“If I were the president, I could stop terrorist
attacks against the United States in a few days.
Permanently. I would first apologize to all the widows
and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the
many millions of other victims of American imperialism.
Then I would announce, in all sincerity, to every
corner of the world, that America’s global
interventions have come to an end, and inform Israel
that it is no longer the 51st state of the USA but now
— oddly enough — a foreign country. I would then
reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the
savings to pay reparations to the victims. There would
be more than enough money. One year’s military budget
of 330 billion dollars is equal to more than $18,000 an
hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White
House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.”
–William Blum, author of “Killing Hope: U.S. Military
and CIA Interventions Since World War II,” and “Rogue
State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower.”
November 6, 2007
Killing Hope
November 5, 2007
Somali pirates leave 2 hijacked ships off Horn of Africa
NAIROBI, Kenya – The American military says Somali pirates have left two boats they had hijacked in the waters off the Horn of Africa.
The newly liberated vessels are under U.S. Navy escort farther out to sea, where naval personnel will later board the vessels and treat the 24 crew members.
A spokeswoman says the Navy is in radio contact with pirates aboard three other ships in the region, encouraging them also to leave those ships and sail back to Somalia.
The spokeswoman says no shots were fired during the incident.
The U.S. has now intervened four times in one week to help ships hijacked by Somali pirates.
October 27, 2007
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts…. New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.
The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas though our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
October 20, 2007
Sweden sells fighter planes to Thailand
Thailand’s air force confirmed on Wednesday that the country is preparing to buy six Swedish Gripen fighter planes in a deal worth 3.7 billion kronor ($560 million). Air force chief Chalit Phukphasuk also told reporters that a decision would be made after December’s general election on whether to buy a second batch of six Saab Gripens.
A source close to the air force said that Thailand had initially planned to replace its ageing F-5E fighters with US F-16 Fighting Falcons. But the deal eventually fell through since the Americans were “not allowed by their laws to sell weapons to countries whose governments have been ousted in coups.”
Owe Wagermark, director of communications for Gripen International, was delighted with Wednesday’s announcement.
“This is absolutely fantastic. It is an important step with regard to our positioning and is incredibly positive for Gripen. It means that we will retain our position as global leaders,” he told a news agency.
Ola Mattsson, secretary general of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (Svenska Freds), was considerable less enthusiastic.
“It should be completely out of the question for Sweden to sell Gripen planes to Thailand. It’s a military dictatorship,” he said.
Mattsson listed secular tensions in southern Thailand and an arms race in South East Asia as further reasons not to sell.
“The Swedish state shouldn’t contribute to a rearmament spiral in the region. Such a move runs contrary to our foreign and security policy,” he said.
Since assuming power in a military coup last year, the Thai government has approved a 66 percent increase in military spending.
Russia’s Su-30s were long tipped to get the nod ahead of Gripen and the US F-16s. Prior to being removed from his post, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is reported to have been close to signing a deal for the Russian fighters.
But last year’s military coup would appear to have tipped the balance in Gripen’s favour.
Vernon Bellecourt: a visionary of the Native movement
In memory
Vernon Bellecourt, WaBun-Inini, a member of the Anishinabe/Ojibwe Nation and longtime leader in the American Indian Movement, died on Oct. 13 of pneumonia at the age of 75.
Bellecourt, one of 12 children and older brother of AIM co-founder Clyde Bellecourt, was born on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation in Minnesota in 1931. It is estimated that unemployment on the reservation was 95 percent when the Bellecourt children were growing up.
Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt co-founded the American Indian Movement in 1968 in Minneapolis, an organization of and for Native people that was inspired by the Black Panther Party. AIM sought to defend the community against police brutality, racism, poverty and oppression.
Vernon soon joined and was a lifelong activist in the organization. By its militant example and defense of Native peoples trying to stop the theft of their land and resources, AIM helped instill a renewed pride across the Native nations of the United States.
AIM led a 71-day takeover of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation beginning Feb. 27, 1973, after U.S. marshals laid siege to a community meeting that sought AIM’s assistance against the repressive and corrupt tribal government. More than 300 federal agents surrounded the camp with armored personnel carriers, over 130,000 rounds of ammunition, and constant gunfire. Two AIM activists were murdered by government agents.
For this, the American Indian Movement leaders, including the Bellecourts and Banks, were severely repressed. Over 60 people on the reservation were murdered by police and vigilantes in the next two years, culminating in the June 26, 1975, shoot-out at Pine Ridge, where two FBI agents were killed after raiding the reservation.
The most egregious injustice against AIM activists was the frame-up and persecution of Leonard Peltier. Because two AIM members, Dino Butler and Bob Robideau, were acquitted of the FBI deaths by a federal jury in Iowa by reason of self-defense, the FBI decided the only remaining defendant charged but not yet tried had to pay. Leonard Peltier had sought refuge in Canada and was therefore not tried along with Butler and Robideau, or he also would have been acquitted.
