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Banking problems prevent Iran exports

Press TV – August 15, 2016

More indications emerge to show that banking problems remaining from the sanctions against Iran are still obstructing the country’s exports.

Fariborz Karimaei, the deputy head of the Association of Petrochemical Industry Corporation of Iran, was quoted by the media as saying that Iran’s petrochemical exports to Europe are facing problems as a result of sanctions-related banking issues that have not been fully settled.

Karimaei emphasized that the European banks are still failing to cooperate with the Iranian exporters of petrochemical products even eight months after the removal of the sanctions.

In January, a series of economic sanctions that had been imposed against Iran were removed after a deal that the country had last year reached with the P5+1 – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany – came into effect.

The sanctions restricted banking transactions with the country among other issues.

Iran has been persistently urging European countries to take the required measures to encourage their banks to facilitate transactions with Tehran now that the sanctions have been removed.

However, the country’s plea appears to have fallen on deaf ears so far.

Analysts have already emphasized that the banks remain wary of the impacts of the remaining American sanctions against Iran, specifically those that address banking transactions with the country.

Reports earlier said they want a promise that the US will not prosecute or punish them for transactions involving Iran — a step the US has so far been reluctant to take.

In May, US Secretary of State John Kerry told a meeting of top EU bankers that they will not be penalized for conducting or facilitating business with Iran.

However, European banks have already emphasized that Kerry’s assurances are not enough and a series of confusions that remain over transactions with Iran need to be cleared by Washington.

August 15, 2016 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Payback Doesn’t Pay Back: U.S.-Cuba Compensation Claims and the Difficulties of Negotiation

By Zachary Cohen and Patrick Denenea | Council on Hemispheric Affairs | August 12, 2016

Before 1959, three-fourths of Cuba’s arable land was owned by U.S. corporations and citizens.[1] The two nations were so tightly bound that Cuba’s economic policies were practically guided by U.S. interests alone. However, after Dictator Fulgencio Batista was deposed in the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Cuba’s economic relationship with the United States was shattered. As part of a process of nationalization, the new Cuban government seized land and factories owned by foreign companies and Cubans who fled to the United States, and in retaliation, the United States issued a strict embargo that continues to constrain Cuba’s economic potential today. Although diplomatic relations have gradually been re-established over the past several years through environmental agreements and the reopening of both embassies, a number of contentious economic grievances remind both countries of their Cold War past.[2]

The first round of talks were held in Havana, Cuba, on December 8, 2015, and while the initial meeting can be considered a positive diplomatic move, it was less of a negotiation than a preliminary discussion to establish the facts and specific demands. The second round, held on July 28-29 of this year, allowed for more substantive debate. The process of negotiations remains ongoing, and both countries seek to “resolve the claims as quickly as possible,” according to a U.S. State Department Official.[3]

Although concessions are not the most pressing issue on the table, the settlement of claims is necessary before full normalization of relations, due to the Helms-Burton Act. This 1996 law stipulates that “the satisfactory resolution of property claims…remains an essential condition for the full resumption of economic and diplomatic relations” between Cuba and the United States.[4] According to a Brookings report on the concessions, Helms-Burton “formally wrote into law the linkage between compensation and normalization of relations,” meaning that the United States sought to create a permanent strong-armed policy toward Cuba and legislatively cement the claims.[5] The law is thus indicative of a larger issue at hand; the United States has consistently undermined its own relationship with Cuba through counter-productive policies, which have had vast and long-lasting consequences.

The historical and political disputes that surround the issue of claims are so numerous that it is unlikely that substantial progress will be achieved anytime soon. Through an exploration of the nature of the demands and their historical roots in anti-communist ideology, it becomes evident that the United States is primarily responsible for the hostility that remains today.

Demands

Over 50 years have passed since the Cuban government under Fidel Castro nationalized all foreign-owned assets; nonetheless, hundreds of U.S. companies and individuals have not forgotten about their appropriated possessions and demand that they be compensated for their losses. These assets include personal bank accounts, oil refineries, cattle ranches, and sugar factories.[6]

In total, the assets being claimed by the United States amount to approximately $1.9 billion USD at their original value.[7] With a U.S. government-determined six percent simple interest added onto the concessions, this amount has accrued to over $8 billion USD.[8] In addition, outstanding judicial claims against the Cuban government levied by the United States add an additional $2.2 billion USD.[9] Cuba’s 2013 GDP was only $77.15 billion USD, which means that the country’s payment would amount to over thirteen percent of its GDP.[10]

Cuba’s counterclaim toward the United States is much broader and focuses on long-term problems rather than a specific event. The Cuban government is asking for $121 billion USD for economic damages, and $181 billion USD for human damages. The total amount, over $300 billion USD, drastically eclipses the United States’ claims of $10.2 billion USD. Though massive, the claims are a telling reflection of the historical damages caused by devastating U.S. policies. Economically, they address the long-term stagnation, isolation, and developmental damages that the country suffered at the hands of the embargo.[11] Additionally, Cuba seeks to hold the United States accountable for “acts of terrorism” committed in Cuba, including the Bay of Pigs incident and various covert CIA missions that killed thousands of Cuban nationals over the past fifty years.[12] In essence, Cuba is making a bold statement to the United States through their claim: if you seek to hold us accountable, we will do the same to you.

Negotiations

There are several critical issues impeding progress in U.S.-Cuba negotiations. First, the total claims presented by both sides are too high for a mutual settlement. The relative size of the U.S. demands, at 13 percent of Cuba’s annual GDP, means that Cuba is unlikely to be able to pay the full price. Similarly, from a pragmatic standpoint, it is hard to imagine that the United States has any incentive to pay Cuba even a single cent of a $300 billion USD request. Moreover, if either country refuses to negotiate on its demand, then the other will do the same; and an unsettled dispute will remain for both.

In theory, the purpose of the negotiations is to revise each side’s demands so that both countries reach a settlement. However, one key hindrance is that the judicial branches of the United States and Cuba have declared their own respective decisions to be legally valid. With both countries’ demands legitimized by the domestic legality of their claims, the demands are unlikely to be modified in the immediate future. On both sides, to lessen the amount demanded would mean depriving someone of compensation that they are legally owed.

An additional critical question arises when considering these claims: at what point does the past become the past? Is there a statute of limitations on these events that would render them as part of history, with less specific relevance to the present day? Given the continued level of contention regarding the specific effects of events from fifty years ago, it is likely that the issue of claims will not be forgotten until they are settled. Even as more and more of the claimants pass away, and the companies who lost property cease to exist, the bargaining chip of expropriated land remains vital for justifying the U.S. treatment of Cuba. Yet, just as actors within the United States are unlikely to forget their claims, the Cuban government will undoubtedly continue to press for justice.

Finally, straightforward negotiations are made improbable by the implications of reparation. If the United States ultimately compensates Cuba for human and economic damages, then it must also answer to legitimate claims from others across the globe who have been harmed at the hand of U.S. policies. For example, if the United States were to compensate Cuba for human damages, why not also provide reparation toward those who lost their homes during the Iraq War, who have suffered directly from U.S. actions as well? Therefore, the country is extremely unlikely to pay Cuba directly, as to avoid dealing with consequences of other historical wrongs. Through this notion of accountability, a double standard is exposed–while the United States is eager to continue pressing claims when its citizens are the ones who are damaged, Washington is quick to dismiss or deny reparations for anything it may have done wrong.

A Problem Entrenched by Ideology

While each roadblock in the negotiation is salient on its own, they can all be traced back to a broader source: the historical and ideological conflict which has defined the present relationship between the United States and Cuba.

