US Navy attacked Nord Stream pipeline, says Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hersh

Andre Damon

The destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany was a terror attack carried out by the US Navy, in a mission planned before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a report by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published Wednesday.

On September 26, a series of explosions destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which shipped natural gas from Russia to Germany. While no one has publicly admitted responsibility, US officials have expressed satisfaction at the pipeline’s destruction.

A promotional photo published by the US Navy for the "research" operation during the BALTOPS 22 war game, which Hersh alleges was used to plant the explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines. [Photo: US Navy]

Seymour Hersh is one of the world’s leading investigative journalists, who exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. He also contributed to revealing the Watergate scandal and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. While Hersh, as usual, does not report his sources, and his accusations cannot be independently verified, his reporting has been confirmed again and again in the past.

Hersh alleges that:

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

The terrorist attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines destroyed civilian infrastructure valued at over $20 billion. It resulted in the single largest spill of methane gas in human history, releasing the equivalent of 14.6 million tons of CO2, with a major climate impact. The attack contributed to a spike in energy prices through Europe and the entire world.

In congressional testimony in January, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said, “I think the administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

These statements strongly suggested that the US and its allies viewed the attack favorably. They also made it appear likely that the attack had been directed by Washington through an intermediary, such as the Ukrainian special forces.

According to Hersh, however, the attack was not only planned by the United States, but actively conducted by the US Navy. If true, what occurred was a staggeringly reckless attack on Germany, a NATO ally of the US. The United States fought against Germany in two world wars, in which hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were killed. In 1917, the United States nominally entered World War I in response to the German policy of indiscriminately sinking American civilian ships using submarines.

In his report, Hersh explained the economic significance of the Nord Stream pipelines:

From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance…

The direct route, which bypassed any need to transit Ukraine, had been a boon for the German economy, which enjoyed an abundance of cheap Russian natural gas—enough to run its factories and heat its homes while enabling German distributors to sell excess gas, at a profit, throughout Western Europe…

America’s political fears were real: [Russian President] Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America…

As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.

Hersh does not note that following the shutoff of European natural gas imports from Russia, the US massively increased its natural gas exports to Europe, leading to record profits for US energy companies.

As one European official told Politico, “The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the US because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons.”

Hersh reports that plans for the American attack on Nord Stream 2 were already in the making ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He writes:

In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, [National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.

Hersh claims that Sullivan proposed a “plan for the destruction” and that he was “delivering on the desires of the President.”

Describing the reasoning among the war planners, Hersh writes, “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”

On February 7, ahead of the invasion, US President Joe Biden declared publicly, “If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

According to Hersh, Biden’s statements shocked the planners of the operation.

Several of those involved in planning the pipeline mission were dismayed by what they viewed as indirect references to the attack…

“It was like putting an atomic bomb on the ground in Tokyo and telling the Japanese that we are going to detonate it,” the source said. “The plan was for the options to be executed post invasion and not advertised publicly. Biden simply didn’t get it or ignored it.”

The US Navy would, according to Hersh, plant the explosives during the BALTOPS 22 military exercise, which involved dozens of warships and thousands of personnel. The US Navy published a press release regarding deep-sea diving operations during the exercise, including a picture of a deep-sea diver.

While the explosives were planted during the exercise, according to Hersh, the White House ultimately decided not to trigger the explosions immediately, and instead allowed them to be remotely detonated in September.

Hersh’s report included rebuttals from the White House, which declared in response to his story, “This is false and complete fiction,” and from the Central Intelligence Agency, which declared “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who shared the article on Twitter, responded to the denials from the White House, “Can you think of any examples from history of a secret operation that the White House was responsible for, but strongly denied? Besides, you know, that little ‘mass surveillance’ kerfuffle.” Snowden was referring to the illegal NSA mass surveillance program created after the 9/11 terror attacks, which he publicly exposed in 2013.

Meanwhile, the entire US media has treated the attack as if it were an unsolved mystery, despite statements by US and NATO officials openly welcoming the bombings. Continuing a wall of silence, the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal have not reported Hersh’s article, or even the denial by the White House.

After earthquake, Syria abandoned to its fate as Turkey seeks to quell public anger

Ulaş Ateşçi

The impact of Monday’s massive earthquakes on the Turkish-Syrian border is steadily worsening. As of this morning, the death toll in Turkey has reached 12,873, while reports indicate that at least 3,162 people are confirmed to have died in Syria.

Aerial photo shows the destruction in Kahramanmaras, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023. [AP Photo/Ahmet Akpolat]

World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Europe Dr. Hans Kluge announced a “grade 3 emergency” in the region. Three days after the earthquakes, tens of thousands of people are thought to still be under the rubble in the freezing cold in both countries.

