Sent to WS and Blog
Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for opposition to
empire, militarism, and wars. Here is the
link to the Index: http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/ See: Continental US Westward Expansion,
Genocide, Indigenous People of Americas, Pentagon ,
US
My blog:
It's the War Department
It's the War Department
WHO TELLS THE STORY?
“. . .the dominant interpretation of the past often enjoys
its status not because of its superior historical accuracy but because of its
proponents’ social power.” Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the
Violence of History (p. 276).
THE CHINA
THREAT
“Percentage of Americans who say China ‘can’t be trusted: 68.” (“Harper’s Index” January 2013). Where do you think that fear came from? US
encirclement of China would
not happen without the majority of people first having been persuaded by the
warriors to believe China
was an enemy, just as with Vietnam
and the “Axis of Evil.” --Dick
Nos. 1 & 2 at end
Contents #3, Nov. 25,
2012
Dick: Jeju Island
Obama Focuses on Asia-Pacific
Burns on Panetta: Transferring Forces to China
Letman (via Global Nework and VFP): Hawaii
US Fear of Chinese Port
Andre Vltchek, Oceania , Western Imperialism S. Pacific
Contents #4 Encircling China
LaFebre, Expansion 1860-1898
Dick: Progress to Pacific
Dick: General Custer
Lind: Hawaii
Bardsley: US Troops to Australia : China
Paik and Mander: Pacific Blowback
Space Alert! Dec. 2012
Middleton, Australian
Military Connections
US and NZ: Waihopai
Spybase
Vandenberg Air Force
Base
Star Wars and China
USPACCOM
Contents #5 March 27, 2013
RESISTANCE
Gagnon: Oppose US/SK War Games
Public Citizen: Stop Trans-Pacific Partnership: Contact Your Congressman
Garate: Resistance to US Military Bases in S. Korea
Kalikasan People’s Resistance
to US Military Destruction of Environment in the Philippines
HISTORY
Chalmers Johnson
Steve Clemons, Tribute
Dick Bennett, Blowback
Conroy, et al., West Across the Pacific
And S.
America
Contents #6
Dick: From Plymouth
Fackler: Japan
Southeast
Asian Bases: Singapore
Gerson:
Peace Movement and Pivot
Beifus:
Transpacific Partnership (TPP)
Glazebrook: Empire Westward or Eastward? Africa
The US Westward Movement: Puritan Aggression from Plymouth
This
passage from Alfred Cave’s The Pequot War
connects the dots of US westward expansion that included the enormous theft
from Mexico of the Southwest US and California and the spoils of the
Spanish-American War and WWII: .
“The Pequot War was not
waged in response to tangible acts of aggression. It cannot be understood as a rational
response to a real threat to English security.
It was, however, the expression of an assumption central to Puritan
Indian policy. Puritan magistrates were
persuaded that from time to time violent reprisals against recalcitrant savages
would be necessary to make the frontier safe for the people of God. The campaign against the Pequots was driven
by the same assumption that had impelled Plymouth Fort Mystic
served the same symbolic purpose as the impalement of Wituwamet’s head on Plymouth
Just change a few words and the passage
applies amazingly well to the Cold War and the War on Terror, the permanent war
that has ravaged the planet. From the
dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki , partly to intimidate the Soviet Union, to the
drone assassinations, US leaders have pumped the public with fear of attack to
justify some fifty US
One of our greatest critics of US US
EVAN TAYLOR, EURASIA : CROSSROADS OF EMPIRE
“The New Crossroads of
Empire,” Part Two of a Series on Eurasia in Z Magazine (April 2013).
·
ZNet
·
ZMag
·
ZBooks
·
ZSocial
·
ZVid
·
ZSpace
·
ZBlog
·
Parecon
·
Volume 26, Number 4
NOTE: Z Magazinesubscribers and sustainershave
access to all Z Magazine articles here and in the archive. The latest Z
Magazine articles available to everyone are listed in the Free Articles box at
the top of the table of
contents, and are starred in the list below.Questions? e-mail Z Magazine
Online.
