Russia to counteract NATO’s boosted presence in Black Sea – envoy
RT | December 26, 2014
Moscow is being forced to come up with countermeasures in response to NATO’s increased presence in the Black Sea, Russia’s envoy to the alliance said following an announcement on the arrival of another US warship in the area.
“Unfortunately, the Black Sea is becoming a place where non-regional powers have a permanent presence. What they are doing there is unclear,” Aleksandr Grushko said.
“Of course, we will take the necessary countermeasures,” he continued.
Grushko also criticized the North Atlantic Alliance for stationing high alert forces near Russia’s borders by holding frequent military drills with counties including Poland and the Baltic states.
Russia’s new military doctrine, adopted on December 26, stresses that the country’s army remains a defensive tool, but lists NATO’s military buildup and the United States’ Prompt Global Strike concept as main security threats.
The USS Donald Cook is scheduled to boost NATO’s fleet in the Black Sea on Friday.
“Donald Cook’s presence in the Black Sea is meant to reassure and at the same time demonstrate our commitment to work closely with NATO allies in order to enhance maritime security,” Cmdr. Charles Hampton, the ship’s commanding officer, said in a statement.
This is the second time the USS Donald Cook has entered the Black Sea since the start of the Ukraine crisis which began in spring 2014.
The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer was previously stationed in the area in April.
NATO sent additional ships to the Black Sea after Russia’s reunification with the Republic of Crimea in March.
The USS Vella Gulf, USS Ross, USS Truxton, and the USS Taylor – as well as warships from other NATO member states – were spotted in the area.
In July, NATO deployed a total of nine vessels to the Back Sea, setting a record in the post-Soviet period.
Despite the Montreux Convention of 1936 allowing warships of non-Black Sea states to stay in the area for no more than 21 days, the alliance has managed to secure its presence by constantly rotating vessels.
READ MORE: Pentagon confirms military buildup along Russian borders for ‘peace and stability’
Russia’s new military doctrine lists NATO, US as major foreign threats
RT | December 26, 2014
Russia has adopted an updated version of its military doctrine, which reflects the emergence of new threats against its national security. NATO military buildup and American Prompt Global Strike concept are listed among them.
The new doctrine was approved on Friday by President Vladimir Putin. Its core remains unchanged from the previous version. The Russian military remains a defensive tool which the country pledges to use only as a last resort.
Also unchanged are the principles of the use of nuclear weapons which Russia adheres to. Their primary goal is to deter potential enemies from attacking Russia, but it would use them to protect itself from a military attack – either nuclear or conventional – threatening its existence.
The new sections of the doctrine outline the threat Russia sees in NATO’s expansion and military buildup and the fact that the alliance is taking upon itself “global functions realized with violation of international law.”
The doctrine lists among major foreign military threats “the creation and deployment of global strategic anti-ballistic missile systems that undermine the established global stability and balance of power in nuclear missile capabilities, the implementation of the ‘prompt strike’ concept, intent to deploy weapons in space and deployment of strategic conventional precision weapons.”
Another new point in the doctrine is that one of the Russian military’s goals is to protect national interests in the Arctic region.
The document also points to the threat of destabilization of countries bordering Russia or its allies and deployment of foreign troops in such nations as a threat to national security.
Domestically, Russia faces threats of “actions aimed at violent change of the Russian constitutional order, destabilization of the political and social environment, disorganization of the functioning of governmental bodies, crucial civilian and military facilities and informational infrastructure of Russia,” the doctrine says.
Moscow sees international cooperation with countries sharing its effort to increase security, particularly members of BRICS, the OSCE, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and others as the key to preventing military conflicts, the doctrine states.
Traditional threats that Russia must deal with mentioned in the doctrine include extremism and terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and rocket technology and actions of foreign intelligence services.
The document notes that modern threats are increasingly drifting from a military nature to informational, and states that the likelihood of anyone launching a fully-fledged war against Russia is decreasing.
Ukraine Peace Negotiations Canceled in Minsk
teleSUR | December 26, 2014
An important step in the ongoing peace talks between Ukraine’s government and eastern Ukrainian rebels, due to take place in Minsk on Friday, has been canceled, Belarusian officials say.
No official reason was provided by the Belarusian foreign ministry.
