Violence Against Journalists and Community Leaders on the Rise in Guatemala

CSO

Over the past few weeks, Guatemala has witnessed some of the worst violence against journalists in recent times. Election years are the most dangerous times for journalists in Guatemala, regardless of their political leanings. So far in 2015, three journalists have been killed, many have received threats and been assaulted, and over 10 Indigenous community leaders have been jailed. The persecution of those who dedicate their lives to exposing the truth and informing their communities is of great concern to human rights organizations around the globe. Community radio reporters in Guatemala are well aware of the struggle for freedom of expression, as they are constantly immersed in it themselves. Now, even journalists from larger networks, like Prensa Libre, are finding themselves under attack.

On March 10, 2015, at around 1:00pm in the central park of Mazatenango, Suchitepequez, Guatemala, two journalists were shot to death. Danilo López and Ramiro Salazar, journalists from the national media networks Prensa Libre and Radio Nuevo Mundo, respectively, were the victims, while Marvin Túnchez, a local  journalist, was gravely injured. Witnesses affirm that the murderers rode a motorcycle and after committing the crime quickly fled to the mayor’s home, where they hid. The mayor of Mazatenango denied the allegations. However, Miguel Angel Mendez, the director of Prensa Libre,  stated on their official webpage that Danilo López had expressed concern over threats he had received from two mayors in Suchitepequez. "I condemn this crime in the strongest possible way. We stand in solidarity with the family and have alerted the international community that it is time that Guatemalans show more concern about the terrible atmosphere of danger and lawlessness that prevails in this country," Mendez added.

On the night of March 13, 2015, in Chicacao, Suchitepequez, 20-year-old cameraman Giovanni Villatoro, of  Noticiero de Intercable, was shot to death by two men on a motorcycle. Several community and human rights organizations condemned the attacks and demanded that authorities clarify the facts and safeguard the lives of journalists, who should be valued for their contribution to democracy in the country. Iliana Alamilla, Director of the Center for Informative Reports on Guatemala (CERIGUA) stated, “Journalists from outside the capital are most vulnerable to danger and attacks. As the journalist community mourns, we urge the authorities to make efforts to safeguard the lives of journalists."

In a similar attempt to inhibit the efforts of Indigenous communities, to access information and defend their territories, two Indigenous community leaders were arrested without any real charges in Guatemala City on March 24, 2015. Rigoberto Juarez and Domingo Baltazar are Q’anjob’al Indigenous leaders from Huehuetenango who have been fighting for their territories against hydroelectric companies in the region. Both leaders were in the capital denouncing human rights violations against their community of Santa Eulalia when the National Police arrested them without a warrant. Ricardo Cajas, a Mayan lawyer, was assaulted during the arrest when he attempted to ask the police to identify themselves and show an arrest warrant. The arrest of these two leaders adds to the list of now 15 Q’anjob’al Mayan activists arrested as political prisoners since 2012. The First Declaration Hearing was held on Friday March 27,  in the Tower of Courts in Guatemala City, where attempts were made to liberate both leaders. As they left the hearing, agents of the National Police once again arrested Rigoberto Juárez, this time accusing him of plagiarism, kidnapping and incitement to commit crime. He was transferred back to the jails under the Tower Courts in Guatemala City.

The increased violence against all political, community and media leaders in Guatemala is of serious concern to both the national and international community. Community protests have been organized demanding thorough investigations of all the killings and arrests. Guatemala is facing a time of turmoil as corrupt political leaders attempt to hold their positions, suppress freedom of expression that might threaten their power, and exploit Indigenous communities’ resources.  

Belize: Maya Land Rights Case to be Heard in International Courts

CSO

The Maya people of Toledo are scheduled for a hearing to reaffirm their land rights case at the regional Caribbean Court of Justice in April of 2015, after almost a decade of back and forth in the national courts in Belize.  Their claim to the land has been upheld twice in the Supreme Court, once in 2009 and again in 2013.  The government of Belize continues to assert that the land title the Maya hold should not be considered Native or Indigenous land title, but merely based on a long period of occupation.  However Maya leaders are optimistic about the ruling:  "We are of the belief that it is our unity, our long standing customary practices that has sustained us and our humble leadership that yet again we will achieve not only the favors of the court but the minds and hearts of many people. The struggle of the Maya is the struggle of all people,” announced Alfonso Cal, President of the assembly of traditional leaders, looking forward to the hearing.

Indeed, this case has upheld Indigenous land rights at every stage, and has become precedent setting in Belize as well as internationally, where it has caught the attention of Indigenous Peoples fighting similar land rights battles with their colonial governments. Senior Counsel Antoinette Moore, the Belizean lawyer working on the case, noted, "The final appeal of the Maya communities of southern Belize before the Caribbean Court of Justice raises the important issues of Indigenous land rights, equality, and cultural integrity in the post colonial Commonwealth Caribbean."

The Maya have been fighting to legally established their land rights, guaranteed to them in international human rights documents like the UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, since 1997, when several Maya villages learned that their ancestral land had been declared a national park without their consent or involvement. A decade of domestic legal cases later, the Supreme Court of Belize handed a major victory to Indigenous Peoples by ruling that the Maya villages of Conejo and Santa Cruz have customary tile to the lands they traditionally use and occupy in accordance with their ancestral land tenure system. In 2010 the Court extended that title to all Maya villages of southern Belize.   

Meanwhile, the Belizean government has tried to avoid implementing the decisions at each stage, bringing appeals to the decisions, and in 2010 has used their authority over the natural park Sarstoon-Temash, to grant oil concessions to Texas oil company US Capital Energy.

Pablo Mis, spokesperson for the Maya Leaders Alliance, spoke of the heavy toll this antagonism has taken on the Maya people. "We have been dragged through the courts, we have been placed against each other and we have been called immigrants to the lands where the sacred bones of our ancestors rest. Like the trees of our land we swayed under pressure but kept reaching out to the sunlight. Our spirit was never broken. Looking ahead, our desire as the Maya Q'eqchi and Mopan communities of southern Belize is to begin the transition to a new model of living in harmony with nature and with one another."