The overall position of the United States can be largely characterized by ideological stubbornness, and is explained through concurrent historical narratives. During the process of nationalization in Cuba, the United States was not the only country whose citizens and corporations lost property. In fact, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Spain faced similar losses. Yet, these countries established claims agreements with Cuba between 1967 and 1973, and were able to put the issue behind them.[13] Reconciliation was incentivized by the prospects of increased trade in the future, and through their quick settlements, these governments were able to restore relatively positive diplomatic relations and beneficial trade relationships with Cuba.[14] Cuba’s trade with Spain and France drastically increased throughout the 1960s and 70s, and these countries have continually supported Cuba over the United States in regards to the embargo.[15]

Although the losses in assets for these nations were less sizeable than for the United States, the lesson of these narratives is clear. Cuba was more than willing to negotiate with other countries for lost property, and the final product reflects an overall beneficial outcome for all parties involved. In fact, the government’s intention for land reform was to create a more equitable Cuba and retain international relationships. In Cuba’s 1959 Agrarian Reform, enacted before the government began nationalizing land, Castro promised that Cuba would compensate the expropriated assets through Cuban bonds, a clear sign that his government sought revolutionary changes but still wished to remain part of the international community.[16] Though the government’s priorities shifted over the next few years, it remains true that Cuba did in fact make an effort to pay back the United States. However, the Eisenhower administration was too uncomfortable to accept the bonds as a secure method of payment.[17]

On October 19, 1960, as land reform in Cuba quickly proceeded, the United States government imposed the embargo and in essence declared that it would not support the Castro regime in any manner. The United States was so quick to reject Cuba’s proposal and fully embargo the country that it essentially extinguished the chance for an immediate resolution of the claims. With economic and diplomatic relations pushed aside because of ideological differences, the United States removed any capacity for a timely settlement to occur, even when Cuba would clearly have been a ready partner in negotiation.

Through its embargo, the United States entrenched the claims in a Cold War stalemate, ensuring that if the issue would ever be resolvable, it would be completely intertwined with grievances of Cuban economic and human suffering. If the United States had not placed the embargo and subsequently engaged in numerous retaliatory actions, Cuba would have far less to counterclaim–it is solely U.S. retribution that brought about such difficult negotiations today.

Conclusion

If it was Cuba who took the first step, it was the United States who began sprinting. If it was Cuba who first broke ground, it was the United States who dug the hole too deep to get out. The escalation of the claims conflict by the United States in 1960 has defined the tense relations more than Cuba’s initial land reform ever could have, and thus the various roadblocks obstructing a speedy negotiation can be attributed to past and present U.S. government policy.

However, the current talks nonetheless present an opportunity to redefine this relationship. It is a sign that both sides are finally willing to reflect on their interwoven histories. And at the very least, they’re talking, which is more than can be said for the past fifty years.

Original research on Latin America by COHA.

[1] Office of Global Analysis, FAS, USDA. “Cuba’s Food and Agriculture Situation Report, March 2008.” United States Department of Agriculture. Accessed August 1, 2016. https://www.ilfb.org/media/546435/fas_report_on_cuba.pdf

[2] US and Cuba to sign agreement on marine conservation and research.” The Guardian. Accessed August 12, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/18/us-cuba-thaw-environmental-accord-marine-conservation

[3] “Senior State Department Official on Cuba Claims Discussion.” U.S. Department of State. Accessed August 8, 2016. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/07/260666.htm

[4] U.S. Treasury Resource Center. “Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996.” Accessed August 12, 2016. https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/libertad.pdf

[5] Richard E. Feinberg. “Reconciling U.S. Property Claims in Cuba: Transforming Trauma into Opportunity.” Brookings. Accessed August 8, 2016. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Reconciling-US-Property-Claims-in-Cuba-Feinberg.pdf

[6] Leon Neyfakh. “Cuba, you owe us $7 billion.” The Boston Globe. Accessed July 29, 2016. https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/04/18/cuba-you-owe-billion/jHAufRfQJ9Bx24TuzQyBNO/story.html

[7] Senior State Department Official. “Senior State Department Official on Cuba Claims Discussion.” United States Department of State. Accessed August 3, 2016. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/07/260666.htm

[8] “Cuba, you owe us $7 billion.”

[9] Arshad Mohammed. “U.S., Cuba hold ‘substantive’ second round talks on claims.” Reuters. Accessed August 3, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba-idUSKCN1091ZV

[10] World Bank. Accessed August 8, 2016. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CU

[11] The US Embargo Against Cuba: Its Impact on Economic and Social Rights.” Amnesty International. Accessed August 8, 2016. http://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/amr250072009eng.pdf.

[12] Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Ismael Francisco, “Aberlardo Moreno sobre compensaciones Cuba-EEUU: Solo estamos conversando,” Cuba Debate, Accessed August 6, 2016. http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2016/08/01/abelardo-moreno-solo-estamos-conversando-sobre-las-compensaciones-mutuas-cuba-eeuu/#.V64sDJMrJp

[13] Michael W. Gordon. “The Settlement of Claims for Expropriated Foreign Private Property between Cuba and Foreign Nations Other than the United States.” Lawyer of the Americas 5, no. 3 (1973): 457-70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40175493?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[14] Ibid, pg 460.

[15]Ibid., Chritine L. Quickenden, “Helms-Burton and Canadian-American Relations at the Crossroads: The Need for an Effective, Bilateral Cuban Policy,” American University International Law Review, Vol. 12 no. 4, 1997, http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1398&context=auilr.

[16] “Cuba, you owe us $7 billion.”

[17] Ibid.

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August 14, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Washington considers sanctioning Moscow over DNC email leak – report

RT | August 12, 2016

US officials are considering new economic sanctions against Russia over the DNC email leak released by WikiLeaks, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources familiar with the situation.

Officials have not so far, however, reached common ground on how exactly to impose sanctions, the WSJ reports.

Adopting more anti-Russian economic sanctions would mean delivering public accusations against Moscow or exposing links of the alleged hackers to Russia.

The White House has so far not commented, although the FBI and intelligence agencies investigating the cyberattack have “signaled” that the attack was “almost certainly” carried out by “Russian-affiliated hackers,” according to the WSJ.

The breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, already compared to the Watergate scandal, is far from reaching its peak, as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has dropped a broad hint he has much more material to potentially publish.

Speaking in Washington DC on Thursday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said she does not know exactly how the notorious DNC leak was possible, but that there could be no mistake about its initiator.

“I know for sure it is the Russians,” Pelosi told reporters, adding “we are assessing the damage.”

“This is an electronic Watergate… The Russians broke in. Who did they give the information to? I don’t know. Who dumped it? I don’t know,” she said, as quoted by the WSJ.

The Democrats are now urging the Obama administration to take decisive action.

“When the administration believes it has sufficient evidence of attribution, it will make that attribution public as well as consider any other steps necessary,” said Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

During President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, relations between Moscow and Washington have dropped to lows similar to those seen in the years of the Cold War.

Washington has already imposed a wide range of sanctions against Russian politicians and state companies following the reunification of Crimea with Russia, and accuses Moscow of being involved in the civil war in Ukraine.

Moscow has consistently denied allegations about its possible role in the hacking of US Democratic Party emails published by WikiLeaks.

“We are again seeing these maniacal attempts to exploit the Russian theme in the US election campaign,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Last year, President Obama signed an executive order that facilitates imposing sanctions against any country endangering US national security through cyberattacks.

“Our tools now include an executive order authorizing sanctions against those that engage in significant malicious cyber activities, such as harming our nation’s critical infrastructure – our transportation systems or power grid,” White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco said last month.

“Nations like Russia and China are growing more assertive and sophisticated in their cyber operations,” the US counterterrorism adviser claimed, before mentioning cyber threats from “non-state actors,” including Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

There is the view in the US that the DNC breach is a tit-for-tat payback operation.

“They believe we are trying to influence political developments in Russia, trying to effect change, and so their natural response is to retaliate and do unto us as they think we’ve done unto them,” the director of US national intelligence, James Clapper, said last month, without making specific statements about the alleged Russian role in the DNC breach.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton seems to have no doubts whatsoever about the Russian involvement in the leaks.

“Russian intelligence services, which are part of the Russian government, which is under the firm control of Vladimir Putin, hacked into the DNC and we know that they arranged for a lot of those emails to be released…,” Clinton told Fox News earlier this week.

Read more:

Kremlin: Idea of Russia’s involvement in US Democratic Party mail hack is ‘absurd’

August 12, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Rockefeller, Ford Foundations Behind World Social Forum (WSF). The Corporate Funding of Social Activism

By Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research | August 10, 2016

This year the World Social Forum is being held in Montreal, regrouping committed social activists, anti-war collectives and  prominent intellectuals.

Most of the participants are unaware that the WSF is funded by corporate foundations including Ford, Rockefeller, Tides, et al.  Much of this funding is channelled to the WSF organizers under the helm of the WSF International Council.