“There will be no contact group meeting today,” Belarusian foreign ministry spokesman Dmitry Mironchik told Agence France-Presse. He added that “Belarus is always ready to offer [Minsk] as a negotiations venue.”
The latest talks also included Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The talks began on Wednesday, however failed to make significant progress, although both sides confirmed that after hours of negotiations they did agree to exchange prisoners, involving at least 375 prisoners from both sides.
The primary goals of the high-level negotiations have been to solidify a lasting cease-fire by agreeing on a withdrawal of heavy weapons from the areas of combat and a demarcation line between rebels and government troops.
Ceasefire and framework peace deals were announced in Minsk in September, but neither has been properly observed.
Since the conflict began in eastern Ukraine in April, 4,707 people have lost their lives, according to the UN.
More Militarization Expected for 2015 in Honduras
Government propaganda is based on repeating that security has improved with militarization
teleSUR | December 24, 2014
In Honduras, after one year of President Juan Hernandez’s term, there has been an increase in privatization, militarization and budget cutbacks in public services. It is expected this will continue next year, but social movements say that they will not sit idle.
According to leaders of the social and political movement, next year will see massive dismissals of public sector workers, reductions in health and education budgets, and the unity of the political opposition against President Hernandez.
Juan Barahona, coordinator of the National Resistance Front explained that, “We see that the budget which was recently approved in the National Congress, is a budget that in 2015 cuts millions off the health system, education, and millions off agrarian programs. There is not even a cent for wage increases or for new jobs. And as a response to this national budget, there is going to be a great deal of social protest, but also there is going to be strong repression and that’s why they (the government) are preparing themselves with the militarization of security forces.”
Repression
According to Barahona, in Honduras next year there will be more persecution of social movement leaders, stronger repression during public demonstrations, and more presence of military intelligence agencies in surveillance of government dissidents.
However, in the last two months of 2014, new fronts have been created in Honduras. The Rural Women’s front has been demanding cheap credit and true agrarian reform such as the titles of the land they have been working on. The Public Workers Front faces the privatization of public services and the dismissal of more than 8,000 workers. Also the opposition National Resistance Front is calling on people to go into the streets, and opposition political parties have pledged unity.
Salvador Nasralla of the Anti-Corruption Party said, “If we continue along this path, it is going to be a dictatorship. When there is a dictatorship people don’t have the right to an opinion. And we three opposition political parties believe that this is going to get worse.”
While the national media, which for the most part supports the government, claims that violence has been reduced and that the forthcoming decisions will bring solutions for the profound crisis in Honduras, everyday there are more and more expressions of discontent among the population. Confrontation is expected to be ongoing all through Honduras during 2015.
India slashes health budget by 20%
The BRICS Post | December 24, 2014
In a setback to efforts to provide affordable healthcare to some of India’s poorest people, the Indian government has decided to cut 20 per cent of its health budget.
More than 60 billion rupees ($948 million) has been slashed from their budgetary allocation for the year ending 31 March 2015, said officials from the Indian Ministry of Health on Tuesday. The move could severely tax government-run hospitals and clinics that are invariably over-stretched and under-resourced.
Apart from being lowest among BRICS, India’s health expenditure is lower than military expenditure. India spends about 1.3 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on public health while it spends 2.4 per cent on military defense. In contrast, India’s BRICS partner South Africa spent more than 8.5 per cent of GDP on healthcare in 2012.
The Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is struggling to achieve the 2014/15 fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent of GDP.
A Reuters report quoted unnamed Indian Health Ministry officials as saying the Finance Ministry has also ordered a spending cut for India’s HIV/AIDS programme by about 30 per cent to 13 billion rupees ($205.4 million).
According to a 2011 study in the medical publication Lancet, 39 million Indians are pushed into poverty every year due to medical costs.
Meanwhile, the neighbouring Chinese government has poured billions of pounds into healthcare reform in recent years, and the system has improved accordingly. Currently, 99 per cent of the rural population gets some kind of insurance, up from 21 per cent a decade ago. China plans to roll out universal coverage by 2020.
India fares poorly in socio-economic indicators, writes development economist, Professor Reeitka Khera.
