Amnesty International is US State Department Propaganda
Amnesty run by US State Department representatives, funded by convicted financial criminals, and threatens real human rights advocacy worldwide.
By Tony Cartalucci
Image: From Amnesty International USA's website, "Free Pussy Riot." "Help Amnesty International send a truckload of balaclavas to Putin." This childish stunt smacks of US State Department-funded Gene Sharp antics - and meshes directly with the US State Department's goal of undermining the Russian government via its troupe of US-funded "opposition activists" including "Pussy Riot." That Amnesty is supporting the US State Department's agenda should be no surprise, it is run literally by the US State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations, Suzanne Nossel.
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August 22, 2012 - Mistakenly considered by many as the final word on human rights worldwide, it might surprise people to know that Amnesty International is in fact one of the greatest obstacles to real human rights advocacy on Earth. In its most recent 2012 annual report (page 4, .pdf), Amnesty reiterates one of the biggest lies it routinely tells:
"Amnesty International is funded mainly by its membership and public donations. No funds are sought or accepted from governments for investigating and campaigning against human rights abuses. Amnesty International is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion."
This is categorically false. Amnesty international is indeed funded and run by not only governments, but also immense corporate-financier interests, and is not only absolutely entwined with political ideology and economic interests, it is an essential tool used for perpetuating just such interests.
Amnesty International's Funding
Finding financial information on Amnesty International's website is made purposefully difficult - specifically to protect the myth that the organization is "independent." Like any organized criminal operation, Amnesty separates compromising financial ties through a series of legal maneuvers and shell organizations. Upon Amnesty's website it states:
"The work carried out through Amnesty International's International Secretariat is organised into two legal entities, in compliance with United Kingdom law. These are Amnesty International Limited ("AIL") and Amnesty International Charity Limited ("AICL"). Amnesty International Limited undertakes charitable activities on behalf of Amnesty International Charity Limited, a registered charity."
And it is there, at Amnesty International Limited, where ties to both governments and corporate-financier interests are kept. On page 11 of Amnesty International Limited's 2011 Report and Financial Statement (.pdf) it states (emphasis added):
"The Directors are pleased to acknowledge the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Oak Foundation, Open Society Georgia Foundation, the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Programme, Mauro Tunes and American Jewish World Service. The UK Department for International Development (Governance and Transparency Fund) continued to fund a four year human rights education project in Africa. The European Commission (EuropeAid) generously awarded a multi-year grant towards Amnesty International’s human rights education work in Europe."
Clearly then, Amnesty does take money from both governments and corporate-financier interests, one of the most notorious of which, Open Society, is headed by convicted financial criminal George Soros. In March, 2012, it was reported that a Bloomberg's report, "Soros Loses Case Against French Insider-Trading Conviction," indicated that an appeal based on a "human rights" violation against Wall Street speculator George Soros had been rejected by the "European Court of Human Rights."
Soros, whose Open Society also funds Human Rights Watch and a myriad of other "human rights" advocates, literally attempted to use the West's human rights racket to defend himself against charges of financial fraud in perhaps the most transparent illustration of just how this racket operates.
Soros, who was convicted and fined for insider trading in 2002 regarding French bank Société Générale shares he bought in 1988, has built an empire out of obfuscating global criminal activity with the cause of "human rights." His support, as well as that of the British and European governments, of Amnesty International aims solely at expanding this obfuscating.
Amnesty International's Leadership
Amnesty's leadership is also telling of its true agenda. Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, for instance was drawn directly from the US State Department - again, utterly contradicting Amnesty's claims of being "independent" of governments and corporate interests. Nossel continued promoting US foreign policy, but simply behind a podium with a new logo, Amnesty International's logo, attached to it. Amnesty International's website specifically mentions Nossel's role behind US State Department-backed UN resolutions regarding Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cote d'Ivoire.
Image: Same lies, different podium. Suzanne Nossel previously of the US State Department, is now executive director of Amnesty International USA. Her primary function of dressing up aspirations of corporate-financier global hegemony as "human rights advocacy" has not changed.
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It has been documented at great length how these issues revolve around a decades long plan devised by corporate-financier interests to divide, destroy and despoil these nations who are seen as obstacles to US global hegemony. In the case of Syria specifically, it was revealed that the current "human rights" catastrophe stems back to a malicious 2007 conspiracy documented by "New Yorker" journalist Seymour Hersh, between the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia which sought to purposefully fund, arm, and deploy sectarian extremists to undermine and overthrow the Syrian government - this knowing full well the human tragedy that would unfold.
Nossel's "contributions" then are simply to dress up naked military aggression and the pursuit of global corporate-financier hegemony with the pretense of "human rights" advocacy.
A glance at AmnestyUSA.org reveals that each and every front the US State Department is currently working on and has prioritized is also coincidentally prioritized by Amnesty International. This includes rallies and campaigns to support US State Department-funded Russian opposition groups (currently fixated on "Pussy Riot"), undermining the Syrian government, toppling the government of Belarus, and supporting the Wall Street-London created Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (still called by its British Imperial nomenclature of "Burma" by Suu Kyi herself).
Amnesty International Betrays Real Human Rights Advocacy
Amnesty does indeed cover issues that are critical of US foreign policy, toward the bottom of their websites and at the back of their reports. Likewise, the corporate-media selectively reports issues that coincide with their interests while other issues are either under-reported or not reported at all. And it is precisely because Amnesty covers all issues, but selectively emphasizes those that are conducive to the interests of immense corporate-financiers that makes Amnesty one of the greatest impediments to genuine human rights advocacy on Earth.
Images: Manufacturing Dissent. "Free Pussy Riot" (above). Ironically, FIDH is directly funded by the US State Department via the Neo-Con lined US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as George Soros' Open Society. "Russia: Stop Arms Transfer to Syria!" (below). If the US State Department wants it, be sure that US State Department-run Amnesty International will stage a demonstration for it - and regardless of size or legitimacy of the demonstration, expect the corporate-media to make it headline news.
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Ordinary people are given the false impression that "someone is watching out" for human rights abuses, when in reality, all Amnesty and other organizations like it are doing, is managing public perception selectively of global human rights abuses, fabricating and/or manipulating many cases specifically to suit the agenda of large corporate-financier interests. This can be seen when entire reports out of Amnesty or Human Rights Watch consist solely of "witness reports" compiled from accounts of US-backed opposition groups.
In the rare instance that a report includes references to actual photographic, video, or documented evidence, such as Human Rights Watch's 2011 "Descent into Chaos" (.pdf) report, deceptive language is intentionally included along with throwaway passages to enable selective reporting and spinning by not only the Western corporate media, but by a myriad of faux-NGOs funded and run by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch's sponsors and affiliates. The Descent into Chaos report, regarding Thailand, was promply and amply spun and manipulated by US State Department-funded faux-NGO and "rights advocate" Prachatai.
When people erroneously believe that credible organizations are handling "rights advocacy" they will not only become complacent, they will become negligent of their own responsibilities to objectively examine potential abuses and speak out against them. Wall Street and London's corporate-financier interests have filled a void - that should be occupied by their greatest opponents - instead with a large advocacy racket of their own creation. Not only are they given a free pass to abuse human rights globally, they've actually used their controlled opposition to attack their opponents.
It is clear that Amnesty International is by no means an "advocate" of human rights, but rather an affront to human rights advocacy. It goes without saying that it should be boycotted out of existence and at the very least, identified as illegitimate and fraudulent - from its funding to its compromised leadership.
