News and Commentary for 11/17/07

The U.S. Congress has passed the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement. Among the provisions: removal of duties on some 80% of U.S. exports to Peru, including subsidized cotton, corn and wheat (which will drive more Peruvian farmers off the land); expanded rights to drill in the Peruvian Amazon (which is why Occidental Petroleum, for example, has been lobbying hard for the FTA); and the greater opening of Peru's urban commercial sectors to foreign competition (hence the enthusiasm of Wal-Mart, Citibank, and others).

Brazil may purchase a nuclear submarine to "protect" the massive offshore oil reserves recently discovered at Tupi.

Speaking of nukes, the always-perceptive Azmi Bishara has written a good op-ed piece on Hiroshima and the Machiavellian logic of U.S. elites.

A massive cyclone hit Bangladesh on Thursday, killing a reported 1,100 people. Some 650,000 coastal villagers have fled to shelters, and 150 fishing trawlers are unaccounted for. The cyclone caused the power system in much of Bangladesh to collapse, leaving millions without power. This also led to a disruption in piped water supplies, as pumps could not be started.

The water problems in Bangladesh are a reminder of the complex supply chains and interdependencies that make urban life possible. The water crisis in Atlanta is another such reminder.

Climate Change and Water Wars

Tom Engelhardt's points out in this article that severe droughts are simultaneously afflicting the southern and midwestern U.S., North Africa, southeastern Europe, Mexico and Australia. Speculating about the possibility of mass migrations and resource conflicts over water in the U.S., he asks why the topic of water security--and what will happen if drought conditions take hold in major cities like Atlanta--is rarely broached in the U.S. media.

The IPCC impact assessments suggest that, even by conservative projections, there will be reductions in crop production in the most populous rural areas on the planet over the next few decades. But we have no reason to believe in convervative projections: U.S. carbon emissions are not only growing, their rate of growth is accelerating, and is predicted to continue to accelerate.

While there may actually be a boost in food production in parts of the U.S. due to climate change, in much of the farm belt food production will decrease. The IPCC 4th Assesment Report predicts:

"By mid-century, annual average river runoff and water availability are projected to increase by 10-40% at high latitudes and in some wet tropical areas, and decrease by 10-30% over some dry regions at mid-latitudes and in the dry tropics, some of which are presently water-stressed areas. [...] Crop productivity is projected to increase slightly at mid- to high latitudes for local mean temperature increases of up to 1-3°C depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that in some regions. At lower latitudes, especially seasonally dry and tropical regions, crop productivity is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases (1-2°C), which would increase the risk of hunger. Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases in local average temperature over a range of 1-3°C, but above this it is projected to decrease. [...] Increases in the frequency of droughts and floods are projected to
affect local crop production negatively, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes."

Two things need to be noted here: 1) these "subsistence sectors in low latitudes" include the most densely populated parts of coastal Asia, Africa and Latin America; and 2) increases of 1-2°C (under which "crop productivity is projected to decrease" in these regions) are at the low end of moderate IPCC predictions for temperature increases. So a fall in crop productivity in most of the world, most dangerously in the bread baskets of the southern hemisphere, is virtually assured. And this despite the fact that, at current growth rates, world population is expected to "crest" at 9 billion by 2050 . Unequivocally, then, anyone who advocates "business as usual" is advocating mass death.

Unfortunately, in a culture where possessive individualism is exalted by all-pervasive private and state propoganda as the highest collective aim, action on climate change might require its effects being "brought home" to the global north through drought and wildfires. As long there is a perceived geographical split between the greatest per capita carbon emitters and the greatest victims of climate change, it is likely that popular pressures will remain weak. Read more!

The U.S. and the Kurds

60,000 Turkish troops have massed on the Iraqi border. Meanwhile, the PKK has offered Turkey an unconditional ceasefire on the condition that it does not cross the border.

The U.S. has poured arms into Turkey throughout the duration of its brutal counter-insurgency campaign against the Kurds. Turkey was the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid between 1994 and 2004, behind Israel and Egypt. The Turkish campaign against the Kurds was arguably as murderous as Saddam's next door, which the U.S. also facilitated with billions' worth of arms (Bell Textron helicopters were used to gas the Kurds at Halabja). The idea that the Kurds are "natural" allies of the U.S. is a sad joke.

As Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed wrote in a still-useful 2001 article:

"The Turkish government has been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide against its Kurdish minority[21] as part of its war on the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) that began in 1984. The war against the Kurdish people en masse continues despite the fact noted by the Federation of American Scientists that the vast majority of Turkey’s 13 million strong Kurdish population do not claim to support the PKK. The scale of the war also happens to be much wider than what Serb forces perpetrated in Kosovo, which elicited NATO intervention. By 1999, an estimated 45,000 Kurdish civilians had been killed, and 3,000 Kurdish villages plundered and sub-sequently incinerated by Turkish security forces in a brutal scorched earth campaign, the occupants either killed or driven out. Up to 3 million people have been internally displaced in this way from their homes in this manner.[22] Most of this destruction has taken place within the last several years.[23]

Systematic detention and torture of captured Kurdish civilians has also continued with impunity. One representative example of the nature of these policies is noted by Amnesty International in its annual country report:

“Two Kurdish girls, 16-year-old N.C.S. and 19-year-old Fatma Deniz Polattas, were detained and reportedly tortured for several days at the Anti-Terror Branch of Police Headquarters in Iskenderun in early March. They were held blindfolded and naked. N.C.S. was exposed to verbal and sexual harassment. Fatma Deniz Polattas was anally raped. A formal complaint was lodged, but the prosecutor decided not to prosecute the police officers.”[24]

The Turkish authorities justify their campaign on the pretext of attempting to prevent the secession of areas in the south inhabited by Kurds, who for decades have sought self-determination through the establishment of their own state. However, as a matter of chronological fact, the movement for secession sprouted and grew in reaction to, and thus as a direct consequence of, comprehensive repression of the Kurdish population within modern Turkey since the founding of Republic by Ataturk. The institutionalised violations of human rights perpetrated by the Turkish authorities against the Kurds have been instrumental in provoking the backlash of separatist movement based on Kurdish nationalism. In the same vein as conditions between Serbia and its Kosovan province, it is primarily due to the massive repression of Kurds by the Turkish authorities that there exists a movement in the country for Kurdish self-determination, similar in kind to the plea of the Kosovan Albanians. Indeed, the Turkish government refuses to recognise the most elementary rights of the Kurdish people, repressing them by refusing to acknowledge their very existence. All human, social, civil, political, cultural and linguistic rights have been denied the Kurds by the Turkish authorities. To even speak the Kurdish language or have a Kurdish name is illegal. The result can only be described as a form of Turkish apartheid.[25]

As the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) reports, the Turkish establishment “has prohibited all existing legal avenues for Kurds in Turkey to express themselves politically or culturally…

“Kurdish language television and radio broadcasts are forbidden. In late 1998 and early 1999, Turkish police arrested over 3,000 members of the main Kurdish political party (People’s Democracy Party or HADEP) for alleged ties to the PKK. With elections scheduled for April 1999, the Government is preparing a legal case to close HADEP and another Kurdish-based political party. Fourteen political parties have been banned since 1982. The government has not responded to past ceasefire announcements by the PKK, saying it will not negotiate with ‘terrorists’. Nor is Turkey responding favorably to calls from many governments to begin negotiating with Kurdish leaders now that PKK leader Ocalan has been arrested.”[26]
Turkish political scientist Haluk Gerger comments on the foundations of this apartheid-like repression:

“The basic insecurity that characterized the system and the resultant fear that shaped the behavior of the ruling elite have their roots in history. That is, both in the imperial heritage upon which the republican reconstruction was attempted, and the very essence of the structure that was created. This phenomenon is now being augmented in all its dimensions by the war against the Kurds… Turkish militarism is characterized by the rampant prominence of its values in society, the preponderance of the military establishment in politics, and by the unabashed legitimacy accorded to violence both at popular and official levels. Turkish chauvinism is expressed in extremely aggressive ultra nationalism, in xenophobic Turkism, in excessive bigotry and in the irrational and superfluous ‘master race’ and ‘one-nation state’ ideas.”[27]

The contrast in Western policy towards parallel circumstances is conspicuous. Although, the Turkish government has been practicing ethnic cleansing against its Kurdish minority since 1984 - on an even wider scale than Serb forces have done in Kosovo – Turkey has been in consistent receipt of extensive support from most NATO allies, most prominently from the United States and the United Kingdom, both of whom played leading roles in the intervention in Kosovo. The contradiction is accentuated when we recall that the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Turkey happens to be far beyond the scale of Kosovo’s crisis both before and after NATO intervention. Yet while NATO saw fit to intervene in Kosovo and indict Serb warlord Slobodan Milosevic, the Alliance has actually supported the Turkish Republic as it pursues its scorched earth campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the south, and consolidates its apartheid-like laws throughout the country.