International human rights bodies have overwhelmingly ruled in favor of the Maya.

The UN Human Rights Committee and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have called on Belize to recognize Maya land rights and desist from issuing resource extraction concessions.  These recommendations come on the heels of similar pronouncements from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the UN Human Rights Council in its Universal Periodic Review of Belize, and consistent support from former UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya.

The hearing will take place April 22-24, 2015 in Belize City where the court will be sitting to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Belize joining the Caribbean Court after formally replacing the UK-based Privy Council in June 2010.

Iran Nuclear Deal: Lessons from North Korea

Vyjayanti Raghavan

After over a decade-long and torturous negotiation, Iran and the US reached an agreement over the former’s nuclear program. There has been some light applause from the international community but that is all. Only US President Barack Obama has been trumpeting its success.

The rest of the world’s muted response is for good reason: a previous such agreement that the US reached in 1994 with a country aspiring to achieve nuclear weapons – North Korea – came badly unstuck. In that agreement too, promises were made and broken by both sides in a cloud of acrimony.

There are two problems with such agreements. First, the nuclear weapons policy of the country wishing to build nuclear weapons is determined by its medium term threat perceptions. Second, such agreements are put in place by a strategy (on the part of the nuclear- aspirant country) to buy time while it wards off international pressure in the form of sanctions etc. This being so, there is an inbuilt structural flaw in such agreements that allows both parties to cry foul that the other side is reneging.

Countries can start finding faults over the smallest things if they do not want to stick to the agreement.

The Iran nuclear deal is therefore reminiscent of what happened when North Korea signed the Geneva Accord in 1994. The Iran deal could follow the same pattern unless great care is taken – and even then it could come unstuck.

The US-North Korea DealTo recall, the US had entered into negotiations with North Korea only because it had threatened to withdraw from the NPT. According to the final agreement, North Korea agreed to remain in the NPT, to submit to regular IAEA inspections, and to give up its entire nuclear program.

In return,  the US agreed to end the provocative Team Spirit military exercises that it carried out annually with South Korea, lift the economic sanctions, and provide North Korea with proliferation-resistant Light water Reactors.

There was an overall sense of relief and euphoria all around, just as now. But as it turned out, the agreement unravelled very quickly. This was essentially because it had been hurriedly entered into by both parties without much thought put into the details. In a sense, both parties were trying to buy time and seek a temporary solution.

The US had signed because it was convinced that it was only a matter of time before the Kim Jong-Il regime would collapse. It never occurred to Washington that it might not, which is what happened eventually. The US had not worked out either the details of the costing of the LWR or the incompatibility of the existing distribution infrastructure in North Korea for meeting its domestic energy requirements. More importantly, in the current context, the US’s approach all along had been to contain North Korea’s nuclear program and not to eradicate it, just as it is in Iran’s case.

Finally, when it came to implementing the agreement, other obstacles cropped up because not all of North Korea’s nuclear facilities had been covered and the US made that a major issue.

On North Korea’s side, its real motives were to only engage with the US in negotiations and get as much as possible out of it to help with its persistent electricity shortages.  But it was determined to build nuclear weapons and was not going to give up so easily. It also feared a pre-emptive attack by the US, just as Iran fears one by Israel.

In the end, both sides began picking on minor infringements – such as very minor delays in doing things that had been agreed upon. The result? Within a few years, the agreement was a dead letter.

Deja Vu?So, after a lot of finger-pointing by both sides about bad faith, in 2002, the agreement failed completely and North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003.

Will history repeat itself in the case of the Iran-US agreement?

The answer depends on its weakest points, and there already is one to begin with: domestic politics. Obama and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayotallah Khamenei both have to cater to hardliners at home. While Khamenei prefers the agreement to be vague, leaving Tehran room to work out the details with the hardliners before the deal is finally signed in June, US Secretary of State John Kerry is being forced to present the specifics to the Congress – which in effect means that this could result in differences right from the start.

The two countries have a few months to work things out and maybe everything will turn out well. But on the face of it – Saudi Arabia is already tapping Pakistan for a nuclear cover – it appears like it will be a difficult task. 

South Korea: US THAAD or Chinese AIIB?

Sandip Kumar Mishra

It is not an easy choice for South Korea to decide about participating in two initiatives, one spearheaded by the US and the other by China. The US insists on South Korea joining its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which is said to be a missile defence system to protect South Korea against any military adventurism by North Korea. However, the THAAD may allegedly be used to spy on China and Russia, and so the latter forbid South Korea’s participation in any such system. In another move, China has been quite active in the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has been seen as a serious challenge to the existing international and regional economic arrangements that are largely dominated by the West and Japan. China is being quite persuasive in getting South Korea on board by offering it a founding member status. However, the US is not happy with the AIIB initiative and would like South Korea to keep away from it.

The contest between the US and China for the Asia-Pacific has made it difficult for South Korea to choose between THAAD and AIIB purely on the basis of its self-defined national interests. South Korea, has been trying to emerge as a middle power in regional politics since 2009, and finds it regressive to go back to either/or choices between the US and China. Under the rubric of its middle power diplomacy and as part of its ‘New Asia initiative’, South Korea became active in providing Official Development Assistance (ODA) to some of the poorest countries in the world, participated more actively in the various international organisations, and more importantly, tried to inject new positive agendas in regional politics by supporting ‘green growth’ etc. The global presence of South Korean companies and the popularity of South Korean cultural products in neighbouring countries, known as as ‘Hallyu’, have provided further impetus to South Korea’s rising stature in the region. South Korea’s attempt to balance between the US and China also emanates from its desire to play a more autonomous and constructive role between them, and this is considered a sine qua non of its emergence as a middle power. 

Pragmatic realities also demand that South Korea should avoid taking sides between the two countries in any disagreement between them. The US military presence in South Korea and its security commitment to Seoul has been an undeniable fact for decades. However, China is also emerging as an important partner for South Korea by being its number one trading partner, in addition to its key role in South Korea’s dealings with North Korea. South Korea would thus like to maintain good relations with both the US and China for these practical reasons as well.