“India’s use of its meagre public resources is also a cause for concern. Public services tend to have the first claim on public revenues in other countries. With close of half of Indian children being undernourished, one-third being illiterate it is not clear how the ruling class obsessed with “superpower” status hopes to achieve it. The refusal to invest in its main economic “resource” – her own people – will ultimately prove counterproductive for the ruling class as well as ordinary people,” says Khera.
UN Offers to Monitor Colombia Ceasefire
teleSUR | December 20, 2014
The United Nations has welcomed the FARC’s (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) declaration of an indefinite unilateral ceasefire in Colombia, and offered to help oversea it – if both parties involved agree.
“The United Nations has the competency,” Hochschild told reporters Thursday. He also stated that the U.N. has the willingness and the experience needed for the job.
The leftist rebel group called the indefinite earlier this week in Havana, Cuba marking the end of the last round of peace negotiations for the year.
The FARC and the Colombian government have been engaged in peace talks since November of 2012 to end the 50 years of civil war in the country. Although unilateral ceasefires have been called in the past, this is first time that no time limit has been set, leaving many optimistic that the two sides may be approaching an agreement.
One of the conditions for the ceasefire set by the FARC was that the situation be monitored by an outside body.
On Thursday, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) announced that they were open to overseeing the ceasefire. The leftist fighters also approached the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Broad Front for Peace to oversea the ceasefire.
President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, welcomed the ceasefire, however has refused to agree to it, stating fears that rebels would use the time to recalibrate and acquire arms.
The President has also refused to meet the FARC’s conditions for an outside monitoring body, saying the government itself could monitor the situation.
Earlier on Friday, the government accused the FARC of killing five soldiers during clashes in the southwestern state of Cauca. The attack reportedly happened only hours before the ceasefire was due to begin, however it is not clear who started the aggressions. The FARC has not accepted responsibility and has yet to comment on the matter.
According to the FARC, the ceasefire – which took effect at midnight on Saturday – must lead to a truce, and will only call it off if Colombian soldiers directly attack FARC troops.
Santos has said he is only willing to halt military actions if a peace agreement is signed.
Ukraine wouldn’t have civil war if not for EU – Putin
RT | December 18, 2014
If EU authorities had called the organizers of Ukraine’s coup to order, the country wouldn’t have faced a civil war, believes Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I am sure that if such a position was taken, there would be neither civil war in Ukraine, nor the multitude of victims. Our colleagues [EU] took another position,” Putin said speaking at his annual Q&A with the press and public.
He says Moscow is ready to become a mediator to start talks between Kiev and self-defense forces from the east.
“We hope…to reach a political dialogue,” said Putin, adding that Russia sees Kiev’s military actions in Ukraine as a “punitive operation.”
“But it [the operation] is made by Kiev authorities, not vice versa. It’s not self-defense forces who sent their troops to Kiev, but the other way round – Kiev authorities sent their forces to the southeast.”
According to the president, if the Kiev government wants peace, then it has to respect the interests of people in eastern Ukrainian regions, not pressure them.
“No doubt [Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko] wants to regulate the situation and I have no doubts that he is looking forward to it, but he is not alone [in making the decision].”
Putin referred to the statements of Ukraine’s former acting president and chairman of the Rada, Aleksandr Turchinov, who said on Wednesday that Kiev’s ‘anti-terrorist’ operation should go on “till the end.”
“We hear many warlike statements. I think that President Poroshenko is ready for regulation [of the crisis], but we need concrete actions.”
Putin expressed regret that the planned exchange of prisoners between Kiev and self-defense troops in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday was disrupted by Kiev.
“Yesterday [Wednesday] there was an agreement to exchange 30 people. The representatives of self-defense troops arrived at the place of prisoners’ exchange; an official from Kiev authorities appeared and said ‘No. We won’t exchange [the prisoners] until the Minsk talks.’”
Putin urged both Kiev and self-defense forces to exchange prisoners before the Christmas holidays using the ‘all for all’ principle.
“I think they [both parties] should exchange all for all without any conditions.”
Putin cited information from self-defense forces, saying that in the lists of exchange prisoners there are people who hadn’t been detained war-stricken Donetsk or Lugansk Regions.
“When the lists emerge, it turns out that from Ukrainian side there are certain people who had been arrested not in connection with military action in the country’s southeast, but somewhere in Odessa or Kherson [southern Ukraine].”
