Promising Israel the War It's Been Gunning For

Yes, Syria and Hezbollah Will Hit Israel if US Strikes

by Sharmine Narwani - Sandbox

Informed insiders have confirmed that Syria and Hezbollah plan to retaliate against Israel in the event of an American-led military attack on Syria. Says one:

 

“If even one US missile hits Syria, we will take this battle to Israel.”

An official who spoke to me on the condition that neither his name or affiliation is published, says the decision to retaliate against Israel “has been taken at the highest levels within the Syrian state and Hezbollah.”

Why attack Israel after a US strike?

“Israel has been itching for a fight since their 2006 defeat by Hezbollah,” explains an observer close to the Lebanese resistance group. “They have led this campaign to draw the US into a confrontation with Syria because they are worried about being left alone in the region to face Iran. This has become an existential issue for them and they are now ‘leading’ from behind America’s skirts.”

The "Resistance Axis" which consists of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and a smattering of other groups, has long viewed attacks on one of their members as an effort to target them all.

And Israeli aggression against this axis reached a new high in 2013, with missile strikes and airstrikes unseen for many years in the Levant.

Israel has reportedly conducted at least three separate, high profile missile strikes against Syria this year, effectively ending a 40-year ceasefire between the neighboring states. The last overt violation of this uneasy truce was in 2007 when the Jewish state destroyed an alleged nuclear site inside Syria.

Then two weeks ago, Israel launched its first airstrike in Lebanon since the 2006 war, bombing a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC) target in an entirely unprovoked attack. Earlier, four rockets had been launched into Israel from Lebanese territory, but an unrelated Al Qaeda-linked group took credit for that incident.

When asked whether Syrian allies Russia and Iran would participate in retaliatory strikes against Israel or other targets, the official indicated that both countries would back these efforts, but provided no information on whether this support would include direct military engagement.

The Russians have stated on several occasions that they will not participate in a military confrontation over Syrian strikes. Iran has not offered up any specifics, but various statements from key officials appear to confirm that strikes against Syria will result in a larger regional battle.

On Tuesday during an official visit to Lebanon, Iranian parliamentarian and Chairman of the (Majlis) Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy Alaeddin Boroujerdi told reporters: “The first party that will be most affected by an aggression on Syria is the Zionist entity.”

His comments follow a steady stream of warnings by senior Iranian officials, which have escalated in tenor as western threats to attack Syria have intensified.

“The US imagination about limited military intervention in Syria is merely an illusion, as reactions will be coming from beyond Syria’s borders,” said the Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari last Saturday.

Even Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stepped into the fray, warning the US and its allies: "starting this fire will be like a spark in a large store of gunpowder, with unclear and unspecified outcomes and consequences".

Concurrent with these warnings, both Iran and Russia have been urging the West to avoid further confrontation and return to the negotiating table to resolve Syria’s 29-month conflict. But instead, western officials and diplomats in the Mideast have spent the past few weeks hitting up their regional sources for information on how Syria’s allies will react to a strike.

An unusual visit to Tehran by UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman (a former senior US State Department official) was one such “feeler.”

According to several media outlets, the Iranians had a singular response to Feltman’s efforts to gauge their reaction to a US strike: if you are serious about resolving the Syrian crisis, you must first go to Damascus, and follow that by launching negotiations in Geneva.

Gunning for a fight

While Israel plays heavily in the background, by turns provoking and encouraging western military intervention in Syria, it publically denies any role in this business.

Just this week, Israeli President Shimon Peres attempted to distance the Jewish state from events in Syria by insisting: “It is not for Israel to decide on Syria, we are in a unique position, for varying reasons there is a consensus against Israeli involvement. We did not create the Syrian situation.”

He’s right about one thing. Any visible Israeli military intervention in Syria will likely raise the collective ire of Arabs throughout the region. But Peres is being disingenuous in suggesting that Israel hasn’t played a pivotal role in dragging the region to the brink of a dangerous confrontation.

In fact, since its establishment as a state, Israel has possibly never been more motivated to force a military confrontation in the Mideast:

The Arab uprisings, a shift in the global balance of power, increased isolation and the waning influence of Israel’s superpower US ally have all served to remind Israel that it stands increasingly alone in the Mideast in confronting its longtime adversaries - Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and various Palestinian resistance groups.

Before a US exit from the region becomes patently clear to one and all, Israel needs to disarm its foes – and it needs the Americans to do that. For years, the Israeli establishment has regularly threatened military strikes against Iran, in most part attempting to inextricably embroil Washington in this military venture.

Forcing 'red line' narratives into western political discourse – whether it be the use of chemical weapons in Syria or a civilian nuclear program in Iran – has become a clever way to commit allies to an Israeli military agenda.

When US President Barack Obama last week appeared to suddenly revise his plans to launch a strike on Syria by deferring the decision to Congress, Israel went into overdrive:

Two Israeli missiles were launched off the Syrian coast in the Mediterranean Sea to raise temperatures again. Whether this was meant to be veiled threat, a provocation, or an attempt to pin the deed on Syrians is unclear. What is certain is this: Russian early radar systems caught the activity and publicized it quickly to ward off misunderstandings that might trigger counterstrikes.

This quick reaction forced Israel – under US cover – to acknowledge it had participated in unannounced ballistic missile tests. The Iranians reacted very skeptically. Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces General Hassan Firouzabadi said the missiles were “a provocative incident” conveniently executed as western nations withdrew from plans to attack Syria, and called Israel “the region’s warmonger.” He further charged: “If the Russians had not traced the missiles and their origin, a Zionist liar would have alleged that they belonged to Syria in a bid to pave the way for breaking out a war in the region.

On an entirely different front, Israel has been amassing its considerable army of US supporters and lobbyists to ensure a compliant Congressional vote on strikes against Syria.

All its heavy hitters have now stepped up to push US lawmakers into backing military intervention, even though polls continue to show the majority of Americans rejecting strikes.

The Israeli lobbying effort has been particularly critical to ensure there is bipartisan consensus and that Obama’s Republican opponents join the bandwagon. To ensure this, the scope of the “surgical strikes” had to be expanded for GOP members opposed to a cursory punitive strike against Syrian government interests.

Key Republicans have since piled on, and already there are soundings of 'mission creep.' Obama told lawmakers on Tuesday that his plan “also fits into a broader strategy that can bring about over time the kind of strengthening of the opposition and the diplomatic, economic and political pressure required – so that ultimately we have a transition that can bring peace and stability, not only to Syria but to the region.”

This suddenly sounds remarkably like President George W. Bush’s plans to remake the Middle East. And it is everything Syria and its allies have both feared and suspected from the start.

Existential for you, existential for me

If ever there was a real 'red line' in the region, this is it. Any "limited” or “broad” military intervention in Syria is simply unacceptable to Syria, Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, China and a whole host of other nations that want to turn the page on US hegemonic aspirations in the region and beyond.

Washington has miscalculated in thinking that an attack in any shape or form would be palatable to its quite incredulous adversaries. They are all intimately familiar with the slippery slope of American interventionism and its myriad unintended consequences.

Israel, in particular, appears to be victim to a false sense of security. Analysts and commentators there seem to think that the lack of a Syrian military response to recent Israeli missile strikes is a trend likely to continue. Or that Hezbollah and Iran would have no 'grounds' to climb aboard a counterattack if Syria were attacked.

But the fact is that, to date, no member of the Resistance Axis has faced a collective western-Israeli-GCC effort to strike a blow at their core. This promised US-plus-allies strike against Syria makes their calculation an easy one: there is nowhere to go but headfirst into the fracas.

As Israel warplanes pounded Lebanon during the 2006 war, then-US Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice got one thing right. Refusing to call for a ceasefire, Rice explained that battle was sometimes necessary to break free of the status quo and emerge with a new regional order. The carnage, in short, was simply “the birth pangs of a New Middle East” - something to endure in order to reach a desired outcome.

But in 2006, conditions were not yet ripe for an all-out confrontation on multiple fronts. Today's confrontation, however, has all the ingredients to fundamentally shift the region in a clear new direction, depending on which side emerges victorious.

What Rice did not anticipate seven years ago was that a few thousand Hezbollah fighters could shake the region beyond Lebanon's small borders in a mere 33 days - simply by emerging from battle with Israel, leadership and capabilities intact.

