Just Commentary January 2015

January 2015

Vol 15, No.01

PARIS-A DASTARDLY ACT

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By Chandra Muzaffar It is not surprising that Muslim governments, organizations and individuals right across the globe have condemned the heinous murder of 12 persons — 10 journalists and two police — at the headquarters of the satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris in the late morning of the 7th of January 2015. This dastardly act of terror, allegedly carried out by two Muslims, violates every norm in the Islamic faith.

If it is true that the killers were trying to avenge the sanctified memory of the Prophet Muhammad who has been the subject of continuous ridicule and contempt in the weekly, murdering its cartoonists and editors is clearly an

abomination. One should respond to satirical cartoons with cartoons and other works of art that expose the prejudice and bigotry of the cartoonists and editors of Charlie Hebdo. One should use the Charlie Hebdo cartoons as a platform to educate and raise the awareness of the French public about what the Quran actually teaches and who the Prophet really was and the sort of noble values that distinguished his life and struggle. To assassinate those who mock the Prophet in such a barbaric manner shows that the terrorists have no understanding at all of how the Prophet himself responded to those who poured their venom and hatred upon him when

he was conveying the message of justice and compassion that is the kernel of Islam to the people of Mecca and Medina in the early 7th century.

Of course, provoking the six million Muslims in France and the larger 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide through constant insults and indignities directed at the Prophet and the religion — albeit through the medium of cartoons — isnot only utterly reprehensible but also an affront to inter-religious harmony and social stability. It is an example of the reckless abuse of the freedom of expression which Turn to next page

STATEMENTS .THE NANJING GENOCIDE AND THE FUTURE OF ASIA .THE MASSACRE IN PESHAWAR

BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR.....................................P3

BY HASSANAL NOOR RASHID...........................P5

ARTICLES . VIVA CUBA!

BY MIKE FAULKNER.......................................P 6 . PUTIN TO DONATE 50,000 TONS OF RUSSIA COAL

DAILY TO UKRAINE FOR HEAT

BY ERIC ZUESSE...............................................P 10 .FIGHTING “ISLAMIC STATE” IS NOT THE ISRAELI PRIORITY

BY NICOLA NASSER.........................................P 10

. ANOTHER MH17 COVER-UP: HIDING A KEY AUTOPSY

BY ERIC ZUESSE...........................................P 13 . THE OIL PRICE CRASH OF 2014

BY RICHARD HEINBERG.................................P 14 . PAKISTAN: A FAILURE

TO UNDERSTAND

BY MARYAM SAKEENAH...............................P 17

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brings much grief to everyone.

Freedom of expression is not the freedom to denigrate and desecrate a Prophet who is so deeply cherished by millions and millions of Muslims.

If the advocates of human rights regard the freedom of a handful of cartoonists as crucial for human civilization, they should also show some appreciation for the honor and dignity of an entire people. Surely, the right to protect one’s dignity — the dignity of a collectivity — is also a fundamental human right.

The Charlie Hebdo episode has underscored yet again the importance of exercising freedom with a deep sense of responsibility. Restraints are part and parcel of rights. It is by balancing rights with restraints that one ensures the well-being of the whole.

This balance is especially critical at a time like this in Europe. Negative feelings towards non-European migrants are getting stronger in various parts of the continent.

Islamophobia is part of this though as a phenomenon it is centuries old.

If attitudes towards Muslims and migrants in general have hardened in recent years, it is partly because of rising unemployment and stagnating economies. As it often happens in such situations, the “outsider” becomes the scapegoat.

If in the midst of all this, elements from the majority, established community in Europe continue to provoke a minority which by and large views religion from a different perspective than the majority, and if some individuals from that minority react to the provocations through mindless

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violence, tension and conflict will become the order of the day. This is why both sides should be responsible and restrained.

Indeed, both the majority and the minority should realize that acts of terror can also be manipulated to serve the agenda of some political actor or other. In the context of Charlie Hebdo, shouldn’t we ask if the killing spree on the 7th of January was also a message of sorts to the French ruling elite? Was some group sending a warning to the elite that it should not have supported Palestine’s recent failed bid in the UN Security Council toobtain endorsement for its goal of establishing an independent, sovereign state within a short time frame?Was that group the mastermind behind 7th January?

Questions of this sort strengthen the case for an independent investigation preferably under the aegis of the UN Secretary-General into the Paris massacre. The truth behind the massacre may tell us a great deal about terrorism itself in our time.

9 January 2015.

POSTSCRIPT. Since the above was written, there has been a major development in the Paris massacre. The two brothers responsible for the massacre, Cherif and Said Kouachi, were gunned down by the French police on the 9th of January, as they emerged from a small printing firm in the Northeast of Paris where they were hiding after their widely condemned act of evil.

A third person, purportedly an accomplice, who was holed up in a

L E A D A R T I C L E supermarket elsewhere in the city was also killed by the police.

By killing these terrorists — which may have been inevitable from a security standpoint — it has now become more difficult to find out if the three acted on their own or if they were part of a larger group and supported by an ideologically driven network. Were they, especially the Kouachi brothers, motivated solely by a desire to punish Charlie Hebdo for its despicable cartoons of the Prophet as claimed by one of them according to the media or were they also fulfilling some other cleverly concealed agenda, unknown to them?

This is a valid question to ask because the cartoons which have enraged a lot of French Muslims have become a regular feature of the Charlie Hebdo weekly for at least eight years now. There has been no report of any specific cartoon in recent days eliciting a particularly potent reaction from any section of the French Muslim community.

Incidentally, the weekly also lampoons revered personalities from other religions.

It has been suggested that it was not just the cartoons that incensed the terrorists. France’s aggressive role in fighting so-called Islamic jihadists in central Africa may have also been a factor. This argument is somewhat compromised by the fact that the French government was directly and indirectly on the side of the jihadists in Libya in the brutal overthrow of the secular Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Even more significant, the French clearly share the same trench continued next page

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as Islamic rebels of different shades who have been fighting another secular leader, President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, for almost four years now. So there is no reason to believe that it is France’s adventures in other parts of the world which have angered Islamic jihadists. This story about the country’s stand against jihadists in other lands may have been deliberately put out by the media to divert attention from some other more plausible explanation for the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

The massacre may well be a Mossad operation to arrest the growing tide of support and sympathy for the Palestinians in their struggle for statehood among people in France and in a number of other European countries. This is the one really momentous development of the last few months that has impacted upon the Israeli government and global Zionism.

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Parliaments in Sweden and Spain to Ireland and Britain have adopted resolutions endorsing the Palestinian struggle. France has also taken a similar step. In my main article I alluded to the French vote in the UN Security Council which some analysts have described as the culmination of a major shift in the public mood vis-a-vis the IsraelPalestine conflict within Europe.

By staging a massacre which once again reinforces the image of the Muslim as a terrorist opposed to civilized values such as the freedom of expression and incapable of living in harmony with the majority population, Mossad and the Israeli government may be seeking to drive a wedge between the majority European citizenry and the Muslim minority.

The aim may be to dissuade governments and citizens in Europe from moving any further along their newly discovered path of

S T A T E M E N T S engagement with Palestinians who they are now beginning to see as victims rather than as aggressors which is how they have been portrayed all these years by the Israeli elite and the Zionist controlled media.

What better way of doing this than by reviving that deeply entrenched image of the Muslim in the European mind as a violence prone creature hell-bent on wiping out the innocent?

What has always enabled the Mossad and Israel to achieve their objective is the readiness of some Muslim groups to resort to violence in order to redeem the honor of Islam which invariably leads to the vilification of the religion and the denigration of its adherents.