This is an issue which has been raised on numerous occasions with progressive organizations and WSF activists: you cannot effectively confront neoliberalism and the New World Order elites  and expect them to finance your activities.

The World Social Forum operating under the banner of  “Another World is Possible” was founded in 2001 at its inaugural venue of Porto Alegre. Brazil.

From the outset in 2001, the WSF has been upheld as an international umbrella representing grassroots people’s organizations, committed to reversing the tide of globalization. Its stated intent is to challenge corporate capitalism and its dominant neoliberal economic agenda.

The World Social Forum at its inaugural meeting defined itself as a counter-offensive to the World Economic Forum (WEF) of business leaders and politicians which meets annually in Davos, Switzerland. The 2001 Porto Alegre WSF was held simultaneously with that of the WEF in Davos.

While  there have been many important accomplishments of the WSF, largely as a result of the commitment of grassroots activists, the core leadership of WSF  –rather than effectively confronting the New World Order elites– has  (often unwittingly) have served their corporate interests. In this process, co-optation has been achieved through the corporate funding of the WSF.

Among the two major accomplishments are the participation of the WSF in the February 2003 Worldwide protest against the US led war on Iraq. The WSF has also supported progressive movements and governments, particularly in Latin America.

In contrast, at the Tunis 2013 WSF, the final declaration paid lip service to to the US sponsored “Syrian opposition”.  Similarly the Al Qaeda affiliated Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which allegedly led the “Arab Spring” against the government of Muammar Gaddafi was tacitly upheld as a revolutionary force. Several workshops on  Libya applauded Western military intervention. A session entitled “Libya’s transition to democracy” focused on “whether Libya was better off without Muammar Gaddafi.”

Funding dissent

From the outset in 2001, the World Social Forum was funded by governments and corporate foundations, including the Ford Foundation which has ties to US intelligence.

The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Ford, Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Wall Street and Big Oil), etc. with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle co-optation of  a small number of key individuals within “progressive organizations”, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement. Many leaders of these organizations have in a sense betrayed their grassroots.

The corporations are funding dissent with a view to controlling dissent.

The Ford Foundation (which has links to the CIA) provided funding under its “Strengthening Global Civil Society” program during the first three years of the WSF.

When the WSF was held in Mumbai in 2004, the Indian WSF host committee declined support from the Ford Foundation. This in itself did not modify the WSF’s relationship to the donors. While the Ford Foundation formally withdrew, other foundations positioned themselves.

The WSF (among several sources of funding is supported by a consortium of corporate foundations under the advisory umbrella of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE). 

This organization, which previously went under the name of The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), has played a central role in the funding of successive WSF venues. From the outset in 2001, it had an observer status on the WSF International Council.  

In 2013, the Rockefeller Brothers representative Tom Kruse co-chaired EDGE’s program committee. At the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kruse was responsible for “Global Governance” under the “Democratic Practice” program. Rockefeller Brothers grants to NGOs are approved under the “Strengthening Democracy in Global Governance” program, which is broadly similar to that put forth by the US State Department.

A representative of the Open Society Initiative for Europe currently sits on EDGE’s Board of directors. The Wallace Global Fund is also on its Board of Directors. The Wallace Global Fund is specialized in providing support to “mainstream” NGOs and “alternative media”, including Amnesty International, Democracy Now (which supports Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president of the US).

Several members of the EDGE BoD, however, are from non-corporative and family foundations with a social mandate. (see below).

In one of its key documents (2012), entitled Funders Network Alliance In Support of Grassroots Organizing and Movement-Building  (link no longer available) EDGE acknowledged its support of social movements which challenge “neoliberal market fundamentalism.” including the World Social Forum, established in 2001:

“From the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (1994) to the Battle in Seattle (1999) to the creation of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001), the TINA years of Reagan and Thatcher (There Is No Alternative) have been replaced with the growing conviction that “another world is possible.” Counter-summits, global campaigns and social forums have been crucial spaces to articulate local struggles, share experiences and analyses, develop expertise, and build concrete forms of international solidarity among progressive movements for social, economic and ecological justice.”

But at the same time, there is an obvious contradiction: another world is not possible when the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by an alliance of corporate donors firmly committed to neoliberalism and the US-NATO military agenda.

The following is the EDGE Montreal WSF Communique. The donors not only fund the activities, they also influence the structure of the WSF venue, which was determined in Puerto Alegre in 2001, namely the decentralized and dispersed mosaic of “do it yourself” workshops.

With regard to the Montreal WSF, the Consortium of Donors (EDGE) intent is:

“… to develop an intersectional space for funders and various movement partners – organizers thought leaders and practitioners – to build alignment by cultivating a shared understanding of the visions, values, principles and pathways of a “just transition.”  (See http://edgefunders.org/wsf-activities/)

“Just Transition” implies that social activism has to conform to a “shared vision” with the corporate foundations, i.e. nothing which in a meaningful way might upset the elite structures of global capitalism.

From the standpoint of the corporate donors “investing in the WSF” constitutes a profitable (tax deductible) undertaking. It ensures that activism remains within the confines of  ”constructive dialogue” and “critique” rather than confrontation. Any deviation immediately results in the curtailment of donor funding:

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))

The limits of social dissent are thereby determined by the “governance structure” of  the WSF, which was tacitly agreed upon with the funding agencies at the outset in 2001.

“No Leaders”

The WSF has no leaders. All the events are “self-organized”. The structure of debate and activism is part of an an “open space” (See  Francine Mestrum, The World Social Forum and its governance: a multi-headed monster, CADTM, 27 April 2013, http://cadtm.org/The-World-Social-Forum-and-its ).

This compartmentalized structure is an obstacle to the development of a meaningful and articulate mass movement.

How best to control grassroots dissent against global capitalism?

Make sure that their leaders can be easily co-opted and that the rank and file will not develop “forms of international solidarity among progressive movements” (to use EDGE’s own words), which in any meaningful way might undermine the interests of corporate capital.

The mosaic of separate WSF workshops, the relative absence of plenary sessions, the creation of divisions within and between social movements, not to mention the absence of a cohesive and unified platform against the Wall Street corporate elites, against the fake US sponsored “global war on terrorism”, which has been used to justify and US-NATO’s  ‘humanitarian’ R2P interventions (Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, etc).

The corporate agenda is to “manufacture dissent”.“The limits of dissent” are established by the foundations and governments which ultimately finance this multimillion dollar venue. The financing is twofold:

1. Core financing of the WSF Secretariat and the Costs of the WSF venue.

2. Many of the constituent NGOs which participate in the venue are recipients of donor and/or government support.

3. The WSF venue in Montreal also receives funding from the Government of Canada as well as from the Quebec provincial government.

What ultimately prevails is a ritual of dissent which does not threaten the New World Order. Those who attend the WSF from the grassroots are often misled by their leaders. Activists who do not share the WSF consensus will ultimately be excluded:

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

“Another World is Possible” is nonetheless an important concept, which characterizes the struggle of the peoples movements against global capitalism as well as the commitment of thousands of committed activists who are currently participated in the Montreal 2016 WSF.

Activism is being manipulated:  ”Another World is Possible”  cannot, however, be achieved under the auspices of the WSF which from the outset was funded by global capitalism and organized in close liaison with its corporate and government donors.

The important question for activists in Montreal:

Is it possible to build “an Alternative” to global capitalism, which challenges the hegemony of the Rockefellers et al and then asks the Rockefellers et al to foot the bill?  

We call upon participants of the Montreal World Social Forum (WSF) to raise and debate these issues: the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by corporate foundations (and governments) which are firmly committed not only to the tenets of neoliberalism but also to the US-NATO led military agenda.

Why would they fund organizations which are actively campaigning against war and globalization? The answer is obvious. …

Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2016

August 11, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama versus Trump, Putin and Erdogan: Can Coups Defeat Elected Governments?

By James Petras | Dissident Voice | August 9, 2016

Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested.

James Clapper, US Director of Intelligence on Turkish Coup, Financial Times, 8/3/16, p. 4

Washington has organized a systematic, global, no holds barred campaign to oust Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump from the electoral process. The virulent anti-Trump animus, the methods, goals and mass media resemble authoritarian regimes preparing to overthrow political adversaries.

