Three foreign journalists caught in violence near Slavyansk, two possibly dead – reports
RT | May 24, 2014
An Italian reporter and his interpreter may have been shot dead and a French photographer has been wounded near the city of Slavyansk, in eastern Ukraine, as their car came under fire, Russian media report.
The injured French journalist identified as William Roguelon has been taken to a local hospital where he received treatment and managed to leave the facility on his own.
Roguelon, from the hospital reached Agence France Presse (AFP) and described how out of nowhere their vehicle was bombarded with mortar shells.
“Before that we heard Kalashnikov shots,” Roguelon was quoted by the Italian tgcom24. “Then the mortar shells rained down all around,” he said claiming to have heard up 60 explosions as they tried to hide in the “middle of a ditch.”
The man, who works as a freelance photographer, has told Russian media that after the shooting he saw his Italian colleagues lying on the ground not moving, Rossiya 24 channel reported.
“In the village of Andreyevka, not far from Slavyansk, an Italian journalist and his interpreter have been shot dead and a French correspondent wounded. Their car came under fire,” a source from the self-defense forces has told RIA Novosti.
The area around the city of Slavyansk has been gripped by violence on Saturday, a day before the scheduled presidential election. Shooting was reported in the village of Semyonovka, where a psychiatric hospital has been partly ruined in a fight between Kiev troops and self-defense forces. Witnesses said a shell hit the roof of the hospital.
According to reports, shooting, artillery and machine-gun fire have been heard in the outskirts of Semyonovka starting Friday night.
Shell-holes can be seen in the ground all around the village. Smoke was reportedly seen billowing from at least three locations in Slavyansk on Saturday.
Update May 25th:
The Creeping Decriminalization of Marijuana in the Caribbean
By Kevin Edmonds | The Other Side of Paradise | May 23, 2014
While the decriminalization of marijuana has been a topic of discussion for decades, those in attendance at this week’s Jamaica Cannabis Conference are doing more than just blowing smoke—they are discussing the upcoming stages of a long-overdue and vital transformation of the Caribbean’s regional economy. Jamaica has long been associated with potent, naturally grown marijuana, but also the unfortunate social ills that have accompanied its criminalization.
While marijuana, or ganja, arrived in the Caribbean with Indian indentured laborers in the mid-1800s, it was not criminalized until 1913, when the Ganja law came into effect at the behest of the church and colonial elites. The ban was largely based on ignorant, racist perceptions of the evil effects that ganja would have on the poor black majority, and thus dealt out fines and other oppressive penalties for consumption or cultivation. During the 1940s and the 1950s, despite the cultivation of ganja for spiritual and medical reasons, it became the routine justification for government raids upon the original, self-sufficient Rastafari community of Pinnacle.
Despite Jamaica’s independence in 1962, the colonial origins of criminalizing ganja were not eroded, but strengthened. When Jamaica signed the United Nations Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1964, it became obligated to treat marijuana as a harmful drug, following the prevailing attitude of the United States. Under the banner of the War on Drugs, the Jamaican government diverted millions of dollars from social development to eradicate marijuana plantations through aerial spraying. If Jamaica refused, under the conditions of the U.S. Drug Certification Policy enacted in 1986, Jamaica would risk losing access to U.S. trade, aid, loans, and visas.
There are very serious human rights issues associated with the prohibition of marijuana. Across the Caribbean, courts are backlogged with simple possession charges for small quantities of marijuana. In one case in St. Lucia, fines for small quantities of marijuana reached $200, or up to 30 days in jail. These charges in turn limit employment and travel opportunities, creating inter-generational disadvantages for those who face jail time. As a result of the overloaded prison systems across the region, the economic and social costs of marijuana are tremendous, as much needed economic resources are taken away from social development and funneled towards an endless cycle of law and order policies.
In addition, the criminalization of marijuana has also led to the unfortunate and unnecessary marginalization of the Rastafari community, which regard the herb as a holy sacrament. Last August St. Lucian journalist Earl Bousquet commented on the negative portrayal of marijuana in the 1960s and 1970s:
Marijuana was… pinned to the Rastafarian movement that started spreading to the rest of the region from Jamaica at the same time. The then leaders erroneously hoped they could easily do away with ‘Rastas and marijuana’ through new laws and armed police forces. By legally twinning Rastafarianism with an illegal substance, growth of a positive and distinctively Caribbean social movement driven by the works of Marcus Garvey, rooted in Pan Caribbean-African nationalism and advocating closer communion with nature half-a-century ago was stifled, suppressed and forced to spend more time resisting and fighting ‘Babylon’ than refining the philosophical, spiritual, cultural and political base of the only indigenous Caribbean movement of its kind in the 20th century.
As a further result of these criminalization policies, Jamaica now has to play catch up in the newly emerging legal and medical marijuana market, according to Dr. Albert Lockhart, a leading ophthalmologist and noted speaker at the Cannabis Conference, who stated that “we are 40 years late.” Dr. Lockhart has helped to pioneer medicine derived from marijuana such as Canasol (which treats glaucoma) and Asmasol (which treats asthma), but due to lack of funding their discoveries are not widely known outside of the island. Dr. Lockhart further warned that if Jamaica does not act now it would be at risk of missing the boat, losing out to countries such as the United States, where the states of Colorado and Washington have fueled the push for legalization across the region—and Canada where medical marijuana has become big business.
