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Doctors and residents blame US weapons for catastrophic levels of birth defects in Fallujah’s newborns

Fallujah, Iraq – While the US military has formally withdrawn from Iraq, doctors and residents of Fallujah are blaming weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorous used during two devastating US attacks on Fallujah in 2004 for what are being described as “catastrophic” levels of birth defects and abnormalities.

Dr Samira Alani, a paediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, has taken a personal interest in investigating an explosion of congenital abnormalities that have mushroomed in the wake of the US sieges since 2005.

“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine,” Alani told Al Jazeera at her office in the hospital, while showing countless photos of shocking birth defects.

As of December 21, Alani, who has worked at the hospital since 1997, told Al Jazeera she had personally logged 677 cases of birth defects since October 2009. Just eight days later when Al Jazeera visited the city on December 29, that number had already risen to 699.

“There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we’ve never seen them until now,” she said. “So when I describe it all I can do is describe the physical defects, but I’m unable to provide a medical term.”

‘Incompatible with life’

Most of these babies in Fallujah die within 20 to 30 minutes after being born, but not all.

Four-year-old Abdul Jaleel Mohammed was born in October 2007. His clinical diagnosis includes dilation of two heart ventricles, and a growth on his lower back that doctors have not been able to remove.

Four-year-old Abdul Jaleel Mohammed has birth defects and health problems that his family blames on depleted uranium exposure from the 2004 US military attacks on Fallujah [Dahr Jamail/Al Jazeera]

Abdul has trouble controlling his muscles, struggles to walk, cannot control his bladder, and weakens easily. Doctors told his father, Mohamed Jaleel Abdul Rahim, that his son has severe nervous system problems, and could develop fluid build-up in his brain as he ages, which could prove fatal.

“This is the first instance of something like this in all our family,” Rahim told Al Jazeera. “We lived in an area that was heavily bombed by the Americans in 2004, and a missile landed right in front of our home. What else could cause these health problems besides this?”

Dr Alani told Al Jazeera that in the vast majority of cases she has documented, the family had no prior history of congenital abnormalities.

Alani showed Al Jazeera hundreds of photos of babies born with cleft palates, elongated heads, a baby born with one eye in the centre of its face, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses and spines.

She told Al Jazeera of cases of “thanatophoric dysplasia”, an abnormality in bones and the thoracic cage that “render the newborn incompatible with life”.

Rahim said many of his relatives that have had babies after 2004 are having problems as well.

“One of them was born and looks like a fish,” Rahim said. “I also personally know of at least three other families who live near us who have these problems also.”

For now, the family is worried how Abdul will fare in school when he is enrolled next year. Maloud Ahmed Jassim, Abdul’s grandfather, added, “We’ve seen so many miscarriages happen, and we don’t know why.”

“The growth on his back is so sensitive and painful for him,” Rahim said. “What will happen in school?”

Jassim is angered by a lack of thorough investigations into the health crisis.

“Why is the government not investigating this,” he asked. “Western media seem interested, but neither our local media nor the government are. Why not?”

In April 2011, Iraqi lawmakers debated whether the US attacks on the city constituted genocide. Resolutions that called for international prosecution, however, went nowhere.

Scientific proof

Alani, along with Dr Christopher Busby, a British scientist and activist who has carried out research into the risks of radioactive pollution, collected hair samples from 25 parents of families with children who have birth defects and sent them to a laboratory in Germany for analysis.

Alani and Busby, along with other doctors and researchers, published a study in September 2011 from data obtained by analysing the hair samples, as well as soil and water samples from the city.

Mercury, Uranium, Bizmuth and other trace elements were found.

The report’s conclusion states:

“Whilst caution must be exercised about ruling out other possibilities, because none of the elements found in excess are reported to cause congenital diseases and cancer except Uranium, these findings suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases. Questions are thus raised about the characteristics and composition of weapons now being deployed in modern battlefields.”

“As doctors, we know Mercury, Uranium and Bismuth can contribute to the development of congenital abnormalities, and we think it could be related to the use of prohibited weapons by the Americans during these battles,” Alani said.

“Findings suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases,” says a recent scientific report on the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah [Dr Samira Alani]

“I made this link to a coroner’s inquest in the West Midlands into the death of a Gulf War One veteran… and a coroner’s jury accepted my evidence,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It’s been found by a coroner’s court that cancer was caused by an exposure to depleted uranium,” Busby added, “In the last 10 years, research has emerged that has made it quite clear that uranium is one of the most dangerous substances known to man, certainly in the form that it takes when used in these wars.”

In July 2010, Busby released a study that showed a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in Fallujah since the 2004 attacks. The report also showed the sex ratio had declined from normal to 86 boys to 100 girls, together with a spread of diseases indicative of genetic damage similar to but of far greater incidence than Hiroshima.

Dr Alani visited Japan recently, where she met with Japanese doctors who study birth defect rates they believe related to radiation from the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

She was told birth defect incidence rates there are between 1-2 per cent. Alani’s log of cases of birth defects amounts to a rate of 14.7 per cent of all babies born in Fallujah, more than 14 times the rate in the affected areas of Japan.

A contaminated country?

In Babil Province in southern Iraq, the head of the Babil Cancer Centre, Dr Sharif al-Alwachi, said cancer rates have been escalating at alarming rates since 2003, for which he blames the use of depleted uranium weapons by US forces during and following the 2003 invasion.

“The environment could be contaminated by chemical weapons and depleted uranium from the aftermath of the war on Iraq,” Dr Alwachi told Al Jazeera. “The air, soil and water are all polluted by these weapons, and as they come into contact with human beings they become poisonous. This is new to our region, and people are suffering here.”

The US and UK militaries have sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, but Iraqi doctors like Alwachi and Alani, and along with researchers, blame the increasing cancer and birth defect rates on the weapon.

Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of Uranium in Iraq, has been researching the effects of depleted uranium on Iraqis since 1991. He told Al Jazeera he personally measured radiation levels in the city of Kerbala, as well as in Basra, and his Geiger counter was “screaming” because “the indicator went beyond the range”.

Alani explained that she is the only doctor in Fallujah registering cases of congenital abnormalities.

Dr Samira Alani, who has been working as a pediatrician at Fallujah General Hospital since 1997, has registered 699 cases of birth defects in Fallujah babies since late 2009 [Dahr Jamail/Al Jazeera]

“We have no system to register all of them, so we have so many cases we are missing,” she said. “Just yesterday a colleague told me of a newborn with thanatophoric dysplasia and she did not register it. I think I only know of 40-50 per cent of the cases because so many families have their babies at home and we never know of these, and other clinics are not registering them either.”

The hospital where Alani does her work was constructed in the Dhubadh district of Fallujah in 2008. According to Alani, the district was bombed heavily during the November 2004 siege.

“There is also a primary school that was built nearby, and from that school alone three teachers developed breast cancer, and now two of them are dead,” Alani said. “We get so many cases from this area, right where the hospital is.”

Even with a vast amount of anecdotal evidence, the exact cause of the health crisis in Fallujah is currently inconclusive without an in-depth, comprehensive study, which has yet to be carried out.

But despite lack of governmental support, and very little support from outside Iraq, Alani is determined to continue her work.

“I will not leave this subject”, she told Al Jazeera. “I will not stop.”

By Dahr Jamail

6 January, 2012

@ Al Jazeera

2011 was a year of austerity for Europe. At the behest of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, stringent programs imposing cuts in wages, pensions and social services, combined with the decimation of jobs, were introduced by governments across the continent.

These austerity measures, designed to pay for massive bailouts of the banks following the financial crash of 2008, are now plunging Europe into new economic and social turmoil. This is confirmed by the most recent economic figures, which indicate that 2012 will be a year of renewed recession in Europe.

The first economic statistics for Europe issued in the new year show that manufacturing across the euro zone declined in December, the fifth consecutive month of decreased output. Overall economic growth in the 17-nation euro zone was anemic throughout the second half of 2011, increasing by just 0.2 percent between July and September. The performance of the 27 economies of the entire European Union was only slightly higher, at 0.3 percent. Since September the general trend has been downwards.

While Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, recorded significant economic growth in the second half of 2011, other major economies such as Italy and Spain registered large falls in production.

French manufacturing has also suffered from the slump in demand across the continent. PSA Peugeot Citroën, Europe’s second-biggest carmaker after Volkswagen, recorded a 29 percent fall in its December sales, while the country’s second major car producer, Renault, registered a 28 percent drop. “Orders were down about 55 percent in December, which leads us to expect a car market contraction of 17 percent in the first quarter of 2012,” said Renault sales chief Bernard Cambier.

In Britain, retailers announced disappointing figures for the Christmas period. Jonathan De Mello, the head of the CBRE retail consultancy, said that due to the slump in consumer spending, 30,000 to 40,000 retail jobs could disappear in Britain over the next 18 months.

During the recession of 2008-09, major British retailers such as Woolworths, Zavvi and MFI went into liquidation. According to the head of another British retail consortium, conditions are now even worse than at the end of 2008.

The trend toward recession has been confirmed by British economists. In a poll conducted by the BBC at the end of the year, 25 leading economists predicted recession for Europe in 2012. Only 2 of those polled dissented. A majority of the economists questioned also said there was a significant likelihood of a breakup of the euro zone.

A parallel survey of 83 economists conducted by the Financial Times concluded that 2012 will rival 2009 for economic weakness, with output in the UK suffering as a result of the continuing debt crisis in the euro zone. According to Sir Alan Budd, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK faces a “choice between extended misery if the euro survives and catastrophe if it doesn’t.”

While predicating recession in 2012, a large majority of the economists questioned by the Financial Times stressed their continuing support for the draconian austerity measures introduced by the British coalition government headed by Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron.

Reflecting the intensifying crisis in Europe, the euro slid to a ten-year low against the yen and a one-year low against the US dollar to end 2011 as the world’s worst performing major currency. International hedge funds stepped up their speculation against the euro in the last week of 2011. The slump in the fortunes of the euro came despite the action of the European Central Bank, which just a week previously provided European banks with nearly half a trillion euros in the form of new credits.