The FBI falsified evidence to get Peltier extradited. Despite a lack of evidence, witness coercion by the FBI, and numerous irregularities, Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. To this day, he remains in a U.S. federal prison at Lewisburg, Penn., despite international and national demands for his freedom.
It is in this context of extreme U.S. government repression of the American Indian Movement that the continued resistance of leaders like the Bellecourts, Banks, Bill Means and many other Indigenous leaders is best appreciated.
An internationalist
Bellecourt was an internationalist, supporting the Palestinian, Irish, Venezuelan, Cuban, Libyan, Nicaraguan and many other causes.
When the CIA intensified its counterrevolutionary war in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s by recruiting Indigenous Miskito leaders who had joined the Contra forces, Bellecourt traveled to the country to defend the Nicaraguan revolution.
He prided himself on his uncompromising anti-imperialist stance, and recently returned from Venezuela where he traveled to express appreciation to Hugo Chávez for the Bolivarian revolution’s heating-fuel deliveries to Native communities in Minnesota.
In recent years, Bellecourt was nationally known as a spokesperson in the campaign against racist anti-Indian symbols of sports teams through the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media.
In 1997, he drew national attention to this anti-racist fight when he, Juan Reyna and Juanita Helphrey and other coalition members set fire to an effigy of the extremely offensive Cleveland baseball team’s Chief Wahoo, during the baseball World Series at Cleveland’s Jacobs Field. He was arrested but charges were later dropped.
In a 1995 interview with Sinn Fein, Bellecourt stated, “AIM sees the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves basketball team, Kansas City Chiefs and Cleveland Indians baseball teams with their grinning buck-toothed mascot Chief Wahoo as demeaning the beautiful culture of the Indigenous nations of the Americas. We are a living people with a vibrant culture and we refuse to have our identity trivialized and degraded. Indians are people, not mascots for America’s fun and games.”
Bellecourt was a strong opponent of the U.S. genocide and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he spoke at several ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) anti-war rallies since 2003 in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation extends its deepest condolences to his family, comrades and friends. We pledge our continued solidarity with the Native struggle for self-determination and justice.
Vernon Bellecourt, presente!
The Bellecourt family is collecting donations to help pay for medical and burial costs. Donations and cards can be sent to:
Clyde Bellecourt
3953 14th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
October 8, 2007
Myanmar’s rubies; bloody colour, bloody business
BANGKOK – The gem merchants of Bangkok display their glistening wares proudly; diamonds from Africa, sapphires from Sri Lanka and rubies, of course, from Myanmar.
The red stones from the country formerly known as Burma are prized for their purity and hue. But they have a sinister flaw.
The country’s military rulers rely on sales of precious stones such as sapphires, pearls and jade to fund their regime. Rubies are probably the biggest earner; more than 90 percent of the world’s rubies come from Myanmar.
International outrage over the generals’ brutal crackdown on pro-democracy rallies encouraged the European Union this week to consider a trade ban on Myanmar’s gemstones, a leading export earner in the impoverished country.
There is also pressure in Washington to close a loophole on existing U.S. sanctions which allows in most of its precious stones.
But in neighbouring Thailand, where the majority of Myanmar’s gems are bought and sold, the stone merchants have yet to be put off business with the junta.
“People are unhappy about what’s going on but they are not angry enough to stop buying rubies,” said Pornchai Chuenchomlada, president of the Thai Gem and Jewellery Traders Association.
“If they killed a lot of people like they did in 1988 we might consider banning their products,” said Pornchai, adding that he personally bought little from Myanmar on moral grounds.
Official media say 10 people were killed when soldiers fired on protesters, including Buddhist monks, in downtown Yangon last week, but the real toll is thought to be much higher.
The junta killed an estimated 3,000 people during the last major uprising in 1988.
VALLEY OF RUBIES
Myanmar’s generals are estimated to have earned around $750 million since they began holding official gem and jade sales in 1964. A far bigger number of precious stones are smuggled over the border into Thailand and China.
The official expositions, held twice a year in the tropical heat of Yangon, are increasingly popular. More Chinese bidders are attending, attracted by slabs of jade.
The state holds a majority stake in all mining operations in Myanmar, including the “Valley of Rubies”, the mountainous Mogok area, 200 km north of Mandalay, famed for its rare pigeon’s blood rubies and blue sapphires worth tens of thousands of dollars apiece.
Conditions in the mines, off-limits to outsiders, are reported to be horrendous.
Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma said her organisation had reports of mining operators hooking employees on drugs to improve productivity. Needles are shared, raising the risk of HIV infection, she said.
