Invited paper to be presented at the national conference on “Multinationals, Violence, Trade Union Freedom and Democracy in Colombia” organized by the SINALTRAINAL International Trade Union on its 30th anniversary, July 26, 2012 at Autonomous University of Colombia in Bogota, Colombia.
Introduction
The US military intervention in Colombia constitutes the longest counter-insurgency war in recent world history. Beginning with President John F. Kennedy’s launch of the “Green Berets” in 1962 and escalating in the new century with President Clinton’s $7 billion dollar military program (Plan Colombia) in 2001 to Obama’s inauguration of seven new military bases in the present, the US has been at war in Colombia for 50 years. Ten US presidents, 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans, both liberals and conservatives, have alternated in carrying out one of the most brutal counter-insurgency wars ever recorded in Latin America. In terms of civilian killings, trade union and human rights activist murders and the dispossession of peasants, the US backed oligarchy has the dubious distinction of being at the top of the list of tyrannical rulers.
To understand the bloody history of US imperial intervention in Colombia requires us to examine several key dimensions of the relation in a comparative-historical framework that highlights the specificities of Colombia’s ruling class and the strategic geo-political importance of Colombia to US hemispheric dominance.
Colombia: A Ruling Class in Search of Hegemony
Violence is endemic in a society ruled by a ‘closed’ ruling class governing through 19th century oligarchical parties (and their competing factions) for the greater part of the 20th and 21st centuries. Colombia differs from most of the rest of the major countries of Latin America which early on in the 20th century expanded representation to diverse middle class parties. In the post-World War 1 period and certainly by the World Depression of the 1930’s, Latin America witnessed the emergence of socialist, communist and national populist parties and Popular Front type regimes. However, Colombia remained frozen in a time warp of a closed political system dominated by two oligarchical parties which competed with bullets and ballots.
When in the immediate post WWII period a dynamic nationalist- populist figure emerged, Jorge Elicier Gaitan, he was assassinated and the country entered a period of a society-wide blood bath, dubbed “La Violencia”. Factions of Conservative and Liberal oligarchs financed armed bands to murder each other resulting in over 300,000 killings. The oligarchs ended their internecine war by signing an agreement to alternate electoral office, the so-called “National Front” further consolidating their stranglehold on power and forcibly excluding new political movements from achieving any significant representation.
Even when a pseudo alternative emerged, under the rule of rightwing populist, Rojas Pinilla, the mass urban and rural poor were subject to the private armies of the landlords, while the urban workers movement was brutally repressed by the military and police. Dissident democrats usually formed a faction of the Liberal Party; while activist workers were drawn to the militant trade unions and the clandestine or semi-legal Communist Party or smaller socialist parties.
The Cold War and US Imperial Penetration
With the onset of the Cold War, Washington found a willing accomplice in the bi-party oligarchical alliance, especially after the elimination of Gaitan and the savage repression of militant class based unions in the US agro-business complexes. Beginning with the bi-lateral and multi-lateral anti-communist military agreements of the early 1950’s, Colombian politics was frozen into a pattern of subordination and collaboration with Washington, as the US extended its empire from Central America and the Caribbean into Latin America.
The similarities between the bi-partisan political systems of Colombia and the US and the exclusion of any effective opposition in both countries, facilitated continuity and collaboration. As a result, Colombia’s oligarchy did not face the challenges that emerged from time to time in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.
The Cuban Revolution and the US-Colombian Alliance
The Cuban revolution, especially its transition toward socialism and the multiplication of guerilla movements throughout Latin America, marked a turning point in US-Colombian relations. Colombia became a pivotal country in Washington’s counter-revolutionary strategy. Colombia served as a US “laboratory” in the effort to defeat the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960’s.
Colombia served as a trampoline for Washington to launch a counter-offensive based on military regimes to establish an empire of dependent client-states, open to US economic interests and obedient to Washington’s foreign policy dictates.
US Imperialism and Latin American Nationalism: Impositions and Adaptations
The US Empire did not emerge ready-made at the end of World War II. It confronted and had to overcome many domestic and overseas obstacles and challenges. Domestically at the end of WW II, after years of war, most US citizens demanded a military demobilization (1945-47) which weakened the capacity to intervene against the emerging progressive governments in Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and elsewhere. However, with the Cold War and the “hot war” in Korea, the US rearmed and launched its quest for world dominance. Social democratic and progressive governments and leaders were ousted from governments and jailed in Venezuela, Guatemala and Chile. Throughout the 1950s Washington embraced the “First (but not last) Age of Dictators and Free Markets”. They included Odria in Peru, Perez Jimenez in Venezuela, Ospina and Gomez in Colombia, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Duvalier in Haiti; Somoza in Nicaragua, Armas in Guatemala, Batista in Cuba.
Between 1948-1960 the US Empire totally relied on the brute force of the dictators and the complicity of the local agro-mineral oligarchy to secure its dominance.
The Empire, built on the basis of rightwing dictators, however, did not last beyond a decade. Beginning with the victory of the 26th of July Movement in Cuba, a decade-long (1960-1970) continent-wide revolutionary upsurge challenged imperial power and client collaborators of Empire.
US imperialism, faced with the demise of its dictatorial clients, was forced to adapt to the new configuration of forces composed of reformist middle class electoral parties and a new generation of radicals and a revolutionary movement of intellectuals, peasants and workers inspired by the Cuban example.
In 1962 Washington launched a new strategy called the “Alliance for Progress” (AP) to divide reformers from revolutionaries: the AP promised economic aid to the reformist middle class regimes and military advisors, arms and special forces to destroy the revolutionary insurgents. In other words imperial violence was more selective; it was directed against the independent revolutionary movements and involved greater direct military involvement in the counter-insurgency programs of the electoral regimes.
Colombia the Exception: Repression with Reform
In contrast to the rest of Latin America, where agrarian, democratic and nationalist reforms accompanied the counter-insurgency programs (Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and Venezuela), in Colombia the oligarchy retained power, blocked the emergence of a reformist – democratic alternative and relied wholly on a strategy of total militarization – polarizing politics between revolution and reaction.
In Colombia the US Empire did not face a choice between a reformist middle class regime or a revolutionary movement because the oligarchical bi-party system dominated the electoral arena. The US did not need to combine the “carrot with the stick” – it concentrated all its efforts in strengthening the military power of the dominant oligarchy.
The Colombian ruling class ruled out any “agrarian reform” like in Chile, Peru and Ecuador for the obvious reason that they were the landowning elite. The Colombian oligarchy did not face a ‘nationalist military’ pressuring to nationalize strategic industries, like in Bolivia (tin and petrol), and Peru (oil and copper) because the military was under US tutelage and was closely linked with the emerging narco bourgeoisie. The Colombian ruling class served as the US “counter-point” to launch its second and most brutal counter-revolutionary offensive beginning with a coup in Brazil in 1964.
By the end of the 1960’s Colombia became the centerpiece (“model”) of US policy for Latin America. The region moved from reform to radical nationalism and democratic socialism in the early 1970’s – especially among the Andean countries and the Caribbean. Colombia was the anomaly in an Andean region ruled by nationalists like Guillermo Rodriguez in Ecuador, Juan Velasco Alvarez in Peru, J J Torres in Bolivia and democratic socialists like Salvador Allende in Chile.
Subsequently the US invaded and occupied the Dominican Republic in 1965/66 and supported the overthrow of Allende, Rodriquez, Torres, Velasco Alvarez in the Andean countries.Later the US backed military coups in Argentina (1976) and Uruguay(1972).
The Pentagon organized mercenary death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala killing nearly 300,000 peasants, Indian workers, teachers and other citizens. The US organized a mercenary army (the “Contras”) in Honduras to destroy the Sandinista revolution.
Colombia’s ruling class, backed by US and Israeli counter-insurgency experts, tried to follow the US counter-revolutionary lead by engaging in a “scorched earth policy” to defeat the popular insurgency. But narco-presidents Turbay, Betancur,Barco , Gaviria and Samper were only partially successful – they destroyed the popular legal Union Patriotica but increased the size, scope and membership of the armed insurgency.