European leaders went public at year’s end to warn that there would be no let-up in the policy of austerity. Ignoring the disastrous social consequences for European workers of the cuts already imposed, Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who took over the six-month rotating European Union presidency on January 1, declared, “The fat years are behind us. We must prepare ourselves for some lean years.”

The message was drummed home by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who warned in her New Year’s speech that for Europe, 2012 would “no doubt be more difficult than 2011,” adding that the continent faced its “harshest test in decades.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was even more explicit, warning, “This extraordinary crisis, without doubt the most serious one since World War II … is not over.”

In Spain, the cabinet of the conservative People’s Party meets Thursday to agree further measures aimed at slashing public spending. The new proposals will come on the heels of a €15 billion package of spending cuts announced just days ago and the declaration by the treasury minister that the country’s budget deficit for 2011 is likely to be higher than forecast.

In Italy, the technocratic government of Mario Monti is under renewed pressure from the financial markets to implement further austerity measures following its recent €33 billion package of cuts to pensions and social spending. Following a brief dip in December, Italy’s long-term borrowing costs have once again been driven up to the critical level of 7 percent.

Bourgeois political commentators have drawn their own conclusions from the crisis and are issuing warnings to the political elite to prepare for major class confrontations. In her prognosis for 2012, Princeton Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote in Tuesday’s Financial Times that austerity and the spread of poverty would provoke revolts in sub-Saharan Africa and further mass protests in Central Asia and South America.

“In the US,” she wrote, “the Occupy movement will operate through rolling flashmob-type disruptions, but we should also see much more concrete actions such as defending against foreclosures—a tactic pioneered in Spain. In European countries that are choking on euro zone-imposed austerity, protests are also likely to turn into coordinated civil disobedience, centered on a refusal to pay new or higher taxes. And the Middle East will continue to burn. … Expect a very turbulent year.”

There are already indications of growing resistance within the working class. In Greece, state hospital doctors started a four-day strike this week against the government’s cuts to the state health system. Their strike has been joined by pharmacists and other workers in the health system.

By Stefan Steinberg

4 January 2012

WSWS.org

Stefan Steinberg is WSWS.org writer

The European Union’s (EU) in-principle decision on Wednesday to impose an embargo on oil imports from Iran has further escalated the danger of military conflict in the Persian Gulf. The EU move dovetails with President Obama’s signing on Saturday of US legislation designed to cripple the Iranian banking system and cut the country’s oil exports.

The US and EU threats have already provoked a sharp reaction from Tehran, which has warned that it would respond to an oil embargo by blocking the Strait of Hormuz—a strategic waterway into the Persian Gulf through which about 20 percent of global oil trade passes.

As Economy Minister Shamseddin Hosseini said yesterday, Iran confronts “an economic war.” Oil and gas exports account for some 80 percent of the country’s hard currency earnings and provide about half of government revenue. The Iranian rial has already plunged by 11 percent this week against the US dollar, compounding already high levels of inflation.

In Washington this week, British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond met with his American counterpart Leon Panetta and threatened joint military action with the US in response to any Iranian attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. A potential trigger for a military clash was established when the Pentagon dismissed an Iranian warning on Tuesday that an American aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, should not return to the Gulf.

The UK, together with the US and France, has been driving the international campaign for a crippling oil embargo on Iran. While ruling out British support for a pre-emptive military strike on Iran, at present at least, Hammond declared: “We are very clear that we need to maintain pressure” on Tehran. In November, the British government ordered all British financial institutions to stop doing business with their Iranian counterparts, including the country’s central bank. The sanctions provoked angry protests in Tehran and led to the closure of the British embassy.

A European oil embargo on Iran is to be finalised at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on January 30. Already divisions are evident. Unlike the US, France and Britain, Italy, Greece and Spain are heavily dependent on imported Iranian oil. Yesterday Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti warned that his government would only back a ban if it were imposed gradually and excluded oil deliveries aimed at reimbursing $2 billion worth of Iranian debt to the Italian energy firm Eni.

While the European decision relates only to EU countries, the US legislation is aimed against all foreign companies doing business with the Iranian central bank. Apart from the EU, other major buyers of Iranian oil are China and Japan. The new law allows President Obama to delay its application for six months and to issue waivers to prevent havoc in oil markets. It is expected that countries will have to convince US officials that action is being taken to reduce economic ties with Iran.

As a result, the Obama administration has the ability to selectively grant waivers to its allies such as Japan, while penalising Chinese corporations for doing business with Iran. According to Reuters, China has already cut its oil purchases from Iran by half this month and might further reduce the amount in February. A government source told Reuters that Japan is also considering cutting its imports from Iran in order to obtain a US waiver.

It is not accidental that the main impact of the sanctions is on Washington’s European and Asian rivals. The escalating US-led confrontation with Iran goes far beyond the US’s unsubstantiated claims that Iran is building nuclear weapons—an allegation that Tehran has repeatedly denied. The latest threats against Iran are a continuation of US efforts over the past two decades to use its military might to consolidate American hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia at the expense of competitors in Europe and Asia.

Under Obama, the focus of US foreign policy has shifted towards the Asia Pacific region where Washington has engaged in intense diplomatic activity aimed at strengthening its alliances and strategic ties and undercutting China’s influence over the past three years. By targeting Tehran, the Obama administration is dealing a blow to Beijing, which is the largest buyer of Iranian oil and has significant investments in Iran.

The Obama administration has dismissed Iranian threats of action in the Strait of Hormuz as bluster—a sign that existing sanctions are impacting on Tehran. Regardless of the intentions on either side, Washington’s reckless raising of tensions in the Persian Gulf has a dangerous logic of its own. An incident or miscalculation has the potential to rapidly escalate into military conflict across the region or even the globe.

The US is already engaged in actions throughout the Middle East to undermine Iran—from the campaign to oust Iranian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in Syria, to the sale of sophisticated arms to US client regimes in the Persian Gulf.

Like George W Bush, President Obama continues to repeat that “all options are on the table”—that is, including an illegal, unprovoked military attack on Iran. The US and Israel have just announced their largest-ever joint military exercise, which is designed to test Israel’s missile defence capabilities.

While Iran and the EU have tentatively mooted renewed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the likelihood of talks taking place, let alone achieving a breakthrough, is slim. The release of two Americans convicted of spying inside Iran in September was regarded as an attempt by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to create a diplomatic opening towards the US. Washington simply ignored the gesture.

Compounding the tensions is what amounts to a covert war by Israel, backed by the US, inside Iran over the past two years.

Writing on Bloomberg.com, American commentator Vali Nasr warned that while Tehran had played down the impact of a destructive computer virus on its nuclear facilities, it was being goaded into responding: “The government has been embarrassed and unnerved by multiple assassinations of its scientists and by suspicious explosions at its military facilities. One blast killed the general charged with developing Iran’s missile program. The attacks have shaken the country’s security forces.”

By placing the Persian Gulf on a hair trigger, the Obama administration’s provocative actions threaten to plunge the region into another disastrous war. 

By Peter Symonds

6 January 2012

WSWS.org

Peter Symonds is WSWS.org writer

The Three Top Hot Spots of Potential Conflict in the Geo-Energy Era

Welcome to an edgy world where a single incident at an energy “chokepoint” could set a region aflame, provoking bloody encounters, boosting oil prices, and putting the global economy at risk. With energy demand on the rise and sources of supply dwindling, we are, in fact, entering a new epoch — the Geo-Energy Era — in which disputes over vital resources will dominate world affairs. In 2012 and beyond, energy and conflict will be bound ever more tightly together, lending increasing importance to the key geographical flashpoints in our resource-constrained world.

Take the Strait of Hormuz, already making headlines and shaking energy markets as 2012 begins. Connecting the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, it lacks imposing geographical features like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Golden Gate Bridge. In an energy-conscious world, however, it may possess greater strategic significance than any passageway on the planet. Every day, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, tankers carrying some 17 million barrels of oil — representing 20% of the world’s daily supply — pass through this vital artery.

So last month, when a senior Iranian official threatened to block the strait in response to Washington’s tough new economic sanctions, oil prices instantly soared. While the U.S. military has vowed to keep the strait open, doubts about the safety of future oil shipments and worries about a potentially unending, nerve-jangling crisis involving Washington, Tehran, and Tel Aviv have energy experts predicting high oil prices for months to come, meaning further woes for a slowing global economy.

The Strait of Hormuz is, however, only one of several hot spots where energy, politics, and geography are likely to mix in dangerous ways in 2012 and beyond. Keep your eye as well on the East and South China Seas, the Caspian Sea basin, and an energy-rich Arctic that is losing its sea ice. In all of these places, countries are disputing control over the production and transportation of energy, and arguing about national boundaries and/or rights of passage.

In the years to come, the location of energy supplies and of energy supply routes — pipelines, oil ports, and tanker routes — will be pivotal landmarks on the global strategic map. Key producing areas, like the Persian Gulf, will remain critically important, but so will oil chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca (between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea) and the “sea lines of communication,” or SLOCs (as naval strategists like to call them) connecting producing areas to overseas markets. More and more, the major powers led by the United States, Russia, and China will restructure their militaries to fight in such locales.

You can already see this in the elaborate Defense Strategic Guidance document, “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership,” unveiled at the Pentagon on January 5th by President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. While envisioning a smaller Army and Marine Corps, it calls for increased emphasis on air and naval capabilities, especially those geared to the protection or control of international energy and trade networks. Though it tepidly reaffirmed historic American ties to Europe and the Middle East, overwhelming emphasis was placed on bolstering U.S. power in “the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean and South Asia.”

In the new Geo-Energy Era, the control of energy and of its transport to market will lie at the heart of recurring global crises. This year, keep your eyes on three energy hot spots in particular: the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Sea basin.

The Strait of Hormuz

A narrow stretch of water separating Iran from Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the strait is the sole maritime link between the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the rest of the world. A striking percentage of the oil produced by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE is carried by tanker through this passageway on a daily basis, making it (in the words of the Department of Energy) “the world’s most important oil chokepoint.” Some analysts believe that any sustained blockage in the strait could trigger a 50% increase in the price of oil and trigger a full-scale global recession or depression.