10 January 2015 Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

STATEMENT THE NANJING GENOCIDE AND THE FUTURE OF ASIA

By Chandra Muzaffar For the first time in its history, China commemorated the Nanjing genocide on the 13th of December as a National Memorial Day. The mass killings and systematic rapes perpetrated by some Japanese soldiers against civilians and disarmed combatants in Nanjing, then the capital of China, for a period of six weeks or so, starting on the 13th of December 1937, is undoubtedly one of the most brutal chapters in the history

of 20th century Asia. This genocide occurred in the thick of the Japanese invasion of China.

Though estimates differ, it is generally accepted that between 140,000 and 300,000 Chinese perished at the hands of the Japanese during those six weeks of incredible moral depravity and unspeakable human cruelty.

The Nanjing genocide is not just recorded in Chinese archives and etched in the collective memory of

the Chinese people. There are numerous well-documented accounts of what happened in Nanjing by Western doctors, missionaries, businessmen, journalists and diplomats who were living there at that time. Japanese writers and activists have also attempted to tell the truth and some have been campaigning for justice for the people of Nanjing and China for decades. continued next page

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I had some exposure to some of these individuals when I was a guest lecturer on a Japanese Peace Boat — an NGO committed to the promotion of peace — in February 2005. The passengers, almost all of whom were Japanese, were deeply concerned about their country’s role in Nanjing. Their concern, I gathered from the organizer of the peace voyage, was a reflection of how a lot of Japanese felt about a dark blot in their history.

It is important for Japanese who are aware of Nanjing to become more vocal and get more organized at this juncture in the nation’s politics. This is because right-wing nationalists are more emboldened now to push for their agenda since the prevailing political climate in Japan appears to favor them. A number of these elements continue to argue that the genocide never took place!

They have forgotten that two tribunals established after the Second World War, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, had convicted some of the men responsible for the Nanjing genocide of war crimes and put them to death. And, on the 15th of August 1995, on the 50th anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of WW 2, the then Prime Minister, TomiichiMuruyama, apologized publicly for Japan’s aggression, including the atrocities committed in Nanjing, and for the “great suffering” his country had inflicted upon the people of Asia.

He should have also provided a

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written apology.

Muruyama’s successors have failed to build upon his outstanding initiative. Instead, some of them have hardened their position on Japan’s past misdeeds. A couple of them have visited the Yasukuni Shrine where the remains of some ‘Class A’ war criminals including those implicated in the Nanjing genocide are preserved.

If Japanese leaders are sincere about removing one of the

longstanding causes of friction between their country and their neighbors in Asia, they should cease making these visits immediately. It would assure Asian societies that were victims of Japanese aggression seven decades ago that Japan has finally repudiated its militaristic past. The present Japanese leadership should also make a much more earnest attempt to resolve its territorial dispute in the East China Sea over what it calls the Senkaku Islands and what the Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands.

At this moment, in the wake of the APEC Summit in Beijing in November 2014, there is a slight thaw in the otherwise tense relations between the Japanese and Chinese governments. That

S T A T E M E N T S thaw offers some hope for dialogue in view of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s mature approach to the commemoration of the Nanjing genocide. He made it very clear in his speech at the commemoration that one should not “bear hatred against an entire nation because of a small minority of militarists who had launched aggressive wars.”

Given this positive signal from President Xi, can ASEAN, which is geographically, politically and economically close to both Japan and Chinaplay a role in reducing the differences and narrowing the gap between these two Asian neighbors? Can ASEAN as a collective entity encourage the two countries to address the thorny issues that separate them through a carefully planned stage by stage dialogue? Shouldn’t Malaysia as the incoming ASEAN Chair for 2015 craft a mechanism for Sino-Japanese dialogue which could lead to a lasting peace between two nations whose diligence, discipline and dynamism (3Ds) when applied in unison could well change the world?

Peace between China and Japan is therefore vital for the future of Asia and indeed the world. We should do all we can to achieve this precious peace within a short span for an obvious reason. There are actors within and without the region who are already exploiting Sino-Japanese tensions in pursuit of their own agendas. We should not allow them to succeed through default.

22 December 2014.

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THE MASSACRE IN PESHAWAR

By Hassanal Noor Rashid The International Movement for a Just world (JUST) joins together with many other organizations, enraged individuals and communities in condemning the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) for the barbaric and mindless massacre of 145 people in a Pakistani school in Peshawar on the 16 th December 2014. The vast majority of the victims—132 to be exact— were school children between the ages of 12 and 16. This is what makes the cruel massacre — the worst in Pakistani history — utterly reprehensible.

The actions of the gunmen who had committed these vile atrocities, which have notably been criticised by the Taliban in Afghanistan, are representative of a virulent ideology and a perverse view of Islam which utilizes the religion to justify the actions of brutal murderers.

The misrepresentation of the Islamic faith by these groups is an increasingly worrying trend that has resulted in many unwarranted tragedies, but like in many other instances of events such as these, religion is not the core driving motivation.

The rationalization given by the group responsible for this heinous act was to avenge the killings of hundreds of innocent tribesmen in provinces such as South Waziristan, North Waziristan and the Khyber Agency according to a spokesperson of the TTP. The military actions by the

Pakistani government within these provinces are reflective of its flawed approach to the fight against terrorism, an approach continuously found within the rhetoric of various Washington pundits that persists in the post- 9/ 11 political environment, 13 years later.

to the invasive activities of countries like the United States of America and its allies, who are seeking to dictate and influence how the structures of power in the region benefit their own interests and agendas.

These countries and their nefarious hegemonic agendas are as much responsible for facilitating the rise of extremist militancy, as they are in many ways responsible for the brutal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people at the hands of the extremists.

The government’s response to these perceived terrorist threats has been one where laws are introduced which curtails civil rights, andlegitimizes the use of torture and assassinations.

The victims of this ideological dogma however, as this incident has shown, are rarely Western civilians.

They tend to, more often than not, be other Muslims, who are seen by these militants as colluding with the foreign aggressor and therefore traitors to the nation and the religion.

All these have created a political and social environment which in fact diminishes security and endows extremists with a sense of perceived legitimacy to carry out their morally disengaged and illconceived actions.

So long as these policies and practices continuously persist, and alternative actions are not implementedto engage with these threats more effectively and sustainably, atrocities like these may well become a political-social norm.

The injustices that have befallen the Palestinian people which have also been a large part of the Muslim world’s conscious reality, have served to be an ideological focal point for many militants and has contributed further to the rise of militancy.

Justice demands we never let that happen, and Muslims all over have a responsibility to not allow Islam to be hijacked by peddlers of violence.

These terrorists’ worldview is ultimately an ideological response

20 December 2014 Hassanal Noor Rashid is Programme Coordinator at JUST. continued next page

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VIVA CUBA!

By Mike Faulkner “Cuba and the United States have quite a curious – in fact, unique status in international relations. There is no similar case of such a sustained assault by one power against another – in this case the greatest superpower against a poor, Third World country – for forty years of terror and economic warfare.” — Noam Chomsky. Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. 2000.

Chomsky wrote that more than fourteen years ago. Nothing much has changed since then. The punitive US blockade of Cuba is still in place.

In October 2014, for the 23rd successive year the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Cuban draft resolution calling for the lifting of the blockade.

Unsurprisingly for the 23rd year the United States voted against the resolution. Perhaps more surprisingly for those uninformed about this annual event, will be the fact that the US casts its vote against Cuba in almost complete isolation.

Since 1992 no more than three member states have ever voted with the US against the Cuban resolution, but until the late 1990s significant numbers abstained. There were, for example, 71 abstentions with 59 in favour in 1992. In recent years there have been only a handful of abstentions – between 1 and 3 – and since 2012 a consistent voting pattern has emerged: 188 for the Cuban resolution: 2 against: 3 abstentions.