Millions of people affected by the earthquake in Syria, ravaged and divided by the civil war fomented by the NATO powers since 2011, are largely abandoned to their fate. The US and European powers still refuse to lift the crippling sanctions imposed on the country. Moreover, US forces’ continued occupation of oil fields in northeastern Syria deprives Damascus of critical revenue to deal with the disaster.

The World Food Program of the United Nations said in late January that hunger in Syria was at its highest level since 2011. It stated that 12 million Syrians don’t know where they will get their next meal, and 2.9 million are at risk of starvation.

In Turkey, there is enormous public anger over the failure of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government to take any precautions against the expected earthquakes, despite many warnings from scientists, and over the inadequate and uncoordinated official response to the earthquakes. The government is more interested in suppressing this social opposition than in saving those trapped under the rubble.

Erdoğan made this clear in his remarks on the catastrophe during his visit to the earthquake zone yesterday. “These things have always happened. These are things that are part of fate,” he said, falsely portraying the preventable deaths of tens of thousands as an inevitable “natural disaster,” rather than a social crime.

In Kahramanmaraş, the epicenter of the earthquake, Erdoğan said: “Our work in the earthquake zones will accelerate and become much more comfortable. At first, there were problems at airports and roads in some places. We will overcome them too. Today we are more comfortable, tomorrow we will be more comfortable.” In reality, it is known that the first hours after a major earthquake are critical for rescuing those trapped under the rubble.

Speaking in Hatay, another city badly damaged by the quake, Erdoğan said: “Of course there are shortcomings. The conditions are very clear. It is not possible to be prepared for such a major catastrophe.” Calling for a period of “unity and solidarity”, he attacked criticism of his government’s late and inadequate response as “filthy negative campaigns.”

The government’s restriction of access to Twitter during Erdoğan’s visit to the region sparked massive outrage. With pro-government media blacking out the situation in the earthquake zone, and even cutting off the speeches of earthquake victims, Twitter had become the main independent news center in the country. Moreover, many people still trapped under the rubble were making their voices heard on Twitter.

Erdoğan’s statement, “It is not possible to be prepared for such a major catastrophe,” is a political lie. In fact, scientists have been warning for years that major earthquakes are extremely likely in this region, and indicating what could be done to avert mass death.

After the January 2020 Elazığ earthquake, well-known geologist Professor Naci Görür warned about the Kahramanmaraş area, noting that there might have been a “stress transfer” to the fault lines in the region. Drawing attention directly to the location of the Kahramanmaraş earthquake, Görür said: “The last earthquake in the Türkoğlu region of Kahramanmaraş was 7.4 in 1513. So this is also an earthquake-prone area. We need to pay special attention to these places. We have to take mitigation measures now.”

However, measures that the central government, governorships and local governments could have taken in coordination to prevent earthquake devastation were not taken, and millions of people were were left to their fate.

While a total of 6,444 buildings have collapsed in Turkey, more than 2,700 have collapsed in Hatay, one of the hardest-hit provinces. Hatay Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Lütfü Savaş said yesterday, “Everywhere is really destroyed. We could only reach 2-3 percent of the destroyed buildings.” This could mean that tens of thousands of people are still under the rubble in Hatay alone.

However, it was known that Hatay, like other major cities in the region, is located on fault lines. Aslıhan Gündoğdu’s master’s thesis on Antakya, the central district of Hatay, titled “Urban Regeneration Policies in Turkey: A Field Research on Urban Regeneration in Antakya,” published in 2019, stated the following:

80 percent of the buildings in the urban area consist of risky structures. Although these facts have been put forward in reports, and it is known that this city is in urgent need of transformation, no significant work has been done on this issue to date.

The devastating implications of the failure to strengthen buildings and public infrastructure in Antakya and other cities, to make them earthquake-proof, is now apparent. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are trapped under collapsed buildings, and their chances of being rescued from entirely preventable deaths are fading by the hour.

Speaking to BBC Türkçe in Antakya yesterday, an aid volunteer said: “People are waiting by the rubble. There are living people inside… There is very little work in the rubble. The situation is very bad.”

Geophysical engineer Professor Övgün Ahmet Ercan’s estimates of the number of people still under the rubble are frightening. Yesterday, he said, “It is a place where there are about 4 million buildings. While 13 million people live in these buildings, about 7,000 buildings have collapsed, and people are desperate.”

He added: “According to my calculations, approximately 200,000 people were under the collapsed buildings, based on assuming there are 4 floors and 8 apartments [in every building]. The number of people pulled out of the collapse is about 8,000.”

Murat Ağırel, a columnist for the daily Cumhuriyet who is in the earthquake zone, said yesterday that in Hatay, “people have given up hope in the state, and everyone is trying to pull out their relatives under the rubble with their own means … Everyone is coming here to help, but there is still a lack of coordination. There are also teams coming from abroad. The pain here is indescribable. Unfortunately, there are places where no teams have reached.”