American leaders have long viewed the Strait as a strategic fixture in their global plans that must be defended at any cost. It was an outlook first voiced by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980, on the heels of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan which had, he told Congress, “brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow.” The American response, he insisted, must be unequivocal: any attempt by a hostile power to block the waterway would henceforth be viewed as “an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America,” and “repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Much has changed in the Gulf region since Carter issued his famous decree, known since as the Carter Doctrine, and established the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to guard the Strait — but not Washington’s determination to ensure the unhindered flow of oil there. Indeed, President Obama has made it clear that, even if CENTCOM ground forces were to leave Afghanistan, as they have Iraq, there would be no reduction in the command’s air and naval presence in the greater Gulf area.

It is conceivable that the Iranians will put Washington’s capabilities to the test. On December 27th, Iran’s first vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said, “If [the Americans] impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz.” Similar statements have since been made by other senior officials (and contradicted as well by yet others). In addition, the Iranians recently conducted elaborate naval exercises in the Arabian Sea near the eastern mouth of the strait, and more such maneuvers are said to be forthcoming. At the same time, the commanding general of Iran’s army suggested that the USS John C. Stennis, an American aircraft carrier just leaving the Gulf, should not return. “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added ominously, “will not repeat its warning.”

Might the Iranians actually block the strait? Many analysts believe that the statements by Rahimi and his colleagues are bluster and bluff meant to rattle Western leaders, send oil prices higher, and win future concessions if negotiations ever recommence over their country’s nuclear program. Economic conditions in Iran are, however, becoming more desperate, and it is always possible that the country’s hard-pressed hardline leaders may feel the urge to take some dramatic action, even if it invites a powerful U.S. counterstrike. Whatever the case, the Strait of Hormuz will remain a focus of international attention in 2012, with global oil prices closely following the rise and fall of tensions there.

The South China Sea

The South China Sea is a semi-enclosed portion of the western Pacific bounded by China to the north, Vietnam to the west, the Philippines to the east, and the island of Borneo (shared by Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia) to the south. The sea also incorporates two largely uninhabited island chains, the Paracels and the Spratlys. Long an important fishing ground, it has also been a major avenue for commercial shipping between East Asia and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. More recently, it acquired significance as a potential source of oil and natural gas, large reserves of which are now believed to lie in subsea areas surrounding the Paracels and Spratlys.

With the discovery of oil and gas deposits, the South China Sea has been transformed into a cockpit of international friction. At least some islands in this energy-rich area are claimed by every one of the surrounding countries, including China — which claims them all, and has demonstrated a willingness to use military force to assert dominance in the region. Not surprisingly, this has put it in conflict with the other claimants, including several with close military ties to the United States. As a result, what started out as a regional matter, involving China and various members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has become a prospective tussle between the world’s two leading powers.

To press their claims, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have all sought to work collectively through ASEAN, believing a multilateral approach will give them greater negotiating clout than one-on-one dealings with China. For their part, the Chinese have insisted that all disputes must be resolved bilaterally, a situation in which they can more easily bring their economic and military power to bear. Previously preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has now entered the fray, offering full-throated support to the ASEAN countries in their efforts to negotiate en masse with Beijing.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi promptly warned the United States not to interfere. Any such move “will only make matters worse and the resolution more difficult,” he declared. The result was an instant war of words between Beijing and Washington. During a visit to the Chinese capital in July 2011, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen delivered a barely concealed threat when it came to possible future military action. “The worry, among others that I have,” he commented, “is that the ongoing incidents could spark a miscalculation, and an outbreak that no one anticipated.” To drive the point home, the United States has conducted a series of conspicuous military exercises in the South China Sea, including some joint maneuvers with ships from Vietnam and the Philippines. Not to be outdone, China responded with naval maneuvers of its own. It’s a perfect formula for future “incidents” at sea.

The South China Sea has long been on the radar screens of those who follow Asian affairs, but it only attracted global attention when, in November, President Obama traveled to Australia and announced, with remarkable bluntness, a new U.S. strategy aimed at confronting Chinese power in Asia and the Pacific. “As we plan and budget for the future,” he told members of the Australian Parliament in Canberra, “we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” A key feature of this effort would be to ensure “maritime security” in the South China Sea.

While in Australia, President Obama also announced the establishment of a new U.S. base at Darwin on that country’s northern coast, as well as expanded military ties with Indonesia and the Philippines. In January, the president similarly placed special emphasis on projecting U.S. power in the region when he went to the Pentagon to discuss changes in the American military posture in the world.

Beijing will undoubtedly take its own set of steps, no less belligerent, to protect its growing interests in the South China Sea. Where this will lead remains, of course, unknown. After the Strait of Hormuz, however, the South China Sea may be the global energy chokepoint where small mistakes or provocations could lead to bigger confrontations in 2012 and beyond.

The Caspian Sea Basin

The Caspian Sea is an inland body of water bordered by Russia, Iran, and three former republics of the USSR: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. In the immediate area as well are the former Soviet lands of Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. All of these old SSRs are, to one degree or another, attempting to assert their autonomy from Moscow and establish independent ties with the United States, the European Union, Iran, Turkey, and, increasingly, China. All are wracked by internal schisms and/or involved in border disputes with their neighbors. The region would be a hotbed of potential conflict even if the Caspian basin did not harbor some of the world’s largest undeveloped reserves of oil and natural gas, which could easily bring it to a boil.

This is not the first time that the Caspian has been viewed as a major source of oil, and so potential conflict. In the late nineteenth century, the region around the city of Baku — then part of the Russian empire, now in Azerbaijan — was a prolific source of petroleum and so a major strategic prize. Future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin first gained notoriety there as a leader of militant oil workers, and Hitler sought to capture it during his ill-fated 1941 invasion of the USSR. After World War II, however, the region lost its importance as an oil producer when Baku’s onshore fields dried up. Now, fresh discoveries are being made in offshore areas of the Caspian itself and in previously undeveloped areas of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

According to energy giant BP, the Caspian area harbors as much as 48 billion barrels of oil (mostly buried in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan) and 449 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (with the largest supply in Turkmenistan). This puts the region ahead of North and South America in total gas reserves and Asia in oil reserves. But producing all this energy and delivering it to foreign markets will be a monumental task. The region’s energy infrastructure is woefully inadequate and the Caspian itself provides no maritime outlet to other seas, so all that oil and gas must travel by pipeline or rail.

Russia, long the dominant power in the region, is pursuing control over the transportation routes by which Caspian oil and gas will reach markets. It is upgrading Soviet-era pipelines that link the former SSRs to Russia or building new ones and, to achieve a near monopoly over the marketing of all this energy, bringing traditional diplomacy, strong-arm tactics, and outright bribery to bear on regional leaders (many of whom once served in the Soviet bureaucracy) to ship their energy via Russia. As recounted in my book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, Washington sought to thwart these efforts by sponsoring the construction of alternative pipelines that avoid Russian territory, crossing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to the Mediterranean (notably the BTC, or Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline), while Beijing is building its own pipelines linking the Caspian area to western China.

All of these pipelines cross through areas of ethnic unrest and pass near various contested regions like rebellious Chechnya and breakaway South Ossetia. As a result, both China and the U.S. have wedded their pipeline operations to military assistance for countries along the routes. Fearful of an American presence, military or otherwise, in the former territories of the Soviet Union, Russia has responded with military moves of its own, including its brief August 2008 war with Georgia, which took place along the BTC route.

Given the magnitude of the Caspian’s oil and gas reserves, many energy firms are planning new production operations in the region, along with the pipelines needed to bring the oil and gas to market. The European Union, for example, hopes to build a new natural gas pipeline called Nabucco from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Austria. Russia has proposed a competing conduit called South Stream. All of these efforts involve the geopolitical interests of major powers, ensuring that the Caspian region will remain a potential source of international crisis and conflict.

In the new Geo-Energy Era, the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Basin hardly stand alone as potential energy flashpoints. The East China Sea, where China and Japan are contending for a contested undersea natural gas field, is another, as are the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands, where both Britain and Argentina hold claims to undersea oil reserves, as will be the globally warming Arctic whose resources are claimed by many countries. One thing is certain: wherever the sparks may fly, there’s oil in the water and danger at hand in 2012.

By Michael T. Klare

10 January 2012

TomDispatch.com

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. His newest book, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, will be published in March.

There must be more than coincidence to the observation that the American media’s appraisal of a world leader often reflects the State Department’s attitude towards the same leader. Just search history; leaders who failed their people but accepted United States foreign policies received only mild criticisms, while leaders who contended U.S. foreign policies, regardless of relations with their populations, received scathing reviews from popular news sources.

China’s Chang Kai-Shek, Korea’s Syngman Rhee, Vietnam’s President Van Thieu, Nicaragua’s Somoza and in more recent times, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Mexico’s Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin, and Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili fit the former pattern. These friends of Washington received relatively harmless rebukes for nefarious actions.

Soviet leaders until Mikhail Gorbachev, France’s Charles de Gaulle, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Venezuela’s Hugo Rafael Chavez, all of whom confronted American foreign policies, were, regardless of their accomplishments, constantly castigated by the American media.

Description of the castigated grow, graduating from being against American policies to being anti-American, then a serious threat to America and finally a danger to everyone. Nothing good can be said about them; anyone muttering kindly remarks is considered ignorant and slightly warped. After the aversion to the anti-Americans who are a danger to everyone engulfs a large percentage of the population, the media joins the bandwagon, aware it best not contradict the one-sided appraisals.

This conditioning enables U.S. foreign policy planners to gain public support for their rejection of foreign critics and for policies that disturb their critics. Initiation of wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Granada, Panama and other countries could not occur before a mention of the name of the leaders of the antagonist nations had aroused an angry emotional reaction in America’s psyche. Economic warfare against several nations could not be practiced until Americans were made to feel that the economic warfare was morally correct; a necessary action to defeat and replace the criminal leader of the impudent nation.

Despite Hillary Clinton having pressed the reset button, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin clearly broadcasts his disfavor with State Department initiatives. Has he also fallen into the Washington character crusher and being leveled due to his alleged antagonism towards America? American media’s scornful attacks on the Russian premier hint at that possibility.

