NPR’s Gas Pains

Stan Cox

In the past few years, listeners to National Public Radio have been hearing frequent announcements that “America’s natural gas” is an underwriter of NPR programming. These spots, created by America’s Natural Gas Alliance, an industry group, claim that increased use of gas is reducing greenhouse emissions and making the world a greener place.

Yesterday, NPR ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen addressed the numerous complaints that she has received from listeners about the ANGA spots. She concluded that “despite the passionate arguments of some listeners, I don’t see any evidence that the ANGA underwriting has compromised NPR’s reporting. As has been noted by ombudsmen before me there is a ‘firewall’ that separates the fundraising and editorial sides of the organization . . . I believe that firewall works and I am confident that NPR’s reporters simply aren’t paying attention to who is paying the bills when they set about to report a story or cover a beat.”

I suggest that we give NPR the benefit of the doubt and take Jensen’s word for it that its reporters are not thinking about who is paying the network’s bills when they’re working on a story. Even then, there’s still plenty of reason to worry about the message that’s coming through. Thanks to ANGA’s ads (yes, I know, as Jensen makes clear, they technically are underwriting announcements, not advertisements, but as even she admits in her article, they sure sound just like ads), NPR listeners are exposed to praise of natural gas far more often than they hear reports addressing highly contentious issues like leakage of methane (natural gas’s chief component and a powerful greenhouse gas); water contamination by hydraulic fracturing (“fracking,” the technology that made the current gas boom possible); cheap gas’s suppressing effect on development of renewable energy; and, most importantly, the fact that if all of the new gas reserves that have become available because of fracking were to be extracted and burned, efforts to save this planet from runaway atmospheric warming would be doomed.

Sure, there’s a lot of gas coverage by NPR’s local affiliate stations, as can be seen on its “StateImpact” websites—mostly straightforward reporting of events in the gas industry and the communities where it operates. (Jensen points, for example, to a StateImpact Pennsylvania story on police abuse of fracking protestors that made it onto NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.) But coverage of gas tends to evaporate as you move up to the national level, especially on NPR’s flagship news programs, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. And that’s crucial, because those are the very programs on which ANGA’s promotional announcements have been so prominent.

Over the past year, the sparse coverage of natural gas on the two big programs has mostly danced around the edges of controversies over the fuel. An April 13 story from Pennsylvania followed young trainees who are landing high-paying entry-level fracking jobs. On February 14, science reporter Richard Harris had a story entitled, “Report: Burning Natural Gas Is Better Than Using Coal.” On June 2 last year, Yuki Noguchi asked and answered a question: “Will EPA’s New Emission Rules Boost Your Power Bill? It Depends.” (It depends mostly on whether gas remains cheap.) Four days earlier had come Elizabeth Shogren’s report, “States Say Cutting Down On Carbon Was Easier Than Expected,” this feat having been accomplished, Shogren informed viewers, “largely because of abundant natural gas, which burns more cleanly than coal.”

Melissa Block’s April 10, 2014 story “Drilling Frenzy Fuels Sudden Growth In Small Texas Town” went a little deeper. While it featured local landowners getting six-figure checks from the gas industry, it also acknowledged the negative impacts of runaway growth on the community of Cotulla. She interviewed Jim Morris of the Center for Public Integrity, who has fielded more than 300 complaints in Cotulla of symptoms such as “headaches, nausea, breathing difficulties, nosebleeds,” which locals were attributing to chemicals being used in nearby fracking operations. Industry spokespeople responded that no such associations have been found.

Harris’s February report, the one with the headline about the superiority of gas over coal, focused on a just-published article in the journalScience which actually found that the volume of methane escaping into the atmosphere, largely from production, distribution, and use ofnatural gas, is far higher than has been estimated by EPA. Nevertheless, projecting total emissions over the next 100 years, the study’s authors concluded that “system-wide leakage is unlikely to be large enough to negate climate benefits of coal-to-natural gas substitution.” (Benefits would be even smaller over, say, the next 20 years, at a time when very rapid emissions cuts are needed.)

One could, like NPR, interpret the researchers’ conclusions as saying that “burning natural gas is better than using coal,” but that seemingly positive spin actually represents a big retreat from previous gas-boosters’ claims. A few years ago, ANGA was touting gas as a fuel “twice as clean as coal,” based on the fact that gas-fired power plants’ carbon emissions per kilowatt-hour are about 55 percent those of coal-fired plants. That comparison not only ignored methane leakage; it was also logically absurd, equivalent to saying that a bacon cheeseburger is twice as healthful as a double bacon cheeseburger. Now that all of gas’s impacts are being accounted for, maybe NPR should have given Harris’s report on the Science article a more meaningful headline: “Natural Gas: Not Quite as Dirty as Coal.”

With the “twice as clean” claim no longer viable, ANGA’s recent NPR spots have placed emphasis not on phony numerical comparisons but on tall tales meant to inspire. In one, Denver International Airport is held out as a green poster child, for having cut emissions by powering its buildings and ground vehicles with natural gas—all in the service of air travel, one of the world’s worst climate culprits. In another, Florida Power and Light earns praise for using gas, which generates electricity “even when the sun isn’t shining,” a not-so-subtle dig at solar energy.

At the end of every ad comes a call to visit ANGA’s promotional site,thinkaboutit.org. It’s a fiendishly misleading URL, implying that the superiority of natural gas as a clean fuel is blindingly obvious, if you just think about it. (The group Environmental Action gives the phrase a nice twist; its successful campaign to bombard NPR with complaints about ANGA’s ads was called, “Don’t Even Think About It, NPR.”)

There is very little discussion anywhere in the media about the desperate necessity for very rapid, very deep reductions in greenhouse emissions worldwide if we are to keep the rise in global atmospheric temperature to less than 2° C—the threshold beyond which warming could go into unstoppable overdrive. One can listen to countless hours of news reports, including those on Morning Edition and All Things Considered, without hearing anything about the impossibility of achieving those necessary reductions if the world does not resolve to leave a large share—perhaps two-thirds or more—of global fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

Research published last year shows that if the world is to hold warming to under 2° C while maintaining today’s highly inequitable access to fuel resources, North America will have to leave almost 70 percent of all its known coal, oil, and natural gas reserves in the ground. On the other hand, if the burden of emissions cutting is shared equitably among the world’s peoples, 93 percent of North American fossil fuel reserves must be left alone.