The only ally the US now has in its vindictive hostility towards Cuba is Israel. Even lickspittle lackeys such

as Albania, Romania and Uzbekistan have deserted. Israel, however, has never faltered, standing steadfast with Goliath against David every year since 1992.

If one needed an object lesson in imperial arrogance, hypocrisy and impunity one need look no further than the US treatment of Cuba since 1959. Actually, the bullying started much earlier than that – as far back as the beginning of the 20thcentury.

But after the triumph of the revolution in 1959 US hostility became remorseless, aimed at the overthrow of the new government and restoration of the status quo ante. The US has never been reconciled to the Cuban revolution. Failure to destroy it by armed intervention and terrorist assassination plots against its leaders during the 1960s and 1970s did not lead to abandonment of the mission.

US power has been used relentlessly to impose the most draconian economic blockade, to deny the country its sovereign right to trade freely, and to intimidate and penalise national states, commercial companies and individuals who are deemed to be in breach of the policy of extra-territorial sanctions imposed unilaterally by the US in the 1960s and still in force.

The extraterritoriality underpinning the blockade violates the United Nations Charter, the Organization of American States and the fundamentals of international law. All US administrations invoke “The International Community”, in whose interests they claim to act. Yet in this vicious and vindictive exercise of

overweening power by one state against another (which is without parallel in modern history) the United States has persistently ignored the wishes of the overwhelming majority of member states of the United Nations. And the allies of the United States who vote to lift the blockade of Cuba, do nothing to take their disagreement with the superpower beyond the politics of pain-free gesture. Annually for the past 47 years US presidents have extended the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) against Cuba. The TWEA dates back to 1917 when it was enacted by President Wilson on the eve of US entry into the First World War, in order to prohibit or regulate trade with a wartime adversary. It is the basis of all the sanctions against Cuba, a country with which the US has never been formally at war. In September of this year President Obama extended TWEA for another year. It is estimated by the Cuban government that over the past 55 years the economic sanctions, measured in current prices, have cost the country US$116.8 billion in lost trade. When the depreciation of the dollar against the price of gold is taken into account, the figure is US$1.11 trillion. This reality reveals the purpose of the economic blockade- to cripple Cuba economically.

Ronald D. Godard, US Senior Area Adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs, opposing the Cuban draft resolution at the UN, stated bluntly that the Cuban economy would not continued next page

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thrive until the government “permits a free and fair labour market, freely empowers Cuban entrepreneurs….opens state monopolies to private competition and adopts the sound macro-economic policies that have contributed to the success of Cuba’s neighbours in Latin America”. This means that the economic blockade will not be lifted until Cuba abandons its efforts to build a socialist society and submits to the untrammelled operation of the neo-liberal “free market”. In referring to Cuba’s Latin American neighbours, he evidently did not have in mind countries such as Bolivia, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela that have in recent years rejected that model. He must have been referring to those like Cuba’s close neighbours in Central America who have not: Guatemala and Honduras, the two countries suffering from the most extreme social inequality in the hemisphere.

But in spite of the crippling impact of US sanctions, Cuba, with a population of 11 million has once again provided the world with a glowing example of selfless internationalism. In early October Cuba sent 63 doctors and 102 nurses to Sierra Leone in response to the Ebola crisis. They joined a team of 23 Cuban doctors who were already working there. Another 300 health workers are being trained and will soon join their colleagues. The WHO has praised the Cuban contribution, pointing out that while other countries have offered money, no other country has matched the numbers of health professionals sent from Cuba to work in the most difficult circumstances. Soon the Cubans plan to have an aid presence in Guinea and Liberia. The 461 selected for the task were from a

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larger group of 15,000 health care workers who volunteered. Cuba’s response to the Ebola crisis is the latest in a long record of aid given to other nations at time of need. 2,465 health workers went to Pakistan to provide emergency care in the wake of the Kashmir earthquake; in 2010 Cuba was the first country to responds to the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti. The Independent reported (26. December 2010) that Cuba’s “doctors and nurses put the US effort to shame.”

“A medical brigade of 1,200 Cubans is operating all over earthquake-torn and cholera-infected Haiti as part of Fidel Castro’s international medical mission which has won the socialist state many friends but little

international recognition…Amid the fanfare and publicity surrounding the arrival of help from the US and UK, hundreds more Cuban doctors, nurses and therapists arrived with hardly a mention.”

As far as the British media is concerned the same may be said of Cuba’s response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Apart from an early report in the Observer , which echoed the New York Times, there has been almost no mention of Cuba’s involvement. It is difficult to believe that this is not deliberate.

Either that or the equally damning conclusion that so deeply ingrained is the anti-Cuban bias in the consciousness of supposedly objective journalists that they do not

A R T I C L E S consider the extraordinary contribution of this small Caribbean island in the face of a humanitarian crisis to be worthy of mention.

Because most of the communications media in Britain, together with the British government, are so subservient to the US government, particularly in matters of foreign policy, it is worth recalling a few of the pivotal episodes in the 55 year history of implacable US hostility towards Cuba. This will draw largely on an account (Cuba and the United States: A Personal Reflection on Thirty-Five years of Conflict) by this writer, published in Monthly Review in February 1996: “In the distorted account of the breakdown of US-Cuba relations it is suggested that Eisenhower ’s administration broke off relations with Cuba as a consequence of Castro’s embracing MarxismLeninism. This turns the truth on its head. In 1960 Fidel’s ‘26th July Movement’ had no organizational links with the small Communist Party and the members of that movement, formed during the guerrilla war against the Batista dictatorship, explicitly denied that they were communists. But Fidel was branded a communist on his first and only visit to Washington in 1959; a visit undertaken to win US aid. He was snubbed by Eisenhower and virtually ignored by Vice-President Nixon, who, when told about the planned agrarian reform concluded that Castro was ‘obviously a Red.’ Nixon, who a year earlier had warmly embraced the butcher Batista on a visit to Havana to boost US arms supplies to the embattled dictator, thus set the scene for his government’s future relations with Castro. continued next page

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“The land reform which was the most thorough and the most popular ever undertaken in Latin America, was denounced as ‘Communist.’ In the spring of 1960 the Cubans purchased cheap Soviet crude oil in the teeth of hostility from the Western oil companies. When the Westernowned refineries refused to refine the Soviet oil, Castro, with mass popular support for his actions, took over the refineries. This was the decisive turning point which put Cuba on a collision course with the United States.

The Eisenhower administration responded to this exercise of sovereignty by a small, poor country by cancelling the sugar quota, which meant that 70 percent of Cuba’s sugar production was left without a market. The intention was clear: to cripple Cuba economically in the shortest possible time and to bring down Castro.

“I was in Cuba shortly after this episode. The tension was palpable.

Khrushchev…agreed to buy the sugar that the US had refused to take. The USSR became very popular overnight, but still, for the majority of Cubans, this didn’t mean that they had chosen Communism, or that they considered that it was being imposed upon them. A popular expression of sentiment in Cuba at the time was ‘Sin Cuota; Sin Amo’ (without quota; without bosses). At the time US newspapers were still available in Havana. I recall in Early August of 1960 reading the most crude distortions of what was happening in Cuba. Most of the US press was claiming that Castro was clamping a Communist dictatorship upon an unwilling, oppressed people.

“One of my most vivid recollections from that time was attending a mass rally on August 6. (1960) in the

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Havana Sports stadium Fidel addressed a crowd of about 70,000.

