to be prosecuted?

PZ: Absolutely. It needs to be prosecuted. We need to go back and find out about the put option trades Chesney talks about, to every single one of them – we need to go back to Boeing, Merrill Lynch, Morgan, Citigroup etc. You have to look at every single one of those and look at exactly at who did it, and don’t make a presumption that so-and-so is an American citizen and would never have done such a thing, etc. That’s not the way to go about anything in any serious piece of work. That needs to be done.

LS: Why is it that those scientific papers we have talked about don’t get addressed from other economists?

PZ: To be frank about my profession, the real reason is that they are scared. I know my profession. Ordinarily, when you have a topic which is as hot as this one, or maybe a topic not as quite so hot but has huge social implications, you want to research it, because you could make your career really moving forward, I’m just talking in normal academic terms.

So you would think that there are other econometricians out there who would want to do their own study or criticize the other studies, but doing it in a very serious way, hoping that it will move their own professional career forward – and it’s not happening. And I think the reason is what I have said, they are afraid. This is too big for them to deal with. They are afraid that even getting into the topic gives it credence. Let me say it again: even getting into the topic legitimatizes the topic. That’s why Poteshman’s paper in the Journal of Business was so enormously important, because it legitimized the topic.

LS: It seems as if there were more remaining questions about financial issues surrounding September 11. For example, something that calls for attention is the staggering growth in

the amount of US currency circulating outside banks … in July/August 2001. The growth ran into the billions of dollars. … The currency component of the M1 monetary aggregate reported by the Fed rose by $13 billion (in the non-seasonally adjusted data), posting the highest such June-August growth rate in the 55 years since World War II. Balance sheet data for the Reserve Banks show a similar decline in inventory holdings of currency in July/August 2001, while data from the US. Treasury Department suggest the growth in currency in circulation was concentrated in $100 bills. [7]

Do you have an opinion on that

PZ: Bill Bergman, whom you quote here, basically says that there’s a field of research here that needs more explanation, and I understand what he is trying to ask us to look at and it is important. As you said, there was a huge increase in, particularly, the $100 bill currency supply in July/August of 2001, it was an enormous increase.

That drives a question for explaining why it happened. And Bergman got apparently fired from his job for even asking the question, for even pointing out the problem. That’s my understanding. But having said that, I don’t have anything to offer to add to what he has done, expect that I would note what he has done is important.

But there were other things happening on that day that were connected to financial issues. For example, I don’t know what to say about it, but the specific floors in which the World Trade Center towers were hit were particularly important financial floors. I am not talking about the whole buildings, I am talking about specific floors which were hit. Or the specific portion of the Pentagon which was hit was also extremely important for financial issues.

LS: For the accounting?

PZ: Yes, for the accounting, right. It is almost too much to believe that this is just a coincidence. Another thing, I have read reports that there were enormous gold stocks at the bottom of the World Trade Center, and trucks were coming in, carrying it out. Where did the gold go to? Did it happen, first of all, and if it did, where did it go to?

And in Building 7, the third building that collapsed, you have SEC files that were destroyed. I know a person working in the Washington office of the SEC, who told me afterwards – they were dealing with all kinds of investigations that were being undertaken, and case after case after case was closed because they had no copies located elsewhere, the documents that they needed to prosecute these corporations.

What I’m saying is that the case of M1 money supply is just one of many cases. The significance of the put option issue is that the numbers are clear and what you ought to do as a prosecuting person is also clear: you go to the people, you go to the exact names, the exact people who did the trades, and you can get that, no question about that.

LS: Through the brokers?

PZ: Yes, who ought to know, right. But I’m just saying that insider trading is the cleanest example we have in financial irregularities, which is why it is attractive to investigate. There are other things out there. Insurance payoffs for the buildings that were destroyed, that’s another example, billions of dollars that we are talking about.

LS: And we know that some re-insurance companies like Munich Re and Swiss Re were also targeted via put options.

PZ: Yes, right.

LS: You’re not only an expert on econometrics but also an expert on Marxist theory. Could you give us at the end of this interview an interpretation from a Marxist approach to the critical question “Cui Bono 9/11”? [Who benefits?]

PZ: Well, first of all let me say, since I have done Marxist research and been the editor of a Marxist series for years – when 9/11 happened it took me a little while to decide that 9/11 is worth investigating in its own right. While it is a shocking human event, it is not a shocking theoretical event – I mean, it’s not shocking from a point of view of what I see as the Marxist understanding of what the state is capable of doing even to its own citizens. It is not shocking from that point of view.

But, anyway, you then go to the next question: Why would the US state possibly do this at this time and for what purpose? Well, that can be a kind of a trap question, because no matter what I say somebody could come back and say: Well, they could have accomplished the same thing without 9/11.

