Jul 22

Spain Facing Downturn

by Ac. Krtashivananda

Spain protest

Unemployment in the eurozone hit 11.1% in May while the downturn in its manufacturing sector continued, according to official statistics.

A total of 17.56m people are now out of work marking the highest level since records began in 1995, according to EU statistics body Eurostat.

Meanwhile, the manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), compiled by Markit, was stuck at 45.1 in June. Any reading below 50 indicates contraction.

The data compounds the gloomy outlook for the eurozone where companies have reduced or frozen spending levels – including labour costs – as fears over the impact of the ongoing debt crisis have reduced confidence in future growth.

Joblessness in the eurozone has risen for the past 14 months.

In Spain, which has the highest unemployment rate in the 17-bloc nation, one in four people is now out of work.

The downturn in employment is reflected in the eurozone’s manufacturing sector. The closely-watched manufacturing PMI’s unchanged reading of 45.1 in June means it remains at its lowest reading for three years.

The survey’s employment index fell to 46.7 in June, its lowest since January 2010, from 47.1 in the previous month, signalling accelerating job cuts.

Chris Williamson - Markit

“Companies are clearly preparing for worse to come, cutting back on both staff numbers and stocks of raw materials at the fastest rates for two-and-a-half years,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at data provider Markit.

Whatever name you give to the EU financial support for Spain, one thing is clear. Spain alone was unable to go to the financial markets and raise the 100 billion Euros or so it needs to meet the capital requirements of its banking system for 2012/2013. The country’s leaders wanted one of the European funds (the EFSF perhaps) to inject the money directly into the banking system, but Europe’s leaders said no, it would need to be the Spanish sovereign that borrowed (via its bank reorganization fund FROB), and responsibility for repayment would lie with the Spanish state.

So, five years after one of the largest property bubbles in history burst, with an economy which has fallen by around 5% from its pre-crisis peak and is now expected to contract by around another 2% this year, while unemployment is hitting the 25% mark, Spain has finally had to accept that it cannot manage alone.

Whatever way you call the aid Spain is now receiving from Europe it is clear that this is the beginning and not the end of what is likely to be a long process, one which will now inexorably lead to either the creation of a United States of the Euro Area, or to failure and disintegration of the Euro. There will be no middle path, so the stakes are now very high for all involved.

Spain has to think seriouly about increasing purchasing power of the people and avoid imported goods to meet their daily neccessities moblising local resources. Emphasising on small scale industries instead of big capital industries should be the thrust. Eu must take initiative to meet the capital requirement. Otherwise Spain may switch over to local curreny remaining in Euro Zone.

Jul 07

Spain, Debt and Sovereigninty

By George Friedman 

Eurozone countries on June 9 agreed to lend Spain up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion) to stabilize the Spanish banking system. Because the bailout dealt with Spain’s financial sector directly rather than involving the country’s sovereign debt, Madrid did not face the kind of demands for more onerous austerity measures in exchange for the loan that have led to political instability in countries such as Greece.

There are two important aspects to this. First, yet another European financial problem has emerged requiring concerted action. Second, unlike previous incidents, this bailout was not accompanied by much melodrama, infighting or politically destabilizing threats. The Europeans have not solved the underlying problems that have led to these periodic crises, but they have now calibrated their management of the situation to minimize drama and thereby limit political fallout. The Spanish request for help without conditions, and the willingness of the Europeans to provide it, moves the European process to a new level. In a sense, it is a capitulation to the crisis.

This is a shift in the position of Europe’s creditor nations, particularly Germany. Berlin has realized that it has no choice but to fund this and other bailouts. As an export-dependent country, Germany needs the eurozone to be able to buy German products. Moreover, Berlin cannot allow internal political pressures to destabilize the European Union as a whole. For all the German bravado about expelling countries, the preservation and even expansion of the existing system remains a fundamental German interest. The cycle of threats, capitulation by creditors, political unrest and then German accommodation had to be broken. It was not only failing to solve the crisis but also contributing to the eurozone’s instability. In Spain, the Germans shifted their approach, resolving the temporary problem without a fight over more austerity.

The problem with the solution is that it does nothing to deal with the larger dilemma of European sovereignty and debt. Germany is taking responsibility for solving Spain’s banking problem without having any control over the Spanish banking system. If this becomes the norm in Europe, then Germany has moved from the untenable threat of expelling countries to the untenable promise of underwriting them. Europe, in other words, has accommodated itself to the perpetual crises without solving them.

In our view, the root of the problem is the struggle to align the world’s second-largest exporter with a bloc of nations that ought to be enjoying positive trade balances but are instead experiencing trade deficits. Germany, however, views the root of the problem as undisciplined entitlement and social program spending that leads to irresponsible borrowing practices. Thus the Europhiles, led by Germany, don’t look for solutions by redefining the European trading system, but rather by disciplining countries, particularly within the eurozone, on their spending and borrowing practices.

According to a report in German magazine Der Spiegel, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso are drafting a plan to stabilize the system. Under the purported plan, all eurozone members would be required to balance their budgets. Borrowing would be permitted only if approved by a Europe-wide finance minister, a position that would have to be created and supported by a select group of eurozone finance ministers. If approved, money could be borrowed by issuing eurobonds.

There are two problems inherent in this approach. The first, is the assumption that Europe’s core problem is irresponsible borrowing and that if borrowing were controlled, the European problem would be solved. Irresponsible borrowing is certainly part of the problem, but the deeper issue is trade.

The European Union is built around Germany and therefore the sort of economic dynamism that Germany enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s, when the country benefited from access to the U.S. market while retaining some protection for its own emerging industries. Eurozone countries’ inability to cover debt payments stems in part from their inability to compete with Germany. Under normal circumstances, the economies of developing countries grow through exports driven by lower wage rates, but the shared currency prevents developing European countries from taking advantage of low wages. Borrowing may be too high, but Germany’s dependence on exports makes it impossible for Berlin to allow a Greece or a Spain the time and space to develop critical economic sectors in the way that the United States allowed Germany to develop after World War II.

The second problem is the more serious one. The ability to manage a national budget, including the right to borrow, is a central element of national sovereignty. If the right to borrow is transferred from national governments to unelected functionaries appointed by a multinational entity, a profound transformation of democracy in Europe will take place. The European Union has seen transfers of sovereign rights from national governments and their electorates before, but none as profound as this one. Elected governments will not be able to stimulate their economies without approval of this as-yet-unnamed board, nor will they be able to undertake long-term capital expenditures based on the issuance of bonds. This board thus will have enormous power within individual countries.

This prospective solution involves more than simply an attempt to solve banking and debt problems. It reflects a fundamental principle of European political philosophy: the belief that disinterested officials are likely to render better decisions than interested politicians. This idea derives from deep in European intellectual history. Georg Hegel, a German philosopher, made the argument that the end of history was its full rationalization, represented by the rational and disinterested civil servant. Jean-Jacques Rousseau distinguished between the general will and the popular will. He argued that the latter did not represent the interests of the people but that the general will, the source of which was not altogether clear, did.

The question of the budget is central to a democracy and a highly politicized process. It is one of the places in which the public and its representatives can debate the direction in which the nation should go. The argument has been made that the public and its politicians cannot be trusted with absolute power in this area and that power should be limited to unelected people. In a sense, it is the same argument that has been made for central banks, with even greater power.

The problem, of course, is that the decisions made by this board will be highly political. First, the board must be appointed. The selection of the chief eurozone finance minister and the finance ministers represented on the board will be determined in some process that likely will not take the views of average European citizens into account. Second, the board will make decisions that will determine how the citizens of individual nations live. The board derives from a political process and shapes national life. It is apolitical only in the sense that its members don’t stand for election by the populations they oversee and thus are not answerable to them.

The core problem is the decision about who will and will not be allowed to borrow. Ideally, this decision would be completely transparent and predictable. In practice, the differences and needs of different countries will be so vast that the board will have to make some decisions. Given that the board will be composed of the finance ministers of some eurozone countries — and that they will have to go home after a decision — the question of who will be denied permission will be perceived as highly political and, in some cases, as extremely unfair. In some cases, both will be true.

The ultimate issue has nothing to do with economics, save for the trade issue. It is a question of the extent to which European publics are prepared to cede significant elements of national sovereignty in exchange for secured lines of credit, subject to the authority of people they never elected. For EU supporters, the notion that political leaders must be selected by the people they govern is not an absolute. Rational governance by disinterested leaders is an alternative and, at times, a preferred alternative. This is not entirely alien to the European tradition. In practice, however, it could create an explosive situation. The board will determine its willingness to grant deficits based on its own values. It may not permit deficits to fund hospitals for the poor. It may allow borrowing to fund bank bailouts. Or the reverse.In any event, by taking power from the electorate, it risks a crisis of legitimacy.