The US has never predicted outcomes successfully in the Middle East and is unlikely to do so this time given that its strategic and military objectives seem even more muddled than usual. What we do know is that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has promised that the “next battle” will take place inside Israel’s borders and that he will fight proportionately this time – striking Israeli cities when Israel hits Lebanese ones.

On the Syrian front, Israel imagines a war-weary adversary. But the Syrian armed forces have the kinds of conventional weapons and ballistic missiles that can level a town in short shrift – that is not an outcome Israel has the capacity to endure.

In yet another corner is Iran, boasting a rare combination of military manpower, hardware, technology and tactical skills that Israel has never faced in any adversary on the battlefield. Russia looms large too – it may provide military intelligence to its allies or it may just use its clout in the UN Security Council to intervene at opportune moments in the fight. Either way, Moscow is a huge asset for the Resistance Axis – and will be joined by China to coach and calibrate responses to the fighting from the 'international community.'

Meanwhile, as if unable to stop a 'war trajectory' once it starts, the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee has just voted to widen and deepen the scope of a US attack on Syria. The new goal? To “reverse the momentum on the battlefield” against the Syrian army and “hasten Assad’s departure.”

This is no different than Libya, Afghanistan or Iraq. Israelis and Americans need to understand that language and behavior threatening 'regime-change' gives their adversaries only one choice: to retaliate with all their capabilities and assets on all fronts. Washington just made this existential. No more games, no more rhetoric. Any strike on Syria will be 'war on.' In US military parlance: a 'full-spectrum operation' will be heading your way. And you can call it Operation "Tip of the Iceberg" out of sheer accuracy, for a change.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East. You can follow Sharmine on twitter @snarwani.

Closing the Back Door on NSA Intrusion

Leaks Show NSA is Working to Undermine Encrypted Communications, Here's How You Can Fight Back

by EFF

In one of the most significant leaks to date regarding National Security Agency (NSA) spying, the New York Times, the Guardian, and ProPublica reported today that the NSA has gone to extraordinary lengths to secretly undermine our secure communications infrastructure, collaborating with GCHQ (Britain's NSA equivalent) and a select few intelligence organizations worldwide.

These frightening revelations imply that the NSA has not only pursued an aggressive program of obtaining private encryption keys for commercial products—allowing the organization to decrypt vast amounts of Internet traffic that use these products—but that the agency has also attempted to put backdoors into cryptographic standards designed to secure users' communications. Additionally, the leaked documents make clear that companies have been complicit in allowing this unprecedented spying to take place, though the identities of cooperating companies remain unknown.

Many important details about this program, codenamed Bullrun, are still unclear. For example, what communications are targeted? What service providers or software developers are cooperating with the NSA? What percentage of private encryption keys of targeted commercial products are successfully obtained? Does this store of private encryption keys (presumably procured through theft or company cooperation) contain those of popular web-based communication providers like Facebook and Google?

What is clear is that these NSA programs are an egregious violation of our privacy. We can and should enjoy a future where it is still possible to speak privately with fellow citizens, to freely associate and engage in political activism, and to be left alone when we want to be. If the NSA is allowed to continue building backdoors into our communications infrastructure, as law enforecement agencies have lobbied for, then the communications of billions of people risk being perpetually insecure against a variety of adversaries, ranging from foreign governments to criminals to domestic spy agencies, which would have disastrous economic consequences.

Faced with so much bad news, it's easy to give in to privacy nihilism and despair. After all, if the NSA has found ways to decrypt a significant portion of encrypted online communications, why should we bother using encryption at all? But this massive disruption of communications infrastructure need not be tolerated. Here are some of the steps you can take to fight back:

• Sign the petition to stop NSA spying. Let Congress know that It's time for a full accounting of America's secret spying programs—and an end to unconstitutional surveillance. If you are not in the US, please take the time to sign our international petition.
• In addition to signing our petition, take the time to call your elected representative using the dedicated call line: 1-STOP-323-NSA (1-786-732-3672) to voice your opposition.
• Use secure communications tools (read some useful tips by security expert Bruce Schneier). Your communications are still significantly more protected if you are using encrypted communications tools such as messaging over OTR or browsing the web using HTTPS Everywhere than if you are sending your communications in the clear.
• Finally, the engineers responsible for building our infrastructure can fight back by building and deploying better and more usable cryptosystems.

The NSA is attacking our secure communications on many fronts and we must oppose them using every method we have at our disposal. Engineers, policy makers, and netizens all have key roles to play in standing up to the unchecked surveillance state.

The more we learn about the extent of the NSA's abuses, the more important it is for us to take steps to take back our privacy. Don't let the NSA's attack on secure communications be the end game. Let it be a call to arms.

The Other Reason Syria Targeted: Money

Making the World Safe for Banksters: Syria in the Cross-hairs

by Ellen Hodgson Brown

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole." - Prof. Caroll Quigley, Georgetown University, Tragedy and Hope (1966)

Iraq and Libya have been taken out, and Iran has been heavily boycotted. Syria is now in the cross-hairs. Why? Here is one overlooked scenario.

In an August 2013 article titled “Larry Summers and the Secret ‘End-game’ Memo,” Greg Palast posted evidence of a secret late-1990s plan devised by Wall Street and U.S. Treasury officials to open banking to the lucrative derivatives business. To pull this off required the relaxation of banking regulations not just in the US but globally. The vehicle to be used was the Financial Services Agreement of the World Trade Organization.

The “end-game” would require not just coercing support among WTO members but taking down those countries refusing to join. Some key countries remained holdouts from the WTO, including Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. In these Islamic countries, banks are largely state-owned; and “usury” – charging rent for the “use” of money – is viewed as a sin, if not a crime. That puts them at odds with the Western model of rent extraction by private middlemen. Publicly-owned banks are also a threat to the mushrooming derivatives business, since governments with their own banks don’t need interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, or investment-grade ratings by private rating agencies in order to finance their operations.

Bank deregulation proceeded according to plan, and the government-sanctioned and -nurtured derivatives business mushroomed into a $700-plus trillion pyramid scheme. Highly leveraged, completely unregulated, and dangerously unsustainable, it collapsed in 2008 when investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, taking a large segment of the global economy with it. The countries that managed to escape were those sustained by public banking models outside the international banking net.

These countries were not all Islamic. Forty percent of banks globally are publicly-owned. They are largely in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—which house forty percent of the global population. They also escaped the 2008 credit crisis, but they at least made a show of conforming to Western banking rules. This was not true of the “rogue” Islamic nations, where usury was forbidden by Islamic teaching. To make the world safe for usury, these rogue states had to be silenced by other means. Having failed to succumb to economic coercion, they wound up in the crosshairs of the powerful US military.

Here is some data in support of that thesis.

The End-game Memo

In his August 22nd article, Greg Palast posted a screenshot of a 1997 memo from Timothy Geithner, then Assistant Secretary of International Affairs under Robert Rubin, to Larry Summers, then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner referred in the memo to the “end-game of WTO financial services negotiations” and urged Summers to touch base with the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan Bank, for whom private phone numbers were provided.

The game then in play was the deregulation of banks so that they could gamble in the lucrative new field of derivatives. To pull this off required, first, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 Act that imposed a firewall between investment banking and depository banking in order to protect depositors’ funds from bank gambling. But the plan required more than just deregulating US banks. Banking controls had to be eliminated globally so that money would not flee to nations with safer banking laws. The “endgame” was to achieve this global deregulation through an obscure addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization, called the Financial Services Agreement. Palast wrote:


Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods–that is, my cars for your bananas. The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in “bads” – toxic assets like financial derivatives.

Until the bankers’ re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders. The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives “products.”

And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives.

The job of turning the FSA into the bankers’ battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization.

WTO members were induced to sign the agreement by threatening their access to global markets if they refused; and they all did sign, except Brazil. Brazil was then threatened with an embargo; but its resistance paid off, since it alone among Western nations survived and thrived during the 2007-2009 crisis. As for the others:

The new FSA pulled the lid off the Pandora’s box of worldwide derivatives trade. Among the notorious transactions legalized: Goldman Sachs (where Treasury Secretary Rubin had been Co-Chairman) worked a secret euro-derivatives swap with Greece which, ultimately, destroyed that nation. Ecuador, its own banking sector de-regulated and demolished, exploded into riots. Argentina had to sell off its oil companies (to the Spanish) and water systems (to Enron) while its teachers hunted for food in garbage cans. Then, Bankers Gone Wild in the Eurozone dove head-first into derivatives pools without knowing how to swim–and the continent is now being sold off in tiny, cheap pieces to Germany.