He added the following:

We are living in a situation of diminishing hope. After this hour, we are going to hear huge cries. Because people have blatantly died. Before, we used to call out from above the rubble ‘can anyone hear our voices?’ Now people are calling out from below the rubble ‘can anyone hear our voices?’ The main problem is lack of coordination, the main problem is the mentality of ‘with the blessings of our president,’ the main problem is the inability of state institutions to come together and carry out the work in a coordinated manner.

Social anger is growing in the earthquake region and across the country. In Adıyaman, which was severely affected by the earthquake, the governor was met with protests by earthquake victims. Yesterday, it was announced that the governor of Ordu had been temporarily appointed to replace him, while Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoğlu was also met with protests in the city.

How Complicit Governments Support the Drug Trade

John P. Ruehl

Several governments or government entities play a double game of enforcing some drug laws while ignoring others. Their reasons vary, and history proves it will be difficult to stop.

The modern globalized world has made it easier and far more lucrative to facilitate and enable international drug networks, and several governments, or elements within them, actively work with criminal groups to support the flow of drugs around the world. This has led to a surge in drug usage among people worldwide, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report 2022, with 284 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 using drugs globally in 2020, which amounts to “a 26 [percent] increase over the previous decade.”

State involvement in the drug trade occurs for a variety of reasons. The allure of profiteering can entice state actors to produce and transport drugs, particularly if their country is under financial duress. Producing drugs or merely taxing drug routes can bring in much-needed funds to balance budgets, create sources of “black cash,” or enrich elites. Allowing the drug trade may also be deemed necessary to ensure regional economic stability and can prevent criminal groups from confronting the state.

In other instances, government agencies and institutions might be “captured” by criminal elements that have gained extreme influence over political, military, and judicial systems through corruption and violence. Government entities also often become too weak or compromised to stop criminal groups, which “have never before managed to acquire the degree of political influence now enjoyed by criminals in a wide range of African, [Eastern] European, and Latin American countries.”

Finally, some governments use the drug trade to promote foreign policy objectives as a form of hybrid warfare. Supporting criminal groups in rival or hostile countries can help challenge the authority of the governments in these states, but it is also an effective way to promote social destabilization. Introducing drugs to other countries fuels local criminal activity, plagues their court and prison systems, induces treatment and rehabilitation costs, and causes immense psychological stress and societal breakdown through addiction.

The Complicity of State Actors in the Drug Trade

The Russian government’s involvement in the international drug trade is due to several reasons. Russian state entities have sought to raise cash for their own benefit but have also historically worked with powerful criminal groups due to corruption and to avoid bloodshed (though the Kremlin has steadily absorbed Russia’s criminal elements under Russian President Vladimir Putin). Additionally, with the West imposing sanctions on the Kremlin after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin is seeking to punish some EU countries for supporting Kyiv by bringing drugs into the bloc, leveraging its connections to the Eurasian underworld to do so.

The Kremlin’s role in the drug trade has provided it with influence over former Soviet states in Central Asia, which have also facilitated the drug trade from Afghanistan to Europe for decades. The criminal elements that control this northern route have immense influence over the political and security elites of Central Asian states and rely on cooperation with Russian intelligence services.

Much of the drug trade provides funding for Russian intelligence services, and the Kremlin appears to have approved an increase in drug trafficking in 2022 largely because of the financial difficulties stemming from its invasion of Ukraine.

The Balkans are also a key gateway for drugs entering Europe. In Bulgaria, corruption has seen high-level politicians implicated in drug smuggling, in addition to officials in Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. The Council of Europe, meanwhile, accused Hashim Thaçi, the former prime minister and president of Kosovo, as well as his political allies, of exerting “violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics” “and [occupying] important positions in ‘Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organized crime’” in 2010. Kosovan politicians continue to face allegations of corruption.

Morocco’s government has largely accepted drug networks to support national economic livelihood, which serves “as the basis of a parallel economy,” while this relationship is reinforced by corruption in the country. Libya had more of a state-backed drug production and export apparatus under former leader Muammar Gaddafi, though this mechanism broke down following the civil war in 2011. However, the close relationship between Guinea-Bissau’s “political-military elites” and drug smugglers has made it Africa’s greatest example of state complicity in aiding international drug networks. The country’s importance in the international drug trade stems from its proximity to Latin America and Guinea-Bissau’s geographic use as a transit stop for criminal groups seeking access to the European market.

In recent years, politicians from Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, and other Latin American countries have been accused or suspected of aiding and abetting criminals involved in the drug trade. United States officials have also accused former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and his political allies of “state-sponsored drug trafficking,” as he awaits trial in the United States.

But there has been a decades-long involvement of the United States in the drug trade. In the 1950s, for example, the CIA gave significant support to anti-communist rebel groups involved in the drug trade in the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet. The cooperation lasted into the 1970s, and ongoing corruption in the region means state authorities continue to permit criminal groups a degree of operability.

