October 2012
Vol 12, No.10
TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP (TPP): FREE TRADE AIN’T FREE By Mickey Z.
“TPP is Wall Street’s global power grab—a death sentence for people with AIDS, for endangered rainforests, family farmers, and U.S. jobs.” - Adam Weissman Free (sic) trade agreements have a way of altering our lives in unexpected ways. For example, thanks to something called the “trade-related intellectual property rights” section of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)—precursor to the World Trade Organization (WTO)— when a human gene is introduced to a sheep’s mammary glands to produce a protein called alpha-1-antitrypsin, a sheep is no longer a mere “sheep.” Instead, that woolly object is now a legally patented corporate commodity known as a “mammalian cell bioreactor.”
All this backroom betrayal has led us right up to what has been called “NAFTA on steroids,” potentially the mother of all free (sic) trade agreements: the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP .
these so-called trade agreements because they’re really all about investors’ rights anyway. For more details on the infamous WTO, here’s an article I wrote in April of this year: “Roots of Occupy: The Battle in Seattle, 1999.”
Not a sheep, not a lamb, but a mammalian cell bioreactor. Try it out: “Mary had a little mammalian cell bioreactor.”
Of course, there’s also the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which, since the time it was enacted in 1994, the U.S. Labor Department has certified more than 2.5 million American jobs as “destroyed by either direct offshoring or displacement by imports.”
If you don’t like it, don’t blame me. Blame GATT. Hell, you can blame all
Mic Check: There’s a huge difference between “free trade” and fair trade.
Free Trade ain’t free…and it ain’t even trade TPP, as described by the Citizens Trade Campaign, is a “massive new international trade pact being pushed by the U.S. government at the behest of transnational corporations. The TPP is already being negotiated between the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — but it is also specifically intended as a ‘docking agreement’ that other Pacific Rim countries would join over time, with Japan, Korea, China and others already expressing some interest. It is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in the world.” “Trade is only a minor part of the agreement,” add the folks at TPP Watch, who call it “a clever branding exercise” and “an agreement that continued next page
ARTICLES . US A MBASSADOR ’ S D EATH : F RUITS
OF US FOREIGN POLICY BY TONY CARTALUCCI .............................................P3
.THE CHINA JAPAN DISPUTE OVER DIAOYU: LET TRUTH PREVAIL! BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR .........................................P6 .80 YANOMAMI PEOPLE MASSACRED AS SHELL GETS ARCTIC DRILLING PERMIT BY SUBHANKAR BANERJEE ..........................................P7
.TEHRAN NON ALIGNED SUMMIT — A REBUFF TO WESTERN HEGEMONY BY RANJAN SOLOMON ...........................................P10
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guarantees special rights to foreign investors.” “TPP is a sweetheart deal for corporations who profit from hydrofracking, toxic dumping, mining, and the destruction of rainforests and other endangered ecosystems,” explains activist Adam Weissman. “It grants corporate environmental destroyers the power to sue governments for unlimited sums in international tribunals for enforcing their environmental laws. Outrageously, corporations can sue not only to recoup their investments, but can demand compensation for all the money they might have made if they weren’t stopped from damaging the environment.” How will all this—and more—be possible? Under TPP, details Public Citizen, corporations would gain an array of privileges, e.g. • Rights to acquire land, natural resources, factories without government review • Risks and costs of offshoring to low wage countries eliminated • Special guaranteed “minimum standard of treatment” for relocating firms • Compensation for loss of “expected future profits” from health, labor, and environmental, laws (indirect or “regulatory” takings compensation) • Right to move capital without limits • New rights cover vast definition of investment: intellectual property, permits, derivatives In addition: • A major goal of U.S. multinational corporations for TPP is to impose on more countries a set of extreme foreign investor privileges and rights and their private enforcement through the notorious “investor-state” system. This system elevates individual corporations and investors to equal standing with each TPP signatory country’s government—and above all of us citizens. • Under this regime, foreign investors can skirt domestic courts and laws, and sue governments directly
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before tribunals of three private sector lawyers operating under World Bank and UN rules to demand taxpayer compensation for any domestic law that investors believe will diminish their “expected future profits.” Such an agreement would also give animal agribusiness the opportunity to pressure countries to eliminate import safety standards and eliminate tariffs on U.S. meat, dairy, and egg exports. Translation: More animals suffering on factory farms, more climate change and factory farm pollution, more destruction of rainforests for livestock feed, more diabetes, heart disease, and cancer in the global South, more countries shifting to factory farming to stay competitive, and more outbreaks of deadly diseases like bird flu and swine flu. As one might imagine, Wall Street is licking its chops over provisions like: prohibitions against limiting the size of financial institutions (i.e., safeguards against “too big to fail”); prohibitions against firewalls between different types of financial institutions (i.e., reinstating the Depression-era GlassSteagall Act); prohibitions against bans on specific financial products (i.e., banning the sale of toxic assets); and prohibitions against capital controls (i.e., tools designed to stabilize the flow of money into and out of a country). To add insult to injury, under the auspices of TPP, the U.S. is actively seeking to cut access to medicine in the name of boosting Big Pharma profits. Those of you in the “lesser (sic) evil” crowd please note that both wings of the one American corporate party are swooning over TPP. “President Obama is slamming Mitt Romney for refusing to release his taxes and for offshoring jobs at Bain Capital,” Weissman adds, “but the Obama administration is negotiating and refusing to release the text of the TransPacific Partnership, an 11-country international outsourcing agreement that makes Bain look like a bunch of amateurs by comparison.”