There was nothing dragooned (or restrained) about the audience. It was composed of people of all ages; workers’ and peasants’ militia, students’ militia, men and women – many armed. The rally marked another decisive stage in the radicalization of the Cuban revolution and in Cuba’s relations with the United States. cubaFidelSpeech-098It was the occasion on which he announced the expropriation of all US companies and assets in Cuba. The crowd went wild with delirious excitement. The next day (or rather, later the same day, as the rally didn’t end until 5 am on August 7), the streets of Havana were thronged with thousands of people celebrating their freedom from ‘Yanqui imperialism.’ Numerous buildings were festooned with banners announcing that ‘this company is the property of the people of Cuba.’ Young militia women, rifles slung over their shoulders, stood guard in front of the buildings. Feeling somewhat apprehensive about how Uncle Sam might react to this demonstration of sovereignty by its small and ‘uppity’ Latin neighbour, we frequently asked people whether they were worried that the marines might come ashore soon. The response was almost always immediate and uniform: ‘Let ‘em come! We’ll deal with them!’

“In late August the United States tightened the screws further. At a conference of the Organization of American States in Costa Rica, the State Department, through its manipulation of many Latin American delegations, secured Cuba’s expulsion from the OAS and demanded in the so-called ‘Declaration of San Jose’ that Castro open his country to an OAS inspection. The Cubans, aware of the debacle that had just occurred in the

A R T I C L E S newly independent Congo, supposedly under the auspices of the U.N., had no intention of complying.

“While working [as members of the first ever international work brigade to visit Cuba] with picks and shovels in the Sierra Maestra [on the construction of the first residential school in that remote area] we read reports in the New York herald Tribune of a State Department document presented to the Cost Rica conference claiming that our work brigade was in fact a Soviet trained international communist guerrilla force, smuggled into Cuba to reinforce the supposedly demoralized Castro militia and help to spread red revolution throughout the hemisphere. It was, the statement claimed, a common Soviet ruse to disguise such contingents as ‘work brigades’. This was the kind of ‘evidence’ the State Department invented in order to swing their Latin American client states into line against Cuba.

“On September 2 the Cuban government answered the accusations emanating from the State Department via the OAS meeting. Fidel spoke at a rally in Havana attended by 1 million peoplewho enthusiastically packed the Plaza Civica [now the Plaza de la Revolution]. From that historic meeting came the first ‘Declaration of Havana’ which was essentially a declaration of independence and an assertion of the right to formulate a foreign policy without pressure or interference from the United States or anyone else. Each clause of the declaration was submitted for the approval of the ‘assembly of the Cuban people.’ In this fashion Cuba’s foreign policy alignment continued next page

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changed overnight. I remember listening to that address, relayed from Havana, in a Cuban army barrak near the top of the highest mountain in the Sierra Maestra. The proceedings went on until the elrly hours of the morning, depriving us of much needed sleep.

“Our work schedule at the Camilo Cienfuegos site was frequently interrupted whether by invitations to this or that celebration or by visits from this or that delegation. The most memorable of these events was a visit

by Che Guevara, who was at that time Minister of Industry.

Representatives of a dozen or more countries packed into a fairly small building to listen to him and to ask questions. My impression was that he differed from all the other political leaders I had listened to in Cuba (and by that time I had heard many) in his less volatile delivery, and the cool, completely undemagogic way he dealt with questions. I did not know then that he was an Argentinian and not a Cuban, though whether this in any way accounted for his style, I have no idea.

“We met hundreds of young people, mainly women, from Santiago, Havana and elsewhere, enrolled as ‘agrarian instructors’ in the first stage of the albeto campaign, which resulted a few years later in the virtual elimination of illiteracy in Cuba – many years short of the time the UN predicted it would take. It was almost inconceivable that anyone but the most bone-headed reactionary bigot could have failed to be impressed and deeply moved by the Cuban revolution in those early years. But few of its achievements were reported in the western world.

“Successive US administrations,

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Republican and Democratic, have treated Cuba’s attempts to break free from US tutelage and build a socialist society as a criminal offense to be punished with the utmost severity.

The catalogue of real offenses perpetrated against Cuba is endless.

Distortions of fact, lies and chicanery have been the commonplace accompaniments of the thirty-five year old vendetta against Castro and his country. In 1961 the Bay of Pigs invasion organized by the CIA was preceded by a clumsy provocation involving the mendacious claim that the Cuban air force had rebelled; CIA terrorism and sabotage against Cuba

was routine in the 1960s and the numerous well-documented attempts to assassinate Castro sit uneasily with the US public opposition to terrorism; the so-called missile crisis of 1962 seems to have had its immediate origin in a secret planned invasion of the island that became known to the Cubans; the retention to the present day of the provocative base on Cuban soil at Guantanamo is in blatant violation of Cuban sovereignty and against the expressed demand of the Cuban government for its removal. But worst of all perhaps is the 34 year old blockade of the country, which, until 1990 guaranteed Cuba’s heavy dependence on the Soviet bloc.

“The US treatment of Cuba doesn’t differ in any essentials from its treatment of other cases of radical nationalism in the hemisphere.

Guatemala in 1954, the Dominican

A R T I C L E S Republic in 1963, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Chile and Grenada – all examples of what happens when attempts are made to overthrow oppressive puppet regimes. Radical reforming governments or movements in these countries have, like Cuba, been subjected to political and economic destabilization, murderous terrorism by US armed and trained death squads, sabotage, embargo, blockades, US backed military coup and outright invasion. In each case the pretense has been to ‘restore democracy’.

That was written nearly twenty years ago. Much has changed since then.

But if the prospects of real, radical change in the Latin America now seem brighter than they were then, it is no thanks to any change of heart on the part of the United States.

Changes in the balance of class forces in countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Uruguay and Ecuador and less radical, but nonetheless encouraging signs of resistance on the part of countries such as Brazil and Argentina encourage the hope that the tide is turning and that the challenge to the neo-liberal model imposed on so many countries will permanently weaken the economic hegemony of US imperialism in the hemisphere.

And, for all the difficulties it still faces, Cuba is no longer alone. Its example has been an important factor in stimulating the determination of millions to fight for the better world which is possible. Viva Cuba!

07 December, 2014 Mike Faulkner is a British citizen.

He lives in London where for many years he taught history and political science at Barnet College, until his retirement in 2002.

Source: Greanvillepost.com

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PUTIN TO DONATE 50,000 TONS OF RUSSIA’S COAL DAILY TO UKRAINE FOR HEAT

By Eric Zuesse On Saturday, December 27th, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided that though Ukraine cannot now pay for coal and will soon go bankrupt, so that any ‘sale’ of coal to Ukraine will be a donation, Russia will nonetheless supply 50,000 tons of coal per day to Ukraine in order to help them through the winter.

The official announcement said that “this is a demonstration of good will of President Vladimir Putin to provide real support for the Ukrainian people.”

In a bill that had passed both houses of the U.S. Congress, with more than 98% support from members of both houses, and which U.S. President Barack Obama then signed into law on December 18th, the United States has made available to the Ukrainian Government the possibility of up to $450 million to aid its war against the residents in Ukraine’s far-eastern region, Donbass. The Ukrainian Government is killing the residents there because the vast majority of them don’t recognize the legitimacy of the U.S. coup on 22 February 2014 that overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, for whom the people in that nowrebelling region had voted 90%. Obama has said that this military aid will not immediately be supplied, and that he will

hold this expense and threat in abeyance for the time being.

So, the Ukrainian Government either is, or will be, receiving donations, or possible donations, from the taxpayers in both the United States and Russia.

An earlier announcement from Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Kozak, said that Russia would supply Ukraine with “up to a total of 1 million tons of coal per month, … to remove energy problems that arise in that country.”