The second wave of “Dictators and Free Markets” (1970’s – 1980’s), including Pinochet (Chile), Videla (Argentina) and Alvarez (Uruguay) came under popular pressure and faced the insurmountable debt crises of the early 1980’s. Once again US imperialism faced a challenge and choice: continue with the dictators and a deepening financial crisis or engineer a “democratic transition” which would preserve the state and the neo-liberal economy.
The Golden Age of Imperialism … Neoliberalism and Elections 1990-2000 (except Colombia)
The 1990’s witnessed the greatest pillage of the Latin American economies since the times of Pizzaro and Cortes. Presidents Menem in Argentina, Salinas and Zedillo in Mexico, Cardoso in Brazil, Sanchez de Losado of Bolivia and Fujimori in Peru privatized and de-nationalized over 5,000 public enterprises, mines, energy resources, banks, telecommunication networks – mostly through executive decrees – worth over $1 trillion dollars. During the 1990’s over $900 billion dollars flowed out of Latin America in profits, royalties and interest payments to multi-national corporations, bankers and speculators. In Colombia, narco-trafficking became the principle source of profits as the traditional oligarchy joined with the new “narco-bourgeoisie” in laundering billions of dollars via “correspondence” accounts with the major US banks in Miami, Wall Street and Los Angeles.
The “transition” from military dictatorships to neo-liberal authoritarian electoral systems in Latin America was paralleled in Colombia by the transition from an oligarchical to a narco-state. In Colombia the military and para-military death squads dispossessed millions of peasants, and confronted the armed insurgency. There was no “democratic transition” – the democratic opposition was murdered! Between 1984-1990 over 5,000 members of the Patriotic Union were slaughtered.
US empire builders looked on neo-liberal Latin America in the 1990’s as the “model” for expanding on a world-scale. The formula was to combine pillage via privatization in Latin America and dispossession via militarization in Colombia.
The Crises of the Neo-liberal-Militarist Model of Empire 2000-2012
The entire basis of US imperial supremacy in Latin America in the 1990’s was built on fragile foundations: pillage, plunder and corruption led to a profound class polarization and economic crises which culminated in mass popular uprisings overthrowing US backed client regimes in Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador. In Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela the incumbent neo-liberal Presidents were defeated by center-left and national populist’s parties and leaders.
In Colombia, mass rejection of the ruling neo-liberal narco-bourgeoisie expressed itself via massive electoral abstention (over 75%): the exponential growth of influence and the presence of the armed insurgency in over one-third of the municipalities and the tactical retreat of President Pastrana. He accepted a demilitarized zone for direct peace negotiations with the FARC-EP.
The entire basis of US imperial rule built on the collaboration of the neo-liberal client regime crashed. Between 2000-2005 popular social movements succeeded in defeating a counterrevolutionary coup and lock-out in Venezuela(2002-3). A victorious President Chavez accelerated and radicalized the process of socio-economic change and deepened Venezuela’s anti-imperialist foreign policy. Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay rejected US free trade agreements.
Once again Colombia went against the progressive tide of the region. Colombia’s narco-bourgeoisie and oligarchy opted for total militarization to avoid the popular democratic movements occurring in the rest of Latin America. The Colombian-US response to democratic revolution in Latin America was “Plan Colombia” – a $10 billion dollar war on the Colombian people financed by the governments of the US, Colombia and the European Union.
Plan Colombia: Imperialism’s Response to Latin America’s Democracy Movement
“Plan Colombia” was the US response to the spread of the popular democratic revolution throughout Latin America. Plan Colombia represented the biggest US military aid program in the entire region and was designed with several strategic goals.
1. To ‘fence in’ Colombia from the “contagion” of the anti-neo-liberal revolution which had undermined the proposed US Free Trade of the Americas agreement.
2. Plan Colombia served to build-up Colombia’s capacity to threaten and pressure Venezuela’s anti-imperialist government and to provide the US with multiple military bases from which to launch a direct intervention in Venezuela if an ‘internal’ coups took place.
3. ‘Plan Colombia’ had an important internal political and economic function.
It was designed to militarize society and to empty the countryside; 300,000 soldiers together with 30,000 death squad paramilitary forces, forced millions to flee guerrilla controlled territory. The guerrillas lost important intelligence and logistical support but gained new recruits. As a result of the Uribe/Santos “scorched earth policy” and the mass violence, entire new economic sectors, especially in mining, oil and agriculture, were secured for foreign investors, laying the groundwork in 2012 for the Obama-Santos free trade agreement.
There is a direct connection between Plan Colombia (2001), militarization of the state, mass repression and dispossession (2002-2011), the deepening of neo-liberalization and the free trade agreement (2012).
4. Colombia serves a strategic geo-political role in the US militarized empire.
In the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa the US has used the pretext of the “War against Terrorism” to invade and establish an empire of military bases, in alliance with Israel and NATO. In Latin America, the US in alliance with Colombia and Mexico and under the pretext of the “War on Drugs” has built an empire of military bases in Central America, the Caribbean and increasingly in Latin America. Currently the US has military bases in Colombia (8), Aruba, Costa Rica, Guantanamo (Cuba), Curacao, El Salvador , Honduras (3), Haiti, Panama (12), Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico (several).
The US: A Militarized Empire
Because of the relative decline of US economic power and the rise of militarism, the US Empire today is largely a military empire engaged in perpetual wars. Washington’s close ties with Colombia reflect the close structural features of the state – heavily weighted toward military institutions – and economy, skewed toward neo-liberal and free market policies.
Once again, Colombia is the anomaly in Latin America. Nearly ten years after Latin America rejected neo-liberalism and eight years after the center-left regimes rejected a free trade agreement with the US, Colombia under Uribe-Santos embrace neo-liberalism and a free trade agreement with Washington.
Facing two major economic initiatives from Venezuela , Plan Caribe and ALBA, challenging US hegemony in the Caribbean and Andean region, Washington tightens its ties with Colombia via the free trade agreement.
Conclusion
US Empire depends on collaborator regimes everywhere in order to defend its military dominance. In Latin America, Colombia is the biggest and most active collaborator, especially in the Central American-Caribbean region.
But like the US, Colombia’s militarized state does not ‘fit’ in with the rest of Latin America. The US has no new economic initiatives to offer Latin America and has lost significant influence and witnessed a relative decline in trade, investment and market shares. Because Colombia, as a militarized-neo-liberal state complements the US global project, it became a special recipient of massive US military aid – precisely to prevent it from joining the new bloc of independent progressive states and further isolating Washington.
Colombia’s increasing dependence on the US economy via the free trade agreement sacrifices a large sector of domestic producers in agriculture and manufacturing but increases vast opportunities for the oligarchy and foreign investors in mining, oil and finance. The free trade agreement will increase the opportunities of the powerful narco-financial-bourgeoisie which launders over $20 billion dollars annually in drug revenues through leading US and EU banks.
Colombia is the ‘model state’ of the US Empire in Latin America. Colombia is ruled by a triple alliance of a narco-oligarchy, neo-liberal bourgeoisie and the military. The Santos regime depends increasingly on the large scale inflow of foreign capital, which is oriented toward producing for overseas markets. The military expenditures, the mass terror of the Uribe regime, the political isolation from the regional economic powers (Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina) and the limitation of the stagnant US economy are serious obstacles to the neo-liberal model. President Santos is attempting to reconcile these “internal contradictions”. Santos has replaced mass terror with selective assassinations of key activists in the trade unions and the human rights and social movements. He has focused on co-opting electoral politicians and centering the activity of the paramilitaries on eliminating popular opponents in the new mining and investment zones. He has combined major economic agreements with Venezuela and deepened military ties with the US.
The Santos-White House agreements and the strategy of diversified dependence and free markets rest on very fragile domestic and global foundations. The repression of dissent, the regressive taxes, the depression of living standards, the millions of rural dispossessed have led to the vast growth of inequalities and pent-up mass demand and rising popular pressure. The military commitments to the US impose a heavy economic cost with no economic compensation. The cost of US promoted militarism undermines efforts by Colombian business to expand in regional markets. The US economy is stagnant, the EU is in recession and the outlook for 2012 is precarious, especially for an open economy like Colombia.
