January 2012
Vol 12, No.01
JUST CAMPAIGN
NO TO MILITARY INTERVENTION IN SYRIA; NO TO MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRAN T
he International Movement for a Just World (JUST) invites citizens of the world to join a global campaign aimed at averting a colossal catastrophe in West Asia. The campaign themed, NO TO MILITARY INTERVENTION IN SYRIA; NO TO MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRAN will mobilise signatures from people in every continent to demonstrate to the centres of power in the West and their allies and proxies in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) that any military action by them against Syria and Iran in whatever form or guise is totally unacceptable. Foreign military intervention in Syria could de-stabilise the entire region.
elicit a counter response from Israel and pro-US regimes in WANA. The resulting conflict may accentuate the Sunni-Shia fault-line which runs through a number of countries in WANA and exacerbate the unfolding tussle for regional supremacy among certain states in the region.
Given Basar al-Assad’s opposition to the Israeli occupation of both the Golan Heights in his own country and Palestine, and to US helmed hegemony over WANA, any attempt to topple his government through external military force will provoke a strong reaction from groups and governments in a number of neighbouring countries, apart from Syria itself. It is quite conceivable that their response will
The push for regime change in Syria is closely linked to a larger US-Israel agenda that seeks to cripple the Iranian government and its nuclear energy programme. The manipulation of the IAEA’s report on Iran’s nuclear programme which offers no evidence at all of any clandestine attempt to manufacture nuclear weapons and the expansion and intensification of wideranging financial and economic
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ARTICLES . CELAC, C OUNTER -OAS O RGANISATION INAUGURATED IN CARACAS........................P 3
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BANKS, BUT SO HARD TO SAVE THE PLANET? ....................P 4 IS IT SO
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sanctions by the US and the European Union (EU) against Iran, are directed at this goal. Analysts are convinced that the momentum is being built for a military attack against Iran. The consequences of such an attack for the region and the world will be simply horrendous. Our opposition to foreign military intervention in Syria goes hand in hand with our commitment to change through peaceful means. We renew our call to President Assad made on a number of occasions to expedite the implementation of democratic reforms
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in Syria. The President should dialogue with all advocates of change who eschew violence. The killing of peaceful protesters is abhorrent and should be strongly condemned. In the case of Iran, it should be totally transparent about its nuclear programme and remove any suspicion that it is developing nuclear weapons. The whole of WANA should be a nuclear weapons free zone. This means that Israel should immediately eliminate its huge nuclear arsenal. It would be a positive step towards peace in the region. It is because we choose peace that we
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L E A D A R T I C L E reject military intervention in Syria and military strikes against Iran. They will only increase the violence and the carnage that has blighted and blood stained the region for decades. Thousands and thousands of innocent children, women and men are going to die. In the name of PEACE we urge you to join this campaign. Visit the JUST website www.just-international.org to sign the online petition. Persuade your friends and relatives to endorse this call —— NO TO MILITARY INTERVENTION IN SYRIA; NO TO MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRAN.
HUMANITY
By Chandra Muzaffar Any conflict in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) is a threat to world peace. For WANA is of tremendous strategic, economic, political and religious significance to the whole of humanity. This is why it is the responsibility of the entire human family to ensure that war does not break out in that region. Why is WANA of such great importance? One, it is the only region in the world where three continents— Asia, Africa and Europe meet. WANA is home to some of the world’s most critical sea routes and most strategic waterways, including the Mediterranean, the Suez, the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz. Two, WANA is the world’s major oil exporting region. And oil is the lifeblood of contemporary civilisation. The majority of OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) members are in WANA. Three, most of the wars that have shaken the world since World War II
have occurred in WANA. The IsraelArab conflicts, Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, Israel’s invasions of Lebanon, the Suez War, the Iraq- Iran War, the Kuwait War, the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the NATO-led assault upon Libya would be the outstanding examples. Needless to say, millions of lives have been lost in these wars. Four, at the epicentre of many of these wars, it is so obvious, is Israel— a state created by a Western dominated United Nations in 1948, in violation of the UN’s own Charter. The manner in which Israel has perpetuated its presence and its power through occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands, and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, has been a huge source of instability and perpetual conflict in WANA. The current escalation of tensions over Syria and Iran, engineered to a considerable degree by the US and certain other Western states, aided and abetted by their regional allies and proxies, is also directly linked to Israel’s geopolitical agenda.