The New Crossroads of Empire [US
westward expansion meets Chinese. –Dick] By Evan Taylor
[CHINA Beijing China Beijing and Guangzhou ,
the historic trading center on China Beijing to Guangzhou
But equally as important is Beijing Turkey ’s
east-west breadth, connecting Asia to Europe
at 200 mph. But where Turkey
is the future, the start of Beijing
The
idea of a railroad has always been the dream for connecting global markets
going on two centuries now. The Trans-Siberian railway, the original Eurasian
land bridge from Moscow to the Sea
of Japan , was a two-decade project completed by the Russian Tsars
in 1916. In the U.S. ,
railroads settled the west and, when they reached the Pacific, the U.S. China
In
October 2008, Norbert Bensel, a top board manager at DB Schenker, the logistics
subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn that manages the service, aptly described the new
process of industry that was taking place. “The introduction of the regular
timetable and fixed departure times,” he stated, will create “a new link in our
global network” and “a new level of quality in the trans-continental exchange
of goods” (“Trans-Eurasia Express to Launch next year,” Railway Gazette, October 6,
2008). Heady words, and ones that speak of a great imaginary market coming to
life.
Bensel was speaking at the commercial launch
of what was then called the Trans-Eurasia expressway, a twice a week, 20-day
freight shipping line from
By
October 2011, DB Schenker had the service running five days a week and a number
of major companies had bought into the route. Auto manufacturers like BMW,
Audi, and Volkswagen now ship parts overland from their German manufacturing
plants to their Chinese assembly plants, and computer companies like HP and
Acer ship from their Chinese factories to the European market. Since 2011, HP
has shipped over four million notebook computers from Chongqing
to Germany
Beijing is also developing a factory economy in
Western China. Whereas the Southeast coast had been the major
growth market for Chinese factory development in the past, industry is now
moving inland and to the west. Chongqing , in Sichuan Chongqing China Beijing Beijing China
Oil
and Gas Pipelines
The other half of
Since
then, Beijing China ’s share in oil production in Kazakhstan
In
order to transport the oil to China Dushanzi , located halfway between
the border and Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi ,
received China
A
second pipeline, for transporting natural gas, has also been constructed,
running from fields in Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan Kazakhstan has been planned
as well, running from the Caspian Sea to
Shykment.
A 2009 meeting in the remote Turkmeni desert
symbolized the new petroleum reality in
[USA China
is building her industrial connection to the west, the U.S. Afghanistan
One
main path starts in the Latvian port
of Riga , on the Baltic
Sea . From there it travels by rail through Russia , Kazakhstan ,
and Uzbekistan Georgia ’s Black Sea port
of Poti and runs across the Caucasus
to Baku , on the Caspian Sea .
It then goes through Kazakhstan
and Uzbekistan Afghanistan Riga
to Afghanistan
Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan
Consider
the case of Uzbekistan , the
most populous state in Central Asia and one
ruled with an iron fist by Islam Karimov since 1989. Karimov is of the Saddam
Hussein mold of dictator, a former Soviet secret policeman obsessed with power
and violence, famous for boiling prisoners alive. Like Iraq , Uzbekistan Washington Uzbekistan
barely one month to agree to host a U.S. Fort Drum ’s tenth mountain division, the first U.S.
Months
later, Kyrgyzstan followed
suit, and allowed the U.S.
military to use the Manas International Airport ,
located on the outskirts of the capital city of Bishkek Tampa , Florida
Here, it is worth quoting at length from a
remarkable article, “Footprints in Steppes of Central Asia,” by Vernon Loeb and
published in the February 9, 2002 edition of the Washington Post: “In a remote
corner of Central Asia in a country that didn’t even exist a decade
ago, the U.S. Air Force is building a base that within
months will be home to 3,000 personnel and nearly two dozen American
and allied aircraft. While the intensity of the war in
Just
how long the United States Manas International
Airport is any indication, the
Pentagon, rather than searching for an exit strategy for Afghanistan America will have
a continuing interest and presence in Central
Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before,”
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the House International Relations
Committee on Wednesday….”
All
told, more than 50,000 U.S.
military personnel now live and work on ships and bases stretching
from Turkey to Oman Central Asia ,”
Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century, wrote in a recent e-mail
circulated among leading military analysts.
The
full article is an amazing read on the
bellicose optimism of American policymakers in the wake of September 11.
