UK’s Iraq war report delayed until after 2015 general elections
Press TV – January 21, 2015
The publication of a long-awaited inquiry into the UK’s participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath has once again been postponed until after the country’s general elections later this year.
On Wednesday, British media cited government sources as saying that the inquiry chairman, John Chilcot, will in an exchange of letters with Prime Minister David Cameron later in the day explain the reasons for the new postponement.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg reacted angrily to the news, saying the further delay is “incomprehensible.”
Clegg’s Liberal Democrats also suggested that the inquiry report is being “watered down” after those criticized in the report, such as then Prime Minister Tony Blair, were given the opportunity to respond to the findings.
The judge-led inquiry into how Blair led Britain into war in Iraq was ordered by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009 and was expected to publish its findings within 18 months.
The Chilcot report had previously been delayed by rows over its criticism of leading figures in the Blair government. The report had also been delayed due to diplomatic negotiations between the US and the UK about what can be revealed from correspondence between Blair and former US President George W. Bush.
The report is believed to be highly critical of Blair, who is accused of misleading the British public about the reasons for joining the 2003 US-led Iraq war.
The US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law in 2003 over the allegation that the regime of then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). No WMDs, however, were ever found in Iraq.
Anti-nuclear MPs debate Trident, call renewal ‘waste of money’
RT | January 20, 2015
The future of Britain’s nuclear deterrent was debated in Parliament on Tuesday, hours after a Scottish opinion poll found nearly half of Scots oppose renewing the Trident program.
Parliament’s debate on Trident comes weeks after the Ministry of Defence (MoD) published a report revealing the cost of the program’s “assessment phase” will increase by an additional £261 million this year.
Renewal of Trident, which is based just 25 miles west of Glasgow, is expected to cost £20 billion.
The cost of the overall program over the next 25 years, however, is estimated to be £80 billion.
Tuesday’s debate was called by the Scottish National Party (SNP), Green Party, and Welsh national party Plaid Cymru, with the intention of demonstrating “opposition to Trident renewal in Westminster.”
It was boycotted by most members of the Labour Party, which officially supports Trident renewal.
Tuesday’s poll, conducted by Survation and commissioned by SNP, found that 47 percent of Scots oppose Trident renewal, 32 percent support it, and 21 percent “don’t know.”
The results, along with revelations of Trident’s rising costs, will boost SNP confidence, as the party pledges to oppose nuclear weapons ahead of May’s general election.
Angus Robertson MP, a member of the SNP, opened the debate in the House of Commons.
“Today’s debate is an opportunity to show there is opposition to Trident renewal in Westminster,” he said.
Robertson emphasized the ethical case for scrapping nuclear weapons.
“Each warhead [on Trident submarines] has an explosion eight times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945,” he said.
He also cited recent debates on austerity and food banks, saying “there is an alternative.”
In a press statement, the SNP criticized Labour’s boycott of the debate given the party’s support for austerity.
“Labour’s refusal to take part in the debate on Trident comes less than one week after the party voted along with the Tories for a further £30 billion of austerity cuts,” the SNP said.
“That Scottish Labour MPs support wasting another £100 billion on weapons of mass destruction while foodbank use is rocketing, and more and more children are being pushed into poverty, is simply indefensible,” they added.
A handful of Labour MPs did attend the debate, however. Speaking to the Commons, rogue Labour MP Dame Joan Ruddock supported scrapping Trident.
The former chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) asked how Britain can justify trident renewal “when we cannot raise millions out of poverty or fund our precious National Health Service.”
Ruddock described proponents of Trident renewal as being stuck in “Cold War thinking.”
“The threats that were part of the Cold War scenario are very different from the threats we face today,” she said.
“Real security lies in nuclear disarmament,” she added.
Her comments echo those of current CND General Secretary Kate Hudson.
“[Trident] is the wrong answer to the security challenges facing the UK. And when that wrong answer comes with a £100 billion price-tag, it’s no wonder it’s deeply unpopular with the British public,” Hudson said.
“[Prime Minister] David Cameron claims it’s the ultimate insurance policy – but even the former head of the Armed Forces has conceded that it is ‘completely useless’ to [sic] the threats we face.”
“It’s time the government recognized the colossal waste of money that Trident constitutes, and committed instead to investing the money in health, jobs and education,” she added.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon defended the planned renewal of Britain’s nuclear weapons program, calling it “the ultimate guarantor of our freedom and independence.”
“Whether we like it or not, there remain approximately 17,000 nuclear weapons globally,” he said.
“We cannot gamble with our country’s national security, we have to plan for a major, direct nuclear threat to this country or to our NATO allies,” he added.