Phillip Paulwell, Jamaican Minister of Science and Technology, has assured interested parties that marijuana will be decriminalized by the end of the year. Paulwell remarked that “I am of the firm opinion that scientific research into marijuana, both in the very many uses of the plant as hemp, and its medical properties, is an idea whose time has come,” adding that a marijuana-based medical industry could earn as much as $5.2 billion.
So the Cannabis Conference closed with hope that Jamaica and the wider Caribbean will be able to finally cash in and create a world leading, legal industry which not only acts as a cash crop and provides much needed agricultural jobs, but also as the building blocks for the development of wide ranging medical treatments. Additionally, the new CARICOM Regional Commission on Marijuana Use shows a regional investigative interest. Beyond just decriminalization, the Ganja Future Growers and Producers Association has been advocating for a regulatory model that will benefit small growers instead of large corporations, stating: “For the first three years of a regulated industry, licenses should only be given to plots of one acre or less.” The taxable income from the industry has the power to transform stagnating Caribbean economies and will allow them to have the self determination to rightfully produce a quality product which the world has always demanded in great quantity, but has been criminalized for far too long.
Kevin Edmonds is a NACLA blogger focusing on the Caribbean. Edmonds is a former NACLA research associate and a current PhD student at the University of Toronto, where he is studying the impact of neoliberalism on the St. Lucian banana trade. Follow him on twitter @kevin_edmonds.
Self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics form ‘Novorossiya’ union
Representatives from eight south-eastern regions voting at the people’s congress in Donetsk
RT | May 24, 2014
Self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics which recently held referenda on independence from Ukraine have declared the creation of Novorossiya union.
“We have signed a memorandum on the union,” Denis Pushilin, co-chairman of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told the media.
The new union will be called Novorossiya, said the people’s governor of the Donetsk Region, Pavel Gubarev.
He added that the document was signed in the city of Donetsk by Donetsk People’s Republic Prime Minister Aleksandr Borodai and the head of Lugansk People’s Republic Aleksey Karyakin.
People’s representatives from eight Ukrainian regions gathered for a congress in Donetsk on Saturday, a day ahead of scheduled countrywide presidential elections.
As a result of the congress, the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, where anti-government protests gained momentum, have announced the creation of a pro-federalization Popular Front socio-political coalition. The movement accepted a manifesto vowing self-determination and protection of people from “Nazi gangs’ terror.”
The coalition involves Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kharkov, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk Regions.
At the congress, all 145 delegates accepted the manifesto, which stresses that the Popular Front will consist of “everybody, who is ready to resist self-appointed Kiev authority, which started war against the people.”
The coalition vowed to protect innocent civilians from the “terror of Nazi gangs, financed by oligarchs and foreign security services.” It also pledges “a joint fight for people’s rights to a decent life.”
It says it has launched an investigative commission that will probe “crimes of Nazi-terrorists and their Kiev patrons”.
The coalition is calling for a boycott of the presidential election, which is scheduled to take place on Sunday, because “all major candidates” are “oligarchs, whom we have already seen in top positions, hence, robbery and terror would continue,” the manifesto said.
When it comes to a new Ukrainian constitution, the Popular Front demands that it guarantees “neutrality” and non-participation in military blocks as well as “political independence”, “mechanisms to stop corruption and massive poverty.”
The coalition also demands that the parliament consists of two chambers. At the same time, regions must be given “a right to autonomy” and “independent foreign-economic activity”.
In addition to that, regional governments must be given a right to “announce its territory de-militarized zones and also “ban political, social and religious organizations on its territory” in case they are considered a “threat” to the people.
The Popular Front wants two official languages in Ukraine – Ukrainian and Russian.
Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics earlier announced they will not participate in Ukraine’s presidential elections scheduled for May 25.
Fascism or the Bankruptcy of the Left?
The anti-EU movement spreads all over Europe… apart from Ukraine*
By TAKIS FOTOPOULOS | The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 9, Nos. 1/2 (2013)
The events in Ukraine have been instructive, even though the mass media of the Transnational Elite (TE) have created the false impression that there has been a popular “revolution” there by cretins fighting for their right to become the TE’s slaves within the EU, so that they may starve like the Greek people! But I will not dwell here on the orange “revolution” that has just been staged in this country by the pro-western bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of Kiev, with the decisive assistance of the provocateurs of the TE’s intelligence services who organized it[1], but rather on the two main lessons to be learned from it, which are especially important for all European peoples and, in particular, for the Greek people.