Source: Stratfor

N:B:  The system of Euro zone is no different than the rules of Global economy has been set by the multinations behind the door.Today it is obvious  that World Bank; International Monetary fund and World Trade Organisation, dictates the policy of borrowing, value of currency and even the national budgets by imposing Structural Reforms. EDITOR

Jun 24

GREECE – EURO OR DRACHMA?

by Ac. Krtashivananda                                                                       

     The economy of Greece is the  37th largest in the world at $312 or $309 billion by nominal G.D.P or purchasing power parity respectively, according to World Bank statistics for the fiscal year 2009–2010. Additionally, Greece is the 15th largest economy in the 27-member EU .In terms of per capita income Greece is ranked 29th or 33rd in the world at $27,875 and $27,624 for nominal GDP and purchasing power parity respectively.

Since the turn of the millennium, Greece saw high levels of GDP growth above the Eurozone average peaking at 5.9% in 2003 and 5.5% in 2006. Due to the late-2000s financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis, the Greek economy saw growth rates of –6.9% in 2011, –3.4% in 2010,  –3.3% in 2009 and –0.2% in 2008. The country’s public debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 165.3% of nominal gross domestic product in 2011.

Since a change in government revealed the true size of the country’s massive deficits, Greece has been kept afloat by its fellow euro zone countries, but at a steep price: the austerity measures demanded by France and Germany in return for two massive bailout packages have ripped holes in the Greek safety net and plunged the country into a recession of near-Great Depression dimensions.

After long resisting the idea of a default, European officials in March 2012 helped Greece negotiate a landmark debt restructuring deal with the vast majority of its private sector lenders, who agreed to swap $77 billion in Greek debt for new bonds worth as much as 75 percent less. It was the largest default in history.

The deal cleared the way for the so-called troika — the European Union, the European Central Bank(ECB) and International Monetary Fund(IMF) — to begin releasing funds from the second, 130 billion euro ($163.4 billion) bailout package, avoiding an uncontrolled default. But many economists said it still left Greece saddled with unsustainable debts and little prospects for growth.

While Greece receives billions of Euros in emergency assistance from lenders overseeing its bailout, almost none of the money is going to the Greek government to pay for vital public services. Instead, it is flowing directly back into the troika’s pockets.

The European bailout that was supposed to buy time for Greece is mainly servicing only the interest on the country’s debt — while the Greek economy continues to struggle.

In early May, voters upended the country’s political system in a parliametary election that saw Parties representing the left and the far-right made gains, as Greeks protested the austerity pact. After the leading parties failed to form a coalition, a caretaker government was installed until new elections in June.

Center-Right Party Wins a Critical Election 

On June 17, Greek voters gave a narrow victory in parliamentary elections  to the conservative New Democracy party, which had supported a bailout for the country’s failed economy. The vote was widely seen as a last chance for Greece to remain in the euro zone, and the results had an early rallying effect on world markets.

While the election afforded Greece a brief respite from a rapid downward spiral, it was not likely to prevent a showdown between the next government and the country’s so-called troika of foreign creditors — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — over the terms of a bailout agreement.

The day after the election, Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy, began efforts to form a coalition government aimed at keeping Greece in the euro and renegotiating its loan agreement with the foreign creditors keeping it afloat. Mr. Samaras will try to persuade his party’s longtime rival, the Socialist Pasok party, to join forces in a pro-bailout coalition. Read More…

Spain’s Bailout Raises Worry Over Greece

A week before the Greek election, Spain became the fourth country in Europe to accept a bailout for its cash-starved banks as European finance ministers offered an aid package of up to $125 billion.

The Spanish rescue was well within the means of a European emergency fund already established for just such purposes. Far harder to calculate are the costs if, after the Greek elections, the new government there reneges on the terms of the bailout Athens negotiated with its European lenders only a few months ago. That could lead to an unprecedented withdrawal from the euro zone, threatening the structural integrity of a currency union that has largely benefited more prosperous members like Germany.

Lucas Papademos, the country’s former interim prime minister, said Greece’s departure from the euro zone would be catastrophic, pushing inflation in the country as high as 50 percent, putting extreme stress on Greek banks and reducing living standards.

And those problems would not be Greece’s alone. The big fear in Europe is contagion — an infection of financial panic that could spread far beyond Greece. Indeed, Spanish leaders have long said that Greek problems were contributors to the general market uncertainties that helped undermine Spanish banks.

Background

The roots of the crisis go back to the strong euro and rock-bottom interest rates that prevailed for much of the past decade. Greece took advantage of this easy money to drive up borrowing by the country’s consumers and its government, which built up $400 billion in debt, much of it lent by banks in France and Germany.

When the global economy crumpled, those chickens came home to roost.

After the revelation of the true size of its deficit, Greece was quickly frozen out of the bond markets, and in May 2010 began to rely on an aid package of €110 billion, or $152.6 billion, agreed to by its richer European neighbors.

Throughout 2010 and 2011, investors continued to demand ever higher interest rates for Greek borrowing as the market appeared to conclude that some sort of default was inevitable. Mass demonstrations turned violent in October 2011 as Parliament barely passed additional austerity measures Europe demanded to keep the bailout money flowing.

Tensions in the Euro Zone

For Greece — and for Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal — the financial crisis has highlighted the constraints of euro membership. Unable to devalue their currencies to regain competitiveness, and forced by E.U. fiscal agreements to control spending, they are facing austerity measures just when their economies need extra spending. Other economies like Germany, the Netherlands and Austria have kept deficits down while retaining an edge in global markets by restraining domestic wage increases. France lies somewhere between the two camps.

The chief difficulty in working out a package to support Greece was the popular sentiment in Germany — deeply concerned about becoming the answer to the debt problems of all of Europe’s endangered economies — that Greece should pay a penalty for its former profligacy.

Since the euro’s inception in 1999, no member had sought support from the I.M.F., which typically comes to the rescue of emerging-market economies rather than developed countries. Beside unsettling the markets, Greece’s troubles have undermined the common currency it and 15 and other European nations share.

Bond Losses, Second Bailout Package

On Feb. 21, after more than 13 hours of talks in Brussels, European finance ministers approved a new bailout of 130 billion euros, or $172 billion, subject to Greece taking immediate steps to put the deep structural changes that they agreed to into effect.

The agreement included a reduction in interest rates on loans from Greece’s first rescue in 2010, and European central banks foregoing profit on their Greek bond holdings, that allowed the deal to satisfy a mandate set by the IMF that Greece’s debt come down to 120.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2020.

The bailout cash is likely to be paid into a special “escrow” account that will prioritize debt servicing before money is released to general government coffers.

The Debt Deal

In early March 2012, Greece announced that it had clinched a landmark debt restructuring deal with its private sector lenders. The deal clears the way for the release of bailout funds from Europe and the International Monetary Fund that will save the country from imminent default.

The Greek finance ministry said that 85.8 percent of private creditors holding 177 billion euros in Greek bonds participated in the bond swap. After invoking collective action clauses, provisions that will force the holdouts to accept the offer, the participation rate would rise to 95 percent and meet the target set by Europe and the I.M.F. for the release of crucial rescue funds.The value of Greek 10-year bonds had shortly before hit a record low of 16 cents on the euro.  When the bailout was finalized on March 14, European officials said that if the reform program is successful, Greece’s debt level by 2020 could equal 116.5 percent of gross domestic product.

After the May 2012 Elections

Leaders in Germany and elsewhere in Europe made clear that as far as they were concerned, a Greek departure from the euro was no longer unthinkable — and far more likely than additional aid.

And depositors were voting with their feet, pulling billions from Greek banks to protect against the losses that would accompany a switch to a depreciated drachma. The head of the new caretaker government said the central bank had warned of “a great fear that could develop into a panic.”

Fear of ‘Drachmageddon’

In the weeks following the May 2012 elections, talk of “drachmageddon” could be heard in conversations all around Athens — despite the fact that 80 percent of Greeks said they wanted to stay with the euro.

Any departure from the euro, if it did occur, would not come quickly, even if a new government repudiates Greece’s bailout terms; orchestrating the exit would be legally complicated and lengthy. European leaders may also move to prevent a Greek default or exit at the 11th hour, considering the almost unending uncertainties.

But coming up with a Plan B is proving difficult for Greek businesses, especially smaller ones. There are so many unknowns involved that many of them cannot even conceive of how they would cope. Economists say the drachma would be devalued by an estimated 50 to 70 percent compared to the euro.

The depositors fears that with a devalued currency, inflation would rise rapidly, and Greek companies would struggle to pay the euro-denominated bills of their suppliers. Trade with other countries would slow sharply for a while, as suppliers halted deliveries, further crippling Greek businesses that depend heavily on imports.

On the other hand it may also happen that  the weakened Greek currency lowers the cost of Greek labor and products like olive oil. As was the case in Argentina, businesses and consumers in other countries would eventually start buying Greek goods and services once they improved in value.

Today, Greek exports of manufactured products account for only 10 percent of GDP,, compared with a 30 percent average for the rest of the euro zone. In addition, Greece’s adoption of the euro hastened a steady shift away from agricultural production. Today, Greece imports nearly 40 percent of its food, most of its medicine and almost all of its oil and natural gas.