Fallon cited Russia, North Korea and Iran as potential nuclear threats given their desire to build or maintain nuclear weapons programs.
Parliament will vote on whether to upgrade Britain’s nuclear weapons program in 2016.
A mass demonstration against replacing Trident will take place in London on Saturday, January 24.
Organized by CND, the protest will begin at 12pm outside the Ministry of Defence on Horseguards Avenue.
READ MORE:
Nuclear ultimatum: Scottish National Party challenges Labour on Trident
‘Ticking time bomb’: Watchdogs slam UK nuclear weapons maker over safety practices
US Army Command delegation ‘to arrive in Kiev this week’
RT | January 19, 2015
Representatives of the US Army Command will arrive in Ukraine in the coming days, Ukrainian military announced. The visit comes as the Kiev forces have launched a large-scale offensive on the militia positions in the south-east of the country.
“This week, a delegation from the US Army Command, headed by Commander of US Army Europe, Lt. Gen [Frederick Ben] Hodges, will arrive in Ukraine,” Vladislav Seleznyov, spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces, said at a media briefing in Kiev on Monday.
The spokesman also said that Ukraine will take part in the NATO Military Committee conference on January 20-22.
The get-together will be dedicated to the issues of military cooperation between Ukraine and NATO as well as plans to reform the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the evaluation of the situation in south-eastern Ukraine, he said.
Previously, the Society of Assistance to Defense of Ukraine announced that it has already begun training military specialists in line with NATO programs.
“At our military centers, about 100 people per week are being prepared in line with the accelerated NATO weekly program in military professions such as gunner, machine gunner and others,” Yury Chizhmar, the Society’s head, said, as cited by TASS news agency.
The fighting intensified in south-eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Kiev forces launched a large-scale offensive, reportedly involving Grad multiple rocket launchers and aviation, against the militia in the Donetsk region.
According to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic count, at least nine civilians were killed and 44 injured as the city endured some 50 artillery strikes from the Ukrainian military on Sunday.
There were also human casualties and destruction in the nearby towns of Makeevka and Gorlovka.
Earlier, in a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry urged Kiev to take steps to pull its heavy weapons out of Eastern Ukraine, saying that their militia opponents had already signed a roadmap for it.
An arms pullout is a key point in the so-called Minsk agreement, a roadmap to deescalating the situation. However it was never fully implemented after the Russia and OSCE-brokered deal between the government in Kiev and their opponents was penned in September 2014.
“If Kiev truly prepared to pull back heavy weapons as would the militia do… this should lead to practical steps on the ground, especially considering that the leaders of [the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics] have already signed a roadmap for it,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.
The Ukrainian military launched the operation in the country’s southeast last April, after the Donetsk and Lugansk regions became the site of a rebel movement refusing to recognize the new, coup-imposed authorities in Kiev.
The death toll in the Ukrainian conflict has exceeded 4,800. Over 10,000 have been injured, according to UN estimations.
READ MORE: Kiev’s new offensive in Donbass may lead to irreversible consequences – Moscow
Scottish First Minister leads united call for Iraq war report disclosure
RT | January 19, 2015
Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon has called for a united political movement to demand the immediate publication of the Chilcot Inquiry report into the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Sturgeon has written to other Scottish party leaders, urging them to unite in favor of immediate publication.
The Chilcot Inquiry, which was set up in 2009 and is expected to cost the taxpayer over £10 million, has come under fire in recent months due to delays in its publication.
The disclosure of secret documents, and disagreements over whether private communications between former leaders Tony Blair and George W. Bush should be made public, has disrupted the progress of the inquiry.
There are now fears that unless the report is published immediately, its release could affect the results of the general election in May.
The leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Jim Murphy, and the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Willie Rennie, have also said they support the earliest possible release of the document.
The House of Commons will debate the release of the findings on January 29.
Last month there was speculation that Tony Blair may face prosecution for war crimes as a result of the report’s findings. Blair said he “resented” claims he was responsible for the delays.
The debate surrounding the release of classified material had presented a large obstacle to the publication of the report, but it was decided in June last year that the “gist” of conversations between Blair and Bush could be published.
Sturgeon said it would be impossible to have a national election without the report’s findings being presented.
“Surely we can’t go through a general election without people having the answers to the questions on the Iraq war that they still don’t have,” she told the BBC.
“That has to happen before some of these MPs that voted for the Iraq war are back up for election.”
Murphy responded to Sturgeon’s call for action, saying it was essential for future governments to learn from the results.