Firstly, social struggle in the era of neoliberal globalization can no longer be just a struggle for social liberation, as obsolete Marxists still believe today and some Trotskyites have always believed even during the Nazi occupation when they called upon German workers in the Nazi army to fraternize with occupied workers, while some “Marxists” and “anarchists” today still call for similar fraternization between the Zionist occupiers in Israel and the occupied Palestinians! The struggle for social liberation today must, first and foremost, be a struggle for national liberation. This becomes obvious when one considers the fact that, when a country (not belonging to the TE, i.e. mainly the “G7”) is incorporated into neoliberal globalization, it loses every trace of economic and, consequently, national sovereignty. This is why the struggle for social liberation today is inconceivable unless it has already gone through national liberation. The occupying troops that are now destroying and plundering Greece (or Portugal, Spain and Italy) and its weakest social strata (with the full cooperation of a small, local privileged elite which controls the media, the political parties, the “Left” intelligentsia etc.) are not a regular army in uniform and with lethal weapons of physical violence at their disposal, but an economic army in suits, possessing equally lethal instruments of economic violence, as well as the means to justify it.
Secondly, the target of social struggle today can only be neoliberal globalization, which is managed by a TE ensuring that only its own bogus revolutions succeed (the orange “revolutions” in Eastern Europe in the past[2] and today, or the pseudo-uprisings in Libya,[3] Syria, etc.) while even the attempted uprisings of the TE’s victims in Greece and elsewhere are suppressed in the most brutal way as soon as they occur – and yet Baroness Ashton finds nothing wrong with this, nor does she detect any violation of human rights occurring. Similarly, the peoples who resist being integrated into neoliberal globalization are condemned to remorseless slaughter, as the Libyan and Syrian people have been. Nevertheless, the impudent Barroso did not hesitate to declare that human rights had been violated in Ukraine when the police dared to beat “protesters” who attacked government buildings with bulldozers, “forgetting” that such conduct in any other “democratic” EU country would have sent many to the morgue!
In other words, contrary to the misleading propaganda of the degenerate “Left”, globalization is not a chimera, or just a continuation of the internationalization of the market economy taking place at the beginning of the last century, but, rather, a systemic phenomenon which can only be neoliberal within the capitalist system, as can easily be shown. Similarly, neoliberalism is neither a doctrine (of “shock” and similar fairy tales)[4] nor the bad policy making of certain “bad” neoliberal politicians and economists. It is simply the ideology of globalization. Neoliberal globalization is, in other words, the necessary institutional framework that ensures the opening and liberalization of the markets (capital, goods and labor), which is required for the effective operation of the transnational corporations that currently control the globalized economy.
On the basis of this analytical framework it is not surprising that an unprecedented mass movement “from below” is currently spreading throughout Europe, challenging the EU directly but also neoliberal globalization indirectly. This movement is essentially comprised of the victims of globalization who are driven to mass unemployment and poverty, as well as to homelessness, starvation or even suicide. These popular strata sooner or later become aware of the fraud of the degenerate “Left”, which consciously misleads them by claiming that the current disaster could be overcome even within the EU, despite the loss of economic and national sovereignty. Then, these strata inevitably turn to nationalist movements of all kinds, since these are the only ones that raise the anti-EU flag: from patriotic to neo-Nazi movements – depending on the local conditions. But this nationalism, which both the Transnational and Zionist elites condemn with such disgust (at the very moment when the strongest nationalist state today is the Zionist one!), has little to do with the prewar aggressive nationalism that led to two World Wars. It is a new kind of nationalism which is fundamentally defensive and does not aim to conquer new “vital space” etc. like the pre-WWII nationalism. Above all, it aims to “protect” national sovereignty (national culture, domestic labor, etc.) that is under threat from the opening and liberalization of the markets imposed by globalization.
The main reason that these popular strata have been turning to nationalist movements is, therefore, not that they have suddenly become fascist (as the TE claims in an attempt to defame them); it is the bankruptcy of the degenerate “Left” which, rather than raising the anti-EU flag in place of the nationalists to promote a struggle for social and national liberation, is engaged in “antifascist” struggles together with privileged “leftists”. It is not surprising, then, that this “Left” implicitly consents to the passing of “anti-fascist” legislation, as required by the Transnational and Zionist elites, so that it may effectively ban such movements that threaten its hegemony. In Greece, for instance, a so-called “anti-racist” bill is now being passed through Parliament, which effectively bans freedom of thought (not action!). This bill means, for example, that if somebody supported the national liberation struggle of the Syrian Baathist leadership against the TE and the criminals, pretending to be rebels, who have destroyed this country, s/he might end up in jail for supporting war crimes against humanity. This is based on a very recent utterly biased report by the well known instrument of the TE, the UN Human Rights Commission, which asserted that as Navi Pillay, the UN’s human rights chief, said there is “massive evidence … [of] very serious crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity” and that “the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state”.[5] Of course, neither this committee nor Navi Pillay who once said that “the Commissioner is the voice of the victim everywhere,”[6] nor its blood brothers among the NGOs for human rights (Amnesty International, Human Right Watch, etc.) have ever dreamed of declaring the arch-criminals Bush, Blair et al. to be guilty of war crimes, even though they are responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Presumably, the millions of people killed or maimed by war criminals like them are not victims, according to Mrs Pillay’s definition of a victim!