      Greece may remain within Euro zone like Denmark, using Euro for external trade within Euro Zone instead of dollar and Drachma internally. But economic experts may think about Plan C that is to float 3 currencies. Euro, Drachma(1) as convertible currency with Euro for expternal trade with Euro Zone countries. The exchange rate controlled by the ECB. And Drachma(2) for internal trade only and exchangable only with Drachma(1). Its value can be determind by the National Government. There can be two price levels for the goods interal and external.  

            Besides this Greece must develope its agricultural potential and also labour intensive industries which can  produce quality goods in competable price.

Jun 08

THE HOULA MASSACRE: Another systematic Western media manipulation

The appalling massacre of 108 people, including 49 children, in Houla, Syria, dominated the Independent on Sunday’s latest front cover. Above a few short lines of commentary the banner headline read:

‘SYRIA: THE WORLD LOOKS THE OTHER WAY. WILL YOU?’

The text beneath observed:

The Houla Massacre

‘There is, of course, supposed to be a ceasefire, which the brutal Assad regime simply ignores. And the international community? It just averts its gaze. Will you do the same? Or will the sickening fate of these innocent children make you very, very angry?’ (Independent on Sunday, May 27, 2012)
Readers, then, knew exactly where to direct their anger – the ‘brutal’ Syrian ‘regime’ was responsible for the massacre.
It is not quite true that the ‘international community’ has averted its gaze. And the Syrian government is not the only party to have violated the April 12 ceasefire. Earlier this month, four weeks into the attempted pause in fighting, the Washington Post reported:
‘Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials.’

The weapons were having an impact:
‘The effect of the new arms appeared evident in Monday’s clash between opposition and government forces over control of the rebel-held city of Rastan, near Homs. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebel forces who overran a government base had killed 23 Syrian soldiers.’
….. Within hours of Houla massacre being reported, a cartoon by Martin Rowson in the Observer depicted Assad with his mouth and face smeared with the blood of children. In the Independent, Assad was shown sitting in a bath filled with blood.

We challenged Rowson on Twitter: ‘On what actual evidence about the massacre in Houla is your cartoon based?’
Rowson replied: ‘I have no more evidence than media & UN reports, like anyone else. Also used cartoonist’s hunch – are you saying I’m wrong?’

Media Lens: ‘Would you rely on a “hunch” in depicting Obama and Cameron with mouths smeared with the blood of massacred children? Shouldn’t a cartoon also be based on fundamentally rational analysis, on credible evidence?’ We repeatedly and politely asked Rowson to supply some of the evidence (links to articles, quotes) that had informed his thinking. We received numerous and varied responses but no mention of evidence. Instead,
Rowson erupted:‘[Media Lens] has succeeded in riling me. Well done. If I’m proved worng I’ll apologise.
He finally pointed to one sentence in a BBC article quoting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov:‘There is no doubt that the government used artillery and tanks and this has been reported by UN observers who have visited the scene.’This was indeed the initial Western focus in blaming the Syrian government.
Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt said:‘We are appalled at what appears to be credible reports that the Syrian regime has been responsible for the deaths of 92 civilians in Houla, including 32 children. The UN Head of Mission has been able to confirm the numbers and also that artillery tank shells have been used. If this is the case then it’s an act of pure, naked savagery and we condemn it in the most strongest possible terms.’ (Our emphasis)
But it turns out that shelling was not the major cause of deaths. Associated Press has more recently reported:‘The U.N.’s human rights office said most of the 108 victims were shot execution-style at close range, with fewer than
20 people cut down by regime shelling.’
Two days after Rowson’s cartoon appeared, the BBC reported the head of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria, Maj Gen Robert Mood, as saying: ‘the circumstances that led to these tragic killings are still unclear’. Mood commented: ‘Whatever I learned on the ground in Syria… is that I should not jump to conclusions.’

The typical of the propaganda that issues forth from the BBC. Under the headline, ‘Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows,’ the BBC website published a picture of a young child jumping over a huge number of white body bags. But the picture was actually taken on March 27, 2003 of a young Iraqi child jumping over bags of skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad. The photographer who took the picture, Marco Di Lauro, said he nearly ‘fell off his chair’ when he saw the image being used to illustrate a story from Syria: ‘What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn’t check the sources and it’s willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone: activist, citizen journalist or whatever.’

The Case For Critical Thinking

There are reasonable grounds for questioning the claim that the Syrian government, and Assad personally, was wholly responsible for the massacre. First, as the Sunday Telegraph noted:

‘Damascus has long accused activist groups of exaggerating and falsifying accounts to draw international attention to their plight, a charge that independent observers say has sometimes been justified.’ (Ruth Sherlock, Colin Freeman, Richard Spencer, Magdy Samaan, ‘Massacre of the innocents,’ Sunday Telegraph, May 27, 2012)

A rare dissenting view was offered by the highly respected Syria analyst Alastair Crooke, founder and director of Conflicts Forum. On responsibility for Houla, Crooke commented:

‘We don’t know for sure yet… But one thing that stands out quite clearly, and which is very important, is that the methodology, this type of killing – of beheadings, of slitting of throats, slitting of throats of children, too, and of this mutilation of bodies – has been a characteristic, not of Levantine Islam, not of Syria, not of Lebanon, but really of what happened in the Anbar province of Iraq. And so it seems to point very much in the direction of groups that had been associated with the war in Iraq against the United States, who have perhaps returned to Syria, or perhaps Iraqis who have come up from Anbar to take part in it…. But this whole process of mutilation is so very much against the tradition of Levantine Islam that I think it’s very hard to see this will have come either from soldiers or even from others who might have been bent on revenge… I don’t think this speaks of soldiers going on the rampage.’

Crooke added: ‘This is very much a possibility; that what we’re looking at here is a deliberate and cold-blooded attempt to cast Syria into civil war, to initiate civil war, to bring Western intervention, if possible. But simply, again, to bring down the regime. And it is clearly, I think, perpetrated in the interests of those external parties and groups at the end of the spectrum of the opposition, which are jihadi groups, who want no part in the peace process but who want to bring down the system and for Syria to turn into civil war.’

John Bradley, author of After The Arab Spring:  How Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolts, wrote in the Daily Mail: ‘The expressions of outrage over Houla and the consequent threats of military action all feed into the conventional Western narrative of the Syrian crisis whereby Assad is portrayed as a bloodthirsty tyrant and the rebels as heroic freedom-fighters trying to liberate the Syrian people from oppression. It is a picture that has been sedulously cultivated by the anti-Assad opposition, who are masters of manipulative propaganda aimed at gullible Western politicians, broadcasters and protest groups. But the truth about the violence in Syria is far more complex than Assad’s enemies would have us believe.’

Massacres and crises of this kind (real, imagined, or manufactured) have been used to justify Western armed intervention in the past. In 1999, the contested Racak massacre provided the trigger for Nato military intervention in Kosovo. In 2003, as the Downing Street memo made clear, the US and UK conspired to manufacture a trigger event to justify war on Iraq. Britain and the US did not use UN diplomacy as a way to avoid war, but as a way to lure Iraq into supplying a casus belli for war. Last year, the alleged threat of a massacre in Benghazi was used to trigger an attack on Libya. Clearly, Syrian rebels are hoping for a ‘Benghazi moment’ enabling Western intervention in Syria.

Emails leaked by WikiLeaks from the influential risk analysis group, Stratfor, noted that ‘most of the opposition’s more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply untrue’. Stratfor argued that Syrian government massacres against civilians were unlikely because the ‘regime has calibrated its crackdowns to avoid just such a scenario. Regime forces have been careful to avoid the high casualty numbers that could lead to an intervention based on humanitarian grounds’.

So why would the Syrian government order the one action that risks triggering Western intervention, regime change and the fate suffered by Gaddafi in Libya? Perhaps Syrian government forces, or allied militias were responsible. Would that mean the Syrian government, and Assad himself, ordered, or knew about, the killings? Might the killers be rogue supporters of the government acting independently? These would be natural questions if the finger of blame was pointing at the US or UK. They are almost unthinkable, now, when the latest official enemy is being targeted for destruction.

Sharmine Narwani, Senior Associate at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, quotes from the US 2010 Unconventional Warfare (UW) Manual of the US Military’s Special Forces on the dark art of generating regime change.

‘First, there should be local and national “agitation” – the organization of boycotts, strikes, and other efforts to suggest public discontent. Then, the “infiltration of foreign organizers and advisors and foreign propaganda, material, money, weapons and equipment.”

‘The next level of operations would be to establish “national front organizations [i.e. the Syrian National Council] and liberation movements [i.e. the Free Syrian Army]” that would move larger segments of the population toward accepting “increased political violence and sabotage” – and encourage the mentoring of “individuals or groups that conduct acts of sabotage in urban centers.”