You can also spend a very long time searching Morning Edition’s and All Things Considered’s archives and not find any reporters, interviewees or commentators mentioning other crucial issues: the disincentive to invest in new solar and wind power that is created by plentiful, cheap gas; or the industry’s planning for massive long-term investments in new gas-fueled power plants that will lock us into dependency on fossil gas and prolong its greenhouse impact for decades to come.

I realize that it’s not fair to pick on NPR alone. MSNBC, a TV network that, like NPR, is much enjoyed by liberals, regularly airs natural-gas propaganda from ANGA and the American Petroleum Institute. Back in 2013, MSNBC even sealed an agreement to run articles by ANGA-paid writers on its website. That practice seems to have petered out, but viewers of the network’s advertising-heavy evening shows hosted by Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and others still endure a heavy dose of green-tinted misinformation on gas.

Huffington Post also ran ANGA-authored articles in 2013 and still maintains a “Think About It” page featuring those pay-to-play pieces. HuffPo’s “Generation Change” page, which focuses on green issues, is a joint venture with the NRG electric utility, which operates in 22 states and touts its aggressive pursuit of wind and solar energy. But here’s the breakdown of NRG’s actual generation capacity: solar, 513 megawatts; wind, 1665; oil, 6415; coal, 16,209; and natural gas, 23,864. NRG apparently is not worried about the Generation Change page damaging its image or its access to gas.

It’s easy for media outlets to team up with the fossil-fuel industry, secure in the knowledge that they won’t catch heat from powerful environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council. In its public statement on fracking, NRDC acknowledges the technology’s many problems but concludes with nothing more than a plaintive request that extraction and consumption of natural gas be done “as safely as possible.”

In her recent book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, Naomi Klein roundly condemns NRDC, The Nature Conservancy, and other Big Green groups for caving in to the fossil-fuel industry. She singles out the Environmental Defense Fund as the worst of the sellouts. EDF has doubled down on its support for gas in the age of fracking, going so far as to join forces with Big Petroleum and its big profits to create the Center for Sustainable Shale Development. EDF itself claims to be “taking a leading role to minimize risks associated with developing new supplies of natural gas, while maximizing the lower carbon benefit inherent to natural gas as compared to other fossil fuels.”

As Klein notes, corporations and their allies in the big environmental organizations know that leaving most fossil fuels, including natural gas, in the ground in order to stop runaway warming would deal a serious if not mortal blow to big-business-as-usual, so they will never go along with it. We also can’t seriously expect the corporate media to report reliably on this situation. But we can and should demand that NPR and other public media be fully supported by public funds so that they can declare independence from the corporate world and get some relief from their gas problem.

Sri Lankan government to pass laws banning “hate speech”

Sanjaya Jayasekera

The Sri Lankan government of President Maithripala Sirisena has proposed to amend the country’s criminal laws to ban “hate speech and literature relating to ethnicity and religion that exacerbate ethnic and religious tensions.”

Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne announced on April 3 that the cabinet approval had been given to include the new legislation in the Penal Code allowing the imposition of a two-year jail term and a fine on those convicted. He justified the law saying that “in the recent past there have been speeches which promoted religious extremism.”

Senaratne pointed out that the government was acting on a recommendation of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) set up in 2010 by former President Mahinda Rajapakse to whitewash the war crimes of the government and military during the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and deflect international criticism.

The government’s claim to be cracking down on “hate speech” is a sham. The new laws are an attack on democratic rights and are aimed at strengthening the state apparatus. Regardless of the immediate pretext, the real target is not religious extremism but the working class.

To justify the legislation, the government has seized on the communal campaigns against Muslims and Christians by Sinhala-Buddhist extremist organisations such as Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Brigade or BBS), Sihala Ravaya (Sinhala Voice) and Ravana Balakaaya (Ravana Brigade) over the past few years.

After a series of attacks on places of Muslim and Christian worship last June, Sinhala-Buddhist mobs mobilised by the BBS burned down shops and houses owned by Muslims in the southern town of Aluthgama, killing three persons and injuring dozens. BBS leader Galagoda Aththe Gnasara, a monk, repeatedly used anti-Muslim slogans and made provocative speeches against other religious faiths, accusing them of damaging the “heritage” of Sinhala Buddhists.

Earlier this month, a mob led by Sihala Ravaya entered a site at Kuragala near Balangoda with equipment to destroy a mosque which they claimed has been built on a Buddhist archaeological site. Police used water cannon to disperse the crowd.

Sections of the security apparatus sympathise with these right-wing, chauvinist organisations that in many cases brazenly flout the law while the military and police remain passive onlookers. The previous Rajapakse government sponsored and protected the Sinhala Buddhist extremists as a means of dividing the working class.

The communal attacks created widespread fear and anger among the country’s Muslims, Tamil and Christian minorities and were widely condemned by workers and youth. Now the government is exploiting these sentiments both to justify a further strengthening of the state.

The claims by Sirisena and the ruling United National Party (UNP) to oppose communal extremism are completely bogus. Until the January presidential election was announced, Sirisena was a cabinet minister in the Rajapakse government and did not make a murmur of criticism of its association with Sinhala Buddhist extremists. The UNP-led government maintains the military occupation of predominantly Tamil north and east of the country and recently approved the 48-hour police detention of suspects.

An editorial in the state-owned Daily News on April 13 declared that “the government’s move to come hard against purveyors of hate speech is most opportune.” It concluded: “At a time when all measures are being taken by the new government to heal the festering wounds and bring about amity, brotherhood and concord between the two main communities no room should be left for persons with hidden political agendas to queer the pitch.”

No one should be fooled by such comments. Just a few months ago, the same newspaper was defending Rajapakse and the Sinhala Buddhist extremists. These organisations might be new but they are rooted in more than six decades of communal politics propagated by the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie. Since formal independence from Britain in 1948, successive governments have exploited anti-Tamil communalism to divide and suppress the working class, culminating in the eruption of civil war in 1983 that killed at least 200,000 people.

Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the UNP are both responsible for war crimes and gross human rights abuses. They have not suddenly transformed into pious democrats. The new law will be directed against workers and poor. It should be recalled that the UNP’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), legislated in 1978, was not only used against Tamils but Sinhalese and Muslims as well.