President Putin has decided instead on 1.5 million tons per month. He did this despite Russia’s own economic hardships from the Obama-imposed economic sanctions against Russia, and from the Saudis’ agreement with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in September to flood the global markets with oil in order to drive down oil prices enough to hurt Russia, which both the U.S. and Saudi aristocracies want to destroy. Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. are all major exporters of oil and gas. The Saudi and American aristocracies want to control the aristocrats in Russia, who are currently controlled by Russia’s President Putin, whom U.S. and Saudi aristocrats want

to replace.

Putin seems to be saying that the Americans and the Saudis will not dictate his policies, and that he is more interested in ameliorating the extreme hardships that are being suffered by the victims of Obama’s February coup in Ukraine.

Perhaps this response from Putin will anger Obama even more, but what can Obama do about it?

Probably, things are not playing out in the way that things had been gamed out inside the U.S. White House at the time when the Ukrainian coup was being planned by President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, CIA Director John Brennan, and the other Obama advisors. However, only future historians will be able to write about that; no reporter today can.

28 December, 2014 Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010.

Source: Countercurrents.org

FIGHTING THE “ISLAMIC STATE” IS NOT THE ISRAELI PRIORITY

By Nicola Nasser Defying a consensus that it is a priority by the world community comprising international rivals like the United States, Europe, Russia and China and regional rivals like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, Israel, like Turkey, does not eye the U.S. – led war on the IS as its regional priority. Nor fighting Israel is an IS priority.

The Israeli top priority is to dictate its terms to Syria to sign a peace treaty with Israel before withdrawing its forces from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, Palestinian territories and Lebanese southern lands.

For this purpose, Israel is determined to break down the Syria – Iran alliance,

which has been the main obstacle preventing Israel from realising its goals. Changing the ruling regime in either Damascus or Tehran would be a step forward. Towards this Israeli strategic goal the IS could not be but an Israeli asset. continued next page

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“To defeat ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as the IS was previously known) and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly last September.

Therefore, “it should not come as a surprise that the (Benjamin) Netanyahu government has not yet taken any immediate steps against IS,” according to Amos Harel, writing in Foreign Policy on September 15.

However, information is already surfacing that Israel is “taking steps” in the opposite direction, to empower the IS and other terrorist groups fighting and infighting in Syria.

Israeli daily Haaretz on last October 31 quoted a “senior Northern Command officer” as saying that the U.S. – led coalition “is making a big mistake in fighting against ISIS … the United States, Canada and France are on the same side as Hezbollah, Iran and [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad.

That does not make sense.”

Regardless, on September 8 Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel has provided “satellite imagery and other information” to the coalition.

Three days later Netanyahu said at a conference in Herzliya: “Israel fully supports President [Barack] Obama’s call for united actions against ISIS …

We are playing our part in this continued effort. Some of the things are known; some of the things are less known.”

Obama’s call was the green light for Israel to support Syrian and non- Syrian rebels. Syrian official statements claim that Israel has been closely coordinating with the rebels.

Israeli statements claim theirs is

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confined to “humanitarian” support to “moderate” Syrian opposition, which the U.S. has already pledged to train and arm in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey. A significant portion of the $64 billion earmarked for conflicts abroad in the budget legislation signed by Obama on December 19 will go to these “moderates.”

Both Israel and the U.S. have no headaches about whether the “moderates” would remain as such after being armed with lethal weapons or whether it remains appropriate to call them “opposition.”

But the Israeli “humanitarian” claim is challenged by the fact that Israel is the only neighbouring country which still closes its doors to Syrian civilian refugees while keeping its doors wide open to the wounded rebels who are

A R T I C L E S Minister Moshe Ya’alon officially outlawed the IS and anyone associating with it.

On September 10, Netanyahu convened an urgent security meeting to prepare for the possible danger of the IS advancing closer to the Israeli border, a prospect confirmed by the latest battles for power between the IS and the al – Nusra Front on the southern Syrian – Lebanese borders and in southern Syria, within the artillery range of Israeli forces.

On November 9, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (ABM), which has been operating against the Egyptian army, released an audio clip pledging allegiance to the IS to declare later the first IS Wilayah (province) in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, south of Israel.

On last November 14 The Israeli Daily quoted Netanyahu as saying in a private defense meeting that the IS is “currently operating out of Lebanon … close to Israel’s northern border. We must take this as a serious threat.”

treated in Israeli hospitals and allowed to return to the battle front after recovery.

IS close to Israeli borders The Israeli foreign ministry on last September 3 confirmed that the U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff whom the IS had beheaded was an Israeli citizen as well. In a speech addressed to Sotloff’s family, Netanyahu condemned the IS as a “branch” of a “poisonous tree” and a “tentacle” of a “violent Islamist terrorism.”

On the same day Israeli Defense

However, “in truth, as most of Israel’s intelligence community has been quick to point out, there are no signs that anything of the sort is actually happening,” according to Amos Harel, writing in Foreign Policy five days later.

Moshe Ya’alon told journalists in September that “the organization operates far from Israel” and thus presents no imminent threat. Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, on November 14, wrote: “The present and former generals who shape Israel’s policy can only smile when this ‘danger ’ is mentioned.”

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journalist and Associate Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Dimi Reider, writing in a Reuters blog on last October 21.

What Netanyahu described as a “serious threat” in the north does not yet dictate any Israeli action against it because “we must assume that Hizballah,” which is allied to Syria and Iran, “does not have its house in order,” according to the Israeli premier.

The presence of the IS Wilayah on its southern border with Egypt is preoccupying the country with an internal bloody anti-terror conflict that would prevent any concrete Egyptian contribution to the stabilization of the Arab Levant or support to the Palestinians in their struggle to end the Israeli occupation of their land, let alone the fact that this presence is already pitting Egypt against Israel’s archenemy, Hamas, in the Palestinian Gaza Strip and creating a hostile environment that dictates closer Egyptian – Israeli security coordination.

Therefore, Israel is not going to “interfere” because “these are internal issues of the countries where it is happening.” Israel is “informally … ready to render assistance, but not in a military way and not by joining the (U.S. - led) coalition” against the IS, according to the deputy head of the Israeli embassy in Moscow, Olga Slov, as quoted by Russian media on November 14.

Jordan is another story However, Israel’s eastern neighbours in Jordan and Syria seem another story.

“Jordan feels threatened by IS. We will cooperate with them one way or another,” ambassador Slov said.

Jordanian media has been reporting that more than 2000 Jordanians had already

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joined al-Qaeda splinter the IS, alQaeda’s branch al-Nusra Front or other rebels who are fighting for an “Islamic” state in Syria. Hundreds of them were killed by the Syrian Arab Army.

The Daily Beast on last June 27 quoted Thomas Sanderson, the co-director for transnational threats at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as saying that Israel considers the survival of Jordan as “a paramount national security objective.”

If Jordan requested Israeli assistance in protecting its borders, Israel would have “little choice” but to help, the Beast quoted the director of the Israeli National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror, as saying.

As a precaution measure, Israel is building now a 500-kilometre “security fence” on its border with Jordan.

While Israel is willing and getting ready to “interfere” in Jordan, it is already deeply interfering in Syria, where the real battle has been raging for less than four years now against terrorists led by the IS. A few weeks ago The Associated Press reported that the IS and the al-Nusra had concluded an agreement to stop fighting each other and cooperate on destroying the U.S. – trained and supported rebels (The Syrian Revolutionaries Front and the Hazm movement) as well as the Syrian

A R T I C L E S government forces in northern Syria.

But in southern Syria all these and other terrorist organizations are coordinating among themselves and have what Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) called “a gentleman’s agreement” with Israel across the border, according to Colum Lynch in Foreign Policy on June 11.