‘Now, how and why would an uncommitted – and ostensibly peaceful – majority of the population respond to the introduction of violence by opposition groups? The UW manual tells us there is an easy way to spin this one:

‘“If retaliation [by the target government] occurs, the resistance can exploit the negative consequences to garner more sympathy and support from the population by emphasizing the sacrifices and hardship the resistance is enduring on behalf of “the people.” If retaliation is ineffective or does not occur, the resistance can use this as proof of its ability to wage effect combat against the enemy. In addition, the resistance can portray the inability or reluctance of the enemy to retaliate as a weakness, which will demoralize enemy forces and instill a belief in their eventual defeat.”’

Whatever the truth of Houla, the reaction of the corporate media has, yet again, made a mockery of the claim that it is a ‘free press’. Rather, it has propagandised relentlessly in promoting the US-UK view of the conflict. Once again, war in pursuit of regime change is the real goal behind the ‘humanitarian’ deceit.

With its usual depth of sincerity and compassion, Murdoch’s Times commented:

War, again war, always war – endless war! But then corporate greed is a form of eternal war in pursuit of profit. We are living, very clearly, in a pathologically violent and structurally insane society.“

Media Lens web-site of the article

http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=682:the-houla-massacre&catid=25:alerts-2012&Itemid=69

http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2012/06/humanitarian-intervention-syria-towards-regional-war

 

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CONFIRMED: US CIA Arming Terrorists in Syria 

By Tony Cartalucci

Global Research, June 22, 2012 – landdestroyer.blogspot.com

As West berates Syria for “killing civilians” Western weapons flow into terrorist hands from NATO. 

The New York Times in their article, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,” confirms what many have already long known – that the West, led by the US and its Gulf State proxies, have been arming terrorists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, while berating the Syrian government for “violating” a UN mandated ceasefire and for “failing to protect” its population.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been combated by nations across the Arab World to stem the tide of their sectarian extremism, violence, and their targeted erosion of secular nation-states. Ironically, the US which has claimed to have been fighting the forces of sectarian extremism and “terrorism” for over a decade now, have been revealed as the primary enabler of the most violent and extreme terrorist organizations in the world. These include, in addition to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Libya, Baluch terrorists in Pakistan, and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) currently based in Iraq and being used as proxies against Iran.

Video: Professor Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research gives perhaps the most comprehensive back-story on Syria’s conflict to-date.

VIDEO: US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention” in Syria: Towards a Regional War?

Latest report now available on GRTV – by Michel Chossudovsky, Nile Bowie – 2012-06-08

The New York Times claims that, “the C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said,” a unsubstantiated claim that was similarly made in Libya before Al Qaeda flags were run up poles in Benghazi by rebels flush with NATO cash and arms used to collapse the government of Muammar Qaddafi. In fact, it is confirmed that Libyan LIFG rebels, led by Al Qaeda commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj, have now made their way by the hundreds to Syria (and here).

Despite months of the US claiming the “international community” sought to end the violence and protect the population of Syria, the New York Times now admits that the US is engaged in supporting a “military campaign” against the Syrian government aimed at increasing “pressure” on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Efforts to impose an arms embargo on Syria is now revealed to be one-sided, aimed at giving rebels an advantage in the prolonged bloodbath with the intent on tipping the balance in favor of Western proxy-forces – not end the violence as soon as possible as claimed by the UN, and in particular, Kofi Annan.

The Times also reported that Turkey has been directly delivering weapons to terrorists operating in Syria – Turkey being a NATO member and implicating NATO as now being directly involved in perpetuating bloodshed in the Middle Eastern nation. For months, Turkey has been allowing terrorists to use its border region as a refuge from which to stage attacks against Syria.

Despite this, however, the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” according to the New York Times, consists of only 100 or so small formations made up of  “a handful of fighters to a couple of hundred combatants,” betraying the narrative that the Syrian government faces a large popular uprising, and revealing that the “Free Syrian Army” is in fact a small collection of mercenaries, foreign fighters, and sectarian extremists, armed, funded, and directed by foreign interests solely to wreak havoc within Syria. It should be noted that these terrorist proxies were organized as early as 2007 by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, specifically to enact regime change and transform Syria into a Western client regime.

As the West’s propaganda campaign imploded after a torrent of unsubstantiated claims of “massacres” and “atrocities,” all unverified, some in fact being revealed as the work of the West’s sectarian proxies themselves,  it appears that sidelining Syria in headlines while pursuing a clandestine proxy war is now the tactic of choice for the time being.

For the United States to claim Syria has “failed” to protect it population while simultaneously fueling the very armed conflict it claims it is seeking to end is not only hypocrisy of the highest order, but a crime against world peace – punishable under the Nuremberg precedent.

May 17

Women’s liberation struggle in Chinese Society

by Ac. Krtashivananda

The movement for women’s liberation in China evolved simultaneously in the background of political struggle. 

Confucio

Revolt against Traditionalism

The three bonds of Confucianism – namely obedience to the ruler by his subjects, to the father by his sons and daughters, and to the husband by his wife were ultimately challenged both by men and women in the course of time, especially through the feminist movement.

The Taiping rebellion, which lasted from 1850 to 1864, was supposedly one of the world’s worst civil wars. This revolt arose in the southern provinces of China, where people were suffering from agrarian distress, unemployment and inflation. The rebels demanded the redistribution of land, the establishment of communal property, and equality of the sexes. Some of the founding members of the revolutionary force were Hakka women.

It played a significant part in the Taiping Rebellion

They demanded complete equality of men and women, communal property, abolition of prostitution and foot binding, and supported monogamy based on mutual love. Although they defeated the imperial army, the women’s aspirations were not fulfilled.

In the early twentieth century, China erupted in a revolt against the three cardinal principles of Confucianism. Amidst their attack on the inhumanness of Confucianism, the New Culturalists, as they called themselves, attacked all sorts of social practices reflective of gender discrimination, such as foot-binding, concubinage, arranged marriages and female chastity. Fighting the oppression of women became a recurring theme of the movement. The New Culturalists positioned that gender equality is a sign of modern society, and rendering the feminist movement is necessary for China a modernization.

It is worth noting that most New Culturalists were male, and under the influence of Western philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel. However, their effort for gender eqality did not change due to  the immense impact these New Culturalists exerted on the Chinese women’s movement. A Chinese feminist movement emerged as the result of the inclusion of women in men’s pursuit of a Chinese Enlightenment. There emerged an increasing number of women’s publications, and large-scale organized women’s activism, such as campaigns to end foot-binding, and to promote education for women. The original membership of the Peking Alliance for the Womens Rights Movement were two thirds male. For a long time in China, men were the major supporters of women’s rights.

As a result of the liberation movement, foot-binding, a practice which had existed in China for over a thousand years, was banned by the government of the New Republic of China that emerged in 1911 under the leadership of San Yat Sen. Finally, the general public came to realize the excruciating pain foot-binding inflicted upon women. Approximately eighty to ninety percent of the women in some big cities stopped binding their feet. Female education was also recognized and institutionalized by the republican government. Women’s schools, private or public, mushroomed during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Despite all these accomplishments, problems lingered. For example, the professions available to women were mostly limited to teaching and nursing. School systems were sex-segregated.

In addition, women in rural China were hardly reached by the movement. The May Fourth era ended with the advancement of the National Revolution advocated by the Kuomintang and the CCP. Feminists, a large portion of whom became CCP members, were called upon to subordinate their agenda to the larger party agenda and national interests. As a consequence, non-party feminist activities dropped dramatically after the late 1920s. Taken together, the State (e.g., political parties) had already made a deep impact in the initial stages of the Chinese women’s movement, even before the founding of the ACWF in 1949.

The People’s republic of China was established in 1949. In the spring of that year, the All China Democratic Women’s Federation (ACWF) was formed. Helen Snow commented in her book, Women in Modern China, that it was possibly the largest single mass organization and the most active one ever formed in the history of mankind. In 1956 it had 56 million membership; the CCP had only 11 millions.

      It can be commented that the Chinese revolution remained faithful to the feminist principles with which it began, and to the women who participated in it. But in the course of years after the cultural revolution of 1966, China, like other countries, continued to be ruled by men.

The Chinese Women’s Federation Web-Page 
http://www.women.org.cn/english/index.htm

May 01

THE GLOBAL SPY APPARATUS: You Are All Suspects Now. What Are You Going To Do About It?

John Pilger

by John Pilger

  You are all potential terrorists. It matters not that you live in Britain, the United States, Australia or the Middle East. Citizenship is effectively abolished. Turn on your computer and the US Department of Homeland Security?s National Operations Center may monitor whether you are typing not merely “al-Qaeda”, but “exercise”, “drill”, “wave”, “initiative” and “organisation”: all proscribed words. The British government’s announcement that it intends to spy on every email and phone call is old hat. The satellite vacuum cleaner known as Echelon has been doing this for years. What has changed is that a state of permanent war has been launched by the United States and a police state is consuming western democracy.

What are you going to do about it?

In Britain, on instructions from the CIA, secret courts are to deal with “terror suspects”. Habeas Corpus is dying.