Nevertheless, I still am going to say just a fact: the United States military-industrial complex has earned billions and billions of dollars as a result of 9/11. I think it would have been much more difficult to achieve those sums of money without 9/11. The US military expenditures are already equal in size of all of the rest combined. 9/11 surely helped that ideological support for such an incredibly large military.

LS: Do you think from an economist’s point of view it has become reality what president [Dwight] Eisenhower warned about, that the military-industrial complex has become too large and too powerful, and is now calling the shots economically? [8]

PZ: The short answer is yes, but the more complicated answer is that my understanding of Eisenhower’s statement is that it was long in preparation, it was kind of a year in the making. But, on the other hand, I mean, you can ask yourself the question: Well, why didn’t he do it two years earlier than that? It was kind of something he threw out at the last minute and didn’t have to take any responsibility for.

At the same time he was setting up the Bay of Pigs invasion [in Cuba] that he foisted on [president J F] Kennedy. So, yes, it’s a great thing to quote what Eisenhower said; I like it and it turns out to be correct, but I don’t fully understand his motivation when he waited to the last minute to say it and then afterwards couldn’t do anything about it, and what he did do as president was consistent with the rest of the US foreign policy.

LS: Well, his successor John F Kennedy was dealing with the military-industrial complex a bit differently.

PZ: Yes, he was the one who really challenged it. There is a wonderful book on this that should be read by anybody: JFK and the Unspeakable by Jim Douglas. [9]

LS: Yes, it is just brilliant, I agree.

PZ: If people want to read something about JFK’s challenge of the military-industrial complex this is definitely the book to read, no doubt about it.

LS: Thank you very much for taking your time, Professor Zarembka!

By Lars Schall

27 April 2012

@ Asia Times Online

Notes

1. Paul Zarembka:, “Evidence of Insider Trading before September 11th Re-examined”, International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, September 8-11, 2011, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, online here, September 9, 2011.

2. Allen M Poteshman: “Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,” published in The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, 2006, Vol. 79, Edition 4, page 1703-1726.

3. Wing-Keung Wong, Howard E. Thompson und Kweehong Teh: “Was there Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks”, Multinational Finance Journal, Vol. 15, no. 1/2, pp. 1- 46 online here.

4. Marc Chesney, Remo Crameri and Loriano Mancini: “Detecting Informed Trading Activities in the Option Markets”, University of Zurich, April 2010, online here.

5. See Michael C Ruppert: “Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age Of Oil”, New Society Publishers, 2004.

6. See Commission Memorandum: “FBI Briefing on Trading”, dated August 18, 2003, online here.

7. Bill Bergman: “A 9/11 Paper Trail: Benjamin Franklin, Rolling Over In His Grave”, published March 23, 2012, see here.

8. See Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Farewell Address”, delivered 17 January 1961, online here.

9. James Douglass: “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters”, Orbis Books, 2008.

Lars Schall is a German financial journalist.

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph”- Haile Selassie

“Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden” – Bishop Desmond Tutu

These two cautionary admonitions capture the thrust of Guenter Grass’ electrifying poem, “What Must Be Said,” that has brought an avalanche of invective – some scurrilous, some vituperative, some even personal vilification – against the man who warns the people of the world as well as the Jewish people of the dangers inherent in the actions of the Zionist controlled government of the State of Israel. Such condemnations avoid direct rebuttal of Grass’ pointed cries of despair as he contemplates continued indifference to the slow yet calculated genocide that exists in Israel ‘s occupation of Palestine reverting instead to derogatory innuendo, ignorance of conditions prevalent in the occupied territories, ignorance of those determined to destroy Israel , and personal guilt as a German. There is no reflection on the worst sin human kind can inflict on their fellow human beings, the silence of indifference to the plight of the Palestinians or to the potential danger facing the people of the mid-east should Israel preemptively strike Iran .

The title of his poem, “What Must Be Said,” echoes the prophets of old, cries of those weeping in the wilderness to heed the obvious, to hear the hypocrisy that masks the reality of a nation that cries for peace as it stealthily steals more land, that demands dismantling of Iran’s nuclear plants as it declares its right to Demona and untold weapons of mass destruction, that denounces with all brazen duplicity, indeed silences those who criticize the state of Israel while they are free to attack them as anti-Semitic.

“Why silence so long,” Grass asks of himself and answers, as must we all, that we are “slaves to an oppressive lie,” what cannot be said without condemnation because Israel has the “right” to demand and defend what it will. Is it wrong to criticize the obvious? Is it wrong to bare truth when silence once before begot a holocaust? Is it wrong for the German people to mark what they have learned through decades of reflection and reparation and not reveal what they have lived and learned? Is it wrong to speak when devastation threatens, when arrogance buries truth, when the weak have no voice, when the unknown consequence of brutal, raw, preemptive poweris imminent?