However, the dilemma South Korea faces on the THAAD and AIIB front is a difficult one. The best option, which has been prescribed by many scholars and even policy-makers and politicians in South Korea, is that it should join both initiatives. By doing so, South Korea would not be seen as defying either the US or China, and will be a position acceptable to both. Already, the US has diluted its position on South Korea joining the AIIB from ‘being unacceptable’ one year ago to ‘South Korea could decide by its own’, and there are chances that China would also come to terms with South Korea joining the THAAD.

However, the AIIB with China and the THAAD with the US do not go well with South Korea’s behaviour as a middle power, which would suggest a relatively more autonomous space in its policy-making. The AIIB is an economic platform and network led by China with whom South Korea already has massive economic exchanges; joining the AIIB therefore would not bring any fundamental shift in its bilateral relations with China or the US. Already, many close friends of the US such as the UK have declared their participation in it, and it would not be a big issue if South Korea also decides to joins. However, THAAD is different. Many scholars disagree with the claim that it is aimed at North Korea - they claim that its real targets are China and Russia. The skeptics say that the THAAD would not be very effective in averting the North Korean threat as the geographical proximity between South and North Korea is very close. Moreover, it is also said that South Korea has been trying to develop its own indigenous Korean Anti-Missile Defense (KAMD) system. For all these reasons, at the beginning, South Korea said that it was not interested in the THAAD. Furthermore, joining the THAAD would strain South Korea’s relations with both China and Russia and thus would hamper South Korea’s middle power diplomacy.

So, a rational choice for middle power South Korea would be to join the AIIB but to refuse the THAAD. But the choice for South Korea as an American ally would be to join the THAAD and not the AIIB. South Korea announced its decision to join the AIIB on 26 March 2015 but is yet to make its position clear on the THAAD. It would interesting to see what choice South Korea makes, as it would determine South Korea’s approach to regional politics in the future as well as its own place in its emerging dynamics.

Myanmar: Democracy in Brakes

Wasbir Hussain

Signals emanating from Myanmar indicate the country’s semi-civilian government is pursuing democracy with the brakes on. The brutal crackdown of a student protest by the authorities in early March has once again brought the spotlight back on a nation that was under military rule for 49 years until 2011. Apart from sowing seeds of doubt among the citizens about the possibility of actually experiencing a democratic free spirit in the days ahead, Naypyidaw’s decision to put down the student movement against the National Education Bill has upset donor countries and human rights groups across the world.

The student protestors, led primarily by the All Burma Federation of Students’ Unions (ABSFU), have a set of 11 main demands that include the right to establish student unions at their institutions, freedom to study the country’s ethnic languages and greater funding for education. The National Education Bill passed by Parliament in September 2014 prohibits student politics by not allowing the formation of students unions. On 10 March, the police used brutal force to break a protest by students and monks in the city of Letpadan, some 140 km north of Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial hub.

The government’s action on the students may have been disheartening for Western countries that have supported Myanmar’s rather reluctant march to democracy, but many would think four years on the slippery road to a democratic form of governance is a bit too early to give a verdict on the intentions of the people at the helm of affairs, which includes the military. The biggest irony in the whole story is the near silence of the country’s best-known symbol of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD). The NLD had in fact backed the controversial educational bill last year.

If Ms Suu Kyi has refrained from demonstrating her sympathy for the students’ protest, except for urging all sides to keep away from violence, she has also not bothered to lend her voice against human rights violations by the country’s government. It is not difficult to see through Ms Suu Kyi’s game-plan as she and her party is seeking the support of the government in revising Myanmar’s constitution which currently bars her from running for president. The military-drafted constitution has a clause preventing anyone with a spouse or children of foreign citizenship from becoming president. The daughter of independence hero General Aung San, Ms Suu Kyi’s sons are British nationals. She and her sons, of course, have a huge following in Myanmar. 

Despite the ban on Ms Suu Kyi from becoming president, the NLD is planning to contest the national elections later this year. If this is the case, backing the students in their genuine demand for more freedom in matters relating to affairs at educational institutions would have been a good strategy for Ms Suu Kyi and the NLD to adopt. After all, the role of students as a moral and political force is rooted in the 1920s and 1930s when Ms Suu Kyi’s father General Aung San was at the forefront of a movement that sought autonomy for universities and the right to set up student unions. The democracy movement that Myanmar witnessed subsequently has its roots in this students’ stir.

Ms Suu Kyi’s silence on the students’ protest may have anguished her supporters as of now, but they know she is Myanmar’s best bet to usher in true democracy, and are expected to rally around her in any case. The NLD, too, is aware of this fact and have therefore taken the decision to contest the elections. Ms Suu Kyi and her colleagues seem to be convinced that if the NLD were to win the polls, it would give them greater power and authority in parliament to bring about further amendments to the junta-drafted constitution and do away with the controversial clause that bars her from becoming president.

The current semi-civilian establishment in Naypyidaw, too, would obviously want the opposition NLD to contest the national elections later this year because without that the polls would look like a sham electoral exercise in the eyes of the international community. That may hurt Myanmar’s interest in view of the liberal aid now pouring in for the country’s development after years of sanction against the brutal military regime. Moreover, this would be the first election under the country's new democratic system, and as such is very significant. In March, therefore, Myanmar President Thein Sein met Ms Suu Kyi for the fifth time since the Nobel laureate's release from house arrest in 2010. Presidential spokesman and information minister Ye Htut said, “It was a one-on-one meeting and they discussed matters concerning constitutional amendments and holding a free and fair general election.”

The latest crackdown on the students reminded everyone of the 1988 student uprising in the country that was quashed by the government, with hundreds killed and imprisoned. The crisis drew international attention on Myanmar’s struggle for democracy and freedom from a brutal military-led dictatorship. That was supposed to have been history when in 2011 Myanmar’s generals stepped down, and the government began a process of reforms, with the backing of the US. The impact of this transition has been felt on the economy that is fast evolving, but the country’s road to democracy has been rocky to say the least.