Central Asia had been conquered, the war in Afghanistan
would soon be over, and Iraq Uzbekistan Andijon ,
U.S. U.S.
due to the recent “color revolutions” Washington
had sponsored in Georgia , Ukraine , and Kyrgyzstan
With
the growing importance of the Northern Distribution Network, the U.S. has been crawling back to Karimov in order
for him to open up his borders for U.S. Washington lifted the last of the
arms-sales restrictions placed on Uzbekistan Tashkent in November, Army Lt. General James L. Brooks
stated that transferring leftover or old
U.S. military equipment from
Afghanistan to Uzbekistan Uzbekistan
and Afghanistan , with the
excess of U.S.
Although it is ethically troublesome for the
New Silk Road
Disregarding
the logistical and ethical problems, the entire effort is not a sustainable
plan, as it is a fact that the U.S.
will soon remove all its “combat” soldiers from Afghanistan Washington U.S.
State Department, the NDN is the first step in creating what they term a “New Silk Road Afghanistan Nigeria
and top State Department advisor to Transportation Command, laid out the U.S. strategy: “Eventually, with continued
cooperation, they will be able to go all the way from China into Europe ….
You will have a whole new economic
network, built upon the foundation of this military logistics supply network.”
Hilariously,
the State Department is also still pining for the famed TAPI pipeline,
connecting Turkmenistan to Afghanistan , Pakistan ,
and India Afghanistan Turkmenistan found
its energy patron in China U.S. China
has embraced industrial development, the U.S. Eurasia ?
It is laughable, but the same idea has driven U.S.
policy around the globe, from Columbia to Iraq to the Philippines
China’s Going West Policy
China’s current policy of Going West and
expanding their economic influence into western Eurasia—Central Asia, the
Middle East, and eventually Western Europe—is rooted in
Beijing’s keen reading of the last 20 years of history. Economically, they
watched the dissolution of the Soviet Union ,
and the reality of Western-backed free-market “shock therapy” being imposed on
a nation of 150 million, and decided a different path was needed. Beijing
Militarily,
they watched the U.S. follow
the Cheney plan of imperial expansion and privatization, fighting wars in Yugoslavia , Afghanistan ,
and Iraq , all at a huge cost
to the U.S. China Red Sea
area, the idea was quickly denied and no base was ever constructed.
Currently,
Beijing seems to be happy letting U.S. soldiers protect China China is now the largest investor in the Iraqi
oil sector, as well as making the largest investment in the history of Afghanistan Caspian Basin ,
which U.S. strategists have
tried to control since the George H.W. Bush Administration, China has built oil and gas pipelines to their
Western province
of Xinjiang Uzbekistan ,
where the China-Central Asia gas pipeline
intersects with NATO’s supply route for the Afghanistan War, are the new
crossroads of empire. While Washington
strategists dream about ending the war by turning the supply route into a
Pentagon-designed “New Silk Road” in the region, Beijing Eurasia .
The
last the 40 years of U.S.
foreign policy have been devoted to gaining hegemony over the Middle East and Southwest Asia . U.S.
leaders have made this an entirely military project, fighting multiple wars in
both Iraq and Afghanistan China
implemented an economic strategy and trumped the U.S. U.S.
The
guns are still there, but the resources and industrial infrastructure is being
developed and controlled by China U.S. needs a “new
strategic partnership” with Turkey New York City and Washington ,
they see a Turkey Ankara Turkey
is spurning U.S. Syria ,
and Missile Defense, Turkey U.S.
Whether
the Chinese people are benefitting from these developments is a different
question altogether and one that cannot be fully examined in this space.
Corruption and scandals have plagued the upper levels of the Chinese Communist
Party as of late and top leaders have been exposed as amassing giant fortunes.
In 2011, Liu Zhijun, railroad minister for 8 years, was dramatically fired from
his post, accused of netting $152 million in bribes. One wonders if China ’s high-speed railroad boom will be a
repeat of the Gilded Age, the famous phrase used in 1873 by Mark Twain to
describe the veneer of conspicuous wealth associated with the U.S. China
Evan Taylor is a student at American
University and a graduate of Marlboro College
by E. San
Juan , Jr. [NOTES ON U.S.GENOCIDE IN THE PHILIPPINES
Except during the sixties when the Filipino-American War
of 1899-1902 was referred to as “the first Vietnam ,”
the death of 1.4 million Filipinos has been usually accounted for as either
collateral damage or victims of insurrection against the imperial authority of
the United States London
This fact is not even mentioned in the
tiny paragraph or so in most U.S. Luzon alone by 1902.