The Holdouts

That was the fate of countries in the WTO, but Palast did not discuss those that were not in that organization at all, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. These seven countries were named by U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.) in a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview as the new “rogue states” being targeted for take down after September 11, 2001. He said that about 10 days after 9-11, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

What did these countries have in common? Besides being Islamic, they were not members either of the WTO or of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That left them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland. Other countries later identified as “rogue states” that were also not members of the BIS included North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

The body regulating banks today is called the Financial Stability Board (FSB), and it is housed in the BIS in Switzerland. In 2009, the heads of the G20 nations agreed to be bound by rules imposed by the FSB, ostensibly to prevent another global banking crisis. Its regulations are not merely advisory but are binding, and they can make or break not just banks but whole nations. This was first demonstrated in 1989, when the Basel I Accord raised capital requirements a mere 2%, from 6% to 8%. The result was to force a drastic reduction in lending by major Japanese banks, which were then the world’s largest and most powerful creditors. They were undercapitalized, however, relative to other banks. The Japanese economy sank along with its banks and has yet to fully recover.

Among other game-changing regulations in play under the FSB are Basel III and the new bail-in rules. Basel III is slated to impose crippling capital requirements on public, cooperative and community banks, coercing their sale to large multinational banks.

The “bail-in” template was first tested in Cyprus and follows regulations imposed by the FSB in 2011. Too-big-to-fail banks are required to draft “living wills” setting forth how they will avoid insolvency in the absence of government bailouts. The FSB solution is to “bail in” creditors – including depositors – turning deposits into bank stock, effectively confiscating them.

The Public Bank Alternative

Countries laboring under the yoke of an extractive private banking system are being forced into “structural adjustment” and austerity by their unrepayable debt. But some countries have managed to escape. In the Middle East, these are the targeted “rogue nations.” Their state-owned banks can issue the credit of the state on behalf of the state, leveraging public funds for public use without paying a massive tribute to private middlemen. Generous state funding allows them to provide generously for their people.

Like Libya and Iraq before they were embroiled in war, Syria provides free education at all levels and free medical care. It also provides subsidized housing for everyone (although some of this has been compromised by adoption of an IMF structural adjustment program in 2006 and the presence of about 2 million Iraqi and Palestinian refugees). Iran too provides nearly free higher education and primary health care.

Like Libya and Iraq before takedown, Syria and Iran have state-owned central banks that issue the national currency and are under government control. Whether these countries will succeed in maintaining their financial sovereignty in the face of enormous economic, political and military pressure remains to be seen.

As for Larry Summers, after proceeding through the revolving door to head Citigroup, he became State Senator Barack Obama’s key campaign benefactor. He played a key role in the banking deregulation that brought on the current crisis, causing millions of US citizens to lose their jobs and their homes. Yet Summers is President Obama’s first choice to replace Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chairman. Why? He has proven he can manipulate the system to make the world safe for Wall Street; and in an upside-down world in which bankers rule, that seems to be the name of the game.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com, http://PublicBankSolution.com, and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.

"Try Not to Be a Dick": Pigs on the Wing and the Face of American Brutality at Home

A Brutal Arrest of Iraq War Vet at Anti-Syria Rally

by Dave Lindorff - CounterPunch

The US has yet to launch President Obama’s latest war crime of massively bombing Syria (a country that does not threaten this nation) and already federal police thugs, in this case National Parks Service Rangers, have violently arrested an Iraq War Veteran who was peacefully playing her banjo in the shade on Independence Mall in Philadelphia following an anti-war protest and march.

Emily Yates, an activist with the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and a professional folksinger and banjo player, can be seen in this video, peacefully standing plucking her instrument when she is ordered to move by a group of Park Rangers. When she asks them (politely) why she has to move off of federal park property that is open to the public, she is not given any explanation. Then at one point, she is grabbed from behind roughly without warning and slammed, bent over, across the wooden top of a park bench, with several large rangers pinning her down, and with her hands wrenched behind her back, as they try to place metal cuffs on her wrists.

"Stop Resisting"

As she struggles to breathe with all that pressure on her forcibly bent-over form, a senior officer can be heard telling her to “relax” and to “stop resisting” — though with three men piled on top of her, it is clear she is not resisting..

Yates was held in a federal lockup for two days before an arraignment on Monday, at which she was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and, most seriously, “assaulting a federal officer.” The latter charge, absurd when matched up against the video of the arrest, is a felony carrying a heavy jail sentence.

One is reminded of those black jokes about police ramming arrested persons head first into the sides of patrol cars and then charging them with damaging public property, or punching handcuffed victims in the face and then charging them with banging their heads into the officer’s fist. It is impossible to view the above video and see any evidence of “assault.” Nor could Yates have been assaulting the larger scrum of rangers who were all over her prone body later when she can be seen being held on the ground, screaming for help, as angry spectators shouted from the sidelines for the rangers to let her go, to “stop strangling her” and to call for a medic.

Yates’ attorney, Larry Krassner, offered TCBH! a statement on the case saying: “Emily is a six-year military veteran who served honorably for two tours in Iraq. She has PTSD. She was arrested and injured by federal officers for no good reason. The US government owes its veterans better treatment than this, even when they happen to be opposed to further war in Syria.”

I would add it owes its citizens, veterans or not, better treatment than this too, especially in this particular location, of all places.

Independence Mall is a three-block piece of property run by the National Park Service in Philadelphia. A favored spot for tourists from all over the nation and the world, with the restored Independence Hall at one end, where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written and where the Bill of Rights was passed into law, protecting freedom of speech and assembly, and the Constitution Center at the other end, where the US Constitution and its guarantees of freedom are celebrated, it is also a favored locale for protest actions, such as the protest and march against a US attack on Syria, which took place just before Yates’ arrest.

The brutal assault on this peaceful folksinger offers a stark view of the reality of America’s burgeoning police state, set as it was against the image of the building where America’s founding documents offered the hope for such a different kind of state. The park’s rangers Saturday certainly sent many foreign tourists home with a whole different view of the “Land of the Free” not to mention the “Home of the Brave.”

I’m reminded of my own arrest by a park ranger some 45 years ago, which went down quite differently.

It was the summer of 1968, and I was driving across the country from California to Connecticut in a 1946 Dodge pickup truck with a friend. We were earning our gas money along the way with my 12-string Guild guitar, which I would take out at opportune moments, setting the case open beside me and plucking my tunes. We were passing through beautiful Yosemite Park, and had figured it would be a good place to pick up some extra gas money before going through what we expected to be some rough territory for busking in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Nebraska, and so I sat down on the running board of the truck and began to play in the middle of the main parking lot.

I wasn’t begging. There was just a sign on the inside of the case top saying “Gas money”. People passing by were standing and listening and tossing in money and it was going well until a ranger drove up. He was an older guy, and didn’t look particularly happy about it when he said he had to arrest us for “panhandling.” (There was a real difference between this fellow, who clearly saw his job as being a custodian of a natural wonder, not a cop, and the young toughs working as rangers at Independence Mall, who look and carry themselves like club bouncers enjoying their power.)

Being an easterner, I asked the Yosemite ranger what panhandling meant. He said, “What you’re doing — asking for money.” I told him I thought panhandling meant cooking on an open fire in a pan, and I insisted I wasn’t asking for anything, but that people were coming up to us, not the other way around. But he said he’d been told to bring us in, so we were brought to the ranger station, where he wrote up two tickets. I didn’t look at mine until we were driving out of the park towards Nevada. Only then did I see the amount: $500! More than I had earned all summer working in Seattle. No wonder he had told us not to ignore our tickets, which he warned were federal offenses.

Furious at the unfairness of it, I wrote a letter to then Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall (the father of current New Mexico Senator Tom Stewart Udall), stating that I did not think it proper to fine someone short of money $500 for trying to earn some, particularly as I was merely entertaining people in a parking lot who were coming over to listen to me because they were enjoying the music.