The CIA also admitted to ignoring reports about Nicaraguan Contra rebels selling drugs in the United States to fund their anti-communist campaign in the 1980s. The United States permitted Afghan farmers to grow opium poppy during the Obama administration’s handling of the War in Afghanistan in 2009 and has been suspected of cultivating Latin America’s drug networks to control the region.

Drug deaths in the United States have, meanwhile, been rising significantly since 2000 and hit record highs during the pandemic, with fentanyl responsible for two-thirds of total deaths. China has been accused by Washington of allowing and enabling domestic criminal groups to import fentanyl into the United States.

While this trade partially diminished after pressure from Washington, fentanyl exports from China now often make their way to Mexico first before crossing the U.S. border. China’s willingness to cooperate with U.S. authorities, as well as authorities in Australia, where Chinese drugs are also imported, has declined as relations between Beijing and Western states have worsened. China’s government is also mildly complicit in the Myanmar government’s far more active and direct role in facilitating the drug trade in Southeast Asia. This is due to Myanmar’s need to both raise funds and control militant groups in the country.

Drug Trade Supporting Economies in Some Countries

Drug production and exporting also give regimes an option for long-term survival. A 2014 report from the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea indicates that after North Korea defaulted on its international debts in 1976, its embassies were encouraged to “‘self-finance’ through ‘drug smuggling.’” In the 1990s, this gave way to state-sponsored drug production to further increase access to foreign currency.

Most of the suspected or arrested drug traffickers from North Korea over the last three decades have been diplomats, military personnel, or business owners. In 2003, Australian authorities busted a North Korean state-sponsored heroin smuggling operation while following Chinese suspects. But by 2004, China was also admitting to problems with North Korean drugs crossing their mutual border. And in 2019, Chinese authorities arrested several people with connections to the North Korean government who were involved in a drug smuggling ring near the border.

The Syrian government has produced and exported drugs for decades. But sanctions and civil war since 2011 have severely weakened Syria’s leadership, prompting it to drastically increase its drug operations to raise funds and maintain power. Exports of Captagon and hashish now generate billions of dollars a year for the Syrian government and far exceed the value of the country’s legal exports.

In neighboring Iran, government officials, as well as state-affiliated groups like Hezbollah, are also complicit in profiting off the drug trade, which also implicates Lebanese officials. Involvement in the drug trade by state-sponsored groups like Hezbollah or Turkey’s Grey Wolves reveal attempts by Tehran and Ankara respectively to make these groups self-sustaining when state support withers.

Overt participation in the drug trade by certain states is likely to continue. Sanctions help fuel the drug trade by making states more inclined to resort to these networks to make up for lost economic opportunities. Additionally, most efforts to combat the drug trade are largely domestic initiatives. Less corrupt law enforcement agencies are often unwilling to work with their counterparts in other countries through forums like Interpol, for fear of their complicity in illegal drug networks. The drug trade also remains a valuable geopolitical tool for states.

Nonetheless, state involvement in the drug trade is a risky venture. It emboldens criminal actors, often involves inviting drugs into national territory, and can result in enormous public backlash. While preventing the involvement of state actors in these practices will be a difficult task, the most overt instances should be scrutinized more thoroughly to ensure these policies are given greater attention.

Forest fires kill at least 26 in Chile

Mauricio Saavedra

At least 26 people have lost their lives to catastrophic fires that are sweeping through central-southern Chile with no end in sight. Over 280 active fires are blazing in the regions of Maule, Ñuble, Biobío and La Araucanía, 350km to 700km south of Santiago, regions that are dominated by agribusinesses and millions of hectares of pine and eucalyptus plantations.

Fire in the Ñuble region of Chile. Sign reads, "Preventing a forest fire is easier than fighting one". (Photo: Lacasadeljotta) [Photo by Lacasadeljotta / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Wildfires have also broken out in the deep south of Los Ríos and Los Lagos, and in Valparaíso to the north of the capital.

Over the weekend, Minister of the Interior Carolina Tohá placed Ñuble, Biobío and La Araucanía under States of Catastrophe, which allows for the deployment of the Armed Forces into the zones.

Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Venezuela and other countries have responded to the call for help and are sending fire brigades, specialists and equipment.

A debilitating 14-year drought caused by climate change, criminally reckless forestry industry activity, unusually high temperatures and strong Patagonian winds have created the perfect conditions for the environmental disaster unfolding in Chile.

The devastating fires have already burnt through approximately 200,700 hectares according to preliminary estimates of the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF). They’ve predominantly ravaged enormous privately-owned plantations, pine and eucalyptus plantations that have been allowed to encroach into populated spaces where today they buttress homes, farms, indigenous communities, villages, towns and even regional cities.

These are the people being directly affected. Twenty-six people have perished in the space of a week, including a volunteer fire fighter, Yesenia Muñoz, who died while on active duty, as well as a firefighting pilot and a helicopter mechanic. Over 1,550 houses have been destroyed by the fires affecting some 3,300 people.