“Heroin is given to people at the end of the working day as a reward,” said Stothard. “Young people go off to the mines with big hopes and dreams and they come back to die.”
“These rubies are red with the blood of young people.”
REVULSION
Couples buying engagement rings often now ask where the diamonds come from since last year’s Hollywood film “Blood Diamond” raised awareness about gems which finance conflicts.
But even during the late 1990s, when war was still raging in Sierra Leone, where the film was based, only between 4 percent and 15 percent of the world’s diamonds were estimated to have come from conflict zones.
Brian Leber, a third generation jeweller from the U.S. state of Illinois, decided years ago to stop buying Myanmar gems.
“I think it’s more important to sleep at night,” said the 41-year-old who founded The Jewellers’ Burma Relief Project, an organisation that supports humanitarian projects in the country.
Although the United States imposed a ban on imports of Myanmar gems in 2003, a customs loophole allows in stones cut or polished elsewhere. As Myanmar exports virtually all its gems uncut, this interpretation rendered the ban useless.
Leber is hopeful last week’s brutal crackdown will convince U.S. lawmakers to close this loophole. He would like to see consumers shun all gems from Myanmar, whatever their cachet, until the generals are gone.
“For the time being, Burmese gems should not be something to be proud of. They should be an object of revulsion.”
In Bangkok, some dealers have stopped handling stones from Myanmar and they are angry that colleagues haven’t followed suit.
“This is a Buddhist country. I was expecting the price of rubies to drop dramatically after they shot at the monks, but I’m beginning to think these people are hypocrites,” said one Bangkok-based jeweller, who declined to be named.
“It’s the only country where you can get really top quality rubies, but I stopped dealing in them. I don’t want to be part of a nation’s misery.”
“If someone asks for a ruby now I show them a nice pink sapphire.”
October 1, 2007
Myanmar: Internet link remains shut
Yangon – Myanmar’s main Internet link remained shut for a third straight day on Sunday, as the ruling regime tried to curb the flow of information on a bloody crackdown against protesters.
“I tried on Sunday morning again but it’s failed again. I haven’t been able to check my email since Friday,” said one Yangon resident.
Internet cafes in Yangon also remained closed. Over the past week, tech-savvy citizens used the cybercafes to transmit pictures and video clips of the regime’s clampdown taken on mobile phones and digital cameras.
“People inside Myanmar can’t send emails or news to outside organisations,” said Kho Win Aung from activist group Shwe Gas Movement.
“So they are losing their chance to express what’s happening in Myanmar,” the Thailand-based activist told reporters in Bangkok.
The government cracked down on protesters last week, killing at least 13 people and injuring hundreds more, in a campaign that has also intensified pressure on media operating in the country.
In the main city of Yangon, soldiers shot dead a Japanese video-journalist Thursday and beat people found with cell phones or cameras, witnesses said.
Myanmar’s military rulers always keep a tight grip on information, heavily censoring newspapers, blocking much of the Internet and rarely allowing foreign journalists into the country.
Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders said that by cutting Internet access, the regime was trying to operate “behind closed doors”.
It has condemned Myanmar as a “paradise for censors” and listed the country as one of the world’s most restrictive for press freedoms.
September 26, 2007
Nicaragua leader slams U.S. in 1980s throwback
UNITED NATIONS – In a throw-back to Cold War disputes, leftist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega launched a blistering attack on U.S. global “tyranny” on Tuesday and defended Iran’s right to pursue a nuclear program.
In his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly for 18 years, Ortega said U.S. leaders continued to dictate what was right or wrong “as if they were God”, while poor countries were still afflicted by “oppression and violence and terror”.
“Today we are more threatened than we were 18 years ago,” said Ortega, who spoke about two hours after U.S. President George W. Bush, in his speech to the Assembly, criticized a lack of human rights in Iran, North Korea, Cuba and other states.
Referring to the United States, Ortega said that what was called “the most exemplary democracy in the world” was “really a tyranny. It’s the most impressive, huge dictatorship that has existed — the empire of North America.”
Ortega, leader of the radical Sandinista Party, ruled his central American nation in the 1980s when his government fought U.S.-backed Contra rebels. The Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990 but he returned to power in January.
In a speech that appeared largely improvised, Ortega said the United States dictated the world economic order and was guilty of hypocrisy in trying to deny developing countries the right to nuclear power.
“With what authority does he (Bush) question the right of Iran and the right of North Korea … to nuclear development for peaceful purposes?” he asked.
“And even if they wanted nuclear power for military purposes, with what right can we question this? The U.S. is the only country in the world to have launched nuclear bombs on innocent people — Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Japanese cities bombed in 1945.
Iran says its nuclear program is only to generate nuclear power, but Washington and other Western capitals fear it is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.