Colvin R. de Silva, when he was a Trotskyist, delivered a speech in February 1948 at a meeting of students in West Bengal in which he opposed the Indian government’s plan to ban Hindu Maha Sahba after its member, Nathuram Godse, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.

“You cannot kill communalism by fine words or even hasty deeds. The suppression of the Hindu Maha Sabha and other frankly communal organizations will not kill communalism. But it will surely open the way to a reactionary attack on the Left. Governments which take [on] special powers to act against the Right always end up by using them more vigorously against the Left,” he said.

De Silva went on to explain that the only way to defeat communalism was by intensifying the struggle to unite the working class in a common struggle for socialism. Likewise, the working class today should reject the government’s plans for new laws, which will only further strengthen the police state apparatus built up during the civil war, and at the same time fight for the unity of workers by opposing all forms of communalism and nationalism.

UK welfare benefit sanctions hit the homeless

Dennis Moore

A report for the UK homeless charity Crisis describes the system of benefit sanctions as cruel and disproportionately affecting homeless people.

The Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University conducted the survey.

Benefit sanctions, where a job centre can suspend or dock welfare payments, are applied when a claimant is deemed not to be in compliance with the specific requirements of claiming a particular benefit. A sanction could be applied when a claimant does not attend just one appointment at the Job Centre or work programme provider. Sanctions can be applied against a claimant deemed not to be proactively looking for work while claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA).

Following the Welfare Reform Act 2012, the rules regarding sanctions were tightened. Benefit payments can now be stopped between four weeks and three years, dependent on how many times the claimant breaks the rules.

The report shows the “post code lottery” behind the sanctions regime. Claimants in more economically depressed areas of the countries are hit harder. Crisis said sanctions varied between 15.4 per hundred per month in Richmondshire, North Yorkshire, and 1.8 per hundred in the Western Isles.

Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis, said, “Sanctions are cruel, and can leave people at severe risk of homelessness—cold hungry and utterly destitute.”

The number of people on the unemployment benefit JSA that have been sanctioned in the last 13 years is 6.8 million. The numbers of those on JSA who are sanctioned has risen from 35,000 a month in October in 2012 to 84,800 per month to the date of the report. This group is predominantly younger, with two-thirds of all sanctions being applied to claimants under the age of 35.

Sanctions also affect those claimants who claim the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) sickness benefit. Many ESA claimants suffer mental health or substance misuse problems.

The number of those sanctioned claiming ESA since its introduction in 2008 already stands at 120,800. The rate at which sanctions have been applied to ESA claimants has risen dramatically, with a nearly a fourfold increase from 1,400 per month in March 2013 to 5,400 in March 2014. This represents one sanction per 100 ESA claimants and applies to claimants who are placed in just one specific category, the work-related activity group. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) deems those in this category capable of work at some time in the future and capable of taking steps towards moving into work.

One-in-three sanctions is imposed for failing to actively seek work. At present over half of all JSA sanctions are imposed at the lower level, while one-third are at the intermediate level, and less than 10 percent are at the higher level.

The numbers of people who are classed as homeless and those living in hostels and shelters that are sanctioned are difficult ascertain, as statistics do not include the housing circumstances of particular claimants. A study carried out over a three-month period in 2013 by the Homeless Link charity suggests that sanction rates amongst homeless people are high. An estimated one-third of homeless people claiming JSA were hit and nearly one-fifth claiming ESA.

There is a strong body of evidence to suggest that vulnerable groups of claimants are at an increased risk of being sanctioned, with many people finding it difficult to navigate increasingly complex rules in order to receive meagre benefits.

An independent review carried out by the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee scrutinised the system of sanctions in 2014. They found evidence that claimants faced difficulties storing letters, correspondence that was impossible to understand, poor communication, claimants having difficulties with literacy and no access to the Internet, and a lack of flexibility to accommodate claimants’ commitments for job interviews and hospital appointments.

Homelessness, though not often mentioned in many such studies, contributes to many of the contributory factors that vulnerable people experience, such as ill health, substance misuse, lack of work experience, problems with literacy and low self-esteem. Homeless people experience some of the worst health in society, facing much higher levels of physical, mental and substance misuse than the general population.

Homeless people face further difficulties in ability to comply with the regime of “conditionality” as they will often lead chaotic lives, not knowing where they will sleep from one day to the next. The system of benefit sanctions is particularly restrictive when applied to these claimants.

A homeless claimant who is in receipt of JSA will be expected, as part of their claimant commitment to qualify, to use a phone or have access to a computer to carry out a job search. If they cannot demonstrate to their local benefits office that they have been looking for jobs, then they are at risk of having their benefits sanctioned.

Homeless people are less likely to receive mail due to the transitory nature of their lives. If they live in a large hostel, mail is often not received. When they do receive it, there are often problems due to poor communication by the DWP. The letters are not clear and include vague wording, often difficult to understand. Evidence from Citizens Advice Scotland found that many clients had not realised they had been sanctioned until they had gone to the bank to find out they had no money.

Sanctions increase the risk of homelessness. Claimants once sanctioned have to cut back on housing costs including payments towards rent, service charges. Failing to reclaim Housing Benefit following a sanction being imposed leads to rent arrears and the possibility of eviction.

Benefit sanctioning has been integral to the massive clampdown on welfare entitlement carried out over the last five years by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. Some 20 billion has been slashed from the welfare budget, with a further £12 billion in welfare cuts already being planned by the Conservatives. These cuts have sharply reduced incomes and increased housing insecurity for the poorest.

The use of sanctions to punish those on welfare has been in place since the late 1980s within the British social security system. However, sanctions increased markedly with the introduction of JSA in 1996.

It was the Labour Party that strengthened existing conditionality criteria, making it central to benefit claims. Conditionality was an intrinsic part of the 1997-2010 Labour governments’ welfare reforms. The coalition is implementing the harshest regime of conditionality in the history of the welfare benefits system, but the blueprint for the current regime can be traced back to the Labour government, who commissioned reviews and White and Green papers published in 2006-2008.

Labour is committed to retaining the brutal sanctioning system should it come to power on May 7. In November last year, Rachel Reeves, Labour Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and Stephen Timms, Shadow Employment Minister, wrote, “Sanctions have been part of our social security system since its foundation, and the principle of mutual obligation and putting conditions on benefit claims were integral to the progressive labour market policies of the last Labour government.”