Last October, Al-Qaeda branch in Syria, al-Nusra, was among the rebel groups which overtook the only border crossing of Quneitra between Syria and the Israeli – occupied Golan Heights.

Israel has yet to demonstrate its objection.

“Many Sunnis in Iraq and the Gulf consider ISIS a bullet in their rifles aimed at Shiite extremism, in their bid to restore their lost standing,” Raghida Dergham, a columnist and a senior diplomatic correspondent for the London – based Arabic Al-Hayat daily, wrote in the huffingtonpost on September 19.

A political public agreement between Israel and the Gulf Arabs has developed on a mutual understanding that the dismantling of the Syria – Iran alliance as a prelude to a “regime change” in both countries is the regional priority, without loosing sight of the endgame, which is to dictate peace with Israel as the regional power under the U.S. hegemony. The IS is “the bullet in their rifles.” From their perspective, the U.S. war on the IS is irrelevant, for now at least.

24 December, 2014 Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Source: Countercurrents.org

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ANOTHER MH17 COVER-UP: HIDING A KEY AUTOPSY

By Eric Zuesse Decisive evidence as to how the July 17th shooting-down of the MH17 Malaysian airliner occurred is being hidden by the four-nation team that’s doing the official ‘investigation’ into the plane-downing incident.

This decisive evidence is the coroner’s report on the corpse of the airliner’s pilot. If the pilot was killed by bullets, then the standard ‘explanation’ of the downing (that the plane was downed by a ground-fired missile) isn’t just false, it’s an outright hoax. So: where’s the pilot’s autopsy?

This investigation is important because stringent economic sanctions against Russia were instituted immediately after the downing; these sanctions were based upon never-substantiated charges from the Ukrainian Government, and from its sponsor the U.S. Government, alleging that the plane had been downed by rebels who were supported by Russia. (The “Buk” missile launcher charged by Ukraine as the cause was actually manned by Ukraine’s soldiers.)

The same Government, the U.S., that had lied its way into invading Iraq, might now be orchestrating still-moredangerous frauds, with the potential even for a nuclear war against Russia.

The four nations doing the official investigation and report into the airlinerdowning are: Ukraine, Australia, Belgium, and Netherlands. All four are U.S. allies; and, one of them, Ukraine, is one of the two main suspects in this case, the other being separatists against the Ukrainian Government. (They’re not represented in this ‘investigation.’)

The United States and Ukraine say that the airliner was downed by separatists

who mistakenly thought that they were shooting down a Ukrainian bomber instead of an airliner. (Even if that had been true, the U.S. would still have been the ultimate cause of the downing.

The whole cover-story was designed to be believed only by fools.)

However, the Ukrainian Government, which until now has maintained steadfastly that there is only one possible explanation for the downing — their explanation, that it had been downed by a “Buk” ground-fired missile controlled by the rebels — finally changed their tune on December 21st, and announced that maybe it wasn’t. Apparently, the other three nations on the team are refusing to sign their names onto a joint report from all four (according to the secret agreement signed by them all on August 8th, this report will be unanimous or else it won’t be at all) that commits to Ukraine’s ‘explanation,’ because the real evidence is overwhelmingly against it — as will herein be explained and documented.

According to London’s Daily Mail on December 5th, a video documentary from a Russian journalist “suggested” that, “pieces of 30mm rounds were found in the bodies of the pilots.”

30mm bullets are the same size of bullets that come from the types of fighter-jet planes that are in the Ukrainian Air Force, including the following jets: Su-25, Su-27, and Mig29. 30mm bullets are very different from missile-shrapnel, which the U.S. and Ukraine allege had brought down this airliner.

A retired Lufthansa pilot, Peter Haisenko, examined a remarkably clear photo of the key piece of evidence on

the downing, which is the side-panel of the fuselage right next to the pilot; this panel was riddled with what he said were 30mm bullet holes, shot right into the spot where the pilot’s belly would be. Apparently (if Haisenko is correct), the airliner ’s pilot was machine-gunned to death, his belly was ripped into by a hail of bullets, after which the attacking jet or jets fired a missile into the airliner’s body, and the airliner then promptly plummeted to earth. No ground-fired missile was involved. (The ground-fired “Buk” would have been 33,000 feet below, much too far away for precise targeting at the plane’s pilot; and shrapnel-holes are not round; they’re very different from bullet-holes.)

What’s in question is whether the approximately two-foot-diameter gash into the fuselage right next to the pilot was the result of hundreds of bullets fired into the pilot’s belly, as Haisenko alleges. If any bullets at all were involved in this downing, then the Ukrainian Government is the guilty party in it, because only they have an Air Force; the separatists do not. The separatists had no way to machine-gun the plane’s pilot to death. The separatists were never that close to the airliner.

Because of the allegation in the Daily Mail, I consulted the source of that allegation, which was a documentary film that had been made by Russian journalist Andrei Karaulov. Because it’s in Russian, I engaged a Russian translator, who found that the source of the Daily Mail’s allegation was at 3:50-5:00 on this video.

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“Judging by the cockpit fragments photos, the cockpit was shot by 30mm cannon projectiles. There should be plenty of them in the pilots’ bodies.

As announced, the bodies of the passengers were transferred to relatives, but the bodies of both main and support jet crews (currently kept in the Netherlands), were in bad condition due to (1) heavy shelling targeted at the cockpit, and (2) crashing to earth. The projectiles must have been found by now, most certainly. Their type must have been definitely ascertained. Why are these findings not announced? There is but one inference: the high professionals on the international investigation board are severely pressured by some powers, which don’t want certain of the findings to be publicly disclosed.”

“One month ago [from the time of shooting the video] the international commission announced that it found certain ‘objects’ in pilots’ bodies. I believe these were 30mm cannon projectile particles. When we were in Copenhagen, we were told by the international investigation commission that investigation results would be made public on 9 October. To this day it hasn’t been done.”

So: Where’s this crucial autopsyreport? We’ve seen the side-panel with its bullet-holes; were bullets lodged in the corpse?

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(Here are photos of the Pilot’s coffin and funeral-procession.)

of the facts documentary!!!

What we have gotten instead is the Ukrainian Government backing away from the ‘explanation’ that U.S. President Barack Obama, who installed their regime, endorsed, and used as his excuse for the EU to hike sanctions against Russia — an act of war, which now has been followed by the President and Congress virtually declaring war against Russia by taking over Ukraine on Russia’s very border. Based totally on lies.

1. They claim that, according to the Russian media, the air traffic controller and the pilot fled together, which was never said (nor even suggested) in the documentary. This was apparently done in order to make the documentary look ridiculous and farfetched, which it is not.

Evidently, Obama believes that if George W. Bush could fool the American public into invading Iraq, Obama can fool them into invading Russia. Can it be: he’s aiming to outdo even Bush?

PS: a note that my translator wants to append: I have now read the Daily Mail article for the first time — what a distortion

THE OIL PRICE CRASH

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the

2. They forget to mention, that authorities of Borispol [the airport] tower, when contacted by A. Karaulov’s team, said they never had anyone by the name of Anna Petrenko [the alleged fighter-jet’s alleged girlfriend] on staff, when the opposite was said by lower rank employees.

And when the journalists contacted some unnamed boss, s/he just hung up the phone on them.

3. The article doesn’t give any proof of the girl and the pilot still being alive, which makes it seem even more sinister [i.e.: did the Government kill them, to silence them?].