At the turn of the 21st century Latin American countries faced a similar situation: neo-liberal regimes in crises, the US in economic decline and a ruling class unable to grow externally and unwilling to develop the internal market. The result was the popular democratic revolutions which led to a partial rupture with US hegemony and neo-liberalism. A decade later Colombia faces a similar situation. The question is whether Colombia will follow the rest of progressive Latin America in breaking with imperial militarism and embracing a new developmental road. The time is ripe for Colombia to cease being a ‘political anomaly’, a client of a militarized imperialism. The popular movements in Colombia,as evidenced in the Patriotic March movement are ready to make their own popular democratic and anti-imperialist revolution and establish their own Colombian road to 21st century Socialism.
Part of the 2011 Congressional debt reduction deal called for automatic cuts to social spending and military budgets over the next 10 years. The idea was that a deal to avoid these cuts would be struck, because Republicans wouldn’t want to cut the Pentagon, and Democrats would try to protect safety net programs.
That didn’t happen, so these so-called “sequestration” cuts are prompting some alarm bells in the corporate media–ringing loudly at the mere thought of cutting the military budget.
The New York Times (6/4/12) sounded the alarm today in a piece by Jonathan Weisman that framed things like this:
On January 2, national security is set to receive a heavy blow if Congress fails to intervene. That is when a 10-year, $600 billion, across-the-board spending cut is to hit the Pentagon, equal to roughly 8 percent of its current budget.
Wow, this isn’t even about the military budget–it’s the very security of our nation.
The piece is, as the headline suggests (“Some Lawmakers Look for Way Out as Defense Cuts Near”), written from the point of view of lawmakers who can’t stomach the idea of military cuts. The most important is Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. But, the Times explains, he’s not the only one:
The dire warnings are not coming from Mr. Graham alone. They are coming at least as loudly from Leon E. Panetta, the secretary of defense.
So not only hawkish Republicans are worried about Pentagon cuts. So is, you know, the head of the Pentagon.
Weisman tries to give some sense of Graham’s strategy for putting off the military cuts:
Mr. Graham’s intention is to separate defense from the larger deficit issue by aiming his arguments high and low. The high argument is about American greatness.
“The debate on the debt is an opportunity to send the world a signal that we are going to remain the strongest military force in the world,” he said. “We’re saying, ‘We’re going to keep it, and we’re going to make it the No. 1 priority of a broke nation.'”
That might be the “high” argument, but it’s worth mentioning that, even with the cuts we’re talking about, the U.S. will be spending more on its military than anyone else. Enormously more. As in: more than the next 11 countries combined.
Pieces like this one often fail to include any budget context at all. This one actually does include such a perspective–but only so the reporter can try to rebut it himself:
On its face, the automatic cuts do not sound that bad. If they are put into effect, military spending would decline to its 2007 level, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But really it is worse than that. The law exempts war costs and allows the administration to wall off personnel levels and military pay, about a third of the Pentagon budget. That means everything else–operations and maintenance, research and development, procurement, fuel, military construction–would face immediate cuts as deep as 13 percent, Mr. Harrison said.
Follow that: The cuts would actually bring the Pentagon to 2007 funding levels, but it’s worse than that… because the cuts would be distributed unevenly. What?
I wrote a piece about this for Extra!, and this part of it includes all the information one needs to rebut this sky-is-falling reporting:
The proposed “draconian” cuts would force the Pentagon to make do with a budget equivalent to what it spent in 2007 (Project on Defense Alternatives, 10/11/11). Military analyst Winslow Wheeler (Center for Defense Information, 8/24/11) points out an annual base budget of this size–$472 billion–is $70 billion more than was spent in 2000, and would still constitute “more than twice the defense spending of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Cuba and any other potential adversary–combined.”
And the proposed cuts are often reported as raw numbers–$800 billion or $1 trillion in total cuts over the next decade. As economist Dean Baker has noted (CEPR, 8/4/11), coverage should explain that over this period the military is scheduled to spend close to $8 trillion.
Claims of catastrophic consequences from military cuts might also have been tempered by reminders that the Pentagon budget declined by close to 25 percent from 1989 to 1994–a historical context missing from most reports.
In other words, the cuts are real, but should be appreciated in the context of massive increases in military spending over the previous decade.
The other point of that Extra! piece: Stories worrying about supposedly debilitating cuts to military spending are a dime a dozen, and usually consist of getting Leon Panetta to complain about them publicly. But good luck finding many stories about what’s going to happen thanks to $600 billion in social spending cuts. Reporters don’t seem all that interested in that.
Are you wondering about the disconcerting contradictions in the nuclear news in recent weeks?
Following the release of a May 2012 report, newspapers around the world posted headlines announcing that the World Health Organization concludes that Fukushima radiation emissions pose minimal health risk. Based on an assessment of reported emissions of radioiodine and cesium up through September 2011, Japan’s nuclear meltdown poses no serious cancer risk, except for localized exposures around Fukushima prefecture, which may result in increased risk of thyroid cancer.
In the same week, Japanese press reported the alarming news that TEPCO’s assessments of total radioiodine releases were some 1.6 times greater than the Japanese Government’s assessment while, on the same day, the Japanese government issued a reassuring statement that “while gross releases of iodine-131 and cesium-137 are actually far greater than originally estimated, the public can rest assured, as releases to the sea have not resulted in contamination beyond the plant’s immediate area because the mixing power of ocean currents has dispersed the substances beyond the limits of detection in seawater samples”
Meanwhile, the US press reported findings from a study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrating that by August 2011, cesium-134 and cesium-137 from Fukushima was present in the tissue of Pacific blue fin tuna, as evidenced samples taken off the coast of San Diego, in Southern California. In the media storm that followed this report, government experts with the US Food and Drug Administration proclaimed no need for public panic, as radiation levels were detectable but simply too low to be hazardous and independent scientists explained why the presence, even at small levels, was so alarming and noted the need for additional monitoring.
As has been the norm in this most recent nuclear disaster, contradictory information abounds, with alarming news countered or contradicted by reassurances that muddy the water, yet achieve the goal of containing and controlling an impotent public.
We have been here before, in a world blanketed with nuclear fallout, where massive amounts of iodine, cesium, strontium and other radioactive isotopes moved through the marine and terrestrial food chain and the human body, in well-documented ways, with degenerative and at times deadly outcomes. Yet, for many reasons, while the environmental and biomedical trajectory of such exposures are well documented, the human experience and associated public health risks are largely suppressed, classified, or simply and persistently denied.
Sometimes clarity is best achieved by stepping back, taking pause, and considering the historical antecedents and experiences that have brought us to these chaotic times. A new documentary film by Adam Horowitz offers an opportunity to do just that.
Premiering June 2, at 6:30 pm at the Lincoln Center in New York City, Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1 is a poignant, provocative, and deeply troubling look at lingering and lasting effects of nuclear disaster and the human consequences of US government efforts to define, contain, and control public awareness and concern. Nuclear Savage recounts the experiences of the Marshallese nation in the years following World War II, as they played host to the US’s Pacific Proving Grounds and served as human subjects in the classified, abusive pseudoscience that characterized the US government medical response to civilian exposures from the 1954 Bravo Test, the largest and dirtiest hydrogen bomb detonated by the United States. Detonated in the populated nation of the Marshall Islands.
Here is the story: Following World War II, the Marshall Islands became part of the Trusteeship of the Pacific, and in 1946 after the detonation of two atomic bombs in the Bikini lagoon, the United States was given the authority to administer the islands as a Strategic Trusteeship. The terms of this agreement included the US obligation to “Protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources” and “Protect the health of the inhabitants of the Trust Territory.”
Between 1946 and 1958 the United States tested 66 nuclear weapons on or near Bikini and Enewetok atolls, atomizing entire islands and, according to records declassified in 1994, blanketing the entire Marshallese nation with measurable levels of radioactive fallout from 20 of these tests. To consider the gravity of this history: the total explosive yield of nuclear militarism in the Marshall Islands was 93 times that of all US atmospheric tests in Nevada, and more than 7,000 Hiroshima bombs. Hydrogen bomb tests were especially destructive, generating intense fallout containing an array of isotopes, including radioactive iodine, which concentrates in the thyroid and can cause both cancer and other medical conditions.