Additionally, we the people must tackle real violations of each others rights at the grassroots - because it is absolute folly to believe that global spanning organizations, funded by corporate-financiers, echoing the agenda of governments driven by special interests has our best interests and rights in mind.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Interfaith Dialogue in South Korea
By the Revd Dr Guen Seok Yang (Anglican Church of Korea)
1. General Context
Colonialism, cold war confrontation and developmentalist despotism were the three stages of last century of Korean history. Most Korean political, economic, cultural and religious conflicts are very much in debt to those historical experiences. For the majority of responsible thinkers in Korea, the crucial concern for their intellectual endeavour is how to overcome the heritages descended from those three historical experiences of perversion. Even in the overwhelming advance of globalisation, such a historical recognition is neither abandoned nor outdated by them. Rather, I believe, it is continued to be refined as a more elaborate idea, particularly within the Korean peoples' struggle against the ruthless appetite of neo-liberal capitalist globalisation.
The Christian history, particularly protestant history of Korea, has followed the same trajectory of the rather sad history of transaction with Western modernism. Under the colonialist formation of power relations, in which unequal communications were legitimised and the denial of Koreans interpretative potentials was socio-culturally generalised the protestant Christian mission was started. Because of the already formed colonial relations, Christianity could avoid an excessive burden to be a prime suspect of anti-Korean culture, and Christianity could compete and collaborate with Japanese colonialism under the common recognition of the inevitability of the unequal colonial power relationship with Koreans. The cold war in Korea has left not only several millions of victims but also deep scars of division. The atrocious antagonism between ideologies, and between religion and ideology, was the experience of the cold war confrontation. Through the war, Christian churches had experienced the oppression and antagonism by the communist ideology of North Korea. It was time for them to arm with anti-communist spirit. The exclusive and antagonistic attitude against the ideologies, cultures and religions became a socio-cultural character of the divided country. Exclusivism and dogmatism were the principles of cold war confrontation, not only for religions but also for political ideologies. Under the development of military dictatorship, this religious and ideological dogmatism was combined with the capitalist spirit of competition. It is not too excessive to say that this deliberate combination of religious ideological dogmatism and the capitalist spirit of competition is the main reason for the rapid economic and religious growth in Korea.
With the beginning of more democratised civil government and the end of the cold war system of the world in the 1990s, Korean society is experiencing unexpected confusions. For the development of democratic society and for the reunion of a divided country, Korean society demands a more tolerant and dialogical attitude of all segments of society. Korean society is waiting for the emergence of the new vision for humanity and community. I believe Korean peoples are expecting religions including Christianity to respond and to co-operate with others for the new vision of humanity and community. However, Korean religions including Christianity are not very ready to commit themselves to dialogue with others, particularly just to satisfy the peoples' expectation.
The overcoming of negative heritages of colonialism, cold war, and military dictatorship, and the participation to the constructive and co-operative dialogue with the other religions and ideologies, are both the basic contexts of Korean inter faith dialogue and for a Christian theology of religions.
2. The Social Practices of Inter Religious Co-opertion
In spite of the history of conflict and division, there have been experiences of inter-religious co-operation for social and national issues. The most foundational experience of inter-religious co-operation for national issues was the "March 1st movement", in which all the Korean religions including Christianity had co-operated in the independent movement against Japanese colonialism in 1919. Until now, this experience has become the foundational reason for why all the religions should co-operate with each other on national issues.
Although the reason is not very clear, the Anglican Church of Korea has been known as a church truly respecting Korean traditional culture. Perhaps it maybe the distinctive church building styles following Korean tradition. But as on reflection, the most important Anglican missionary experience for the inter-religious co-operation was the 1960's mission for coal miners. According to Bishop John Daily's diary, this mission was started very accidentally. One day, he was searching for missing students in mine villages. They were students who were arrested and sent to the mines by military government. As he was going to leave one village student camp failing to find his missing students, one of those students in the camp, asked the bishop to pray for them. Most of the students were not Christians. The bishop's translator, he was also a Buddhist, translated their request. When the bishop hesitated ho to do so, the Buddhist translator sincerely asked him to pray for them. Bishop John Daily remembered the experience as on eof the most exciting moments of his mission in Korea. Several months later, he started his mission for coal miners in that place. This mission has been known as the beginning of Korean industrial mission of the Christian church. Furthermore, he wanted to build an octagonal hall as a church building at the village. He planned to provide the eight different corners of the octagonal hall to different Christian denominations and other religions including Buddhism. Although his dream was not achieved, his experience has become a very important heritage of Anglican ecumenical and inter-religious co-operation.
Recently, the inter-religious co-operation for social issues and each of the religion's intended efforts to so-operate with other religions is clearly expanding. Many Buddhist temples are pronouncing congratulatory messages at Christmas. Some Christian churches, particularly Roman Catholic Churches, are celebrating the birth of the Buddha with Buddhists. But the most exciting experience, which will be remembered for a long time, was the 'three steps and one bow' protest journey that was organised very spontaneously in order to stop the national government's land reclamation project. This journey led by Buddhist and Christian leaders continued for sixty-five days. Finally, it succeeded in gainig the co-operation of most of the religions in Korea, and temporally achieved its goal of stopping the land reclamation project. With the success of this very religious protest journey for an environmental issue, the inter-religious co-operation for social issues becomes a much more widely and easily accepted agenda for Christian churches in Korea. We can expect that this developing and widening co-operation among religions in Korea will be advanced into a deep spiritual and theological dialogue.
3. Historical Experience of Inter Faith Dialogue
The history of inter faith dialogue in academic groups has to go back to the first encounter between 18th century Korean Confucian scholars and Christian literature, which was published as the result of 17th to 18th century Jesuit mission in China. This Christian literature includes the Chinese translation of Christian texts and Christian or non-Christian Chinese scholars' texts about Christianity. Through this encounter, a very spontaneous Confucian-Christian community has been established without any direct intervention from Roman Catholic missionaries in China. Although this pre-colonial and very voluntary acceptance of Christianity by Koreans has not been seriously reflected by official Roman Catholic historians or even by Korean scholars of mission studies, I believe this historical experience tells us many things about the present discussions about inter faith dialogue and Christian mission. Here I would like to talk about just one point. It is about what kind of process Confucian scholars had taken to understand Christianity. This small group of young Confucian scholars' main concern was to find a new way of self-discipline and governing of people (or community relationship), which are key themes of Confucianism. They had voluntarily read Christian texts. Their reading of Christian texts was not confined to intellectual and doctrinal understanding. They tried to practice Christian liturgical and spiritual teachings. They used to their own style of comparative method to read Confucian and Christian texts cross-scripturally as well as top practice the self-discipline methods of Confucianism an Christianity very cross-religiously. Through these readings in liturgical or spiritual practices, they wanted to carefully work out what changes were made in their mind and soul, and they wanted to find what kind of help the Christina teaching could give for the new way of self-discipline and community relationship. One interesting thing was that this experimental study had been carried out in the Buddhist temple by a group of sincere Confucian scholars. These Confucians' voluntary encounter with Christianity had given deep influences for the reformation of Confucianism and one of the results of the encounter was the voluntary formation of Christian community in Korea. However, Roman Catholic missionaries in China criticised the leaders of this community as sinners who profaned God and the church, furthermore, the Korean Confucian government suppressed them as heretics. I believe this pre-colonial experience of the encounter between Confucianism and Christianity tells us many things about today's issues, like '"What is the foundational motivation for inter faith dialogue?", "What kind of process has been taken in inter faith dialogue, particularly in relationship to various aspects of religious practices?", "What is Christian mission in the situation of inter faith dialogue?", "What is an equal and creative dialogical relationship among partners?".
Even after the beginning of protestant mission at the end of 19th century, this kind of comparative approach by Christian and non Christian Korean intellectuals has been continued. however, the present situation of inter faith dialogue, particularly after Christianity became one of the dominant religions in Korea, is not very easy. Rather, the Christian churches' narrow and triumphalistic attitude looks likely to suppress the sincere dialogue among religions.