The actual figure of 1.4 million covers the period from 1899 to 1905 when
resistance by the Filipino revolutionary forces mutated from outright combat in
battle to guerilla skirmishes; it doesn’t include the thousands of Moros
(Filipino Muslims) killed in the first two decades of U.S. colonial domination.
The
first Philippine Republic led by Emilio Aguinaldo, which had already waged a
successful war against the Spanish colonizers, mounted a determined nationwide
opposition against U.S. U.S. U.S. Vietnam Philippines
As
defined by the UN 1948 “ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide,” genocide means acts “committed with intention to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” It is
clear that the U.S. colonial
conquest of the Philippines U.S.
What
was deleted in the original draft of the UN document are practices considered
genocidal in their collective effect. Some of them were carried out in the Philippines by the United States
In
a recent article, “Genocide and America ”
(New
York
What happened in 1899-1903 is bound
to be repeated with the increased U.S.
intervention in the Philippines
(declared “the second front” in the “war against terrorism”) unless U.S. Philippines gained nominal independence from the
U.S. U.S.
As attested to by UNESCO and human rights monitors, the situation
has worsened since then with hundreds of killings of journalists, lawyers,
women activists, and union organizers. The current crisis of the Arroyo regime,
ridden with corruption and exposed for blatant vote rigging, is renewing alarm
signals for Washington, foreboding a repeat of mass urban uprisings sure to
threaten the comprador agents of global capital that abet the misery of
millions—10 million of 80 Filipinos work as domestics and contract workers
abroad—caused by World Bank, World Trade Organization, and International
Monetary Fund policies imposed on a neocolonial government.
The revolutionary upsurge in the Philippines U.S.
imperialism (the genocide of Native Americans is replayed in the
subjugation of the inhabitants of the Philippines ,
Puerto Rico , Hawaii ,
and Cuba
Despite inroads of critical theory
here and there, the received consensus of a progressive modernizing influence
from the advanced industrial Western powers
remains deeply entrenched here and in the Philippines
What remains to be carefully considered,
above all, is the historical specificity or singularity of each of these
projects of national liberation, their class composition, historical roots,
programs, ideological tendencies, and political agendas within the context of
colonial/imperial domination. It is not possible to pronounce summary judgments
on the character and fate of nationalist movements in the peripheral formations
without focusing on the complex manifold relations between colonizer and
colonized, the dialectical interaction between their forces as well as others
caught in the conflict. Otherwise, the result would be a disingenuous ethical
utopianism such as that found in U.S. postnationalist and postcolonialist
discourse which, in the final analysis, functions as an apology for the
ascendancy of the transnational corporate powers embedded in the nation-states
of the North, and for the hegemonic rule of the only remaining superpower
claiming to act in the name of freedom and democracy.
The case of the national-democratic
struggle in the Philippines Philippines ’
emergence as a dependent nation-state controlled by the United States U.S.
The central founding “event” (as the philosopher Alain Badiou
would define the term) is the 1896 revolution against Spain and its sequel, the Filipino-American war
of 1899-1902, and the Moro resistance up to 1914 against U.S. U.S.
Following a long and tested tradition of grassroots mobilization,
Filipino nationalism has always remained centered on the peasantry’s demand for
land closely tied to the popular-democratic demand for equality and genuine
sovereignty.
For over a century now, U.S.-backed developmentalism and modernization have
utterly failed in the Philippines U.S. Philippines
Recalling the genocidal U.S. U.S.
The Philippines as an “imagined” and actually experienced ensemble
of communities, or multiplicities in motion, remains in the process of being
constructed primarily through modes of political and social resistance against
corporate transnationalism (or globalization, in the trendy parlance) and its
technologically mediated ideologies, fashioning thereby the appropriate
cultural forms of dissent, resistance, and subversion worthy of its people’s
history and its collective vision.