Five, there have been other conflicts in the region from Suez in 1956 to Libya in 2011, in which Western imperial powers have sought to impose their will upon WANA through massive military operations. The conquest of Iraq in 2003, motivated by oil and Israel, was the most blatant and brazen of these. Imperial hubris aside, the tussle among states within WANA aspiring for regional supremacy sometimes in cahoots with Western powers, has also been a cause of conflict. The IraqIran War from 1980 to 1988 would be a classic case in point. The Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979 was perceived by a number of other states in WANA as a challenge to their power and led to an unprecedented galvanisation of both absolute monarchies and autocratic republics under the leadership of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein aimed at thwarting the nascent revolution. There are shades of that episode in the unfolding mobilisation of various Arab states and Turkey against Iran and Syria today. Saudi Arabia is once again playing a crucial role just as tiny but fabulously rich Qatar is flexing its muscles. Turkey, continued next page
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vying for dominance, is clearly targeting Iran. Six, intertwined in these conflicts are religious dichotomies which have occasionally intensified the antagonism between the political actors. The Sunni-Shia dichotomy is one such fault-line which has been exploited by various forces in a number of countries in WANA from Lebanon and Iraq to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In the targeting of the Syrian leadership and Iran, this issue is also being manipulated. In fact, the whole spectrum of theological-cumideological positions in Islam, ranging from ultra- conservative Wahabi thinking to universal, inclusive approaches associated with progressive elements in the religion have come to the fore through various conflicts in the region. Today, through the electoral process, political parties that have evolved from the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood ( Ikhwan-ulMuslimin) have emerged as frontrunners in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, setting the stage perhaps for a re-definition of the role of Islam in
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public life and its relationship with the centres of power in the West which may have repercussions for politics in WANA. Seven, WANA conflicts have also impacted upon the ethnic and religious minorities in the region. The position
of the Kurdish minority remains vexatious especially in Turkey and to a lesser extent, in Iraq, Syria and Iran. It colours inter-state politics. Equally important is the situation facing the Christian minority in the region. It is a dwindling minority. In Palestine, Israeli occupation is the main cause. In Iraq, it is alleged that about 400,000— almost half the entire Christian population— have left the country since the AngloAmerican invasion partly because of the pressures arising from the resulting
A R T I C L E S chaos, and partly because of the aggressive proselytization of some Christian evangelists which has rendered the ancient Christian community in Iraq vulnerable to the bigoted hostility of Muslim extremists. In Egypt, Christians are also being subjected to physical attacks allegedly by an extremist fringe within the Muslim majority. It is only too apparent that WANA is a region fraught with great dangers. Each and every one of these dangers can fuel horrendous upheavals capable of enflaming the entire region. Hence, the significance of the JUST campaign to persuade people everywhere to oppose foreign military intervention in Syria or military strikes against Iran. Please visit the JUST website www.justinternational.org to support the campaign. 15 December, 2011
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and Professor of Global Studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia.
CELAC, COUNTER-OAS ORGANISATION INAUGURATED IN CARACAS By Rachael Boothroyd V enezuelan President Hugo Chávez welcomed presidents from across Latin America and the Caribbean last weekend, as they arrived in Caracas to attend the official inauguration of CELAC, The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Cuban President Raul Castro hailed the long-awaited inauguration as the most important event to have taken place in Latin America for the past 100 years and was widely celebrated as a step towards realising Simón Bolivar’s project to unify the Latin American continent. Comprised of all of the 33 states that make up the Latin American
and Caribbean region, the newly created union will now form one of the world’s largest regional blocs. The organisation is aimed at increasing hemispheric cooperation in social, economic and security matters, and is also expected to become the main representative body of the region, providing a space to amplify the continent’s voice on the international stage. Unlike the Organization of American States (OAS), the U.S. and Canada are not represented within the bloc, which also aspires to neutralise U.S. influence within the region. “For how long are we going to be the backwards periphery, exploited and
denigrated? Enough! Here we are putting down the fundamental building block for South American unity, independence and development. If we hesitate, we are lost!” said Venezuelan president and official host of the inauguration Hugo Chávez, citing Venezuelan Liberator Simon Bolivar. During the summit, representatives from the region’s 33 states discussed the founding principles of the organisation, as well as its structure and the development of a series of cooperative projects in education, energy, and technology. Each head of state was also given the opportunity to continued next page
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continued from page 3 address the summit and make proposals with regards to issues pertinent to the Latin American and Caribbean region. One of the issues most cited by the presidents was the region’s problem with the international drug trade, with Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner criticising drug consuming countries for not having done enough to stem demand for illegal substances. “It seems that Latin America ends up with all the deaths and guns, and others end up with the drugs and the money,” said the South American president. For his part, Rafael Correa, the leftist president of Ecuador, emphasised the need for a new interAmerican organisation to replace the OAS and a new international human rights body. “It is clear that we need a new inter-American system. The OAS has been captured historically by North American interests and vision, and its cumulative bias and evolution have rendered it inefficient and untrustworthy for the new era that our America is living,” stated Correa. The current global financial situation and its impact on Latin America also figured highly on the agenda, with the indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, speaking of a “terminal and structural crisis of capitalism”. “We have to establish the bases for a new model, for socialism, neosocialism, living well, 21st century
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socialism or whatever you want to call it,” said Morales, who also encouraged Latin American leaders to reconsider their position with regards to North American military bases within their country. “With respect to the presidents [here], we cannot allow United States’ military bases in our territory. Now is the best moment to put an end to certain impositions that are coming from above with regards to our armed forces,” he said.