“The Chilcot Inquiry is a crucially important piece of work that must be conducted thoroughly and forensically,” he said. “The inquiry was initiated by Labour in July 2009, because it is vital to identify the lessons that can be learned from the conflict.”
“There is rightly real public interest in the findings of such an important inquiry and I think it is right that there is the earliest possible publication of the report.”
Rennie also expressed his eagerness for the report to be published, saying he agreed with the SNP’s Sturgeon.
“We agree with Nicola Sturgeon. It is important that the lessons learnt from the Chilcot report are learnt whilst there are people involved in Parliament who are in a position to answer for their actions.”
A spokeswoman for the Iraq Inquiry said: “We will not be commenting further on the process or the progress of the report.”
READ MORE:
Cameron has final word on release date of Iraq war report – Downing Street
US to Deploy 400 Troops to Train Syria Militants
Al-Akhbar | January 16, 2015
Defense officials of the United States said on Thursday the US will deploy about 400 troops in countries neighboring Syria to train “moderate” opposition fighters.
The US military has not yet identified where it will draw its forces from for the training mission, expected to begin in the spring. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have offered to host the training.
The training program is a part of the US’ plan to field local forces in Syria. The Pentagon has estimated that it can train more than 5,000 recruits in the first year and that up to 15,000 will be needed to retake areas of eastern Syria controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Since the start of the Syrian civil war, Western powers, and some regional countries have supported rebels by arming, financing and politically empowering militant groups in the country.
On January 5, a senior Turkish foreign ministry official said that Turkey and the US aim to finalize an agreement on equipping and training “moderate” Syrian rebels until the end of January. However, this support has backfired as many of the weapons provided have ended in the hands of ISIS fighters, who have been targeted by a US-led coalition in an air raid campaign since August.
“Around 1,500 to 2,000 people are expected to be trained in Turkey (in the first year),” the official said, adding that a “limited number” of US soldiers would come to Turkey to help carry out the training jointly with Turkish colleagues.
The US decision to train and equip rebel groups in Syria was criticized by several renowned officials who warned of dire consequences.
Former US Congressman Ron Paul denounced in an interview with Russia Today the plans, noting that these Western-backed forces have been helpful to ISIS, which since August has captured swathes of lands in Iraq and Syria.
“The Free Syrian Army (FSA) turned over the weapons, that we (the US) sent them, to ISIS,” Paul said. “It is pretty well recorded that for $50,000 the FSA turned over one of the two American journalists to ISIS.”
Meanwhile, Gulf state Qatar, with the help of the US, has already been covertly training “moderate” Syrian rebels to fight the Syrian army and ISIS, as well as other extremist groups for over a year, sources claimed in November.
The camp, south of Doha between Saudi Arabia’s border and Udeid area, the largest US air base in the Middle East, is being used to train the FSA militants and other rebels, the sources said.
In September a report by the London-based small-arms research organization Conflict Armament Research revealed that ISIS jihadists in Syria as well appear to be using US military-issued arms and weapons supplied to rebels by Saudi Arabia.
The report said the jihadists disposed of “significant quantities” of US-made small arms including M-16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings “Property of US Govt.”
It also found that anti-tank rockets used by ISIS in Syria were “identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the Free Syrian Army umbrella in 2013.”
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
Civil Rights Leaders, Progressives, Family, Will Again Betray Martin Luther King on His Birthday
By Jay Janson | Dissident Voice | January 13, 2015
January 18 is Martin Luther King’s birthday and will occasion another three day official national holiday with TV specials of criminal deception limiting King to having been merely a hero of the civil rights movement period. Another year’s deceitfully erasing from history King’s condemnation of his country’s government as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and his having held himself and his fellow Americans responsible for “atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945 in order to maintain unjust predatory investments.”
For a near half-century, King’s outrage, King’s hellish description of America’s wars on innocent people in the third world, have been meticulously whisked out of existence. But not without the help of the silence of Kings own family, comrades, fellow civil rights leaders, peaceniks, and progressives, who have mounted no serious effort to expose wars-supporting corporate media’s iron tight blackout of what King said during his last year before receiving that ‘shut him up’ bullet to his brain.
To no avail, did America’s beloved peoples historian, Howard Zinn, for years, end every one of his daily radio programs with a plea to journalists and antiwar organization leaders to quote King continually in order to break the blackout of King’s powerful words and defeat the supporters of US wars.