All told, by US estimates, some 6.3 BILLION curies of radioactive Iodine‐131 were released to the atmosphere as a result of the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands: 42 times greater than the 150 million curies released as a result of the testing in Nevada, 150 times greater than the 40 million curies released as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. And, while comparison to the ongoing Fukushima meltdown is difficult as emissions continue, estimates to date have ranged from 2.4 to 24 million curies. Simply put, radioactive contamination in the Marshall Islands was, and is, immense.
Radioactive fallout from the 1954 Bravo Test not only blanketed a populated nation, but also severely harmed the 23 Japanese crew members of Daigo Fukuryu Maru (No. 5 Lucky Dragon) who were in Marshallese waters harvesting a school of tuna when fallout blanketed their vessel. The US provided antibiotics to treating doctors at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan. One of the crew members, Kuboyama Aikichi, died a few weeks later. In the Marshall Islands, residents of Rongelap and Rongerik Atolls who were evacuated in earlier weapons test but not informed nor moved before this largest of all detonations, experienced near fatal exposures.
News of the disastrous exposure of Japanese fishermen and Marshallese island residents fueled international outrage, prompting demands in the United Nations for a nuclear weapons test ban, a series of pacifying news releases from the US about the rapid return to health of exposed civilians.
What was not reported to an interested world public, is the news that the heavily exposed people of Rongelap, once evacuated, were immediately enrolled as human subjects in a top-secret study, Project 4.1, which documented the array of health outcomes from their acute exposures, but did not treat the pain or discomfort of radiation burns, nor utilize antibiotics to offset any potential infection.
Nor did the US make public the full array of findings from their extensive documentation of the character and extent of radioactive fallout during the 1954 and other nuclear weapons tests, which demonstrated the deposition, movement, and accumulation of radioisotopes in the marine and terrestrial environment of Rongelap and other northern atolls.
In 1957, the people of Rongelap were returned to their homelands with great fanfare, moving into newly built homes on islands still dangerously contaminated from prior nuclear weapons tests and clearly vulnerable to the fallout from the 33 bombs detonated in 1958. This repatriation of the Rongelap community was both planned and celebrated by scientists and officials at the US Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission, who saw a significant opportunity to place a human population in a controlled setting to document how radiation moves through the food chain and human body. Annually, and then as the years progressed and degenerative health symptoms increased, biannually, the US medical teams visited by ship to examine, with x-ray, photos, blood, urine and tissue samples, the relative health of the community.
It is this story of human subject experimentation with unwitting subjects that forms the core of the Nuclear Savage film, illustrating both the abusive disregard and human consequences of experiments that violate US law, the Nuremburg Code, and Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which states that “no one shall be subject without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.”
The long term study of the human health effects of exposure to fallout and remaining nuclear waste in the Marshallese environment extended over four decades with a total of 72 research excursions to the Marshall Islands involving Marshallese citizens from Rongelap, Utrik, Likiep, Enewetak and Majuro Atolls. Some 539 men, women, and children were subject to studies documenting and monitoring the varied late effects of radiation. In addition to the purposeful exposure of humans to the toxic and radioactive waste from nuclear weapons, some Marshallese received radioisotope injections, underwent experimental surgery, and were subject to other procedures in experiments addressing scientific questions which, at times, had little or no relevance to medical treatment needs and in some instances involved procedures that were detrimental to their health. The United States Department of Energy acknowledged in 1994 administration of Cr-51 and tritiated water, and in at least three instances, Cr-51 was injected in three young women of child-bearing age. A 2004 review of declassified research proposals, exam reports, and published articles in support of a Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal proceeding found that a broader array of radioisotopes were used — radioactive iodine, iron, zinc, carbon-14 — for a wide array of experiments including research demonstrating the linkages between radiation exposure, metabolic disorders, and the onset of type-2 diabetes.
Arguably, while these experiences were abusive, a broader public health interest was being served, as the results of such science could potentially influence government policy and actions to protect humanity from the adverse health outcomes of nuclear fallout. And indeed, significant scientific knowledge was accumulated. However, the bulk of these findings demonstrated varied degenerative health effects resulting from chronic exposure to low-level radiation in the environment, findings which threatened political (nuclear proliferation) and economic (nuclear energy) agendas. Such findings were buried in the classified files.
For example, the presence and bioaccumulation of radioiron (Fe-55) in fallout from the 1958 detonations of nuclear bombs was documented in terrestrial and marine environments, including lagoon sediments, coral reefs, and reef fish, with alarming levels in goat fish liver, but this knowledge was not shared with the larger scientific world until 1972, nor shared with Marshallese until the declassification process supporting an Advisory Commission on Human Radiation investigation forced bilateral disclosure to the Marshall Islands Government in the 1990s. The movement of cesium through the soils, and bioaccumulation in coconut crabs, trees, and fruit – primary sources of food and liquid in the Marshallese diet — was also documented, with restrictions on the consumption of coconut crab periodically issued, without explanation. The movement through the food chain, bioaccumulation, and biological behavior of radioiodine in the human body was documented, and when thyroid nodules, cancers, and disease resulted, these conditions were studied and treated through various experimental means, though the relationship between nuclear weapons testing, fallout, contamination of the environment, and human subsistence in that environment was not explained until decades had passed.
In short, a wide array of other degenerative health outcomes were documented, including changes in red blood cell production and subsequent anemia, metabolic and related disorders; immune system vulnerabilities; muscoskeletal degeneration; cataracts; cancers and leukemia; miscarriages, congenital defects, and infertility…
However, when Marshallese residents suggested to US scientists that these and other unusual health problems were linked to the environmental contamination from nuclear fallout, their concerns were repeatedly and, because of the classified nature of the science, easily dismissed then. And, because time and the US power over the radiation health effects narrative is so immense and entrenched, they continue to be dismissed now.
The experiences of the Marshallese are particularly relevant to a world still coming to terms with the ulcerating disaster that is Fukushima, a point that is not lost to the members of United Nations Human Rights Council, which has been engaged in an effort over the past number of years to explore the varied means by which humans are unable to enjoy their right to a healthy environment, including the human rights abuses associated with movement and dumping of toxic and dangerous products and wastes.
Mr. Calin Georgescu (Romania), the UN Special Rapporteur for toxics and human rights, has a mandate that includes, among other directives, a country-specific mission to investigate these concerns in the Marshall Islands, especially the human rights consequences of environmental contamination pertains from nuclear weapons testing and other US military activities. In March 2012, Mr. Georgescu visited the RMI, interviewing displaced members of the Bikini, Enewetak, and Rongelap Atolls and other Marshallese citizens whose health and other rights have been severely impacted by living in a contaminated environment.
In April he traveled to Washington DC where he interviewed US government officials, met with independent experts such as myself, and discussed his investigation with the Marshall Islands Ambassador and the RMI UN representative. The Special Rapporteur is now preparing a report that will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva during their September 2012 meeting.
Why should a world community care about Cold War nuclear militarism in the Marshall Islands and its varied ulcerating consequences, especially given the many urgent and all to current crises we now face?
The US knowingly and willfully exposed a vulnerable population to toxic radioactive waste as a means to document the movement and degenerative health outcomes of radiation as it moves through the food chain and human body. This human subject experiment extended over the decades with profound consequences for individual subjects and the Marshallese nation as a whole. The Marshallese have become a nation whose experience as nuclear nomads, medical subjects, citizen advocates and innovators is shared by many citizens, communities and indigenous peoples around the world. Their experiences, consequential damages, and their struggles to restore cultural ways of life, quality of life, inter-generational health, and long term sustainability, are especially salient to a nation and to a world concerned with the lingering, persistent, and invasive dangers of a nuclear world.
With both the US and RMI participating in the UN Special Rapporteur’s investigation, there is an obligation for both governments to receive and respond to the report recommendations in a timely fashion, and in subsequent reviews, to demonstrate truly meaningful remediation and reparation for their nuclear legacies in the Marshall Islands.