Comparable propaganda efforts led to political coups in Chile in 1973, Brazil 1964, and Venezuela in 2002. The anti-Trump forces include both political parties, a Supreme Court judge, Wall Street bankers, journalists and editorialists of all the major media outlets and the leading military and intelligence spokespeople.

Washington’s forcible and illegal ouster of Trump is part and parcel of a world-wide campaign to overthrow leaders and regimes which raise questions about aspects of the imperial policies of the US and EU.

We will proceed to analyze the politics of the anti-Trump elite, the points of confrontation and propaganda, as a prelude to the drive to oust opposition in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The Anti-Trump Coup

Never in the history of the United States, has a President and Supreme Court Judge openly advocated the overthrow of a Presidential candidate. Never has the entire mass media engaged in a round-the-clock one-sided, propaganda war to discredit a Presidential candidate by systematically ignoring or distorting the central socio-economic issues of their opposition.

The call for the ouster of a freely elected candidate is nothing more or less than a coup d’état.

Leading television networks and columnists demand that the elections be annulled, following the lead of the President and prominent Republican and Democratic Congressional and Party leaders.

In other words, the political elite openly rejects democratic electoral processes in favor of authoritarian manipulation and deception. The authoritarian elite relies on magnifying tertiary, questionable personal judgement calls to mobilize coup backers.

They systematically avoid the core economic and political issues which candidate Trump has raised – and attracted mass support – which challenge fundamental policies backed by the two Party elites.

The Roots of the Anti-Trump Coup

Trump has raised several key issues which challenge the Democratic and Republican elite.

Trump has drawn mass support and won elections and public opinion polls by:

(1) rejecting the free trade agreements which has led major multinationals to relocate abroad and disinvest in well-paying industrial jobs in the US.

(2) calling for large scale public investment projects to rebuild the US industrial economy, challenging the primacy of financial capital.

(3) opposing the revival of a Cold War with Russia and China and promoting greater economic co-operation and negotiations.

(4) rejecting US support for NATO’s military build-up in Europe and intervention in Syria, North Africa and Afghanistan.

(5) questioning the importation of immigrant labor which lowers job opportunities and wages for local citizens.

The anti-Trump elite systematically avoid debating these issues; instead they distort the substance of the policies.

Instead of discussing the job benefits which will result from ending sanctions with Russia, the coupsters screech that ‘Trump supports Putin, the terrorist’.

Instead of discussing the need to redirect investment inward to create US jobs, the anti-Trump junta mouth clichés that claim his critique of globalization would ‘undermine’ the US economy.

To denigrate Trump, the Clinton/Obama junta resorts to political scandals to cover-up mass political crimes. To distract public attention, Clinton-Obama falsely claim that Trump is a ‘racist’, backed by David Duke, a racist advocate of “Islamophobia”. The anti-Trump junta promoted the US-Pakistani parents of a military war casualty as victims of Trump’s slanders even as they rooted for Hillary Clinton, promotor of wars against Muslim countries and author of military policies that sent thousands of US soldiers to their grave.

Obama and Clinton are the imperial racists who bombed Libya and Somalia and killed, wounded, and displaced over 2 million sub-Saharan Black-Africans.

Obama and Clinton are the Islamaphobes who bombed and killed and evicted five million Muslims in Syria and one million Muslims in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

In other words, Trump’s mistaken policy to restrict Muslim immigration is a reaction to the hatred and hostility engendered by the Obama-Clinton million-person Muslim genocide.

Trump’s “America First” policy is a rejection of overseas imperial wars – seven wars under Obama-Clinton. Their militarist policies have inflated budget deficits and degraded US living standards.

Trump’s criticism of capital and job flight has threatened Wall Street’s billion-dollar profiteering – the most important reason behind the bi-partisan junta’s effort to oust Trump and the working class’s support for Trump.

By not following the bi-partisan Wall Street, war agenda, Trump has outlined another business agenda which is incompatible with the current structure of capitalism. In other words, the US authoritarian elite does not tolerate the democratic rules of the game even when the opposition accepts the capitalist system.

Likewise, Washington’s quest for ‘mono-power’ extends across the globe. Capitalist governments which decide to pursue independent foreign policies are targeted for coups.

Obama-Clinton’s Junta Runs Amok

Washington’s proposed coup against Trump follows similar policies directed against political leaders in Russia, Turkey, China, Venezuela, Brazil, and Syria.

Russian President Putin has been demonized by the US propaganda media on an hourly basis for the better part of a decade. The US has backed oligarchs and promoted economic sanctions; financed a coup in the Ukraine; established nuclear missiles on Russia’s frontier; and launched an arms race to undermine President Putin’s economic policies in order to provoke a coup.

The US backed its proxy Gulenist ‘invisible government’ in its failed coup to oust President Erdogan, for failing to totally embrace the US Middle East agenda.

Likewise, Obama-Clinton have backed successful coups in Latin America. Coups were orchestrated in Honduras, Paraguay, and more recently in Brazil to undermine independent Presidents and to secure satellite neo-liberal regimes. Washington presses forward to forcibly oust the national-populist government of President Maduro in Venezuela.

Washington has escalated efforts to erode, undermine and overthrow the government of China’s President Xi-Jinping through several combined strategies. A military build-up of an air and sea armada in the South China Sea and military bases in Japan, Australia, and the Philippines; separatist agitation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and among the Uyghurs; a US-Latin American-Asia free trade agreement which excludes China.

Conclusion

Washington’s strategy of illegal, violent coups to retain the delusion of empire stretches across the globe, ranging from Trump in the US to Putin in Russia, from Erdogan in Turkey to Maduro in Venezuela to Xi Jinping in China.

The conflict is between US-EU imperialism backed by their local clients against endogenous regimes rooted in nationalist alliances.

The struggle is ongoing and sustained and threatens to undermine the political and social fabric of the US and the European Union.

The top priority for the US Empire is to undermine and destroy Trump by any means necessary. Trump already has raised the question of ‘rigged elections’. But each elite media attack of Trump seems to add to and strengthen his mass support and polarize the electorate.

As the elections approach, will the elite confine themselves to verbal hysteria or will they turn from verbal assassinations to the ‘other kind’?

Obama’s global coup strategy shows mixed results: they succeeded in Brazil but were defeated in Turkey; they seized power in the Ukraine but were defeated in Russia; they gained propaganda allies in Hong Kong and Taiwan but suffered severe strategic economic defeats in the region as China’s Asian trade policies advanced.

As the US elections approach, and Obama’s pursuit of his imperial legacy collapses, we can expect greater deception and manipulation and perhaps even frequent resort to elite-designed ‘terrorist’ assassinations.

August 10, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Tehran Versus Washington: From Defensive to Offensive

By Valentin KATASONOV | Strategic Culture Foundation | 07.08.2016

Following the Iran nuclear deal, Washington announced it would begin lifting economic sanctions against Tehran. Iranian banks were allowed to reconnect to the SWIFT communications network, which handles international payment transactions, the ban on Iranian oil exports was lifted, and Washington finally decided to unfreeze Iran’s financial assets held abroad (the assets were seized in 2012). No-one really knows the volume and structure of these assets. Some Iranian officials have put the total amount at $130 billion, while the Institute of International Finance in Washington has estimated it at $100 billion.

The foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank, as well as the National Development Fund of Iran, account for a significant proportion of these assets. In January 2015, US Secretary of State John Kerry declared that $55 billion in frozen assets could be released to Iran. The Central Bank of Iran is using different figures, however. According to the Central Bank’s governor,Valiollah Seif, the amount in question is $32.6 billion. Either way, the amounts are considerable.

Anticipating that its foreign financial assets would be seized back in the 2000s, Iran organised for them to be moved to safer havens. From the point of view of Iranian experts, these were banks outside the jurisdiction of the US and Western Europe. Iran’s assets were withdrawn from Western banks and placed in banks in China, Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Taiwan. The Iranian experts miscalculated, however. Washington was able to get at Iran’s money even there, a fact that should also be borne in mind by Russia, against which the West can still use weapons like freezing its foreign exchange reserves.