However, the Greek “Left”, i.e. the SYRIZA party, instead of mobilizing the people against this unashamedly fascist law, has quietly consented to it by merely abstaining from voting (only the Greek Communist Party and the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party voted against it). It should be noted that SYRIZA, together with its leader, Alexis Tsipras – who has been heavily promoted by the media of the TE – is destined by the same elites to succeed the present parliamentary junta in implementing the same policies but under a “Left” cover. Yet the sordid professional politicians who voted in favor of this openly fascist law dare to speak of democracy and the fight against fascism. This blatant bankruptcy of the “Left” is yet another major reason why a mass popular Front is needed in Greece and in all other countries which have fallen victim to the TE that administers neoliberal globalization, as I stressed in my last article.[7]
* This is an expanded edited version of an article by Takis Fotopoulos under the same title published in the Athens daily Eleftherotypia (8/12/213).
[1] See e.g. Stephen Lendman, “Ukraine: Orange Revolution 2.0?,” Global Research (6/12/2013).
[2] Takis Fotopoulos, “The Ukrainian Crisis and the Transnational Elite,” The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol.1, no.4 (July 2005).
[3] Takis Fotopoulos, “The Pseudo-Revolution in Libya and the Degenerate Left,” Part I & Part II, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter-Spring 2011).
[4] See e.g. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (Penguin, 2007).
[5] Ian Black, “Assad implicated in Syrian war crimes, says UN,” The Guardian (3/12/2013).
[6] Jonah Fisher, “Profile: New UN human rights chief,” BBC News (28/7/2008).
[7] Takis Fotopoulos, “Globalization and the End of the Left-Right Divide” (Part I), The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 8, Nos. 3/4 (Fall 2012-Winter 2013).
What Brought the West to the Table
By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi | Iran Review | May 20, 2014
There is a widespread Western fallacy that “sanctions brought Iran to the table,” which serves to legitimize the unjust regime of sanctions imposed by the Western governments, who rationalize their action by claiming to be the “injured parties” under international law, with respect to Iran’s alleged “non-compliance” with its international obligations.
The problem with this perspective that has acquired the status of a self-evident truth in the Western media is that it adopts the rhetoric of Western governments at face value, without the slightest inquiry on what caused the US and other Western governments involved in the nuclear negotiations with Iran to also ‘come to the table,’ that is, make reciprocal concessions?
The answer to the above question is three-fold. First, the idea that the Iran sanctions have caused little or no pressure on the Western countries is, of course, suspect and can be easily debunked. On the contrary, it can be shown that the whole edifice of sanctions regime was experiencing growing pressures and the Geneva agreement reflected a break not only for Iran but also the very sanctioning regimes, above all the US and European Union (EU).
To elaborate, given the fact that Iran’s nuclear progress had continued unabated despite the escalation of sanctions since 2006, the US was poised to pass new sanction laws targeting Iran’s oil sector, which if passed would have adversely affected US’s relations with some of its own trade partners such as India and China. In the absence of a deal in Geneva last November, the US lawmakers would have for sure enacted the new legislation, which would have instantly introduced new distortions in global trade, further violating the WTO norms on free trade. In other words, the Geneva agreement was a timely rescuer for the Western sanctioning states, avoiding a deterioration of their relations with Iran’s energy partners.
Second, by the time of Geneva agreement the unilateral European sanctions had come under increasing scrutiny by various courts in Europe, which had struck down a growing number of banks, trading companies, and individuals from the sanctions list. The significance of these adverse rulings, dreaded by the US officials who lobbied unsuccessfully to prevent them, was that it questioned the legality of some aspects of the EU sanctions that went far beyond the scope of UN sanctions on Iran, thus reflecting the irrefutable legal gap between UN and unilateral sanctions.
Third, in addition to the pressure of ‘market-distorting’ Western sanctions on the sanctioning powers, who deprived their own corporations from conducting profitable business with Iran, much to the delight of their Asian competitors, another important factor that ‘brought the West to the table’ was indeed the impressive pace of Iran’s nuclear progress. As a result of this steady progress, reflected in Iran’s ability to manufacture fuel rods for its medical reactor by enriching uranium up to 19.75%, i.e., the upper limit of low-enrichment, the West was suddenly jolted into the realization that Iran had reached a new nuclear milestone warranting serious negotiation.
Connected to this at the same time was the lessening value of the “military card” in West’s hands, in light of Iran’s construction of the underground facility known as Fordo, which is relatively immune from aerial bombardment, compared to the above-ground Natanz facility. This instantly jettisoned the “Osirak option,” that is the Israeli scenario of knocking down Iran’s facilities the way they did with ease against Iraq in 1981, thus adding to the futility of military threats against Iran. Needless to say, Iran’s counter-threat of closing the Hormuz and retaliating against any attacks throughout the region and beyond, i.e., the doctrine of extended deterrence, was an effective response that raised the potential cost of any military adventures against Iran. A good deal of this successful Iranian counter-strategy hinged on Iran’s extensive preparations for “asymmetrical warfare” and reliance on missile defense, given the impressive Iranian advances in missile technology.
Notwithstanding the above-said, it is hardly surprising that faced with Iran’s steady nuclear progress despite the sanctions that had harmful effects on the Western economy and entailed exorbitant monitoring costs, the West agreed to climb down its maximalist demands on “zero centrifuges” and to tacitly recognize Iran’s right to a civilian fuel cycle.