Furthermore, given the timing of the Human Rights Council review – when the US Presidential election cycle is in full swing – international scrutiny of Marshallese nuclear legacy issues may provide further fuel for the fires now raging over such questions as the effects of chronic exposure to low-level radiation, radiation monitoring, permissibility levels, who pays for the long term public health costs of nuclear energy, and the absurd notion that a tactical strategic nuclear military is a sustainable and viable option.
And, finally, given the historical role of the United Nations in designating the Marshall Islands as a strategic trust, there is a moral and legal obligation for the United Nations community to assist in the remediation, restoration and reparation due to the environment, health, and dignity of the Marshallese nation. International attention to this history and experience is long overdue, and sadly and sorely relevant to a post-Fukushima world.
The US has hinted at taking actions against the Syrian regime bypassing the authority of the UN Security Council. This comes as pressure is piling up on Damascus following massacre in Houla that claimed over 100 lives.
US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice has said that if the council does not take swift action to pressure Syrian authorities to end 14-month crackdown on the anti-government uprising, the Security Council members may have no choice but to consider acting outside the UN.
“Members of the international community are left with the option only of having to consider whether they are prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this council,” Rice said on Wednesday after the 15-member council met in a closed door session to discuss last week’s massacre.
The United Nations is conducting its own investigation of who exactly is responsible for the bloodshed in the town of Houla. However the US and its allies seem to have come to their own conclusion, saying that the Assad government is solely responsible for the violence.
Rice did not specify what “actions” she meant. However the US and European countries had earlier imposed their own sanction on Syria outside the UN. So there are fears that her words could mean the threat of military action.
The US envoy said the worst but most probable scenario in Syria is a failure of Annan’s peace plan and a spreading conflict that could create a major crisis not only in Syria but also in the entire region.
“The Syrian government has made commitments. It has blatantly violated those commitments, and, I think it’s quite clear, as we have said for many weeks if they continue to do so there should be consequences,” Rice said.
Meanwhile, Syria’s Ambassador to the UN Bashar Jaafari has stated Wednesday that the massacre in the town of Houla was carried out by “professional terrorists” who were seeking to ignite a sectarian conflict in the country.
“Many Syrian innocents got killed because of this misbehavior of these outsiders. The Syrian people need one clear-cut message that the international community, if there is an international community, is there to help settling the conflict in Syria,” he said referring to last Friday’s violence.
Russia’s envoy tot the UN Vitaly Churkin stated that both the authorities and opposition leaders should understand that the current situation in Syria is unacceptable.
Kosovo pattern in Syria?
Susan Rice’s comment became a disturbing reminder of what happened in 1999 when the US and NATO intervened in the former Yugoslavia without a UN Security Council mandate.
“The precedent is already there – we’ve mentioned Kosovo. It’s exactly what happened – you had an allegation of a massacre, which was the village of Racak; you had a UN decree that was severely bullied by the US ambassador who was leading the observation mission on the ground; you had claims that it was brutal unprovoked massacre of innocent civilians by government troops. Serbia was blamed, presented with the ultimatum and then bombed,” historian and author Nebojsa Malic told RT.
“We have the same pattern repeating itself in Syria.”
Blogger Rick Rozoff believes that the US has warned Russia and China that it will push forward military action no matter what.
“Ambassador Rice is basically telling Russia and China and other members of the Security Council that if they do not go along with Western plans for more stringent sanctions and other actions against Syria, the US and its NATO allies reserve a right to act outside the Security Council as they did with Yugoslavia 13 years ago and launch military actions against Syria,” Rozoff told RT.
This video looks at a CNN documentary (April, 2012 with repeats) about the Iran nuclear issue, and examines the role of the mainstream media in keeping the public uninformed about the real problem-nation in the Middle East: Nuclear-armed, Apartheid Israel.
When we look at all the things that the Israel Lobby has been up to, we sometimes lose sight of the big picture. There has been a virtual flood of action by Congress to help Israel, much of it moving very much under the radar with no real debate and suspensions of rules to expedite the voting. Look at what has happened in the past month: HR 4133 passes through Congress on a 411 to 2 vote giving Israel a virtual blank check on the US Treasury and requiring the White House to prepare an annual report demonstrating how the Administration has guaranteed the Israeli military’s “qualitative edge” over its neighbors. It also provided military equipment — refueling tankers and bunker buster bombs — that can only be used for an attack on Iran. Only Ron Paul spoke out against the bill and even Justin Amash, a Palestinian American and Ron Paul supporter, voted yes, explaining “Our national defense benefits from Israel’s ability to defend itself and to serve as a check against neighboring authoritarian regimes and extremists.” According to Amash, it is constitutional to pay for Israel’s defense because of “Congress’s power to raise and support armies.” The Founders were not thinking of foreign armies to be sure, so Justin had better check on what he has been drinking from the House of Representatives water cooler. A few days later, $1 billion appeared in the 2013 Defense Appropriation Bill to fund Israel’s Iron Dome defense system — something that had been recommended in 4133. No coincidence there.
And then there is Iran. House Resolution 568 passed last week by a suspension of rules vote 401 to 11. Ron Paul spoke against the bill and also voted no. It ties the president’s hands on negotiating with Tehran, explicitly rejecting a “containment” policy relating to an Iranian nuclear program and also rejecting any compromises or concessions on the part of the United States if Congress in all its wisdom determines that Iran is pursuing a nuclear device. So if you want to understand how war with Iran is virtually guaranteed thanks to the US Congress, put the two bills together.
And then there is the little stuff. A bill proposed by Brad Sherman of California will give Israelis visa waivers, which means that they can travel freely to the United States, unlike their Arab neighbors. And not just as tourists — they will be able to do business. Why and why now? Because “Israel is our closest friend and democratic ally in the Middle East,” according to Sherman. And it will result in “more business.” For the Israelis.
And then there is an amendment by the redoubtable Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois which passed from committee on May 24th by unanimous vote which will reduce the number of Palestinian refugees by over 99% by declaring that only actual Palestinians who directly lost their homes in 1948 are actual refugees. Their children and grandchildren, also living in refugee camps, do not count. That would mean that there would be virtually no Palestinians left who might have some legal claim to return to their homes in Israel (roughly 30,000 are still alive of the 750,000 who were originally displaced). Kirk’s bill is a prime objective of the Israel government, i.e. to delegitimize the Palestinian diaspora. Given that the bill has nothing whatsoever to do with the American people, one can once again seriously question what parliament Kirk thinks he works for and what people he represents.
Certain names keep popping up in the pro-Israel legislation. Mark Kirk to be sure, who has received more than $1 million in pro-Israel PAC contributions, but also Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ben Cardin, Brad Sherman, Howard Berman, Joe Lieberman, Eric Cantor, Lindsey Graham, and Carl Levin. The Israel firsters in Congress are both shameless and relentless. We Americans who do not share their views should mark them out and hope for the day when they will be voted out of office and eventually prosecuted as the useful idiots and betrayers of our constitution that they most surely are.
Philip Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues.
The American empire is often ideologically dressed up in imagery that borrowed heavily from the Roman representations of imperial power. America, conceived by its founders as an empire in-the-making, has always dreamed of succeeding Rome. Charles Krauthammer wrote in February 2001 in Time magazine, “America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.”
Interestingly, in the summer of 2002, the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) published an eighty-five page monograph called “Military Advantage in History.”1 It examines four empires to draw lessons about how the US “should think about maintaining military advantage in the 21st century.” The monograph “provides a window into a mindset that envisions the US” as a successor to imperial powers. One of the empires studied is the Roman empire. The study cites the Roman experience as a precedent for America’s long-term dominance:
The Roman model suggests that it is possible for the United States to maintain its military advantage for centuries if it remains capable of transforming its forces before an opponent can develop counter-capabilities. Transformation coupled with strong strategic institutions is a powerful combination for an adversary to overcome.1
The American imperial power, like the Roman empire, is presented as not only benevolent, but also promoter and protector of peace and freedom in the world. The US claims that as God’s chosen country promotion and protection of peace and freedom in the world is its divinely mandated mission. This claim is reinforced by the corporate media with seductive symbols and slogans glorifying wars for peace and freedom and righteousness of waging them, and their soldiers as righteous warriors. The US violence and wars are promoted as liberating ones, furthering peace and freedom, and spreading the benefits of a “civilized world”. To protect its system of peace and freedom the US, just like Rome, has stationed troops all over the world. According to the Pentagon’s own 2005 official inventory, there are 737 American military bases in more than 130 countries, not including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and over half a million US troops, spies, contractors, and others work in these military bases.2 However, considering the US bases in Iraq (likely over 100) and Afghanistan (80 and counting), among many other well-known and secretive bases, there are over 1000 military bases around the world.3
A. Exceptionalism and Expansionism: Hallmarks of the US
The public in the US believes in the myth of American exceptionalism, moral superiority and innate goodness, and of its divine mission to spread “light” to the world. It is clear from the founding of the Anglo-American colonies on the land of the Native Americans, and from the time that John Winthrop made his famous sermon and declared that “we shall be as a city upon a hill” that there has been a strong sense among the European invaders and their descendants that they are a special people with a providential mission to the world.