ECHELON system in Menwith Hill (Britain)

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that five men, including three British citizens, can be extradited to the US even though none except one has been charged with a crime. All have been imprisoned for years under the 2003 US/UK Extradition Treaty which was signed one month after the criminal invasion of Iraq. The European Court had condemned the treaty as likely to lead to “cruel and unusual punishment”. One of the men, Babar Ahmad, was awarded 63,000 pounds compensation for 73 recorded injuries he sustained in the custody of the Metropolitan Police. Sexual abuse, the signature of fascism, was high on the list. Another man is a schizophrenic who has suffered a complete mental collapse and is in Broadmoor secure hospital; another is a suicide risk. To the Land of the Free, they go — along with young Richard O’Dwyer, who faces 10 years in shackles and an orange jump suit because he allegedly infringed US copyright on the internet.

As the law is politicised and Americanised, these travesties are not untypical. In upholding the conviction of a London university student, Mohammed Gul, for disseminating “terrorism” on the internet, Appeal Court judges in London ruled that “acts… against the armed forces of a state anywhere in the world which sought to influence a government and were made for political purposes” were now crimes. Call to the dock Thomas Paine, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela.

What are you going to do about it?

The prognosis is clear now: the malignancy that Norman Mailer called “pre fascist” has metastasized. The US attorney-general, Eric Holder, defends the “right” of his government to assassinate American citizens. Israel, the protege, is allowed to aim its nukes at nukeless Iran. In this looking glass world, the lying is panoramic. The massacre of 17 Afghan civilians on 11 March, including at least nine children and four women, is attributed to a “rogue” American soldier. The “authenticity” of this is vouched by President Obama himself, who had “seen a video” and regards it as “conclusive proof”. An independent Afghan parliamentary investigation produces eyewitnesses who give detailed evidence of as many as 20 soldiers, aided by a helicopter, ravaging their villages, killing and raping: a standard, if marginally more murderous US special forces “night raid”.

Take away the videogame technology of killing ‘America’s contribution to modernity’ and the behaviour is traditional. Immersed in comic-book righteousness, poorly or brutally trained, frequently racist, obese and led by a corrupt officer class, American forces transfer the homicide of home to faraway places whose impoverished struggles they cannot comprehend. A nation founded on the genocide of the native population never quite kicks the habit. Vietnam was “Indian country” and its “slits” and “gooks” were to be “blown away.

Massacre of My Lai in 1988

My Lai in 1968: The blowing away of hundreds of mostly women and children in the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968 was also a “rogue” incident and, profanely, an “American tragedy” (the cover headline of Newsweek). Only one of 26 men prosecuted was convicted and he was let go by President Richard Nixon. My Lai is in Quang Ngai province where, as I learned as a reporter, an estimated 50,000 people were killed by American troops, mostly in what they called “free fire zones”. This was the model of modern warfare: industrial murder.

Like Iraq and Libya, Afghanistan is a theme park for the beneficiaries of America?s new permanent war: Nato, the armaments and hi-tech companies, the media and a “security” industry whose lucrative contamination is a contagion on everyday life. The conquest or “pacification” of territory is unimportant. What matters is the pacification of you, the cultivation of your indifference.

What are you going to do about it?

The descent into totalitarianism has landmarks. Any day now, the Supreme Court in London will decide whether the WikiLeaks editor, Julian Assange, is to be extradited to Sweden. Should this final appeal fail, the facilitator of truth-telling on an epic scale, who is charged with no crime, faces solitary confinement and interrogation on ludicrous sex allegations. Thanks to a secret deal between the US and Sweden, he can be “rendered” to the American gulag at any time. In his own country, Australia, prime minister Julia Gillard has conspired with those in Washington she calls her “true mates” to ensure her innocent fellow citizen is fitted for his orange jump suit just in case he should make it home. In February, her government wrote a “WikiLeaks Amendment” to the extradition treaty between Australia and the US that makes it easier for her “mates” to get their hands on him. She has even given them the power of approval over Freedom of Information searches so that the world outside can be lied to, as is customary.

What are you going to do about it?

Apr 16

Tibet is Under Siege

by Ac. Krtashivananda

Suppression of freedom, torture, arrest and even force sterilisation of young women is a common policy in Chinese occupied Tibet Due to infiltration policy of Chinese Govt, in half of the Tibet Chinese have out numbered the Tibetans. Still protests in Tibet continues after 62 years of occupation.

Tsampa revolution’ gathers pace

Tibetans continue to defy Chinese rule, with acts of resistance taking place daily, including at Bora monastery, which was placed under seige in March and a protest of 2,000 in Malho on 19th March. It has also been reported that Chinese forces killed a 12-year-old boy on 18th March when they threw grenades into a crowd of peaceful protesters.

With a growing number of Tibetans laying down their lives by self-immolating in protest and many thousands braving beatings, arrest and torture to support them, now is the time for world governments to show their support for the Tibetan people.

Standing with Tibetans in Tibet

The crisis in Tibet continues to worsen. Gepey, Jamyang Palden, Losang Tsultrim and Sonam Dargye self-immolated between 10th and 17th March, prompting huge protests in support of them. On 6th March, Choeri of Golog was shot dead when troops opened fired on protesters, and an unknown number were hit by police grenades on 18th March.

Tibetans in Tibet are calling for an end to Chinese rule, and we and governments of the free world must stand with Tibetans in Tibet to secure their freedom.

Tibetan protests remain peaceful, yet the Chinese regime is intent on using deadly force to repel them. At least five Tibetans were killed when Chinese forces opened fire on protesters in three seperate incidents in January and two survivors of a shooting were hunted down and shot dead, but this tactic continues to be favoured by the Chinese state.

A Tibetan named Choeri was shot dead when troops opened fire on protesters on 6th March, and reports say that an unknown number of Tibetans were hit with grenades and tear gas when Chinese forces used them on peaceful protesters in Ba County on 18th March. One of those thought to have been killed by a grenade in this incident was a 12-year-old Tibetan boy, and seven people are said to be in a critical condition. The protesters had been demanding the release of 50 monks detained on 16th March for protesting for freedom, carrying images of the Dalai Lama. A local Tibetan reported that popular singer Dorjee Tsepel and his wife and sons were arrested during the incident, and that “few of the injured have been admitted in hospitals but many of the seriously injured have not received any medical treatment”.


Huge gatherings in support of Jamyang Palden in Rebkong and Sonam Dargye in Rongwo

Around 32 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in protest against China since 2009; 31 of them since March 16th 2011 and 19 in 2012 alone. 23 are known to have died as a result, with others being beaten, arrested and denied medical treatment since taking this dramatic action. The latest, monks Tenpa Darjey and Chimey Palden, set themselves on fire in Barkham, Ngaba in protest against Chinese rule on March 30th. It must be clear to world governments and anybody watching events unfold in Tibet that the Chinese government’s current brutal approach to dealing with these incidents is not working, and is in fact worsening the situation. It must be clear that if China does not begin to seriously and progressively address the greivances of the Tibetan people, that the situation will only deteriorate further. And it must now be clear that China will not change this oppressive, failed approach to Tibetan dissent unless it is strongly pressured to do so.

 

Mar 27

Tantra and Science

By Ac. Krtashivananda

René Descartes

The evolution of modern science was preceded by the philosophical developments of Rene Descartes in the 17th Century that established a strong belief in spirit-matter dualism. [Around the same time] Isaac Newton published his mechanist worldview, which saw matter as something inert, organic and indestructible. This was the foundation of modern science and natural philosophy, and it has continued for three centuries. Towards the beginning of the 20th century, new discoveries in science transcended the limitations of Newtonian concepts and proved that they did not have absolute validity.

The discovery of the electromagnetic field brought a new idea about light – that it is a rapidly alternating electromagnetic field travelling through space in the form of waves. Today we know that radio waves, light waves and X-rays are all electromagnetic waves, differing only in the frequency of oscillation.

Ernest Rutherford, in his experiment with atoms, used alpha particles emitted from a radioactive substance to bombard gold atoms. He found that far from being solid and physical particles, atoms consist of vast empty regions of space in which incredibly tiny particles – electrons – orbit around a nucleus to which they are attached by  electrical  forces.

In its attempts to discover the fundamental building blocks of matter, Western science so far proceeded by dividing and re-dividing matter into smaller and smaller sub-units. But after the discovery of sub-atomic entities such as electrons and protons, which display the properties of both particles and waves, modern science found itself faced with fundamental conceptual problems in its attempt to describe  the building blocks. To resolve the apparent contradiction that matter could be both waves and particles.

Max Palnk

German physicist Max Planck suggested at the end of the 19th Century that light and the energy of heat radiation are not emitted continuously, but in the form of ‘energy packets’ called quanta. His quantum theory and Einstein’s subsequent discovery that light and matter are interchangeable changed classical notions about matter. The primordial substance of the universe now appears to be wave/particles and quanta. But in terms of classical physics the wave/particle and quanta possess no reality, because both waves and particles are mutually exclusive types of entities. This created a paradox for modern  science.