4. The Present Disputes on Inter Faith Dialogue
In this final section, I would like to introduce the theological conflicts between church leaders and theologians involved in inter faith dialogue. In order to avoid too much theoretical discussion, I am explaining a discussion among church ministers, theologians and a Buddhist scholar, which was organised and publicised by one of the representative Korean theology journals, "Theological Thought". This dialogue shows us a development of the discussion of inter faith dialogue in Korea. As many Asian theologians know, Korean Christian churches except Roman Catholics were very antagonistic towards inter faith dialogue. Most Christian church leaders have regarded inter faith dialogue and pluralism as the most serious potential threat to Christianity. So, two eminent scholars from a Methodist Theological seminary had been expelled from their teaching position by Methodist church leaders. Some Presbyterian scholars has also been expelled or threatened with expulsion. But this situation is changing slightly since the middle of 1990s. With the development of the social experiences of inter-religious co-operation and public opinions' strong criticism of Christian exclusivism, the situation has advanced toward a more or less positive direction. The dialogue in the theological journal reflected such a changed situation.
In this dialogue, church ministers tried to put their emphasis on inter-religious co-operation for social issues rather then theological dialogue, and theologians did their best to persuade them of the need for theological dialogue. Here, what we have to look at is what kind of theological rhetoric and logic is used against intellectual and theological inter faith dialogue by church ministers. There is no change in their position that the inter faith dialogue, which is advocated by theologians, is paralysing the belief and the church membership of individual Christians as well as the mission and the very existence of Christian church. If I may summarise their assertions, in spite of the danger of over simplification, firstly, they consider that the inter faith dialogue promotes relativistic attitudes threatening the absoluteness of Christian truth. For them, all thoughts rejecting the absoluteness of Christian truth are anti-Christian. Secondly, they consider that Christians cannot devote themselves to mission without conviction about the absoluteness of Christian truth. Therefore, they assert that the pluralistic approach of inter faith dialogue is negating the inherited nature of the Christian church as a missionary community, and in the end it is destroying the foundation of the existence of the Christian church. Thirdly, they assert that theologians who are involved in inter faith dialogue are not in the position to decide the relationship among religions. Looking from their point of view, theologians' ideological and transcendental attitude pursue only what should be done without considering the living relationship with religions and religious individuals. Therefore, they ask theologians to reflect the living relationships instead of sticking to the ideological presuppositions. In this point, some of the contextual theologians support the church ministers' assertion. They also complain that inter faith dialogue in Korea is not very contextual, rather it is very western in its subjects and concerns. Fourthly, they assert that the problem of truth and the issue of co-operative practices for social issues have to be differentiated. Furthermore, they consider that co-operative inter-religious social practices have to precede theoretical and intellectual practices. Here, the church ministers advocate the reductive method of contextual theology, particularly of Minjung theology. Fifthly, they assert that the theologians do not have any concern for the development of the church and the concrete life of church members. They think theologians are people who judge the Christian church from outside the churches. They consider that is why theologians do not give any alternative suggestions about the issues that churches are facing in this secularised world of relativism. Although the assertions are expressed roughly and are rather church centred they clearly show the theological agendas that interfaith dialogue has to solve.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Corporate culture stunts and maims the young generation
Friends, as this forum is for thinkers I am reproducing one paragraph from an article published in TRUTHDIG, one written by Chris Hedges about the U.S.. It is beautifully written and encapsulates much of my own thinking which has featured in many of my posts.
The Perversion of Scholarship
“Corporate culture, which now dominates higher education, shares the predatory culture of the military. These cultures are about subsuming the self into the herd. They are about the acquiring of technical, vocational skills to serve the system. And with the increasing budget cuts, and more craven obsequiousness to corporate donors, it will only get worse. These forces of conformity are hostile to the humanities that teach students to question assumptions and structures, that prod them to seek a life of meaning and an ethical code that challenges the blind, utilitarian obedience to power and profit that corporations and the military instill. We will, I fear, continue to turn out the intellectually stunted and maimed, those who know school football records but no philosophy, drama, art, music, theology, literature or history. The goal of an education is not, in the end, to tell students what to think but to teach them how to think.”
The sentence which I believe has most import for today I have outlined in bold. Probably I would take ‘theology’ out of the list because surely it is irrelevant in 2012 (unless it is examined objectively and historically as evidence of how easily most humans can be conned). The saying that: ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ is true in every respect!
‘Intellectually stunted and maimed!” Yes, folks, if you go to college or university and get only vocational training, it’s no wonder that you end up as cannon fodder for the Corporations and the Military and the Politicians.
If your mind has never been exposed to the great philosophers and their wise, profound thoughts about life and you’ve only been exposed to the Corporate Robber Barons and their miserable little deformed, grasping perspective on life then you are stunted for life.
And what is the effect if a student has nil exposure to psychology, sociology, and biology, etc, and the works of famous writers who weave amazing stories about humans and the bleak human condition and human cruelty and depravity and bravery and courage. You are handicapped for life!
And what about the importance of being educated to see the pros and cons of different political and economic systems, to examine them, to evaluate them, and to be taught how to change them when they fail to provide equality of income or representation or become misused by psychopaths and warmongers.
Surely each graduate should leave his place of learning with this basic knowledge otherwise he or she is not educated (able to question) but is an unthinking human robot who can be manipulated at will by the Oligarchs and Politicians and Shonks that infest our world.
Universities in Australia, the same as those elsewhere, are being turned into Corporate entities because of funding pressures. The rationale is: ‘You give us the graduates we want (who’ll do as they are told and make us a lot of money) and we’ll give you lots of BIG donations!’
But even worse, one top Australian University, Sydney, is in the process sacking staff and closing down courses so it can afford a swimming complex! WTF?
So, fellow thinkers, what do you think about the Hedges paragraph and my few elaborations. Is there truth there perchance? Are we educating a society full of morons, human robots, and sheeple? What will be the eventual result: a totalitarian government, BIG BROTHER, nuclear annihilation…?
The Perversion of Scholarship
“Corporate culture, which now dominates higher education, shares the predatory culture of the military. These cultures are about subsuming the self into the herd. They are about the acquiring of technical, vocational skills to serve the system. And with the increasing budget cuts, and more craven obsequiousness to corporate donors, it will only get worse. These forces of conformity are hostile to the humanities that teach students to question assumptions and structures, that prod them to seek a life of meaning and an ethical code that challenges the blind, utilitarian obedience to power and profit that corporations and the military instill. We will, I fear, continue to turn out the intellectually stunted and maimed, those who know school football records but no philosophy, drama, art, music, theology, literature or history. The goal of an education is not, in the end, to tell students what to think but to teach them how to think.”
The sentence which I believe has most import for today I have outlined in bold. Probably I would take ‘theology’ out of the list because surely it is irrelevant in 2012 (unless it is examined objectively and historically as evidence of how easily most humans can be conned). The saying that: ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ is true in every respect!
‘Intellectually stunted and maimed!” Yes, folks, if you go to college or university and get only vocational training, it’s no wonder that you end up as cannon fodder for the Corporations and the Military and the Politicians.
If your mind has never been exposed to the great philosophers and their wise, profound thoughts about life and you’ve only been exposed to the Corporate Robber Barons and their miserable little deformed, grasping perspective on life then you are stunted for life.
And what is the effect if a student has nil exposure to psychology, sociology, and biology, etc, and the works of famous writers who weave amazing stories about humans and the bleak human condition and human cruelty and depravity and bravery and courage. You are handicapped for life!
And what about the importance of being educated to see the pros and cons of different political and economic systems, to examine them, to evaluate them, and to be taught how to change them when they fail to provide equality of income or representation or become misused by psychopaths and warmongers.
Surely each graduate should leave his place of learning with this basic knowledge otherwise he or she is not educated (able to question) but is an unthinking human robot who can be manipulated at will by the Oligarchs and Politicians and Shonks that infest our world.