While the international community has failed to condemn the Turkish government’s of state terrorism, the United States has been quick in leading the way for the Western powers to label the PKK a ‘terrorist’ group. And while professing concern for the plight of the Kurds under Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the international community has ignored repression of Kurds in Turkey. Summarising this hypocrisy, Kurdish expert Vera Saeedpour, Editor of the International Journal of Kurdish Studies, observes that:

“While the U.S. is attacking Iraq almost daily in its self-declared ‘no-fly zones’, saying that it does so because it cares about the Kurds, it is backing Turkey in its attacks against the Kurds. Turkey has destroyed, drowned villages with dams. They deny or punish any manifestation of Kurdish identity, yet Clinton has called Turkey a ‘shining example to the world of the virtues of cultural diversity’. Kurdish parliamentarians are in prison for their words, some spoken in the US. The Iraqi Kurds, under U.S. pressure, have helped Turkey in its attacks on the Turkish Kurds. European countries didn’t give Ocalan safe-haven because of the pressure from Turkey and the U.S., which insisted that Ocalan face justice in Turkey; but there isn’t any justice for a Kurd in Turkey. Ocalan asked for an international trial in Europe, but Turkey refused since they didn’t want their Kurdish policy to get any scrutiny.”[28]

The anti-humanitarian tenor of Western policies towards the Kurds are well rooted in history. Indeed, they are based on long-standing strategic interests in the region. “The Kurds are in several countries and that was planned by Britain”, observes former President of the American Kurdish Society in Boston, Hussein Aktas. “If you have a problem with Iraq, you can use them against Iraq, same for Iran and Turkey.” Thanks to this disasterous condition, historically established by the West, there are “millions of Kurds who have been displaced from their homes since 1993 in Turkey”, and “hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured.”[29]" [Emphasis added]

Read more!

Andean FTAS and the Southward Drift of NAFTA; Militarization in Mecca

The U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement was passed by Congress this week. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, defending the agreement against critics who say it will harm the U.S. economy, pointed out that the U.S. is running a trade surplus with the Dominican Republic and five Central American countries as a result of CAFTA. He is right to suggest that the U.S.-Peru FTA will extend the results of CAFTA, which has knocked down protective trade barriers between the richest country in the world and some of the poorest in the hemisphere. CAFTA has slashed agricultural tariffs in Central America and the Caribbean without reducing agricultural subsidies in the U.S., allowing multinationals like Cargill to dump artificially cheapened corn and other exports on places like Guatemala, where 40% of the population lives on the land.

The predictable result? Plantations and textile factories producing for export are seeing greater access to the U.S. market due to their “comparative advantage” of dirt-cheap labor, often paid 60 cents an hour or less. Many of these "local" beneficiaries are subsidiaries of U.S. firms like Dole, Del Monte and RL Stowe Mills. (As the Economic Policy Institute calculates, some 50% of all American-owned manufacturing now takes places outside the U.S. This kind of "intra-firm trade" shows up, misleadingly, as GDP growth in the U.S. and in the "host country" on the macroeconomic ledgers.) Meanwhile, small peasant farmers can't compete with subsidized U.S. agribusiness exports. As FTA cheerleader USAID admits in a report on the effects of CAFTA on Honduras, “only a few of Honduras’ sensitive products will be competitive with those from the United States.”