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Translation: You ain’t gonna stop TPP by voting. You down with TPP? All right, now that you’ve heard some (key word: some ) of the sordid details, you might be wondering what—if anything—can stop TPP from becoming a rapacious reality. Well, here’s the good news… If you think NAFTA and GATT were the stuff of nightmares, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was a plot, cloaked in secrecy, designed to essentially eliminate those pesky nationto-nation boundaries that stop our poor, neglected multinational corporations from competing in the global marketplace. U.S. CEO at the time, Bill Clinton, failed in his effort to fast-track MAI in 1997, but it was back on the table a year later. If implemented, the MAI would’ve granted transnational corporations a unique brand of sovereignty that superseded national borders. However, by April 1998, MAI had been soundly defeated thanks to perhaps the first ever Internet activist campaign— a campaign that mobilized some 20 million people to speak out against and stop this global nightmare. (Subsequently defeated by sustained public action: the “Millennial Round” of the WTO in 1999 and The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 2003). Like all battles against the 1%, the odds are long and the game is tilted in their favor, but it’s powerful to remember that: 1 As stated above, agreements like TPP have been defeated when the response was immediate, informed, broad-based, and sustained. 2 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has helped bring corporate malfeasance into the public’s awareness as never before. We can begin by educating ourselves and the general public about the avaricious agenda of the 1%. Let’s continued next page
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spread the word that TPP isn’t an arcane exercise in D.C. double-talk. It will directly affect us—from access to medicine, a lack of food safety, more jobs lost, a faster rate of climate change, and too many more ways to list here. Some resources: • Trade Justice • Citizens Trade Campaign • Trade Watch • Flush the TPP • Occupy the TPP • Stop TPP Of course, we can and should go the usual route, the methods that beat back MAI, FTAA, etc.— letters, petitions, etc.— but I think if we also occupy a
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major effort towards public outreach, we stand a better chance. If we can relentlessly and effectively expose how this deceptive design is whitewashing our past, oppressing our present, and jeopardizing our future, it would not only help us defeat TPP but also inspire others to more easily recognize the big connections. In 1998, one activist said MAI was “like a political Dracula” which “simply cannot survive sunlight.” It’s our job, our duty to the future, to let the sun shine brightly on TPP and collectively drive a stake through its gluttonous heart. So…I’ve laid out some of the details above and now I put it to you: What can/should we do about TPP? What
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are you willing to do and how soon will you do it? E-mail me ( mickey@mickeyz.net ) with your ideas. I’d say it’s now or never… But then again, what do I know? I’ve always been the black mammalian cell bioreactor in my family. 14 September, 2012 Mickey Z. is a writer, editor, blogger, and novelist living in New York City. He writes a bimonthly column, "Mickey Z. Says", for VegNews magazine and he has also appeared on the C-SPAN network's Book TV program. He is also a regular contributor to Planet Green, ZNet, CounterPunch, and other websites. Source: Countercurrents.org
US FOREIGN POLICY
By Tony Cartalucci The US has sworn to “make pay” those responsible for the death of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens. In reality, those responsible for Stevens’ death are fully armed, funded, trained, and coordinating with NATO special forces in Libya, across North Africa, and in Syria. No one will “pay” beyond perhaps a wedding party attacked by US drones, or a limited liquidation of select terrorist groups the US created and armed during 2011’s violent overthrow of the Libyan government. Meanwhile, US warships and Marines will swarm around Libya simply to fulfill Western public expectations that “something” will be done. The embassy attacks were tacitly supported by the respective clientregimes recently installed by US political and military destabilization, and were designed to re-establish an adversarial narrative to counter growing public awareness of the US’ use of terrorist proxies, and specifically, Al Qaeda in nations like Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. We are
now expected to believe that Egypt’s new dictator Mohamed Morsi, and the terrorists of Libya whom the US is right now arming and supporting in Syria, are once again our implacable enemies.
In all likelihood, those behind the attacks on the embassies intended the violence to be limited in scope, and without any high-profile deaths designed simply to lend sorely lacking legitimacy to America’s growing list of client-states. Ambassador Stevens apparently was caught in smoke while escaping from the US consulate in Benghazi, and died of asphyxiation - a victim of unforeseen circumstances, not the victim of a targeted assassination. However, with a highranking US diplomat dead in Libya, in
Benghazi, the very den of Al Qaeda, it leaves the United States and its foreign policy, especially in regards to Syria, in tatters. US Support of Terrorism in Libya Stretches Back Three Decades The details of the plan were sketchy, but it seemed to be a classic CIA destabilization campaign. One element was a ‘disinformation’ program designed to embarrass Kaddafi and his government. Another was the creation of a ‘counter government’ to challenge his claim to national leadership. A third — potentially the most risky — was an escalating paramilitary campaign, probably by disaffected Libyan nationals, to blow up bridges, conduct small-scale guerrilla operations and demonstrate that Kaddafi was opposed by an indigenous political force. Newsweek, “A Plan to Overthrow Kaddafi,” August 3, 1981 The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), along with its affiliates and predecessors, have been armed, trained, its leaders coddled and supported by continued next page
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the West for over 30 years. One of these predecessors, the US-CIA backed National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) made multiple attempts to assassinate Qaddafi and initiate armed rebellion throughout Libya during the 1980s.