The claim of American exceptionalism or the “city upon a hill” (Biblical phrase for Jerusalem) mindset has been a pillar of American expansionism since its inception as a country. It was John Winthrop, who first used this phrase in defining the new settlement in North America as the “city upon a hill”. John Cotton, a Puritan preacher, used this phrase to embody the idea of American exceptionalism. Considering themselves as the chosen people of God and as reenacting the Biblical narratives of exodus and conquest, the European colonizers occupied the “promised land” through divinely sanctioned violence against the owners of the land. The Puritans of New England applied the biblical texts of Israel conquest of Canaan to their own situation, casting the Native American tribes as the Canaanites and Amalekites. In 1689, Cotton Mather urged the colonists to go forth against “Amalek annoying this Israel in the wilderness.”4 A few years later, Herbert Gibbs gave thanks for “the mercies of God in extirpating the enemies of Israel in Canaan.”4 He was referring to the European colonists as “Israel” and the Native Americans as “the enemies of Israel”. Similar rhetoric persisted in American Puritanism through the eighteenth century. Indeed biblical analogies continue to play a part in American political rhetoric down to the present. Ownership of the “promised land” is conferred by divine grant, and violence against the Native Americans is not only divinely sanctioned and legitimate, but also mandatory!
One of the pillars of the “city upon a hill” mindset is bipolarity: good and evil, where European invaders considered themselves good as God’s chosen people, and their enemies evil. That is why, Puritans saw the Native Americans as “brutes, devils” and “devil-worshippers” in a godless, howling wilderness filled with evil spirits and “dangerous wild beasts.”5 Native Americans were targeted for removal as the European invaders moved to occupy the “promised land.” God’s invaders “cleansed” the land by exterminating most of the Native Americans (about 18 millions) through “sacred” violence in 40 wars against the Indigenous peoples during 1622-1900 C.E.
The characterization of America as the “city upon a hill” has become part of American self-understanding and a basis of American expansionistic policies. The US has a virtuous and divine mission to the world, that is, the establishment of its form of peace and freedom by exterminating evil. This divine mission to further peace and freedom by eradicating evil in the world is a basic American impulse and justification for its violence. With this mindset Americans cast themselves against Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, entirely in terms of the binary: good versus evil. George W. Bush’s appeal to evil was dominant in his speeches to lay the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq. According to Bush, the purpose of his war was not only to bring peace and freedom, but also to end evil. It is this mission to end evil that justifies American genocidal violence. Its genocidal violence is a “sacred” violence or a “good” violence that will “cleanse” Iraq of evil and establish peace and freedom. Death and destruction are nothing but purification of the land. Bush launched his war in the name of God and considered the war as a zealous action of God’s chosen people. Just after the bombings of September 11, 2001, the US President referred briefly to his “global war on terror” as a “crusade.”6 On September 16, 2001, the BBC reported Bush had declared a “crusade” when the president remarked, “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a long time.” With the ripples of outrage it created in the Muslim world, the apology duly came. However, five months later, the President repeated the word while addressing US troops in which he termed the war as “an incredibly important crusade to defend freedom.” George W Bush, who describes himself as a “born again Christian”, has been quoted by Bob Woodward in his book Plan of Attack describing himself as a “messenger of God” “doing the Lord’s will.”
Commenting on the eleventh and the twelfth century Crusades James Carroll says:
In the name of Jesus, and certain of God’s blessing, crusaders launched what might be called “shock and awe” attacks everywhere they went. In Jerusalem they savagely slaughtered Muslims and Jews alike — practically the whole city. Eventually, Latin crusaders would turn on Eastern Christians, and then on Christian heretics, as blood lust outran the initial “holy” impulse. That trail of violence scars the earth and human memory even to this day — especially in the places where the crusaders wreaked their havoc. And the mental map of the Crusades, with Jerusalem at the center of the earth, still defines world politics. But the main point, in relation to Bush’s instinctive response to 9/11, is that those religious invasions and wars of long ago established a cohesive Western identity precisely in opposition to Islam, an opposition that survives to this day.6
Characterization of the American “global war on terror” as a “crusade” has not only shaped and given meaning to American violence, but also granted divine legitimacy. So, the US “global war on terror” is a divinely inspired and mandated violence. It is “sacred” violence.
The American history is filled with its “sacred” missions in the world. One of them was to Philippines. William McKinley, then US President explained:
I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me: 1) That we could not give them [the Philippines] back to Spain — that would be cowardly and dishonorable; 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany — our commercial rivals in the Orient — that would be bad business and discreditable; 3) that we could not leave them to themselves — they were unfit for self-government — and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the … War Department map-maker, and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States (pointing to a large wall map), and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!7
The President described the combination of sadistic cruelty and starry-eyed self-adulation as a noble campaign to “uplift and civilize and Christianize” the Filipinos. “Civilizing” and “Christianizing” the Filipinos took longer than McKinley thought. This “noble” campaign brought out the brute in the soul of the US Christian crusaders. A frustrated US General ordered troops to kill every Filipino male over age ten. The righteous American Christian warriors succeeded in their campaign by overcoming local resistance forces through their overwhelming superiority in weapons and sheer ruthlessness. They slaughtered about half-a-million Filipinos within the next few years. The American media explained that it would take patience to overcome evil, and bring liberty and happiness to the Filipinos. One critical citizen satirized McKinley’s war: “G is for guns/ That McKinley has sent/ To teach Filipinos/ What Jesus Christ meant.”7
Therefore, the myth of American exceptional status before God and its divine mission to establish peace and freedom in the world has been instrumental in justification of the American violence around the world and its expansionist policies. This myth has also made it easier to garner public support as Americans are already predisposed to “sacred” violence and receptive to more of it.
Justin Elliott, “Don’t Know Much about History,” in Mother Jones (August 4, 2008).
Jules Dufour, “Review Article: The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases: The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel,” in Global Research (July 1, 2007).
According to a report on azcentral.com, Sen. John McCain’s political legacy is set to be preserved with a high-profile new institute:
“The charge of the McCain Institute for International Leadership fits in perfectly with Arizona State University’s core mission of having a significant positive impact on the larger community, and we are grateful to Senator McCain for his support of this important university endeavor,” ASU President Michael Crow said in a written statement. “It will be guided by the values that have animated the career of Senator McCain — a commitment to sustaining America’s global leadership role, promoting freedom, democracy and human rights, as well as maintaining a strong, smart national defense.”
Sen. McCain, whose political career was a product of organized crime, deserves to be remembered for his longstanding service on Capitol Hill, especially for his supporting role to Sen. Joe Lieberman in promoting American involvement in wars for Israel.
An anti-war book, once pulped by the UK Ministry of Defense, has won the Orwell Prize for political writing by the judges’ unanimous vote.
Dead Men Risen by Toby Harnden is about the death of British officer Lt Colonel Rupert Thorneloe in Afghanistan in 2009.
The book “takes us into the hearts and minds of the Welsh Guards in a way that is both interesting and visceral,” the judges said.
“It challenges every citizen of this country to examine exactly what we’re asking soldiers to do in Afghanistan,” the panel continued.
“Rather than offering easy answers it lets the soldiers speak for themselves.”
The book was published by Quercus in amended form after the MoD bought the entire first print run and destroyed them.