If the prediction in the title of this article turns out to be wrong, the co-founders of the Martin Luther King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign (former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and yours truly) will of course be thankful beyond words, but astounded as well. For it is nearly forty-eight years since King shook the world, made large type bold headlines in newspapers across the planet with his blistering New York sermon, ‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,’ was vilified in US media, and criticized by his fellow leaders of the civil rights movement. With enthusiastic support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Ramsey Clark had for some years envisioned a ‘Break the Blackout of MLKjr Condemnations’ event with speeches by luminaries like Harry Belafonte, Jessie Jackson, Andrew Young — now long Representative of Georgia, John Lewis, Cornel West, Joan Baez and others, who had been close to King, but was unable to find any interest in it. I feel it will, however, happen one day.
Since King’s assassination (within a year of King’s ‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence’ sermon), the silence of his closest comrades and even his own family, a silence that King had called “betrayal,” (King had even agonized over his own previous silence), has been, in effect, a noticeable collaboration with the utter and absolute blackout and erasing of King’s scathing words from popular history by criminal US media, monolithic media that has hyped and justified the US committed holocaust in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and the dozens of subsequent US murderous invasions of dozens of equally innocent nations.
At the 2012 unveiling and dedication ceremony of the King Monument in Washington, the wealthy white elite emoted over how they had been moved by King’s words about equality and freedom, as they pretended to have been deaf to King’s bitter denouncing of the immoral business of inhumane materialism and genocidal violence in desperate accumulation of capital and its twin evil racism. With sour stomach did one listen to the dissimulating, vibrant with emotion, eulogies of King’s daughter, sister, son, African American celebrities, and even the two men who had held the dying King in their arms (and who had gone on to successful political careers in the US war establishment). In these speeches by King’s beloved people, there was not a single world regarding King’s condemnation of Americans putting atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945. Their embarrassing calculated omission of King’s condemnation of US wars on innocent nations was an obvious collaboration with an insane wars-managing elite’s intentions in staging this despicable and farcical event. It was a collaboration, not only by the King family, civil rights leader friends and African American celebrities, who spoke at the monument, but by progressive journalists the next day, who did not rise up with a unanimous commentary of condemnation of their own for the calculated omission of King’s scathing words, poignantly stern warnings and moral demands, which King bravely intended to lead the stopping of the slaughter of the Vietnamese, just as King had led the stopping of legalized death and discrimination of African Americans at home.
It simply does not seem to be important to American dissidents, progressives, African American celebrities and even America’s best anti-imperialist journalists of the left, that citizens in militarized America, and the world audience victims of US media psyop mind control, have been tightly blocked and prevented from hearing or seeing videos of King sounding off with the truth,
The Vietnamese people proclaimed their independence in 1945, after a combined French and Japanese occupation … we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.… For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam…. After the French were defeated, … we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man.… Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops, as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals, children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. … we ally ourselves with the landlords … we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land, their crops. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.
Americans shall never hear these words of King, if the desperate managers of present society have anything to do with it. Knowledge of national hero King having preached to extend the justice he was determined to get of for his African Americans to the infinitely more deadly injustice the Vietnamese had been suffering from his fellow Americans, including forcibly drafted African America soldiers, would be dangerously confusing for tens of millions of young men and women presently participating in, supporting, or indifferent to the dozen ongoing US bombings and invasions and unnerving for older Americans who had participated in, supported, or were indifferent during to all the wars since King was taken out forty-seven years ago. Confusing and unnerving because, after all, Martin Luther King is America’s number one hero, in whose name everyone gets a day or two off work every year.
Perhaps, even more important for the war establishment is that school children now being indoctrinated to look forward to patriotically manning the high tech killing machine that insures future American world domination, be protected from the horrible truth that Martin Luther King spoke of so eloquently and convincingly.
No, not on your sweet life, are speculative investors, who own omnipresent mass media and create mega profitable genocidal wars, going to allow the American public that watches fellow Americans in uniform dispatch thousands of designated ‘bad guy’ men, women, and ‘accidentally their children, in their own beloved countries of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen while America funds goons to do it in Venezuela, Ukraine and Lebanon, Syria, Libya as well, hear King preaching a heart-rending history of the US holocaust in Vietnam and surrounding countries.
Instead this year, as for over forty years, corporate commercial TV channels will be televising King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, the ‘March on Washington’ demanding justice in America, and videos of King leading the civil rights struggle over many years. King will be made to look like someone who today would have been a close friend and supporter of Obama, a documented serial killer, and as outspoken Cornel West, Prof. Cornel West of New York’s Union Theological Seminar and
Princeton University’s Center for African American Studies has often called the President, “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats, now head of the American killing machine and proud of it.”