I received my letter back in the mail a few weeks later. On it, in red felt-tipped pen, was a note saying, “I agree. The ticket has been cancelled. Stewart Udall.” And I wasn’t even a veteran. I was a long-haired hippy war resister.

What a far cry from the horror show that befell fellow folksinger and war veteran Emily Yates!

There was no indication that the ranger thugs who assaulted and arrested her on Independence Mall had any shame or reluctance about what they were doing. In fact, based upon their sworn statements at the arraignment, they were also willing to lie about what happened, to claim that this small, slightly built young woman was assaulting them, instead of the other way around.

The right thing at this point would be for Stu Udall’s successor, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, to do as Udall did and toss out her arrest, perhaps also disciplining her park goons and instructing them about the finer points of respecting the right of citizens, especially in Independence Mall, to exercise their freedom of speech and assembly.

Sadly I suspect Yates will have to go through some kind of lengthy and costly legal battle, while having her freedom of travel severely restricted (although supposedly innocent until proven guilty, she is under court order, as part of her bail conditions, to remain in either Philadelphia or her home city of Oakland, CA, except when traveling on business to perform at concerts), until as would seem likely based upon the above video and others like it, her case is either thrown out, or the government loses. And of course, she has to endure months of worrying that in what passes for justice in federal courts these days, she could even end up being convicted and having to spend years in jail, ending up a convicted felon.

I hope she gets off these trumped up charges, and that she files brutality charges against the ranger thugs who attacked her and violated her civil liberties.

I also hope those rangers, and the federal prosecutor responsible for charging her in Philadelphia, will listen to her song: Try Not to Be a Dick.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

Read Fast BC! Hydro Releases 5,000 Page-Long Integrated Resource Plan

Group Calls for Comment Extension to 5,000- Page Energy Plan

by Damien Gillis - The Canadian.org

BC Hydro is providing the public just six weeks to respond to its 5,000-page draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) - and that doesn’t sit well with a Vancouver-based water advocacy group.

The BC Tapwater Alliance is calling for extended public consultations on the crown corporation’s plan for meeting future power demand in the province.

In an open letter to Energy Minister Bill Bennett, coordinator Will Koop writes:

After downloading all of the 80 component documents associated with the report (almost 5,000 cumulative pages), and scanning through all of the documents, we concluded that the Minister’s six-week schedule for public input is deficient and unreasonable.

The Common Sense Canadian highlighted numerous concerns with the draft plan last week, following its release. Chief among these were Hydro’s failure to address in realistic terms the enormous energy demands associated with “supporting” the proposed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry.

The plan calls for the building of the multibillion dollar, taxpayer-funded Site C Dam, which would impact close to 60,000 acres of prime agricultural and forested lands. As we’ve repeatedly demonstrated in these pages, the power from Site C is simply not necessary for our current or long-term energy demands in BC.

BC Hydro has chronically overestimated the province’s power needs, justifying in recent years taking on pricey, unnecessary private power contracts. On that point, the BC Liberal Government announced late last week that it was dumping its contracts with 10 unfinished private power plants and considering deferring another nine. The reality is the province’s electrical consumption has plateaued over the past five years. We were a net exporter to the tune of well over 10% of our yearly electrical demand in 2012, yet lost $360 million on power sales as we were forced to resell private power at a substantial loss. With exports trending dramatically upward and demand flat, we have no need for Site C – now or in the foreseeable future.

That is, unless Hydro decides to subsidize the enormously energy-intensive LNG industry by powering some of the dozen plants now being planned for BC’s north coast. These complex variables have been given short shrift in the development of Hydro’s IRP, as the BC Tapwater Alliance maintains.

The crown corporation released the documents in late August, following an initial round of limited consultation with various stakeholders. Those discussions occurred prior to the announcement of a number of LNG plants currently on the table, which dramatically alter the conversation.

Yet, it only announced a public feedback window last week, giving citizens and concerned organizations until October 18 to review and respond to 5,000 pages of technical documents. To Will Koop and his organization, this is all highly undemocratic – especially considering the profound, long-term ramifications of things like Site C, LNG and private power projects:

Given the critical and serious nature of BC Hydro’s future planning of the public’s diverse well-being, ecology, economy, and assets, elements fundamentally connected to the service functions of the electrical grid, we strongly believe that if the Minister adopts all of our recommendations he will better serve the public’s vital interests, and through a timely process of transparency.

The water advocacy group is calling for:

• Extending the public comment period to November 30th, 2013.
• Mandating Hydro-led public forums throughout BC during the month of October, 2013. “A panel of BC Hydro and Public advocate representatives can present information and then field public questions and provide answers. The events should be videotaped and then posted on a government website.”
• Making public all written submissions for citizens to access and review
• Creating a subsequent period for Hydro to review these written submissions, which should being in December and run til the end of January
• Establishing a final written submission period during the first two weeks of February

Given the circumstances, these are sensible and fair remedies to the obvious shortcomings of Hydro’s initial public review period. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency recently caved to demands for a longer public comment period regarding a proposed LNG project near Prince Rupert – based on seriously flawed information discovered in Progress Energy’s project description. BC Hydro and the BC Liberal Government should follow the Harper Government’s lead, acknowledging their mistake, and taking seriously the above recommendations.

Processes like these should be designed to maximize public participation. It’s hard not to conclude that Hydro and its government masters are motivated by the opposite intentions when they offer such a short window for consultation on a subject so important to the future of the province’s economy and environment.

Damien Gillis is a Vancouver-based documentary filmmaker with a focus on environmental and social justice issues - especially relating to water, energy, and saving Canada's wild salmon.

Four Failures of Conscience Leading to Syria Attack

How “Progressives” and the American “Left” are Failing Over Syria

by Shamus Cooke

It’s now painfully clear that Obama’s war on Syria is a replay of Bush’s march to war in Iraq, both built on lies. Zero evidence has been put forth that proves the Syrian government used chemical weapons. On the contrary, evidence has been collected that suggests the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels are responsible for the attack.

If Obama wages an aggressive attack on Syria — especially without UN authorization — he’ll be committing a major international crime that will, by any standard, make him a war criminal, just like Bush before him.

And because Obama’s attack on Syria followed Bush’s logic, you’d assume that liberal, progressive, and other Left groups would do what they did when Bush went to war: denounce it unconditionally and organize against it.

But that’s not what happened. Because this didn’t happen, less accurate information was made available to the public, and fewer public mobilizations have occurred, thus re-enforcing Obama’s ability to wage an aggressive war.

There are four pieces of information that all left groups have a duty to report about Syria, but they have either ignored or minimized:

1) Obama presented zero evidence to back up his main justification for war: that the Syrian Government used chemical weapons against civilians.

2) A top UN investigator, Carla Del Ponte, blamed a previous chemical weapons attack on the U.S.-backed rebels.

3) Any attack on Syria, no matter how “limited,” has a high risk of expanding into neighboring countries if Syria exercises its right as a sovereign nation to defend itself.

4) A war against Syria will be a violation of international law, since it is not approved by the UN, and therefore will make President Obama a war criminal.

There has been a broad spectrum of leftist failure to address these issues and condemn Obama’s war, ranging from those who take an overtly pro-war position to those who use anti-war slogans that are stained with pro-war justifications. A consistent “Hands Off Syria” message was hard to find.

The most guilty parties who have aided and assisted Obama’s expected war plans will have blood-stained hands after the bombing begins. Perhaps the best example of this coterie is Van Jones, the former adviser to Obama who founded the Rebuild The Dream organization. On CNN, Jones announced his new appetite for foreign war (Preview) :

“I think we need to stand behind this president and send a clear message to Assad that this type behavior is not acceptable.”

Many liberals took Jones’ “stand by our president” approach, even if it wasn’t stated as directly as Jones did, and even after “our president” was unable to present any sensible reason for waging another aggressive war in the Middle East.

A notch lower on the leftist spectrum of Syria war guilt is MoveOn.org, which has done everything in their power not to portray President Obama’s actions in their true light. But MoveOn had to take a more creative approach to covering up for Obama in Syria.

MoveOn organized a “teach-in” that was streamed on their website. The panel of speakers — with one exception — presented Obama’s position in a very evenhanded, “objective” way, presenting the president as an entirely reasonable person for wanting to bomb Syria, even if it might not be the best way to deal with the situation.