“Anyway I believe that people [prisoners] returned home before New Year, before Christmas, regardless of circumstances.”
Putin also spoke on the reports of Russian citizens fighting alongside self-defense forces in the Ukraine’s east.
“All those people who fulfill their duty or voluntary take part in some military action, including those in Ukraine’s southeast are not mercenaries, as they don’t get money for that,” he said.
READ MORE: Putin’s 2014 Q&A marathon LIVE UPDATES
A Failure to Understand
By Maryam Sakeenah | Dissident Voice | December 17, 2014
The attack on the Peshawar school is a tragedy that sends senses reeling, an enormity that confounds the senses. It does not help however, to dismiss the people who committed this foul atrocity as ‘inhuman’, or to say they were not really Muslims. It is a convenient fiction that implies a most frustrating unwillingness and inability to understand how human beings are dehumanized and desensitized so they commit such dastardly acts under the moral cover of a perverted religiosity.
This unwillingness and inability to understand is deeply distressing because it shows how far away we are from even identifying what went wrong, and where- and hence, how far we are from any solution.
The international media has reflected — not surprisingly — a superficial, flat and ludicrously shallow grasp of the issues in Pakistan. The CNN (and other channels) repeatedly portrayed the incident as ‘an attack on children for wanting to get an education. ’ In fact, the UK Prime Minister himself tweeted: “The news from Pakistan is deeply shocking. It’s horrifying that children are being killed simply for going to school.” It actually reeks of how the media’s portrayal and use of Malala’s story has shaped a rather inaccurate narrative on Pakistan.
Years ago shortly after 9/11, former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer had lamented Western politicians’ dim-witted understanding of terrorism and the motives behind it. Scheuer highlighted how dishonestly and dangerously Western leaders portrayed that the terrorists were ‘Against Our Way of Life’; that they were angry over the West’s progress as some deranged barbarians battling a superior civilization out of rank hatred. This rhetoric from Western politicians and the media ideologized terrorism and eclipsed the fact that terror tactics were actually a reaction to rapacious wars in Muslim (and other) lands often waged or sponsored by Western governments. It diverted focus from the heart of the problem and created a misleading and dangerous narrative of ‘Us versus Them’, setting global politics on a terrible ‘Clash of civilizations’ course.
Today, I remembered Scheuer again, browsing through responses to the Peshawar tragedy both on local social media as well as from people in positions of power; most reflected a facile understanding of the motives of terrorism.
The Taliban spokesman Umar Khorasani states: “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females. We want them to feel the pain.”
Certainly, this is twisted and unacceptable logic. What is most outrageous is his attempt to give religious justification to it by twisting religious texts.
Certainly, the leadership of the TTP is guilty of a criminal abuse of religious sources to legitimize its vile motives and sell it to their conservative Pashtun following who are on the receiving end of Pakistan’s military offensive in the tribal areas. The TTP leaders have hands drenched in innocent blood. Even the Afghan Taliban have rejected the use and justification of such means by the TTP as unacceptable by any standards in an official statement.
But I wonder at those human beings chanting Arabic religious expressions who blew themselves up for the ‘glorious cause’ of taking revenge from innocent unsuspecting school children. I wonder how they had gone so terribly, terribly wrong in their humanity, their faith. Certainly, they were taken in with the TTP’s malevolent ideological justification for the rank brutality they committed. Certainly, they allowed themselves to be taken in because they perceived their miserable lives had no intrinsic worth except in being given up in order to exact vengeance.
I understood too when I heard a victim student writing in pain, vowing revenge. ‘I will grow up and make their coming generations learn a lesson’, he said. In that line, I understood so much about human psychology and the psychology of victimhood, and the innate need for avenging wrongdoing.
The problem with the public perception of the war in Pakistan is that we see only part of it: we see the heartrending images from Peshawar and elsewhere in the urban centres where terrorists have struck. But there is a war that we do not see, hidden from public view. This is the war in the tribal north. The familiar images we see from the war divide the Pakistani victims of this war into Edward Herman’s ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims — both, however, are innocent victims — the ones we see and the ones we do not. But because some victims are unworthier than others, the unworthy victim claims worth to his condemned life in dying, misled into thinking that death by killing others can be a vindication.