German government introduces new mass data retention regulations

Johannes Stern & Denis Krassnin

The German federal government is moving towards re-introducing a controversial system of mass domestic data retention. The plan was announced by justice minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) and interior minister Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) last week.

The Supreme Court annulled the then legal foundation of data retention in 2010 on the grounds that data protection, data security, transparency and access rights were not clearly enough regulated. Last year, the European Court overturned an EU directive on data retention, ruling that it infringed the fundamental right to privacy and the protection of personal data.

At a press conference in Berlin, Maas presented the new guidelines for mass data retention. The guidelines state that “traffic data generated in telecommunications,” will be retained by the telecommunications companies for up to ten weeks, and can be passed upon request to “law enforcement” agencies.

What would be retained is, “in particular, the numbers of the telephone connections involved, the time and duration of the call; for mobile calls, the location data, as well as IP addresses, including the date and duration of the assignment of an IP address.”

Zeit Online stated that such data retention is “a step towards total surveillance” of the population. The publication commented, “Data retention means that the information about who, where, when someone talked or emailed or texts is stored. Whether someone is a suspect or not, it should be possible for months to trace who has spoken with whom and how often.”

This has far-reaching consequences. Using the retained data, the police and the intelligence agencies can establish retroactively, who has communicated with whom, when, where and for how long, and which web sites each person visited. The state would thus be in a position to make a complete profile of any citizen’s movements and to monitor their social and political activities.

De Maizière, who has systematically sought to increase the state’s powers at home and has long pushed aggressively for the reintroduction of data retention, described the guidelines as a “good and wise compromise.” Maas, who until recently posed as a critic of data retention, said that it was only about “better solving serious crimes in the future.” He pledged that profiles of people’s movements would not be made and that “civil rights and liberties” would be safeguarded.

This is complete hogwash. Maas’ guidelines merely regulate the retention, but not access to the data. This is regulated by other laws, such as the Protection of the Constitution Act. The guidelines explicitly allow individual federal states to define their own access rules.

In the opinion of experts, other than the shorter retention time, nothing has changed concerning the illegality of data retention. The law is not about fighting terrorism and crime, but the “total surveillance” of the population.

In an interview with broadcaster Deutschland Funk, former federal data protection commissioner Peter Schaar said that the new law also gives rise to the accusation of “general suspicion.” As before, it concerns “a widespread, not event-driven retention.”

The reintroduction of mass data retention in Germany is only one element of a massive increase in domestic state powers. At the end of March, the government adopted legislation that hugely expands the powers of the security agencies and provides the basis for a centralized police and intelligence apparatus.

An interior ministry press release elaborated the “core objectives” of the law. To ensure “better cooperation within the various domestic intelligence agencies,” the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV, as the secret service is called) would have its “central office function strengthened.” The BfV supports “the state secret service agencies, coordinates cooperation and in certain cases, if need be, can even be involved in surveillance.”

In addition, it concerns “improving the flow of information” and the “development of analytical skills.” “All relevant information must be exchanged between the intelligence authorities,” where “the joint network system NADIS (Intelligence Information System) should be used,” the press release states.

NADIS is a non-public automated data network system in which the various secret service agencies are linked at federal and state level. According to Wikipedia, in 2013, it contained the “personal records” of about 1.6 million so-called “targets.” By merging “the relevant information in NADIS,” “cross-state relationships and structures [should be] more visible” and “information islands” avoided.

As stated in the bill: “The federal organization of the unified overall secret service task must not be accompanied by a fragmentation of the information base and archaic work tools.” Even in the “area of non-violence-oriented surveillance … a comprehensive structured storage of existing knowledge about events and people [must] form the basis for merging information in the network capable of analysis.” “Blind spots in cross-state links” would be overcome “with the network solution.”

The various intelligence agencies would be better linked. For example, the “automated retrieval of files stored by the BfV” should be made possible for the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD). At the same time, “the automated retrieval of data” from the MAD “central reference file” would be possible for the secret services.

This legal phraseology is deployed to hide the creation of a centralized police and intelligence apparatus, which aspires to comprehensively spy upon the population and permit the exchange of data between security agencies.

The full text of the more than 70-page draft bill is an attack on basic constitutional principles. The constitutionally enshrined principle of the separation of police and secret services, which was increasingly weakened in the past, will more or less be abolished.

The separation of police and secret services was written into the constitution after the experiences of the Nazi dictatorship, to prevent a highly centralised and all-powerful state apparatus of repression from developing again. The Nazis’ Secret State Police (Gestapo) gradually combined all the powers of the police and intelligence agencies to terrorize the population.

Such traditions live on in today’s security authorities in Germany. In recent months, more and more facts have come to light demonstrating the close involvement of the intelligence agencies and the police in the right-wing terrorist group the “National Socialist Underground” (NSU). It is now known that at least 25 undercover secret service agents were active in the immediate environment of the NSU, and that right-wing organizations such as the Thuringia Homeland Security and the Baden Württemberg branch of the Ku Klux Klan were built and financed by the secret service.

According to the legislation, such controversial undercover agents may now officially commit crimes in the future. De Maizière declared in parliament that “serious offences” by undercover agents were “justified,” in his view, if they could prevent an “attack.” His principle was, “The more serious the offence, the more weight the conceivable information needs.” This is nothing more than a call for state-sanctioned crimes.

Seventy years after the end of World War II, the German elites are removing all the restrictions of the post-war period in domestic politics too. They are preparing to suppress growing resistance to their austerity measures and unpopular polices of militarism and war by force if necessary.

The Interior Ministry’s plan to establish a heavily armed paramilitary “anti-terrorist unit“ of the Federal Police must be seen in this context. At the same time, the Interior Ministry budget will rise by 6.7 percent to €6.6 billion as early as next year. Hundreds of millions of additional euros will flow directly into upgrading the surveillance and repressive apparatus of the police and intelligence agencies.

Majority of Boston residents oppose death penalty for marathon bomber Tsarnaev

Nick Barrickman

A recent NPR Boston-area poll found that the majority of the public opposes sentencing convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death. Tsarnaev was found guilty earlier this month of 30 charges stemming from the April 2013 bombing, which killed three and grievously wounding 264 others. Seventeen of the 30 charges carry a possible death sentence.