Tantra and quantum theory reveal a startling similarity in their descriptions of matter. The Tantric concepts of ‘bindu’ (point) and ‘nada’ (vibration or wave) are identical to the concept that matter is both wave and particle. A point, in mathematical terms, has no magnitude. In Tantric science, vibrations with finite wavelengths are in wave form emitting various sounds and lights, and a vibration with infinite wavelength is a straight line which has been assumed as the state of Consciousness.

Hence in Tantra, only Consciousness, in a state of infinite wavelength, supposed to be encompassing the whole universe, and simultaneously is also a bindu (point) with no measurable dimension. When the Creative Principle (Shakti) exerts pressure on Consciousness, the infinite wavelength transforms into a finite wavelength, and the

Tantra Symbol

result is the universe that we can perceive with the senses. When our limited mind observes matter through the sensory organs and considers it in terms of isolated objects, separate from Consciousness (spirit), it is seen to be made up of many particles (bindu) and physical objects(conglomeration of particles) extended in space. But when matter is conceived as a metamorphosed form of Consciousness, the three-dimensional character of physical objects transforms into one dimension and becomes a single point – a bindu, which, according to Andre Padouse, is ‘le point sans dimension’, [just as Western science  defines a point.]

Tantra claims that there is no ultimate division between Consciousness and reality. It defines three stages of Consciousness:  the first is the un-manifested state where the wavelength is infinite; the second is the dualistic transformation of Consciousness, where the object (matter) is viewed as apart from self; the third is the state of awareness of ‘I’ feeling. Ultimately, the duality between the individual and Cosmic Consciousness disappears – unity in diversity becomes a  reality.

John Weeler

This view resembles Wheeler’s conception of quantum intra-connectedness, that every point in space-time is connected via the quantum foam to every other point in space-time. This suggests that the universe is `omnijective – a term from New Physics meaning that all objects in the universe are interconnected. This conforms to the Tantric view, though Tantra recognises subjective  intra-connectedness also. One problem in science that it tries to explain reality in terms of language, which has its own limitations. In the language of Werner Heisenberg, “The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of atoms… But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary way.”

Intuitional scientists, on the other hand, try to know reality by becoming one with the object or subject. Hence they conclude that  truth in this scenes can be realised, but cannot be always expressed in language. At any rate, New Physics is gradually acknowledging the  truth discovered by the spiritualists thousands of years ago.

Mar 13

U.N. Draft resolution on Syria is Western conspiracy to distabilise the country



The U.N Resolution calls for withdrawal of Syrian forces who are fighting against the mercenaries  under the patronage of U.S and its puppet regimes.

‘They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.’ Wesley Clerk – Former NATO Chief

On February 4,2012, Western politicians and  journalists responded with outrage to the Russian and Chinese vetoing of a UN security council resolution calling for Syrian president Bashar Assad   to step down as part of a ‘political transition’. UK foreign secretary, William Hague, said,

‘More than 2,000 people have died since Russia and China vetoed the last draft resolution in October 2011. How many more need to die before Russia and China allow the UN security council to act? (In reality it is not the common people but the armed thugs have taken up arms against the regime.)

‘Those opposing UN security council  action, he added, will have to account to the Syrian people for their actions, which do nothing to help bring an end to the violence that is ravaging the country‘.

The corporate media took the same view. A leading article in the Independent commented:

‘Hillary Clinton described the vetoing of the UN resolution as a “travesty”. She is right. But this cannot be the international community’s last word.’

Curiously, while Hague talked of the West’s determination ‘to find an end to the violence’, and the media railed against the Russians and Chinese for failing to seek the same, almost no-one noticed that the resolution had itself subordinated the possibility of a ceasefire to the demand for regime change.

The draft resolution did call ‘for an  immediate end to all violence’. But it specifically demanded ‘that the Syrian government (only)… withdraw all Syrian military and armed forces from cities and towns, and return them to their original home barracks’.

This one-sided demand that only Syrian government forces should withdraw from the streets closely resembled the Machiavellian device built into UN Resolution 1973 on Libya, passed on March 17, 2011.

Further Measures

Returning to the vetoed UN resolution, the one-sided demand that Syrian government forces withdraw, but not the anti-government fighters, (not common people) ,was combined with the demand that the Syrian government ‘facilitate a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system’ – regime change by any other name – ‘in an environment free from violence, fear, intimidation and extremism’. The draft text promised ‘to review implementation of this resolution within 21 days and, in the event of non-compliance, to consider further measures’.

The trap was clear enough – Syrian forces would have been ordered back to barracks. If the fighters had continued fighting and government forces had responded, this would have

parente di Abdulaziz Abu Ahmed Khrer, ucciso dall'esercito siriano

constituted ‘non-compliance’, opening the way for ‘further measures’, including foreign intervention leading to regime change. This would have given Syrian fighters (sponsored by U-S and its puppet regime) every motivation to continue the violence in hopes of triggering the kind of Western intervention that destroyed Gaddafi.

None of this should come as a surprise. For the West, a peaceful solution in Libya (as in Iraq) was perceived as an obstacle to the actual goal, regime change.

Milne (media lens) observed last August: ‘If stopping the killing had been the real aim, Nato states would have backed a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement, rather than  repeatedly vetoing both. Instead, UN Resolution 1973 ‘has since been used as Nato’s fig leaf to justify the onslaught against Gaddafi and deliver regime change from the air’.

Consider, then, that we have strong evidence that the vetoed resolution on Syria would have escalated violence in pursuit of regime change (an illegal aspiration under international law). We have the clear example of Libya, from just last year, of very similar machinations producing regime change, a ten times increase in violence, and massive post-war chaos and violence.

Gen. Wesley Clark

If this isn’t enough to question the ‘black and white’ portrayal of the Russian and Chinese veto as a ‘travesty’, we can consider the filmed testimony of former Nato chief, General Wesley Clark, when he recalled a conversation with a Pentagon general in 2001, a few weeks after the September 11 attacks:

‘He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”’

He recounted a conversation he had had in 1991 with Paul Wolfowitz, then US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, who told Clark: ‘we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us’.

In response, Clark said he asked himself: ‘the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?’

Clark’s  conclusion will be blindingly obvious to future historians, if not to contemporary journalists: ‘There are always interests. The truth about the Middle East is, had there been no oil there, it would be like Africa. Nobody is threatening to intervene in Africa. The problem is the opposite. We keep asking for people to intervene and stop violence. There’s no question that the presence of petroleum throughout the region has sparked great power involvement.’

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

In light of the above facts and arguments, it is interesting to consider the comments of UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, who condemned the Russian and Chinese veto as ‘disastrous for the Syrian people’. The failure to agree on collective action, he said, had ‘encouraged the Syrian government to step up its war on its own people’.

With these words, the UN secretary-general told  much about his own position. Such remark on Security Council resolution, by the secretary-general is uncalled for.

Honest analysis suggests serious room for doubt that the resolution unless vetoed (by Russia and China) might itself have been disastrous for the Syrian people.

Source: Media Lens

Feb 14

Women’s Liberation Struggle in Western Society

Women’s Liberation Struggle in Western Society
by Ac. Krtashivananda Avt.

Feminism in western society, was born in the background of Renaissance. When in society a suppressed feeling tries to express itself to release its suffering, it finds its vitality with an uncontrolled momentum. A revolution in the inner sphere of society takes place. Naturally it has its childhood,  adolescence, maturity etc. In early phase it started with the symbolic protest to break the institutions, to deny everything that is imposed by man, in their fantasy they created a world of their own – isolated and without a direction. They emphasised a ‘masculine model of feminine’. This form of feminism was more criticised than it was welcomed.

Today’s feminist brand those as ‘early feminism’. In next phase the effort was to design a ‘complementary feminine form’. The idea was if women can fulfil the complementary role of man then she will regain her lost dignity. But this concept was also ultimately discarded. Then came the third form and that they termed as ‘true feminism’.  It means our feminine world is different because our aspirations, emotions, feelings are different. They realised that the feminine virtues can be developed and come to dominate or unknown and yet to be discovered  can emerge. But it was realised that the genuinely feminine is either unknowable or yet unknown, to be brought into existence.

Then came the present phase, the era of eco-feminism. The struggle to reach this is phase is a continuous, long tiresome struggle. Emergence of any social value does not depend on an individual or group, but as a result of universal flow of evolution of social psychology. In this phase the struggle for material abandonment and that of artificial status-quo was considered as secondary than the restoration of dignity. In this phase of social transformation eco-feminism found its expression.

What is ecofeminism?

Generally we find four main aspect in ecofeminism:

Firstly  on a very basic level, ecofeminists are unified in the exploration of the commonalities between gender oppression and environmental degradation mainly caused by male Western dominance.