Revised
version of my piece that came out in countercurrents.org
--
Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2013 11:37 AM
Subject: [New post] FREE ALL FILIPINA POLITICAL PRISONERS!
Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2013 11:37 AM
Subject: [New post] FREE ALL FILIPINA POLITICAL PRISONERS!
|
philcsc posted: "U.S.
GLOBAL CAPITALISM'S HUMANITARIAN BLESSING : TORTURE OF WOMEN POLITICAL
PRISONERS IN THE PHILIPPINES by E. SAN JUAN, Jr. Philippines Cultural Studies
Center, USA Listed early this year by the UK ECONOMIST as an upcoming
Asian Tiger with 6-7% G"
|
Reader Supported
News | 02 April 13 AM
Japan Shifting Further Away From Pacifism
Martin Fackler, The New York Times
Fackler reports: "Iron Fist is one of the latest signs that Japan's anxiety about China's insistent claims over disputed islands as well as North Korea's escalating nuclear threats are pushing Japanese leaders to shift further away from the nation's postwar pacifism."
READ MORE
Martin Fackler, The New York Times
Fackler reports: "Iron Fist is one of the latest signs that Japan's anxiety about China's insistent claims over disputed islands as well as North Korea's escalating nuclear threats are pushing Japanese leaders to shift further away from the nation's postwar pacifism."
READ MORE
NEW FILM, THE GHOSTS OF JEJU, Purchased by OMNI
Hello James,
Got your email from Bruce Gagnon. First, your copy of The Ghosts of Jeju will be in tomorrow's mail.
I visited the website and am very impressed with the work you folks are doing. I hope that you will have an opportunity to screen the film with as many as possible, especially the students. The real history of theU.S.
Thanks for purchasing the film, and please do provide me with feedback on how it is received.
Regis Tremblay
209 River Rd
Woolwich, ME 04579
207-400-4362
"I refuse to live in a country like this, and I'm not leaving"
Michael Moore
Hello James,
Got your email from Bruce Gagnon. First, your copy of The Ghosts of Jeju will be in tomorrow's mail.
I visited the website and am very impressed with the work you folks are doing. I hope that you will have an opportunity to screen the film with as many as possible, especially the students. The real history of the
Thanks for purchasing the film, and please do provide me with feedback on how it is received.
Regis Tremblay
209 River Rd
Woolwich, ME 04579
207-400-4362
"I refuse to live in a country like this, and I'm not leaving"
Michael Moore
REPORTING
Latest report in June 5, 2013 number, “Jeju Island , Korea
1.
24/7 construction met with 24/7 resistance on Jeju
Island « The ...
www.nukeresister.org/.../247-construction-met-with-247-resistance-on-je...
Oct 29, 2012 – 24/7 construction met
with 24/7 resistance on Jeju Island Jeju Island , South Korea
2.
Inside
& Out « The Nuclear Resister
www.nukeresister.org/inside-out/
Write a note of support to these
imprisoned anti-nuclear and anti-war activists ... (Obstruction of business
of military port contractors, Jeju , South Korea ) ... road leading into the
site of a naval base under construction on Jeju Island , South Korea
3.
Arrests, jailings, injuries and other repression on Jeju
Island as ...
www.nukeresister.org/.../arrests-jailings-injuries-and-other-repression-on...
May 13, 2013 – Arrests, jailings,
injuries and other repression on Jeju Island as resistance to the
naval base under construction ... Jeju Prison, 161 Ora
2-dong, Jeju City ,
Jeju , Korea
4.
~ from Jeju Prison, by Kim Young-Jae « The
Nuclear Resister
www.nukeresister.org/2013/05/17/from-jeju-prison-by-kim-young-jae/
May 17, 2013 – from Jeju Prison, by Kim
Young-Jae ... the site of a naval base
under construction on Jeju Island , South Korea
5.
The Nuclear Resister
www.nukeresister.org/
The Nuclear Resister networks the
anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance .... leading into the site of
a naval base under construction on Jeju Island , South Korea
6.
Busted on Jeju Island « The Nuclear Resister
www.nukeresister.org/2012/02/26/busted-on-jeju-island/
Busted on Jeju Island
7.