The sentencing phase for Tsarnaev is expected to begin on Tuesday. The Boston-area WBUR poll found that 58 percent of responders during the month of April favored life imprisonment without parole for Tsarnaev. This figure represented a 9 percentage point growth in support for imprisonment over the execution of Tsarnaev from a month earlier. Similarly, those in support of executing the 21 year-old diminished, from 38 percent a month ago to 31 percent today.

On Friday, the Boston Globe published a front-page statement by the parents of Martin Richard, one of the victims who died from a bomb set by Dzhokhar, asking for federal prosecutors to take the death penalty “off the table.”

“We urge the Department of Justice to bring the case to a close,” Bill and Denise Richard state, adding that, “We are in favor of and would support the Department of Justice in taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for the defendant spending the rest of his life in prison without any possibility of release and waiving all of his rights to appeal.”

The state of Massachusetts has abolished the death penalty, which is broadly opposed within the population. However, since Tsarnaev’s trial is being conducted at the federal level, a sentence of death is possible. Since the trial’s beginning, US officials have signaled their intention to pursue the death penalty despite Massachusetts’s laws proscribing it at the state level.

Boston-area residents’ negative attitudes toward the death penalty have grown despite attempts by federal prosecutors and the media to prepare the grounds for Tsarnaev’s execution by inundating the population with lurid details of the carnage caused by Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police in the days after the bombings occurred.

The aftermath of the bombings became the occasion for a massive mobilization of police and military forces in the city of Boston and its surrounding area. A state of siege was imposed. Metropolitan Boston was occupied by heavily-armed police and National Guard troops who conducted warrantless searches in residential neighborhoods while armored vehicles patrolled the streets and military helicopters circled overhead.

The unprecedented nature of this operation was met without a protest within the mainstream political and media establishments, both of which maintain an official wall of silence surrounding what amounted to a de facto dry-run for a police dictatorship.

Speaking in response to the calls by the parents of Richard for prosecutors to have leniency, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz said that the US government would still press for the maximum penalty for Tsarnaev. “I care deeply about their [Bill and Denise Richard’s] views and the views of the other victims and survivors. As the case moves forward we will continue to do all we can to protect and vindicate those injured and those who have passed away,” Ortiz said.

The federal government’s determination to execute Tsarnaev is no doubt motivated by its eagerness to eliminate anyone in a position to give information which conflicts with the official narrative surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings. In May 2013—a month after the bombings—Ibragim Todashev, a friend of the older Tsarnaev and like him an ethnic Chechen, was gunned down in his Florida apartment by an FBI interrogator from Boston while being questioned about his ties to the brothers. As with the federal government’s interactions with the Tsarnaevs, the circumstances surrounding Todashev’s death have never been fully explained.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may possess knowledge in connection to the US intelligence agencies’ prior communications with older brother Tamerlan. In 2011, the FBI, having received warnings about Tamerlan’s proclivities for Islamic extremism from both Russian and Saudi Arabian security services, subjected the older brother to a “threat assessment.” His communications and internet activity were monitored and face-to-face interviews were conducted with him and his family members. The FBI’s assessment was later inexplicably closed.

Just weeks later, homicides in the Boston suburb of Waltham, of which Tamerlan has been posthumously named a suspect, occurred on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11. Despite one of the victims, Brendan Mess, being identified as a “best friend” of Tsarnaev, authorities did not seek to question the latter, allowing the case to go cold.

In early 2012, Tsarnaev was allowed to travel unhindered to Dagestan in Russia’s North Caucasus region, where he made contact with known Islamist separatist terrorist leaders. He was later allowed to return to the US without being stopped or questioned.

Last year, attorneys representing Dzhokhar accused the FBI of seeking to recruit the older brother as an informant within the Muslim community and asked that the agency turn over all information pertaining to such operations. This request, however, was denied by the federal government.

There also has been little attempt to explain the role of Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar. Tsarni was previously married to the daughter of a high-ranking CIA official and ran an organization, the Congress of Chechen International Organizations, which provided material aid to Chechen separatists fighting against the Russian government. The group was headquartered at the home of Tsarni’s father-in-law, Graham Fuller, a top-level CIA official in the 1980s.

EU, Syriza prepare to suppress popular opposition to austerity in Greece

Kumaran Ira

This weekend’s meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in Washington focused on the Greek debt crisis, amid fears in financial circles of a Greek default or exit from the euro, and of rising working class opposition in Greece. The “Troika” of the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB), and IMF are seeking to create the political conditions for Syriza to continue imposing austerity.

After the meeting, ECB president Mario Draghi called for resuming talks with Syriza to avoid a Greek default. He said, “The short-term danger of contagion is difficult to assess, but we have enough buffers in place. And even though they were designed for different circumstances, they are sufficient. But we are entering uncharted waters.”

His uncertain and pessimistic appraisal of the situation notwithstanding, Draghi praised Syriza and his informal talks with Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in Washington. He said there had been progress in “formulating a well-functioning policy dialogue” in talks with Syriza.

Draghi was praising Syriza’s capitulation to the EU’s austerity agenda and its coordination with the EU to impose new attacks on the working class. Syriza is negotiating the next tranche of €7.2bn in loans from Greece’s Eurozone partners. In exchange, the Troika is urging Syriza to present detailed plans for labor market reforms and cuts to pensions.

In recent days, however, financial officials have moved to ease pressure on Syriza from proceeding so rapidly with the new austerity measures. Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF’s European department, said the reforms demanded from Athens in exchange for the €7.2 billion loan should be simplified and slimmed down.

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the euro group who has distinguished himself with his aggressive threats and demands against Greece, struck an oddly mild note. “Let’s not go into a game of chicken to see who can stick it out longer. We have a joint interest to reach an agreement quickly,” he said.

"We have been worried about previous payments they were to make and yet they managed it, so I don’t know when it becomes really dangerous. But I think it is in our joint interest to stay away from that point,” he added.

As it teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, there is rising awareness in ruling circles internationally that the Greek government is heading for a confrontation with the working class.

Already on Thursday, around 4,000 mine workers employed by Canadian-owned Eldorado Gold mine in northern Greece staged a demonstration in Athens, protesting Syriza’s decision to revoke the company’s licence. Workers fear a shutdown of the mine and the loss of all their jobs. The march was the first major labor protest since Syriza came to power. The miners waved banners reading “Yes to mines, yes to growth,” and chanted slogans, forcing police to shut down major roads.