Of course, this explanation does not preclude the argument that the escalation of sanctions adversely affected Iran’s economy and spurred the new government of Hassan Rouhani to prioritize the lifting of sanctions through good-faith and principled negotiations. As an “injured party” whose inalienable nuclear rights have been abridged by Western discrimination and punitive actions, Iran’s anti-sanctions quest is in line with the nation’s national interests. But, while so much attention has been paid to Iran’s motivation to ‘make a deal’ unfortunately so far little attention has been paid to the underlying reasons for the West to reciprocate Iran’s action and thus explore the feasibility of a “win-win” scenario.
In terms of the regional and global geostrategic context, there are undeniably a host of relevant factors such as the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from the region after a decade of costly intervention and the related concerns for stability ‘the day after’ their planned departure, i.e., issues of direct link to Iran’s role in regional stability. Altogether, the net of Western interest to deal with Iran and search for ‘common grounds’ has been expanding and, naturally, one must probe the various economic, political, and geostrategic interests and concerns of the Western governments led by the US in determining why these powers consented to an interim deal with Iran, which has triggered the current negotiations for a long-term agreement? Suffice to say that the Western media’s failure to pay attention to this side of equation fuels a Western misperception that focuses on Iran’s purported weaknesses due to the sanctions, without bothering to present a comprehensive picture that, as outlined above, presents a vastly different, and more complex, picture before us, with clear policy connotations.
Plain clothed Israeli forces kidnap 3 young men, wife of prisoner detained in court
Palestine Information Center – 24/05/2014
RAMALLAH — Israeli undercover soldiers kidnapped three Palestinian young men in down el-Bireh on Friday night.
Sources in the city said that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and soldiers in plain clothes were heavily deployed in the city before kidnapping the three young men.
Meanwhile, the wife of a Jerusalemite prisoner was arrested during her presence in court to attend the trial hearing of her son.
Wadi Hilwe information center said that the wife of the Jerusalemite prisoner Ahmed Obaid, who is serving a life sentence, was in court on Friday to attend the hearing of her son Anas, who was arrested at Qalandiya roadblock on Thursday.
It said that the intelligence officer in court asked her to head to the interrogation section to clarify certain things, but she was then told that she was under arrest.
IOF soldiers detained Mohammed the eldest son of Ahmed Obaid a few days ago.
Iran cut enriched uranium stockpile by 80% – IAEA
RT | May 23, 2014
Iran is fulfilling its obligations under the nuclear deal with the six-world powers, having curbed its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium gas by more than 80 percent, a quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
Most of the 209 kilograms of Tehran’s enriched uranium were either converted or diluted to less proliferation-prone forms, the document said.
It leaves Iran with just 39 kilograms of the material, which is miles away from the 250 kilograms which, the experts say, are needed to create a single nuclear bomb.
The report also revealed that Iran managed to provide the IAEA with information proving that it tested the so-called Exploding Bridge Wire (EBW) detonators, commonly used in nuclear arms, for civilian purposes.
“The agency’s assessment of the information provided by Iran is ongoing,” the report by the UN’s nuclear watchdog is cited by Reuters.
The moves came under the interim deal that the Iranian authorities signed with the six world powers on January 20.
They agreed to halt some aspects of its controversial nuclear program in exchange for a limited relief of international sanctions against the country.
Under new president Hassan Rouhani, who was elected last year, Iran is making steps to counter Western concerns that it’s trying to develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons.
The IAEA report also outlined Tehran’s willingness to cooperate with the investigation into its nuclear related work.
“This is the first time that Iran has engaged in a technical exchange with the agency on this or any other of the outstanding issues related to possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program since 2008,” the document stressed.
However, the IAEA remains concerned that Iran may possibly have undeclared military activities in the nuclear sphere.
The agency continues to insist on the opportunity to visit Parchin military complex, located about 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran.
According to the report, satellite surveillance has revealed that there’s been construction underway at the facility for the last three months.
During talks in Tehran this week, Iran has promised the IAEA to comply with five new transparency measures concerning its nuclear program.
Despite having the same aim, Iran’s talks with the IAEA go on separately from its negotiations with the six world powers.
It’s planned that Tehran will reach a final deal with the UK, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the US by July 20.
However, there are doubts that the deadline would be met after the latest round of talks last week proved fruitless.
Ismael Hossein-zadeh’s “Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis”
The Consequences of Parasitical Capitalism
Book review by Isaac Christiansen | CounterPunch | May 23, 2014
Ismael Hossein-zadeh has done a masterful job in explaining the causes of the 2007-08 financial collapse and in identifying what must be done in response. While there is a consensus that the main source of the 2008 financial collapse was the accumulation of too much toxic debt, there is little agreement on the factors that precipitated the buildup of all that unsustainable debt. Focusing on superficial descriptions or symptomatic factors such as deregulation, securitization, greed, and the like, mainstream economics falls way short of providing a satisfactory explanation for the collapse, or the ensuing long recession. Now comes a newly published book, Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis: Parasitic Finance Capital, which skillfully fills this theoretical void as it provides an alternative explanation of the 2008 financial collapse, of the ensuing long recession and of the neo-liberal austerity responses to it. Instead of simply blaming the “irrational behavior” of market players, as neo-liberals do, or lax public supervision, as Keynesians do, the study focuses on the core dynamics of capitalist development that not only created the financial bubble, but also fostered the “irrational behavior” of market players and subverted public policy.