E-bulletin May 2013 « The Nuclear Resister
www.nukeresister.org/2013/05/31/e-bulletin-may-2013/
May 31, 2013 – Arrests, jailings,
injuries on Jeju Island ... anti-nuclear and
anti-war activists on the Nuclear Resister blog, as well as
prisoners' writings.
8.
More arrests on Jeju Island; support calls and
emails needed « The ...
www.nukeresister.org/.../more-arrests-on-jeju-island-support-calls-and-e...
Nov 8, 2011 – More arrests on Jeju Island; support calls and
emails needed ... In other related news
from South Korea, 40 Catholic priests in
Seoul have begun a hunger strike in protest at what they call a ... Support the Nuclear Resister ...
SOUTHEAST
ASIA: SINGAPORE
“Obama
Lauds Ties with Singapore
“President Barack Obama on Tuesday thanked Singapore for its military ccoperations as the U.S.
“Singapore U.S.
disentangles itself from a decade of conflict in Iraq
and Afghanistan
JOSEPH GERSON, THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE PIVOT. The
Peace Chronicle (Spring-Summer 2013).
Here’s a partial summary of the opening paragraphs: The recent increase of US military and
economic expansion and pressure in the Pacific and East Asia (e.g., Afghan
troops to Australia in the south, Jeju Island naval base expansion in the
north) began with Hillary Clinton’s article “America’s Pacific Century,”
followed by the Pentagon’s new strategic identification of the Persian Gulf and
the Pacific region as the US’s two priorities.
US US power in the Pacific and Asia
and use every means at our disposal as teachers and citizens to educate others.
Second, we must link with campaigns in solidarity with our peace, justice, and
ecology partners across Asia and the
Pacific. Contact: Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization
in Asia and the Pacific (www.asiapacificinitiative.org).
--Dick
Gerson calls the peace movement to resist US military intensification in the Pacific and East Asia . Here
are a few more Gerson sources from Google July 1, 2013.
1.
Peace Advocates Pivot Toward Asia and the Pacific | American ...
https://afsc.org/story/peace-advocates-pivot-toward-asia-and-pacific
Lead conference organizer and AFSC
staffer Joseph Gerson said, “We need to pivotthe peace movement in the same way that the
US
2.
Reinforcing Washington's Asia-Pacific Hegemony | FPIF
www.fpif.org/articles/reinforcing_washingtons_asia-pacific_hegemonySep 13, 2012 – The Obama
administration's military "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region is... the U.S.
3.
SAVE THE DATE - Challenging the Pivot | Facebook
Challenging the Pivot: The U.S., China
4.
Countering Washington's Pivot and the New Asia-Pacific Arms Race
To understand the Obama pivot, it may be helpful to
know what and how ..... build a U.S. peace movement capable of challenging
the pivot and U.S. Asia-Pacific ...Joseph Gerson is currently AFSC
Disarmament Coordinator and Director of the ...
5.
[act-ma] 3/13 'Challenging the Pivot:
The U.S., China ...
Mar 13, 2012 – [act-ma] 3/13
'Challenging the Pivot: The U.S., China
6.
Challenging
the Pivot - United for Justice with Peace
Mar 11, 2012 – Join Jason
Tower
7.
Challenging the Pivot: United States, China and
Alternatives to Asia ...
Challenging the Pivot: United States , China
Why the TransPacific Partnership is a Scary Big
(Trade) Deal [The actual title
is: “The Biggest Trade Deal You’ve Never
Heard of.” --Dick]
A
super-sized NAFTA, the TPP gives foreign corporations privileges that can
override domestic laws on environmental health and citizens’ rights. Here’s why
we shouldn’t let it pass without a fight.
Document Actions
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by Kristen Beifus. YES! Summer 2013
NHK Broadcasting, Japan
A super-sized NAFTA, the TransPacific Partnership is a
free-trade agreement whereby countries give foreign corporations rights and
privileges to encourage investment and global business. The TPP was a major
issue during Japan United States
The corporate powers
granted in the TPP can override domestic laws on environmental health and
safety, and labor and citizens’ rights. Not only that, but multinationals can
claim that those domestic laws hamper free trade and sue member countries for
millions of dollars.