Our long-shot hope is that during this year’s Martin Luther King high profiled birthday celebrations, one of the various presidents or foreign ministers of nations presently threatened with US overt or covert attack, will think to praise on international media, Martin Luther Kings intensely devastating condemnations of America’s mad and genocidal foreign policy, and thereby throw a self-protecting monkey-wrench into America’s world deceiving criminal media, which projects an image of King as a loyal patriot of an America constantly at war with the world.
Prohibiting us from hearing King’s condemnations, so inconvenient to private investors, who rule society by scam and sword, will backfire in the long run. Words of wisdom have a life of their own, and King’s truthful words will one day be hear in countries on all five continents once bombed by US planes, and his words will promote prosecution of colonial and neocolonial imperialist crimes against humanity.
When that day of reckoning arrives King’s statue will be gazed upon as one of the whole meaningful Martin Luther King Jr., adorned with quotes mentioned in this article that are not there today.
For what it worth, those that know what King cried out against, and are still comfortably silent, might remember, Martin Luther King’s quoting from Inferno by the famous Italian poet Dante, “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”
Jay Janson can be reached at: tdmedia2000@yahoo.com.
Dude, Where’s My Peace Dividend?
By Robert Ted Hinds | CounterPunch | January 14, 2015
In the 1970s and 1980s, Americans were conditioned with the idea that the extraordinary growth in military expenditure for the U.S. to “win the arms race” with the USSR would somehow lead to a “peace dividend.” That’s what the elected officials of the United States and its NATO allies called it. Eventually the Soviet Union did collapse under the weight of its own economic dysfunction and hyper-militaristic bureaucracy. When the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989, compelled by massive nonviolent noncooperation with the dictatorial regime, it seemed that the leaders of the world might finally declare the peace dividend we had all been expecting. Mankind as a whole seemed to have hope that the specter of nuclear war had vanished and that a constitutional democracy could operate as a benevolent superpower.
It wasn’t long before President Bush Sr. replaced the old war with a new one. The New York Times disclosed official transcripts of a conversation between US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, and Saddam Hussein where she said, “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait. James Baker (Secretary of State) has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction.”
Soon after, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and America’s action toward war was swift. King Hussein of Jordan, one of America’s strongest allies in the region (and whose wife was American), told the New York Times that the day of the invasion, Bush gave him 48 hours to negotiate a withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
The Jordanian king secured a promise from Saddam to withdraw all of his forces within a week to avert war. King Hussein could not understand why the deal was undermined by the Bush Administration. The US and its Allies proceeded to annihilate the Iraqi army it had supported for 10 years during the Iran-Iraq War which ended in 1988. George Bush had been able to maintain diplomatic relations with Saddam when Saddam was waging war against Iran, but not when he was offering to withdraw from Kuwait. Thus began the Gulf War in 1991 and a process of political destabilization in the Middle East that has been a pretense for ongoing military intervention to this day.
Harvard public policy professor Linda Bilmes published a study in 2013 estimating that the true cost of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will run between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, including ongoing healthcare for veterans and interest on the war debt. A similar study by Brown University put the price tag at $4 trillion, but both of these studies preceded the rise of ISIS and do not account for rising tensions with Iran and Syria, or Russia in the Ukraine.
Where’s the peace dividend we were promised throughout the Cold War, that payback for defeating the evil superpower that prevented America from spreading peace and democracy by way of its “benevolent hegemony?” Where’s our $4 trillion? The war hawks and politicians in Washington D.C. will tell you it is being reinvested to defeat terror and secure American interests abroad; that the elusive dividend payment is just another war or two away. In an October 2014 interview with USA Today to promote his book Worthy Fights, President Obama’s former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, Leon Panetta, stated that “we can expect kind of a 30-year war” that would need to include Nigeria, Yemen, Libya and other threats. Those who profit from the military-industrial complex will continue to recognize a return on their investments. The American people will only realize a peace dividend when their government begins to practice peace instead of war as a means to foreign policy.
Robert Ted Hinds is an activist, journalist, and professional analyst. He holds a Master of Business Administration from Washington State University and Bachelor of Science degrees in Psychology and Finance from the University of Oregon.
FARC says killed 8 Colombia soldiers in ‘defensive response’
File photo shows militants belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Press TV – January 14, 2015
The FARC rebel group says it has killed eight army soldiers in a “defensive response” to the recent attacks carried out by the Colombian army.
“As a result of the defensive response, we lament that eight military personnel lost their lives, unnecessarily,” read the statement issued by the guerrilla group on Wednesday, adding, “These are all casualties that could have been avoided if the government had been less small-minded.”
According to the statement, the FARC forces killed the soldiers in retaliation for the Colombian army’s mortar attacks on rebels’ positions in the central province of Meta earlier this week.