The Russian Prime Minister is continually presented as a bad boy, a tyrannical, and corrupt megalomaniac who assists his cronies in pilfering Russia’s resources. Lacking is a body of verified evidence to support the allegations. Putin’s critics found an opportunity to provide evidence in the recent legislative elections in Russia and promptly accused the Russian premier of personally stealing the election, labeled him rejected by the Russian people, made him responsible for his Party’s losses, and described him as lucky. To them, Russia’s tremendous growth during Putin’s tenure is only due to high energy prices and not his leadership.

Constant repetition of these charges condition the portrait of Vladimir Putin. Are the charges true, specious or a matter of perspective? If the facts are obscure, logic overcomes the obscurity.

Putin stole the election

The New York Times echoed the American media approach to the confusing situation.

Not What Mr. Putin Planned, New York Times, December 7, 2011

“The United States needs Russia’s cooperation on a host of issues, most notably Iran, and the Obama administration made the right decision to try to ‘reset’ the relationship. But that can’t mean giving Mr. Putin’s authoritarian ways a pass. So it was good to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton express ‘serious concerns’ that the voting was neither free nor fair.”

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitored the election and presented an analysis on “free and fair” in a press release.

MOSCOW, 5 December 2011 “Despite the lack of a level playing field during the Russian State Duma elections, voters took advantage of their right to express their choice.

“The observers noted that the preparations for the elections were technically well-administered across a vast territory, but were marked by a convergence of the state and the governing party, limited political competition and a lack of fairness.

“Although seven political parties ran, the prior denial of registration to certain parties had narrowed political competition. The contest was also slanted in favour of the ruling party: the election administration lacked independence, most media were partial and state authorities interfered unduly at different levels. The observers also noted that the legal framework had been improved in some respects and televised debates for all parties provided one level platform for contestants.

“On election day, voting was well organized overall, but the quality of the process deteriorated considerably during the count, which was characterized by frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulations, including serious indications of ballot box stuffing.”

http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/85753

Granted the OSCE press release is only a preliminary and abbreviated summary before a final report, scheduled for its 2012 meeting. Nevertheless, its evaluation uses vague expressions – procedural violations, instances of apparent, serious indications – that don’t confirm extensive fraud.

All seven registered political parties were approved to participate in the elections. Is that a narrow field? The Party with the lowest total received only 0.3% of the vote. Did the electorate need more or want more?

Incumbent legislators, certainly those in the U.S., usually have great advantages in elections, monopolize the news and gain more media coverage. Wherever possible, the Party in power slants the election with all its power. What else is new? Proven charges of ballot stuffing and multiple voting demand investigations, but these skewing of elections are minor when compared to the disguised frauds from PACs and lobbies, many of whom control media expressions and campaign funding. Political Parties are shaped to skirt the edges of legality and do everything to assure victory. When the numerical and financial disparity between one political Party and the others is great, as it is between United Russia and its competitors, the favoritism and slant becomes more exaggerated.

By sensationalizing the alleged frauds, constantly repeating and continually re-circulating the same, the media made it difficult to gauge their actual significance. Signals were filtered out and noise amplified so that only the noise was heard. A similar happening occurred with the heavily publicized videos. Subjectively interpreted, lacking verification and possibly being staged, an unlikely situation, but still a possibility that nobody considered to investigate, an appraisal of the condemning videos places them as images of fraud that look good on Court TV but are not sufficiently convincing for judicial courts. Undoubtedly there were severe irregularities, but were they substantiated as massive and organized or were they more driven by local exuberances and incompetent behaviors?

The table below contains significant details for resolving the debate on election validity. It shows that the election results were close to the trend in the polls and to their final readings. If United Russia (UR) did much better than the polls, then fraud would be a definite probability. By doing worse than predicted, either the UR poorly prepared the mechanisms for illegally augmenting vote totals, or the mechanisms did not exist.

The Russian people rejected Putin

“The youthful, Internet-savvy Russians who have turned out in the streets in historic numbers in recent weeks want to end Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s untrammeled rule over their country, but whether they can translate their frustration to the political arena – or even whether they will remain fired up – remains an open question.”

Washington Post, December 19, 2011

Did voters, who were electing local delegates to the Duma, go to the polls thinking of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin? Unlikely. Interim elections reflect voter opinions on the legislature and somewhat on the president, who is Dmitry Medvedev. In Russia, as in France, the president has considerable power. He nominates the highest state officials, including the prime minister, can pass decrees without consent from the Duma, and is head of the armed forces and Security Council.

The American media might insist that Putin manages everything behind the scenes, but President Medvedev’s performance during the last four years contradicts that assertion. No question that several years ago Putin dealed with Medvedev and promised him support for the presidency in return for a promise that Medvedev would not run for a second term. Knowledge of that agreement might have disturbed voters and swayed their preferences. Nevertheless, Medvedev has operated sufficiently independent during his reign. U.S. media portrays Putin as the Russian leader. Putin is prime minister, but Russians and the U.S. State Department interacted with President Medvedev during the last four years.

Putin’s United Russia was Defeated

“It’s embarrassing enough to do poorly in an honest election. Putin’s party managed to crater despite vigorous measures to rig the vote.” Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman, Dec. 15, 2011.

Crater? A defeat? Steve Chapman misrepresented the election. Gaining 49.3% of the vote in a five Party system is an astonishing victory, not as large as previous United Russia victories, but a total that any European political Party would envy. In the last national elections in United Kingdom, France and Germany, no political Party received more than 36% of the vote. Don’t weep for UR. They are not too sad.

The electorate normally anguishes when the same political Party dominates its life for a decade. Lower totals for United Russia reflect that usual discontent. After ten years of power, it is surprising that Russia’s leading political organization still retains 50% support from the electorate. Evidently, the populace has not tired of United Russia’s managed economy, which features statist and nationalist positions, both of which have irked the western powers. The statist Communist Party and nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (misnamed) showed increased vote totals from their 2007 vote totals.

Putin was lucky. Yeltsin was unlucky

“In retrospect, Mr. Putin was lucky to inherit a recovering economy and an incipient oil-and commodity-price boom from Mr. Yeltsin.” The Economist, February 28, 2008

The difference in media treatment between Boris Yeltsin’s government, which brought Russia to poverty and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which brought Russia to a moderate prosperity, proves the thrust of this article: “There must be more than coincidence to the observation that the media’s appraisal of a world leader, which often shapes public opinion, reflects the State Department’s attitude towards the same leader.”

Putin’s Russia has its corrupt and authoritative components. Unfortunately these are common features of a nation where corruption is ingrained into the society, and authoritarian rule has been the norm.

Evgeny Yakovlev and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, State Capture: From Yeltsin to Putin, explained the situation.

“In contrast to Yeltsin whose political term was notorious for creating and strengthening oligarchs, Putin began his first term in the office by fighting the most famous of them: Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, Gusinsky, and Lebedev. Fighting oligarchs was again high on the agenda during his second election campaign. In addition, Putin attempted centralization process, restricting autonomy of regional political elites and moved political and economic power from the regions to the federal center. A new tax law, which restricted the use of individual tax breaks, was adopted, as well as a number of laws, aimed at easing the burden of business regulation. A new anti-corruption campaign was launched and some governors who were considered most corrupt, e.g. Rutskoy in Kursk region and Nazdratenko in Primorsky region, were not permitted to run for re-election. The governor of Yaroslavl region, Lisitsin, was under a criminal investigation in early fall of 2004 because of pursuing illegal paternalistic policies towards regional business.”

http://www.cefir.ru/papers/WP52.pdf

Note that Saudi Arabian and Iranian oil productions increased during the 1990’s and Russian oil production dropped sharply. Demand was there, but Yeltsin’s policies neither enabled the world’s largest oil producer to produce nor prevented it from halving output in only two years. Although oil production and prices bottomed, Yeltsin’s Russia did not. The GDP continued to fall, lowering to 38% of the value at the time Yeltsin took office.

Regard Putin’s administration. Oil production increased rapidly from the day he took office, up 50% in eight years. GDP increased more rapidly than oil production and prices, rising monotonically to an increase of 700% (in nominal terms) in the same eight years. In July 1997, opinion polls showed Yeltsin having about 5 percent of public support. Putin, who once had 70% approval, has been constantly castigated by the American media. Yeltsin, who fell to 5% approval, received mild rebukes.

Was Yeltsin, who created his own problems, unlucky? Was Putin, whose administration knew what to do, just lucky?

Those who continue crushing Vladimir Putin are tending to bring back the era of Yeltsin and the oligarchs, a time when Russia was a paradise for five to ten persons and a weak antagonist to U.S. military adventures. Could that be what the disparagement of Prime Minister Putin is all about?

By Dan Lieberman

28 December, 2011

@ Countercurrents.org

Dan Lieberman is the editor of Alternative Insight, a monthly web based newsletter. His website articles have been read in more than 150 nations, while articles written for other websites have either appeared or been linked in online journals throughout the world. Many have served as teaching resources in several universities and several have become Internet classics, each attracting about ten thousand readers annually

If we had a wish list for 2012 as Palestinians and friends of Palestine, one of the top items ought to be our hope that we can translate the dramatic shift in recent years in world public opinion into political action against Israeli policies on the ground.

We know why this has not yet materialized: the political, intellectual and cultural elites of the West cower whenever they even contemplate acting according to their own consciences as well as the wishes of their societies.

This last year was particularly illuminating for me in that respect. I encountered that timidity at every station in the many trips I took for the cause I believe in. And these personal experiences were accentuated by the more general examples of how governments and institutions caved in under intimidation from Israel and pro-Zionist Jewish organizations.

A catalogue of complicity

Of course there were US President Barack Obama’s pandering appearances in front of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, and his administration’s continued silence and inaction in face of Israel’s colonization of the West Bank, siege and killings in Gaza, ethnic cleansing of the Bedouins in the Naqab and new legislation discriminating against Palestinians in Israel.

The complicity continued with the shameful retreat of Judge Richard Goldstone from his rather tame report on the Gaza massacre — which began three years ago today. And then there was the decision of European governments, especially Greece, to disallow campaigns of human aid and solidarity from reaching Gaza by sea.

On the margins of all of this were prosecutions in France against activists calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and a few u-turns by some groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Europe caving in under pressure and retracting an earlier decision to cede connections with Israel.