Many of these fighters would also line the US-Saudi created front, Al Qaeda, when first it was conceived in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Most of these fighters lived and operated from Libya’s eastern region of Cyrenaica, and in particular, the cities of Benghazi and Darnah. The US Army’s West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) noted in its report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” that these same fighters, drawn in particular from Benghazi and Darnah, would then move on to fighting US troops in both Afghanistan starting in 2001, and Iraq beginning in 2003, as well as contributing to the sectarian violence that made up the backbone of Iraq’s so-called “civil war.”
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culminated in the LIFG officially joining al Qa’ida on November 3, 2007. (page 9, .pdf) It would seem unthinkable then that the US would pick what was the epicenter of terrorism in Libya to make contacts with militants who had carried out three decades of terrorism and had even fought directly with US troops across multiple theaters of war especially after these terrorists officially announced their merger with Al Qaeda. But that is exactly what the United States did. Starting in March 2011, US President Barack Obama appointed Christopher Stevens as “Special Representative to the Libyan Transitional National Council,” and sent him to Benghazi to coordinate US military, diplomatic, and financial support to a “counter government” constituted from Cyrenaica’s Al Qaeda terror battalions and a cadre of USeducated, politically cultivated proxies across the “National Transitional Council” (NTC).
Whether or not their affiliation with Al Qaeda was official throughout the last 3 decades, the CTC’s report confirms that by 2007, an announced merger was made:
Eventually, Stevens’ mission would become a success. NATO-backed terrorists overran the Libyan government, overthrowing it in Tripoli, brutalizing the cities of Bani Walid and Sirte - with the help of several months of aerial bombardment from NATO and exterminating or exiling the entire population (10,000 to 30,000 people) of Tawarga. And almost immediately after the US’ success in Libya, the very terror brigades NATO had been funding, arming, training, and providing air support for, set out for the Turkish-Syrian border where they began invading Syria.
The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al Qa’ida, which
Ambassador Stevens’ Murderers Tied Directly to US-Backed Terrorists in Syria Entire brigades fighting the Syrian government are led by Libyan LIFG
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terrorists and include within their ranks Saudi-inspired Wahhabi extremists the ones who surrounded and attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, leading to the death of Ambassador Stevens. Reuters, in their article, “Libyan fighters join Syrian revolt,” reported, that Mahdi al-Harati, “a powerful militia chief from Libya’s western mountains,” who is actually a militant of the US, British, and UN listed terrorist organization Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), “now leads a unit in Syria, made up mainly of Syrians but also including some foreign fighters, including 20 senior members of his own Libyan rebel unit.” Reuters would go on to explain, “the Libyans aiding the Syrian rebels include specialists in communications, logistics, humanitarian issues and heavy weapons,” and that they “operate training bases, teaching fitness and battlefield tactics.” Reuters concedes that the ongoing battle has nothing to do with democracy, but instead is purely a sectarian campaign aimed at “pushing out” Syria’s minorities, perceived to be “oppressing” “Sunni Muslims.” To reach Syria, Libyan fighters must cross the Mediterranean Sea and enter via Turkey, or cross Egypt, Israel, and enter via Jordan. The government of Syria has threatened Libya in no conceivable manner, making Libya’s campaign an intolerable act of military aggression. Worst of all, the NATOinstalled government in Tripoli has officially approved of supporting military operations in distant Syria. In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group,” would report: Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the continued next page
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continued from page 4 former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”
Another Telegraph article, “Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels,” would admit Syrian rebels held secret talks with Libya’s new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned. At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers. “There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.” Later that month, some 600 Libyan terrorists would be reported to have entered Syria to begin combat operations and as recently as last month, CNN, whose Ivan Watson accompanied terrorists over the Turkish-Syrian border and into Aleppo, revealed that indeed foreign fighters were amongst the militants, particularly Libyans. It was admitted that: Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade’s ranks. A volunteer Libyan fighter has also
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told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a “platoon” of Libyan fighters to armed movement.