Since the start of the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, 412 British service personnel have been killed.
Britain has more than 9,000 troops stationed in the war-torn country.
Founded by Bernard Crick in 1993, the Orwell Prize is considered the pre-eminent British prize for political writing which honors a writer, a journalist and a blogger each year.
Winners are short-listed entries which come closest to English novelist and journalist George Orwell’s own ambition to “make political writing into an art.”
A blog visited mainly by UN insiders announces that US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman is up for a very important UN job. Former UN Assistant Secretary General for Public Information Samir Sanbar’s blog, UN Forum, notes that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is set to replace B. Lynn Pascoe with Feltman in the post of UN Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs. The office was created in 1992 to help identify and resolve political conflicts around the world. Pascoe ran at least a dozen missions in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, notably in Burundi, Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon and Libya. The longest running mission is in Somalia (since 1995) and the most recent is in Libya (since September 2011). With a budget of $250 million and funds for special political missions that amount, this year, to $1 billion, the post allows its leader to intervene in political crises around the world.
When Secretary General Ban began his second term in January, he promised to reshuffle some of his senior staff. Pascoe’s replacement is part of this process.
Of the proposed new appointment Sanbar writes, “Designating someone with varied field experience, though controversial, and from a substantially senior post, may mean that more issues could be referred to the Security Council.” The UN Security Council’s Secretariat is handled by the Department of Political Affairs, which would be able to have some sway on its agenda. The post is central to the UN bureaucracy.
News of Feltman’s resignation from the State Department next week simply confirmed all the rumors. Another rumor suggests that the UN will announce the appointment on Monday, May 28.
Is Jeffrey Feltman the best person to run such an influential office in the UN? Why did Sanbar believe that this appointment is “controversial.”
Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me that Feltman is “an accomplished and respected American diplomat.” He has been involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Lebanon and Syria, and other hot spots. These bring up “inevitably controversial issues,” Telhami continued. “Feltman would have his share of detractors, including in the Middle East,” he said.
But why would Feltman have these “detractors” and how did he come off on the “controversial issues”?
On one issue Feltman is remarkably consistent. When it comes to the Middle East, Feltman has been outspoken about the threats posed by Iran in the region. Whether in Beirut or Manama, he has publically denounced Iranian “interference” outside its own boundaries. At the same time, Feltman has generously offered US assistance to these same regimes. In other words, US interference is quite acceptable, but Iranian interference is utterly unacceptable. This might be adequate behavior for the diplomat of a country, but it is hardly the temperament for a senior UN official. It raises doubts about Feltman’s ability to be even-handed in his deliberations as a steward of the world’s political dilemmas.
Feltman’s intemperate logic was not of the distant past. It was on display in March 2012 at a Lebanese American Organization’s meeting at the Cannon Office Building in Washington, DC. At this meeting, the former US Ambassador to Lebanon, instructed the Lebanese people as to what they must do in their next election, “The Lebanese people must join together to tell Hezbollah and its allies that the Lebanese state will no longer be hijacked for an Iranian-Syrian agenda.” The people must “use the 2013 parliamentary elections to defeat the remnants of the Syrian occupation, the pillar of which is Hezbollah.”
Indeed, interference by speeches is not the limit of Feltman’s ambitions. On May 3, 2012, he was back in Beirut, meeting former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, former Finance Minister Mohamad Chatah, Future Movement leader Nader Hariri and others at Hariri’s residence. In the transcript of their meeting (leaked through Al-Akhbar), an older side of US policy making emerges. US Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly is heard saying that the government is “Hezbollah dominated,” to which Feltman says to the Lebanese politicians in the room, “You can bring down the government if Walid [Jumblatt] is with you in the parliament or if Najib [Mikati, the PM] resigns right?” To Siniora, Feltman says, “Would it help if this government is brought down before the elections,” and then he mentions that he is seeing the Prime Minister Najib Mikati later that evening. “This place is very, very weird,” he notes, “weirder than when I left.” This is not a trivial statement. A glance at Feltman’s cables when he was ambassador to Lebanon reveals a fulsome appetite for the weird. The cables betray an obsession with the social lives of the Lebanese elite, their peccadillos and their foibles.
Feltman’s “non-interference” to prevent Iranian “interference” in Lebanon brings to mind another episode in his recent career. When the people’s protest broke out in Bahrain, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent him there at least four, perhaps six, times. He was there on the eve of the Saudi-led invasion into Manama to smash the protests in March 2011. In a visit to Manama on March 3, 2011, just before the crackdown, Feltman praised the King for his “initiatives” and urged him to “include the full spectrum of Bahraini society, without exception.” In the Shia quarters, and amongst the al-Wefaq party activists, this sounded like Feltman was urging the King to take them seriously. In language similar to what he used in Lebanon, Feltman noted that the US wants a “Bahraini process” and urges others “to refrain, as we are, from interference or trying to impose a non-Bahraini solution from outside Bahrain.” The crucial phrase here is as we are, which implies that the US is not intervening in Bahrain. The fact of the 5th Fleet stationed in Manama and of the close cooperation between the Saudi monarch, the Bahraini King and Feltman’s bosses was to be ignored. “We are not naïve,” Feltman said, pointing across the waters at Iran. They cannot be permitted to intervene, but the US, a “critical partner” of the Kingdom, and the Gulf Arab monarchs, “will support Bahrain.”
When events heated up in Bahrain, Feltman and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen went on a tour of the emirates’ capitals, declaring their unconditional support. The US stands for “universal human rights,” Feltman told the emirs, but of course since “every country is unique” these rights would emerge in their own way. Mullen was at hand to “reassure, discuss and understand what’s going on.” The key word here is reassure.
A clear-eyed assessment comes from Karim Makdisi, who teaches at the American University of Beirut. Makdisi recalls Feltman’s role as Ambassador in the area, where he made himself an extremely divisive figure. Feltman pushed for UN Resolution 1559 from 2004, to disarm the Lebanese resistance, he supported the Israeli invasion in 2006, and he provided assistance to the March 14 political party against Hezbollah. In other words, Feltman actively took sides in a divided political landscape. Feltman’s appointment “would be a disaster and send exactly the wrong signal for the UN” to the region. Having recognized its weakness, the US knows that it will be the UN that takes the lead in Syria and elsewhere for the foreseeable future. Makdisi believes that in “anticipating a larger role for the UN,” the US wishes Feltman to be well-placed to “ensure that US interests are maintained as much as possible.” Whatever credibility remains with the UN will whittle in the region with this appointment.
It is likely that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon picked Feltman for an unearned reputation. He is known around the Beltway for his work on the Arab Spring. But in the totality of the Arab world Feltman will not be seen as an open-minded professional. He has already thrown his hat into the camp of the Saudis and their satellites (the Gulf Arabs and the Hariri clan of Lebanon). This will limit Feltman’s ability to move an agenda in the region, least of all on the Arab-Israeli conflict where sober diplomacy is necessary from the UN. When I asked several people who watch the UN’s work in the Arab world carefully about this appointment, most offered me three words, “very bad news”. Not bad news for the Saudis or the US neoconservatives, but certainly bad for the people of the Arab world, whose Spring had them longing not so much for this kind of venal diplomacy but for honesty and good-will.
MIRANSHAH/ PESHAWAR: Ten people were killed and three others seriously injured in yet another US drone attack, this time on a mosque in Hasukhel village in the Mir Ali subdivision of North Waziristan Agency early Thursday.
This was the second missile attack by pilotless US spy planes in North Waziristan in the last two days. Reports said the victims included foreign militants, believed to be Turkmen. Villagers and officials of the political administration, however, insisted that all the worshippers were local residents. Tribal sources said the drone fired two missiles and pounded the village mosque where the tribesmen were offering the Fajr (morning) prayers.
“Some of the people had offered the prayers and were leaving the mosque. Others were still praying and some were reciting the Holy Quran, when the drone fired two missiles and struck the mosque. The small structure of the mosque was demolished in the attack and those present inside were buried under the debris of the building,” a tribesman, Mohammad Roshan Dawar, said.