“The honeymoon is over. We’re done with the period when Greek public opinion would agree with everything that the government does,” said Nikos Marantzidis, a professor at the University of Macedonia.

Syriza is now preparing to take the explosive step of cutting off pensions as well as wages for Greek public-sector workers. After repaying almost €2 billion in loans to the IMF in March and April, it needs to pay IMF €950 million euros by May 12, and plans to tap the Greek public sector’s remaining cash reserves, for a total of €2 billion.

This is reportedly not enough for Athens to meet both its debts to the IMF and its wage and pension bill. According to Reuters, “Without a political agreement with the euro zone next week, Athens is likely to have to choose between making wages and pension payments to its people or reimbursing the IMF.”

Whatever the short-term outcome of the financial crisis—whether it be a Greek default or exit from the euro (“Grexit”)—Syriza and its EU partners are preparing for savage repression against the workers. They are discussing the imposition of de facto military dictatorship in Greece.

Syriza has made clear that it wants to strengthen the police and that the false, pseudo-left rhetoric on which it was elected will not prevent it from mounting police crackdowns. Last week, after Public Order Minister Yiannis Panousis issued a call for law and order, Syriza ordered police to smash an occupation of university buildings in Athens by a handful of anarchist protesters.

Yesterday, Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau wrote a comment titled, “Greek default necessary but Grexit is not,” warning that he had “never seen European financial officials so much at a loss.” While advocating deeper social cuts, Münchau was deeply concerned about the implications of a Greek default or exit from the euro zone: “Grexit would bring incalculable economic risk to the country itself, and would harm the EU’s geopolitical ambitions and its global reputation.”

He continued, “My understanding is that some eurozone officials are at least contemplating the possibility of a Greek default but without Grexit [Greek exit from the euro]. The complexity is severe, and they may not have had the time to work it out. But it may be the only way to avert utter disaster.” He warned that a decision not to pay pensions and public sector wages will be “politically suicidal for the Syriza-led government.”

Whatever happened, Munchau wrote, Athens needs time to prepare military-style measures: “Both Grexit and the option of a default inside the euro zone would stretch the resources of even the most organised government. It would require military-style preparation: exchange controls, temporary closure of land borders and airports, overnight bank recapitalisation, and logistical planning to convey money from A to B on D-Day. Is the Greek government really so smart it can just wait until the fateful moment arrives, and then manage this whole process in real time with no script?”

In fact, Syriza has been preparing for scenarios of Greek default or Grexit since Tsipras began touring international capitals and financial centres, two years ago, as he was groomed to be an acceptable Greek prime minister to Washington and the EU. Discussions of such a scenario appeared in the right-wing Greek daily Kathemerini, which said that if Athens decided to default or exit the euro, it would seek to do so over a weekend, when global stock markets are closed. It wrote that Greece would “deploy its military as soon as early morning Saturday and close its borders, preparing to stamp euros as drachma as an interim solution once a public announcement has been made.”

Outgoing Greek Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis said he doubted whether, under these conditions, “we will be able to continue functioning as a modern democracy.”

Asked about such events by Time magazine, Tsipras replied: “We have a plan. There is a team of economists who lay out the plans, update and communicate them … I would not like to talk about them.” He added, “We are fully aware of the consequences. We are fully aware of the consequences that it will have on the country and Europe in general.” That is, while the bourgeois media and political circles were aware of the plans, Syriza’s voters and workers in Greece and internationally were to be kept in the dark.

The comments now circulating in the financial press are a warning to the working class. Those who doubt that a pseudo-left party such as Syriza is capable of brutal repression against the working class are deluding themselves.

US admits FBI falsified evidence to obtain convictions

Kate Randall

The US Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that over a more than two-decade period before 2000, nearly every FBI examiner gave flawed forensic hair testimony in almost all trials of criminal defendants reviewed so far, according to a report in the Washington Post.

The cases examined include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death, 14 of whom have been either executed or died in prison. The scandal raises the very real probability that innocent people have been sent to their deaths, and that many more wrongfully convicted are languishing on death rows across the US due to FBI analysts’ fraudulent testimony.

Testimony involving pattern-based forensic techniques—such as hair, bite-mark, and tire track comparisons—has contributed to wrongful convictions in more than a quarter of the 329 defendants’ cases that have been exonerated in the US since 1989. In their pursuit of convictions prosecutors across the country have often relied on FBI analysts’ overstated testimony on hair samples, incorrectly citing them as definitive proof of a defendant’s guilt.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project are assisting the government in the nation’s largest post-conviction review of the FBI’s questioned forensic evidence. The groups determined that 26 of 28 examiners in the elite FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.

The nation’s courts have allowed the bogus testimony, masquerading as definitive scientific evidence of defendants’ guilt, to railroad innocent people and consign them to decades in prison, life in prison, or death row and the execution chamber.

Federal authorities launched an investigation in 2012 after a Postexamination found that flawed forensic hair matches might have led to the convictions of hundreds of potentially innocent people nationwide since at least the 1970s. Defendants in these cases were typically charged with murder, rape and other violent crimes.

The scandal involves about 2,500 cases in which FBI examiners gave testimony involving hair matches. Hair examination is a pattern-based forensic technique. It involves subjective examination of characteristics such as color, thickness and length and compares them to a known source.

There is no accepted scientific research on how often hair from different people may appear the same, and any hair “matches” must be confirmed by DNA analysis. However, the Post ’s 2012 review found that FBI experts systematically testified to the near-certainty of matches of hair found at crime scenes to the hair samples of defendants. The FBI gave flawed forensic testimony in 257 of the 268 trials examined so far.

In 2002, a decade before the Post review, the FBI reported that its own DNA testing revealed that examiners reported false hair matches more than 11 percent of the time.

In Washington, DC, the only jurisdiction where defenders and prosecutors have carried out an investigation into all convictions based on FBI hair testimony, five of seven defendants whose trials included flawed hair evidence have been exonerated since 2009 based on either DNA testing or court appeals. All of them served 20 to 30 years in prison for rape or murder.

In an interview with the Post, University of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett said the results of the DC investigation reveal a “mass disaster” inside the criminal justice system. “The tools don’t exist to handle systematic errors in our criminal justice system,” he said.