The confiscation of Iran’s foreign exchange reserves

In April, Tehran’s joy at the unfreezing of its foreign exchange reserves proved to be short-lived. The US Supreme Court refused to return $2 billion in frozen assets to the Central Bank of Iran and ruled that the money should be sent to the families of Americans killed in terrorist attacks for which Iran is allegedly responsible. This refers to the 1983 terrorist attack in Beirut, in which 241 American soldiers were killed. The US Supreme Court found Iran’s ‘fingerprint’ in the attack that took place 33 years ago. The claim is far-fetched and has been refuted many times by both Iranian and Western experts (in 2001, Caspar Weinberger, who was the US Secretary of Defense at the time of the tragedy in Lebanon, acknowledged that there has never been any reliable information regarding those behind the attack in Beirut).

Appetite comes with eating, and the US authorities that confiscated $2 billion of Iran’s reserves also prepared another decision. The US court found Iran’s fingerprint in the events of 11 September 2001 and ordered Tehran to pay $7.5 billion in compensation to the families of those Americans killed in the attack (based on $2 million per victim). In addition, Tehran was ordered to pay $3 billion in compensation to those insurance companies that covered damages from the 2001 terrorist attack. There is no real evidence to support the claim that Iranian authorities were involved in the preparation and carrying out of the terrorist attack. Tehran is not going to comply with the US court’s decision, so the US authorities are preparing a resolution on yet another confiscation of Iran’s foreign exchange reserves to the tune of $10.5 billion.

The second target – Saudi Arabia

There is every likelihood that Iran is just the beginning, that Uncle Sam is practising on Iran. And Uncle Sam prefers the term reparations to confiscations. According to the US, it is about compensating for damages incurred by America and its citizens during a variety of military and terrorist attacks. The next victim of these reparations/confiscations is Saudi Arabia.

A bill entitled “Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism” is currently being prepared in the US Congress that will allow the families of 9/11 victims to sue those states involved in the 2001 terrorist attack. Although the document does not mention any states, everyone knows that the bill is directed specifically at Saudi Arabia. In 2014, Saudi Arabia’s international reserves amounted to almost $750 billion. This dwindled following the collapse in oil prices, but the country’s reserves still total just short of $600 billion today. That’s some tasty morsel for Uncle Sam!

At present, relations between Washington and Riyadh are complicated and the reparations/confiscations scenario is highly likely. Riyadh has already stated that it may withdraw its foreign exchange reserves, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, from the US. This raises at least two issues, however. Firstly, Saudi Arabia’s foreign exchange reserves should have been withdrawn earlier when relations between the two countries were still amicable. Now, Washington could block the large-scale withdrawal of reserves and assets. Secondly, even if Riyadh had withdrawn its reserves and assets from the US, there is still the issue of where they could be safely deposited. Iran’s unfortunate experience shows that Uncle Sam’s hand can not only reach banks in Europe, but also in Japan and South Korea, China and Hong Kong, and Turkey and Taiwan.

With regard to Chinese banks, they could not have been considered a reliable refuge for Saudi Arabia’s assets anyway, at the very least because the US Congress has started discussing the possibility of introducing economic sanctions against China. The time has come for Beijing to ponder scenarios like the possible freezing of its gigantic foreign exchange reserves. China is in an extremely vulnerable position, since its foreign exchange reserves are the largest in the world: as of 1 May 2016, they stood at $3.2 trillion. In addition, China has more than $1.24 trillion in US Treasury securities (plus its foreign exchange reserves deposited in US banks). To reduce its vulnerability, China is increasing the share of gold in its reserves, since this precious metal is immune to a variety of sanctions. Saudi Arabia cannot exchange its foreign exchange reserves for gold at the same rate as China and Russia, however, because, unlike these two countries, it is not a gold-producing country, and buying large amounts of gold on the global market is problematic (demand far exceeds supply).

Tehran regards Washington’s actions as “outright theft”

At the end of April 2016, the Iranian Foreign Ministry protested to Washington regarding the confiscation of $2 billion of Iran’s foreign exchange reserves. The Iranian media has referred to Washington’s actions as “outright theft”, and Tehran has decided to move from the defensive to the offensive. In May, the Iranian Majlis approved a bill calling on the government to sue the US and demand compensation for damages incurred by Iran as a result of US actions since 1953. The history of the subversive activities against Iran begins with the overthrow of the legitimate government on 19 August 1953 organised by US and UK intelligence agencies. Further down the list is the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq (1980-1988) instigated by Washington. The Majlis is demanding that compensation be paid to families for the deaths of 223,000 Iranians, as well as to the 600,000 veterans of the war with Iraq, and has invited the government to estimate the amount of the claim. Reparations payments for losses incurred as a result of the 37 years of economic sanctions introduced by Washington in 1979 occupy a special place in the statement of claim to the US.

On the monetary evaluation of American civilisation

There is a short epilogue to this story. In May 2016, the US president completed a tour around the countries of Asia. In several of these, the US has committed crimes against humanity, inflicting colossal material and moral damage on the peoples of these countries. This refers, first and foremost, to Japan. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 fit completely with the modern definition of a ‘terrorist act’. Experts estimate that America’s atomic bombs claimed the lives of 300,000 people. There were also the genetic effects of the atomic bombs. Washington has never apologised for these barbaric acts, and Japan has never raised the issue of compensation for the damage caused. Let us suppose, however, that the compensation for each Japanese civilian killed would be equal to the compensation calculated by the US for the 1983 terrorist attack in Lebanon ($2 million per person). In this case, Japan could demand reparation payments from the US totalling $600 billion. And that is not counting the genetic damage currently affecting around a quarter of the Japanese population or the material damage caused by the destruction of buildings and structures in the atomic blast zones.

Barack Obama also visited Vietnam. Like Japan, Hanoi remained silent and did not present the US president with reparation claims relating to US aggression in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet from the use of toxic substances alone, at least five million Vietnamese citizens have developed diseases and genetic abnormalities. Incidentally, US soldiers were also affected by these chemicals, but they ultimately managed to get some compensation from their government. Based on the amount of compensation given to these US soldiers, compensation for damages caused to the people of Vietnam would run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

With its reparation claims against the US, Iran will hopefully create a much-needed precedent that Japan, Vietnam, and other countries where America has enforced its democracy will take advantage of in the future.

August 7, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Israel pops up in Gulf riding Arab coattails

By M K Bhadrakumar – Indian Punchline – August 7, 2016

The reported statement by former Israeli minister Diaspora Affairs Rabbi Michael Melchior that Saudi Arabia will open its doors to Israeli visitors “much sooner than you dream about” will not come as surprise. To be sure, a critical mass is developing in the secretive Saudi-Israeli intercourse.

The Saudi regime has been chary about links with Israel for fear of annoying the ‘Arab Street’, whereas, Israel has been all along eager to flaunt the breach in the Berlin Wall of Arab-Israeli conflict. But Saudis seem to estimate that the time has come to be open about the relationship.

The point is, if the raison d’etre of the dalliance is the ‘containment’ of Iran, it is resource-sharing. An open relationship is needed to optimally develop security and military cooperation. The Custodian of Holy Places seems to think the Muslim world will learn to live with his country’s strategic cooperation with Israel.

Well, the Palestine issue no longer poses hurdles, either. Arab Spring, conflicts in Syria and Iraq, military coup in Egypt, Saudi-Iranian rivalry, breakdown in Iran’s ties with Hamas, Islamic State – all these  have relegated the Palestine issue to the backburner. Besides, Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas is on a tight American and Saudi leash. Abbas even received in Ramallah recently a Saudi delegation led by former general Anwar Majed Eshki who visited Jerusalem and met senior Israeli officials, including the head of the foreign ministry Dore Gold.

Again, Saudi Arabia’s keen interest in taking possession of two Red Sea islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba – Tiran and Sanafir – needs to be understood as a move to be Israel’s ‘neighbor’. Sanafir and Tiran sit at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, on a strategically important stretch of water called the Strait of Tiran, used by Israel to access Red Sea. King Salman personally camped in Cairo in April to persuade Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to transfer the two islands in lieu of a seductive multi-billion dollar offer to Sisi.