Hossein-zadeh sets out in Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis to first demonstrate the origins of the crisis and the subsequent transfer of “tens of trillions” of dollars from the vast majority of society into the coffers of the financial speculators through the imposition of austerity cuts on the many for the benefit of the few; and secondly to examine potential societal responses to avoid the repetition of such crises in the future. To do this, he begins by examining the two most prominent explanations for the crisis: the neoliberal explanation, which claimed it was due to irrational market actors and/or intrusive government policies that interfered with the self-correcting market mechanism; and the Keynesian explanation, which explained the crisis as the result of excessive deregulation, “inappropriate” public policy and supply side strategies. The author skillfully exposes the weaknesses of both and offers a compelling and well grounded alternative explanation, as indicated in the book’s title.
The book is well written and is easily understood by those who may not have an extensive background in economic theory. At the same time, it provides keen insights that are essential to understanding the crisis for those who may be more experienced in the field. It is structured with the first five chapters devoted to understanding crises within advanced capitalism, particularly the role of finance capital in provoking them, while the final three chapters are dedicated to examining solutions. Moreover, the work is an essential heuristic tool for any and all who wish to show how and why advanced capitalist economies tend towards crisis and the role of finance capital as a catalyst of crisis. A more thorough examination of the work’s primary contributions follows below.
In Chapter one Hossein-zadeh explains that neoliberal conceptualizations suffer from a misplaced religious-like faith in the market mechanism that led the leading neoliberal/neoclassical economists to remain oblivious to the impending crash. Due to neoliberals’ blind faith in the income-expenditure (or supply-demand) circular flow model, their economic theory is impervious to the fact that contradictions can arise within the real sector itself as well as to the reality that contradictions can also arise between the financial and the real sector. This led the leading neoliberal/neoclassical economists like Ben Bernanke and the IMF financial gurus to predict continual expansion up through the very eve of the crisis, and later to offer mistaken remedies such as quantitative easing and more funds to the financial sector. The impact of these measures is that instead of preventing a new bubble from forming they put us well on the way to creating another one.
In chapter two Mr. Hossein-zadeh delves into the weaknesses of Keynesian explanations of the crisis, arguing that while they are not wrong to signal deregulation as part of the problem leading to this crisis, they naively believe that capitalism will allow itself to be regulated without pressure from the people, thereby ignoring the power relationship between capitalism and the state. Not surprisingly, Keynesians tend to be oblivious as to why their more sane-sounding prescriptions for increasing public demand (through the promotion of New Deal type economic programs) and curtailing the aggressive and irresponsible behavior of financial players through more regulation have not been followed. While their policy suggestions may prove effective under certain circumstances, Keynesians fail to see or acknowledge that profit can also be increased through more intense exploitation of workers, that is, through supply-side measures. Furthermore, while the New Deal reforms were beneficial for the extrication of the U.S. economy from the grips of the Great Depression, these were followed much more as a response to working-class pressure from below then as a deliberated response to the writings of Keynes. In addition, the long economic expansion that followed was also due to the specific global economic situation of vast amounts of capital destroyed in Europe leaving the U.S. without much competition for its exports.
Much of the weakness of Keynesian economic theory, like all neoclassical economics, is their rejection of the category of value, and thus any real understanding as to the origin of social wealth and class dynamics. The general weaknesses of neoclassical economics are covered expertly in chapter 3. This chapter examines the weaknesses in the neoclassical understanding of the relationship between industrial and finance capital. The neoclassical position traditionally argues that the latter is limited by the real expansion of the former, and thus remains oblivious to the possibility of a crisis forming in the financial sector and spreading to the real ‘productive’ sector. To understand the real developments, Hossein-zadeh convincingly argues, we need to turn to Karl Marx’s Volume III and look at what he termed ‘fictitious capital’, when Marx examined how value tended to be siphoned from the sector in which it was produced to the unproductive sectors of the economy in pursuit of speculative investment.
Chapter 4 looks at the historical growth of finance capital (whose share of GDP in 2008 was more than double its share on the eve of the Great Depression in 1929), the growth of speculative activities (derivative markets, credit-default swaps) and the role of private control of the money supply. Each one of these phenomena is analyzed here in their social impacts and class/political dynamics. Here the author (p76) demonstrates that the speculative activity of finance capital accelerates “accumulation of fictitious capital through asset price inflation” (often with the help of public funds that simultaneously act as insurance protecting the speculators from the potential consequences of their socially deleterious behavior), creating a bubble that eventually bursts—with the public left paying the debt for the now-devalued assets.