The US has built its case for extending liberal aid to Myanmar keeping in view the aspirations of the Burmese people. The US has been saying it is providing assistance to deepen and accelerate Myanmar’s political, economic, and social transition; promote and strengthen respect for human rights; deliver the benefits of reform to the country’s people; and support the development of a stable society that reflects the diversity of its people. Total US assistance to Myanmar between 2012 and mid-2014 is estimated at US$ 202,185,000. But, contrary to expectations, national reconciliation is not happening and the road has been thorny. There has been fighting recently between ethnic Kokang rebels and the Myanmar army in north eastern Shan state that sent thousands of refugees fleeing across the border into China.

India’s stakes in Myanmar, too, are heavy. As the world’s largest democracy, India is expected to aid Myanmar in consolidating its transformation into a true democracy. If it succeeds in doing so, New Delhi will not only have a democratic neighbour, but will have managed to wean Myanmar away considerably from the grip of the Chinese. The attempt by the Narendra Modi government to raise the bar on India-Myanmar relations is a good effort in this direction. Myanmar is already showing signs that it could actually be against becoming a strategic pawn of China. New Delhi’s strength lies in the fact that while recognising and backing Ms Suu Kyi in her struggle for democracy, it maintained more than cordial relations with Myanmar’s military establishment. What is needed is consolidation of the ties, demonstrated by Prime Minister Modi’s November 2014 visit and talks with Myanmar’s leaders, and, of course, a continuous nudge not just to march along but value the true ideals of democracy.

Ukraine's Economy Plunges: So, Who Should Pay For It?

Eric Zuesse

According to Ukrainian news-accounts, Ukraine's economy is rapidly falling. On April 2nd was reported that “Sales of new cars in Ukraine fell to the lowest in 15 years,” and that March's sales-volume (number of cars sold) was 23% less than that in February. Even more startlingly, "The general decline in sales of vehicles in Ukraine in January-February 2015 compared to the same period in 2014 was 67%.” So, whenever comparisons go back not merely month-to-month but to the situation prior to the February 2014 coup by the Obama Administration in Ukraine (which was quite violent and surprised EU leaders, who knew nothing about it in advance), this automotive sales-decline is especially stark.

Broad-based polling also supports the conclusion that the Ukrainian population are suffering from the consequences of Obama's 2014 coup. Ukraine's pro-Western Razumkov Center think-tank has periodically since 2004 (“the Orange Revolution”) asked Ukrainians, “Is the situation in Ukraine developing in a right or wrong direction?” The latest “right direction” score, March 2015, is 17.5%, which is the lowest such score in nearly three years. The highest score in the past 10 years was 41.3%, in June 2010, right after the man whom Obama overthrew in 2014, Viktor Yanukovych, was elected President. The second-highest such score was 26.1%, in December 2013, which was their first poll taken after Yanukovych had turned down the EU's offer because Ukraine's Academy of Sciences had calculated that it would cost Ukrainians $160 billion — it would destroy the economy. (Maybe their economists got that right, after all.) But, though the Ukrainian public were relieved at that rejection of the EU's offer, the U.S. CIA and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine were definitely not, and so they secretly organized public “Maidan” demonstrations against this turn-down, and used those public demonstrations as cover for their far-right, rabidly anti-Russian, mercenaries, to execute the actual coup, masked and cross-dressed as if they were government security forces shooting into the crowd so that the violence would be blamed on President Yanukovych. Here was Obama's agent, Victoria Nuland, on the phone on 4 February 2014, telling America's Ambassador in Kiev whom to get to be appointed to run the government after the coup; and her choice, “Yats,” was appointed 22 days later, on February 26th, and he still runs the country today, and probably for as long as Obama remains pleased with his performance.

Another recent news report, this one on April 1st, headlines “German business is ready to leave Ukraine” and it says: “German businesses are disappointed in Ukraine, and contracting. Most of the 600 companies operating in the country, are currently conducting an audit to determine the desirability of further functioning — exploring options for going out of business with minimal losses — according to the director of the Eastern Committee of German Economy, Chairman of the German-Ukrainian Forum, Rainer Lindner.”

However, yet another Ukrainian news-report, this one on April 2nd, headlines, "Merkel pledges to support investments of German business in Ukraine,” and it notes that, during Chancellor Angela Merkel's joint press conference with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk in Berlin on April 1st, she had said, "We talked about this a lot, and discussed ways that will encourage German companies to come to Ukraine,” not leave it.

Already, $40 billion from EU and U.S. taxpayers, through the IMF and other financial intermediaries, are propping up the post-coup regime in Ukraine, and yet that sum is still less than investor George Soros claims is needed: $50 billion. And, so, various ways are being sought to leave Russia holding the bag for these losses, as much as possible (and at least to the tune of that needed additional $10 billion). 

On April 1st, Britain's Financial Times bannered, "Ukraine's debt haircut showdown looms,” and reported that "academics say another option might be for Ukraine to make Russia's debt unenforceable in English courts, arguing that Russia's annexation of Crimea should be set off against the debt.” That way, when Ukraine's citizens get their pensions and health care and other government-services cut back in order to pay the accumulated debts of the Ukrainian Government (which were largely pocketed by Ukraine's aristocrats or “oligarchs”), those debt-payments will end up going to the new, Western, (post-coup) investors, and not to the former, (pre-coup) Russian (and Chinese), ones. Western investors don't care about Ukrainians, but they absolutely hate Russians (and don't much like Chinese, either). Any money that's skimmed off of Ukrainian citizens should be heading westward, not eastward, they argue. Their chief argument right now is that Russia ‘stole' Crimea, and that therefore Russians forfeit any right to anything from Ukraine — including the tens of billions of dollars that Russians had lent to Ukraine before Obama's 2014 coup turned Ukraine into an anti-Russian military platform (for NATO missiles against Russia, according to the Obama Administration's plans and anti-Russian propaganda).