PLAN OF ACTION
The inauguration came to an end with the ratification of a Plan of Action document, as well as the approval of a text outlining the official purposes of the CELAC. The plan of action elaborates on a number of social programmes and energy and environmental projects, as well as proposing the construction of a “new regional financial architecture, based around solidarity, justice and transparency”. Within the field of trade and finance, the plan also proposes the establishment of preferential trade tariffs for CELAC countries, and says that the newly established organisation
A R T I C L E S would “promote more of a voice for developing countries” within the international financial arena. Many of the proposals relating to the environment and technology are based around shared experience and mutual cooperation. Plans include the sharing of experience and knowledge with regards to bio-fuels and the creation of a forum for environmental matters to develop and implement communal and regional environmental projects. In terms of social welfare, the CELAC has pledged to try and eradicate illiteracy on the continent by 2015 and to create a commission that explicitly addresses social problems such as poverty and hunger. The CELAC body also released a number of official communications linked to proposals made by the various heads of state, including a statement condemning the illegal U.S. blockade against Cuba and the high levels of speculation on the financial market. Chile, Venezuela, and Cuba will now form a troika for the CELAC in order to develop the organisation’s objectives and projects, whilst Chilean President Piñera will assume protempore presidency of the bloc. “Current problems cannot be resolved individually...they require unity, collaboration and teamwork,” said the Chilean president, who added that the “best of CELAC is yet to come”. 5 December, 2011 Rachael Boothroyd is a writer for Venezuelanalysis.com Source: Venezuelanalysis.com
WHY IS IT SO EASY TO SAVE THE BANKS, BUT SO HARD TO SAVE THE PLANET? By George Monbiot A greements to bail out banks happen in days – but despite some good progress at Durban, we still don’t have a legally binding deal to bail out the planet. They bailed out the banks in days. But even deciding to bail out the planet is taking decades.
Nicholas Stern estimated that capping climate change would cost around 1% of global GDP, while sitting back and letting it hit us would cost between 5 and 20%. One per cent of GDP is, at the moment, $630bn. By March 2009, Bloomberg has revealed, the US Federal Reserve had committed
$7.77 trillion to the banks. That is just one government’s contribution: yet it amounts to 12 times the annual global climate change bill. Add the bailouts in other countries, and it rises several more times. continued next page
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This support was issued on demand: as soon as the banks said they wanted help, they got it. On just one day the Federal Reserve made $1.2tr available – more than the world has committed to tackling climate change in 20 years. Much of this was done both unconditionally and secretly: it took journalists two years to winkle out the detail. The banks shouted “help” and the government just opened its wallet. This all took place, remember, under George W Bush, whose administration claimed to be fiscally conservative. But getting the US government to commit to any form of bailout for the planet – even a couple of billion – is like pulling teeth. “Unaffordable!” the Republicans (and many of the Democrats) shriek. It will wreck the economy! We’ll go back to living in caves! I’m often struck by the wildly inflated rhetoric of those who accuse environmentalists of scaremongering. “If those scaremongers have their way they’ll destroy the entire economy” is the kind of claim uttered almost daily, without any apparent irony. No legislator, as far as I know, has yet been able to explain why making $7.7tr available to the banks is affordable, while investing far smaller sums in new technologies and energy saving is not. The US and other nations began talking seriously about tackling climate change in 1988. Yet we still don’t have a legally binding global agreement, and we are unlikely to get one until 2020, if at all. Agreements to help the banks are struck at economic summits without breaking sweat, yet making progress at climate summits looks like using a donkey to tow a 44-tonne truck. That said, the outcome at Durban, after some superhuman feats of traction, was better than most environmentalists expected. After Copenhagen and Cancún, it seemed implausible that rich and poor nations
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would ever agree that they would one day strike a legally binding treaty, but they have. That doesn’t mean that the outcome was good: even if everything happens as planned, we are still likely to end up with more than 2C of warming, which threatens great harm to many of the world’s people and places.