The TPP is in many ways an attempt to revive the stalled expansion of the World
Trade Organization.
At present, the TPP talks include 12 Pacific Rim
countries: Canada , the United States , Mexico ,
Peru , Chile , New Zealand ,
Australia , Singapore , Malaysia ,
Brunei , Vietnam and, most recently, Japan Thailand
and the Philippines
Although trade deals have potentially huge effects on
the economy, environment, and food sovereignty of communities throughout these
12 countries, the TPP negotiations are
being held in secret between unelected government officials and representatives
from more than 600 of the world’s most powerful corporations. The United States has plenty of interests clamoring
for the trade advantages of the TPP, while developing countries like Vietnam
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But the AFL-CIO, one of the few non-corporate and
nongovernmental entities that have access to the text of the agreements, does
not support the TPP in its current form because of implications for labor and
human rights.
The talks are scheduled to finish by October of this
year. Meanwhile, negotiators are lobbying Congress to grant “Fast Track”
authority for the TPP. That would mean Congress couldn’t revise the agreements
and could only vote “yes” or “no” to the United States
Leaked documents show how extensive the reach of the TPP
would be. It is shaping up as a corporate takeover of public policy that would
impact safe food, sustainable jobs, clean water and air, access to life-saving
medicines, education, even our very democracy. After 20 years under NAFTA we
know the likely impacts for people and the environment.
Can a
"Dracula Strategy" Bring the TPP Into the Sunlight?A highly secretive trade agreement aims to penalize countries that protect workers, consumers, and the environment. Luckily, the growing opposition goes beyond the usual trade justice suspects.
In March, Citizens Trade Campaign organized a letter to
Congress signed by 400 U.S. U.S.
The next round of TPP talks will be held May 15–24 in Lima , Peru United States , Canada ,
and Mexico
Kristen Beifus wrote this article for Love and the
Apocalypse, the Summer 2013 issue of YES!
Magazine. Kristen is Executive
Director of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition, which is dedicated to creating
an equitable global trading system.
Counterpunch WEEKEND EDITION
FEBRUARY 15-17, 2013
The African Union , Algeria and Mali
The West’s War Against African Development
Continues
by DAN GLAZEBROOK,
Another
form of handout would be through the looting of minerals. Countries like the
Democratic Republic of Congo are ravaged by armed militias who steal the
country’s resources and sell them at sub-market prices to Western companies,
with most of these militias run by neighbouring countries such as Uganda,
Rwanda and Burundi who are in turn sponsored by the West, as regularly
highlighted in UN reports.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, are the pitifully low
prices paid both for African raw materials and for the labour
that mines, grows or picks them, which effectively amount to an African subsidy
for Western living standards and corporate profits.
This
is the role for which Africa has been ascribed
by the masters of the Western capitalist economy: a supplier of cheap resources
and cheap labour. And keeping this labour, and these resources, cheap depends
primarily on one thing: ensuring that Africa
remains underdeveloped and impoverished. If it were to become more prosperous,
wages would rise; if it were to become more technologically developed, it would
be able to add value to its raw materials through the manufacturing process
before exporting them, forcing up the prices paid. Meanwhile, extracting stolen oil
and minerals depends on keeping African states weak and divided. The Democratic
Republic of Congo, for example – whose mines produce tens of billions of
mineral resources each year – were only, in one recent financial year, able to
collect a paltry $32million in
tax revenues from mining due to the proxy war waged against
that country by Western-backed militias.
The
African Union, established in 2002 was a threat to all of this: a more
integrated, more unified African continent would be harder to exploit. Of
special concern to Western strategic planners are the financial and military
aspects of African unification. On a financial level, plans for an African
Central Bank (to issue a single African currency, the gold-backed dinar) would
greatly threaten the ability of the US ,
Britain and France
Along with these potentially threatening financial
developments come moves on the military front. The 2004 AU Summit in Sirte , Libya
Yet the creation of the African Standby Force represented
not only a threat, but also an opportunity. Whilst there was certainly the
possibility of the ASF becoming a genuine force for independence, resisting
neocolonialism and defending Africa against
imperialist aggression, there was also the possibility that, handled in the
right way, and under a different leadership, the force could become the
opposite – a proxy force for continued neocolonial subjugation under a Western
chain of command. The stakes were – and are – clearly very high.