Learning firsthand how pro-Israel intimidation works

In recent years, I have learned firsthand how intimidation of this kind works. In November 2009 the mayor of Munich was scared to death by a Zionist lobby group and cancelled my lecture there. More recently, the Austrian foreign ministry withdrew its funding for an event in which I participated, and finally it was my own university, the University of Exeter, once a haven of security in my eyes, becoming frigid when a bunch of Zionist hooligans claimed I was a fabricator and a self-hating Jew.

Every year since I moved there, Zionist organizations in the UK and the US have asked the university to investigate my work and were brushed aside. This year a similar appeal was taken, momentarily one should say, seriously. One hopes this was just a temporary lapse; but you never know with an academic institution (bravery is not one of their hallmarks).

Standing up to pressure

But there were examples of courage — local and global — as well: the student union of the University of Surrey under heavy pressure to cancel my talk did not give in and allowed the event to take place.

The Episcopal Bishops Committee on Israel/Palestine in Seattle faced the wrath of many of the city’s synagogues and the Israeli Consul General in San Francisco, Akiva Tor, for arranging an event with me in September 2011 in Seattle’s Town Hall, but bravely brushed aside this campaign of intimidation. The usual charges of “anti-Semitism” did not work there — they never do where people refuse to be intimidated.

The outgoing year was also the one in which Turkey imposed military and diplomatic sanctions on Israel in response to the latter’s refusal to take responsibility for the attack on the Mavi Marmara. Turkey’s action was in marked contrast to the European and international habit of sufficing with toothless statements at best, and never imposing a real price on Israel for its actions.

Do not cave in to intimidation

I do not wish to underestimate the task ahead of us. Only recently did we learn how much money is channeled to this machinery of intimidation whose sole purpose is to silence criticism on Israel. Last year, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs — leading pro-Israel lobby groups — allocated $6 million to be spent over three years to fight BDS campaigns and smear the Palestine solidarity movement. This is not the only such initiative under way.

But are these forces as powerful as they seem to be in the eyes of very respectable institutions such as universities, community centers, churches, media outlets and, of course, politicians?

What you learn is that once you cower, you become prey to continued and relentless bashing until you sing the Israeli national anthem. If once you do not cave in, you discover that as time goes by, the ability of Zionist lobbies of intimidation around the world to affect you gradually diminishes.

Reducing the influence of the United States

Undoubtedly the centers of power that fuel this culture of intimidation lie to a great extent in the United States, which brings me to the second item on my 2012 wish list: an end to the American dominance in the affairs of Israelis and Palestinians. I know this influence cannot be easily curbed.

But the issue of timidity and intimidation belong to an American sphere of activity where things can, and should be, different. There will be no peace process or even Pax Americana in Palestine if the Palestinians, under whatever leadership, would agree to allow Washington to play such a central role. It is not as if US policy-makers can threaten the Palestinians that without their involvement there will be no peace process.

In fact history has proved that there was no peace process — in the sense of a genuine movement toward the restoration of Palestinian rights — precisely because of American involvement. Outside mediation may be necessary for the cause of reconciliation in Palestine. But does it have to be American?

If elite politics are needed — along with other forces and movements — to facilitate a change on the ground, such a role should come from other places in the world and not just from the United States.

One would hope that the recent rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah — and the new attempt to base the issue of Palestinian representation on a wider and more just basis — will lead to a clear Palestinian position that would expose the fallacy that peace can only be achieved with the Americans as its brokers.

Dwarfing the US role will disarm American Zionist bodies and those who emulate them in Europe and Israel of their power of intimidation.

Letting the other America play a role

This will also enable the other America, that of the civil society, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the progressive campuses, the courageous churches, African-Americans marginalized by mainstream politics, Native Americans and millions of other decent Americans who never fell captive to elite propaganda about Israel and Palestine, to take a far more central role in “American involvement” in Palestine.

That would benefit America as much as it will benefit justice and peace in Palestine. But this long road to redeeming all of us who want to see justice begins by asking academics, journalists and politicians in the West to show a modicum of steadfastness and courage in the face of those who want to intimidate us. Their bark is far fiercer than their bite.

By Ilan Pappe

28 December 2011

@ The Electronic Intifada

The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.

There is mounting evidence that China’s massive real estate speculation “bubble” has begun to burst. The result will destabilise the country’s banking system, slow its economic growth and impact heavily on the world economy, which has relied on China as a major source of growth since the global financial crisis began in 2008.

An article in the US Foreign Affairs magazine warned last month that “sudden, steep price reductions” were “upending real estate markets across China.” It cited industry data showing that new home prices in Beijing dropped 35 percent in November alone, and that developers had built up 22 months’ worth of unsold inventory in Beijing and 21 months’ worth in Shanghai.

Written by an academic at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, the article noted: “Everyone from local landowners to Chinese speculators and international investors are now worrying that these discounts indicate that the ‘biggest bubble of the century,’ as it was called earlier this year, has just popped, with serious consequences not only for one of the world’s most promising economies—but internationally as well.”

Fuelled by housing construction, the country produced 627 million tonnes of steel in 2010, or 44.3 percent of the world’s output. It produced 1.87 billion tonnes of cement—60 percent of the world’s total. China manufactured 43 percent of the world’s construction machinery such as excavators and bulldozers. The speculative housing boom also bolstered spending by the urban middle class, driving up the demand for cars—China’s automotive output was 18.2 million vehicles in 2010, or one quarter of the world’s production.

Significant global corporations, such as iron ore miners in Australia and Brazil, and equipment manufacturers in Germany and Japan, are likely to be the first to suffer heavy blows from a sharp downturn in China’s real estate. China is looming as another shock, on top of the predicted recessions in Europe and other parts of the world.

The current real estate bubble has its roots in the 2008-09 worldwide financial crisis. The Chinese Stalinist regime released trillions of dollars of cheap credit in a desperate attempt to stem social unrest after 23 million migrant workers, especially in export industries, lost their jobs. The main result, however, was a borrowing spree by local governments, developers and industrial companies to speculate in the property market.

Led by the construction boom, capital investment currently accounts for nearly 50 percent of China’s gross domestic product—a recipe for a major crisis. In the first 10 months of last year, 3.6 billion square metres of property were under construction—compared to sales of just 709 million square metres, pointing to massive overcapacity about to hit the market.

At the same time, unaffordable housing has become a highly politically charged issue in China. Based on prices earlier last year, it would take the average wage earner in Beijing 36 years to pay for an average residence, compared to 18 years in Singapore, 12 in New York and five in Frankfurt.

Yet, up to 65 million homes are estimated to be “idle”—kept empty on speculation of securing even higher prices in the future. This social irrationality is most graphically expressed in smaller cities, such as Inner Mongolia’s Ordos where property investment recorded average growth of 69 percent during the past four years—compared to 27.6 percent nationally. Large parts of Ordos have become “ghost” towns, with speculators leaving behind empty and unfinished apartment blocks.

In late 2010, Beijing sought to placate public discontent over soaring housing prices by imposing restrictions on bank lending and house ownership. These measures only exacerbated the intensifying financial instability, as many operators turned to other sources for highly leveraged loans. The developing economic crisis has been compounded by the lack of recovery in China’s main export markets—the US, Japan and the European Union.

Businesses in the export hub of Wenzhou borrowed heavily from dubious underground lending schemes charging interest rates up to 150 percent a year. The sell-offs in real estate threatened to unleash a domino effect, wiping out large numbers of small and medium enterprises. More than 80 debt-laden entrepreneurs have fled the city, and a shoe factory owner jumped to his death last year.

Property market collapses have become a new source of discontent. Last weekend, thousands of small investors protested in Anyang city’s train station, in an attempt to bring their grievances to the Beijing leadership. They had lost their savings in failed Ponzi investment schemes based on real estate and other projects. Since October, the operators of many such schemes had fled after their projects—based on duping depositors with promises of high returns—unravelled.

The first quarter outlook published by the Bank of China last week pointed to the huge debts incurred by local governments to finance property and infrastructure projects as part of the 2008 stimulus package. “The actual scale of the debt is likely even larger [than the official estimate of $US1.69 trillion], and much of the debt is due soon,” it wrote. A slump in land sales, which had accounted for up to 40 percent of the local government revenue, was hitting their finances. From January to November last year, 24,000 plots of land use rights were sold for 1.18 trillion yuan—a 30.5 percent fall in value from the same period in 2010.

To offset the downturn in the property market, Beijing is pinning its hopes on building 36 million subsidised flats by 2015. This “one stone-two birds” strategy seeks to provide affordable housing for low-income earners, while maintaining investment-led growth. Surveys show, however, that most developers have no incentive to build housing that is going to further drive down property prices. Municipal governments are also suspected of inflating the numbers of such projects, counting holes in the ground as the “commencement” of construction. Bank loans on such projects, especially for rentals, are likely to become another source of bad debts in the coming years, due to the low-yield rents.

The Bank of China predicted an economic growth rate of 8.8 percent this year, down from 9.3 percent for 2011. However, Andy Xie, a leading Chinese economist, warned last week that given the vast distortions created by the property bubble, a “correction” would last until 2014 and could halve China’s growth rate to just 4-5 percent. “If you think 2008 was bad enough,” Xie wrote, “tighten the seat belt in the upcoming 2012.”

Such dramatically slowing growth, not to mention an outright financial crisis, would inevitably lead to rising unemployment, triggering a social explosion in China, with immense implications for global capitalism.

By John Chan

4 January 2012

WSWS.org

John Chan is a WSWS.org writer

One sweltering day in August of last year, Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi arrived for the first time in the capital of her country. The city of Naypyidaw, inaugurated six years ago by Burma’s mercurial military rulers, is a supremely artificial creation, a place of vacant boulevards and echoing plazas built in the foothills some 200 miles away from the old capital of Rangoon. Rangoon is the city that Aung San Suu Kyi calls home, and it is there that she had spent 15 of the past 22 years under house arrest.

She had come to Naypyidaw to meet the man who had orchestrated her release from detention 10 months earlier. Burmese President Thein Sein, like most of the men who have ruled the country since World War II, spent almost his entire adult life as an army officer. Then, in 2010, he took off his uniform, assumed the leadership of the ruling political party, and led it to victory in an election denounced by most international observers as a sham. He then took office as the head of the first ostensibly civilian government in Burma (also known as Myanmar) in 49 years and announced that he was preparing to lead the country toward democracy.