Universities in Australia, the same as those elsewhere, are being turned into Corporate entities because of funding pressures. The rationale is: ‘You give us the graduates we want (who’ll do as they are told and make us a lot of money) and we’ll give you lots of BIG donations!’
But even worse, one top Australian University, Sydney, is in the process sacking staff and closing down courses so it can afford a swimming complex! WTF?
So, fellow thinkers, what do you think about the Hedges paragraph and my few elaborations. Is there truth there perchance? Are we educating a society full of morons, human robots, and sheeple? What will be the eventual result: a totalitarian government, BIG BROTHER, nuclear annihilation…?
Monday, July 30, 2012
Syrian war of lies and hypocrisy
Robert Fisk: Syrian war of lies and hypocrisy
The West's real target here is not Assad's brutal regime but his ally, Iran, and its nuclear weapons
Robert Fisk
Sunday, 29 July 2012
Has there ever been a Middle Eastern war of such hypocrisy? A war of such cowardice and such mean morality, of such false rhetoric and such public humiliation? I'm not talking about the physical victims of the Syrian tragedy. I'm referring to the utter lies and mendacity of our masters and our own public opinion – eastern as well as western – in response to the slaughter, a vicious pantomime more worthy of Swiftian satire than Tolstoy or Shakespeare.
While Qatar and Saudi Arabia arm and fund the rebels of Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad's Alawite/Shia-Baathist dictatorship, Washington mutters not a word of criticism against them. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, say they want a democracy in Syria. But Qatar is an autocracy and Saudi Arabia is among the most pernicious of caliphate-kingly-dictatorships in the Arab world. Rulers of both states inherit power from their families – just as Bashar has done – and Saudi Arabia is an ally of the Salafist-Wahabi rebels in Syria, just as it was the most fervent supporter of the medieval Taliban during Afghanistan's dark ages.
Indeed, 15 of the 19 hijacker-mass murderers of 11 September, 2001, came from Saudi Arabia – after which, of course, we bombed Afghanistan. The Saudis are repressing their own Shia minority just as they now wish to destroy the Alawite-Shia minority of Syria. And we believe Saudi Arabia wants to set up a democracy in Syria?
Then we have the Shia Hezbollah party/militia in Lebanon, right hand of Shia Iran and supporter of Bashar al-Assad's regime. For 30 years, Hezbollah has defended the oppressed Shias of southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. They have presented themselves as the defenders of Palestinian rights in the West Bank and Gaza. But faced with the slow collapse of their ruthless ally in Syria, they have lost their tongue. Not a word have they uttered – nor their princely Sayed Hassan Nasrallah – about the rape and mass murder of Syrian civilians by Bashar's soldiers and "Shabiha" militia.
Then we have the heroes of America – La Clinton, the Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, and Obama himself. Clinton issues a "stern warning" to Assad. Panetta – the same man who repeated to the last US forces in Iraq that old lie about Saddam's connection to 9/11 – announces that things are "spiralling out of control" in Syria. They have been doing that for at least six months. Has he just realised? And then Obama told us last week that "given the regime's stockpile of nuclear weapons, we will continue to make it clear to Assad … that the world is watching". Now, was it not a County Cork newspaper called the Skibbereen Eagle, fearful of Russia's designs on China, which declared that it was "keeping an eye … on the Tsar of Russia"? Now it is Obama's turn to emphasise how little clout he has in the mighty conflicts of the world. How Bashar must be shaking in his boots.
But what US administration would really want to see Bashar's atrocious archives of torture opened to our gaze? Why, only a few years ago, the Bush administration was sending Muslims to Damascus for Bashar's torturers to tear their fingernails out for information, imprisoned at the US government's request in the very hell-hole which Syrian rebels blew to bits last week. Western embassies dutifully supplied the prisoners' tormentors with questions for the victims. Bashar, you see, was our baby.
Then there's that neighbouring country which owes us so much gratitude: Iraq. Last week, it suffered in one day 29 bombing attacks in 19 cities, killing 111 civilian and wounding another 235. The same day, Syria's bloodbath consumed about the same number of innocents. But Iraq was "down the page" from Syria, buried "below the fold", as we journalists say; because, of course, we gave freedom to Iraq, Jeffersonian democracy, etc, etc, didn't we? So this slaughter to the east of Syria didn't have quite the same impact, did it? Nothing we did in 2003 led to Iraq's suffering today. Right?
And talking of journalism, who in BBC World News decided that even the preparations for the Olympics should take precedence all last week over Syrian outrages? British newspapers and the BBC in Britain will naturally lead with the Olympics as a local story. But in a lamentable decision, the BBC – broadcasting "world" news to the world – also decided that the passage of the Olympic flame was more important than dying Syrian children, even when it has its own courageous reporter sending his despatches directly from Aleppo.
Then, of course, there's us, our dear liberal selves who are so quick to fill the streets of London in protest at the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. Rightly so, of course. When our political leaders are happy to condemn Arabs for their savagery but too timid to utter a word of the mildest criticism when the Israeli army commits crimes against humanity – or watches its allies do it in Lebanon – ordinary people have to remind the world that they are not as timid as the politicians. But when the scorecard of death in Syria reaches 15,000 or 19,000 – perhaps 14 times as many fatalities as in Israel's savage 2008-2009 onslaught on Gaza – scarcely a single protester, save for Syrian expatriates abroad, walks the streets to condemn these crimes against humanity. Israel's crimes have not been on this scale since 1948. Rightly or wrongly, the message that goes out is simple: we demand justice and the right to life for Arabs if they are butchered by the West and its Israeli allies; but not when they are being butchered by their fellow Arabs.
And all the while, we forget the "big" truth. That this is an attempt to crush the Syrian dictatorship not because of our love for Syrians or our hatred of our former friend Bashar al-Assad, or because of our outrage at Russia, whose place in the pantheon of hypocrites is clear when we watch its reaction to all the little Stalingrads across Syria. No, this is all about Iran and our desire to crush the Islamic Republic and its infernal nuclear plans – if they exist – and has nothing to do with human rights or the right to life or the death of Syrian babies. Quelle horreur!
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
LIly-pad Strategy
Tomgram: David Vine, U.S. Empire of Bases Grows
By David Vine
Posted on July 15, 2012, Printed on July 17, 2012
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175568/
It was January 15, 2004, and TomDispatch had only been in existence for a year when Chalmers Johnson, author of the prophetic book Blowback (published in 2000 and a bestseller after the 9/11 attacks), did a piece for this site entitled “America’s Empire of Bases.” He wrote then: “Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.”
It was a benchmark essay for TomDispatch and a theme -- the unprecedented way Washington was garrisoning the planet -- that Johnson would return to repeatedly and that others of us would take up. This mattered because, despite the crucial role that Washington's empire of bases played in the American way of war and its dreams of global dominance, bases were then, and remain today, a phenomenon largely ignored in the mainstream media.
In 2004, the Pentagon was, for instance, already building the first of its 505 bases, the biggest among them meant to be “enduring,” in Iraq -- American ziggurats, I called them at the time. Some of these were large enough to qualify as full-scale American towns, with PXs, fire departments, bus routes, the usual range of fast-food joints, internet cafes, and the like -- and yet it was the rare American reporter who saw a story of any sort in them, even when visiting one of them. The same was true in Afghanistan, where the U.S. was building (and is still upgrading) 400 or more bases. No one even bothered to try to count them up until Nick Turse did so in February 2010 for this site. (Ann Jones took TomDispatch readers onto one of them in August of that same year.)