The clearest account of the negotiations and the outcome of the Durban meeting that I have read so far has been written by Mark Lynas, who attended as an adviser to the president of the Maldives. The byzantine complexity he documents is the result of 20 years of foot-dragging and obstruction. When powerful countries want to do something, they do it swiftly and simply. When they don’t, their agreements with other nations turn into a cat’s cradle. Here are some of the key points: 1. The most important negotiations boiled down to a battle between two groups: the European Union, least developed countries (LDCs) and small island states on one side, which pressed for steeper, faster cuts, and the US, Brazil, South Africa, India and China on the other side, seeking to resist that pressure. 2.The first group (EU + LDCs) succeeded in one respect: the other nations agreed to work towards a legally binding deal “applicable to all parties”. In other words, unlike the Kyoto protocol, which governs only the greenhouse gas emissions of a group of rich nations, this will apply to everyone. (It doesn’t necessarily mean that all nations will have to reduce their emissions however).
A R T I C L E S 3. The first group failed in its attempt to get this done quickly. The poorest nations wanted a legally binding outcome by the end of next year. But the US-China group held out for 2020, and got it. Unless this changes, it makes limiting the global temperature rise to 2C or less much harder perhaps impossible. 4. The Kyoto protocol, though it will remain in force until either 2017 or 2020, is now a dead letter. In fact, Lynas suggests, unless the loopholes it contains are closed it could be worse than useless, as they could undermine the voluntary commitments that its signatory nations have made. 5. The countries agreed to create a green climate fund to help developing nations limit their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of global warming. But, with three exceptions - South Korea, Germany and Denmark - they didn’t agree to put any money into it. The fund is supposed to receive $100bn a year: a lot of money, until you compare it to what the banks got. 6. Between now and 2020, all we have to rely on are countries’ voluntary commitments. According to a UN study, these fall short of the cuts required to prevent more than 2C of global warming - by some 6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. 7. But as the Durban agreement conceded, 2C is still too high. It raised the possibility of pledging to keep the rise to no more than 1.5C. This would require a much faster programme of cuts than it envisages. So why is it so easy to save the banks and so hard to save biosphere? If ever you needed evidence that our governments operate in the interests of the elite, rather than the world as a whole, here it is. 16 December, 2011
George Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. Source: monbiot.com
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By Mairead Maguire Ten years after the US led NATO invasion and war against Afghanistan, the Afghan people are trapped in a downward spiral of violence. The US and British Generals for war, are upbeat and optimistic but the facts of suffering, injury, displacements and deaths of Afghan civilians, including many women and children, reminds us of the ongoing daily and unacceptable cost of war. Add to this also the injury and death of soldiers from NATO countries – particularly the UK and the US. Surely the question has to be asked, at what point is enough killing is enough? And when will people everywhere unite and act to stop this military madness and insanity? Precisely because the war in Afghanistan is going so badly, and is in truth unwinnable, NATO and US military are using even more illegal and cruel forms of violence in their increasingly desperate attempt to stop the dissidents, and build up their own US power base in Afghanistan. These immoral and illegal actions include drones, bombing raids, destruction of ‘suspect’ buildings, when often whole families have been killed. Whole villages have been destroyed by NATO forces which in turn results in recruitment to the Taliban. (Drone strikes in 2008/10 have killed 14 Taliban leaders and over 700 civilians). The US military have a massive targeted assassination program. The US Air Force personnel at Creech, Nevada, pilot surveillance and combat drones, unmanned aerial vehicles with which they are instructed to carry out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan and Iraq. These drones include the ‘Predator ’ and the ‘Reaper’. The Obama administration favours a combination of drone attacks and Joint Special operations to pursue its stated goal of eliminating whatever Al Qaeda presence exists in these countries. Such extrajudicial killings, sanctioned by President Obama, are in
clear violation of International Law. The Afghan people are caught in an increasing circle of violence between NATO forces, tribal militias, Taliban, drug and crime warlords. The US’ invasion of the sovereign state of Afghanistan is supported militarily by the UK with token forces from a few other NATO states, as most countries initially involved have pulled out. Billions continue to be spent on the Afghan war (£15bn for 20ll-15 by the UK) and the USA’s 400 bases across Afghanistan, cost $7.5 billion).