Under Ortega, Nicaragua has cultivated ties with Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an arch-foe of Washington, visited Managua in January. Ortega went to Iran in June.
Last month, oil-rich Iran promised to help fund a new $350 million ocean port and build 10,000 houses for the cash-strapped Nicaraguan government.
In his speech on Tuesday, Ortega said the General Assembly reflected a world where “a capitalist and imperialist minority is imposing global capitalism to impoverish the world, continue to enslave us all and promote apartheid against Latin American immigrants and against African immigrants in Europe”.
Thailand to buy foreign arms
Thailand’s post-coup government has approved the 6.7 billion baht purchase of Israeli guns, Ukrainian armoured vehicles and Chinese missiles, a cabinet spokesman said.
The army would spend 960 million baht on 15,000 rifles and 259 million baht on 992 sub-machine guns from Israel, Nattawat Suthiyothin said after a cabinet meeting.
The cabinet also approved 3.9 billion baht for 96 Ukraine-built BTR-3E1 armoured personnel vehicles, produced by state-owned Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau, after heavy lobbying by Russia, China, and Canada failed.
The navy would pay 1.6 billion baht for ground-to-ground missiles from China, Nattawat said without giving further details.
The military, which ousted elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a bloodless coup last year, has faced criticism for buying new equipment at a time when Thailand’s economic growth has slowed due to post-coup political uncertainties.
Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas told Reuters last month the military needed new tanks, ships, fighter jets and helicopters after the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis had capped annual defence spending at 80 billion baht in the past decade.
Next year’s budget allocates 143 billion baht to defence spending.
September 9, 2007
Breaking 10-year silence, China reveals it’s now No 1 arms supplier to Bangladesh
While Islamabad remains Beijing’s traditional business partner when it comes to weapons and military equipment, it’s Dhaka that’s emerging as the prime buyer of weapons made in China.
This has been revealed for the first time in 10 years when last week, China submitted a report on its exports and imports of major conventional arms for year 2006 to the United Nations.
And outside South Asia, Africa is China’s new destination for weapons supplies.
This has implications for India. Given that the military holds the levers of power in both Pakistan and now Bangladesh, too, China’s weapons trade brings a new dimension to India’s engagement with its two neighbours.
India’s only defence export between 2000 and 2005 has been the sale of six L-70 anti-aircraft guns to Sri Lanka two years ago. New Delhi never openly admitted to this — wary of domestic political repercussions — but has indicated it in its annual submission to the UN Register of Conventional Arms.
The seven categories on which this reporting is done are battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large-calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships (including submarines) as well as missiles and missile-launchers.
According to its declaration to the UN, China has sold 65 large-calibre artillery systems, 16 combat aircraft and 114 missile and related equipment to Bangladesh last year.
A scrutiny of Bangladesh’s report to the UN also confirms the growing profile of China as its major arms supplier over the last three years.
The 65 artillery systems shown as exports to Bangladesh in China’s report are further sub divided in Dhaka’s import list: 18 122-mm Howitzers and 16 rocket launchers. In 2005, 20 122-mm guns were imported from China.
Besides this, some 200 small arms like pistols and sub-machine guns have been imported along with regular 82-mm mortars.
Interestingly, the other keen supplier to Bangladesh is Pakistan which sold 169 anti-tank Bakhtar Shikan missiles to Bangladesh in 2004.
China’s 1996 record shows that its principal buyers were Pakistan and Iran, which purchased five warships, five combat aircraft and over 100 missiles and missile launchers. A decade later, the profile has changed with Pakistan (10 battle tanks) still on the list as a traditional importer of Chinese equipment. Bangladesh tops the list and the rest of the concentration is in Africa.
China has sold four armoured combat vehicles to Congo, six to Gabon and two to Tanzania. Six combat aircraft each have been exported to Namibia and Zimbabwe. Outside Africa, the one-time large export is to Jordan of 150 large calibre artillery systems.
A decade ago, China stopped providing this information to the UN because US had mentioned Taiwan in a footnote while explaining some of its exports.
An angry China had then remarked that the UN register is a “register of legitimate transfers” and that Taiwan being a “province of China”, any arms transfer between US and Taiwan is “illegitimate”.
With US deciding, of late, to no longer make such a mention in its reports, Beijing last week took a decision to file the arms transfer report as well as tell UN about its military spending.
“In light of the fact that a certain country has stopped providing data on its illegal arms sales to the Taiwan province of China to the UN Register of Conventional Arms, China decides to resume providing annually the data of its imports and exports of conventional arms in the seven categories to the Register from this year,” the Chinese representative in Geneva told relevant UN bodies.
As for its own purchases, China indicates importing two warships from Russia and a little over 1500 missile and missile launching equipment from Russia and Ukraine. There are no other imports in any of the other categories.