In his books and at TomDispatch, Johnson put significant effort into trying to come up with a number for the bases the Pentagon garrisoned outside the United States. In January 2011, Turse returned to that task and found that number to be well over 1,100. Again, it’s not a figure you normally see reported in the mainstream. In March 2010, John Feffer reminded TD readers of just how far the Pentagon would go to hang onto a single major base, among so many, on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
One of the last essays Chalmers Johnson published at this site before his death in 2010 was entitled “Dismantling the Empire” and it was concerned with just how the U.S. could downsize its global mission and end its empire of bases. David Vine, anthropologist and author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia, has been touring American bases for the past three years. In a major survey of the changing shape of our Baseworld, he suggests that unfortunately it isn’t shrinking at all, and that “dismantling” isn’t yet on the American horizon. This means that -- until the mainstream finally stumbles upon the import of this story -- TomDispatch has little choice but to stay on the bases beat for the foreseeable future. (To catch Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Vine discusses his experiences with the Pentagon’s empire of bases, click here or download it to your iPod here.) Tom
The Lily-Pad Strategy
How the Pentagon Is Quietly Transforming Its Overseas Base Empire and Creating a Dangerous New Way of War
By David Vine
The first thing I saw last month when I walked into the belly of the dark grey C-17 Air Force cargo plane was a void -- something missing. A missing left arm, to be exact, severed at the shoulder, temporarily patched and held together. Thick, pale flesh, flecked with bright red at the edges. It looked like meat sliced open. The face and what remained of the rest of the man were obscured by blankets, an American flag quilt, and a jumble of tubes and tape, wires, drip bags, and medical monitors.
That man and two other critically wounded soldiers -- one with two stumps where legs had been, the other missing a leg below the thigh -- were intubated, unconscious, and lying on stretchers hooked to the walls of the plane that had just landed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. A tattoo on the soldier’s remaining arm read, “DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.”
I asked a member of the Air Force medical team about the casualties they see like these. Many, as with this flight, were coming from Afghanistan, he told me. “A lot from the Horn of Africa,” he added. “You don’t really hear about that in the media.”
“Where in Africa?” I asked. He said he didn’t know exactly, but generally from the Horn, often with critical injuries. “A lot out of Djibouti,” he added, referring to Camp Lemonnier, the main U.S. military base in Africa, but from “elsewhere” in the region, too.
Since the “Black Hawk Down” deaths in Somalia almost 20 years ago, we’ve heard little, if anything, about American military casualties in Africa (other than a strange report last week about three special operations commandos killed, along with three women identified by U.S. military sources as “Moroccan prostitutes,” in a mysterious car accident in Mali). The growing number of patients arriving at Ramstein from Africa pulls back a curtain on a significant transformation in twenty-first-century U.S. military strategy.
These casualties are likely to be the vanguard of growing numbers of wounded troops coming from places far removed from Afghanistan or Iraq. They reflect the increased use of relatively small bases like Camp Lemonnier, which military planners see as a model for future U.S. bases “scattered,” as one academic explains, “across regions in which the United States has previously not maintained a military presence.”
Disappearing are the days when Ramstein was the signature U.S. base, an American-town-sized behemoth filled with thousands or tens of thousands of Americans, PXs, Pizza Huts, and other amenities of home. But don’t for a second think that the Pentagon is packing up, downsizing its global mission, and heading home. In fact, based on developments in recent years, the opposite may be true. While the collection of Cold War-era giant bases around the world is shrinking, the global infrastructure of bases overseas has exploded in size and scope.
Unknown to most Americans, Washington’s garrisoning of the planet is on the rise, thanks to a new generation of bases the military calls “lily pads” (as in a frog jumping across a pond toward its prey). These are small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.
Around the world, from Djibouti to the jungles of Honduras, the deserts of Mauritania to Australia’s tiny Cocos Islands, the Pentagon has been pursuing as many lily pads as it can, in as many countries as it can, as fast as it can. Although statistics are hard to assemble, given the often-secretive nature of such bases, the Pentagon has probably built upwards of 50 lily pads and other small bases since around 2000, while exploring the construction of dozens more.
As Mark Gillem, author of America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire, explains, “avoidance” of local populations, publicity, and potential opposition is the new aim. “To project its power,” he says, the United States wants “secluded and self-contained outposts strategically located” around the world. According to some of the strategy’s strongest proponents at the American Enterprise Institute, the goal should be “to create a worldwide network of frontier forts,” with the U.S. military “the ‘global cavalry’ of the twenty-first century.”
Such lily-pad bases have become a critical part of an evolving Washington military strategy aimed at maintaining U.S. global dominance by doing far more with less in an increasingly competitive, ever more multi-polar world. Central as it’s becoming to the long-term U.S. stance, this global-basing reset policy has, remarkably enough, received almost no public attention, nor significant Congressional oversight. Meanwhile, as the arrival of the first casualties from Africa shows, the U.S. military is getting involved in new areas of the world and new conflicts, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Transforming the Base Empire
You might think that the U.S. military is in the process of shrinking, rather than expanding, its little noticed but enormous collection of bases abroad. After all, it was forced to close the full panoply of 505 bases, mega to micro, that it built in Iraq, and it's now beginning the process of drawing down forces in Afghanistan. In Europe, the Pentagon is continuing to close its massive bases in Germany and will soon remove two combat brigades from that country. Global troop numbers are set to shrink by around 100,000.
Yet Washington still easily maintains the largest collection of foreign bases in world history: more than 1,000 military installations outside the 50 states and Washington, DC. They include everything from decades-old bases in Germany and Japan to brand-new drone bases in Ethiopia and the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean and even resorts for military vacationers in Italy and South Korea.
In Afghanistan, the U.S.-led international force still occupies more than 450 bases. In total, the U.S. military has some form of troop presence in approximately 150 foreign countries, not to mention 11 aircraft carrier task forces -- essentially floating bases -- and a significant, and growing, military presence in space. The United States currently spends an estimated $250 billion annually maintaining bases and troops overseas.
Some bases, like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, date to the late nineteenth century. Most were built or occupied during or just after World War II on every continent, including Antarctica. Although the U.S. military vacated around 60% of its foreign bases following the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Cold War base infrastructure remained relatively intact, with 60,000 American troops remaining in Germany alone, despite the absence of a superpower adversary.
However, in the early months of 2001, even before the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration launched a major global realignment of bases and troops that’s continuing today with Obama’s “Asia pivot.” Bush’s original plan was to close more than one-third of the nation’s overseas bases and shift troops east and south, closer to predicted conflict zones in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Pentagon began to focus on creating smaller and more flexible “forward operating bases” and even smaller “cooperative security locations” or “lily pads.” Major troop concentrations were to be restricted to a reduced number of “main operating bases” (MOBs) -- like Ramstein, Guam in the Pacific, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean -- which were to be expanded.
Despite the rhetoric of consolidation and closure that went with this plan, in the post-9/11 era the Pentagon has actually been expanding its base infrastructure dramatically, including dozens of major bases in every Persian Gulf country save Iran, and in several Central Asian countries critical to the war in Afghanistan.
Hitting the Base Reset Button
Obama’s recently announced “Asia pivot” signals that East Asia will be at the center of the explosion of lily-pad bases and related developments. Already in Australia, U.S. marines are settling into a shared base in Darwin. Elsewhere, the Pentagon is pursuing plans for a drone and surveillance base in Australia’s Cocos Islands and deployments to Brisbane and Perth. In Thailand, the Pentagon has negotiated rights for new Navy port visits and a “disaster-relief hub” at U-Tapao.
In the Philippines, whose government evicted the U.S. from the massive Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base in the early 1990s, as many as 600 special forces troops have quietly been operating in the country’s south since January 2002. Last month, the two governments reached an agreement on the future U.S. use of Clark and Subic, as well as other repair and supply hubs from the Vietnam War era. In a sign of changing times, U.S. officials even signed a 2011 defense agreement with former enemy Vietnam and have begun negotiations over the Navy’s increased use of Vietnamese ports.