24 December, 2014 Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010.

Source: Countercurrents.org

2014

By Richard Heinberg Oil prices have fallen by half since late June. This is a significant development for the oil industry and for the global economy, though no one knows exactly how either the industry or the economy will respond in the long run. Since it’s almost the end of the year, perhaps this

is a good time to stop and ask: (1) Why is this happening? (2) Who wins and who loses over the short term?, and (3) What will be the impacts on oil production in 2015?

1. Why is this happening?

Euan Mearns does a good job of explaining the oil price crash here.

Briefly, demand for oil is softening (notably in China, Japan, and Europe) because economic growth is faltering.

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petroleum because domestic supplies are increasing—almost entirely due to the frantic pace of drilling in “tight” oil fields in North Dakota and Texas, using hydrofracturing and horizontal drilling technologies—while demand has leveled off.

Usually when there is a mismatch between supply and demand in the global crude market, it is up to Saudi Arabia—the world’s top exporter—to ramp production up or down in order to stabilize prices. But this time the Saudis have refused to cut back on production and have instead unilaterally cut prices to customers in Asia, evidently because the Arabian royals want prices low. There is speculation that the Saudis wish to punish Russia and Iran for their involvement in Syria and Iraq. Low prices have the added benefit (to Riyadh) of shaking at least some high-cost tight oil, deepwater, and tar sands producers in North America out of the market, thus enhancing Saudi market share.

The media frame this situation as an oil “glut,” but it’s important to recall the bigger picture: world production of conventional oil (excluding natural gas liquids, tar sands, deepwater, and tight oil) stopped growing in 2005, and has actually declined a bit since then. Nearly all supply growth has come from more costly (and more environmentally ruinous) resources such as tight oil and tar sands. Consequently, oil prices have been very high during this period (with the exception of the deepest, darkest months of the Great Recession). Even at their current depressed level of $55 to $60, petroleum prices are still above the International Energy Agency’s highprice scenario for this period contained in forecasts issued a decade ago.

Part of the reason has to do with the fact that costs of exploration and

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production within the industry have risen dramatically (early this year Steve Kopits of the energy market analytic firm Douglas-Westwood estimated that costs were rising at nearly 11 percent annually).

In short, during this past decade the oil industry has entered a new regime of steeper production costs, slower supply growth, declining resource quality, and higher prices. That allimportant context is largely absent from most news stories about the price plunge, but without it recent events are unintelligible. If the current oil market can be characterized as being in a state of “glut,” that simply means that at this moment, and at this price, there are more willing sellers than buyers; it shouldn’t be taken as a fundamental or long-term indication of resource abundance.

2. Who wins and loses, short-term?

Gail Tverberg does a great job of teasing apart the likely consequences of the oil price slump here. For the US, there will be some tangible benefits from falling gasoline prices: motorists now have more money in their pockets to spend on Christmas gifts. However, there are also perils to the price plunge, and the longer prices remain low, the higher the risk. For the past five years, tight oil and shale gas have been significant drivers of growth in the American economy, adding $300 to 400 billion annually to GDP. States with active shale plays have seen a significant increase of jobs while the rest of the nation has merely sputtered along.

The shale boom seems to have resulted from a combination of high petroleum prices and easy financing: with the Fed keeping interest rates near zero, scores of small oil and gas companies were able to take on enormous amounts of debt so as to pay for the purchase of

A R T I C L E S drilling leases, the rental of rigs, and the expensive process of fracking. This was a tenuous business even in good times, with many companies subsisting on re-sale of leases and creative financing, while failing to show a clear profit on sales of product. Now, if prices remain low, most of these companies will cut back on drilling and some will disappear altogether.

The price rout is hitting Russia quicker and harder than perhaps any other nation. That country is (in most months) the world’s biggest producer, and oil and gas provide its main sources of income. As a result of the price crash and US-imposed economic sanctions, the ruble has cratered. Over the short term, Russia’s oil and gas companies are somewhat cushioned from impact: they earn high-value US dollars from sales of their products while paying their expenses in rubles that have lost roughly half their value (compared to the dollar) in the past five months. But for the average Russian and for the national government, these are tough times.

There is at least a possibility that the oil price crash has important geopolitical significance. The US and Russia are engaged in what can only be called low-level warfare over Ukraine: Moscow resents what it sees as efforts to wrest that country from its orbit and to surround Russia with NATO bases; Washington, meanwhile, would like to alienate Europe from Russia, thereby heading off long-term economic integration across Eurasia (which, if it were to transpire, would undermine America’s “sole superpower” status; see discussion here); Washington also sees Russia’s annexation of Crimea as violating international accords. Some argue that the oil price rout resulted from Washington talking Saudi Arabia into continued next page

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flooding the market so as to hammer Russia’s economy, thereby neutralizing Moscow’s resistance to NATO encirclement (albeit at the price of short-term losses for the US tight oil industry). Russia has recently cemented closer energy and economic ties with China, perhaps partly in response; in view of this latter development, the Saudis’ decision to sell oil to China at a discount could be explained as yet another attempt by Washington (via its OPEC proxy) to avert Eurasian economic integration.

Other oil exporting nations with a highprice break-even point—notably Venezuela and Iran, also on Washington’s enemies list—are likewise experiencing the price crash as economic catastrophe. But the pain is widely spread: Nigeria has had to redraw its government budget for next year, and North Sea oil production is nearing a point of collapse.

Events are unfolding very quickly, and economic and geopolitical pressures are building.

Historically, circumstances like these have sometimes led to major open conflicts, though all-out war between the US and Russia remains unthinkable due to the nuclear deterrents that both nations possess.

If there are indeed elements of US-led geopolitical intrigue at work here (and admittedly this is largely speculation), they carry a serious risk of economic blowback: the oil price plunge appears to be bursting the bubble in high-yield, energy-related junk bonds that, along with rising oil production, helped fuel the American economic “recovery,” and it could result not just in layoffs throughout the energy industry but a contagion of fear in the banking sector.

Thus the ultimate consequences of the price crash could include a global

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financial panic (John Michael Greer makes that case persuasively and, as always, quite entertainingly), though it is too soon to consider this as anything more than a possibility.

3. What will be the impacts for oil production?

There’s actually some good news for the oil industry in all of this: costs of production will almost certainly decline during the next few months.

Companies will cut expenses wherever they can (watch out, middle-level managers!). As drilling rigs are idled, rental costs for rigs will fall. Since the price of oil is an ingredient in the price of just about everything else, cheaper oil will reduce the costs of logistics and oil transport by rail and tanker.

Producers will defer investments.

Companies will focus only on the most productive, lowest-cost drilling locations, and this will again lower averaged industry costs. In short order, the industry will be advertising itself to investors as newly lean and mean.

But the main underlying reason production costs were rising during the past decade—declining resource quality as older conventional oil reservoirs dry up—hasn’t gone away.

And those most productive, lowestcost drilling locations (also known as “sweet spots”) are limited in size and number.

The industry is putting on a brave face, and for good reason. Companies in the shale patch need to look profitable in order to keep the value of their bonds from evaporating. Major oil companies largely stayed clear of involvement in the tight oil boom; nevertheless, low prices will force them to cut back on upstream investment as well. Drilling will not cease; it will merely contract (the number of new US oil and gas well permits issued in Novemberfell by 40 percent from the previous month).

A R T I C L E S Many companies have no choice but to continue pursuing projects to which they are already financially committed, so we won’t see substantial production declines for several months. Production from Canada’s tar sands will probably continue at its current pace, but will not expand since new projects willrequire an oil price at or higher than the current level in order to break even.

As analysis by David Hughes of Post Carbon Institute shows, even without the price crash production in the Bakken and Eagle Ford plays would have been expected to peak and begin a sharp decline within the next two or three years. The price crash can only hasten that inevitable inflection point.