CNN also added: On Wednesday, CNN’s crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way. The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as … a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.CNN’s reports provide bookends to 2011’s admissions that large numbers of Libyan terrorists flush with NATO cash and weapons had headed to Syria, with notorious terrorist LIFG commanders making the arrangements. So who exactly will the US make “pay” for the death of Ambassador Stevens? Will they pull the funds and weapons they are using currently to wage terror upon the people of Syria? Will they liquidate the terror organizations and bases in Libya recruiting and training militants to fight America’s proxy war in Syria? Unlikely. US Foreign Policy is Hegemony Through Terror, Couched in “Democracy Promotion” Clearly, those involved in overthrowing the government of Libya, and
A R T I C L E S attempting to overthrow the government of Syria, are not “freedom fighters,” but listed terrorists. The US, UK, and EU are in violation of both their own domestic anti-terrorism laws (and here), as well as international law in their continued support of listedterrorist organizations. What was to be a relatively benign public relations stunt to disassociate the US and its “democracy promotion” from terrorist organizations, has now left a high ranking US diplomat dead and the West’s foreign policy narrative in further tatters. This illustrates operational incompetence as well as Wall Street and London’s increasing reliance on complex ploys to manage public perception. Stakeholders in the Wall Street-London international order will inevitably begin asking themselves whether or not they will share the fate of Stevens if they do not begin an orderly divestment from a crumbling paradigm. Furthermore, an increasingly aware public will still be able to look at both the Libyan and Egyptian governments and see proxy-regimes desperately seeking “street-credit” through antiAmerican, anti-Israeli rhetoric (or embassy raids). However, for example, Egypt’s Morsi cannot erase his US education, the US citizenship of his children, nor his current policy of capitulation to the IMF, and his support of the US-Saudi-Israeli proxy assault on Syria. America’s “democracy promotion” is simply a rhetorical mechanism within which hegemonic ambitions are couched. US State Department fronts, including Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy have their boards of directors full of Neo-Conservative warmongers and continued next page
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representatives of corporate-financier interests. They use issues of “democracy” and “human rights” to dress up naked military aggression and global corporate-financier expansion. Wall Street and London, realizing that many of their policy makers have become hopelessly discredited, their public opinions dismissed out of hand as warmongering and unacceptable, have established new fronts with new faces to give their agenda “left cover.” Obama’s presidency itself can be clearly seen as just such a public relations front. The Henry Jackson Society’s Michael Weiss, a Neo-Con in cheap liberal clothing, regularly has his propaganda aired by the likes of the Telegraph - despite his colleagues
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within the halls of the Henry Jackson Society including notorious Neo-Cons Max Boot, Michael Chertoff, Carl Gershman, Robert Kagan, Max Kampelman, William Kristol, Richard Perle, and James Woolsey. The corporate-financier interests of Wall Street and London hope that those in the West continue to make false distinctions between “left” and “right,” as well as fall for new faces telling old narratives. They also hope that regardless of your political views, you continue paying into their corporations and institutions, so that they continue receiving the resources they need to carry on with their agenda. In the game of chess, pawns are first sacrificed for tactical advantages.
A R T I C L E S When these are expended, highervalued pieces are next. Ambassador Stevens’ is just such a “piece.” His death was caused by a risky geopolitical stunt for the benefit of his own government, involving extremists he helped arm, train, fund, and install into power. Stevens’ contemporaries must ask themselves if they too are willing to join him in his “sacrifice,” as all the pawns have either been spent, or are stuck in stalemates upon the board. 13 September, 2012 Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report. Source: Activist Post
THE CHINA JAPAN DISPUTE OVER DIAOYU: LET THE TRUTH PREVAIL! By Chandra Muzaffar three of the islands from the Kurihara family on 11 September 2012 that ignited the present crisis. That decision should be rescinded immediately.
Tensions are rising in the dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu Islands — 5 tiny islands and 3 rocks covering a mere 7 square kilometres in the East China Sea. It is a pity that this is happening especially when Chinese-Japanese economic ties have reached a new level since the end of last year with the two countries agreeing to use their respective currencies in their bilateral trade, instead of the US dollar. To de-escalate tensions, Japan should make the first move. It was the Japanese government’s purchase of
In fact, Japan has been upping the ante on Diaoyu — which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands — for some time now. It will be recalled that on 7 September 2010 when a Chinese fishing boat collided accidentally with a Japanese patrol vessel near Diaoyu, the captain and the crew of the Chinese boat were detained by the Japanese Coast Guard for a few days. Though they were all released in the end, the incident revealed a new toughness on the part of the Japanese. The Chinese have been reacting to this and other such incidents. What explains this new toughness? Some analysts attribute it partly to the growth of the Political Right in Japanese politics. Japanese economic stagnation for more than two decades and China’s success in replacing Japan as the
world’s second most important economy have increased the influence of conservative nationalist forces in the country who are now targeting China. Impending elections within the ruling Democratic Party and the forthcoming General Election have also widened the berth for conservative politics. It is also not a coincidence that the Japanese Right has become more vocal — especially vis-a-vis China — at a time when the United States is seeking to re-assert its presence and its power in the Asia-Pacific region. In the last couple of years, US political and military officials have on a number of occasions underscored the significance of US-Japan security ties. Even on the Diaoyu dispute, the US government, while professing to remain neutral, has through the Pentagon made it clear that the JapanUS Security Treaty would come into force in the event of a military conflict continued next page