The rebel group called on the government to put an end to its “senseless” offensives, “because they could provoke the end of the unilateral ceasefire and disturb the climate of confidence that should prevail at the negotiating table.”
Back on December 20, 2014, the FARC declared a unilateral ceasefire in an alleged attempt to boost the peace talks that have been held in Cuba since two years ago. However, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos rejected the move, saying the guerrillas’ condition for an international verification of the ceasefire cannot be accepted.
Earlier in the month, the Colombian government and the FARC resumed the latest round of peace talks, suspended in November 2014, over the abduction of an army general.
The peace talks were launched in the Cuban capital of Havana in 2012, aimed at ending a half-a-century-old conflict between the rebels and the US-backed government.
Bogota estimates that 600,000 people have been killed and more than 4.5 million displaced due to the fighting.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is Latin America’s oldest insurgent group and has been fighting the Colombian government since 1964.
Poroshenko the “Civilized”
By HALYNA MOKRUSHYNA | CounterPunch | January 14, 2015
President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine stated in Paris on January 11 that the Charlie Hebdo tragedy has united all civilized countries. He marched proudly at the front line of the huge crowd of “civilized people” who were expressing their solidarity with freedom of speech against terrorism. Poroshenko’s participation in the march presumably qualifies Ukraine as one of the “civilized countries”. He is outraged by the terrible attack on Western values, in whose name the Ukrainian army is bombing and shelling its own citizens in the Donbas region in the east of the country.
Over 4,800 civilians have died since the Ukrainian government launched an “anti-terroristic operation” against Donbas in April 2014. Donbas did not want a nationalist parliament and nationalist ideology which refuse to Russian-speaking citizens the right to have their language recognized as the second official language of Ukraine. Donbas rejects the anti-Russian and anti-Soviet interpretation of history which the extremist parties making up the majority of the Parliament are imposing on Ukraine. Donbas takes pride in its Soviet past. Donbas is different from the rest of Ukraine first of all in these two features.
It is an industrial region in which 75% of the population considers Russian to be its mother tongue–even though over half of the residents of the region (57%) are ethnic Ukrainians, according to the Ukrainian census of 2001. In Donetsk city, the dominance of Russian language is even higher – 88% versus 11% of people for whom Ukrainian is a mother tongue. The ethnicity of Donetsk’s residents is split roughly evenly – 47% Ukrainian versus 48% Russian.
One of the first steps of the new, right-wing government that seized power in Kyiv in late February of last year largely thanks to nationalistic, paramilitary units of the ‘Euromaidan’ movement, was an attempt to abolish Ukraine’s law on languages. This law, adopted in 2012 in an effort to quell tensions being created by right-wing nationalists, granted the right to use Russian and other minority languages in regions where this minority constitutes at least 10% of the local population. Minority language services would be provided and used in public administration, education and cultural activities. This attempt to abolish the law on languages sent a clear signal to Donbas: the new Ukrainian regime will continue to implement their nationalist agenda. Donbas rebelled.
A series of pro-Russian demonstrations took place in major cities of South- Eastern Ukraine – Odessa, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Donetsk. It was a response to the nationalist discourse coming out of Kyiv. A discourse in which Soviet Union was portrayed as an “occupant” which suppressed the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture and a Ukrainian quest for independence. In this discourse, the Soviet Union was an empire, a direct heir of the Russian tsarist imperialism. How were people for whom being Soviet is a significant part of their identity to react to such a discourse?
Donbas people have a strong regional identity, built on the Cossack freemen spirit, proletarian pride, and internationalism. According to a recent poll conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, residents of Donbas identify themselves as citizens of Ukraine (34%), people of Donbas (27%), residents of a town/city (19%), and former Soviet citizens (14%). To compare, in the rest of the country the national component of self-identification (citizen of Ukraine) is much stronger than in Donbas (60% in the South, 67% in Eastern Ukraine, 70% in the West and 76% in Central Ukraine).
Donbas has been asking for regional autonomy and the recognition of Russian as a second official language of Ukraine since 1994. On March 27, 1994, concomitantly with the elections to the Verkhovna Rada (‘Supreme Council’, or Parliament), a local referendum was held,in Donetsk and Luhansk regions in which the vast majority of people voted in favor of the federalization of Ukraine (decentralization of central government powers), the use of Russian language as a second official language, and Ukraine joining the Commonwealth of Independent States (an association of former Soviet republics led by Russia).