I would have Guenter Grass speak for me, my children and grandchildren, and all others who could suffer yet another World War, by noting the obvious that has been silenced so long:

•  a state provided with the fourth greatest military machine in the world to defend less than 6 million people,

•  a nation, the only nation in the mid-east with weapons of mass destruction,

•  a nation that refuses to sign the mid-east nuclear non-proliferation agreement,

•  a nation that has demonstrated its willingness to invade its neighbors in Lebanon , Syria , Egypt , Iraq , and drools to bomb Iran ,

•  a nation that occupies a land provided for it by the same United Nations that gave Israel license to declare itself a nation,

•  a nation that damns Iran for proclaiming that it will “wipe Israel off the map,” when in fact it never made such a declaration yet innocently hides its own declaration in the Likud Party Platform that the state it professes to want peace with, Palestine, shall never have a state west of the Jordan,

•  a nation that is of such demonstrable threat to world peace that if it is not condemned would be a blot on all who remain silenced and thereby complicit in its crimes,

and for such inaction, such indifference we must accept responsibility and condemnation; let the indignant ring their bells of anger and hatred, truth will prevail.

Who better to speak than a citizen of a country that supplies Israel with nuclear submarines capable of terrorizing its neighbors if not the world, submarines provided as reparation to a people destroyed so they can become the destroyer. “Why silence so long?”because “this must be said” with strength, conviction, integrity and honesty, and without personal fear or trepidation because the silence has been broken by a voice that resounds throughout the world in righteous thunder against the greatest danger the world now knows, an Israel that can act with impunity to crush whomever they determine to be their enemy.

Let me close this defense of Guenter Grass with a story told by Professor Michael Klein years after he had escaped death at Auschwitz . Klein’s brief narrative is titled “Breaking Silence.” It captures what I believe is the real essence of Guenter Grass’ plea, both in time and shame. The story reflects on Klein’s close friend, SalamonAbshalom, who had attempted escape and was to suffer death as a consequence. The story is a parable that parallels our time; what if voices had told of the Jewish plight before the trains took them to the death camps; maybe SalamonAbshalom would still be alive.

“My friend SalamonAbshalom was let out. He was barely able to walk; his hands were tied behind his back. An SS guard took him to the back of the camp yard. … He was led to the gallows and made to climb onto what looked like a stepladder. The noose was tied around his neck.

We stood paralyzed, in bewildered despair. How could the Heavens allow this to happen on this holy Yom Kippur evening? Did the Germans set up the execution specifically for Yom Kippur to humiliate the God of Israel and His people? The silence of the Heavens screamed out in our hearts and in our souls. The desecration of the God of Israel, of the people of Israel , of Yom Kippur, and the humiliation of man created in the image of God proceeded in silence as the German hangman, the Camp’s SS commander, stood over SalamonAbshalom.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a powerful, high pitched voice rang out over the camp yard. It sent chills down our spines, as we heard the cry of ” Sh’maYisrael… “, Hear O Israel”, as SalamonAbshalom declaimed the eternal proclamation of the Jewish people’s belief in one God….

With his prayer of Sh’maYisrael arising from his last breath, he raised all of us standing Zaehlappell to the highest spiritual level. Even as his life was extinguished by the brutal murderer to whom nothing was holy, he still proclaimed the eternity of the Jewish People, in defiance of evil, in defiance of the Germans, in defiance of the silence of humanity, and in defiance of the silence of the Heavens. SalamonAbshalom proclaimed the Godliness of the Jewish People even at a time when God seemed to be totally absent.

I slowly calmed my emotions and tried to analyze my thoughts. The Germans murdered SalamonAbshalom, but I was guilty having been silent in spite of the promise we made to each other in the camps that we will tell the world of what happened. I had kept SalamonAbshalom’s memory a secret for all these years.”

Silence sacrifices the innocent because it allows continuation of slaughter; silence rests in the soul as it acidifies into self-shame; silence speaks no language, offers no aid, but ensures that time will extinguish both hope and guilt. Silence is the voice of the coward and the accomplice. Silence must be extinguished.

By William A. Cook

7 April 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He writes frequently for Internet publications including The Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Countercurrents, Counterpunch, World Prout Assembly, Dissident Voice, and Information Clearing House among others. His books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and the forthcoming The Plight of the Palestinians. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com

In recent days, the Western powers have stepped up efforts to foment civil war in Syria and prepare for imperialist intervention in this strategically important country. Media reports indicate increased fighting between Western-backed armed groups and the Syrian army, accompanied by terrorist attacks on government forces and civilians.

Heavy fighting has taken place in the Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria. The province has a 200-kilometer border with Turkey, where the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) is based. According to the news agency AFP, “rebel” forces attacked military intelligence headquarters in Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, and the FSA launched a dawn assault on the nearby Minakh Air Base.