Instead of pointing out the flagrant similarities between Obama’s Syria war rationale and George Bush’s Iraq War lies, these similarities were papered over, thus legitimizing Obama’s criminal actions.

The worst Obama apologist on the panel was Matt Duss from the Center for American Progress, who explained that, although he was against a war on Syria, he “respects” that “other progressives of good faith may come to a different view.”

Phyllis Bennis from the Institute of Policy Studies was the only consistent anti-war panelist, who appeared as a fringe element when compared to the rest of the panel, only because she offered a common sense, consistent anti-war message.

The teach-in ended with a “what can we do” segment to influence the situation. Instead of mobilizing in the streets against Obama, the panelists discussed “contacting congressmen,” “calling the White House’s comment line,” “tweeting,” “email,” “petitions,” but no call was made for doing what was done against Bush: mobilize people in the streets to demand that the war be stopped.

MoveOn further exposed their pro-Obama, pro-war attitude on the website, where for days the featured petition being promoted was titled: “President Obama: Don’t Strike Syria Without Congressional Approval.”

Again, there is no basis for any strike on Syria, period — Congressional approval or otherwise. Even if Congress doesn’t approve Obama’s actions in Syria, it’s likely that he’ll attack Syria anyway, just as happened in Libya after Congress refused authorization.

On the lower end of the spectrum of leftist failure on Syria sits the International Socialist Organization (ISO). After Obama announced his intention to attack Syria, the ISO’s main article, “Imperial Hypocrisy to Justify an Assault,” neglected to address any of the above-stated four critical points about the situation in Syria.

But the ISO’s article went beyond mere neglect of facts; in several instances it re-enforced Obama’s war plans by unquestionably accepting Obama’s claim that there was “evidence” that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians.

After Obama’s “evidence” was accepted, the ISO article then went on to plagiarize John Kerry’s hyper-dramatization (Preview) of the YouTube video that showed the after effects of the attack:

“The mass killing in Ghouta was so awful that it forced the debate on Syria to a head. The warheads filled with sarin gas were targeted not at rebel fighters, but women and children in their beds. Their lungs filled with fluid, suffocating them. Hundreds more suffered severe and crippling injuries. Anyone with a sense of justice will be incensed by such a calculated effort to terrorize a vulnerable civilian population.”

Nowhere in the ISO article does it say “Hands Off Syria” or does it clearly denounce Obama’s pending attack on Syria. The article merely states that the U.S. is acting “hypocritically,” which, although true, falls tragically short of the needed response, therefore allowing more political space for Obama to wage a brutal attack.

It’s important to note that the above groups and individuals also politically failed BEFORE Obama announced a direct military intervention, since they did not sound the alarm bells of the long-approaching attack.

For example, the U.S. has been training, funding, and arming Syrian rebels for almost two years now, while having led the diplomatic organizing efforts of a group of rich Syrian exiles that Obama refers to as the “legitimate” government of Syria. Obama stated several times that “Assad must go.” The political Left had a duty to explain the significance of these events and their likely outcome, direct U.S. military intervention.

All of the above groups are also guilty of demonizing Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, buying in on the propaganda that he is worse than the Al Qaeda-linked rebels who are attacking him. This is a crucial element of justifying any aggressive war. Every head of state that is targeted by the U.S. government must be portrayed as an inspiring “Hitler,” since attacking a nation led by “Hitler” is, of course, a “good” thing to do.

And although opinion is certainly divided over Assad, those in the U.S. wishing to stop an aggressive war must focus on the actions of their own country.

“Hands Off Syria” is a united front demand, meaning that it’s intentionally aimed to create a broad based appeal in an effort to mobilize as many people as possible. No anti-war movement — or any social movement — is powerful without massive, ongoing mobilizations.

Within the united front demand of Hands Off Syria there is plenty of room for other tactics and room to discuss the deeper politics of the movement, but creating the largest possible mobilizations must be the base ingredient, and this can only be done under a demand that is capable of bringing together broad sections of the U.S. public.

The question of war sadly remains the greatest immediate threat the world faces, especially in light of an increasingly conflict-ridden and dangerous Middle East.

The United States government is hell-bent on reckless wars that are increasingly likely to spiral out of control as they bring abject misery to the affected populations around the world while funneling money for badly needed social programs here in the U.S. into campaigns of death and destruction. Unequivocally denouncing U.S. foreign aggression is the duty of all working people who value peace, hate war, and aspire to create a better world.

Hands Off Syria! Bring the Troops Home NOW!

Shamus Cooke is a social service specialist, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

The Trophy Hunter's Tale: Taking Grizzlies from the Great Bear Rainforest

New Film Tells Story of Grizzly Bear Killed in Violation of First Nations Ban on Trophy Hunting

by Coastal First Nations

Last May, trophy hunters shot and killed a five-year-old grizzly bear in BC’s Kwatna estuary — an ancient First Nations village site midway between the central coast communities of Bella Bella and Bella Coola.

The bear, nicknamed 'Cheeky' by local field technicians, was skinned and left to rot in a field. His head and paws were carried out past a sign declaring trophy hunting closed in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Cheeky the bear may have died the same way as 100 other bears every year in the Great Bear Rainforest. The difference is, this time there was a witness.

After several months of research, CFN’s Bear Working Group is preparing to release a short film about the incident and the broader issue of trophy hunting in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Telus World of Science, 

1455 Quebec St, Vancouver, BC

Wednesday, September 4th 2013

10:00 a.m. (Doors at 9:30)

Members of the press are invited to an exclusive screening at Telus World of Science at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, September 4th. Scientists, elected leaders, and a special guest will be available for a Q&A following the film. Attendees will also receive early access to results from a new province-wide poll documenting shifting public sentiment on trophy hunting.

Coastal First Nations is an alliance of Wuikinuxv, Heiltsuk, Kitasoo/Xai’xais, Nuxalk, Gitga’at, Metlakatla, Old Massett, Skidegate, and the Council of the Haida Nation, working together to create a sustainable economy on British Columbia’s North and Central Coast and Haida Gwaii. In September 2012, CFN announced a ban on trophy hunting for bears in the territories of all nine member nations.

For more information:

Councillor Jessie Housty, Heiltsuk Nation

604-831-7292

Councillor Douglas Neasloss, Kitasoo/Xai'xais Nation

604-836-0954

Doing Adolf Proud: Obama and Kerry Dust Off Die Große Lüge Doctrine

Obama’s and Kerry’s Big Lie

by Dave Lindorff - CounterPunch

The document released on the White House web site to “prove” to the American people that the Syrian government had used poison gas — allegedly the neurotoxin Sarin — to kill hundreds of civilians, is so flawed and lacking in real proof that if it were being used to make a case against a terrorist group it would be too weak to justify an indictment.

For starters, there is no documentary proof offered. Only assertions about evidence which is never actually shown. No maps. No satellite or aerial spy-plane or drone surveillance photos. No identified witnesses with verifiable expertise. All there is in this document is a narrative with assertions like:

“The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013.”

There are coy explanations for the lack of any hard evidence, like:

“To protect sources and methods, we cannot publicly release all available intelligence – but what follows is an unclassified summary of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s analysis.”

Remember, we’re talking about a debate over whether to have the US launch a war of aggression against a sovereign nation that poses absolutely no risk either to the US or even to its allies directly abutting Syria. The reality is that this is about launching a war against a country wracked by civil war, not a country that is threatening its neighbors, or US interests and citizens. And make no mistake, a major US bombing campaign against Syria will not be clean and precise. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of innocent Syrian men, women and children will be killed, whether by errant bombs and rockets, or by accurate ones that hit targets located near residences.

The first section of the report is devoted to trying to make the case that poison gas, and specifically Sarin, was used in a suburb of Damascus. No actual evidence is presented, though certainly there is evidence available — specifically the reports of physicians working in Syria with Doctors Without Borders. Why those doctors are not identified is never explained, but perhaps it is because to do so would make the lack of identifiable sources for the rest of the argument all the more blatant. In any event, it is probable that Sarin was used and that a considerable number of people were killed or injured by the chemical, but that is no casus belli, since it is not at all clear who is responsible for the release of the deadly chemical–the Syrian government, the rebels, or, as retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell has suggested, Israel.