The UK Government has said that British combat troops will be out of Afghanistan by 2015 but the continual build-up of US military present in Afghanistan and South East Asia (716 US bases worldwide) gives an indication that their presence will be long-term. As the gravity of power moves from West to Asia-Pacific region it behoves the Western military/political powers, instead of arrogantly trying to control these countries militarily for their own purposes, to acknowledge the right of these countries, including Afghanistan, to self-determination. Afghanistan is already, after ten years of war, a country in deep poverty and sorrow. It is immoral and unethical to ask the Afghan people to accept to live 4 more years with a war being played out in their streets and villages, and having yet more of their lives, their homes and their livelihoods destroyed. It is time now for the Taliban and all groups using violence to end the
violence and for the US-NATO to withdraw militarily and use its financial resources to recompense the Afghan people for the destruction of their country. We can all join in solidarity to support the peaceful, nonviolent Afghan civil communities, working from bottom up, rebuilding their communities and their country. We are seeing this in such courageous movements like the Afghan Youth for Peace in Kabul. We can also encourage political leaders to end the violence and support the Afghan people in a negotiated peace settlement through all inclusive, unconditional dialogue and negotiation with representatives of all sections of society, including women, community groups, Taliban, and other tribal and religious leaders. Now is the time to listen to the voices of the Afghan people who are calling for an end to all violence, their right to selfdetermination, and a solution based on International Law and Human Rights. ABOLISH NATO, MILITARISM AND WAR
In this its 62 nd year, NATO continues to expand its military operations – including the current war in Afghanistan and recent military attacks on Libya. We should not be surprised by NATO’s attack on Libya, as the program for wars was revealed to us all by General Clarke. US General Lesley Clarke, NATO’s commander during bombing of Serbia, revealed on US TV seven years ago that the Pentagon had drawn up a ‘hit list’ in 200l of seven States they wanted to ‘take-out’ within five years – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. In a world where there is a new consciousness of our interdependence and inter-connectedness as the human family, NATO is a coldcontinued next page
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war relic, and an obstacle to real development and peace. NATO should be disbanded and its resources put into human security, i.e., eradicating poverty, enhancing the environment, preventing violations of Human Rights and International Law, and improving education, health care, nonviolent civilian security, etc. Increasingly we are aware that violence, armed struggles, militarism, and war do not solve problems. I
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therefore believe we must abolish militarism and war, pursue peaceful settlement of disputes, and make this method a principle of International relations. The Nobel Peace Laureates Charter for a World without Violence, Chapter 13 states, ‘We have a right not to be killed and a responsibility not to kill others’. Adopting such a principle wherever we live, would help bring about a new Culture of Peace and Nonkilling for the Human Family and be
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Mairead Maguire is a Nobel Peace Laureate. She is also a member of JUST’s International Advisory Panel (IAP) Source: www.peacepeople.com
ISRAEL’S REQUEST
By Richard Irvine Legal mechanisms developed after the end of the Second World War to more easily prosecute war criminals are now being taken off the books to preserve Israeli impunity from accountability. In the aftermath of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes an outraged international community demanded justice — a demand that resulted in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the introduction of the new legal concept of universal jurisdiction. Justice, it seemed, would be impartial and hiding places for criminals scarce. Universal jurisdiction is a simple concept. Deriving its authority from Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, it places an obligation upon all states “to respect and ensure respect” for the laws of war, effectively requiring all states to prosecute suspected war criminals regardless of where the crimes were committed. In reality, however, universal jurisdiction has rarely been invoked. This absence of enforcement in a world replete with war crimes and crimes against humanity may seem more than a little peculiar but is easily explained. In the vast majority of states the decision to investigate and prosecute lies with the state-controlled institutions of the police and public
prosecutor ’s office, and these unfortunately, unless they are politically sanctioned to do so, do not spend time investigating crimes committed elsewhere. Consequently, when suspected war criminals travel abroad they travel with virtual impunity; the preparatory investigations needed to establish a case against them having simply not been done. Until mid September, however, there was one country where war criminals stood a fair chance of having their day in court.