Aung San Suu Kyi was understandably cautious as she went into her meeting with the president. She and her fellow activists have watched Burma’s leaders break promises for decades. Was this one really any different?

To her surprise, the president welcomed her warmly, lavishing praise upon her father Aung San, a hero of Burma’s anti-colonial struggle in the 1940s. Two decades ago, wary of the late Aung San’s continuing star power (and that of his daughter, who entered politics after the 1988 uprising), the military junta had erased his image from the national currency. Now, in demonstrative contrast, the president insisted that he and Aung San Suu Kyi pose for an official photo beneath a portrait of her father. Later that evening Thein Sein’s wife welcomed Aung San Suu Kyi to a “family dinner” in the presidential palace. She greeted Burma’s leading dissident with a warm embrace.

In the weeks that followed, the opposition leader told her colleagues that it was time to take the president’s promises of reform for real. She moved to obtain official registration for her political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and stated that she wanted to see it participate in parliamentary by-elections to be held on April 1 of this year. Even if the NLD wins every seat at stake, it would still fall short of anything like a legislative majority. Victory, though, could ensure an important opposition voice in the hitherto docile body. On Jan. 10, after weeks of uncertainty, she finally announced that she will run for a seat in the parliament.

Allowing the NLD to participate is merely the latest in a series of dramatic moves made by the president. Since Thein Sein took power in March 2010, he has freed hundreds of political prisoners, initiated discussions about legalizing trade unions, and loosened censorship. Over the past year the new Burmese government has taken more steps toward political reform than the previous military regime took in over two decades.

Yet none of this can disguise the fact that Burma is still a country under authoritarian rule, and that means its further progress depends to a critical extent on the motives and capabilities of the man who holds its highest office. Many observers wonder whether Thein Sein is committed to meaningful progress or is simply serving as the public face of the old junta in its quest to retain power under a quasi-civilian government. Once a pillar of the old regime, he was one of its highest-ranking generals when in 2007 he assumed the office of prime minister, a post that he retained throughout the government’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests that year.

There are also questions about the extent to which Thein Sein is truly in control. Several leaders of the military regime still hold positions in his government. (In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Aung San Suu Kyi cautioned that the generals still wield enormous power despite the veneer of democracy provided by the elections. “I am concerned about how much support there is in the military for changes,” she said. “In the end that’s the most important factor, how far the military are prepared to cooperate with reform principles.”) Although the government denies it, former junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe, a master political chess player, continues to exercise considerable influence behind the scenes, say some experts.

The culture of secrecy surrounding Burma’s military rulers makes it especially difficult to gauge just how far they will allow the current opening to go. But Thein Sein’s biography provides some intriguing clues. The son of peasants from the Irrawaddy Delta, he graduated from the country’s elite military academy in 1968. As a young officer in the 1970s, he was sent to the front lines of the Burmese military campaign against the Chinese-backed communist insurgency. Retired Lt. Gen. Chit Swe, under whom Thein Sein served in the 1980s, describes the president as someone who rarely shows his emotions, is notably devoid of arrogance, and is usually willing to listen to differing opinions.

When Burma was rocked by nationwide protests in 1988, Thein Sein commanded an elite battalion stationed in the rural areas of the country’s northwest. On one occasion, Thein Sein’s unit captured pro-democracy activists fleeing toward the Indian border. In contrast with the bloody crackdown being orchestrated by his colleagues in Rangoon, he either freed the activists or handed them over to local authorities.

Ex-army officer Ko Ko Hlaing, who once served under Thein Sein, is now one of the president’s chief advisors: “He’s polite and likes to keep a low profile,” says Ko Ko Hlaing. “He’s not after personal popularity. He’s a bit media-shy and not really suited for the life of a populist politician. But his honesty and sincerity could attract public sympathy.”

This assessment is echoed by others who know the man, yet the president is also someone who thrived in the vicious internal intrigues that characterized life at the top of Burma’s harsh military regime. In 1991 he received a senior post in the Defense Ministry that placed him in direct proximity to the country’s top military leaders, including, most importantly, Than Shwe. In 2004, when Than Shwe purged the powerful intelligence chief who was one of his main rivals for power, Thein Sein was the main beneficiary, rising to the fourth-most powerful position in the junta. When the prime minister died from leukemia in 2007, the all-powerful Than Shwe named Thein Sein to fill the vacancy.

Even now, however, Thein Sein manages to demonstrate a degree of sensitivity that nearly all his fellow generals lack. It’s a trait that seems at odds with his position as one of the leaders of the same ruthless regime that gunned down unarmed monks and demonstrators during the 2007 Saffron Revolution.

For example, when Cyclone Nargis slammed into the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008 and Than Shwe’s government blocked significant amounts of foreign aid to the area, Thein Sein was the first top general to travel to the delta and meet the victims. Meanwhile, despite the heavy death toll from the cyclone and mounting international criticism about Burmese government relief efforts, the regime pushed through a constitutional referendum in the immediate aftermath of the devastating storm.

The 2008 Constitution, drafted by the military in a process overseen by Thein Sein, was approved in a sham referendum. The announcement of the results then kicked off a long period of speculation over who would lead Burma once a general election was held.

Larry Dinger, head of the U.S. mission in Rangoon, sent a cable to Washington (later published by WikiLeaks) that offered a concise assessment of the situation at the time. “The most senior generals are looking for an escape strategy,” he wrote. “The current senior generals are getting old … [they] undoubtedly want assurances that, if they voluntarily step aside, they and their families will retain their assets and will not be prosecuted.”

During this time of uncertainty, Thein Sein emerged as the international face of the Burmese regime, attending both regional and international summits. In 2009, when he traveled to the U.N. General Assembly in New York to defend the junta’s policies, diplomats characterized him as quiet but persuasive. These were qualities that would serve him well as the aging Than Shwe began casting about for a successor.

Thein Sein’s main rivals for the job were both powerful confidants of the outgoing junta leader, but they were also burdened by allegations of corruption. In the end, Than Shwe opted for Thein Sein, a man with international experience who was personally untainted by dubious business dealings or human rights abuses. Perhaps even more importantly, Thein Sein had no internal power base that posed a threat to the dictator’s personal or financial security.

Yet the ambiguities about his role persist. Crucially, it remains unclear just how much authority Thein Sein really has in the new government. Insiders say that Than Shwe continues to wield great influence over major decisions. They say that a hard-line faction continues to hobble the president and resist reforms.

In any event, the ultimate authority on anything related to national security (which in Burma means almost everything) rests with the 11-member National Defense and Security Council (NDSC). In Thein Sein’s defense, his aides say that the president continues to argue for the reform process in NDSC meetings and has made the final decision on many important issues.

If the meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi was the last act that convinced many that Thein Sein was serious about at least some degree of reform, then his September decision to suspend work on the China-funded Myitsone Dam project was what helped dispel the notion that he was weak and indecisive.

The decision was a slap in the face to China, Burma’s giant neighbor and traditional ally that for years had shielded the Burmese regime from U.N. Security Council censure debates and international condemnation. But Thein Sein was rewarded for his audacity. The move brought him domestic accolades, served as a signal to the West that Burma wanted to balance out its relationship with China, and significantly increased the momentum for his reforms.

“He might look gentle, but he’s a man of strong will,” Ko Ko Hlaing told me. “Once he’s made a decision, he sticks with it.”

Some critics, however, noted that many other Chinese-funded and controlled mega-projects, including other Irrawaddy River dam projects, as well as a gas pipeline and railway line to China’s Yunnan province, remained untouched. There are also skeptics who continue to argue that all the steps Thein Sein and his government have taken have been a facade aimed at gaining the chairmanship of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) for 2014. They say that Burma’s rulers are also keen on persuading Western countries to lift sanctions in order to get international investment flowing into domestic businesses controlled by the ex-junta leaders and their cronies.

In November, Thein Sein succeeded in convincing ASEAN to grant Burma its 2014 chair, and on the heels of that decision U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would become the first top U.S. diplomat to visit Burma in over 50 years. But though her visit gave another injection of legitimacy to the new government, she held the line and said that sanctions would not be lifted until further reforms were made. The message was repeated by British Foreign Secretary William Hague during his visit in early January.

Yet there are also at least two cases where there is good reason to doubt the depth of the new government’s commitment to reform.

First, there is the problem of the government’s continuing conflict with ethnic minority groups. Thein Sein has launched an effort to enter into cease-fire agreements with some of them, and in some cases he has succeeded. The army, however, has openly defied his public call to cease its attacks in the northern state of Kachin. The surge in fighting there, including widespread report of abuses by the army, has created some 30,000 refugees in the area. When asked recently about the discrepancy, Ko Ko Hlaing noted only that the army’s chief, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, is a member of the NDSC. He added, “Our country is no longer an autocratic state as before.” To those versed in the Burmese art of circumlocution, these comments implied that Thein Sein has no personal power to tell the Burmese military to refrain from anything. (On Jan. 12, the government announced a historic ceasefire agreement with another rebel group, the Karen National Union. But fighting with the Kachin continues.)

Then there is the matter of political prisoners. For the past few months Thein Sein and other senior government officers had been dropping hints that the rest of Burma’s political prisoners would soon be set free, with Jan. 4 (Independence Day) as the date most often mentioned. But on Jan. 2, the president signed an insulting amnesty order that freed fewer than 40 political prisoners and left many languishing in jail. That prompted Aung San Suu Kyi to issue another warning about dangers to the reform process.

There are two possible explanations for these failures to follow through, and neither is good for the image that Thein Sein has been trying to cultivate. One possibility is that he genuinely wants the political prisoners to be released but has no power to make that happen. The other is that he is a willing participant in an effort by the military to present a facade of liberalization in the hopes of gaining concessions from the West.

In any event, Thein Sein remains an enigma. He is a man who has demonstrated some admirable qualities while acting as one of the leaders of a brutally immoral regime. He is also a man who has spent his adult life obeying the military’s chain of command in an authoritarian junta and who now purports to head up a civilian government on the path toward democracy. Finally, he is the man who most believe represents the Burmese people’s best hope for internal government reform, even while he remains closely connected with those who wish to remain in absolute power.