The death toll surpasses the forest fires of 2014 in the densely populated Valparaíso region, which killed 15, injured over 500, and destroyed more than 2,900 homes.

It also looks likely to surpass the 2017 forest fires, until then the worst in recent history. Some 467,000 hectares went up in flames. The tragic incident left 11 dead and localities such as Santa Olga were razed to the ground. 1,600 homes were set ablaze by fires that advanced at 8,240 hectares per hour.

In a sickening twist, the focus of the administration of pseudo-left President Gabriel Boric has been to lay responsibility on the population at large and ignore the elephant in the room. The government, assisted by the corporate media, have desperately sought to avoid any mention of the timber industry.

In announcing the deployment of the military, Interior Minister Tohá told a press conference that “an important part of the work that the armed forces and the forces of order is to have patrols to avoid risky situations. To avoid behaviors that could generate new fires…”

Prompted by a CNN reporter if she was aware of any intentionally lit fires, Tohá responded that while they are investigating cases, “we do know that 99 percent of fires are generated by human action whether voluntary or involuntary … So, regardless of what the investigations tell us, what we can say is there was human action behind it, that it was avoidable with precaution, and the insistence today is to concentrate on that because the vast majority of fires are caused by this type of reason.”

This servility to corporate interests has only emboldened the timber magnates. On February 4, the president of the Chilean Timber Corporation, Juan José Ugarte, alleged that the fires were intentional and menacingly called for the militarization of the entire central-southern territory.

“The capacities are at the limit, and for that reason it is vital to use the tools that the State of Exception allows, because it is required in some communes to establish curfews, prohibition of circulation of people, prohibition of the sale of fuel in drums, to not have accelerant vehicles that spread fires, establish control points of routes, among others, to give security to the neighbors and prevent people from continuing to cause fires,” Ugarte said.

Nonetheless, it has proved impossible to shut out the growing voices of anger representing the hundreds of thousands of families directly and indirectly affected by the yearly occurrence of bush fires that are widely believed to be the work of the forestry companies themselves to acquire more land—in 2021, seven Forestal Arauco brigadiers were arrested for intentionally lighting fires that burnt 15,000 hectares in Radal Siete Tazas National Park.

One fisherman from Punta Lavapié, a cove in the Gulf of Arauco, Biobío, interviewed by Megavisión demanded that forestry companies stop planting trees so close to their homes. “To all the private companies that continue planting near our homes, our coves and our workplaces. We are all artisanal fishermen and we are not going to leave here. You can't plant your resources so close to us,” he told a surprised reporter who quickly diverted the discussion to the cleanup efforts of the residents.

About 35 houses of the coastal village were razed to the ground. All the residents were forced to evacuate by sea on boats supplied by the local fishermen and by the Navy because plantations adjacent to the small village blocked all possibility of escaping by land.

In another interview, the mayor of the rural municipality of Santa Juana unwittingly criticized the government’s subservience to the timber magnates in the Biobío region.

Santa Juana, which sits between the Wood Route and the Biobío River and is where the fires crossed to other locations, found itself surrounded by fire on all sides. Ten residents have lost their lives and 50 percent of the rural homes have gone up in flames.

The mayor, Ana Albornoz, (who happens to be allied with the current administration of the pseudo-left president Gabriel Boric) told the media, “The first shelter we had, the school of Colico Alto, we lost. We lost the health care center in the sector, we have no possibility of providing health care for the neighbors affected in the rural area. We are evacuating the sector of Los Castaños, because the fire, in addition to expanding towards Santa Juana, is spreading towards rural sectors of the municipality.”

She continued, “We are unable to cope. We are alone. There is an abandonment by the State of Chile. There is no plan for plantations, we need it to be regulated and that was not done by the State. The legislation we have is horrible, it does not protect us. The Biobío Region is entirely planted with (pines). Sometimes it seems that only Providencia, Las Condes and big cities matter, but not the communities that feed our country.”

Many thousands more have turned to social media to air their anger at the current and past governments which have bent over backwards to help the timber industry magnates, beginning with the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Pinochet brought in decree law 701 in 1974, which subsidized 75 percent of the cost of pine plantations, and in 1980 brought in the Water Code, which allowed for the private ownership of water. From 1974 to the present, Arauco (owned by the Angelini Group) and CMPC (Matte Group) had received US $1billion from public funds and own close to 2 million hectares of land combined.

To create a propitious climate for the expansion of the industry, the dictatorship removed indigenous Mapuche communities from ancestral lands at the point of a gun. It also rescinded the land seizures of the 1960s and 1970s, handing them back to latifundistas, while brutally repressing left-wing peasant organizations.