This chapter also demonstrates that the bailouts for the speculators and austerity for the many, which further increased the already sharp economic inequality, were not an economic necessity but a reflection of the power of finance capital over the state and the monetary authority. To this end, Hossein-zadeh reflects on the immense tax-breaks for the wealthy, gargantuan military spending and lucrative contracts for weapons producers that created ‘public’ debt as a pretext to slash necessary social programs. The chapter demonstrates that we live under an economic system where losses are socialized and profits are privatized.
In Chapter 5, Hossein-zadeh reflects on Marx’s understanding of parasitic finance capital, its place within labor theory of value, and its contribution to a better understanding of the causes behind the present economic crisis. In Vol. III of Capital Marx outlined how the surplus value produced in the industrial and agricultural sectors ends up being divided between the merchant (or commercial capital), finance capital (money lending capital) and ground rent (Marx [1894] 1981). Hossein-zadeh points out that, according to Marx, fluctuations of finance capital could take place independent “of the movement of the actual capital it represents” (p86, quoted in Hossein-zadeh); and that as capitalism develops the movement of money (finance) capital becomes more and more independent of the movement of industrial capital. This is critical for his argument that crisis can hit the speculative financial sector at a moment when there is not a crisis within the real sector, but that through the tightening of credit and asset price deflation spread the crisis from the speculative to the productive sector.
The author further argues in this chapter that contemporary Marxists, unlike Hilferding and Lenin who expanded in the early 20th century on Marx’s work on finance capital, have largely abandoned systematic explorations into the workings of finance capital (generally viewing it as secondary to their conception of a Marxian theory of crisis), and focused primarily on the movements within the productive sector. It is not that Hossein-zadeh disagrees in principle with the contemporary Marxist scholars about the potential for crisis to arise within the circuit of productive capital; but that many of these Marxists have overlooked the fact that crisis can and does at times start within the financial sector and proceeds to spread to the real sector. Many contemporary Marxist theoreticians and economists seem to argue, in an inconsistent or self-contradicting fashion that “asset price inflation can boost demand and cause or magnify an expanding real cycle; but debt and/or asset price deflation cannot cause or aggravate a real-sector recession!” (p107).
In Chapter 6 the author explores the historical record of debt cancellations/write-downs, dating back to Bronze Age Mesopotamia (2400-1400 BCE) and running through the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Here he examines the evidence that suggests that not only were debt cancellation and land restitution/reform common practices in this epoch, but that they often led to economic renewal. While there are moral and ethical arguments that can easily be made in favor of the biblical Jubilee and debt cancellation in general, Hossein-zadeh goes beyond these points to argue that the historical record offers clear evidence that an economic recovery would not occur so long as the vast majority of the population is saddled with overwhelming debt and interest payments. The author further argues that the decline of these socially-beneficial practices coincided with the rise of private property and the growth of power of landowning and rentier classes, and that these classes exerted influence over the state/religious authorities to deemphasize these central aspects to the Old Testament’s socio-economic reforms.
In Chapter 7 the author makes the case for public banking. Here he underscores once again the pernicious role of private banking in advancing the interests of the wealthy few in general and finance capital in particular at the expense of the many. He argues that while private banks “create financial bubbles during expansionary cycles and credit crunch during contradictory ones”, public banking “can provide steady, reliable financial resources as dictated by a nation’s industrial and/or commercial needs”(p129). Crucial here is the superior economic record held by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries in weathering the 2008 financial collapse and the ensuing economic crisis. Contrary to a situation in which the state becomes beholden to creditors, when banks are nationalized the state has additional resources with which to engage in essential public projects that both serve a social purpose and stimulate demand. While acknowledging that public banking by itself is insufficient to prevent the recurrence of all economic crises, Hossein-zadeh successfully makes the case that this is a necessary first step to avert crises that originate within the financial sector.
In the final chapter, the author soundly argues that there are no shortcuts to superseding capitalism by solely nationalizing the banking system; and that we must move beyond capitalism itself, or else we would be subjected to the throes of its logic. Here he examines the role of labor as one of the key players in confronting capital. Sadly, as he points out in this chapter, many unions have become caught up in business unionism and have tragically become vehicles for transmitting the dictates of capital to the workers (as opposed to vice-versa!), and have been unable (or unwilling) to resist the generalized assault on labor in the form of layoffs, wage cuts and outsourcing.
A central explanation for the debilitation of unions offered here lies in capital’s global reach and the globalization of production. Capital has free global movement and is organized on an international level and thus is able to play off workers in various countries against each other in a race to the bottom in terms of worker safety, salaries, benefits, labor laws and environmental protections. Labor must therefore organize internationally so as to be able to effectively resist a globalized capitalist system. A key element of this strategy lies in resisting all forms of chauvinisms, and reactionary nationalisms that have at times infected the labor movement and can lead to what Edna Bonacich (1972) referred to as a split-labor market.
Dr. Hossein-zadeh in this chapter also looks at the limitations of the Occupy movement, arguing that while their heart was in the right place, Occupy activists had condemned themselves to be ineffective as a long-term force for change by refusing to adopt an organizational structure or outline specific demands. The author thus points us back to the critical role of labor to play in this regard, but that it is essential that they organize and coordinate globally, otherwise capital will be able to outmaneuver workers’ resistance and subject labor to its logic. In the end, Hossein-zadeh remains hopeful based on the seeds of international labor organizing that labor will be able to meet this challenge in the future and serve as a primary catalyst for meaningful socio-economic transformation. In summary, I recommend this book without reservation, as a critical component of the library of those who are not just concerned with understanding the dynamics of finance capital and its role in facilitating economic crisis, but to all those who are genuinely interested in bringing about a more socially just and equitable society.