Livni cancelled her trip rather than face arrest. Other senior Israeli figures simply chose to stay away from Britain. Sadly on 15 September this means of potentially achieving justice was revoked. In response to Israeli protests the UK government chose to change its laws rather than see Israelis arrested. In a move condemned by Amnesty International, the UK government amended the law on universal jurisdiction so that in future only the Director of Public Prosecutions can authorize the arrest of a suspected war criminal (“Tories make life easier for war criminals,” Liberal Conspiracy, 30 March 2011). CONTRADICTORY GROUNDS
In the UK the judicial system allowed private parties and individuals to present their own evidence of war crimes before a magistrate who could then, if he or she felt the case was strong enough, issue a warrant for the suspect’s arrest. Consequently, in 2005 retired Israeli General Doron Almog only escaped arrest by skulking in his plane before being flown back to Israel, while in 2009 Kadima party leader Tzipi
Oddly, the UK government defended its decision on two contradictory grounds. The first reason it put forward is that the evidence used to secure the arrests stands little chance bringing about “a realistic prospect of conviction.” This is disingenuous, to say the least. As Geoffrey Robertson, a UN appeals judge, states: “The change in the law has nothing to do — as the UK claims — with ensuring that cases proceed on solid evidence. No district judge would issue an arrest warrant lightly (“DPP may get veto power over continued next page
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arrest warrants for war crime suspects,” The Guardian, 22 July 2010).” Secondly, the reason for the arrest is so the suspect cannot flee while further evidence is being gathered. Indeed, this is a common way for domestic investigations to proceed. The other equally disingenuous reason the UK gave for the change in the law is that arresting suspected war criminals may endanger the nonexistent peace process. This absurd view was advanced by UK Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, who decried the previous law because it constituted a risk to “our ability to help in conflict resolution or to pursue a coherent foreign policy.” Indeed, claiming that the previously granted arrest warrants had been politically motivated, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague declared, “We cannot have a position where Israeli politicians feel they cannot visit this country.” However, the UK’s retreat from the implementation of universal jurisdiction is not a lone example of the power of the Israel lobby to affect states’ domestic legislation. A similar shameful episode ensued when Ariel Sharon was indicted before the Belgian
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courts, in that instance not just Israel but also the United States brought pressure to bear, Donald Rumsfeld going as far as to threaten to move NATO headquarters from Belgium. Which raises the question, if enforcing international humanitarian law is a threat to peace, then why do we have it? A more coherent view was advanced by Daniel Machover, partner at the law firm Hickman and Rose: “It is disgusting that the Foreign Office is exaggerating the impact on the peace process to get a few people who are suspects of very serious international crimes off the hook” (“Ministers move to change universal jurisdiction law,” The Guardian, 30 May 2010). SKIPPING HOLOCAUST DINNER TO VOTE
Nevertheless, the move to change the law was not unaccompanied by controversy, and The Jewish Chronicle reported that in the House of Lords the vote was tied 222 to 222 and only passed because one lord, Monroe Palmer, former president of the Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel group, put off an invitation to attend a Holocaust Education Trust dinner (“Universal jurisdiction change becomes law,” The Jewish Chronicle,
A R T I C L E S 15 September 2011). That in itself seems odd; surely Palmer should have gone and perhaps learned that, to use the Latin phrase, “impunitas sempre ad deteriora invitat,” impunity always leads to greater crimes. And certainly it is also at odds with the assessment by retired South African judge Richard Goldstone that “The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence” (“Goldstone defends Gaza war crimes report,” Ynet News, 29 September 2009). Sadly, however, while Ilana Stein of the Israeli foreign ministry celebrated — “We are glad that Britain has made the right choice” — it seems that the lessons of the Holocaust have still to be learned. 2 October, 2011 Richard Irvine teaches a course at Queen’s University Belfast entitled ‘The Battle for Palestine’ which explores the entire history of the conflict. Irvine has also worked voluntarily in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and is coordinator of the Irelandbased Palestine Education Initiative. Source: The Electronic Intifada
THE SOVIET UNION’S AFTERLIFE By Stephen F. Cohen This essay is an expanded version of an article that appeared in The Nation on the fifteenth anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union.