Regarding Peru, an Oxfam report noted in March: “There are 25,000 cotton producers in the US who receive approximately $3.5 billion per year in subsidies. There are 28,000 cotton producers in Peru who receive no subsidies and who have few alternative ways to make a living. At the moment, Peruvian producers are protected from import surges by a tariff of 12% on cotton imports. This would be removed under the FTA, with devastating results.” Overall, we can predict from CAFTA, the new FTA with Peru, and the ones under discussion with Colombia and Panama, will have the same results as NAFTA. A few thousand manufacturing jobs which pay $1 a day or less will be created, and a far larger number of smallholders will be driven off the land due to export dumping from U.S. agribusiness. Some estimate that 2 million Mexican farmers were driven off the land by NAFTA. CAFTA and the Andean FTAs will generate similar waves of economic refugees, who will then appear in decontextualized, quasi-criminal form in U.S. immigration debates.

Saudi Arabia just signed an $8.9 billion deal with the British government for 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets, manufactured by the British firm BAE Systems. This continues an accelerating arms build-up: in February 2007, the Saudis ordered $50 billion in fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, cruise missiles and tanks at an arms fair in Abu Dhabi.

Al-Jazeera reports that BAE Systems was threatened with a corruption probe by the Serious Fraud Office of the British government in 2006. BAE was alleged to have payed Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan $2 billion in bribes over the last twenty years. This was in connection with the biggest arms deal in British history, in which $86 billion worth of arms were sold to the Saudi regime in 1985. Tony Blair said last year that the corruption probe would harm “national security,” which is true, if by "national" he meant "shareholders of the largest defense contractor in Europe."

So, what is Saudi Arabia doing with this costly arsenal? It is worried about Yemeni tribesmen crossing its border at will, as well as its own Shiite population, which could be stirred up by Iran. It is even more worried about its own majority-Sunni population. Since 2003, anti-government attacks have increased in the kingdom of Saud, whose rulers continue to be (correctly)denounced as corrupt American clients by Muslim fundamentalists and secularists alike. In 2006, Saudi car bombers struck the gates of the Abquaiq oil facility, which processes two-thirds of Saudi oil. Although they were unsuccessful (failing to make it past the second layer or security), this may not be true of future attackers.

Most importantly of all, the Saudis are concerned about an Iranian missile strike on Saudi oil facilities in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran. Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., told the press in 2006 that a U.S. attack on Iran would make “the whole Gulf an inferno of exploding fuel tanks and shot-up facilities" and "shoot up the price of oil astronomically."

The U.S. has a massive naval build-up at Saudi Arabia's doorstep for exactly such an event. The 5th fleet is based in Bahrain, and is there to guard the Persian Gulf shipping lanes to maintain the flow of Saudi oil. Read more!

Taiwan Missile Crisis? And: Indigenous Rights, Global Health Toll from Pollution

Taiwan is one of the largest recipents of U.S. arms, recieving $540 million in high-tech weaponry in 2003 alone. U.S. planners are now worried that China will gain a military edge over Taiwan through a French arms deal with Pakistan. According to Jane's Defense Weekly, quoted by USA Today, Pakistan is developing a JF-17 jet fighter with China, and it is trying to buy air-to-air missiles from the MBDA company, and radar from the Thales company, which use the same technology as the French-built Mirage jet fighters used by Taiwan. The diffusion of this technology to China could tip the military balance in an attempted future annexation of Taiwan. Alexander Neill of the British Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies predicts a "quite vicious" reaction from the U.S. if the deal goes through. My reaction is that the U.S. arming of Taiwan is much more provocative than the Russian arming of Cuba leading up to the Cuban missile crisis ever was, given that China has a more legitimate historical claim to Taiwan than the U.S. did to Cuba. And can we imagine the absurdity of Kremlin officials reacting "viciously" to the diffusion of the missile technology possessed by Cuba to the U.S.?

The U.N. passed a declaration of rights for indigenous peoples on Thursday. 143 countries voted in favor. The United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand voted against it, while Colombia, Suriname, Guyana, Russia and Namibia abstained. Opponents protested especially the article stating that "indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired." And with good reason: if it were honored, most of the territory in the Americas, Australasia, southern Africa and southern and eastern Russia could be claimed as indigenous property, an alarming prospect for many a priveleged descendant-of-Euro-settlers. As a Reuters article notes, "That could potentially put in question most of the land ownership in countries, such as those that opposed the declaration, whose present population is largely descended from settlers who took over territory from previous inhabitants."