In another attack at Hreitan, an officer of the Syrian army and two security personnel were killed early Saturday. In Idlib province, one of the FSA’s main strongholds near the Turkish border, Syrian forces shelled an area held by the FSA.

Clashes and terrorist attacks have also taken place in central Syria. In several districts in the city of Hama, fighting was reported between armed groups and the regular Syrian army. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that 5 explosive devices planted by terrorist groups were dismantled in Homs. Over 100 people have reportedly been killed over the weekend, and thousands have fled over the Turkish border in recent days.

The US and its main NATO allies—France, Great Britain, Germany and Turkey—are leading the campaign to destabilize Syria. Together with the reactionary Persian Gulf monarchies, Saudi-Arabia and Qatar, they are funding and arming the so called “rebels.” During the April 1 “Friends of Syria” meeting in Istanbul, the Saudi and Qatari regimes officially announced they would put the Syrian “rebels” on their payroll, thus formalizing their status as a mercenary force of imperialism’s regional proxies.

The current offensive by the “rebels” and the reactions of their Western backers expose the fraudulent character of the six-point peace plan that former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan negotiated with the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The imperialist powers never intended to find a political settlement to the conflict, as they claimed, but sought instead to create a pretext for further provocations against Syria, hoping to organize a Libyan-style overthrow of the regime.

On Friday, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon placed all the blame for the violence in Syria on the Assad regime, declaring that attacks by government forces “violate” the UN Security Council statement demanding an end to hostilities. Ban-Ki-moon declared, “The Syrian authorities remain fully accountable for grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. These must stop at once.” He accused the Syrian government of using the April 10 deadline for implementing a cease-fire as an “excuse” to step up the killing.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that Turkey will wait “patiently” to see if Syria sticks to the ceasefire deadline, but added that it may take “certain steps” if the violence does not stop after that. Erdogan did not specify what measures Turkey would take, but he has in the past announced plans to create a buffer zone inside Syria—that is, to seize a portion of Syria’s territory.

In another sign of increasing imperialist sentiment for war with Syria, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung published an editorial Thursday entitled “The Lessons of Syria.” Suggesting that the search for a peaceful solution of the Syrian crisis was hopeless, it wrote: “Sometimes the use of military power is not only right, but even morally justified, unlike the search for a ‘political solution’ which does not exist.”

The Syrian regime has repeatedly pointed out the criminal actions of the West. On Friday, it sent letters to the president of the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary General, stating that “the terrorist acts committed by the armed terrorist groups in Syria have increased during the last few days, particularly after reaching an understanding on Kofi Annan’s plan.”

According to SANA, Syria’s Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry spokesman Dr. Makdessi released a statement on Sunday announcing that “Syria has undertaken steps to show good faith concerning Annan’s plan and informed him of them,” adding that Syria has drawn his attention “to the escalation of violence by the armed terrorist groups as it announced agreement to Annan’s mission.”

Makdessi criticized interpretations of Annan’s speeches at the UN Security Council that maintain that Syria must unilaterally withdraw all troops from its cities on Tuesday, April 10. He stated that this was a false interpretation, especially given that armed “rebel” forces have offered no written guarantees to the Syrian government agreeing to stop their attacks. He also reportedly stressed that Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey had given no pledges to stop funding and arming terrorist groups.

The statement declared that Syria would “continue cooperation with Mr. Annan to implement his plan and will inform him of the undertaken steps in the hope of obtaining the aforementioned guarantees.”

In a response to the statement, FSA leader Rifat al-Asaad told Reuters by phone from Turkey that he would not deliver written guarantees. He declared that “the regime will not implement this plan” and that “this plan will fail.” He said that his organization does not recognize the Assad-regime, cynically adding that the FSA will silence its weapons only after the Syrian troops have retreated to their barracks and removed all their checkpoints.

Rifat al-Asaad and his mercenaries have virtually no basis of support amongst the Syrian population, but they feel encouraged by their imperialist backers, who have made clear that they intend to remove Assad regardless.

Kofi Annan made no reference to the Syrian demands and declared he was “shocked by recent reports of a surge in violence and atrocities in several towns and villages in Syria,” He reminded the Syrian government “of the need for full implementation of its commitments,” which can only be understood as a further threat. As UN Secretary General in 2001, Annan himself was one of the main architects of the United Nation’s infamous “responsibility to protect” doctrine.

In last year’s imperialist war against Libya, calls for “buffer zones” and “humanitarian corridors” were advanced in the name of the “responsibility to protect” civilians. This was used to justify a war that killed tens of thousands and laid waste to entire Libyan cities. An imperialist attack against Syria would threaten the lives of millions. It would be directed not only against Syria, but also against Iran, Syria’s sole ally in the region, and ultimately against Russia and China, with the danger of triggering a conflict between the major powers.

By Johannes Stern