How much and how fast will world oil production fall? Euan Mearns offers three scenarios; in the most likely of these (in his opinion) world production capacity will contract by about two million barrels per day over the next two years as a result of the price collapse.

We may be witnessing one of history’s little ironies: the historic commencement of an inevitable, overall, persistent decline of world liquid fuels production may be ushered in not by skyrocketing oil prices such as we saw in the 1970s or in 2008, but by a price crash that at least some pundits are spinning as the death of “peak oil.” Meanwhile, the economic and geopolitical perils of the unfolding oil price rout make expectations of business-as-usual for 2015 ring rather hollow.

20 December, 2014 Richard Heinberg is a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute Source: Post Carbon Institute Blog continued next page

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PAKISTAN: A FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND.

By Maryam Sakeenah The Peshawar school attack is a tragedy that sends senses reeling, an enormity that confounds the senses.

It does not help however, to dismiss the people who committed this foul atrocity as ‘inhuman’, or to say they were not really Muslims. It is a convenient fiction that implies a most frustrating unwillingness and inability to understand how human beings are dehumanized and desensitized so they commit such dastardly acts under the moral cover of a perverted religiosity.

This unwillingness and inability to understand is deeply distressing because it shows how far away we are from even identifying what went wrong, and where- and hence, how far we are from any solution.

The international media has reflectednot surprisingly- a superficial, flat and ludicrously shallow grasp of the issues in Pakistan. The CNN (and other channels) repeatedly portrayed the incident as ‘an attack on children for wanting to get an education. ’ In fact, the UK Prime Minister himself tweeted: “The news from Pakistan is deeply shocking. It’s horrifying that children are being killed simply for going to school.” It actually reeks of how the media’s portrayal and use of Malala’s story has shaped a rather inaccurate narrative on Pakistan.

Years ago shortly after 9/11, former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer had lamented Western politicians’ dimwitted understanding of terrorism and the motives behind it. Scheuer highlighted how dishonestly and dangerously Western leaders portrayed that the terrorists were ‘Against Our Way of Life’; that they were angry over the West’s progress as some deranged barbarians battling

a superior civilization out of rank hatred. This rhetoric from Western politicians and the media ideologized terrorism and eclipsed the fact that terror tactics were actually a reaction to rapacious wars in Muslim (and other) lands often waged or sponsored by Western governments.

It diverted focus from the heart of the problem and created a misleading and dangerous narrative of ‘Us versus Them’, setting global politics on a terrible ‘Clash of civilizations’ course.

Today, I remembered Scheuer again, browsing through responses to the Peshawar tragedy both on local social media as well as from people in positions of power- most reflected a facile understanding of the motives of terrorism. The Taliban spokesman Umar Khorasani states: “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females. We want them to feel the pain.”

Certainly, this is twisted and unacceptable logic. What is most outrageous is his attempt to give religious justification to it by twisting religious texts.

Certainly, the leadership of the TTP is guilty of a criminal abuse of religious sources to legitimize its vile motives and sell it to their

conservative Pashtun following who are on the receiving end of Pakistan’s military offensive in the tribal areas.

The TTP leaders have hands drenched in innocent blood. Even the Afghan Taliban have rejected the use and justification of such means by the TTP as unacceptable by any standards in an official statement.

But I wonder at those human beings chanting Arabic religious expressions who blew themselves up for the ‘glorious cause’ of taking revenge from innocent unsuspecting school children. I wonder how they had gone so terribly, terribly wrong in their humanity, their faith. Certainly, they were taken in with the TTP’s malevolent ideological justification for the rank brutality they committed. Certainly, they allowed themselves to be taken in because they perceived their miserable lives had no intrinsic worth except in being given up in order to exact vengeance.

I understood too when I heard a victim student writing in pain, vowing revenge. ‘I will grow up and make their coming generations learn a lesson’, he said. In that line, I understood so much about human psychology and the psychology of victimhood, and the innate need for avenging wrongdoing.

The problem with the public perception of the war in Pakistan is that we see only part of it: we see the heartrending images from Peshawar and elsewhere in the urban centres where terrorists have struck.

But there is a war that we do not see, hidden from public view. This is the war in the tribal north. The familiar

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images we see from the war divide the Pakistani victims of this war into Edward Herman’s ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims- both, however, are innocent victims- the ones we see and the ones we do not. But because some victims are unworthier than others, the unworthy victim claims worth to his condemned life in dying, misled into thinking that death by killing others can be a vindication.

But sometimes the ones we are not allowed to see, make themselves visible in horrible, ugly ways; they become deafeningly loud to claim notice. And in the process, they make other victims- our own flesh and blood... And so it is our bloody burden to bear for fighting a war that was not ours, which has come to haunt us as our own.

The work of some independent journalists has highlighted the war we do not see in Waziristan- their work, however, has not made it to mainstream news. Such work has brought to light enormous ‘collateral damage’ figures. Some independent journalists have also focused on the plight of IDPs who feel alienated and forgotten by the Pakistani state and nation. It must be noted, however, that there is no access to the media in the areas where the army’s operation is going on. The news we get from the war zone is solely through the Pakistan Army- there is, hence, absolutely no counternarrative from Waziristan. And hence our onesided vision eludes a genuine understanding.

This unwillingness and inability to understand reflects in our uninsightful militarist approach to the problem in Waziristan. While the necessity of using military means to combat a real and present danger is

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understood, the need for it to be precisely targeted, limited in scope and time, and planned to eliminate or at least substantively minimize collateral damage is equally important. The need to efficiently manage the fallout of such an operation and rehabilitate affectees cannot be overemphasized. On all these counts, we need to have done more.

But perhaps the most vital understanding is that military operations are never the enduring solution. They may be needed to achieve specific necessary targets, but only with the aforementioned conditionalities to minimize the fallout. Moreover, the bigger, deeper problems have to be dealt with through a wider, more insightful nonmilitary approach: listening and understanding, dialogue, mutual compromise and reconciliation, rehabilitation and peacebuilding.

There are numerous examples in the past- even the recent past- of how war-ravaged communities drenched in the memory of oppression and pain, seething with unrelenting hate, have successfully undertaken peacebuilding. There have been temporary respites in this war in Pakistan whenever the two sides agreed to a ceasefire. That spirit ought to have lasted.

I understand that this sounds unreasonable on the backdrop of the recent atrocity, but there is no other

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way to give peace a chance.

Retributive justice using force will prolong the violence and make more victims.

Since religion is often appealed to in this conflict, its role in peacebuilding has to be explored and made the best of. To break this vicious, insane cycle, there has to be a revival of the spirit of ‘Ihsan’ for a collective healing- that is, not indiscriminate and unrelenting retributive justice but wilful, voluntary forgiveness (other than for the direct, unrepentant and most malafide perpetrators). This must be followed by long-term, systematic peacebuilding in Pakistan’s war-ravaged tribal belt in particular and the entire nation in general. Such peacebuilding will involve religious scholars, educators, journalists, social workers and other professionals. Unreasonable as it may sound, it is perhaps the only enduring strategy to mend and heal and rebuild.

The spirit of ‘Ihsan’ has tremendous potential to salvage us, and has to be demonstrated from both sides. But because the state is the grander agency, its initiative in this regard is instrumental as a positive overture to the aggrieved party.

But this understanding seems to have been lost in the frenzy, just when it was needed most pressingly. I shudder to think what consequences a failure to understand this vital point can bring.

The Pakistani nation has already paid an enormously heavy price.

17 December, 2014 Maryam Sakeenah is a Pakistanbased independent researcher and freelance writer on International politics, human rights and Islam.

Source: Countercurrents.org

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