But sometimes the ones we are not allowed to see, make themselves visible in horrible, ugly ways; they become deafeningly loud to claim notice. And in the process, they make other victims — our own flesh and blood… And so it is our bloody burden to bear for fighting a war that was not ours, which has come to haunt us as our own.
The work of some independent journalists has highlighted the war we do not see in Waziristan; their work, however, has not made it to mainstream news. Such work has brought to light enormous ‘collateral damage’ figures. Some independent journalists have also focused on the plight of IDPs who feel alienated and forgotten by the Pakistani state and nation. It must be noted, however, that there is no access to the media in the areas where the army’s operation is going on. The news we get from the war zone is solely through the Pakistan Army; there is, hence, absolutely no counter-narrative from Waziristan. And hence our one-sided vision eludes a genuine understanding.
This unwillingness and inability to understand reflects in our uninsightful militarist approach to the problem in Waziristan. While the necessity of using military means to combat a real and present danger is understood, the need for it to be precisely targeted, limited in scope and time, and planned to eliminate or at least substantively minimize collateral damage is equally important. The need to efficiently manage the fallout of such an operation and rehabilitate affectees cannot be overemphasized. On all these counts, we need to have done more.
But perhaps the most vital understanding is that military operations are never the enduring solution. They may be needed to achieve specific necessary targets, but only with the aforementioned conditionalities to minimize the fallout. Moreover, the bigger, deeper problems have to be dealt with through a wider, more insightful non-military approach: listening and understanding, dialogue, mutual compromise and reconciliation, rehabilitation and peace-building. There are numerous examples in the past — even the recent past — of how war-ravaged communities drenched in the memory of oppression and pain, seething with unrelenting hate, have successfully undertaken peace-building. There have been temporary respites in this war in Pakistan whenever the two sides agreed to a ceasefire. That spirit ought to have lasted.
I understand that this sounds unreasonable on the backdrop of the recent atrocity, but there is no other way to give peace a chance. Retributive justice using force will prolong the violence and make more victims.
Since religion is often appealed to in this conflict, its role in peace-building has to be explored and made the best of. To break this vicious, insane cycle, there has to be a revival of the spirit of ‘Ihsan’ for a collective healing; that is, not indiscriminate and unrelenting retributive justice but wilful, voluntary forgiveness (other than for the direct, unrepentant and most mala fide perpetrators). This must be followed by long-term, systematic peace-building in Pakistan’s war-ravaged tribal belt in particular and the entire nation in general. Such peace-building will involve religious scholars, educators, journalists, social workers and other professionals. Unreasonable as it may sound, it is perhaps the only enduring strategy to mend and heal and rebuild. The spirit of ‘Ihsan’ has tremendous potential to salvage us, and has to be demonstrated from both sides. But because the state is the grander agency, its initiative in this regard is instrumental as a positive overture to the aggrieved party.
But this understanding seems to have been lost in the frenzy, just when it was needed most pressingly. I shudder to think what consequences a failure to understand this vital point can bring. The Pakistani nation has already paid an enormously heavy price.
Maryam Sakeenah is a student of International Relations based in Pakistan. She is also a high school teacher and freelance writer with a degree in English Literature. She is interested in human rights advocacy and voluntary social work and can be reached at: meem.seen@gmail.com.
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Bum Rap for the Rapa Nui
By Thomas Riggins | Dissident Voice | February 5, 2014
A new report in Science News Magazine (1-25-2014) by Bruce Bower details a reevaluation of the view that the Rapa Nuians, the native inhabitants of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), were responsible for the collapse of their population and society due to over exploitation of natural resources and the destruction of the rain forest on their island, a view recently popularized by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse (2005).
As Bower reports, the anthropologist Maria Mulrooney has published the results of her studies of the Rapa Nui culture (Journal of Archeological Science, December 2013) based on new radiocarbon dates from archeological sites on the island. She has concluded that after the clear cutting of the forest in the 1500s, to make room for agricultural production, the population of Rapa Nui remained sufficiently vibrant to carry on food production and continue their cultural development.
Exactly when the Rapa Nui arrived on Easter Island is unknown but it was on or before 1200 A.D. or so. Mulrooney maintains they had a thriving culture which was still going strong even after their “discovery” by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday 1722. This would indicate that they had not suffered “collapse” as a result of forest clearance. … continue
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