Moving along, the White House document becomes even more opaque and useless.

In the “proof of use” section of the precis, the White House writes:

“A large body of independent sources indicates that a chemical weapons attack took place in the Damascus suburbs on August 21.”

Not one of those independent sources is identified. Yet on the basis of this vague assertion, the document goes on to say: “We assess with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out the chemical weapons attack against opposition elements in the Damascus suburbs on August 21. We assess that the scenario in which the opposition executed the attack on August 21 is highly unlikely.” Lest anyone think that this falls a good deal short of “proof” or “certainty” or, to use a phrase from the Bush-era campaign for an invasion of Iraq over non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, a “slam dunk,” the White House goes on to say: “ Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the U.S. Intelligence Community can take short of confirmation.”

Actually, what they are saying here is that they do not have confirmation. The rest of the section is just obfuscatory verbiage.

The next section, headed “Background,” makes the entirely circumstantial argument that the Syrian government, and specifically President Bashar al-Assad, was responsible for a Sarin attack in Damascus on Aug. 21 because a) Syria has stockpiles of gas weapons, b) it has used small amounts of poison gas against rebel fighters (no examples given), c) it uses gas when it is caught in a battle stalemate (no examples given), and d) the opposition rebels have never used Sarin (this last point is a deliberate falsehood, since the administration certainly is aware that Carla del Ponte, chief investigator with the UN Human Rights Commission, has reported publicly that Syrian rebels used Sarin gas against civilians last March).

Again, all the arguments are fact and evidence-free, and the inclusion of a falsehood should make any reader particularly skeptical. Besides, there is an excellent, well sourced report from a US publication, Mint Press News in Minnesota, that suggests it was rebel forces which were responsible for the Aug. 21 poison gas, which may have been unintentionally detonated by fighters who didn’t know how to handle toxic weapons allegedly provided by Saudi Arabian intelligence sources.

Under the section titled “Preparation,” the document says; “We have intelligence that leads us to assess that the Syrian military was preparing to use Sarin gas.” This 
so-called intelligence includes: “streams of human, signals and geospatial intelligence” allegedly indicating that military personnel were active in an area said by the administration (again on the basis of no evidence offered) to be where Sarin stocks were stored, and that they were wearing gas masks. Not a single photo, reported “signal,” or identified source was given to substantiate these evidentiary claims.

Finally, under the heading “The Attack,” the administration writes that:

“Multiple streams of intelligence indicate that the regime executed a rocket and artillery attack against the Damascus suburbs in the early hours of August 21.” 

That fact in and of itself would mean nothing as Syrian forces have been using tactical rocket fire and artillery against rebel forces for two years running. But then the White House writes, ominously, that these rocket and artillery attacks included “rocket launches from regime controlled territory early in the morning, approximately 90 minutes before the first report of a chemical attack appeared in social media.”

Let’s think about that a moment. 90 minutes is a long time. We’re talking about rockets that land within seconds of launch, and explode on impact. In an age of cell phones and other “social media,” why would it take 90 minutes from that particular rocket launching event for a “first report” of a chemical attack? Is that remotely credible? Why didn’t the administration at least address that peculiar time lapse?

The paper goes on to offer as evidence, some 100 videos it collected from the internet purporting to show visual evidence of the poison gas attack. It goes on to say, “We assess the Syrian opposition does not have the capability to fabricate all of the videos, physical symptoms verified by medical personnel and NGOs, and other information associated with this chemical attack.”

Reading between the lines here, we can assume with, as the White House would put it, “a high degree of confidence,” that many of those videos are in fact fabricated. Since we are not offered even one to view, the assumption might be reasonably made that none are reliable.

In fact, there is no evidence presented in this administration document to support the whole poison gas attack scenario; only assumptions and assertions by the administration based upon evidence which we are told exists but that we cannot see. We are, in other words, being expected to trust the White House. As the administration puts it: “As indicated, there is additional intelligence that remains classified because of sources and methods concerns that is being provided to Congress and international partners.”

Except that at least when it comes to those foreign “partners,” Washington is still not sharing the classified evidence. We know this because in the Aug. 29 presentation made by British Prime Minister David Cameron in his failed attempt to win parliamentary approval for the UK to join the US in a Syrian attack, there was no hard evidence provided, and certainly if any foreign country would have been privy to any hard evidence in the hands of US intelligence, it would have been Britain, and it would have been used by PM Cameron to win the support of Parliament. As well, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that his US “partner,” in a presentation made to the Russian government, provided no evidence to support the charge that Syria had used Sarin gas.

In a statement made after the US released its intelligence report, Putin said:

 “I am convinced that (the chemical attack) is nothing more than a provocation by those who want to drag other countries into the Syrian conflict, and who want to win the support of powerful members of the international arena, especially the United States.” He went on to scoff at alleged US intercepts of Syrian communications, saying that such flimsy, ambiguous evidence should not be relied upon in making “fundamental decisions” about using military force against another nation.

As for Congress, after a closed session Sunda in which the White House made its case for war, members reportedly exited the room with some saying the case had not been made and that the evidence presented was sketchy. As Rep. Bennie Thompson, top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee put it, “In terms of whether not a lot of questions were really answered today? I’d say no.”

Something smells here. If this is the best the White House can come up with to make a case for starting a war with a country that poses no threat to the US, at a time when a majority of Americans opposes starting yet another war in the Middle East, and when most of the world, including America’s closest allies, are backing away from support for an attack, the conclusion has to be that there is no real case against Syria.

Rather, President Obama appears to have oratorically backed himself into a corner by saying he would bomb Syria for what he insists is a war crime it has committed, and now he feels he has to attack, committing an even more serious war crime, in order to defend his “credibility” as a leader.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

Guatemalan Indigenous Council Files Mining Practices Complaint with Inter American Commisison

Guatemalan Indigenous Council Files Mining Law Complaint with Inter American Commission

by MiningWatch Canada

Guatemalan Indigenous organizations allege government's failure to consult over current mining law, which has led to violent repression of affected communities.

(Guatemala City/Ottawa/Washington) Tuesday, Guatemala's Western Peoples' Council of Mayan organizations (CPO) filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) alleging that the country’s mining law was approved without their prior consultation as required under both national and international law. The IACHR is the last resort for the CPO, which has exhausted all domestic recourse to halt violations as a result of current mining legislation.

The CPO first challenged the constitutionality of the 1997 Mining Law in a July 2012 suit filed with Guatemala’s Constitutional Court . In March 2013, however, the Constitutional Court upheld the mining law, contradicting Guatemala's legal obligations to consult with indigenous peoples before the approval of policies that will significantly impact their territories.

“We believe that Constitutional Court’s decision is illegal and contradictory, given that the same court ruled in 2011 that consultation is a constitutional right of indigenous peoples in Guatemala. Indigenous peoples were not consulted on the Mining Law despite its implications for our way of life and the state’s commitment to respect the collective rights of indigenous people under international legal instruments such as the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169,” said Lucia Xiloj, attorney and member of the CPO legal team.

With over 360 mining licenses issued and more than 600 pending, Guatemala’s mining sector has been in the spotlight for increasing conflict and violence across the country. At the root of these conflicts is the lack of respect for free, prior and informed consent of affected communities at the project and policy level.

Nearly a million people have voted against mining on their territories in 78 community referenda held throughout Guatemala since 2005. A public opinion survey published in January 2013 further demonstrated that some 66% of Guatemalans are opposed to mining. Nonetheless, neither the government nor the mining companies have respected community decisions; instead repression against those opposed to mining has intensified.

“The conflict, which has at its root the violation of the right to consultation, has resulted in targeted attacks and death, as well as the criminalization and persecution of community leaders,” said Lolita Chavez, member of the CPO and a signatory on the IACHR complaint.

According to the Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala’s Peace Accords, the American Convention on Human Rights, the International Labour Organization Convention No. 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Guatemala is obliged to respect the right of indigenous peoples to free, prior and informed consent for any project that could adversely impact them, and to consult with them before passing laws or administrative initiatives that would affect their rights.

“A favorable response from the Inter-American Commission on this case is vitally important, given that the current mining law has allowed Canadian and U.S. mining companies in particular to exploit indigenous territories with complete disregard for indigenous peoples' decision-making processes regarding their lands and resources,” said Kris Genovese, Senior Attorney with the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington D.C.