Women, Environment and Development (WED), which was also known as ecofeminism, particularly scrutinized  the correlation between the oppression of women and the oppression of the environment. WED, sometimes referred to as GED (Gender, Environment and Development), is still struggling for acceptance and a wider audience, though it has been in existence for a number of decades and solidified as a theory in the 1980’s.

The second, states that men are more related to culture and that women are related to environment. Culture has been seen as superior to the untamed’ environment and hence both women and the environment have been subjugated by men, which is seen as dominant over an ‘untamed’ environment. Women are related to the environment. Thus, women and the environment share a common inferior position.

Thirdly, oppression of women and the oppression of nature have occurred simultaneously and thus women have a responsibility to nutralise male domination over both.

Fourthly, ecofeminism seeks to combine feminism and ecological thought, as they both work towards egalitarian, non-hierarchical structures.

It is important to note that feminists formulated the theory of ecofeminism at a time when the green movement was popular, so although ecological ethics are of primary concern, ecofeminists are feminists first . The spectrum of ideas encompassed within this paradigm vary from rigid academic endeavours to proposing an innate female spiritual nurturing power over nature. The latter has been heavily criticised by some as anti-intellectual and overly intuitive.

Ecofeminists stress  that certain ecologically damaging issues have more of a detrimental effect on women than on men, particularly as women tend to be more involved in family provisions and household management. Such problems include sustainable food development, deforestation, desertification, access to safe water, flooding, climate change, access to fertile land, pollution, toxic waste disposal, responsible environmental management with in companies and factories, land management issues, non-renewable energy resources, irresponsible mining and tree felling practices, loss of biodiversity (fuel, medicines, food). As household managers, women are the first to suffer when access to sustainable livelihoods are unbalanced.

Françoise d'Eaubonne

When the water becomes scarce, the food stores dry up, the trees disappear, the land becomes untenable and the climate changes, women are often the ones who need to walk further and work harder to ensure their families survival. It has been found that in times of economic crisis, it is the women who shoulder the burden and they are the first to go without provisions such as food, medicine and education .

The term Ecofeminism was coined in France in 1974 by Francois d’Eaubonne in her book Le Feminisme ou la Mort. However the term did not appear in America until 1980, with Ynestra King’s The Eco-feminist Imperative. The concept was, however, appearing throughout the 1970’s with authors like Rosemary Radford-Ruether’s New Woman, New Earth- Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation (1975),

Susan Griffin’s Women and Nature – The Roaring Inside Her (1978) and Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature – Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (1980) and Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology (1979).

Susan Griffin

Eco-feminists demarcated the world into two spheres—the rational or masculine sphere and the sphere of nature or femininity. They realised that not only women are subjugated by man but the masculine sphere has a dominant role over feminine sphere. That’s why the struggle for liberation should be directed towards the domination of the whole feminine sphere – environment, unprivileged class, weaker section of the society etc. in other words they challenged the institutions of power that dominates.

Eco-feminist reject the masculine model especially in the area of relations to nature and argue more directly that this masculinising attitude leads women to join men in belonging to a privileged class in turn defined by excluding the unprivileged class, silent nature, that is the strategy is to include women into a new dominating class, without caring the structure of or the attitude of domination.

Before feminist used to react with the label of being ‘close to nature’. The eco-feminist not only accepted it proudly but went further and declared that not only ‘close to nature’ we are nature. They declared that the primacy of female, (i.e. feminine character traits, not necessarily biological femaleness), would be acknowledged as primary, the source of all life force. But they could not define the concept and tried to define as Genuinely Feminine.

The project of the discovery and emergence of the genuinely feminine, is conceptualised not as something whose character has been formed by the exclusion of the masculine sphere, but as an independent force, silenced and unable to reach expression under patriarchy, but ready to and able to emerge once the barriers of phallo-centric society to its expression are removed. Women’s bodily experience is taken as the starting point in the attempt to give expression to the silenced and unknown feminine.

It is not enough to challenge nature/culture dualism, and the dominant masculine model of human culture. As long as self is separated from the natural world as in liberalism and as long as the dialectical contradiction remains, any model however lofty it is, is difficult to realise. Ultimately we have to find the answer in spirituality. We have to realise that difference remains in physical and psychic sphere but not in the sphere of soul. Deepest human feeling must find its inspiration from the soul and not from biological urge and intellectual or emotional domain.

As mentioned earlier women’s struggle for liberation found momentum during the Renaissance in the West. Three trends influenced it. First one, is the idea of liberalism,  which took the form individualism; secondly, the Freudian school of thought which revolted against Victorian morality and embraced the idea of sexual revolution. Thirdly, in the sixties the youth revolt against all forms of authorities i.e. religious injunctions, state, teachers and guardians. This destabilised the harmonious relation in many families and ultimately created  a social antagonism, which, however with the emergence of eco-feminism transformed into a more positive direction.

Human being is yet to search her/his inner light as Virginia Wolf could claim, ‘ Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged, but a luminous halo’.


Jan 19

American double standard On Nuclear Question between Iran and Israel

Ac.Krtashivananda Avadhuta

India on Friday (27th Nov. 2011) supported the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog’s governing body’s resolution that prevents Iran from developing a uranium-enrichment facility in secrecy.

The resolution, passed  by a 25-3 vote with six abstentions, urges Iran to halt construction of the Fordow uranium-enrichment plant, located in a mountain bunker near the city of Qom immediately.

IAEA has also asked Tehran to immediately freeze the uranium-enrichment project. Besides, the resolution asks Tehran to clarify the original purpose of the Fordow facility and to confirm that Iran does not have any more hidden atomic facilities or clandestine plants for any purpose.

Significantly, the latest IAEA resolution has also been supported by Russia and China, which have shied away from censuring Iran in the past.
Russia and China both hold the power to veto possible international sanctions as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

The West raised an alarm that Iran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons in violation of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though Iran itself has declared it in a letter to IAEA on 21st Nov.

Meanwhile, the six countries that abstained from today’s vote were Afghanistan, Brazil, Egypt, Pakistan, South Africa, and Turkey.

Those who voted against the censure measure – Venezuela, Malaysia, and Cuba – are all developing countries in a bloc with Iran. They called the resolution provocative and counterproductive. Iranian officials say the IAEA resolution will undermine its relations with the UN nuclear watchdog.

M.-K.-Narayanan - Governor of West Bengal

The Indian vote, much like the Chinese sponsorship, came as a result of a lot of US diplomacy. The issue was discussed during the meetings in Washington earlier this week between the Obama administration and Indian officials, with even the US national security advisor holding a special conversation with NSA M K Narayanan. It is clear that India surrendered its neutral foreign policy to please America. But what is the reality?

When Iran’s Fordow fuel enrichment plant first became public on September 25 at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, the underground facility, located near the holy city of Qom, was widely portrayed as proof that Tehran was pursuing nuclear weapons. In particular, U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown  claimed that the clandestine enrichment plant’s “size and configuration” were “inconsistent with that of a peaceful program.”

For its part, Tehran has steadfastly denied that it’s pursuing nuclear weapons and rejects accusations that it hid the Fordow enrichment plant from the international community. Iran has defended its lack of disclosure and the nature and location of the facility (in a bomb-proof tunnel, under a mountain, near a military base) by citing its legal right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium, persistent Israeli military threats, and a different interpretation of its obligations to reveal new facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the Subsidiary Arrangements to its Safeguards Agreement.

Mohamed ElBaradei

Mohamed ElBaradei, Chief of IAEA confirmed to reporters on Wednesday(25th Nov.) that U.N. inspectors had no proof of more covert nuclear sites in Iran but a newly revealed enrichment site made little sense for civilian or military ends.  But Tehran’s behavior had increased the mistrust on the regime.

He said recourse to harsher sanctions against Iran, hinted at last week by Western powers angered by the fuel deal holdup, was likely to be counterproductive. U.N. resolutions against Iran were largely “expressions of frustration”, he added.

“We have no indication that there are other undeclared facilities in Iran. I want to be very clear about that,” he said, despite a November 16 IAEA report saying Fordow “reduced the level of confidence” in the absence of other clandestine plants. Nor did the IAEA have information of covert nuclear plans.

ElBaradei also denied reports, based on leaks of classified IAEA analyses, saying the agency had concluded Iran had developed technology needed to assemble a nuclear warhead.

Institute for Science and Internal Security (ISIS) also confirmed that “There is no nuclear material at the facility and there are no centrifuges at the facility. The site is an advanced state of construction in preparation for centrifuges but there are no centrifuges.”

In its initial statement to the IAEA, Iran described Fordow as a pilot plant protected by “passive defense” systems. Tehran has justified placing the facility in a hardened mountainside tunnel as a response to barely veiled threats by the United States and overt threats by Israel to destroy its nuclear program. In another letter, cited in the agency’s report, Iran described the facility as a so-called contingency enrichment plant, designed to prevent enrichment from being suspended in the event its declared nuclear facilities were destroyed by military attack.