A sked to evaluate the French Revolution nearly 200 years later, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was famously reported to have replied, “Too early to say.” Though apocryphal, the long perspective attributed to Zhou is better informed than the certitudes of American commentators about the causes and consequences of the end
of the Soviet Union only twenty years ago. Consider four explanations routinely given. The Soviet Union ended because it was “illegitimate”. The Communist state was toppled by a democratic revolution from below. The system crumbled because “its economy collapsed.” The Soviet Union was an empire, and “all empires die.” In addition to contradicting one another, all these explanations are flawed: the first is simply ideological; no real evidence exists for the second or the
third; and academic specialists disagree as to whether the Soviet Union, not to be confused with its satellite governments in Eastern Europe, was an empire or a multiethnic state. As for the consequences of the Soviet breakup, mainstream American commentators, almost without exception, have only applauded them. Most former Soviet citizens, on the other hand, are still weighing, as Russians say, the “pluses and minuses.” But whatever anyone thinks today, the continued next page
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Soviet Union is certain to have a long historical, and therefore political, afterlife. Because its seventy-four-year role in the twentieth century is still bitterly disputed, because the way it ended remains so controversial and because the full ramifications of its disappearance are still unclear, its fate can only confirm the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl’s axiom, “History is indeed an argument without end.” This history-changing event took place surreptitiously at a secluded hunting lodge in the Belovezh Forest near Minsk, in what is now Belarus. On December 8, 1991, heads of three of the Soviet Union’s fifteen republics, led by Boris Yeltsin of Russia, met there to sign documents abolishing the Soviet state. Reactions to the end of the Soviet Union were profoundly different. It quickly became the defining moment in a new American triumphalist narrative. The US government’s hope, expressed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, that Mikhail Gorbachev’s pro-Soviet democratic and market reforms of 1985–91, or perestroika, would succeed was forgotten. In the media, all the diverse complexity of Soviet history was now presented as “Russia’s seven decades as a rigid and ruthless police state,” a history “every bit as evil as we had thought—indeed more so.” A New York Times columnist even suggested that a “fascist Russia” would have been a “much better thing.” American academic specialists reacted similarly, though in their own way. With few exceptions, they also reverted—forgetting what they had only recently written about Gorbachev’s policies—to previous Sovietological axioms that the system had always been unreformable and doomed. The opposing scholarly view that there had been other possibilities in Soviet history, “roads not taken,” was again dismissed as an “improbable idea” based on “dubious” notions.
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Gorbachev’s reforms, despite having so remarkably dismantled the Communist Party dictatorship by 1990, had been “a chimera,” and the Soviet Union therefore died from a “lack of alternatives.” Accordingly, most American specialists no longer asked, even in light of the large-scale human tragedies that followed in the 1990s, if a reforming Soviet Union might have been the best hope for the post-Communist future of Russia or any of the other former republics. On the contrary, they concluded, as a leading university authority insisted, that everything Soviet had to be discarded by “the razing of the entire edifice of political and economic relations.” That kind of nihilism underlay the “shock therapy” so assiduously urged on Russia in the 1990s by the Clinton administration, which turned the country, as a columnist in the centrist Literary Gazette recently recalled, into “a zone of catastrophe.” None of the policy’s leading proponents, such as Larry Summers, Jeffrey Sachs and former President Clinton himself, have ever publicly regretted the near-destruction of essential consumer industries, from pharmaceuticals to poultry, or the mass poverty it caused.