Elsewhere in Asia, the Pentagon has rebuilt a runway on tiny Tinian island near Guam, and it’s considering future bases in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, while pushing stronger military ties with India. Every year in the region, the military conducts around 170 military exercises and 250 port visits. On South Korea’s Jeju island, the Korean military is building a base that will be part of the U.S. missile defense system and to which U.S. forces will have regular access.
“We just can’t be in one place to do what we’ve got to do,” Pacific Command commander Admiral Samuel Locklear III has said. For military planners, “what we’ve got to do” is clearly defined as isolating and (in the terminology of the Cold War) “containing” the new power in the region, China. This evidently means “peppering” new bases throughout the region, adding to the more than 200 U.S. bases that have encircled China for decades in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and Hawaii.
And Asia is just the beginning. In Africa, the Pentagon has quietly created “about a dozen air bases” for drones and surveillance since 2007. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, we know that the military has created or will soon create installations in Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, South Sudan, and Uganda. The Pentagon has also investigated building bases in Algeria, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria, among other places.
Next year, a brigade-sized force of 3,000 troops, and “likely more,” will arrive for exercises and training missions across the continent. In the nearby Persian Gulf, the Navy is developing an “afloat forward-staging base,” or “mothership,” to serve as a sea-borne “lily pad” for helicopters and patrol craft, and has been involved in a massive build-up of forces in the region.
In Latin America, following the military's eviction from Panama in 1999 and Ecuador in 2009, the Pentagon has created or upgraded new bases in Aruba and Curaçao, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru. Elsewhere, the Pentagon has funded the creation of military and police bases capable of hosting U.S. forces in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, and even Ecuador. In 2008, the Navy reactivated its Fourth Fleet, inactive since 1950, to patrol the region. The military may want a base in Brazil and unsuccessfully tried to create bases, ostensibly for humanitarian and emergency relief, in Paraguay and Argentina.
Finally, in Europe, after arriving in the Balkans during 1990’s interventions, U.S. bases have moved eastward into some of the former Eastern Bloc states of the Soviet empire. The Pentagon is now developing installations capable of supporting rotating, brigade-sized deployments in Romania and Bulgaria, and a missile defense base and aviation facilities in Poland. Previously, the Bush administration maintained two CIA black sites (secret prisons) in Lithuania and another in Poland. Citizens of the Czech Republic rejected a planned radar base for the Pentagon’s still unproven missile defense system, and now Romania will host ground-based missiles.
A New American Way of War
A lily pad on one of the Gulf of Guinea islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, off the oil-rich west coast of Africa, helps explain what’s going on. A U.S. official has described the base as “another Diego Garcia,” referring to the Indian Ocean base that’s helped ensure decades of U.S. domination over Middle Eastern energy supplies. Without the freedom to create new large bases in Africa, the Pentagon is using São Tomé and a growing collection of other lily pads on the continent in an attempt to control another crucial oil-rich region.
Far beyond West Africa, the nineteenth century “Great Game” competition for Central Asia has returned with a passion -- and this time gone global. It’s spreading to resource-rich lands in Africa, Asia, and South America, as the United States, China, Russia, and members of the European Union find themselves locked in an increasingly intense competition for economic and geopolitical supremacy.
While Beijing, in particular, has pursued this competition in a largely economic fashion, dotting the globe with strategic investments, Washington has focused relentlessly on military might as its global trump card, dotting the planet with new bases and other forms of military power. “Forget full-scale invasions and large-footprint occupations on the Eurasian mainland,” Nick Turse has written of this new twenty-first century military strategy. “Instead, think: special operations forces... proxy armies... the militarization of spying and intelligence... drone aircraft... cyber-attacks, and joint Pentagon operations with increasingly militarized ‘civilian’ government agencies.”
Add to this unparalleled long-range air and naval power; arms sales besting any nation on Earth; humanitarian and disaster relief missions that clearly serve military intelligence, patrol, and “hearts and minds” functions; the rotational deployment of regular U.S. forces globally; port visits and an expanding array of joint military exercises and training missions that give the U.S. military de facto “presence” worldwide and help turn foreign militaries into proxy forces.
And lots and lots of lily-pad bases.
Military planners see a future of endless small-scale interventions in which a large, geographically dispersed collection of bases will always be primed for instant operational access. With bases in as many places as possible, military planners want to be able to turn to another conveniently close country if the United States is ever prevented from using a base, as it was by Turkey prior to the invasion of Iraq. In other words, Pentagon officials dream of nearly limitless flexibility, the ability to react with remarkable rapidity to developments anywhere on Earth, and thus, something approaching total military control over the planet.
Beyond their military utility, the lily pads and other forms of power projection are also political and economic tools used to build and maintain alliances and provide privileged U.S. access to overseas markets, resources, and investment opportunities. Washington is planning to use lily-pad bases and other military projects to bind countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America as closely as possible to the U.S. military -- and so to continued U.S. political-economic hegemony. In short, American officials are hoping military might will entrench their influence and keep as many countries as possible within an American orbit at a time when some are asserting their independence ever more forcefully or gravitating toward China and other rising powers.
Those Dangerous Lily Pads
While relying on smaller bases may sound smarter and more cost effective than maintaining huge bases that have often caused anger in places like Okinawa and South Korea, lily pads threaten U.S. and global security in several ways:
First, the “lily pad” language can be misleading, since by design or otherwise, such installations are capable of quickly growing into bloated behemoths.
Second, despite the rhetoric about spreading democracy that still lingers in Washington, building more lily pads actually guarantees collaboration with an increasing number of despotic, corrupt, and murderous regimes.
Third, there is a well-documented pattern of damage that military facilities of various sizes inflict on local communities. Although lily pads seem to promise insulation from local opposition, over time even small bases have often led to anger and protest movements.
Finally, a proliferation of lily pads means the creeping militarization of large swaths of the globe. Like real lily pads -- which are actually aquatic weeds -- bases have a way of growing and reproducing uncontrollably. Indeed, bases tend to beget bases, creating “base races” with other nations, heightening military tensions, and discouraging diplomatic solutions to conflicts. After all, how would the United States respond if China, Russia, or Iran were to build even a single lily-pad base of its own in Mexico or the Caribbean?
For China and Russia in particular, ever more U.S. bases near their borders threaten to set off new cold wars. Most troublingly, the creation of new bases to protect against an alleged future Chinese military threat may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: such bases in Asia are likely to create the threat they are supposedly designed to protect against, making a catastrophic war with China more, not less, likely.
Encouragingly, however, overseas bases have recently begun to generate critical scrutiny across the political spectrum from Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul to Democratic Senator Jon Tester and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. With everyone looking for ways to trim the deficit, closing overseas bases offers easy savings. Indeed, increasingly influential types are recognizing that the country simply can’t afford more than 1,000 bases abroad.
Great Britain, like empires before it, had to close most of its remaining foreign bases in the midst of an economic crisis in the 1960s and 1970s. The United States is undoubtedly headed in that direction sooner or later. The only question is whether the country will give up its bases and downsize its global mission by choice, or if it will follow Britain’s path as a fading power forced to give up its bases from a position of weakness.
Of course, the consequences of not choosing another path extend beyond economics. If the proliferation of lily pads, special operations forces, and drone wars continues, the United States is likely to be drawn into new conflicts and new wars, generating unknown forms of blowback, and untold death and destruction. In that case, we’d better prepare for a lot more incoming flights -- from the Horn of Africa to Honduras -- carrying not just amputees but caskets.
David Vine is assistant professor of anthropology at American University, in Washington, DC. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2009). He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other places. He is currently completing a book about the more than 1,000 U.S. military bases located outside the United States. To listen to Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Vine discusses his experiences with the Pentagon’s empire of bases, click here or download it to your iPod here.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook, and check out the latest TD book, Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.