Since it would be difficult to divert enriched material from Natanz, theoretically Fordow still could be used to enrich natural uranium to HEU levels. But it would take four years to enrich enough natural uranium for just one bomb, hardly a viable breakout option. To remain undetected, this would require a covert uranium hexafluoride conversion plant, which converts uranium to gas for use in the cascades. So far, no clandestine Iranian conversion facility has been detected. (Iran’s only known conversion plant is at Isfahan, and it is under safeguards).

What is the stand of American lobby about Israel in a similar stance?

The IAEA, which met in Vienna on September 18, adopted a resolution expressing concern about “Israeli nuclear capabilities” and called on agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei to work on the issue. The motion was adopted by 49 votes to 45, with 16 abstentions. Russia and China, both permanent members of the UN security council, voted in favour. The United States and the European Union initially tried to block the vote, and then voted against it. David Danieli, deputy director of Israel’s atomic energy commission, said “Israel will not co-operate in any matter with this resolution. (aljazira.net)

Israel is widely believed to be the sixth country in the world to have developed nuclear weapons

Despite this defiance, despite Israel’s appalling record of violating international law, despite its record of waging and threatening war in the region, and despite possessing as many as 400 nuclear warheads, no Western Powers and journalists, suggested that Israel should be bombed or blockaded as a result. Indeed, apart from the tiny left-wing Morning Star newspaper and a couple of wire agencies, no main stream media carried the news. Neither any main stream media in Indian highlighted the resolution.

Israel is one of three countries, along with India and Pakistan, which is not a signatory to the NPT. The treaty is intended to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, but Article VI constitutes a specific obligation on nuclear-weapon states like Britain and the United States to disarm themselves of nuclear weapons, an obligation they have conspicuously failed to meet.

But immediate propaganda of war against Iran started in a similar style, they adopted against Iraq and caused its devastation.

On the Guardian’s letter’s page, John Heawood delivered a powerful counterblast to the Guardian’s earlier warmongering:

Jonathan Heawood - Guardian

“This ‘propaganda victory’ is easily demolished by relevant facts which you fail to mention. Fact: Israel has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Fact: Israel has had nuclear weapons for at least 30 years. Fact: Israel has done and still does its best to conceal the existence of these weapons. Fact: as recently as 18 September Israel refused a request from the IAEA to open its nuclear plants to inspection. Fact: an unprovoked Israeli attack on Iran would be a violation of the UN charter and a war crime. And please don’t claim that Iran’s as-yet ambiguous nuclear activities are a provocation. What Israel most fears from Iran is not a nuclear threat to its territory, but a nuclear threat to its own nuclear domination.

The lunacy of the current propaganda campaign against Iran is bad enough. The fact that it comes so soon after the lies on Iraq – every last one of them now exposed for all to see – makes it far worse. But it is taken to an altogether different level by the fact that the last set of concocted threats has resulted in the devastation of an entire country, with over one million killed and four million made refugees (they are still out there, although not for the mainstream media). The icing on this malevolent cake is that there is next to no reference to these horrors in the latest media propaganda campaign. There is no sense that journalists recognise the consequences of what they helped make happen in Iraq. There is no sense that they feel even a tiny tug of horror at the prospect of repeating the same catastrophe in Iran.

            Noam Chomsky commented on this: “it is not that they want to cause harm; they simply step on Third World people the way they might step on ants. It is perhaps best described as a kind of speciesism, rather than racism.

N:B: Author is  the Director of Prout Research Institute, Germany.

Jan 02

Durban Climate: A Death Sentence for Africa

by Ac. Krtashivananda

The Durban Climate Deal And Eight Corporate Media Unmentionables

The UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, ended with one of those marathon all-night negotiations that the media love so much. The outcome was a commitment to talk about a legally-binding deal to cut carbon emissions – by both developed and developing countries – that would be agreed by 2015 and come into effect by 2020. It was about as torturous and vague as that sounds.

BBC News reported the UN chairperson saying that the talks had ‘saved tomorrow, today’.  But nothing substantive had changed. Carbon emissions, already at their peak, will continue to increase for at least the next eight years, pushing humanity closer to the brink of climate collapse. Rather than address the madness of a global system of corporate-led capitalism that is bulldozing us to this disaster, the corporate media mouthed deceptive platitudes.

A Guardian editorial assured readers that the Durban deal is ‘better than nothing’, and that: ‘There are times when inching forward can look like progress […] a moment when it is cheerier to think of how bad things might have been than to rate the success of the final outcome.’

Adopting the standard, but discredited, establishment framework to explain the treacly mire hindering serious action on climate, this vanguard of liberal journalism opined  ‘There is an unvarying conflict of interest in the fight against climate change between developed and developing economies. ’No hint there that the conflict is, in fact, between the elite corporate 1% and the 99% of the global population that are their victims.

The Independent, another great white hope of liberal journalism, told its diminishing band of readers that the Durban outcome is ‘an agreement that gives new cause for optimism.’ Indeed, it ‘is an enormous advance on the position now.’

A Crime Of Global Proportions

We are not suggesting that critical comment was entirely missing from press coverage. That would take absurd levels of totalitarian media control. The Guardian managed to find space on its website, if not in the print edition, for the Guardian’s head of environment, Damian Carrington, to write in his blog:

‘Unlike the economic debt currently transfixing the attention of world’s leaders, it appears possible to them that we can put our climate debt on the never-never.

‘The loans in euros, dollars and pounds will be called in within days, weeks, and months. But the environmental debt – run up by many decades of dumping carbon dioxide waste in the atmosphere – won’t be due for full repayment before 2020, according to the plan from Durban.’

This ‘ecological debt’, Carrington added, ‘will inevitably transform into a new economic debt dwarfing our current woes. […] Cleaning up the energy system that underpins the global economy is inevitable, sooner or later. If not, true economic armageddon  awaits, driven by peak oil, climate chaos and civil unrest.’

Friends of the Earth were permitted their token quote in the Guardian, scant reward for decades of soft-pedalling its criticism of the corporate media: ‘This empty shell of a plan leaves the planet hurtling towards catastrophic climate change.’

Unfiltered by corporate news editors, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a statement pointing out that, in Durban, the world’s governments: ‘by no means responded adequately to the mounting threat of climate change. […] It’s high time governments stopped catering to the needs of corporate polluters, and started acting to protect people.’

UCS added:

‘Powerful speeches and carefully worded decisions can’t amend the laws of physics. The atmosphere responds to one thing, and one thing only – emissions. The world’s collective level of ambition on emissions reductions must be substantially increased, and soon.’

In  a powerful article on Independent Online, based in South Africa, there were stronger messages still. The environment group Earthlife, Africa said the decisions resulting from the Durban summit would result in a 4oC global average temperature rise which would mean an average increase of 6oC-8oC for Africa. This would lead to an estimated 200 million deaths by 2100.

No wonder that Nnimmo Bassey, chairman of Friends of the Earth International, said: ‘Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global proportions.’

He continued: ‘An increase in global temperatures of 4ºC, permitted under this plan, is a death sentence for Africa, small island states, and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. This summit has amplified climate apartheid, whereby the richest 1 percent of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99 percent.’

Karl Hood of Grenada, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, responded to the Durban deal with damning words: ‘Must we accept our annihilation?’

The Eightfold Nay: The Great Unmentionables Of Climate Coverage

The book, Newspeak in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 2009),  listed the key issues that would be at the heart of debate on the climate crisis in a truly free press:

  1. The inherently biocidal, indeed psychopathic, logic of corporate capitalism, structurally locked into generating maximised revenues in minimum time at minimum corporate cost. Because corporations are legally obliged to maximise profits for shareholders, it is in fact illegal for corporations to prioritise the welfare of people and planet above private profits. How can this simple fact of entrenched corporate immorality not be central to any discussion that is relevant to the industrial destruction of global life-support systems?
  2. The proven track record of big business in promoting catastrophic consumption regardless of the consequences for human and environmental health. Whether disregarding the links between smoking and cancer, junk food and obesity, exploitation of the developing world and human suffering, fossil fuel extraction and lethal climate change, factory farming and animal suffering, high salt consumption and illness, corporations have consistently subordinated human and animal welfare to short-term profits.
  3. The relentless corporate lobbying of governments to introduce, shape and strengthen policies to promote and protect private power.
  4. The billions spent by the advertising industry to sell consumer products and ‘services’, creating artificial ‘needs’, with children an increasing target.
  5. The collusion between powerful companies, rich investors and state planners to install compliant, often brutal, dictators in client states around the world.
  6. The extensive use of loans and tied aid that ensnare poor nations in webs of crippling debt, ensuring that the West obtains or deepens control of their resources, markets and development.
  7. The deployment of threats, bribery and armed force against countries that attempt to pursue self-development, rather than economic or strategic planning sanctioned by ‘the international community.’
  8. The lethal role of the corporate media in promoting the planet-devouring aims of private power.

One searches in vain for any sensible and sustained discussion of any of these issues in the corporate media; never mind all of them taken together.

No wonder then that, for all the warm words of political ‘commitment’, we are headed for unprecedented desperate times ahead.

Source: Media Lens