Isaac Christiansen is a Ph.D Student in the Sociology Department at Iowa State University.
Works Cited
Bonacich, Edna. 1972. “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split-Labor Market” American Sociological Review, 37:5 547-559.
Marx Karl. [1894] 1981. Capital Vol. III Penguin Books in Association with New Left Review. London WI.
FBI threatens to go after Russian hackers
RT | May 23, 2014
On the heels of a high-profile indictment announced earlier this week by the United States Department of Justice against five Chinese military officers, sources say Russian hackers could be among the next individuals targeted by the DOJ.
The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy magazine and the Chicago Tribune all reported this week that officials close to the US government’s hunt for foreign hackers say Russians are on the radar of the Justice Department, and could be named in the next DOJ indictment.
All three outlets hesitated to name their sources, but the Journal reported that people familiar with the government’s investigations said alleged cybercriminals in Russia are likely to be charged soon.
“For several years, the Obama administration has put Chinese and Russian cyber spies and criminals at the top of its list of worst offenders in what officials describe as a relentless campaign targeting American businesses for the benefit of those countries’ own industries,” Shane Harris wrote for FP. “Estimates on the true cost of cyber-espionage range widely, but are generally believe by experts and officials to be in the tens of billions of dollars annually.”
As Harris reported, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that the FBI was aggressively pursuing further criminal investigations pertaining to foreign hacking cases, but fell short of announcing the filing of new charges. Now with Monday’s indictment out of the way and the US officially charging members of the Chinese military for the first time ever, however, multiple sources said that American authorities are gearing up to throw the book at Russian hackers.
Earlier this week, the Justice Dept. said that five Chinese individuals working within a highly-secretive cyber unit inside the People’s Liberation Army have stolen trade secrets and sensitive communications from six American entities, including major metal companies that compete with Chinese businesses and the US Steel Workers union.
“The range of trade secrets and other sensitive business information stolen in this case is significant and demands an aggressive response,” US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement on Monday.
“This administration will not tolerate actions by any nation that seeks to illegally sabotage American companies and undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market,” Holder added.
Nevertheless, the Chinese government fired back and accused the US of hypocrisy, and its Foreign Ministry demanded a withdrawal of the indictment and called the US “the biggest attacker of China’s cyberspace.” As RT reported earlier this week, leaked National Security Agency documents released by former US government contractor Edward Snowden have revealed that the US does, in fact, conduct economic cyberespionage in order to spy on competitors in Brazil, France, Mexico and, indeed, China. As with China, the Russian government has adamantly denied any involved in cyber spying, and claims to lack the same technical abilities as the NSA.
And although the Justice Dept. declined to name any other targets of investigation while touting their latest cyber indictment on Monday, reports for years have suggested that Russian hackers have targeted US businesses in a similar way to what China’s PLA Unit 61398 are accused of doing.
Most recently, American cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike reported in January that the Russian government spied on hundreds of US, European and Asian companies, which Reuters called the first time ever that Moscow has been linked to conduct economic espionage over the web.
“These attacks appear to have been motivated by the Russian government’s interest in helping its industry maintain competitiveness in key areas of national importance,” Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike’s chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, said to Reuters at the time.
“They are copying the Chinese play book,” he said. “Cyber espionage is very lucrative for economic benefit to a nation.”
In March, researchers in the US also traced a piece of malicious malware known as Turla back to Moscow.
“It is sophisticated malware that’s linked to other Russian exploits, uses encryption and targets western governments,” Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Reuters then. “It has Russian paw prints all over it.”
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Provoking a Path to Persia
The Saban Center’s prescient paper on war with Iran
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | October 20, 2011
In June 2009, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy published “Which Path to Persia?—Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran.” Writing in a tone strikingly reminiscent of the Project for a New American Century’s infamous pre-9/11 paper “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the six co-authors noted that, “It seems highly unlikely that the United States would mount an invasion without any provocation or other buildup.” For a think tank specifically established by media mogul Haim Saban to protect Israel, this could prove to be a formidable obstacle impeding their desired march—of U.S. troops—to Tehran.
“In fact, if the United States were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.S. domestic support, and/or provide a legal justification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely,” Saban’s think-tankers ruefully observed.
“With only one real exception, since the 1978 revolution, the Islamic Republic has never willingly provoked an American military response, although it certainly has taken actions that could have done so if Washington had been looking for a fight. Thus it is not impossible that Tehran might take some action that would justify an American invasion. And it is certainly the case that if Washington sought such a provocation, it could take actions that might make it more likely that Tehran would do so (although being too obvious about this could nullify the provocation). However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all.”
Seemingly undeterred by Iran’s frustrating unwillingness to provide the requisite provocation, the analysts continued to examine this option… continue
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