Nor have any US policy-makers or mainstream media commentators asked if the survival of a democratically reconstituted Soviet Union—one with at least three or four fewer republics— would have been better for the world: If during the past twenty years there would have been less ideological zealotry, aggressive nationalism, civil war, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, unwise American and NATO military
A R T I C L E S interventions, unregulated global finance and even divisions in Europe. Almost certainly there would have been, but here too triumphalist certitudes continue to dominate the US political and media establishments. A majority of Russians, on the other hand, as they have repeatedly made clear in opinion surveys, still lament the end of the Soviet Union, not because they pine for “Communism” but because they lost a familiar state and secure way of life. In March 2011, to take a recent example, 59 percent of those surveyed said they “regret” the Soviet breakup while only 24 percent did not. Indeed, in December, 74 percent of readers of even a liberal Moscow newspaper said they regretted it. No less important, most Russians do not share the nearly unanimous Western view that the Soviet Union’s “collapse” was “inevitable” because of inherent fatal defects. They believe instead, and for good empirical reasons, that three “subjective” factors broke it up: the unduly rapid and radical way—not too slowly and cautiously, as is said in the West—Gorbachev carried out his political and economic reforms; a power struggle in which Yeltsin overthrew the Soviet state in order to get rid of its president, Gorbachev, and to occupy the Kremlin; and propertyseizing Soviet bureaucratic elites, the nomenklatura, who were more interested in “privatizing” the state’s enormous wealth in 1991 than in defending it. In addition, a growing number of Russian intellectuals have come to believe that something essential was tragically lost—a historic opportunity, thwarted for centuries, to achieve the nation’s political and economic modernization by continuing, with or without Gorbachev, his Soviet reformation. While the Soviet breakup led American specialists back to cold war–era concepts of historical inevitability, it convinced many of continued next page
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their Russian counterparts that “there are always alternatives in history” and that a Soviet reformation had been one of the “lost alternatives”—a chance to democratize and marketize Russia by methods more gradualist, consensual and less traumatic, and thus more fruitful and less costly, than those adopted after 1991. Whether or not the jettisoning of Gorbachev’s perestroika was a missed opportunity for Russia’s “noncatastrophic transformation,” instead of its recurring “modernization through catastrophe,” may be for historians to decide. But it was already clear at the time, or should have been, that the way the Soviet Union ended— in fateful circumstances about which standard American accounts are largely silent or mythical—boded ill for the future. (One myth, promoted by Yeltsin’s supporters to claim he saved the country from Yugoslavia’s bloody fate, is that the dissolution was “peaceful.” In reality, ethnic civil wars and other strife soon erupted in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, killing hundreds of thousands of former Soviet citizens and brutally displacing
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even more, a process still under way.) Most generally, there were ominous parallels between the Soviet breakup and the collapse of czarism in 1917. In both cases, the end of the old order resulted in a near total destruction of Russian statehood that plunged the country into prolonged chaos, conflict and misery. Russians call what ensued smuta, a term full of dread derived from previous historical experiences and not expressed in the usual translation, “time of troubles.” Indeed, in this respect, the end of the Soviet Union may have had less to do with the specific nature of that system than with recurring breakdowns in Russian history. The similarities between 1991 and 1917, despite important differences, were significant. Once again, hopes for evolutionary progress toward democracy, prosperity and social justice were crushed; a small group of radicals, this time around Yeltsin, imposed extreme measures on the nation; fierce struggles over property and territory tore apart the foundations of a vast multiethnic state; and the victors destroyed longstanding economic and other essential structures
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A R T I C L E S to build entirely anew, “as though we had no past.” Once again, elites acted in the name of a better future but left society bitterly divided over yet another of Russia’s perennial “accursed questions”—why it had happened. And again the people paid the price. All of those recapitulations unfolded, amid mutual (and lasting) charges of betrayal, during the three months from August to December 1991, when the piecemeal destruction of the Soviet state occurred. The period began and ended with coups (as in 1917)—the first a failed military putsch against Gorbachev organized by his own ministers in the center of Moscow, the second Yeltsin’s liquidation of the state itself in the Belovezh Forest. What followed was a revolution from above against the Soviet system of power and property by its own elites. Looking back, Russians of different views have concluded that during those months political extremism and unfettered greed cost them a chance for democratic and economic progress. 24 December, 2011 Stephen F. Cohen is a professor of Russian Studies at New York University. Source: Countercurrents.org
120 COUNTRIES (PART I)
By Nick Turse Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now. After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are
deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows. Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence — in about
60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world. THE RISE OF THE MILITARY’S SECRET MILITARY
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money continued next page
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by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate. Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, pararescuemen, and even battlefield airtraffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations. One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/ capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to fourstar general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.” This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.
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From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM’s baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon. Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command — the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 — indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. “I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000,” he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000. During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities. A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite
A R T I C L E S U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.” During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet — mostly the industrialized nations of the global north — were considered the key areas. “But the world changed over the last decade,” he said. “Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren’t.” To that end, Olson launched “Project Lawrence,” an effort to increase cultural proficiencies — like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs — for overseas operations. The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed “Lawrences of Wherever.” 5 August, 2011
Part II of this article will be published in the February 2012 Commentary
Nick Turse is a historian, essayist and investigative journalist. Source : Countercurrents.org
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