Under these circumstances, it is understandable that most Burmese are likely to insist that they will gauge the depth of Thein Sein’s reforms by the actions of his government rather than simply taking him at his word.

BY AUNG ZAW

12 January 2012

@ Foreign Policy

Aung Zaw is founding editor of the Irrawaddy magazine based in Thailand.

Brilliant humanitarian Indian writer Arundhati Roy has commented powerfully on simultaneous First World holocaust commission and holocaust denial: “the ultimate privilege of the élite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience” (see Arundhati Roy in “The Cheque-book and the Cruise Missile”). In the British TV comedy “ Fawlty Towers ”, hotelier Basil Fawlty (John Clease), faced with some German guests,  famously told his staff “Don’t mention the war”. The look-the-other-way Mainstream media of Australia – and no doubt those of other Western Murdochracies and Lobbyocracies – have applied this dictum by ignoring the horrendous carnage in reviewing a blood-soaked 2011.

Thus the  Sydney Morning Herald (SMH, Fairfax media empire) opined “We can sum up 2011 as a year when the foundations were shaken. Literally and tragically so in some instances: Christchurch, that most stable of cities, was devastated by an earthquake and still has aftershocks that liquefy the very ground; Japan’s Tohoku region was swept by a double tsunami, and confidence in its nuclear power industry shattered by the resulting Fukushima disaster; devastating floods took their toll on some of the world’s poorest people. For the rest of us, particularly in the wealthy countries, it was more a sudden shakiness in the pillars holding up the world’s financial system. The second wave of the global financial crisis struck….” but offered not a word about the war (see SMH editorial, National Times, “2012- hang together or hang separately”, SMH National Times, 31 December 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/2012–hang-together-or-hang-separately-20111230-1pfhr.html ).

The SMH’s Melbourne  sister Fairfax empire newspaper The Age reviewed 2011 but offered only the following about the war: “For the United States, which spent much of the year trying to define the terms of its withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, the finding and killing of Osama bin Laden in May did not so much close a chapter as throw open a door onto the ghastly failings of the Pakistani state, an abyss into which even the most determined nation-builder would shudder to look ” (The Age editorial, National Times, “99% searching for a common cause in an upturned world”, The Age, National Times, 231 September 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/99-searching-for-common-cause-in-an-upturned-world-20111230-1pfik.html ).

However Rory Cahill, a section editor for The Conversation, a novel academic-based web magazine for expert opinion, does offer a small glimpse of the war-related horrors of 2011: “The forces unleashed by the Arab Spring will continue to play out. 2011 drew to an ominous close in Libya and Egypt , with rival militia fighting for control of Tripoli ‘s airport while the Egyptian Army turned its guns on protestors in Tahrir Square . The dream of democracy could yet become a blood-soaked nightmare more reminiscent of post-invasion Iraq than the stable Muslim state of Turkey . Iran will continue to be the focus of much attention. Over the course of 2012 the world will come to understand that the much-anticipated war on Tehran is already underway, albeit not the kind of war we recognise. Instead of tanks crossing the border, war on Iran involves viruses like Stuxnext being planted on laptops” (Rory Cahill, “2011, the year that was: politics & society”, The Conversation, 30 December 2011: https://theconversation.edu.au/2011-the-year-that-was-politics-and-society-4828 ).

The Age published a review of 2011 by eminent but very conservative Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC (he was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours list of 2000 for his service to academia, research and scholarship), who was formerly Professor History at the University of Melbourne. Professor Blainey’s article was entitled “Turbulent times but journeys to remember in 2011” (see The Age On-line National Times Section, 30 December 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/turbulent-times-but-journeys-to-remember-in-2011-20111229-1pe6u.html ).

Professor  Blainey’s summary of 2011 followed Basil Fawlty’s famous dictum of “don’t mention the war” and opined: “This was the year of the televised disaster. A host of present-day Australian children, when they grow old, will recall how in the year 2011 they saw on their screens the Japanese tsunami and nuclear nightmare, the earthquake in Christchurch , drought in north-east Africa and flood in Thailand . In eastern Australia the severe floods in successive years were a special surprise for those who, a few years previously, had been told by the more outspoken climate-scientists that Australians might never see floods again in their lifetime. Across the world a pervasive fear centred on debt. The hopes of a steady recovery from the globe’s financial crisis of 2008-09 were pricked this year by the realisation that Europe might be crippled by debt and, even more, by its own disagreements on how to handle debt. The European Union had been a notable achievement of the 20th century, and nations now sit together at a thousand conference tables and drink coffee rather than fight.”

But not a word about the US Alliance wars in Somalia, Iraq,  Afghanistan and Libya that have been associated with  war-related deaths totalling 2.2 million, 4.6 million, 5.0 million and 50,000, respectively (see Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ).

Further, re Professor Blainey’s assertion about “floods” and “outspoken climate scientists”, CSIRO Australia’s premier scientific research organization in its 2011 report “Climate change: science and solutions for Australia” (see: http://www.publish.csiro.au/Books/download.cfm?ID=6558 ) shows decreased precipitation drought in southern and south eastern Australia [p7] and increasing precipitation  in northern and central Australia [p7] and states “Climate models indicate that there is likely to be less rainfall in southern areas of Australia, especially in winter, and in southern and eastern areas in spring, caused by the contraction in the rainfall belt towards the higher (more southern) latitudes (Figure. 3.2). Future changes in summer tropical rainfall in northern Australia remain highly uncertain. It is also likely that the most intense rainfall events in most locations will become more extreme, driven by a warmer, wetter atmosphere [p38] … For Australia, heatwaves, fires, floods, and Southern Australian droughts are all expected to become more frequent and more intense in the coming decades [p46] … Water security, or reliability if water supply, in southern and eastern Australia is expected to decline in future as a result of reduced rainfall and higher rates of evaporation [p48]”.

Professor Blainey’s blinkered view of history as it is actually happening  has nevertheless registered that others perceive reality otherwise. His essay on 2011 concludes with the following extraordinary non-sequitur: “This nation, so far, has had two Jewish governors-general; and one, Sir Zelman Cowen, long ago wrote the life of the other, Sir Isaac Isaacs. In his book of 1967, Sir Zelman wrote affectionately of Sir Isaac and singled out his ”mind of great strength, power and range” and his ”unflagging and almost inexhaustible energy”. Those were also among the qualities of Sir Zelman, who, at the age of 92, died this month. Some of those who write Australia ‘s history textbooks devote an indignant chapter or two to what they see as the unparalleled racism of this country. But the day will come when they realise that, more than probably any European nation, Australia has recognised and honoured the talent of its Jewish citizens”. Professor Blainey seems to be saying (a) that Australia cannot be racist, (b) because  it (assertedly) treats Jews properly – and if so, he is wrong on both counts.

In reality Sir Isaac Isaacs, Australia’s first Australian-born Governor General was a decent man who, unlike the rabidly pro-Zionist Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Opposition and rabidly pro-Zionist Labor Party Government (the Lib-Labs who together account for 80% of the vote in Australia),  strongly opposed Zionism as he articulated as  follows: “The honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism.” and “The Zionist movement as a whole…now places its own unwarranted interpretation on the Balfour Declaration, and makes demands that are arousing the antagonism of the Moslem world of nearly 400 millions, thereby menacing the safety of our Empire, endangering world peace and imperiling some of the most sacred associations of the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem faiths. Besides their inherent injustice to others these demands would, I believe, seriously and detrimentally affect the general position of Jews throughout the world” ( Sir Isaac Isaacs, quoted by Wikipedia, ”Isaac Isaacs”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Isaacs ).

Further, Australia has a long history of anti-Jewish anti-Semitism that continues to this day. Indeed the current Lib-Lab anti-Jewish anti-Semitism is potentially  far more dangerous than that in Australia in the past (for shocking details of past anti-Semitism see Chapter 17, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) . Thus the pro-war, pro-Zionist, pro-US imperialism Lib-Labs are anti-Jewish anti-Semitic by remorselessly ignoring the decent views of outstanding  anti-racist Australian Jews such as Sir Isaac Isaacs and many others (for the expert , humanitarian opinions  numerous such outstanding anti-racist Jewish scholars and writers  “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home ) and by falsely identifying decent, anti-racist Jews with the appalling, genocidal crimes of racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel (0.1 million Palestinians killed, 1.4 million non-violent war-related deaths, 7 million refugees) and the racist Zionist-beholden US Alliance (12 million war-related deaths since 1990 in the racist Zionist-backed US War on Muslims).

For a glimpse of the extraordinary Australian Mainstream censorship of the humane views of anti-racist Jewish Australian intellectuals  see “ Australian ABC censorship of top Jewish intellectuals against racist Zionism”, Bellaciao, 27 December 2011: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article21532 and “ABC Censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/abccensorship/home .

I sent a comment on Professor Blainey’s article and under my professional name (Dr Gideon Polya) to The Age but – in keeping with its regular practice of censoring informed, credentialled and non-anonymous professional comments – The Age completely censored my comments, presumably as containing material unfit for its readers to read, know or think about (see “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age ) :

“Professor Blainey can praise the European countries for not attacking each other anymore (the NATO attacks on Serbia aside) but ignores 2 decades of US Alliance attacks on the Muslim World that have been associated with 12 million war-related deaths (violent deaths plus avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation), the breakdown being 4.6 million (Iraq, 1990-2011), 2.2 million (Somalia, 1992-2011), 5.0 million (Afghanistan, 2001-2011), these estimates being consonant with avoidable under-5 infant deaths totalling 1.8 million, 1.2 million and 2.6 million, respectively, and reflected in refugee numbers totalling 5-6 million, 2.0 million and 3-4 million, respectively.

Professor Blainey similarly failed to notice in his “A Short History of the World” and his “A Very Short History of the World” the 6-7 million Indians starved to death by the British (with Australian complicity) in the 1942-1945 WW2 Bengali Holocaust (although he does note “the loss of at least two million lives” there in his “The Great Seesaw. A new view of the Western world 1750-2000”).

Professor Blainey dismisses ongoing Australian racism (towards Asians and Aborigines) because he claims Jews have been treated properly – they have not been, they still are not and why shouldn’t they be?”