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between Japan and China. This stance has to be viewed in the larger context of the US’s active military alignment with the Philippines in its recent clash with China over the Huangyan Island in the South China Sea and its support for Vietnam in its longstanding tiff with China over parts of the Spratly Islands and the Paracels. For both Japan and the US there may also be other reasons why the Diaoyu Islands are important. In 19689, a United Nations agency, it is reported, had discovered potential oil and gas reserves near Diaoyu. The US military, it is not widely known, also uses one of the five islands — Kuba— as a practice range for aircraft bombing. Whatever the reasons for holding on to Diaoyu, Japan’s claim to ownership is weak. There are books, reports and maps from the 15 th century, during the period of the Ming Dynasty, that establish in no uncertain terms that Diaoyu is Chinese territory. The book Voyage with a Tail Wind and the Record of the Imperial Envoy’s Visit to Ryukyu bear testimony to this. Even writings by Japanese scholars in the late 19th century acknowledged this fact. The challenge to Chinese ownership of Diaoyu came from Japanese annexation of the Islands in 1894-5 following the first Sino-Japanese War. China under the Ching Dynasty was too weak to fight back and regain lost
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territory. But annexation through military force does not confer legitimacy upon the act of conquest. This is why when Japan was defeated in the Second World War the victors who included China and the US recognised that Diaoyu was Chinese territory. Both the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration acknowledged this though for administrative purposes Diaoyu was placed under US control as part of its governance over the Ryukyu Islands. The US was then the occupying power in Japan following the latter’s surrender. However, when China was taken over by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the US changed its position and began to treat the Islands as part of Japan. The Chinese communist leadership protested vehemently. In 1971, the US Senate returned the Diaoyu Islands, together with Okinawa, to Japan under the Okinawa Reversion Treaty. Again, the Chinese government in Beijing objected, as did the Taiwan government which also regards the Islands as part of China. Since the normalisation of relations between China and Japan in 1972, both sides have agreed to allow their fisher folk to operate in the waters surrounding the Islands without resolving the issue of ownership. Of course, neither China nor Japan has relinquished even an iota of its claim in the last 40 years. Recent incidents have
A R T I C L E S however forced this unresolved issue into the open.
Apart from taking the first step by abrogating its purchase of the Islands, as we have proposed, Japan should also come to terms with undeniable historical, legal and ethical facts. It must accept the irrefutable reality that the Diaoyu Islands belong to China. We realise that there are powerful vested interests that will not allow Japan to embrace this truth. Nonetheless, we should all try to persuade the Japanese government and the Japanese people that it would be in their best interest to do so. Governments in Asia should convey this message to Japanese elites through quiet diplomacy. Citizen groups throughout the continent should speak up in a firm and courteous manner. The media should play its role by laying out the arguments for an amicable resolution of the dispute which respects truth and justice. 17 September, 2012 Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
80 YANOMAMI PEOPLE MASSACRED AS SHELL GETS ARCTIC DRILLING PERMIT By Subhankar Banerjee
It has been a painful day for me. Two pieces of news came in this morning: one about the massacre of up to 80 Yanomami people at a settlement in the Amazon, and the other about Obama green lighting Shell’s drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Both are about resource
wars that lead to killing—humans and/ or animals, fast or slow, one to get gold, and the other to get oil. “A massacre of up to 80 Yanomami people has taken place in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas,” The Guardian
reported. “According to local testimonies an armed group [illegal gold miners] flew over in a helicopter, opening fire with guns and launching explosives into Irotatheri settlement in the High Ocamo area.” continued next page
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Survival International, a London– based NGO that works with indigenous communities around the world (over the years I contributed my Arctic photographs for their campaigns) stated in a news release, “Witnesses of the aftermath described finding ‘burnt bodies and bones’ when they visited the community of Irotatheri in the country’s Momoi region, close to the border with Brazil.…The attack is believed to have happened in July, but news is only just emerging.”
Today about 20,000 Yanomami people live in small communities in the Amazon rainforest bordering Brazil and Venezuela. I first came to know about the Yanomami from the remarkable photographs of artist–activist Claudia Andujar. In the 1970s Andujar gave up her career as a photojournalist and embarked on an in–depth photo–essay about the Yanomami people. During this time she was witness to, “one of the most significant cultural dislocations to occur in Yanomami history, when the government began construction of a transcontinental highway in Northern Brazil. Villages were razed to pave roads, and the Yanomami suffered a devastating measles epidemic.” Then, during the 1980s, a new kind of devastation came into the Yanomami homeland, when thousands of garimpeiros, illegal, small–scale gold diggers came to the Amazon to make their fortunes. Twenty percent of the Yanomami died in the 1980’s as a consequence of the gold mining
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intrusion. Also the mining led to environmental destruction. Following a 15–year campaign, in which Andujar’s work played a crucial role, in 1992, with the help of Brazilian anthropologists and Survival International, the Brazilian government established the Yanomami Park “for protection and use by Yanomami people.”
A R T I C L E S Iñupiat of the Arctic. On August 30, the Obama administration gave Shell the green light to begin drilling in the Arctic Ocean—Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of Alaska. Shell’s spill response barge, the Arctic Challenger is still sitting in Bellingham, Washington, waiting for the US Coast Guard certification. The administration couched their approval with a soft phrase, calling it “preparatory work.” What that means is that Shell will now begin drilling, but won’t get to the hydrocarbon layer until Arctic Challenger is certified and in place, which is expected to happen soon.
The July massacre wiped out an entire indigenous settlement. Not the first time. One of the worst Indian massacres had taken place in the predawn hours of April 30, 1871, that came to be known as the Camp Grant Massacre, in which nearly 150 Apaches, including children, elders and women from a single settlement in the Aravaipa canyon in Arizona had been brutally killed. Historian Karl Jacoby writes about that incident in his powerful book “Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History.” From the companion website for the book you’ll learn about what Jacoby calls “the most familiar and yet the most overlooked subject in American history—violence against Indians.”