With the return to civilian rule in 1990, alternating Christian Democratic, Socialist Party and right-wing governments have applied “anti-terrorist” and “state security” laws against Mapuche communities, which have turned increasingly to armed struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands. Meanwhile politicians of all stripes have been mired in one corruption scandal after another involving the oligarchic families of Chile.

Today President Boric, promoted as a “progressive,” “environmentalist,” “feminist” by liberals and the pseudo-left, is continuing in line with his predecessors.

US-backed provincial leader in Solomon Islands removed from office

Patrick O’Connor

Yesterday a no-confidence motion in the provincial assembly ousted the premier of Malaita province in Solomon Islands, Daniel Suidani.

The development represents a blow to the United States government, which has funneled so-called aid money into the island of Malaita and extended political support to Suidani and his backers as a reward for their vociferous anti-China and anti-central government stance.

Daniel Suidani in September 2022 [Photo: Solomon Islands Government]

Suidani’s ouster comes just days after the US formally reopened its embassy in Solomon Islands, which had been closed in 1993 but was relaunched as part of Washington’s drive to counter Beijing’s influence in the South Pacific.

The national government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in September 2019, and in March 2022 developed a security pact with Beijing. The diplomatic switch was met with consternation and protests from powerful figures within Washington.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio threatened to crash the Solomons’ impoverished economy. The security pact saw threats by the Biden administration to stage a military intervention in the event that a Chinese military base was opened in the small, strategic Pacific country.

These were blatantly illegal ultimatums issued against an elected government entering into relations with other states.

For US imperialism, however, everything—including basic precepts of international law—is subordinated to its war drive against China. Washington is attempting to diplomatically and militarily encircle China, while ratcheting up anti-China rhetoric within the US and internationally, most recently via the scare campaign over an apparently stray weather balloon. The Solomons-China security pact cut directly across this agenda, while raising the spectre of an end to unchallenged American hegemony across the Pacific Ocean.

It was within this context that Malaitan Premier Daniel Suidani rose from the obscurity of Solomon Islands’ village politics to become the US pointman within the country over the past four years.

On the eve of the 2019 diplomatic switch, a team of American officials travelled to Malaita, including members of the Department of State, Department of Defence, Department of Trade, as well as embassy and aid personnel. US intelligence operatives were undoubtedly also present. After this secretive trip—no press statements or social media posts accompanied the mission—Suidani declared that his provincial administration regarded as illegitimate the central government’s recognition of Beijing.

The Malaitan premier insisted that he would maintain his own foreign policy relations with Taiwan—despite this being explicitly illegal under Solomon Islands’ law.

Suidani sought to whip up Christian fundamentalist and anti-communist sentiment in Malaita and prohibited Chinese trade and investment in the province. His supporters in the now proscribed Malaita For Democracy outfit (M4D) issued a pogromist threat in September 2020 to ethnic Chinese residents, demanding they leave the Malaitan capital of Auki within 24 hours.

The US pledged tens of millions of dollars in so-called aid directly to Malaita, amounting to at least 50 times more money than the province receives from any other country. Suidani also enjoyed critical political backing—he and his colleagues have received “training” from personnel with the International Republican Institute, an organisation with close ties to the US intelligence agencies.

As early as January 2020, the World Socialist Web Site warned that the US and its key ally in the region, Australia, were preparing a “regime change” operation against the Solomon Islands’ Sogavare government. This was borne out when Suidani’s M4D supporters travelled from Malaita to the capital, Honiara, in November 2021 and attempted to storm the parliament and take Sogavare hostage. When this proved unsuccessful, they burned and looted much of the city for three days, murdering three people.

Suidani’s removal as premier appears to reflect growing opposition to his rule in Malaita. Promised US investments have largely failed to materialise and desperate poverty and chronic infrastructure problems remain. Paved roads and bridges are either non-existent or in advanced disrepair, yet Suidani has blocked Chinese construction firms from doing work as they have in other provinces. Suidani also blocked the installation of Huawei mobile phone towers, limiting reception on the island. This issue was recently raised against Suidani by Malaita’s deputy premier, Glen Waneta.

Suidani and his executive failed to appear before the provincial assembly yesterday, apparently after learning they lacked the numbers. The provincial budget failed to pass the assembly last month, demonstrating growing defections to the opposition. Seventeen assembly members reached quorum yesterday and voted for the no-confidence motion, the text of which included allegations against Suidani of financial mismanagement and corruption.

Around 100 Suidani supporters reportedly clashed with police after the premier’s removal, with protestors throwing stones and officers firing tear gas. According to social media reports, the rioters attempted to enter the assembly building, reprising their previous occupation of the assembly building in October 2021. This anti-democratic incident resulted in an earlier no-confidence motion being unable to be heard.