The Cato Institute, of the libertarian Koch brothers, has even presented an extremely right-wing former economic advisor to Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Andrei Illarionov, as being their chief spokesperson for this Russia-stole-Crimea argument against Illarionov's former employer. Headlining in a February 2015 publication from the Razumkov Center think-tank, “The Point of No Return,” Illarionov argued:

“The fact that Russia should return Crimea to Ukraine is indisputable,” even though Russia disputes it. He went on: “It does not matter in any way how exactly Crimea was transferred from RSFR's jurisdiction to that of the Ukrainian SSR in 1954, … since the entire transfer was executed based on the decisions of the supreme legislative bodies of the USSR, RSFR, and Ukrainian SSR, in full compliance with the legislation in force at the time. …

“Likewise of no relevance is the allegedly pro-Russian public opinion in Crimea, … even if the majority of its population really would vote for the annexation. … 

“Neither is the Crimean jurisdiction an issue of the Crimean population. …

“The issue of Crimea's ownership is the prerogative of only one subject of international law: the owner of the territory. The owner of the Crimean peninsula is the state of Ukraine.”

Here is the reason why he was dismissing what the people who live in Crimea wanted (and which they wanted even more after the coup): he knows that they had sound reason to be especially terrified of the people whom the Obama Administration had placed in control of Ukraine, and that more than 90% of Crimeans were enormously relieved for Crimea to be restored as part of Russia, which it had been part of from 1783-1954.

That's how Crimeans came to be protected from the hell that has been imposed by Obama's Ukrainian regime against the ‘terrorists' who live in Ukraine's Donbass region in the former Ukraine's far-east, which had voted 90% for Yanukovych, and so who didn't accept Obama's coup overthrowing Yanukovych — for that rejection of Obama's dictatorship over them, they are called ‘terrorists' by Obama's regime, which has now invaded and bombed there twice and will probably do it yet a third time, rather than grant the residents of Donbass what Britain recently (and with no bombing) granted the residents of Scotland: the opportunity to decide for themselves whether to continue being a part of that country. (But, inconsistently, Britain's rulers won't acknowledge the same basic human right to the residents of Crimea and Donbass, who have far more reason to reject Obama's rule than Scotts did to challenge UK's.)

In keeping with standard libertarian theory (such as at Cato), and with standard economic theory, which theory is that the sole real purpose of government is to enforce the rights of owners to their property, Illarionov (an admirer of the far-right economist Milton Friedman) says that a nation is its land and the physical property on and under it, not its residents (unless they are slaves; i.e., property themselves). He rejects basic democratic theory, such as is embodied in America's own Constitution, which opens with its Sovereignty Clause as its Preamble:

“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Libertarians (and economists) assume that all rights reduce down to the right to property. But America's Founders didn't even include that right among its list of concerns upon which the USA was actually founded. Instead of sovereignty residing in property, or even in propertyholders, it resides in the people, and only in them (regardless of whether, or how much, property they might happen to own). This is a fundamentally different view of the purpose of the State, and of government — the view that government exists for the ruled, and not for the rulers (not for the benefit of the aristocracy). That the rulers are merely the elected representatives of the people, and can be dismissed by them, at will, by the people.

The RedCoats, the (troops hired by) British aristocracy in the 1700s, have apparently won the ideological war in more-recent times. Vladimir Putin will now necessarily be compelled by circumstances to decide whether or not he agrees with his former chief economic advisor on that fundamental matter; or, instead, with the Founders of the USA on it — this country which has unfortunately been subsequently conquered by a counter-revolution by the domestic aristocracy (especially after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decison), even without its people so much as knowing about (much less, understanding) the American counter-revolution that now is ruling us.

I develop this discussion further (in economics, law, ideology, and morality) in my just-issued book, Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics. It explains how this counter-revolution was waged in America and then went on to win the ideological war world-wide — and what must now be done in order to reverse the aristocracy's victory and to restore democracy.

But it's all summed up right here, in these very concrete news-events regarding Ukraine. Because: if what is at issue in government is the property, and not the people, then feudalism is again dominant, only under a more modern name. And that's the question and choice which is now at issue, regarding Ukraine, Crimea, Russia, and the future of the entire human species. This little piece of history, then, is just a microcosm of the whole, of our lives, and of those that will come after us.

Who’s Afraid of Iran’s Big Bad Bomb?

URI AVNERY

I must start with a shocking confession: I am not afraid of the Iranian nuclear bomb.

I know that this makes me an abnormal person, almost a freak.

But what can I do? I am unable to work up fear, like a real Israeli. Try as I may, the Iranian bomb does not make me hysterical.

My father once taught me how to withstand blackmail: imagine that the awful threat of the blackmailer has already come about. Then you can tell him: Go to hell.

I have tried many times to follow this advice and found it sound. So now I apply it to the Iranian bomb: I imagine that the worst has already happened: the awful ayatollahs have got the bombs that can eradicate little Israel in a minute.

So what?

According to foreign experts, Israel has several hundred nuclear bombs (assessments vary between 80-400. If Iran sends its bombs and obliterates most of Israel (myself included), Israeli submarines will obliterate Iran. Whatever I might think about Binyamin Netanyahu, I rely on him and our security chiefs to keep our “second strike” capability intact. Just last week we were informed that Germany had delivered another state-of-the-art submarine to our navy for this purpose.

Israeli idiots – and there are some around – respond: “Yes, but the Iranian leaders are not normal people. They are madmen. Religious fanatics. They will risk the total destruction of Iran just to destroy the Zionist state. Like exchanging queens in chess.”

Such convictions are the outcome of decades of demonizing. Iranians – or at least their leaders – are seen as subhuman miscreants.

Reality shows us that the leaders of Iran are very sober, very calculating politicians. Cautious merchants in the Iranian bazaar style. They don’t take unnecessary risks. The revolutionary fervor of the early Khomeini days is long past, and even Khomeini would not have dreamt of doing anything so close to national suicide.

According to the Bible, the great Persian king Cyrus allowed the captive Jews of Babylon to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. At that time, Persia was already an ancient civilization – both cultural and political.

After the “return from Babylon”, the Jewish commonwealth around Jerusalem lived for 200 years under Persian suzerainty. I was taught in school that these were happy years for the Jews.

Since then, Persian culture and history has lived through another two and a half millennia. Persian civilization is one of the oldest in the world. It has created a great religion and influenced many others, including Judaism. Iranians are fiercely proud of that civilization.