The Western People’s Council is a coalition of indigenous authorities and institutions from seven departments of Guatemala. The complaint filed in the IACHR has 32 signatories representing 8 indigenous groups that make up the Western Peoples’ Council. Each signatory was elected during community assemblies carried out during the weeks leading up to the filing.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts

* Ellen Moore, NISGUA, ellen(at)nisgua.org,

 * Jen Moore, MiningWatch Canada, jen(at)miningwatch.ca, 

 * Amanda Kistler, Center for International Environmental Law, akistler(at)ciel.org,

Background

In May, the military was sent into indigenous and non-indigenous communities in the area of Tahoe Resources’ Escobal silver project south of Guatemala City, following increased violence in the region, including a shooting against protesters demonstrating peacefully outside the mine site. The company’s head of security and his advisor are currently awaiting trial for their alleged involvement in ordering and then covering up evidence of the attack.

Tahoe Resources is a spin-off from Goldcorp, which sold the Escobal project to Tahoe in 2010 and which now holds 40% of Tahoe’s shares and multiple positions on its board of directors. Goldcorp’s Marlin mine in the northwestern highlands of Guatemala has been the source of continuing tensions over lack of respect for indigenous rights and land, and impacts on water supplies and public health.

For nearly a year and a half, community members in La Puya, just north of Guatemala City, have been peacefully blocking entry to the Tambor mine project currently in the hands of Kappes Cassidy & Associates, which took over the project from Vancouver-based Radius Gold in August 2012 following the shooting of Yolanda Oquelí. Community members opposing the project have faced repeated threats from company workers during the last ten months, despite entering into a high-level dialogue with the government in June.

In August, Rights Action reported that female plaintiffs are facing intimidation and harassment for having brought three lawsuits against Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals regarding the gang rape of a group of women during a forced eviction in 2007 and shootings in 2009 in the eastern municipality of El Estor. The lawsuits are taking place in an Ontario court and mark the first time that alleged human rights abuses regarding a foreign-owned subsidiary have been admitted against a parent company in Canada.


English Translation of CPO Communiqué:

The Council of Maya and Xinca Peoples Denounces the Guatemala State in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

On February 28, 2013, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court dismissed the Council’s challenge of unconstitutionality filed against the mining law on March 12, 2012.

As a result of leaving the current Mining Law in force, the State of Guatemala violates its responsibilities under international law, under which it is obliged to guarantee the effective exercise of our rights to political participation, consultation and consent regarding such legislation.

The collective and individual human rights that have been violated by the State of Guatemala are:

• 1. Political Rights – the rights to participation, consultation and consent as recognized in article 23.1 of the American Convention on Human Rights (the Convention).
• 2. Right to equality under the law as recognized in article 24 of the Convention.
• 3. Right to legal guarantees and judicial protection – the right to access to justice – as per articles 8.1 and 25.1 in relation to articles 1.1 and 2 of the Convention.

Based on the description of the facts and declaration of the rights that have been violated; we request that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights:

• 1. Proceed with the analysis of our case and request the relevant observations from the state of Guatemala;
• 2. Emit the pertinent report regarding admissibility of the case;
• 3. Determine the responsibility of the state of Guatemala for violation of articles 23.1.a., 24, 8.1, and 25.1, related to articles 1.1 y 2 of the Convention through the elaboration of an in-depth report.

Sources: Western Peoples' Council (CPO) - Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) - MiningWatch Canada – Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)

Copyright © 2013 MiningWatch Canada, All rights reserved.

Found! Mullah Omar and Saddam's WMD's Magically Appear (in Syria)

Found at last! After searching for 10 years, the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have finally been found – in Syria!

by William Blum - Anti-Empire Report

Secretary of State John Kerry: “There is no doubt that Saddam al-Assad has crossed the red line. … Sorry, did I just say ‘Saddam’?”

A US drone has just taken a photo of Mullah Omar riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Damascus. 1

So what do we have as the United States refuses to rule out an attack on Syria and keeps five warships loaded with missiles in the eastern Mediterranean?

• Only 9 percent of Americans support a US military intervention in Syria. 2
• Only 11% of the British supported a UK military intervention; this increased to 25% after the announcement of the alleged chemical attack. 3
• British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote August 29 endorsing military action against Syria 285-272
• 64% of the French people oppose an intervention by the French Army. 4 “Before acting we need proof,” said a French government spokesperson. 5
• Former and current high-ranking US military officers question the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggest that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. “If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to Islamic fundamentalist rebels, they say, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous.” 6
• President Obama has no United Nations approval for intervention. (In February a massive bombing attack in Damascus left 100 dead and 250 wounded; in all likelihood the work of Islamic terrorists. The United States blocked a Russian resolution condemning the attack from moving through the UN Security Council)
• None of NATO’s 28 members has proposed an alliance with the United States in an attack against Syria. NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that he saw “no NATO role in an international reaction to the [Syrian] regime.” 7
• The Arab League has not publicly endorsed support of US military action in Syria; nor have key regional players Saudi Arabia and Qatar, concerned about a possible public backlash from open support for US intervention. 8
• We don’t even know for sure that there was a real chemical attack. Where does that accusation come from? The United States? The al-Qaeda rebels? Or if there was such an attack, where is the evidence that the Syrian government was the perpetrator? The Assad regime has accused the rebels of the act, releasing a video showing a cave with alleged chemical-weapon equipment as well as claiming to have captured rebels possessing sarin gas. Whoever dispensed the poison gas – why, in this age of ubiquitous cameras, are there no photos of anyone wearing a gas mask? The UN inspection team was originally dispatched to Syria to investigate allegations of earlier chemical weapons use: two allegations made by the rebels and one by the government.
• The United States insists that Syria refused to allow the UN investigators access to the site of the attack. However, the UN request was made Saturday, August 24; the Syrian government agreed the next day. 9
• In rejecting allegations that Syria deployed poison gas, Russian officials have argued that the rebels had a clear motivation: to spur a Western-led attack on Syrian forces; while Assad had every reason to avoid any action that could spur international intervention at a time when his forces were winning the war and the rebels are increasingly losing world support because of their uncivilized and ultra-cruel behavior.
• President George W. Bush misled the world on Iraq’s WMD, but Bush’s bogus case for war at least had details that could be checked, unlike what the Obama administration released August 29 on Syria’s alleged chemical attacks – no direct quotes, no photographic evidence, no named sources, nothing but “trust us,” points out Robert Parry, intrepid Washington journalist.

So, in light of all of the above, the path for Mr. Obama to take – as a rational, humane being – is of course clear. Is it not? N’est-ce pas? Nicht wahr? – Bombs Away!

Pretty discouraging it is. No, I actually find much to be rather encouraging. So many people seem to have really learned something from the Iraqi pile of lies and horror and from decades of other American interventions. Skepticism – good ol’ healthy skepticism – amongst the American, British and French people. It was stirring to watch the British Parliament in a debate of the kind rarely, if ever, seen in the 21st-century US Congress. And American military officers asking some of the right questions. The Arab League not supporting a US attack, surprising for an organization not enamored of the secular Syrian government. And NATO – even NATO! – refusing so far to blindly fall in line with the White House. When did that last happen? I thought it was against international law.

Secretary of State John Kerry said that if the United States did not respond to the use of chemical weapons the country would become an international “laughingstock”. Yes, that’s really what America and its people have to worry about – not that their country is viewed as a lawless, mass-murdering repeat offender. Other American officials have expressed concern that a lack of a US response might incite threats from Iran and North Korea. 10

Now that is indeed something to laugh at. It’s comforting to think that the world might be finally losing the stars in their eyes about US foreign policy partly because of countless ridiculous remarks such as these.

United States bombings, which can be just as indiscriminate and cruel as poison gas. (A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.)

The glorious bombing list of our glorious country, which our glorious schools don’t teach, our glorious media don’t remember, and our glorious leaders glorify.

• Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
• Guatemala 1954
• Indonesia 1958
• Cuba 1959-1961
• Guatemala 1960
• Congo 1964
• Laos 1964-73
• Vietnam 1961-73
• Cambodia 1969-70
• Guatemala 1967-69
• Grenada 1983
• Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
• Libya 1986
• El Salvador 1980s
• Nicaragua 1980s
• Iran 1987
• Panama 1989
• Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
• Kuwait 1991
• Somalia 1993
• Bosnia 1994, 1995
• Sudan 1998
• Afghanistan 1998
• Yugoslavia 1999
• Yemen 2002
• Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular no-fly-zone basis)
• Iraq 2003-2011 (Second Gulf War)
• Afghanistan 2001 to present
• Pakistan 2007 to present
• Somalia 2007-8, 2011 to present
• Yemen 2009, 2011 to present
• Libya 2011
• Syria 2013?

The above list doesn’t include the repeated use by the United States of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and other charming inventions of the Pentagon mad scientists; also not included: chemical and biological weapons abroad, chemical and biological weapons in the United States (sic), and encouraging the use of chemical and biological weapons by other nations; all these lists can be found in William Blum’s book “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”.

A story just released by Foreign Policy magazine, based on newly-discovered classified documents, reports how, in 1988, the last year of the 8-year Iraq-Iran War, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks by Iraq far more devastating than anything Syria has seen. 11 Indeed, during that war the United States was the primary supplier to Iraq of the chemicals and hardware necessary to provide the Saddam Hussein regime with a chemical-warfare capability. 12

Now, apparently, the United States has discovered how horrible chemical warfare is, even if only of the “alleged” variety.
 
Humanitarian intervention

Some of those currently advocating bombing Syria turn for justification to their old faithful friend “humanitarian intervention”, one of the earliest examples of which was the 1999 US and NATO bombing campaign to stop ethnic cleansing and drive Serbian forces from Kosovo. However, a collective amnesia appears to have afflicted countless intelligent, well-meaning people, who are convinced that the US/NATO bombing took place after the mass forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this “ethnic cleansing”. In actuality, the systematic forced deportations of large numbers of people from Kosovo did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a Serbian reaction to it, born of extreme anger and powerlessness. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, and the few days after. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:

… with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would NOW vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation.

On March 27, we find the first reference to a “forced march” or anything of that sort.

But the propaganda version is already set in marble.

If you see something, say something. Unless it’s US war crimes.

“When you sign a security clearance and swear oaths, you actually have to abide by that. It is not optional.” – Steven Bucci, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, speaking of Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley) 13

Really? No matter what an individual with security clearance is asked to do? No matter what he sees and knows of, he still has to ignore his conscience and follow orders? But Steven, my lad, you must know that following World War II many Germans of course used “following orders” as an excuse. The victorious Allies of course executed many of them.

Their death sentences were laid down by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, which declared that “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

Nuremberg Principle IV moreover states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

Manning, and Edward Snowden as well, did have moral choices, and they chose them.

It should be noted that Barack Obama has refused to prosecute those under the Bush administration involved in torture specifically – he declares – because they were following orders. Has this “educated” man never heard of the Nuremberg Tribunal? Why isn’t he embarrassed to make this argument again and again?

I imagine that in the past three years that Manning has had to live with solitary confinement, torture and humiliation, adding mightily to her already existing personal difficulties, the thought of suicide has crossed her mind on a number of occasions. It certainly would have with me if I had been in her position. In the coming thousands and thousands of days and long nights of incarceration such thoughts may be Manning’s frequent companion. If the thoughts become desire, and the desire becomes unbearable, I hope the brave young woman can find a way to carry it out. Every person has that right, including heroes.

The United States and its European poodles may have gone too far for their own good in their attempts to control all dissenting communication – demanding total information from companies engaged in encrypted messaging, forcing the closure of several such firms, obliging the plane carrying the Bolivian president to land, smashing the computers at a leading newspaper, holding a whistle-blowing journalist’s partner in custody for nine hours at an airport, seizing the phone records of Associated Press journalists, threatening to send a New York Times reporter to jail if he doesn’t disclose the source of a leak, shameless lying at high levels, bugging the European Union and the United Nations, surveillance without known limits … Where will it end? Will it backfire at some point and allow America to return to its normal level of police state? On July 24, a bill that would have curtailed the power of the NSA was only narrowly defeated by 217 to 205 votes in the US House of Representatives.

And how long will Amnesty International continue to tarnish its image by refusing to state the obvious? That Cheleas Manning is a Prisoner of Conscience. If you go to Amnesty’s website and search “prisoner of conscience” you’ll find many names given, including several Cubans prominently featured. Can there be any connection to Manning’s omission with the fact that the executive director of Amnesty International USA, Suzanne Nossel, came to her position from the US Department of State, where she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations?

A phone call to Amnesty’s office in New York was unable to provide me with any explanation for Manning’s omission. I suggest that those of you living in the UK try the AI headquarters in London.

Meanwhile, at the other pre-eminent international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, the director of HRW’s Washington office, has been nominated by Obama to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Is it really expecting too much that a high official of a human rights organization should not go to work for a government that has been the world’s leading violator of human rights for more than half a century? And if that designation is too much for you to swallow just consider torture, the worst example of mankind’s inhumanity to man. What government has been intimately involved with that horror more than the United States? Teaching it, supplying the manuals, supplying the equipment, creation of torture centers in much of the world, kidnapping people to these places (“rendition”), solitary confinement, forced feeding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Chicago … Lord forgive us!

Surrounding Russia

One of the reactions of the United States to Russia granting asylum to Edward Snowden was reported thus:

“There was a blistering response on Capitol Hill and calls for retaliatory measures certain to infuriate the Kremlin. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), long one of the Senate’s leading critics of Moscow, blasted the asylum decision as ‘a slap in the face of all Americans’ and called on the administration to turn up the pressure on Moscow on a variety of fronts, including a renewed push for NATO expansion and new missile-defense programs in Europe.” 14

But we’ve long been told that NATO expansion and its missiles in Europe have nothing to do with Russia. And Russia has been told the same, much to Moscow’s continuous skepticism. “Look,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin about NATO in 2001, “this is a military organization. It’s moving towards our border. Why?” 15 He subsequently described NATO as “the stinking corpse of the cold war.” 16

We’ve been told repeatedly by the US government that the missiles are for protection against an Iranian attack. Is it (choke) possible that the Bush and Obama administrations have been (gasp) lying to us?
America’s love affair with Guns

Adam Kokesh is a veteran of the war in Iraq who lives in the Washington, DC area. He’s one of the countless Americans who’s big on guns, guns that will be needed to protect Americans from their oppressive government, guns that will be needed for “the revolution”.

On July 4 the 31-year-old Kokesh had a video made of himself holding a shotgun and loading shells into it while speaking into the camera as he stood in Freedom Plaza, a federal plot of land in between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. This led to a police raid of his home and his being arrested on the 25th for carrying a firearm outside his home or office. The 23-second video can be seen on YouTube. 17

I sent Kokesh the following email:

“Adam: All your weapons apparently didn’t help you at all when the police raided your house. But supposedly, people like you advocate an armed populace to protect the public from an oppressive government. I’ve never thought that that made much sense because of the huge imbalance between the military power of the public vs. that of the government. And it seems that I was correct.”

I received no reply, although his still being in jail may explain that.

Kokesh, incidentally, had a program on RT (Russia Today) for a short while last year.

Notes

1. The three preceding jokes are courtesy of my friend Viktor Dedaj of Paris ↩
2. Reuters/Ipsos poll, August 26, 2013 ↩
3. Sunday Times (UK), YouGov poll, August 25 ↩
4. Le Parisien, August 30, 2012 ↩
5. Christian Science Monitor, August 29, 2013 ↩
6. Washington Post, August 29, 2013 ↩
7. The Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2013 ↩
8. Washington Post, August 31, 2013 ↩
9. UN Web TV, August 27, 2013 (starting at minute 12:00) ↩
10. The Washington Post, August 31, 2013 ↩
11. Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid, “CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran”, Foreign Policy, August 26, 2013 ↩
12. William Blum, “Anthrax for Export”, The Progressive (Madison, Wisconsin), April 1998 ↩
13. Washington Post, August 22, 2013 ↩
14. Washington Post, July 31, 2013 ↩
15. Associated Press, June 16, 2001 ↩
16. Time magazine, December 2007 ↩
17. Washington Post, August 13, 2013 ↩

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.