Indeed, both Saudi Arabia and Israel are making haste to position themselves for a new phase of the Middle East’s politics in the post-Barack Obama era. They expect Hillary Clinton to pick up the threads where George W. Bush left them —  a muscular regional policy involving switch back to containment of Iran and resuscitation of the pivotal relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel is willing to reconcile with the Iran nuclear deal. They are doing everything possible, no matter what it takes, to see that the deal gets derailed. On Saturday, Israeli Defence Ministry issued a harshly-worded statement slamming Obama and comparing the Iran deal with the 1938 Munich agreement to appease Hitler. (Jerusalem Post )

Equally, Saudis and Israelis have convergent interests in regard to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq — supporting extremist Sunni groups, promoting the Kurdistan project, creation of ‘spheres of influence’ on Syrian and Iraqi territory, and ultimately, entrapping Iran in a quagmire that will exhaust the regime.

The Saudi-Israeli strategic regional realignment is something that Washington historically encouraged. It is just the underpinning needed for creating a regional security architecture supported by the NATO’s network of partnerships with the GCC states under the canopy of a US missile shield.

Alas, Turkey too could have been a key partner in this enterprise, but for the failure of the July 15 coup. Israel looked distressed when it transpired that the coup failed. As for Saudi Arabia, it probably played a role in the failed coup. (Sputnik )

Without doubt, it is against a complex backdrop that the recent reports regarding Israel and Pakistan taking part in a major air exercise hosted by the US also needs to be viewed. Neither Islamabad nor Tel Avi has denied the reports. Of course, the US always encouraged a Pak-Israeli proximity. Now, the big question is: With Saudi Arabia establishing ties with Israel, can Pakistan be far behind? (Times of Israel )

From the Israeli, Saudi and American perspective, it is of utmost importance that Pakistan aligns with Saudi Arabia instead of remaining neutral in regard of Iran’s rise. Pakistan’s role is crucial to any major plans of destabilization of Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia pretended until recently that they have a special thing going with Moscow, too, with a view to create ‘strategic ambiguity’. Moscow played along, while making a strategic decision that Iran is its ‘natural ally’ in the Middle East. This is perfectly understandable, because in the ultimate analysis, Israel and Saudi Arabia are bit players only, while Iran (or Turkey for that matter) is an authentic regional power credited with a world view.

It is possible to see the Russia-Azerbaijan-Iran trilateral summit in Baku on Monday as a strategic counter-move by Moscow and Tehran.

The proposed North-South Transport Corridor is  admittedly an old idea with a pronounced economic dimension, but in the present context, an access route for Russia to the Persian Gulf and Middle East via Iran’s territory becomes a geopolitical event of far-reaching significance in the regional alignment that is under way. (See my blog China’s One Belt One Road isn’t only show in town.)

August 7, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

But, Mr. Putin, You Just Don’t Understand

By David Swanson | Let’s Try Democracy | August 1, 2016

Once in a while one of the videos somebody emails me a link to turns out to be well worth watching. Such is this one. In it a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union tries to explain to Vladimir Putin why new U.S. missile bases near the border of Russia should not be understood as threatening. He explains that the motivation in Washington, D.C., is not to threaten Russia but to create jobs. Putin responds that, in that case, the United States could have created jobs in peaceful industries rather than in war.

Putin may or may not be familiar with U.S. economic studies finding that, in fact, the same investment in peaceful industries would create more jobs than does military spending. But he is almost certainly aware that, in U.S. politics, elected officials have, for the better part of a century, only been willing to invest heavily in military jobs and no others. Still, Putin, who may also be familiar with how routine it has become for Congress members to talk about the military as a jobs program, appears in the video a bit surprised that someone would offer that excuse to a foreign government fixed in U.S. sights.

Timothy Skeers who sent me the video link commented: “Maybe Khrushchev should have just told Kennedy he was just trying to create jobs for Soviet citizens when he put those missiles in Cuba.” Imagining how that would have played out may help people in the United States to grasp how their elected officials sound to the rest of the world.

That one main motivation for U.S. military expansion in Eastern Europe is “jobs,” or rather, profits, is almost openly admitted by the Pentagon. In May the Politico newspaper reported on Pentagon testimony in Congress to the effect that Russia had a superior and threatening military, but followed that with this: “‘This is the “Chicken-Little, sky-is-falling” set in the Army,’ the senior Pentagon officer said. ‘These guys want us to believe the Russians are 10 feet tall. There’s a simpler explanation: The Army is looking for a purpose, and a bigger chunk of the budget. And the best way to get that is to paint the Russians as being able to land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. What a crock.”

Politico then cited a less-than-credible “study” of Russian military superiority and aggression and added:

“While the reporting about the Army study made headlines in the major media, a large number in the military’s influential retired community, including former senior Army officers, rolled their eyes. ‘That’s news to me,’ one of these highly respected officers told me. ‘Swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles? Surprisingly lethal tanks? How come this is the first we’ve heard of it?'”

It’s always the retired officials speaking truth to corruption, inlcuding retired Ambassador Jack Matlock in the video. Money and bureaucracy are euphemized as “jobs,” and their influence is real but still explains nothing. You can have money and bureaucracy promote peaceful industries. The choice to promote war is not a rational one. In fact, it is well described by a U.S. writer in the New York Times projecting U.S. attitudes onto Russia and Putin:

“The strategic purpose of his wars is war itself. This is true in Ukraine, where territory was a mere pretext, and this is true of Syria, where protecting Mr. Assad and fighting ISIS are pretexts too. Both conflicts are wars with no end in sight because, in Mr. Putin’s view, only at war can Russia feel at peace.”

This was, in fact, how the New York Times reported last October on the event from which the video linked above is taken. (More here.) I condemn the Russian bombing of Syria all the time, including on Russian media on almost a weekly basis, but if there is a nation that is always at war it is the United States, which backed a right-wing anti-Russia coup in Ukraine and now refers to the Russian response as irrational war-making.

The wisdom of the New York Times writer, like the wisdom of Nuremberg, is selectively applied in a hostile manner, but still wise. The purpose of war is indeed war itself. The justifications are always pretexts.

August 2, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Struggling U.S. Gives Israel Largest Aid Package Ever

teleSUR – August 1, 2016

With more unemployed people than at any time in U.S. history, President Obama next week is scheduled to sign the most lavish foreign aid package in the country’s history – $3.1 billion in military assistance to Israel – raising an urgent question: can the U.S. afford it?

The United States already transfers $3.1 billion in taxpayer money to Israel every year, far more than any other country, but the deal that will be signed into law next week will guarantee foreign aid to the country until the year 2027, a decade after Obama has left office. In Monday’s edition of The Intercept, the journalist Glenn Greenwald notes that Israeli living standards already surpass those in the U.S. in some critical areas.

While Israeli citizens enjoy universal health care, 33 million citizens in the United States don’t have coverage, Greenwald notes. Israelis also have a higher life expectancy, 82.27 years, compared to 79.68 years in the U.S. And Israel’s infant mortality rate – one of the best indicators of human development – is one of the lowest in the world, at 3.55 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Conversely, in the United States, 5.87 babies die before their first birthday.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last year that the number of Americans 16 years and older who were not in the workforce eclipsed 93 million people, an all-time high and nearly a third of the total US population of 321 million.

A 2012 Congressional Resources Service report, as reported by The Intercept, found that “U.S. military aid [to Israel] has helped transform Israel’s armed forces into one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.” Despite that aid, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly demanded as much as US$5 billion in aid a year.

What’s more, he has also opposed U.S. requirements that some of that money is spent with U.S. military contractors rather than Israeli ones. With the U.S. presidential elections just three months away, both political parties are campaigning to restore the once-vaunted middle-class prosperity in the country, but Israeli aid is all-but-sacrosanct in the electoral discourse. Early in the campaign Trump had suggested that he might not oppose the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, against Israeli-made products – but has since reversed his position.

August 2, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Is Hillary Double-Talking on Trade Deals?

By JP Sottile | Consortium News | August 1, 2016

Did perennial Clinton rainmaker and current Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe let the cat out of the bag? The “cat” is the widely-held suspicion that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton isn’t really opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The “bag” is the campaign narrative that frames her election year reversal on the controversial trade accord as the outcome of an honest re-examination of a deal that she once hailed as “the gold standard in trade agreements.”

Just to add to the confusion, Hillary Clinton failed to declare her opposition to the TPP in her historic acceptance speech. Instead, she asked assembled Democrats to join her if they “believe that we should say ‘no’ to unfair trade deals” and “stand up to China.”