To imagine that the present leaders of Iran would even contemplate risking the very existence of Persia out of hatred of Israel is both ridiculous and megalomaniac.

Moreover, throughout history, relations between Jews and Persians have almost always been excellent. When Israel was founded, Iran was considered a natural ally, part of David Ben-Gurion’s “strategy of the periphery” – an alliance with all the countries surrounding the Arab world.

The Shah, who was re-installed by the American and British secret services, was a very close ally. Teheran was full of Israeli businessmen and military advisers. It served as a base for the Israeli agents working with the rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq who were fighting against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

After the Islamic revolution, Israel still supported Iran against Iraq in their cruel 8-year war. The notorious Irangate affair, in which my friend Amiram Nir and Oliver North played such an important role, would not have been possible without the old Iranian-Israeli ties.

Even now, Iran and Israel are conducting amiable arbitration proceedings about an old venture: the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline built jointly by the two countries.

If the worst comes to the worst, nuclear Israel and nuclear Iran will live in a Balance of Terror.

Highly unpleasant, indeed. But not an existential menace.

However, for those who live in terror of the Iranian nuclear capabilities, I have a piece of advice: use the time we still have.

Under the American-Iranian deal, we have at least 10 years before Iran could start the final phase of producing the bomb.

Please use this time for making peace.

The Iranian hatred of the “Zionist Regime” – the State of Israel – derives from the fate of the Palestinian people. The feeling of solidarity for the helpless Palestinians is deeply ingrained in all Islamic peoples. It is part of the popular culture in all of them. It is quite real, even if the political regimes misuse, manipulate or ignore it.

Since there is no ground for a specific Iranian hatred of Israel, it is solely based on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No conflict, no enmity.

Logic tells us: if we have several years before we have to live in the shadow of an Iranian nuclear bomb, let’s use this time to eliminate the conflict. Once the Palestinians themselves declare that they consider the historic conflict with Israel settled, no Iranian leadership will be able to rouse its people against us.

For several weeks now, Netanyahu has been priding himself publicly on a huge, indeed historic, achievement.

For the first time ever, Israel is practically part of an Arab alliance.

Throughout the region, the conflict between Muslim Sunnis and Muslim Shiites is raging. The Shiite camp, headed by Iran, includes the Shiites in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. (Netanyahu falsely – or out of ignorance – includes the Sunni Hamas in this camp.)

The opposite Sunni camp includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf states. Netanyahu hints that Israel is now secretly accepted by them as a member.

It is a very untidy picture. Iran is fighting against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, which is a mortal enemy of Israel. Iran is supporting the Assad regime in Damascus, which is also supported by Hezbollah, which fights against the lslamic State, while the Saudis support other extreme Sunni Syrians who fight against Assad and the Islamic State. Turkey supports Iran and the Saudis while fighting against Assad. And so on.

I am not enamored with Arab military dictatorships and corrupt monarchies. Frankly, I detest them. But if Israel succeeds in becoming an official member of any Arab coalition, it would be a historic breakthrough, the first in 130 years of Zionist-Arab conflict.

However, all Israeli relations with Arab countries are secret, except those with Egypt and Jordan, and even with these two the contacts are cold and distant, relations between the regimes rather than between the peoples.

Let’s face facts: no Arab state will engage in open and close cooperation with Israel before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ended. Even kings and dictators cannot afford to do so. The solidarity of their peoples with the oppressed Palestinians is far too profound.

Real peace with the Arab countries is impossible without peace with the Palestinian people, as peace with the Palestinian people is impossible without peace with the Arab countries.

So if there is now a chance to establish official peace with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and to turn the cold peace with Egypt into a real one, Netanyahu should jump at it. The terms of an agreement are already lying on the table: the Saudi peace plan, also called the Arab Initiative, which was adopted many years ago by the entire Arab League. It is based on the two-state solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Netanyahu could amaze the whole world by “doing a de Gaulle” – making peace with the Sunni Arab world (as de Gaulle did with Algeria) which would compel the Shiites to follow suit.

Do I believe in this? I do not. But if God wills it, even a broomstick can shoot.

And on the day of the Jewish Pesach feast, commemorating the (imaginary) exodus from Egypt, we are reminding ourselves that miracles do happen.

NATO is Building Up for War

Brian Cloughley

Voutenay sur Cure, France.

The German city of Frankfurt is continental Europe’s largest financial center and host to the country’s Stock Exchange, countless other financial institutions, and the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) which is responsible for administering the monetary policy of the 18-nation Eurozone. The place is awash with money, as demonstrated by the plush new ECB office building which is costing a fortune.

The original price of the bank’s enormous palace was supposed to be 500 million euros, about 550 million dollars, but the bill has now been admitted as €1.3 billion (£930 m; $1.4 bn).  This absurdly over-expensive fiasco was directed by the people who are supposed to steer the financial courses of 18 nations and their half billion unfortunate citizens. If the ECB displays similar skill sets in looking after Europe’s money as it has in controlling the cost of constructing its huge twin-tower headquarters, then Europe is in for a rocky time.

Intriguingly, the Bank isn’t alone in contributing to Europe’s bureaucratic building boom. There is another Europe-based organization of equal ambition, pomposity and incompetence which is building a majestically expensive and luxurious headquarters with a mammoth cost overrun about which it is keeping very quiet indeed.

The perpetrator of this embarrassing farce is NATO,  the US-Canada-European North Atlantic Treaty Organization which is limping out of Afghanistan licking its wounds, having been fighting a bunch of sandal-wearing rag-clad amateur irregulars who gave the hi-tech forces of the West a very hard time in a war whose outcome was predictable. But the debacle hasn’t dimmed the vision of the zealous leaders of NATO who are confronting Russia in order to justify the existence of their creaking, leaking, defeated dinosaur.  Their problem is not only do they lose wars, but they then look for another one to fight — to be directed from a glittery new and vastly expensive building whose cost has soared above all estimates.

Just like NATO’s wars.

NATO’s operation ‘Unified Protector’ to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi involved a massive aerial blitz of 9,658 airstrikes which ended with the gruesome murder of Gadhafi — and caused collapse of Libya into an omnishambles where fanatics of the barbarous Islamic State are now establishing themselves.