The situation remains tense ahead of the scheduled assembly vote for a new provincial premier. Just before Suidani’s removal, a spokesman for a group of his supporters among Malaitan chiefs issued a provocative statement warning of violence unless the provincial government remained in power. Flex Fiumae told the Solomon Star last Sunday: “If anything goes wrong, resulting in damages to properties and loss of lives, the mover of the [no-confidence] motion and the non-executive will be blamed for triggering the situation.”

Suidani’s removal will see no let-up in the propaganda campaign in the Australian and US media against the Sogavare government and China. Already, without a shred of evidence, Suidani’s ouster is being attributed to a corrupt conspiracy. Mihai Sora from an Australian corporate thinktank, the Lowy Institute, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that there is “speculation that Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare financed these motions against Suidani, backed by money from China, which would be glad to see the premier removed.”

This unsubstantiated speculation is being fueled by the Australian and American governments as part of ongoing efforts to destabilise the Sogavare government.

Canada deploys surveillance plane over Haiti to lay groundwork for US-demanded military intervention

Roger Jordan & Keith Jones

Canada’s Liberal government moved closer to launching a full-scale military intervention in Haiti this past weekend, deploying a long-range Canadian Armed Forces surveillance plane to support operations by the country’s national police to combat a sustained wave of gang violence. The Western Hemisphere’s most impoverished country, Haiti has been gripped for years by an ever widening social calamity, characterized by mass hunger and destitution, the COVID-19 pandemic, a cholera epidemic, and a proliferation of heavily-armed gangs that are allied with competing factions of Haiti’s corrupt, pro-imperialist ruling elite.

The Biden administration has been pushing Ottawa behind the scenes and in public statements to assume a leadership role in a military intervention in Haiti since late October. In a joint statement issued Sunday, Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly confirmed that a C-140 Aurora spy plane had begun surveilling Haiti, but refused to specify how long the mission would continue. “This Canadian patrol aircraft will provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability to bolster efforts to establish and maintain peace and security for the people of Haiti,” the ministers declared in their statement. “The CP-140 aircraft has already deployed to the region and is currently operating over Haiti. It will remain in the region for a number of days.”

Protesters calling for the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry run after police fired tear gas to disperse them in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

To describe the blather about Canada working to establish “peace” and “security” for “the people of Haiti” as hypocritical would be an understatement. The social disaster that faces the vast majority of the country’s 12 million inhabitants is the outcome of a long series of catastrophic foreign occupations and interventions stretching back over a century, primarily led by US imperialism, but also in recent decades directly involving its Canadian ally.

The last of these interventions began in 2004, when US and Canadian troops collaborated with far-right paramilitary forces associated with the old Duvalier dictatorship—which Washington had backed to the hilt for three decades ending in 1986—to violently overthrow Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The intervening two decades have witnessed the imperialist powers in the so-called “Core Group,” which includes the US, France and Canada, back a series of increasingly right-wing governments that have presided over deepening social and economic breakdown, especially since the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Under pressure from the Biden administration, the Trudeau Liberal government has made preparations over recent months to mount a new imperialist military occupation of the island nation. The Trudeau government sent a batch of armoured vehicles to the Haitian national police in October and made a second delivery last month. Ottawa also dispatched a fact-finding mission to Port-au-Prince late last year after Ariel Henry, the imperialist-installed acting president, appealed in October 2022 for a foreign military intervention to suppress the criminal gangs that control much of Port-au-Prince and other cities and exact tolls on traffic and the transport of fuel and other essentials.

Henry has held power since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse—in what appears to have been a settling of scores within the traditionally pro-Duvalierist, ultra-right-wing faction of the ruling elite from which Moïse himself hailed. The well-armed gangs, some of which were used by Moïse to suppress popular unrest, are backed by powerful figures within the Haitian oligarchy.

If there is a certain reluctance on the part of the Trudeau government to rush to deploy ground troops to Port-au-Prince, this is certainly not to be explained by any aversion to aggressive military operations in other countries. Over the past two decades, Canadian imperialism has participated side-by-side with its US ally in the savage destruction of Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and is now in the front ranks of the imperialist war on Russia.

The delay in finalizing the intervention in Haiti has much more to do with the depth of the crisis confronting Haitian capitalism and its pro-imperialist puppet regime, and fears that the attempt to bloodily prop it up could prove costly.

Henry, who is widely suspected of having a hand in Moïse’s assassination, is hated by the vast majority of the populace. His rule is also seen as illegitimate by the bourgeois opposition, which has long argued that Moïse’s election and that of his predecessor and mentor, Michel Martelly, were the result of manipulation and outright fraud.

Among Haiti’s workers and toilers there is mass opposition to American imperialism due to its more than century-long role in bloodily suppressing the democratic and social aspirations of the Haitian people. But there is also widespread and mounting hostility to Canadian imperialism, with repeated protests in recent years targeting Ottawa’s role in upholding the country’s vicious, corrupt capitalist ruling elite.