Kyiv has consistently refused to hold a national referendum on these vital issues for Ukraine. According to the Constitution of Ukraine, even the holding of such regional referendums is illegal. All of this supposedly because Ukraine’s political elites were afraid of the “imperialistic” ambitions of Ukraine’s big brother – Russia. Ukraine’s elites preferred to ignore voices coming from Eastern Ukraine.
In 2013, the Communist Party of Ukraine proposed to hold a referendum on the political future of Ukraine—whether to seek closer relations with the European Union or retain close ties to Russia. The party collected more than three million signatures in favor of such a referendum. Then-President Viktor Yanukovych declared such a referendum illegal.
From Kyiv’s perspective, any request by a region to have more administrative and financial autonomy is an encroachment on Ukrainian sovereignty. The word “federalization” provokes panic and fear. Kyiv prefers killing its own citizens instead of negotiating and accommodating.
Kyiv claims that the rebellion in Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions) is purely a product of Russian support. It is said that Russia encouraged anti-Maidan protests, Russian troops are fighting against the Ukrainian army and Russians are destroying the Donbas infrastructure, while at the same time, in some kind of a twisted logic, Russia is acknowledged and condemned for sending one humanitarian convoy after another to help Donbas residents.
It is true that Russia is involved in Donbas. The majority of the population of Donbas has consistently expressed its desire to have closer ties with Russia, not with the European Union. The overwhelming majority of Donbas residents saw in the Euromaidan movement a coup d’état–orchestrated either by the West (51%) or by the opposition (21,5%), according to a poll conducted in October 2014 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiative Fund. This perception coincides with the interpretation of the Euromaidan revolution by the majority of citizens of Russia, including President Vladimir Putin.
Russia could not remain indifferent to events, particularly to Kyiv’s decision to seek close military ties with NATO, if not eventual membership of the aggressive military alliance. And volunteers from Russia went to Donbas to defend the people they perceive as their brothers and sisters. As for the regular Russian military fighting in Donbas, no convincing evidence has been presented so far in Ukrainian or Western media. If Russia really decided to send troops, any resulting war would be over in a couple of weeks and the Donbas insurgency would not be complaining about lack of military support from Russia.
As for political and financial support, how is Russia’s defending the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians any different from the NATO governments’ involvement in Ukraine? The West spends huge amounts of money supporting NGOs which promote so-called European values. Ukrainian parties, such as UDAR, have direct financial support from the German government and the Conrad Adenauer Foundation. How about the famous visits to Maidan Square of Victoria Nuland, John McCain and other Western politicians declaring openly their support for the political goals of protesters? Is this not interference in a country’s internal affairs? Ah yes, we know the answer–they were supporting Ukrainians in their fight for democracy and human dignity, against the corrupt, kleptomaniac regime of the dictator Yanukovych.
Today, after the “bloody dictator” fled and democracy reigns, why is the new regime in Kyiv fighting a war against its own citizens instead of sitting down at the table of negotiations in a truly democratic spirit? Why is Kyiv still refusing to hear a different opinion? Why is national history being rewritten to suit one nationalist narrative instead of offering a plurality of perspectives? Why is the Ukrainian government imposing a war tax of one and a half per cent on impoverished Ukrainians and waging a nationalist, propaganda war in national and international media, trying to convince Ukrainians they are fighting a war against Russia?
This war has already killed thousands of Ukrainians. Many more thousands of Ukrainian families have been split over the issue of relations with Russia. The economy and infrastructure of Donbas are ruined. Is it better to kill and destroy or take a chance and negotiate? Ukraine is not a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural country. It will never fit into this mold, no matter how hard the current Kyiv regime tries to squeeze Ukraine into it by suppressing dissenting opinions.
Democracy, which Kyiv so much adores and venerates together with the “civilized countries”, as President Poroshenko puts it, is about learning to live with differences, by respecting and accommodating it. I do not see any sign of if coming from Kyiv. Joining a march to commemorate the writers of Charlie Hebdo is not enough to make of Ukraine a democratic country. What Ukraine really needs is a President and a government that listens to all Ukrainians and respects their right to be different. Yes, the majority of Ukrainians want to be part of Europe. But there is also the other Ukraine that wants to keep close ties with Russia. Any political project of state-building in Ukraine will succeed only if this other Ukraine is heard and accommodated.
Halyna Mokrushyna is currently enrolled in the PhD program in Sociology at the University of Ottawa and a part-time professor. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and MA degree in communication. Her academic interests include: transitional justice; collective memory; ethnic studies; dissent movement in Ukraine; history of Ukraine; sociological thought. Her doctoral project deals with the memory of Stalinist purges in Ukraine. In the summer of 2013 she travelled to Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk to conduct her field research. She is currently working on completing her thesis. She can be reached at halouwins@gmail.com.