David Pimentel, an ecologist and agricultural scientist at Cornell, has published a study collating "120 published papers on the effects of population growth, malnutrition and various kinds of environmental degradation on human diseases." The conclusion? About 40% of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution! According to the study:
-Almost half the people on earth live in urban areas where inadequate sanitation exposes them to epidemics.
-1.2 billion people don't have access to clean water. As a result, 80% of all infectious diseases are caused by waterborne infections.
-1.2-2.7 million people a year are killed by malaria, often contracted by mosquitoes that breed in polluted water.
-3 million people a year are killed by air pollution.
-5 million people a year are killed by unsanitary living conditions, over half of them children.
-As microbes become more drug resistant, global warming is increasing the ability of parasites and exotic species to invade new areas, leading to increased threats of West Nile Virus, Lyme disease, etc.

Recall that in 2005, the UN warned that there were already 20 million "environmental refugees" worldwide. Desertification in western China and the African Sahel is already generating waves of migrants. Northeastern Brazil (one of the places catastrophically effected by El Niño events in the late 19th century, as documented by Mike Davis in "Late Victorian Holocausts") is already generating "eco-refugees." Rising sea levels in South Asia will perhaps effect the most people of all. Read more!

The Father of All Bombs, Israeli Spy Flights, Pax Amerafrica, Apartheid Nuke Smugglers

There has been a great deal of speculation about how Russia will respond to the Eastern European missile defense system the U.S. is planning. This "defense" system is being widely interpreted in Russia as an offense system, not a means of preventing a Russian first strike, but of disabling a Russian retaliatory strike in the event of a U.S. first strike. This is exactly how the testing of a Chinese missile defense system was interpreted in the U.S. media last summer, although mainstream commentators wouldn't dream of applying the same standards to US we apply to THEM.

Anyway, now we know. According to Reuters:
"Russia has tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, which unleashes a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast, the military said on Tuesday, dubbing it the "father of all bombs". The bomb is the latest in a series of new Russian weapons and policy moves as President Vladimir Putin tries to reassert Moscow's role on the international stage."

The article goes on to say that:

"The main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature," the reports said. "All that is alive merely evaporates."
[Deputy Armed Forces Chief of Staff Alexander] Rukshin said: "At the same time, I want to stress that the action of this weapon does not contaminate the environment, in contrast to a nuclear one."

Good to know that it evaporates flesh in an eco-friendly way.

Meanwhile, Israel is playing with fire again. A few weeks ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced that Israeli troops would be withdrawing from the Golan border. Since July, the Israeli government has deployed thousands of IDF reservists to the border of the Golan Heights, a piece of Syrian territory Israel siezed during the 1967 war, for military exercises. Rumors of war with Syria have been heating up in recent months, and it appeared that Barak's announcement was a sign of eased tensions. Then, on September 6th, four Israeli warplanes, travelling faster than the speed of sound, invaded Syrian airspace after midnight. They reportedly entered from the south and reached the vicinity of Tal Abyad, on the northern Syria-Turkey border. There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. Syrian officials at the U.N. on Tuesday said that the craft engaged in an airstrike against an unspecified target, while Israeli officials said they were on a reconnaissance mission, but were forced to drop their munitions in order to increase speed and altitude after being fired on by Syrian troops.

So what were they doing? According to Sami Boubayed at Asia Times, Syria recently purchased ballistic missiles from Russia. He quotes Israeli "counter-terrorism expert" Boaz Ganor's statement that Israel was "collecting intelligence" for long-range missile installations in the north. If a Lebanon-style conflagration erupts, Israel may find itself simultaneously at war with Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinans in Gaza and the West Bank.

U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops continued their offensive inside Somalia on Tuesday, bombing the Mogadishu international airport and siezing towns all through southern and central Somalia. The U.S. is participating in many of these operations, and is even carrying out airstrikes inside Somalia. The perception that the U.S. is extending its sphere of occupation from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Horn of Africa is, inevitably, leading to an extension of the resistance it provokes. General John Abizaid recently made a visit to Addis Ababa, and there are other visitors. According to McClatchy, "Hundreds of foreign fighters, primarily from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Asian peninsula, reportedly have arrived in recent days to bolster the CIC [Council of Islamic Courts]."

Oh, and the South African government has uncovered evidence of a nuclear smuggling ring operating in 30 countries. Members include engineers involved in the apartheid regime's nuclear weapons program, which was dismantled in 1994. Read more!