I have written extensively about Shell’s Arctic drilling since May 2010. Here is the key concern: the Obama administration, Shell, and the media are all focused on minutiae to distract the public from the real issues, which at its most basic is the fact that the administration has not done an Environmental Impact Statement on the Arctic Ocean drilling, and no one knows how to clean up a spill from underneath the ice, in the harsh conditions of the Arctic.
It will take time to figure out the details of the Yanomami massacre, but one thing is for certain, it’s a tragic case of resource wars—gold, in this case. Unfortunately such events will likely increase in the coming decades because much of the last remaining natural resources left on Earth are in lands inhabited by indigenous communities, or underneath oceans on which indigenous communities depend on— Amazon, Arctic, forests of India… Small illegal bands of garimpeiros or big corporations supported by governments will do everything to destroy and displace human and nonhuman communities to extract those resources.
As I write this, on the table, I have two books. The first one is: “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain Resource Assessment Final Report: Baseline Study of the Fish, Wildlife, and Their Habitats, Volume 1.” It is a 392–page report with chapters titled: “Soils and Vegetation,” “Birds,” “Mammals,” “Fish,” “Human Culture and Lifestyle,” and “Impacts of Further Exploration, Development and Production of Oil and Gas Resources.” Despite the fact that the Reagan administration gagged federal scientists to promote Arctic drilling, his administration did publish this extensive report in 1986. I learnt a lot about the Arctic Refuge ecology from that report.
Resource wars connect the Yanomami of the Amazon with the
The second book is: “Cumulative continued next page
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Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska’s North Slope.” It is a 288–page book published by the National Research Council, a division of the US National Academies with chapters titled: “The Human Environment,” “The Alaska North Slope Environment,” “History of Oil and Gas Activities,” “Future Oil and Gas Activities,” “Effects on the Physical Environment,” “Effects on Vegetation,” “Effects on Animals,” “Effects on the Human Environment,” “Filling Knowledge Gaps,” and “Major Effects and their Accumulation.” Despite the fact that the George W. Bush administration gagged federal scientists and manipulated major scientific reports to promote Arctic drilling, his administration did publish this extensive report in 2003. It was the first of its kind and remains the most scholarly publication about the cumulative impact of oil development on Arctic tundra. Both reports are about the terrestrial environment of Arctic Alaska. Nothing like that exists about the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas which is home to more than 10,000 endangered bowhead whales, more than 60,000 beluga whales, nearly 4,000 threatened polar bears, tens of thousands of seals and walruses, and hundreds of thousands of sea birds, to name a few species. The Iñupiat people of the Arctic coast depend on the Ocean that they call “the garden,” for their economic, cultural and spiritual survival. Now, if you ask the Obama administration if there is a report on the Arctic Ocean similar to the 1986 Arctic Refuge baseline study, the answer you will get would be: “nada,” “zero,” “zilch,” “zippo,” “zot,” “golla [that’s Bengali].” On September 13, 2010, Seth Borenstein wrote in an Associated Press story, “Tens of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the
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sea ice they normally rest on has melted. Scientists with two federal agencies are most concerned about the one–ton female walruses stampeding and crushing each other and their smaller calves near Point Lay, Alaska, on the Chukchi Sea. The federal government is in a year–long process to determine if walruses should be put on the endangered species list.” Since then we have heard more than a hundred times that Shell has spent more than 4 billion dollars in their Arctic venture, but have you heard about what’s happening to the walruses? Over the past decade, Arctic warming has very significantly changed the ecological and cultural dynamic of the North and we do not yet have a comprehensive understanding of these rapid changes, yet Shell will drill there now, thanks to the Obama administration.
because they never challenged Obama, only appealed to him politely, again, and again, and again. Imagine the rage the green groups would have exhibited to a Republican president if she/he had done the things Obama has done: he hasn’t done anything on climate change and didn’t even mention the phrase in his 2012 Earth Day Proclamation — remember his top climate change advisor Carol Browner resigned after realizing she won’t get a thing done under this administration; sold the Powder River Basin of Wyoming to King Coal — a completely unnecessary act; approved the building of the southern half of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and now Shell’s Arctic drilling.
How is Obama getting away with approving the most dangerous form of drilling anywhere on earth without having done a comprehensive study on the Arctic Ocean to a company that is causing great destruction to the Niger Delta and the indigenous Ogoni people? Allow me to guess. With approving Shell’s drilling Obama has given his boots to the face of the environmental organizations, and us. He has figured he cannot afford to upset Shell (the company might pour too much money to zabbledabble his re-election campaign, thanks to Citizens United), but he can indeed afford to piss off the environmental community, which he believes (my guess) is “wimpy,”
The fate of indigenous communities around the world is connected through destructive resource wars. For a long time, dominant cultures had referred to members of tribal communities as “barbarians.” Is a Yanomami barbarian? Is an Iñupiaq barbarian? Is a thug of a plutocratic society barbarian? Time has come to put that word ‘barbarian’ on its head. Indigenous communities are left with no choice but to fight and resist destruction. 31 August, 2012
In her testimony in the recently published anthology “Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point” that I edited, Iñupiat elder and community leader Caroline Cannon wrote: “It feels as if the government and industry want us to forget who we are, what we have a right to, and what we deserve. They repeatedly overwhelm us with information, requests, and deadlines, and it seems as if they hope that we will either give up or die fighting. We are not giving up. We must fight.”