Those exonerated since 2009 in DC include:

* Donald Eugene Gates was incarcerated for 28 years for the rape and murder of a Georgetown University student. He was ordered released in December 2009 by a DC Superior Court Judge after DNA evidence revealed that another man committed the crime. The prosecution relied heavily on the testimony of an FBI analyst, who falsely linked two hairs from an African-American mail to Gates.

* Kirk L. Odom was wrongfully imprisoned for more than 22 years for a 1981 rape and murder. He completed his prison term in 2003, but it was not until July 2012 that DNA evidence exonerated him of the crimes. A DC Superior Court order freed him from remaining on parole until 2047 and registering as a sex offender.

* Santae A. Tribble was convicted in the 1978 killing of a DC taxi driver. An FBI examiner testifying at Tribble’s trial said he had microscopically matched the defendant’s hair to one found in a stocking near the crime scene. In 2012, DNA tests on the same hair excluded him as the perpetrator, clearing the way for his exoneration.

Federal authorities are offering new DNA testing in those cases where FBI analysts gave flawed forensic testimony. However, in some 700 of the 2,500 cases identified by the FBI for review, police or prosecutors have not responded to requests for trial transcripts or other information. Biological evidence is also not always available, having been lost or destroyed in the years since trial.

Although defense attorneys argue that scientifically invalid testimony should be considered a violation of due process, only the states of California and Texas specifically allow appeals when experts recant their testimony or scientific advances undermine forensic evidence given at trial.

In a statement responding to the new scandal’s eruption, the FBI and Justice Department vowed that they are “committed to ensuring that affected defendants are notified of past errors and that justice is done in every instance” and that are “also committed to ensuring the accuracy of future hair analysis, as well as the application of all disciplines of forensic science.”

The scandal over fraudulent testimony, however, only reveals the corrupt and anti-democratic character of the US prison system as a whole. The United States locks behind bars a greater proportion of its population than any other country, topped off by the barbaric death penalty that is supported by the entire political establishment.

Whatever the hypocritical posturing of the Obama White House, it cannot bring back the years spent in prison by the wrongfully convicted or the lives of those likely executed for crimes they did not commit.

Mass drownings in the Mediterranean: A crime of imperialism

Patrick Martin

Another horrific tragedy has befallen refugees fleeing Northern Africa to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. On Sunday morning, a small boat capsized about 120 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa. As many as 700 people are dead. Rescuers are still seeking to recover bodies. The actual death toll may never be known.

The disaster comes only days after a boat carrying 550 refugees sank in the Mediterranean, with at least 400 drowned.

The number of people dying in the attempt to emigrate to Europe is shocking: more than 1,500 since the beginning of this year, 30 times the death toll for the same period last year. Some 20,000 refugees have reached Italy, the majority of whom are now locked up in internment camps.

The latest mass drowning is not simply a tragedy, it is a crime. The major imperialist powers of Europe and the United States have blood on their hands.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other aid agencies estimate that a half-million people are now encamped along the coastline of Libya, desperately seeking passage on any vessel available to make the crossing to Europe. They represent only a fraction of the refugee population of this region: two million from Libya alone, displaced by the 2011 US-NATO war that destroyed the Gaddafi regime and the subsequent civil war. Another US-instigated civil war, in Syria, has created an additional one million refugees. Many thousands more have been displaced from countries in the Horn of Africa—Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia—ravaged by famine, civil war or US drone missile strikes.

Added to this are large numbers of people fleeing the breakdown of countries in West Africa under the combined impact of economic crisis, drought, disease and the depredations of the imperialist powers, with France playing a leading role. These nations include Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and the Central African Republic.

Israel contributes to the flood of refugees through its onslaught on the Gaza Strip last summer, which destroyed the homes of hundreds of thousands, and the ongoing economic blockade of Gaza, jointly enforced by Israel and the Egyptian military dictatorship, which effectively imprisons the entire population of 1.5 million.

The European ruling class has responded to this humanitarian catastrophe by erecting a “fortress Europe,” focusing its efforts on preventing migrants from reaching the continent. The European Union views the drowning of refugees as a deterrent against more people crossing in the future.

The main responsibility, however, rests with US imperialism and the Obama administration, whose unending military attacks, drone missile assassinations, economic blockades and CIA regime-change operations have produced a humanitarian disaster without parallel since the Second World War.

Two decisions by Washington deserve particular scrutiny: the launching of the US-NATO war against Libya in March 2011, and the intervention in Syria, beginning the same month and continuing to this day. In each case, the Obama administration sought to conceal its predatory aims behind talk of defending human and democratic rights. The corporate-controlled American media provided the necessary propaganda, and liberal voices like the Nationmagazine and pseudo-left groups like the International Socialist Organization applauded.

In the case of Libya, the Obama administration claimed there was an impending humanitarian disaster in Benghazi, where Libyan government troops were supposedly poised to crush a US-backed “rebellion.” This rebellion, it later emerged, was spearheaded by Islamic fundamentalists linked to Al Qaeda, recruited for the anti-Gaddafi campaign and subsequently mobilized for the civil war in Syria.

Six months of US-NATO bombing, supplemented by aid to proxy ground forces directed by imperialist advisers, led to the overthrow of Gaddafi and his murder by “rebel” forces in the streets of Sirte. Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, remarked afterwards, “We came, we saw, he died,” laughing at her own sick joke.

Since then, Libya has descended into chaos, with rival militias fighting for control, the emergence of multiple governments, parliaments and capitals, and one third of the population displaced from their homes. The main prizes have been the country’s vast oil resources as well as the export-processing facilities and ports required to deliver oil to the world market. The next chapter may well be a return to outright colonialism, as Italy, the former ruler of the country, considers a naval blockade against refugee boats and the dispatch of ground troops to “restore order.”

In Syria, a much more populous and economically developed country, the US intervention has been more indirect, but no less catastrophic. US allies and the CIA have financed, armed and trained a succession of rebel groups seeking to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the principal Arab ally of both Iran and Russia.

The country’s cities have been devastated, especially Aleppo, the largest city and commercial center. The Assad regime has lost control of half the country. One third of the population of 26 million has been displaced from their homes, and many millions have fled to neighboring Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. Large numbers have sought to reach Europe, contributing to the refugee flow across the Mediterranean.