It was an understandable omission given the grievances of Bernie loyalists poised to pounce on her every misstep. By avoiding the minefield completely she disappointed union leaders and deferred the issue until she debates Donald Trump.

Until then, she — and notable surrogates like economist Joseph Stiglitz — will try to convince a trade-weary public that she’s truly committed to renegotiating the increasingly unpopular deal. She’ll also be beating-back the ghost of trade deals past.

United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams claims Hillary assured him during the primary that she’s also committed to reopening the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Like the TPP, she was for it before she was against it. And like Hillary’s campaign promise to tweak NAFTA, McAuliffe suggested in an interview with Politico that – if she wins the White House – Clinton would make a few tweaks in the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal and then support it.

These caveats fit into a long pattern of trade policy triangulation that raises the question: Is this policy reversal truly a switch or just another bait and switch? There is good reason for the buyer to beware.

“Once the election’s over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a couple things we want to fix on it but going forward we got to build a global economy,” McAuliffe said.

Trading Places

NAFTA is America’s most notorious trade deal. Although It was negotiated by the first Bush Administration, it was Bill Clinton who closed the deal. At the end of his first year in office he guided NAFTA through the House and Senate by offsetting Democratic resistance with significant Republican majorities. Its ratification fit perfectly with the “centrist” mission of the Clinton-led “New Democrat” movement incubated by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) during the preceding decade.

From its inception in 1985, the DLC triangulated against the Democratic Party’s “liberal” moniker that the GOP so effectively turned into an epithet after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. The historic loss of “liberal” former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988 set the table for the DLC’s corporately-minded “New” Democrats. The election of DLC star Bill Clinton in 1992 was the turning point.

With the DLC’s best salesman and former chairman in the Oval Office, the Democratic Party was open for business. His wheeling-dealing economic team opened a whole new avenue for Wall Street to influence U.S. government policies. The Democrats were no longer a political roadblock.

Even if these New Democrats weren’t completely trading places with the GOP, Team Clinton was certainly willing to triangulate against Democrats’ traditional constituencies … particularly on trade.

The biggest signal of Clinton’s brand new deal was Al Gore’s smug dismissal of Ross Perot’s NAFTA warning on Larry King’s CNN show about the trade deal causing a “giant sucking sound” of American jobs going to Mexico. In dismissing Perot’s worries, Gore fired the starting gun for the go-go globalization of the 1990s.

The Morning NAFTA

For the first decade of NAFTA, Perot’s “sucking sound” seemed to go in reverse. As Sonali Kolhatkar detailed on TruthDig, big U.S. agribusinesses flooded Mexico with cheap, subsidized corn and seven other market-crushing products. That tidal wave put small Mexican farmers out of work. Ironically, they flooded back across the border to work in — surprise! — Big Ag’s burgeoning factory farming operations in states like Iowa, North Carolina, Alabama and Arkansas. Go figure.

According to a 2014 assessment by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Mexico is still waiting for the promise of NAFTA’s economic leveling effect to be fulfilled. It’s actually lost ground on economic growth and GDP per person. And the poverty rate remains essentially unchanged.

But NAFTA did offer another low wage alternative to manufacturing in the United States. That helps keep retail prices low enough to match the eroding purchasing power of American consumers, which suffers because their wages are, like Mexican workers, flat or declining. The one thing that hasn’t suffered? Corporate profits and the executive compensation it is predicated upon. Again, go figure.

Where Credit Is Due

Although NAFTA is the usual target of anti-trade fervor, it simply doesn’t compare with the transformative impact of Bill Clinton’s biggest “trade deal” — securing Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status for China. Repeated approval of Chinese access to U.S. markets set off a wave of job losses in America’s industrial heartland. It stoked corporate profits and consumer debt. And it ushered in the often-lamented era of the big box store.

Rising retail titans like Arkansas-based Walmart rushed into China’s incredibly favorable labor market. The cheap products they made turned the 1990s into a decade of plenty. Big box stores were stocked with cheap plastic stuff and consumers gobbled up the bargains with one or more of the credit cards they’d been given during an unprecedented era of ubiquitous consumer credit.

A study by Demos published in 2003 found that during Bill Clinton’s tenure the “average American family experienced a 53 percent increase in credit card debt, from $2,697 to $4,126.” Low-income families experienced a “184 percent rise in their debt.” And, despite the rise in income inequality during his presidency, even “high-income families had 28 percent more credit card debt in 2001 than they did in 1989.”

Demos also found a sharp rise in credit card direct mail solicitations from 1.52 billion in 1993 to a staggering 5 billion in 2001. Monthly minimums where lowered from 5 percent to 2 percent, thus making it easier to carry debt. And the consumer credit industry “tripled the amount of credit it offered customers from $777 billion to almost $3 trillion” by the time Clinton left office. It was a bill of sale first written by Bill Clinton on the campaign trail in 1992.

Promises, Promises

When Bill Clinton ran for president, the Cold War was over; the Savings and Loan scandal had exploded; the economy was mired in a sharp recession; and incumbent President George H.W. Bush couldn’t do a damn thing right. He seemed bored by people’s “pain.” He looked woefully out of touch in a grocery check-out line. And he’d broken the infamous “no new taxes” pledge that helped him defeat “Taxachusetts” Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988.

With Reaganomics on the ropes, Team Clinton scored repeatedly with their “It’s the Economy, Stupid” campaign. But Clinton also exploited another weakness — the Bush Administration’s quick embrace of the Chinese Government after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. That embrace was sealed with a discomfiting handshake by Bush’s national security advisor Brent Scowcroft.

Shortly thereafter, President Bush renewed China’s “Most Favored Nation” trade status, which, among other things, lowered tariffs on Chinese imports into the U.S. He was widely criticized, often from within his own party, for cutting a deal with a regime some called “The Butchers of Beijing.”

In the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton exploited Poppy’s “kowtowing” to great effect. Clinton accused Bush of “indifference toward democracy” in China. And Clinton famously said Bush was willing to “coddle dictators.” On March 9, 1992, Clinton proclaimed, “I do not believe we should extend ‘Most Favored Nation’ status to China unless they make significant progress in human rights, arms proliferation and fair trade.”

Of course, that all changed after he took office. On March 28, 1993, the cagey President announced he’d cut a deal with a Congress to extend a waiver that effectively approved MFN while deferring human rights-related conditions to the following year. Clinton even outlined other concerns, including China’s “$18 billion trade surplus” with the U.S.

But all those concerns, along with his campaign pledge, where jettisoned on March 27, 1994 when Clinton made the economy-changing decision to “de-link” China’s MFN status from human rights. That decision buried Tiananmen Square in the crowded graveyard of America’s often-trumpeted “advocacy” for human rights around the globe.

It also unleashed American corporations to dive headlong into China’s vast, cheap pool of low-wage labor. By the time Clinton made his state visit to China in the summer of 1998, MFN was becoming a footnote to the amazing story of China’s skyrocketing industrial output. Facing charges of hypocrisy on human rights, Clinton countered, “I’m going because I think it’s the right thing to do for our country.”

That may be a debatable point. What’s not in doubt is that it, like MFN, was the right thing to do for the bottom line of American business. And it was specifically beneficial for an emerging retail behemoth that had a long, close relationship with the Clintons.

The Power Greeter

Alice Walton likes Hillary Clinton. That’s a fairly safe assumption given the $353,400 check she cut for the Hillary Victory Fund during a mad dash of pre-election year fundraising at the end of 2015. And she also kicked in another $25,000 into the “Ready for Hillary” SuperPAC. Those big donations are, like the estimated $130 billion net worth of Walton family, a legacy handed-down from Walmart founder Sam Walton.

That legacy dates back to Bill’s time as Governor — when the Walton family began a long history of financial support of the Clintons, according to Bloomberg. It made sense given Walmart’s supersized role in Arkansas.

It also made good political sense that, as Michael Barbaro of the New York Times reported back in 2007, Hillary was brought onto Walmart’s Board of Directors back in 1986 at the behest of Walton’s wife Helen. That effort to add a woman to the boardroom turned into a six-year stint that cemented the long relationship between Arkansas’ most famous corporation and its most famous political family.