Copyright 2012 David Vine
© 2012 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175568/
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Vietnam, the US and China
Vietnamese communists: the hermaphroditic creatures
by GABRIEL KOLKO
If history proves anything, it is that nothing can be taken for granted. Men and parties that rule nations fall all the time—as witnessed today in much of the Middle East, a region that was once considered stable. The American Central Intelligence Agency, a huge, highly expensive operation with many analysts paid to predict the future, was utterly surprised when the Soviet Union fell apart and the whole Eastern Communist bloc dissolved with it. Change is the norm today, everywhere, and rulers who think they will be in power forever—even if they try to repress signs of discontent—have a poor sense of history. What is certain is that the Americans have a motive to see that the regime in Vietnam that defeated them militarily fall because of its own failures.
Given the tremendous and growing disparity between Vietnam’s nominal Marxist-Leninist ideology and its state-led capitalist practice, Vietnam is as ripe for overthrow as any nation has ever been, and Vietnam’s present rulers should take very little for granted–no more, indeed, than those who ran the former U S S R. Basic change is very likely to occur in Vietnam: how and when cannot be predicted precisely, but the anomaly between its ideology and its practice is too overwhelming to persist indefinitely. The higher levels of the Party are now very corrupt and increasingly cynical, and the patriotic legitimacy it had when it led the struggle against the French and then the Americans is gone. The younger generation of Vietnamese increasingly regard the Communists as corruptionists who practice nepotism.
When I was last in Vietnam in 1987 I saw corruption at all levels, and nepotism is the way many nations are ruled—Vietnam is no exception. All this means the Communist Party is losing its legitimacy and relying on its security apparatus to stay in power, but police will not return the consensus of support from the masses it had during the war against the United States, a consensus based in very large part on nationalism–although many peasants were also for a more just land tenure system and Communist appeals attracted them. And caused them to make immense sacrifices. On the contrary, using its security system to control public opinion is more likely to further alienate the public. It is a liability, although the Vietnamese Communists have a large one, and effective in the short-run. But as we see in the Middle East (or the Bolshevik Revolution under Lenin) soldiers and police can also switch sides, which can produce real crises for the status quo.
The Saigon-regime leader, Nguyen Van Thieu, was corrupt and nepotistic also, had a security apparatus (also corrupt) and fell apart despite the fact the Saigon-regime had superior military power to that the Communists possessed. By losing its legitimacy the Communists make themselves ripe for replacement, even overthrow.
The replacements may, in fact, be worse (they have been in various nations) but that thought is not likely to occur to those who regard the present rulers in Hanoi as the fount of all evil.
The regime is likely to fall—I am surprised it has lasted as long as it has—next month or five years from now–it is impossible to tell. But peasants are a danger to it (as they are in China) because too many are being displaced to build, among other things, industrial zones, open pit mines, and golf courses while many leaders of the Communist Party, who are increasingly factionalized and split, enrich themselves.
There are reports that the American government has specialists on Vietnam who are also thinking about how and why the Communist government might be replaced. These reports are probably true. They believe that the spread of American culture (mainly music) will eventually bring down the regime—but that may very well be wishful thinking. American-style culture has existed in Vietnam for decades. Far more important, in my opinion, is the Communist Party’s loss of legitimacy due to corruption and nepotism, and the élan it once had. It has developed economically but the benefits of economic growth have been very unequal—as it is in China also.
And no less important is the fact that fissures among Communist leaders have emerged; many know about them and effectively they are public, and this split never existed to this extent before. Basing Party rulership on cronyism makes such opposition all the more easy and justifiable. The system of control that the Communist Party elite has worked out is to some crucial extent also self-defeating. A split at the top was the prelude to the Soviet Union’s demise, and the leading opponent among the famous leaders in Vietnam is Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of the Communist victories in the first and second Indochina Wars and the last living Communist “founding fathers.” He is vocal, has even talked of forming a new party, and any effort to silence Giap might alone trigger mass resistance against existing Party leaders. Having the venerable Giap on its side might very well embolden the potential opposition, which also includes some members of the Communist Party who do not like the way it has been going–and still believe in the ideals, which led to the emergence of the Party in the first place.
The Obama Administration–which includes many people besides the President– is in an ambiguous position: the present Vietnamese regime is ready to be a part of an anti-Chinese coalition the U. S. is talking about forming as an aspect of its yet-vague Pacific strategy that will presumably preoccupy it over the next 10 years, but I think over the next decade the U. S. is likely to be distracted by crises elsewhere—where is unknown but its similar resolution in 2002 to focus on China was impossible once it decided to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—whose outcome remains unknown but were certainly not American victories in the sense it hoped for. Given the nature of the world today, it is impossible to know what will occur 10 years from now. Shooting or other crises will define its priorities. It would be naïve for the Hanoi regime to assume the American-led coalition would ever emerge over the next decade, though in fact—if precedent is any indication—Vietnam is able to be very naïve in conducting its foreign relations.
The American Government would be happy, though, were the Communist-led regime to capsize. The U. S. lost a war with it and the collapse of the present Communist government would give many important people in Washington a certain solace.
The United States has since 1945 felt responsible for every corner of the world, and this sense of having a global mission makes it impossible to know where it is going to place its resources ten years from now. Its military is now increasinly involved in Africa. The Vietnam Government should be aware that American intentions today are not what they do a year from now, much less ten. Its placing confidence in present U.S. promises and intentions flies in the face of historical experience.
It is not certain in this world what will happen next: neither the careful observer nor the people in power know. Vietnam may or may not implode, but Communist states have ceased to exist, and there is such a discrepancy between its nominal ideology and practice—as there is in China also—that the men and women who now rule
Vietnam would be foolish not to take into serious consideration what events elsewhere—the entire Eastern Bloc—means for their future also. Vietnam “Communism,” as it still likes to call itself, can last forever or it might fall next month—but the state has problems and if it does nothing then the contradiction between its nominal ideology and practice will eventually catch up with it. Their present policies are likely to be challenged, somehow, and at some time. If they ignore these questions they ignore the meaning of recent history, not only in the Eastern Bloc but in many Muslim nations also. Making an alliance of some sort with the United States against China—which I think will never emerge in the form the U.S. envisages today—will not resolve its basic problems.
GABRIEL KOLKO is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914 and Another Century of War?. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. He can be reached at: kolko@counterpunch.org.
by GABRIEL KOLKO
If history proves anything, it is that nothing can be taken for granted. Men and parties that rule nations fall all the time—as witnessed today in much of the Middle East, a region that was once considered stable. The American Central Intelligence Agency, a huge, highly expensive operation with many analysts paid to predict the future, was utterly surprised when the Soviet Union fell apart and the whole Eastern Communist bloc dissolved with it. Change is the norm today, everywhere, and rulers who think they will be in power forever—even if they try to repress signs of discontent—have a poor sense of history. What is certain is that the Americans have a motive to see that the regime in Vietnam that defeated them militarily fall because of its own failures.
Given the tremendous and growing disparity between Vietnam’s nominal Marxist-Leninist ideology and its state-led capitalist practice, Vietnam is as ripe for overthrow as any nation has ever been, and Vietnam’s present rulers should take very little for granted–no more, indeed, than those who ran the former U S S R. Basic change is very likely to occur in Vietnam: how and when cannot be predicted precisely, but the anomaly between its ideology and its practice is too overwhelming to persist indefinitely. The higher levels of the Party are now very corrupt and increasingly cynical, and the patriotic legitimacy it had when it led the struggle against the French and then the Americans is gone. The younger generation of Vietnamese increasingly regard the Communists as corruptionists who practice nepotism.