In spite of the horror of NATO’s Libyan catastrophe one does have to have a quiet smile about Ivo H. Daalder and James G Stavridis whose deeply researched analysis in the journal Foreign Affairs in 2012 was titled ‘NATO’s Victory in Libya.’  These sages declared that “NATO’s operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention . . .  NATO’s involvement in Libya demonstrated that the alliance remains an essential source of stability . . .  NATO may not be able to replicate its success in Libya in another decade. NATO members must therefore use the Chicago summit to strengthen the alliance by ensuring that the burden sharing that worked so well in Libya — and continues in Afghanistan today — becomes the rule, not the exception.”

Not much is working well in either Libya or Afghanistan two years after the Daalder-Stavridis advocacy of “burden sharing” and it is obvious that NATO has been the opposite of a “source of stability” in both unfortunate countries.

In October 2005 I wrote that “NATO is to increase its troop numbers in Afghanistan to 15,000 and its secretary-general states that instead of acting as a peacekeeping force it will assume the combat role of U.S. troops, which is insane . . .   The insurgency in Afghanistan will continue until foreign troops leave, whenever that might be. After a while, the government in Kabul will collapse and there will be anarchy until a brutal, ruthless, drug-rich warlord achieves power. He will rule the country as it has always been ruled by Afghans: by threats, religious ferocity, deceit, bribery, and outright savagery when the latter can be practiced without retribution. And the latest foreign occupation will become just another memory.”

The number of US-NATO troops in Afghanistan has been reduced from a high of 130,000 to 13,000, of which some 10,000 are U.S., but NATO’s new headquarters building in Brussels is expanding in both size and cost. The budget for the immense complex was approved at 460 million Euros (500 million US dollars) in 2010 but has now surged to over 1.25 billion Euros,  about 1.4 billion dollars.

Germany’s Der Spiegel reported in January that the scandal of the cost overrun was being kept secret by all governments contributing to this redundant organization. A leaked cable from Germany’s ambassador explained that at a meeting of NATO representatives last December they “pointed to the disastrous effect on the image of the alliance if construction were to stop and if NATO appeared to be incapable of punctually completing a construction project that was decided at the NATO summit of government leaders in April 1999 in Washington. The risk of a further cost increase is already palpable.”

The solution to NATO’s self-imposed image problem was simple :  the people responsible for managing the affairs of a military alliance involving 28 countries, 3.5 million combatants and 5,000 nuclear weapons decided, as asked by the staff of its Secretary General, to deal with the matter “confidentially.”  In other words, the cost overruns and delays in construction are being deliberately concealed from the public in the hope that NATO’s executives will not appear incompetent.

Meantime, while trying to conceal their flaws, faults and failings in management of basic administrative affairs, NATO’s chiefs are squaring up to Russia in an attempt to persuade the world that President Putin is about to mount an invasion from the east.  The focal point of NATO’s contrived alarm is the corrupt and chaotic regime in power in Ukraine, which has serious disagreements with Russia and is therefore energetically supported by the United States to the point of distortion, menace and mendacity.

As reported in the UK’s Daily Telegraph on March 4, the commander of US troops in Europe, General Frederick “Ben” Hodges, has accused Russia of having 12,000 troops inside eastern Ukraine, which was irresponsible nonsense.

Hodges was formerly the army’s Congressional Liaison Officer in Washington where he obviously acquired a taste for political grandstanding, as in a political speech of the sort that generals have no right to make he declared that “We have to raise the cost for Putin. Right now he has 85 per cent domestic support. But when mothers start seeing their sons come home dead, when the price goes up, domestic support goes down,” which was as offensive as it was hostile.

In February the Wall Street Journal reported Hodges as saying “I believe the Russians are mobilizing right now for a war that they think is going to happen in five or six years—not that they’re going to start a war in five or six years, but I think they are anticipating that things are going to happen, and that they will be in a war of some sort, of some scale, with somebody within the next five or six years.” Just what President Putin was supposed to make of that is anyone’s guess — but it is certain that Hodges’ bellicose meanderings did nothing to persuade Moscow that there would be any attempt by the US-NATO coalition to modify its policy of uncompromising enmity.

Other pronouncements by NATO leaders have been equally threatening and intended to convince the public of western Europe that Russia attacked Ukraine.

But even if Russia had indeed invaded Ukraine, it would have had nothing whatever to do with anyone else.

The US-NATO coalition willfully ignores the fact that Ukraine is not a member of either the European Union or NATO and has no treaty of any sort with any nation in the world that would require provision of political, economic or military support in the event of a bilateral dispute with any other country.  Yet NATO has seized upon the Ukraine-Russia discord to justify its policy of unrelenting hostility to Moscow.

NATO should have been disbanded at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union because that threat was the sole reason for its existence; but it decided to multiply membership and extend its military presence closer and closer to Russia’s borders. There is little wonder that Russia is apprehensive about NATO’s intentions, as the muscle-flexing coalition lurches towards conflict.

NATO’S Supreme Commander, US General Breedlove, has also contributed greatly to tension and fear in Europe by issuing dire warnings about Russia’s supposed maneuvers.  On March 5 he indulged in fantasy by claiming, without a shred of evidence and no subsequent proof, that Russia had deployed “well over a thousand combat vehicles” along with “combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” within Ukraine.  This pronouncement was similar to his downright lie of November 18, 2014, when he  told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there were “regular Russian army units in eastern Ukraine.”

The swell of anti-Russian propaganda, confrontation and attempted intimidation by NATO has increased, and if it continues to do so it is likely that Moscow will take action, thereby upping the stakes and the danger even more.  It is time that NATO’s nations came to terms with the reality that Russia is a major international power with legitimate interests in its own region. Moscow is not going to bow the knee in the face of immature threats by sabre-rattling US generals and their swaggering acolytes.  It is time for NATO to forge ties rather than destroy them — and to build bridges rather than glitzy office blocks.

Quebec education minister urges mass expulsions of striking students

Keith Jones

Quebec Education Minister François Blais has urged universities and CEGEPs (pre-university and technical colleges) hit by a student “anti-austerity” strike to expel two or three of the most militant students per day till the strike ends.