N. Korea’s proposal to suspend nuclear tests ‘meaningful and significant’
RT | January 14, 2015
Pyongyang is ready to suspend nuclear tests if the US cancels annual military drills with South Korea, according to North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the UN, who once again reiterated the North’s offer.
“We the government of the DPRK propose to the US to temporarily suspend the joint military exercises which it conducts every year in South Korea. And if this is the case, we will respond by temporarily suspending nuclear tests which the US is concerned about,”An Myong Hun said in New York, as quoted by Inner City Press.
The deputy ambassador was also quick to blame Washington for the “division of the nation,” calling US foreign policy “hostile” towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as every year the US conducts “dangerous military exercises” near the North Korean border.
“For this, the largest scale war exercises undertaken every year in South Korea, jointly by the US and South Korea, must stop immediately,” he said.
The North Korean envoy said it is “very important” to avoid the “danger of war,” as the US continues to permanently station 30,000 troops in South Korea.
Meanwhile, a two-day joint naval drill on South Korea’s east coast started on Tuesday and includes two US destroyers and several South Korean vessels. The USS Mustin and the USS John McCain, each with around 280 sailors on board, are leading the anti-submarine warfare drill. The drill also includes the South Korean destroyer Gwanggaeto, a submarine, anti-submarine aircraft, and two helicopters. The maritime exercise is reportedly aimed at boosting the allies’ readiness to fend off any potential threats from the North, which is believed to have some 70 submarines.
Last Friday, the communist North offered to suspend nuclear tests if Washington agreed to halt this year’s drills.
“The DPRK is ready to take such a responsive step as temporarily suspending the nuclear test over which the US is concerned,” KCNA said.
The US rejected the proposal with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki replying on Saturday that nuke tests and US-led drills are two separate issues.
“The DPRK statement that inappropriately links routine US-ROK [South Korea] exercises to the possibility of a nuclear test by North Korea is an implicit threat,” Psaki told reporters, calling on the North to “immediately cease all threats, reduce tensions, and take the necessary steps toward denuclearization needed to resume credible negotiations.”
North Korea insisted on Tuesday that the official proposal was made through “appropriate channels” and was “meaningful and significant.”
“By refusing to accept our proposal … the United States has shown once again that they will continue to increase attack military capabilities in South Korea while requesting us not to have our own national defence capabilities,” the envoy said.
Since 2006, North Korea has conducted three separate nuclear tests, the latest in February 2013. It has threatened to hold more tests in response to a United Nations resolution condemning human rights in the country.
Britain scraps Sellafield nuclear deal
Press TV – January 13, 2015
Britain said on Tuesday that it had scrapped a deal worth $30.2 billion with an international consortium to clean up the Sellafield nuclear facility in Cumbria in the northwest of the country.
The contractors of the project were Amec of Britain, Areva of France and URS, an American company. They have been fired from the job that was delegated to them six years ago after their leader was accused by the government of “delays and exceeding budgets”.
Meanwhile, there are reports that while rising costs have been a major motivation for the decision, among the problems encountered was the accidental shipping of radioactive waste to a landfill, which resulted in a fine of more than $1 million.
Despite the problems, members of parliament hesitated to tear up the contract last year in part because of concerns about the government’s ability to get the decommissioning job done, the Telegraph said.
The government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will now take ownership of the clean-up.
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey described Sellafield as “the biggest and most complex nuclear site in Europe” and said “it’s right that we keep the way it’s being managed under constant review”.
He added that a “strategic partner” would be found from the private sector.
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The toxic legacy of nuclear weapons testing serves as a stark warning of the danger these weapons pose
By Scott Ritter | RT | March 11, 2021
Millions of people suffer and die from the effects of radiation exposure from decades of nuclear weapons testing. Their experience should give serious pause to those who continue to embrace the viability of a nuclear deterrent.
A dust storm originating in the Sahara Desert swept across parts of Spain, France, the UK, and Ireland last month. In addition to bringing a red tinge to the sky, the dust caused a slight, yet noticeable, spike in radiation in the areas it reached. This radiation spike was caused by the presence of cesium-137, a radioactive isotope produced through the nuclear fission of uranium-235 in nuclear weapons. A legacy of French nuclear weapons testing that occurred in Algeria during the 1960s, the cesium-137 contamination is a reminder that while the testing of nuclear weapons may have been halted for the time being, the consequences of these tests live on through the poisoning of the planet mankind calls home.
The Saharan radioactive dust cloud is but the most recent visible phenomenon of a plague that has infected much of the world. … continue
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