The Liberal government clearly fears that a Canadian-led military intervention would face mass popular opposition from the outset, and that this could dangerously undermine the “democratic” and “human rights” façade behind which Ottawa conducts its predatory foreign policy, including its increasingly significant roles in the US military-strategic offensives against Russia and China.

It also needs to be noted that the gangs are heavily armed and could prove difficult to disarm. As for the National Police, some of whose former personnel are now gang leaders, they are likely to prove a less than reliable ally of a Canadian-led military intervention. Late last month, a group of officers staged a violent day-long protest in Port-au-Prince to press for more state support and weaponry, forcing acting Prime Minister Henry to shelter in the airport as they fired guns into the air. At least 78 police officers have been killed on duty since Moïse’s assassination, including 14 who were kidnapped.

The spy plane mission indicates that a decision on a Canadian-led military intervention may be imminent. During a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the North American leaders’ summit in Mexico City last month, Biden again pressed Ottawa on the issue. If Trudeau has not green-lighted such a deployment by the time the US president visits Canada in March, it could well serve as the backdrop for unveiling a Canadian-led military operation. This is the preferred outcome for the Biden administration, which is eager to avoid yet another US-led operation as it wages war against Russia and intensifies its all-sided campaign of diplomatic, economic and military pressure against China.

Bob Rae, the Trudeau government’s ambassador to the United Nations, told a meeting of the UN Security Council in January that Canada intends to “do things differently than in the past” and “learn from the history of large, outside military interventions in Haiti because they have actually failed to bring about long-term stability for Haitians.” The “solutions” Ottawa is striving for must be “led by Haitians and Haitian institutions,” Rae claimed.

Behind the florid rhetoric, Rae was essentially saying that pressure is being applied behind the scenes to establish a more stable regime that can better front an imperialist intervention. Henry duly sought to oblige his imperialist masters with his announcement February 6 of the creation of a “High Transition Council,” which he stated unanimously supports a foreign military intervention to “restore order.” Its three members represent the political, business and civil sectors. They include Mirlande Manigat, a former right-wing presidential candidate associated with Henry’s supporters; Laurent Saint-Cyr, president of Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce; and Pastor Calixte Fleuridor, from the country’s Protestant Federation.

The imperialists would like to see the political integration of the bourgeois opposition “Montana Accord” parties into a transitional regime capable of imposing the dictates of the major powers and international investors, who are demanding “stability” to facilitate the ruthless exploitation of Haiti’s impoverished workers. Washington and Ottawa are also anxious that the social crisis in Haiti not destabilize the broader Caribbean region, including through a mass exodus of desperate refugees to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and beyond.

Amid the unfolding nightmare in Haiti, both the US and Canada continue to deport Haitians en masse.

A report released this week by the UN Children’s Agency UNICEF underscored the extent of the social catastrophe produced by decades of imperialist intervention and the corrupt rule of their local stooges. Fully 2.5 million children, half of the country’s entire child population, will require emergency assistance this year due to a lack of food and other basic necessities. As Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s Haiti representative told the Guardian, “Haitian children don’t just face challenges accessing food and potable water while the health system collapses around them. There is also a lack of protection. Children are being abused, young girls are being raped and services are not there at the scale they should be for their survival and development.”

A deadly cholera epidemic continues to rage across the country. According to a UN report dated January 15, 483 deaths, 1,742 confirmed cases and 24,232 suspected cases can be attributed to the outbreak that began last year. The impact of the disease is compounded by widespread malnutrition, with the World Food Program reporting that 4.7 million Haitians, more than a third of the population, face acute hunger.

Chief responsibility for this abysmal state of affairs lies with the imperialist powers. After decades of military occupations and interventions, and the backing of brutal dictatorships, they responded to the 2010 earthquake that claimed at least 250,000 lives by offering up Haiti’s impoverished masses as a source of cheap labour for international finance capital. Money provided to support the victims was funneled through pro-imperialist organizations like the Inter-American Development Bank, and large investment deals brokered by the war criminals Bill and Hillary Clinton were struck.

Under this regime of “aid,” approximately 60,000 jobs were created in the low-paying apparel sector, as large international concerns took advantage of extremely low wage rates and Washington’s removal of export restrictions to cash in. At least 11,000 of these jobs have disappeared since December 2021.

The latest announcement came from South Korean producer Sae-A Trading Co., which is cutting 3,500 jobs from its workforce of 7,000 and closing one of its six factories in northeastern Haiti. The company, which operates as S&H Global in Haiti, arrogantly complained about the prevalence of strikes by customs officials, gang violence and the unreliable local power supply in a statement full of corporate managerial-speak. “These disruptions,” declared Sae-A Trading, had led “to orders canceled and trust lost from our retailer customers in the USA as they suffered significant losses from delayed and non-delivery of merchandise.” For 2023, it continued, the large US-based retailers are rerouting orders “elsewhere around the Caribbean and Central America leaving us, S&H Global with a dearth of orders.”