Tens of thousands of students joined a protest in downtown Montreal Thursday against the provincial Liberal government’s austerity program

At a meeting Tuesday, Blais told the province’s university rectors to use their disciplinary powers to break the strike, including by systematic exemplary expulsions of strike leaders and others “who go too far.” Later he told a radio station, the rectors “can do this. If they (expel) two or three people per day, it will, I think, cool the ardor of others.”

Blais went on to compare the strikers, who are protesting sweeping austerity measures including massive social spending cuts and user-fee hikes, to children. In expelling some, “we’ll get the others to think,” said Blais. “We do that with children when we want to change their behaviour. … We begin by saying there’ll be a punishment for what you said to your mother, etc. And then we make sure we carry that out.”

The next day, after a public outcry, Blais somewhat tempered his remarks. But there is strong support within Quebec’s elite for the government’s attempts to effectively criminalize the strike.

François Leagult, the head of the third party in the National Assembly, le Coalition Avenir Québec, or CAQ, defended Blais, while suggesting he hadn’t gone far enough. “I think there needs to be important penalties for students who stop other students from having access to their classes. So, it’s perhaps a poor formulation to target just two or three students.”

Also Wednesday, a Quebec Superior Court Judge issued an injunction at the request of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) forbidding five UQAM student associations and 34 of their members from trying to prevent students from attending their classes.

Police have repeatedly declared student demonstrations illegal and made mass arrests since the “anti-austerity” strike was launched March 23. Quebec City Police arrested 274 demonstrators on the strike’s second day and in a brutal crackdown on a demonstration two days later shot a tear-gas canister point-blank into the face of an 18-year-old CEGEP student. Naomie Trudeau-Tremblay had to be hospitalized after losing consciousness and sustaining severe lacerations to her face. According to experts she is lucky to have escaped permanent injury and could even have been killed.

The Quebec Civil Liberties Union has joined numerous student, union and community groups in denouncing the police violence, which they note has been encouraged by statements from the mayor of Quebec City and City of Montreal authorities demanding “zero tolerance” of protests that do not adhere to anti-democratic bylaws that restrict the right to demonstrate.

Quebec’s political and business elite are determined to stamp out the student “anti-austerity” strike. Their greatest concern and fear is that the student protest could spark a mass mobilization of the working class

On Thursday, tens of thousands of students joined a demonstration in Montreal called by ASSE, the student group that led the 2012 Quebec-wide strike against massive university tuition fee hikes and whose member-associations have been spearheading the current anti-austerity strike.

Despite its radical rhetoric, the ASSE leadership played a major role in the ultimate defeat of the student strike. It limited the strike to a nationalist protest perspective aimed at pressuring the Liberal government, then led by Jean Charest; made no appeal to students and workers outside Quebec; bowed to the authority of the unions when they vehemently opposed its call for a broader protest movement involving limited worker job-action (a “social strike”); and assisted the unions in channeling the opposition to Charest behind the election of a right-wing Parti Québécois (PQ) government.

Underscoring its subservience to the pro-capitalist unions, the ASSE leadership issued a call for a “strategic retreat” earlier this week, urging this weekend’s ASSE Congress to suspend the current strike. The ASSE leaders argue a “retreat” will facilitate the coordination of a student strike with public-sector worker job action in a mass anti-austerity movement in the fall.

In fact, the pro-capitalist unions have no intention of leading any working class challenge to the austerity program of Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government, either now, in the fall, or for that matter in 2016.

Claiming that Quebec must make dramatic changes to avoid a future “Greece-type” scenario, the Couillard government is demanding sweeping concessions from Quebec’s half-million public-sector workers. These include a five-year contract that will slash real wages, cut pensions, and increase the workload.

Everyone knows that the government will quickly illegalize any public-sector strike and impose contracts by decree, as has been done repeatedly by Liberal and PQ government for more than three decades.

Yet when the public-sector unions held a conference Tuesday to plan their strategy, they were quick to proclaim that their aim is “good-faith bargaining” with an extreme right-wing government that is already employing mass repression against striking students. “It’s all good to say that our collective agreements expire today [March 31],” declared Quebec Federation of Labour President Daniel Boyer, “but it’s not true we can launch [a strike] tomorrow morning. … In any event our objective today is not to launch a strike, but to get the government to negotiate in good faith and that’s what everyone at our conference wants.”

Boyer’s comments were seconded by Confederation of National Trade Unions Vice President Francine Lévesque. “We’ll stick above all to the progress at the negotiating table,” said Lévesque. “Our goal is a good collective agreement.”

The unions have emphasized that they will follow to the letter all the legal obstacles Liberal and PQ governments have erected to any effective worker job action, including a lengthy mandatory conciliation process and draconian essential services legislation.

ASSE’s call to suspend the current strike has been criticized by the anarchist-influenced Spring 2015 Committee, a faction of the student protest movement. But like the ASSE leadership, it is entirely wedded to a nationalist protest perspective. It opposes any fight for the independent political mobilization of the working class and an orientation toward workers in the rest of North America, claiming that if students and their supporters “howl” and “bite,” the elite will abandon its austerity program—no matter that the dismantling of public services and the destruction of workers’ social rights is the class strategy of the bourgeoisie across Canada and around the world.

As the Socialist Equality Party (Canada) explained in a statement last month, “the critical issue is the mobilization of the working class as an independent political force to impose its own socialist solution to the capitalist crisis.”

“Youth and workers,” declared the statement, “should champion not a ‘social strike’—a protest movement aimed at appealing to the Quebec elite. Rather they should fight to prepare a political general strike of the entire working class, in defiance of the anti-union laws, and with the aim of bringing down the Couillard government and making the struggle against austerity in Quebec the spearhead of a movement of the working class across Canada, and throughout North America, for workers’ governments and the socialist reorganization of society.

“The main obstacle to this path is the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy. The central task posed to the tens of thousands of students who will be on strike from March 23 is to support the workers in breaking out of the organizational and political straightjacket of the unions and taking the road of political struggle against capitalism.”