Subhankar Banerjee is a writer, photographer, and activist. He has worked tirelessly to conserve ecoculturally significant areas of the Arctic, and to raise awareness about indigenous human rights and climate change. Source: Climatestorytellers.org
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Irish journalist and political commentator Finian Cunningham believes that the 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran which wrapped up on August 31 was a “spectacular diplomatic coup for the Islamic Republic of Iran” and a “puncturing of Western selfimportance.” In unanimity, the summit rejected the US and Israel’s attempt to wage war with Iran under dubious pretexts. Instead, they expressed “respect and solidarity towards the Islamic Republic”. By endorsing Iran as President of the NAM for the next three years, the 120 nations gathered in Tehran were affirming that “We respect and trust Iran to lead the NAM in its central aim of achieving world peace and defending nations from aggression.” NAM surfaced in the 1960s in the context of the bi-polar world; with the United States of America leading the ‘Free World’ on the one hand, and the Soviet Union at the head of a coalition of revolutionary communist countries, on the other. Leaders of the new nations of Africa and Asia, such as Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea) Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Emperor Haile Selassie (Ethiopia) Jawaharlal Nehru (India), and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito argued that developing countries should refrain from aligning their countries with either bloc, but pursue their own independent path in international affairs. The Non-aligned Movement adopted two ideological pillars to guide the work of the Movement; 1. Political decolonisation of all territories under colonial domination and; 2. Reform of an unjust global economic order which consigned developing countries to the underdog status of ‘hewers of wood and water’, while the
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advanced industrial countries produced manufactured goods. Since those heady days, NAM has gone through its ups and downs also shaken by the collapse of the USSR, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the caving in of Eastern European economies and their communist systems. NAM went into a crisis of its own in the Uni-polar world to which they had to readjust. The US emerged as the ‘Master Nation’ managing the rest of the world as if it were its owner and keeper, and assuming leadership it had never won in a democratic process. With its military supremacy, it began to function as the world’s policeman, instigating and waging wars geared at asserting its economic ambitions, pilfering precious resources needed to match its materialistic and economic ambitions. The post-cold war international economic order was characterised by marginal countries extracting and exporting raw materials to the metropolitan countries which turn these materials into manufactured goods that are exported back to the periphery. NAM went into a period of impotency. Some of its most influential members played into the new world order under which the orders were passed by the Washington-led international alliance of nations who were in the hunt to sneak back the old colonial order through the back door. India was one of these- seeking the crumbs from under the tables of the ex-colonizers.
WESTERN HEGEMONY imperialist designs of the US, and to irrevocably set out a trail that polarizes the world if need be between those who seek justice and those who seek power to quench their unquenchable thirst for resources and riches that are not theirs. It matters little or nothing who the US will elect as their President. They will, as has been proven, be politically impotent men who are controlled by corporates and Zionists who give a damn if the rest of the world were damned to doomsday. The Non-Aligned Movement can still offer a platform to enable developing countries to agree on a unified position vis-à-vis the powerful developed nations on a wide range of issues – be they climate change, universal nuclear disarmament, United Nations Reform, Rights of the Palestinian peoples. The NAM countries may not be able to match the brute military capabilities of the western powers that have powerful military forces but they can speak as one on the critical questions that confront our world. They may never stir the consciences of the rich and powerful countries. Power knows only conceit and arrogance. It does not know the content of justice even if the word justice is one that gets to be used in the discourse that the powerful engage in.
Thankfully, the next NAM summit will be in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez will take over as President in 2016. This guarantees six years of strong and unambiguous anti-imperial thinking and leadership of the NAM.
NAM must now become the voice of the people and countries from the margins. The rich nations have brazenly appropriated the spaces and resources that are not rightfully their own. To them, there is one and only one thing that matters – that the weak must surrender to the rich what they wish to possess on terms that are unfair and perverse.