As Brian Ross of ABC News reported in the lead-up to her 2008 run, Hillary notably left that glass ceiling-shattering appointment out of her biography. She basically “de-linked” herself from a stridently anti-union company that was also a notoriously thrifty spender on employee wages and benefits. The ABC report also referenced a 1992 report showing her trumpeting Walmart’s “Buy America” campaign in spite of Walmart’s reliance on children working in sweatshops in places like Bangladesh. That’s a practice Walmart continued into the 1990s.

It came to a head in 1996 when All-American “sweetheart” Kathie Lee Gifford got embroiled in a child labor scandal in Honduras. Coincidentally, that scandal broke the same year Walmart entered China “through a joint-venture agreement.” And that was just two years after Bill Clinton “de-linked” human rights from MFN.

It was also the same year that he successfully renewed MFN with an overwhelming vote of support by the House of Representatives. The timing couldn’t have been better for Walmart. They’d auspiciously formed their international division in 1993 and were poised to profit off Bill’s broken promise to “not coddle dictators.”

But, as with all things Clinton, there really isn’t a “smoking gun” linking Bill’s MFN reversal with Walmart’s amazing good fortune in China. There is just the lingering miasma of happy coincidences. Bill Clinton’s crowning coincidence before exiting the Oval Office was Congressional approval of his proposal to give China permanent Most Favored Nation trading status in 2000.

The New Normal

On Oct. 10, 2000, he signed the U.S.–China Relations Act of 2000 into law. Most Favored Nation status officially became Normal Trade Relations. Also in that year, the $18 billion trade deficit he decried in 1993 ballooned to $83 billion. Meanwhile, Walmart rode low-cost Chinese manufacturing to the top of the retail heap. Walmart’s massive workforce is now the third largest in the world behind the U.S. Defense Department and, ironically, China’s People’s Liberation Army.

Amazingly, the U.S. trade deficit with China more than tripled to $263 billion in the eight years after Clinton secured “Normal” trade relations in 2000. Meanwhile, Walmart’s infamous low-wage practices at home were subsidized annually to the tune of “an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing,” according to 2015 report in Forbes.

Also amazingly, the Clintons’ wealth skyrocketed to $111 million in the years after Bill left office. Hillary spent those years in and out of “public service” and the former President turned the Clinton Foundation into a $439 million powerhouse by 2014.

While the Foundation’s philanthropy is demonstrable, criticisms of it as a de facto slush fund remain. But the link between political promises and trade policy persisted. This time it was Hillary running for president. The trade deal was with war-torn Colombia. And the campaign trail leads back to the Clinton Foundation.

Rinse, Repeat

There is a strange symmetry between China’s MFN status, the TPP imbroglio and a notable “flip-flop” on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement by first-time presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008. Then like now, she was competing against a movement candidate in newcomer Barack Obama. And then like now, she struggled to protect her “left” flank on economic issues.

At issue in 2008 was a sweeping deal negotiated by the second Bush Administration with the U.S.-supported, civil war-wracked narco-state of Colombia. Obama “vowed” to oppose the deal. To keep pace with her high-octane opponent, Hillary repeatedly reassured labor leaders of her opposition to the deal.

The rub was two-fold. Not only did she have a decidedly pro-free trade voting record as a senator. But both her free-trading husband and her chief campaign strategist were on record supporting the deal. She ditched her Colombia-linked strategist and matched Obama’s anti-deal stance. But, just like China’s MFN before it, the trade agreement with Colombia eventually became a “big win” for a Democratic President who was for it before he was against it.

This time it was a flip-flopping President Obama. With the help of his flip-flopping former foe and then-current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he scored a trade deal trifecta on Oct. 12, 2011. That’s when Congress approved the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (CTPA) and separate deals with both South Korea and Panama. Obama called the trio of trade deals “a major win for American workers and businesses.” Alas, it turned out that there was a lot more change on trade than reason to hope Obama or Hillary would keep their promises.

Mining The Depths

Meet billionaire mining magnate Frank Giustra. According to the New York Times, the financial power-player’s global interests have included philanthropy and a $45 million stake in a deal to sell strategic uranium mines in Central Asia and the United States to the Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom. Strangely enough, those two interests — charity and strategic resources — fit together nicely. That’s because the uranium deal required U.S. agencies — including the State Department — to sign-off before it was approved.

The eight-year process for the uranium deal required approval by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment of which the State Department is a member. That approval finally came in 2010 when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and while the Clinton Foundation was continuing to collect millions of dollars from related investors.

Throughout, Giustra’s wheeling and dealing continued with his close friend and private jet-setting partner Bill Clinton, who gave a $500,000 speech to a Russian investment bank that gave the stock a buy rating.

Since 2005, Giustra has lavished the Clinton Foundation with repeated donations, adding up to in excess of $100 million. Yet, putting Bill Clinton’s oddly remunerative, but not uncommon $500,000 speech in Moscow aside, there still is no smoking gun linking then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the actual approval of the deal. Once again we just have that miasma of happy coincidences.

More troubling, though, is the coincidence that her husband’s friend Frank Giustra did benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement deal’s “extreme” protections for foreign investors and special rights for corporations engaged in “resource extraction,” according to an eye-opening exposé by David Sirota, Matthew Cunningham-Cook and Andrew Perez of the International Business Times.

At issue is a company formerly known as Pacific Rubiales, an oil company founded by (you guessed it) Frank Giustra. The State Department repeatedly fielded accusations of workers’ rights and human rights abuses, particularly related to a strike targeting Pacific Rubiales in 2011. Strangely, the State Department not only ignored these accusations, but actually praised the Colombian government’s stellar progress on human rights. Was this Hillary Clinton’s “de-linking” MFN moment?

Maybe it’s worse. It looks like there’s a little smoke coming out of this gun. As Sirota, Cunningham-Cook and Perez reported:

“At the same time that Clinton’s State Department was lauding Colombia’s human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant’s founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire.”

Those “commercial ties” include the “Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership” which its snazzy website calls a “pioneering an innovative approach to poverty alleviation” that “generates both social impact and financial returns by addressing existing market gaps in developing countries’ supply or distribution chains.”

Really, doesn’t that “pioneering approach” sound a lot like the long-term project of the Democratic Leadership Committee?

The “pioneering” privatization of “poverty alleviation” was a big part of then-President Bill Clinton’s famous “welfare reform bill” of 1996. Profitable privatized prisons grew to match the skyrocketing demand created by infamous “crime bill” of 1994. The “financial returns” flowed as the prison “market gap” was closed. And like neoliberal trade policy, deregulation of Wall Street and the media, it’s all symptomatic of the Clinton-led move of the party toward the corporate-friendly “center.”

As Frank Giustra said in a 2006 profile of Bill Clinton for The New Yorker, “All of my chips, almost, are on Bill Clinton. He’s a brand, a worldwide brand, and he can do things and ask for things that no one else can.” Based on a Giustra’s latest venture in Colombia — a big financial play in the Gran Colombia Gold Corporation — he’s still reaping the “free trade” rewards of his bank-shot bet on Hillary Clinton.

In fact, he’s not just going for the gold … but some silver, too.

Big Box Democrats

Back in 1992, the phenomenal Clinton political machine successfully sold the “new,” improved Democratic Party to Reaganomics-starved political consumers. He felt their pain. He also changed his party and opened the door to the big-box consumerism. Now that same sharp messaging machine is repackaging Hillary’s free-trading past, pulling Bill’s mixed political record from the shelves, and hard-selling her latter-day transformation on trade and economic policies.

The question is: Will suspicious voters buy her “Come to Bernie” moment as a wholesale conversion on the road to the White House? Disgruntled and disaffected voters have to buy into the idea that she’s truly changed on trade and is not, as Terry McAuliffe implied, simply repeating a well-worn pattern of bait and switch.

Simply put, she’s got a long, demonstrable history of supporting trade agreements. And by one account she specifically “pushed” the Trans-Pacific Partnership 45 times. But that was then and this now. And now she’s got a disillusioned cadre of #BernieOrBusters to her left and a new army of anti-trade Trumpsters to her right. That’s left her stuck in the “centrist” middle with the corporate donors, financiers and loyalists who’ve been shopping in the supermarket of political influence ever since the Clintons transformed the Democrats into the party of Big Box-style democracy.

August 2, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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