This, in brief,  is what the Australia Mainstream media chose not to notice in looking back on 2011: Australia withdrew its last 33 soldiers from Iraq in August 2011 leaving a country that since 1990 has suffered 4.6 million war-related deaths, 1.7 million violent deaths, 2.9 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, 1.8 million avoidable under-5 infant deaths and 5-6 million refugees (see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ) but Australia still has about 1,500 troops in Afghanistan that since the US Alliance invasion in 2001 has suffered 5.0 million war-related deaths, 1.2 million violent deaths, 3.8 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 2.7 million under-5 infant deaths, 2.4 million avoidable under-5 infant deaths and 3-4 million refugees (plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated by US and US-backed violence in NW Pakistan) (see “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ).

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We are obliged to inform everyone we can about horrendous crimes against humanity. A key resolution for everyone for 2012 is to do exactly that.

By Dr Gideon Polya

01 January 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career.

The taxpayer-funded Australian ABC has failed to report a petition by some of Australia’s most outstanding Jewish scholars denouncing and renouncing the racist and genocidal Israeli “law of return” that is a key instrument in Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide. This is a further instance of egregious lying by omission by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-beholden Australian ABC.

The taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) is Australia ‘s equivalent of the taxpayer-funded British  BBC. The Australian ABC has an appalling record of lying by omission and lying by commission, indeed  ABC censorship has plumbed Orwellian depths (see “ABC Censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/abccensorship/ ). This extraordinary  ABC censorship stems from the reality that the ABC, like other Mainstream media in Murdochracy and Lobbyocracy Australia and in other Western Murdochracies and Lobbyocracies, is subject to pressure form neocon Americans, racist Zionists (RZs) and their associates.

Australia is a Murdochracy (Big Money determines public perception of the truth and hence votes) and a Lobbyocracy (Big Money buys politicians and policy). The racist Zionist Lobby is extremely powerful in what has become an Apartheid Australia that now follows the Apartheid Israeli and Apartheid Israel-supported Apartheid South African racism examples and applies race-based laws and regulations to Indigenous Australians and to refugees. Thus in 2010 the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who had been elected with a huge majority in 2007,  was deposed in a pro-Zionist-led overnight Coup. The impetus for PM Rudd’s demise came from a $23 million Mining Industry campaign against his proposed Mining Tax  but the people who did the dirty work of deposing a democratically-elected Australian Prime Minister were mostly members of the extreme pro-Zionist faction of the Australian Labor Party (the ALP, aka the Apartheid Labor Party and the Apartheid Israel-supporting Labor Party) (see Antony Loewenstein, “Does the Israeli Lobby have blood on its hands in Australia?”: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/07/02/does-the-zionist-lobby-have-blood-on-its-hands-in-australia/ ).

The racist, extreme right wing ALP is well-funded by pro-Zionists with some of this funding  notoriously coming from the proceeds of crime.  This is a great irony because  the Labor Government had no objection to former PM John Howard profiting from  his recently  published memoirs (PM Howard  had  illegally invaded Iraq and is thus complicit  in  2.7 million  post-invasion war related Iraqi deaths; see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ) but referred the case of David Hicks to the Australian Federal Police under Australian “no profit from crime” laws (David Hicks has killed nobody, broke no Australian laws,   was abusively imprisoned and tortured by the  Americans in Guantanamo Bay for 5 years and has recently published his memoir “Guantanamo: My journey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo:_My_Journey ).

In March 2010 a large number of decent, anti-racist Australian Jewish intellectuals  signed a petition against the racist and genocidal Israeli “law of return” that gives all Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel) the “right” to live in Palestine with Israeli citizenship to the exclusion of 7 million Palestinians forbidden to live in the land inhabited continuously by their Palestinian forebears since the literal dawn of history.

According to outstanding Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein “Some of the key signatories include world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, actor Miriam Margolyes, legendary feminist campaigner Eva Cox, La Trobe University’s Dennis Altman, Monash University’s Andrew Benjamin, Sydney University’s David Goodman and John Docker, legal scholar GJ Lindell, best-selling author and journalist Antony Loewenstein, writers Susan Varga and Sara Dowse, ANU’s Ned Curthoys and many others” (see:

http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/03/03/prominent-australian-jews-including-peter-singer-reject-the-israeli-right-of-return/ ).

However the ABC has resolutely failed to report this remarkable, ethical statement by some of Australia ‘s most famous Jewish intellectuals in a continuing act of anti-Jewish anti-Semitic lying by omission by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-beholden ABC. Thus a Search of “the entire ABC site” using the “ABC Search” function for the phrase “law of return” yields  4 reports, but ZERO (0) reportage of this important letter by these outstanding anti-racist Jewish Australian intellectuals: http://search.abc.net.au/search/search.cgi?form=simple&num_

ranks=20&collection=abcall&query=%22law+of+return%22 ).

The petition is reproduced below – this is what the Australian taxpayer-funded but Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-beholden ABC does not wants its viewers, readers and listeners to see, read, hear, know about or think about .

“Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews

March 2010

We are Jews from Australia , who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel ‘s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.

Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.

We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.

Signed:

Professor Peter Singer – Princeton University

Miriam Margolyes (OBE) – renowned actor

Eva Cox (AO) – National Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.

Professor Dennis Altman – Professor of Politics, La Trobe University

Professor Andrew Benjamin – Monash University

Sara Dowse – writer

GJ Lindell – Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Adelaide

Susan Varga – writer

Antony Loewenstein – writer, journalist, author of My Israel Question

Professor David SG Goodman – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney

Professor John Docker – Sydney University

Jean McClean – advisor to Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University on East-Timor

Dr Peter Slezak – University of New South Wales

Dr Tony Balint – Blue Horizon Clinic

Dr Ron Witton – University of Wollongong

Dr Ned Curthoys – Australian National University

Dr Rick Kuhn – Australian National University

Dr. Tamas Pataki

Russell Bancroft – Manager Industrial Relations, Government Branch

Alice Beauchamp

Toni Beauchamp

Wendy Crew

Bronwyn Dahlstrom

Nicole Erlich – PhD candidate, University of Queensland

Marshall Harris

David Hermolin

Sylvie Leber

Jeffrey Loewenstein

Stefan Moore

Martin Munz

Vivienne Porzsolt

Joe Rich

Margot Salom

Rene Tsukasov

Nic Witton.” [1].

[1]. Antony Loewenstein, “Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli “right of return”, Media release, 3 March 2010:

http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/03/03/prominent-australian-jews-including-peter-singer-reject-the-israeli-right-of-return/ .

Summary and Conclusions.

All decent, anti-racist  folk will  applaud this courageous and ethical statement by these wonderful anti-racist, humanitarian  Jewish Australian intellectuals denouncing  and renouncing  the genocidal, racist Zionist (RZ)  “law of return”

For anti-racist Jews and indeed all anti-racist humanitarians the core moral messages from the Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and from the more general WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slav, Jewish and Gypsy dead) are “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone”, “bear witness” and “zero tolerance for lying”.

In 1880 there were about 0.5 million Indigenous Palestinians. Of the  25,000 Jews in Palestine in 1880 half were immigrants (see:  http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story559.html and http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm ).  Palestinian deaths  from war violence total about 80,000 since 1948 and about 100,000 since 1936 (see “Palestinian casualties of war”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_casualties_of_war ). However one must also consider avoidable Palestinian deaths from war-, expulsion- and occupation-imposed deprivation that now total about 1.4 million since 1948. Palestinian refugees  total over 7 million. This has been a Palestinian Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention.

Decent, anti-racist people will accordingly similarly applaud the words of outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Jared Diamond who in his best-selling book “Collapse” (Prologue, p10, Penguin edition) enunciated the “moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people” – an injunction grossly violated by racist Zionist (RZ)-run Apartheid Israel and its racist, genocide-committing and genocide-ignoring US Alliance backers.

Racist Zionism is not simply a huge threat to Palestinians (1.5 million dead, 7 million refugees, 4.3 million without rights under Occupier guns in West Bank mini-Bantustans and the Gaza Concentration Camp, 6 million forbidden to even step foot in the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for thousands of years, only the adults of 1.5 million Palestinian Israelis are permitted to vote for the government ruling all of  Palestine, albeit as third class citizens in a race-based Apartheid Israel) –  it is also a huge threat to decent, anti-racist Jews around the world.

All decent, anti-racist, humanitarians must vigorously oppose: those supporting racist Zionism, Apartheid Israel and racist Western wars and occupations who are currently complicit in  0.7 million non-violent excess deaths annually and 12 million Muslim deaths since 1990 in the Zionist-backed US Alliance War on Muslims; continuing, racist perversion of human rights, humanitarian  values and rational discourse in the Western democracies; the ignoring of a worsening climate genocide (that may kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century through unaddressed man-made climate change); and egregious anti-Jewish anti-Semitism through utterly false identification of decent, anti-racist Jews with these appalling crimes.

Racist Zionist-beholden Australian media are not just anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by supporting  the ongoing Palestinian Genocide and the ongoing Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide that has killed 12 million Muslims in the last 2 decades) but are also anti-Jewish anti-Semitic by resolutely ignoring the opinions of outstanding  anti-racist Jewish scholars  (for such views from Hannah Arendt to Howard Zinn  see “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home ) and  by utterly falsely and dangerously conflating racist Zionism and its genocidal crimes with decent, anti-racist,  secular, liberal and Orthodox Jews.

The taxpayer-funded ABC is anti-Arab anti-Semitic through its  lying by omission and commission  over the Palestinian Genocide,  Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Genocide and Muslim Genocide (12 million Muslim war- and occupation-related deaths, 1990-2011) and anti-Jewish anti-Semitic by endangering decent anti-racist Jews and sidelining their opinions. The failure of the ABC to report the  “ Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews” signed  by outstanding anti-racist Australian Jewish intellectuals is a further instance of lying by omission by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)- beholden ABC (see “ABC Censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/abccensorship/ )  and of its  entrenched anti-Arab anti-Semitism and inherent anti-Jewish anti-Semitism that threatens Palestinians, Arabs,. Muslims and decent, anti-racist Jews.

By Dr Gideon Polya

28 December 2011

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003).