Talking to The News from Hasukhel village by phone, he said four US spy planes were seen flying over the area at the time of the attack. He said a large number of villagers later arrived there and helped retrieve the bodies of the slain men and those injured in the attack.
The tribesman said some houses located close to the mosque were also damaged in the missile strike, but did not cause any loss of life to the inmates. He said bodies of the slain men were mutilated beyond recognition.
“Their bodies were almost burnt and could not be recognised easily. It was a horrible scene as the villagers were offering prayers and reciting the Holy Quran in the mosque but within minutes there was devastation and human bodies lying everywhere,” the tribesman recalled.
Tribal sources said three people seriously injured in the attack were admitted to the Agency Headquarters Hospital in Miranshah. Pleading anonymity, a senior doctor at the Miranshah Agency Headquarters Hospital said all the three injured were in critical condition. “They were brought to us in a serious condition and had suffered multiple injuries. Also, we do not have any facility here in the hospital to save lives of seriously injured patients. Let alone other facilities, the only X-ray machine at the hospital is also out of order,” the doctor said.
Government officials based in Mir Ali confirmed that the drone had targeted the village mosque. Drones in the past had pounded schools, houses, Hujras and even the tribal Jirgas were not spared, but this was the first time that a mosque was attacked in North Waziristan. This was the 13th drone attack in North Waziristan this year.
The scale of the ongoing tragedy visited on Libya by NATO and its allies is becoming horribly clearer with each passing day. Estimates of those killed so far vary, but 50,000 seems like a low estimate; indeed the British Ministry of Defence was boasting that the onslaught had killed 35,000 as early as last May. But this number is constantly growing. The destruction of the state’s forces by British, French and American blitzkrieg has left the country in a state of total anarchy – in the worst possible sense of the word. Having had nothing to unite them other than a temporary willingness to act as NATO’s foot soldiers, the former ‘rebels’ are now turning on each other. 147 were killed in in-fighting in Southern Libya in a single week earlier this year, and in recent weeks government buildings – including the Prime Ministerial compound – have come under fire by ‘rebels’ demanding cash payment for their services. $1.4billion has been paid out already – demonstrating once again that it was the forces of NATO colonialism, not Gaddafi, who were reliant on ‘mercenaries’- but payments were suspended last month due to widespread nepotism. Corruption is becoming endemic – a further $2.5billion in oil revenues that was supposed to have been transferred to the national treasury remains unaccounted for. Libyan resources are now being jointly plundered by the oil multinationals and a handful of chosen families from amongst the country’s new elites; a classic neo-colonial stitch-up. The use of these resources for giant infrastructure projects such as the Great Manmade River, and the massive raising of living standards over the past four decades (Libyan life expectancy rose from 51 to 77 since Gaddafi came to power in 1969) sadly looks to have already become a thing of the past.
But woe betide anyone who mentions that now. It was decided long ago that no supporters of Gaddafi would be allowed to stand in the upcoming elections, but recent changes have gone even further. Law 37, passed by the new NATO-imposed government last month, has created a new crime of ‘glorifying’ the former government or its leader – subject to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Would this include a passing comment that things were better under Gaddafi? The law is cleverly vague enough to be open to interpretation. It is a recipe for institutionalised political persecution.
Even more indicative of the contempt for the rule of law amongst the new government – a government, remember, which has yet to receive any semblance of popular mandate, and whose only power base remains the colonial armed forces – is Law 38. This law has now guaranteed immunity from prosecution for anyone who committed crimes aimed at “promoting or protecting the revolution”. Those responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Tawergha – such as Misrata’s self-proclaimed “brigade for the purging of black skins” – can continue their hunting down of that cities’ refugees in the full knowledge that they have the new ‘law’ on their side. Those responsible for the massacres in Sirte and elsewhere have nothing to fear. Those involved in the widespread torture of detainees can continue without repercussions – so long as it is aimed at “protecting the revolution” – i.e. maintaining NATO-TNC dictatorship.
This is the reality of the new Libya: civil war, squandered resources, and societal collapse, where voicing preference for the days when Libya was prosperous and at peace is a crime, but lynching and torture is not only permitted but encouraged.
Nor has the disaster remained a national one. Libya’s destabilisation has already spread to Mali, prompting a coup, and huge numbers of refugees – especially amongst Libya’s large black migrant population – have fled to neighbouring countries in a desperate attempt to escape both aerial destruction and lynch mob rampage, putting further pressure on resources elsewhere. Many Libyan fighters, their work done in Libya, have now been shipped by their imperial masters to Syria to spread their sectarian violence there too.
Most worrying for the African continent, however, is the forward march of AFRICOM – the US military’s African command – in the wake of the aggression against Libya. It is no coincidence that barely a month after the fall of Tripoli – and in the same month Gaddafi was murdered (October 2011) – the US announced it was sending troops to no less than four more African countries – the Central African Republic, Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. AFRICOM have now announced an unprecedented fourteen major joint military exercises in African countries for 2012. The military re-conquest of Africa is rolling steadily on.
None of this would have been possible whilst Gaddafi was still in power. As founder of the African Union, its biggest donor, and its one-time elected Chairman, he wielded serious influence on the continent. It was partly thanks to him that the US was forced to establish AFRICOM’s HQ in Stuttgart in Germany when it was established in February 2008, rather than in Africa itself; he offered cash and investments to African governments who rejected US requests for bases. Libya under his leadership had an estimated $150 billion of investments in Africa, and the Libyan proposal, backed with £30billion cash, for an African Union Development Bank would have seriously reduced African financial dependence on the West. In short, Gaddafi’s Libya was the single biggest obstacle to AFRICOM penetration of the continent.
Now he has gone, AFRICOM is stepping up its work. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan showed the West that wars in which their own citizens get killed are not popular; AFRICOM is designed to ensure that in the coming colonial wars against Africa, it will be Africans who do the fighting and dying, not Westerners. The forces of the African Union are to become integrated into AFRICOM under a US-led chain of command. Gaddafi would never have stood for it; that is why he had to go.
And if you want a vision of Africa under AFRICOM tutelage, look no further than Libya, NATO’s model of an African state: condemned to decades of violence and trauma, and utterly incapable of either providing for its people, or contributing to regional or continental independence. The new military colonialism in Africa must not be allowed to advance another inch.
DAN GLAZEBROOK writes for the Morning Star newspaper and is one of the co-ordinators for the British branch of the International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine. He can be contacted at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk
By Michael Hoffman | Revelation of the Method | January 3, 2024
Will the more than 100 Iranians killed by terrorist bombs today be mourned in the West as victims of terrorism? Certainly not. Allied doctrine has it that the killing of Israeli or American civilians is a crime of cosmic proportions, while shedding the blood of “enemy” women and children is perfectly acceptable; indeed commendable.
The West does not memorialize the hundreds of thousands of civilians bombed by the U.S. in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and every major German city 1943-1945. America’s fire-bombing of the city of Tokyo by General Curtis LeMay in March 1945 was followed by Harry Truman’s atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year. Truman never had a moment of doubt or regret over the murder of more than a 100,000 Asian children, mothers and non-combatant boys and men. It was business as usual for the “noble” Allies during the “Good War.”
In the West human rights signifies passionate concern only for civilians designated as truly human: Israelis first, then Americans and British, followed by their satraps.
This inhumanity is the legacy of Talmudic ideology, beginning with tractate Sanhedrin 57a from 400 A.D., concerning liability for capital punishment: “If a Jew murders a gentile, he is exempt.”
This teaching of contempt was reiterated in the dogma of Chabad Lubavitch founder Rabbi Shneur Zalman in the 18th century. … continue
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A blog visited mainly by UN insiders announces that US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman is up for a very important UN job. Former UN Assistant Secretary General for Public Information Samir Sanbar’s blog, UN Forum, notes that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is set to replace B. Lynn Pascoe with Feltman in the post of UN Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs. The office was created in 1992 to help identify and resolve political conflicts around the world. Pascoe ran at least a dozen missions in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, notably in Burundi, Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon and Libya. The longest running mission is in Somalia (since 1995) and the most recent is in Libya (since September 2011). With a budget of $250 million and funds for special political missions that amount, this year, to $1 billion, the post allows its leader to intervene in political crises around the world.
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