Never before has NAM needed to reassert itself as a force in international relations, to return to its history and founding purposes of opposing the colonial instincts of the ex-colonizer, the
Rajan Soloman is a widely experienced NGO/ecumenical leader with varied experiences in organizational transformation and creating social change through advocacy, communications and issue education
REFLECTIONS: TORTURE Over time, the definition of torture has evolved to encompass its evolving forms in methods and severity with comprehensive precision. The practise of
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OF THE FAITHFUL By Emilie Terebessy
torture dates back to the primitive human desire of the self-righteous to punish offences of others. During these contemporary times, specifically post-9/
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11, torture has once again reared its ugly head with a new face. The most recently revived form of torture is faith-based continued next page
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continued from page 10 torture. The thrust in the revival of faithbased torture was propelled by the Bush administration in order to maintain national security, including investigations of “ticking-bomb” scenarios, at the sacrifice of upholding morality to fight the “war on terror.” According to reports by Stephen Budiansky, “U.S. military intelligence agencies have long known that torture and humiliation are unreliable and counterproductive means of securing intelligence” (qtd. in McCormick 156). Faith-based torture has its roots in religious persecution that dates back to antiquity and it continues to be practised globally. Recently, faith-based torture has expanded into aspects of psychological torture in order to escape legal scrutiny. “Faith-based torture” is a problematic expression that can lead to misunderstanding, both in its terminology and definition. Renaming and redefining the concept of “faithbased torture” from an objective stance is the first step in eradicating the legal exploitation of human dignity and promoting self-enforcement of the prohibition of torture. The term “faith-based torture” is an oxymoron that does not accurately depict the subject: torture of the faithful. The use of the word “based” in “faith-based torture” refers to origin; hence by definition, the expression implies that faith is the origin of torture. No religion promotes the violation of basic human dignity, especially not for the sake of achieving nationalistic goals like interrogating “enemy combatants” to save a nation from an alleged threat. However, religion is vulnerable to misinterpretation as the word of God is interpreted through scriptures. It is the human error in interpretation of religion that results in its misunderstanding such as religion promotes torture. Human error in interpretation can be minimized by clearly defining the boundaries of a subject in question. Current literature does not provide an objective definition of the term “faithbased torture” despite the available information on torture and faith. I propose the term “faith-based torture” be renamed as “torture of the faithful (TotF).” TotF will
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be defined as: the intentional act of assaulting individuals’ faith sensitivities to inflict either physical, mental, and/or emotional harm on the individual, or to inflict vicarious mental and/or emotional harm on the associated population of the individual. According to Liaquat Ali Khan, two conditions must be satisfied in order to classify the perpetration of torture as faith-based torture: “(a) the subject of torture belongs to an identifiable religious population, and (b) the chosen form of torture assaults deeply held religious values of that population.” These conditions will continue to be applied alongside the term TotF.
detainees to lose their Islamic identity and thus submit to interrogational duress. Among some of the ineffective antiIslamic tactics involve incidents where detainees were prohibited from performing prayers or interrupted midprayer, relevant information such as the direction and time of prayer were withheld from them, prevented from reading the Qur’an and others. However, the religious identity and commitment of these detainees were not perceptibly affected by such anti-Islamic torture. This is because Islam provides a sufficient degree of flexibility to accommodate even cases of necessity.
Let’s get one thing straight: torture is prohibited under international law. With such prohibitions in place, how does the practise of torture continue to penetrate our society? I believe there are two main reasons as to why torture continues to be legally practised: “the lack of political will to implement the obligations of States under international humanitarian and human rights law” (Kälin) and the lack of objective definition of torture leading to its legal exploitation to override basic human rights. Firstly, the concept of national sovereignty has always been a delicate matter; international law cannot be imposed on a State if the authorities refuse to apply international law due to a perceived threat to sovereignty and the desire to maintain independence. Secondly, the lack of objective definition of TotF enables the exploitation of loopholes through legal interpretation by governing bodies to conduct TotF. With an objective definition in place, clearer standards prohibiting TotF can be established and put into practise, thus defending the physical and spiritual integrity of potential victims.
Another form of TotF that causes much uproar in the Muslim community is the desecration of the Qur’an. A recent example is from late February where multiple copies of the Qur’an confiscated from prisoners were burned at NATO’s Bagram military airbase; the incident resulted in protests and civilian deaths. The incineration of the Qur’an by the military personnel can be interpreted as a vicarious form of TotF. Vicarious TotF involves an additional step beyond its physical perpetration, which in this case is the act of burning multiple volumes of the Qur’an. Knowledge of the perpetration of TotF must be disseminated to the vicarious victims of the associated population; this is to generate vicarious degradation amongst the victimized population and invoke fear of the perpetrators. Essentially, TotF communicates to the victimized population what is not acceptable conduct in the eyes of the perpetrator.
There are various instances of TotF that have been identified globally; no political or religious grouping is exempt from culpability in this regard. The most prominent examples can be found in U.S.run detention camps in the “war on terror;” such examples involve the practise of anti-Islamic torture. These can range from ineffective anti-Islamic tactics to more serious violations of Islamic modesty such as forced nudity and pornographic abuse. Anti-Islamic torture was committed to presumably cause the
The recent justifications in committing TotF post-9/11 tend to arise from selfserving political agendas. Our failure to uphold collective human rights through legal means results in our failure to protect innocent victims. TotF is a serious problem that needs immediate and sustained attention to defend basic human dignity. Awareness needs to be raised among the relevant authorities and the general public as well. We need to create a sense of outrage in order to provide impetus for effective collective action. 16 August, 2012 Emilie Terebessy was an intern with JUST from July - August 2012.
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The International Movement for a Just World is a nonprofit international citizens’ organisation which seeks to create public awareness about injustices within the existing global system. It also attempts to develop a deeper understanding of the struggle for social justice and human dignity at the global level, guided by universal spiritual and moral values. In furtherance of these objectives, JUST has undertaken a number of activities including conducting research, publishing books and monographs, organising conferences and seminars, networking with groups and individuals and participating in public campaigns. JUST has friends and supporters in more than 130 countries and cooperates actively with other organisations which are committed to similar objectives in different parts of the world.
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