Another million refugees have been displaced in Iraq with the emergence of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), itself a byproduct of the earlier US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the CIA operations in Syria. Millions more refugees are being created by the latest explosion of imperialist-directed violence--in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and other US client states are bombing the country with American warplanes, bombs and missiles, while preparing a possible invasion by US-equipped ground forces.

For a quarter century, since the first Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991, the American ruling class has been engaged in nearly continual warfare in its bid to dominate the oil-rich regions of the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. These wars have destroyed entire societies and produced untold human suffering throughout the region.

Both major parties and all of the official institutions of American capitalism are implicated in this historic crime, including Congress, the courts and the corporate-controlled media.

Every section of the political establishment defends the imperialist interests of the corporations and banks. Every Democratic and Republican politician does the bidding of the military-intelligence apparatus that upholds these interests around the world. The struggle against imperialist war requires a turn to the working class and its revolutionary mobilization against capitalism.

To lead this movement, a political leadership must be built. It is for this reason that the International Committee of the Fourth International has organized the 2015 International May Day Online Rally.

Pakistan's First Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan Was Assassinated By America

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Liaquat Ali Khan (right) with Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan's first Prime Minister, was assassinated on October 16, 1951 while addressing a public meeting in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. His assassin, later identified as Saad Akbar Babrak was shot dead on the spot. Saad Akbar Babrak was an Afghan national and a professional assassin. For more than 63 years controversy continued about the motives and perpetrators after the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan. Conspiracy theories abounded with little to substantiate. However, the controversy is now coming to end as declassified documents of the US State Department disclosed that Americans murdered the first elected prime minister of Pakistan through the Afghan government.

The US documents, released several years ago but highlighted recently by the Pakistani media and social media.

A leading English newspaper of Pakistan, the Nation and also the Express News reported on April 17: The United States wanted to get contracts of oil resources in Iran. Pakistan and Iran enjoyed cordial ties and Afghanistan used to be the enemy of Pakistan during 1950-51. The neighboring Afghanistan was the only country that didn’t accept Pakistan at that time.

The US demanded Pakistan use its influence in Tehran and persuade it to transfer control of its oil fields to the US. Liaquat Ali Khan declined to accede to the request, saying that he would not use his friendship for dishonest purposes. On which, then US President Harry Truman had threatened Liaquat Ali Khan. Not only that, Liaquat Ali Khan also asked US to vacate air bases in Pakistan within next 24 hours, dropping a bombshell on Americans.

Americans didn’t find a suitable person in Pakistan and then turned to Afghanistan for this purpose, according to the documents. Washington contacted the US Embassy in Kabul, offering Zahir Shah to search a murderer. Afghan government had found a man Syed Akbar to take the job and also made arrangements for him to be killed on the spot. All three stayed at a local hotel in Rawalpindi. Akbar fired and Liaquat Ali Khan fell, saying Allah help Pakistan.

Two persons killed the murderer of Liaquat Ali Khan at the spot while crowd also massacred the two persons in order to leave no sign of the conspiracy. The bullets used to kill the Pakistani prime minister were not easily available in the market.

Coup against Mossadegh

Not surprisingly, August 1953 the CIA staged a coup against the Iranian nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh to safeguard the west's oil interests in the country. In April 1951 Iranians democratically elected the head of the National Front party, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, as prime minister. Mossadegh moved quickly to nationalize the assets in Iran of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (the forerunner of today’s BP) a step that brought his government into confrontation with Britain and the US. Britain’s MI6 military intelligence then teamed up with the CIA and carried out a coup that ousted Mossadegh in August 1953 and returned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power.

In August 2013, 60 years after the coup, the CIA admitted staging a coup against Mossadegh though at least two US Presidents, Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama, have publicly acknowledged the US role in the Iranian coup.

"The military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.

The declassified documents, under the US Freedom of Information Act, related to CIA’s TPAJAX operation that sought regime change in Iran through the bribery of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, and massive anti-Mossadegh propaganda that helped to instigate public revolt in 1953.

Mossadegh was replaced with Iranian general Fazlollah Zahedi, who was handpicked by The CIA and M16. Mossaddegh was later sentenced to death, but the Shah never dared to carry out the sentence. Mossadegh died in his residence near Tehran in 1967.

The Shah’s pro-Western dictatorship continued for 27 years and ended with the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which paved the way for today’s Iran, where anti-American sentiments remain strong. The 1953 coup still casts a long shadow over Iranian-US relations.

Liaquat Ali Khan visits USA

Going back to the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan which came almost two years after his visit to the United State in May-June 1950. His visit perhaps set the tone of Pakistan's foreign policy because he disregarded an invitation to visit the Soviet Union.

In December 1949, Liaquat Ali Khan received an invitation from President Truman to visit the USA. This was readily accepted and the visit took place in May 1950. While on US soil, Liaquat confirmed that he intended to visit the Soviet Union. Liaquat's visit to USA brought the two countries closer. This was shown by Pakistan's support for the use of force by the UN in June 1950 against North Korea to secure its withdrawal from South Korea, as also support for the peace treaty negotiations with Japan in 1951. The Soviet Union opposed both of these developments.

In October 1949, the Communists came to power in China. The US strongly opposed this development and refused to recognize the Communist regime. It continued to recognize the ousted Kuomintang regime of Gen. Chiang Kai-shek as the legitimate government of China. The US also managed to prevent most countries in the world from recognizing Communist China which was thus kept out of the UN as well. However, Liaquat Ali Khan decided to extend recognition to Communist China in January 1950. The Chinese Ambassador arrived in Karachi in September 1951, a month before Liaquat's death, and the first Pakistani Ambassador presented credentials in Beijing in November 1951.

Pakistan thus became the first Muslim country, and one of the few countries in the world, to establish diplomatic relations with Communist China. This shrewd decision laid the foundation for strong relations with China that have since become a pillar of Pakistan's foreign policy.

When Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan visited the USA, Pakistan was non-aligned between the US-led Western Bloc and the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and it had recognized the Communist-led People's Republic of China, ignoring Washington's opposition to Peking.

It was Pakistan's membership of US backed military pacts in 1954 that aroused Soviet hostility. The Soviet veto on Kashmir was not applied until 1957. The Soviets themselves have never put the blame for unfriendly relations on the inability of Liaquat Ali Khan to visit the Soviet Union.

As the declassified documents of the US State Department reveal, Liaquat Ali Khan, was victim of politics of oil resources grab by the U.S. and British oil companies.