When I was last in Vietnam in 1987 I saw corruption at all levels, and nepotism is the way many nations are ruled—Vietnam is no exception. All this means the Communist Party is losing its legitimacy and relying on its security apparatus to stay in power, but police will not return the consensus of support from the masses it had during the war against the United States, a consensus based in very large part on nationalism–although many peasants were also for a more just land tenure system and Communist appeals attracted them. And caused them to make immense sacrifices. On the contrary, using its security system to control public opinion is more likely to further alienate the public. It is a liability, although the Vietnamese Communists have a large one, and effective in the short-run. But as we see in the Middle East (or the Bolshevik Revolution under Lenin) soldiers and police can also switch sides, which can produce real crises for the status quo.
The Saigon-regime leader, Nguyen Van Thieu, was corrupt and nepotistic also, had a security apparatus (also corrupt) and fell apart despite the fact the Saigon-regime had superior military power to that the Communists possessed. By losing its legitimacy the Communists make themselves ripe for replacement, even overthrow.
The replacements may, in fact, be worse (they have been in various nations) but that thought is not likely to occur to those who regard the present rulers in Hanoi as the fount of all evil.
The regime is likely to fall—I am surprised it has lasted as long as it has—next month or five years from now–it is impossible to tell. But peasants are a danger to it (as they are in China) because too many are being displaced to build, among other things, industrial zones, open pit mines, and golf courses while many leaders of the Communist Party, who are increasingly factionalized and split, enrich themselves.
There are reports that the American government has specialists on Vietnam who are also thinking about how and why the Communist government might be replaced. These reports are probably true. They believe that the spread of American culture (mainly music) will eventually bring down the regime—but that may very well be wishful thinking. American-style culture has existed in Vietnam for decades. Far more important, in my opinion, is the Communist Party’s loss of legitimacy due to corruption and nepotism, and the élan it once had. It has developed economically but the benefits of economic growth have been very unequal—as it is in China also.
And no less important is the fact that fissures among Communist leaders have emerged; many know about them and effectively they are public, and this split never existed to this extent before. Basing Party rulership on cronyism makes such opposition all the more easy and justifiable. The system of control that the Communist Party elite has worked out is to some crucial extent also self-defeating. A split at the top was the prelude to the Soviet Union’s demise, and the leading opponent among the famous leaders in Vietnam is Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of the Communist victories in the first and second Indochina Wars and the last living Communist “founding fathers.” He is vocal, has even talked of forming a new party, and any effort to silence Giap might alone trigger mass resistance against existing Party leaders. Having the venerable Giap on its side might very well embolden the potential opposition, which also includes some members of the Communist Party who do not like the way it has been going–and still believe in the ideals, which led to the emergence of the Party in the first place.
The Obama Administration–which includes many people besides the President– is in an ambiguous position: the present Vietnamese regime is ready to be a part of an anti-Chinese coalition the U. S. is talking about forming as an aspect of its yet-vague Pacific strategy that will presumably preoccupy it over the next 10 years, but I think over the next decade the U. S. is likely to be distracted by crises elsewhere—where is unknown but its similar resolution in 2002 to focus on China was impossible once it decided to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—whose outcome remains unknown but were certainly not American victories in the sense it hoped for. Given the nature of the world today, it is impossible to know what will occur 10 years from now. Shooting or other crises will define its priorities. It would be naïve for the Hanoi regime to assume the American-led coalition would ever emerge over the next decade, though in fact—if precedent is any indication—Vietnam is able to be very naïve in conducting its foreign relations.
The American Government would be happy, though, were the Communist-led regime to capsize. The U. S. lost a war with it and the collapse of the present Communist government would give many important people in Washington a certain solace.
The United States has since 1945 felt responsible for every corner of the world, and this sense of having a global mission makes it impossible to know where it is going to place its resources ten years from now. Its military is now increasinly involved in Africa. The Vietnam Government should be aware that American intentions today are not what they do a year from now, much less ten. Its placing confidence in present U.S. promises and intentions flies in the face of historical experience.
It is not certain in this world what will happen next: neither the careful observer nor the people in power know. Vietnam may or may not implode, but Communist states have ceased to exist, and there is such a discrepancy between its nominal ideology and practice—as there is in China also—that the men and women who now rule
Vietnam would be foolish not to take into serious consideration what events elsewhere—the entire Eastern Bloc—means for their future also. Vietnam “Communism,” as it still likes to call itself, can last forever or it might fall next month—but the state has problems and if it does nothing then the contradiction between its nominal ideology and practice will eventually catch up with it. Their present policies are likely to be challenged, somehow, and at some time. If they ignore these questions they ignore the meaning of recent history, not only in the Eastern Bloc but in many Muslim nations also. Making an alliance of some sort with the United States against China—which I think will never emerge in the form the U.S. envisages today—will not resolve its basic problems.
GABRIEL KOLKO is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914 and Another Century of War?. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. He can be reached at: kolko@counterpunch.org.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Ten Camels for Obama
CNN) -- The United States offers millions for information leading to the capture of the world's most wanted terrorists.
A Somali militant group has purportedly countered with an offer of camels for U.S. officials.
Al-Shabaab has placed a bounty of 10 camels for President Barack Obama and two camels for information on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
An audio statement posted on jihadist websites purportedly from Al-Shabaab jeered news that the United States is offering millions of dollars for information on seven key members of al-Shabaab through its Rewards for Justice program.
The battle against al-Shabaab in Somalia
New push against militants in Somalia The man on the audio claimed to be Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, considered by the State Department to be Al-Shabaab's leading fundraiser. The United States has offered $5 million for information of his whereabouts.
"Whoever brings the mujahidin information about the whereabouts of infidel Obama and the lady of Bill Clinton, the woman named Hillary Clinton, I will give a reward," the man said.
A study by Galkayo University, which looked at the effects of drought on livestock, said the average cost of a camel in Somalia is $700.
CNN can not independently verify the authenticity of the audio recording, which was purportedly made by Khalaf during a speech to followers in the southern port city of Merca.
The U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice program is offering $7 million for information on the location of Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, the founder of the Islamist group in Somalia.
This year, he and al Qaeda's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a joint video formally announcing a merger between the terror groups.
In announcing the bounties on Mohamed and his key associates Thursday, the State Department called al-Shabaab "a threat to the stability of East Africa and to the national security interests of the United States."
The State Department said it is also offering up to $5 million each for information leading to the location of four of Aw-Mohamed's associates, including Khalaf. In addition, it is offering up to $3 million each for two of the terror group's other leaders
A Somali militant group has purportedly countered with an offer of camels for U.S. officials.
Al-Shabaab has placed a bounty of 10 camels for President Barack Obama and two camels for information on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
An audio statement posted on jihadist websites purportedly from Al-Shabaab jeered news that the United States is offering millions of dollars for information on seven key members of al-Shabaab through its Rewards for Justice program.
The battle against al-Shabaab in Somalia
New push against militants in Somalia The man on the audio claimed to be Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, considered by the State Department to be Al-Shabaab's leading fundraiser. The United States has offered $5 million for information of his whereabouts.
"Whoever brings the mujahidin information about the whereabouts of infidel Obama and the lady of Bill Clinton, the woman named Hillary Clinton, I will give a reward," the man said.
A study by Galkayo University, which looked at the effects of drought on livestock, said the average cost of a camel in Somalia is $700.
CNN can not independently verify the authenticity of the audio recording, which was purportedly made by Khalaf during a speech to followers in the southern port city of Merca.
The U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice program is offering $7 million for information on the location of Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, the founder of the Islamist group in Somalia.
This year, he and al Qaeda's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a joint video formally announcing a merger between the terror groups.
In announcing the bounties on Mohamed and his key associates Thursday, the State Department called al-Shabaab "a threat to the stability of East Africa and to the national security interests of the United States."
The State Department said it is also offering up to $5 million each for information leading to the location of four of Aw-Mohamed's associates, including Khalaf. In addition, it is offering up to $3 million each for two of the terror group's other leaders
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