Meanwhile,
the West had already been building up its own military preparations for Africa . Its economic decline, coupled with the
rise of China, meant that it was increasingly unable to continue to
rely on economic blackmail and financial manipulation alone in order to keep
the continent subordinated and weak. Comprehending clearly that this meant it
would be increasingly forced into military action to maintain its domination, a
US white paper published in 2002 by the African Oil Policy Initiative Group
recommended “A new and vigorous focus on US military cooperation in sub-Saharan
Africa, to include design of a sub-unified command structure which could
produce significant dividends in the protection of US investments”. This
structure came into existence in 2008, under the name of AFRICOM. The costs –
economic, military and political – of direct intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan ,
however – with the costs of the Iraq
The biggest obstacle to this plan was the African Union
itself, which categorically rejected any US
military presence on African soil in 2008 – forcing AFRICOM to house its
headquarters in Stuttgart , Germany , a humiliating about turn after
President Bush had already publicly announced his intention to set up the HQ in
Africa itself. Worse was to come in 2009, when
Colonel Gaddafi – the continent’s staunchest advocate of anti-imperialist
policies – was elected Chairman of the AU. Under his leadership, Libya
His
fate is clearly now a matter of public record. After mounting an invasion of
his country based on a pack of lies worse
than those told about Iraq ,
NATO reduced Libya Nigeria , Gabon
and South Africa
However,
this did not last. The South Africans, in particular, quickly came to regret
their support for the intervention, with both President Zuma and Thabo Mbeki
making searing
criticisms of NATO in the months that followed. Zuma argued –
correctly – that NATO had acted illegally by blocking the ceasefire and
negotiations that had been called for by the UN resolution, had been brokered
by the AU, and had been agreed to by Gaddafi. Mbeki went much further and
argued that the UN Security Council, by ignoring the AU’s proposals, were
treating “the peoples of Africa with absolute contempt” and that “the Western
powers have enhanced their appetite to intervene on our Continent, including
through armed force, to ensure the protection of their interests, regardless of
our views as Africans”. A senior diplomat in the South African Foreign
Ministry’s Department of International Relations said that “most SADC [Southern
African Development Community] states , particularly South Africa, Zimbabwe,
Angola, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia which played a key role in the Southern
African liberation struggle, were not happy with the way Jean Ping handled the
Libyan bombing by NATO jets”. In July 2012, Ping was forced out and replaced –
with the support of 37 African states – by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: former
South African Foreign Minister, Thabo Mbeki’s “right hand woman” – and clearly
not a member of Ping ’s capitulationist camp.
The African Union was once again under the control of forces committed to
genuine independence.
However, Gaddafi’s execution had not only taken out a powerful
member of the African Union, but also the lynchpin of regional security in the
Sahel – Sahara region. Using a careful mixture
of force, ideological challenge and negotiation, Gaddafi’s Libya was at the
head of a transnational security system that had prevented Salafist militias
gaining a foothold, as recognized by US Ambassador Christopher Stevens in 2008:
“The Government of Libya has aggressively pursued operations to disrupt foreign
fighter flows, including more stringent monitoring of air/land ports of entry,
and blunt the ideological appeal of radical Islam…Libya cooperates with
neighbouring states in the Sahara and Sahel region to stem foreign fighter
flows and travel of transnational terrorists. Muammar Gaddafi recently brokered
a widely-publicised agreement with Tuareg tribal leaders from Libya, Chad,
Niger, Mali and Algeria in which they would abandon separatist aspirations and
smuggling (of weapons and transnational extremists) in exchange for development
assistance and financial support…our assessment is that the flow of foreign
fighters from Libya to Iraq and the reverse flow of veterans to Libya has
diminished due to the Government of Libya’s cooperation with other states…” MORE
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/15/the-wests-war-against-african-development-continues/ [I read this article in Z Magazine (April 2013) entitled The African Union , Algeria and Mali
END US
WESTWARD IMPERIALISM, PACIFIC OCEAN , EAST ASIA
NEWSLETTER #6
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