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About half of rural women in India eat LESS than usual during pregnancy, leading to very small weight gain (just 4 kg in UP, compared with a norm of 13-18 kg for women with low BMI) – this is one of the findings of the Jaccha-Baccha Survey 2019, released today.
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Hidden Hardships – Pregnancy and Child Birth in Rural India
Press Release
About half of rural women in India eat LESS than usual during
pregnancy, leading to very small weight gain (just 4 kg in UP, compared with a norm of 13-18 kg for women with low BMI) – this is one of the findings of the Jaccha-Baccha Survey 2019, released today.
The Coup That Ousted Morales
by Dr Chandra Muzaffar
Any human being who values justice and freedom would condemn the coup that ousted the Bolivian president Evo Morales on the 10th of November 2019.
Any human being who values justice and freedom would condemn the coup that ousted the Bolivian president Evo Morales on the 10th of November 2019.
Morales obtained 47.08 % of the vote to secure a fourth term as president in the election held on the 20th of October. Since his vote was more than 10% of what his closest rival had harnessed, there was no need for a second round of voting according to the Bolivian Constitution. However his opponents did not want to accept the result. Neither did the Organisation of American States (OAS) nor the United States of America (USA) nor the European Union (EU). They alleged “electoral fraud” without providing any tangible evidence. It should be emphasised that international observers from a number of countries testified to the legitimacy of the polls.
To protest Morales’s re-election, his adversaries organised strikes and boycotts. They disrupted public order and even resorted to violence. The police allowed this to happen because like the military it was also opposed to the president. Indeed, the military and the police played a critical role in undermining Morales.
It was partly because of the failure of the military and police to protect the Constitution and the rule of law that chaos escalated accompanied by the intensification of violence. Morales did not want the situation to deteriorate further and decided to resign as president. A number of other top leaders also chose to quit. Mexico offered Morales political asylum. An opposition politician with the full backing of the military, Jeanine Anez, declared herself interim president of Bolivia. Anez had garnered only 1.7% of the votes cast in the October elections.
It would be naïve to believe that the ouster of Morales and the installation of a new president was the result of the dynamics of internal politics alone. The US had a huge role in the entire episode. Some members of the US elite not only colluded with elements in the Bolivian military but also helped to engineer the convulsions that forced Morales out of office. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an appendage of the US establishment with a reputation for orchestrating ‘regime change’ in a number of countries all over the world was allegedly heavily involved in Bolivian political and civil society activities long before the October elections.
Why is the US elite so determined to control and direct Bolivia? It is partly because Bolivia since Evo Morales came to power in 2006 has sought to be a truly independent and sovereign nation. As the first president from an indigenous community (the indigenous constitute 63% of the population) Morales is deeply committed to protecting Bolivia’s wealth and resources and ensuring that they are utilised for the well-being of the people. It is widely recognised that he has succeeded to a great extent to reduce poverty, improve the standard of health of the people, especially the rural folk, and expand educational opportunities for the disadvantaged. Morales has also tried to curb the power of mega corporations in the economy.
In this regard, just before he was ousted, Morales , it is reported, decided to partner with Chinese firms to develop Bolivia’s lithium deposits since Western mining companies were not prepared to comply with the terms that the Bolivian government laid out. For Morales, the exploitation of lithium had to benefit the Bolivian people before anyone else. Western companies and the US elite saw the Bolivian president as a hurdle. They were convinced that Morales had to go.
In passing, it has to be highlighted that lithium is in great demand in the world battery market today. It is crucial for the electric car which is predicted to play a significant role in transportation in the near future. Bolivia claims to have 70% of the world’s lithium reserves.
Will Bolivia’s partnership with China in lithium mining come to an end with Morales’s overthrow? It is very likely. But the larger trend towards change in Latin America and the Caribbean in which Morales’s contribution was pivotal will continue. Opposition to the military backed coup in Bolivia is strong and sustained. Though at least 23 Morales’ supporters have been killed so far by the new regime, the protest against the usurpation of power by an unpopular elite remains unabated. In Venezuela all attempts, both external and internal, to crush a leadership that is determined to protect the nation’s independence have failed. A right-wing government in Brasilia has not been able to extinguish the Brazilian people’s desire for justice. In Argentina some of the progressive elements have returned to power through the ballot-box. Ecuador is another example of a country where those with a progressive orientation are prepared to resist the retrogressive forces that seek to re-shape the nation. The leadership of Nicaragua remains committed to people based policies in spite of all the challenges. The new president of Mexico is attempting to introduce reforms that matter to the people. Most of all, there isCuba 60 years after a Revolution steadfast as ever in its pursuit of human dignity and national sovereignty and serving as a pioneerof that monumental transformation that awaits Latin America and the Caribbean.
All this has to be located within a broader tapestry — a tapestry in which US and Western power is declining significantly and new centres of power are emerging and becoming more assertive.
Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)., Malaysia.
Maduro and Morales on gringos and dictatorship
by Countercurrents Collective
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced this Sunday that the country’s right-wing has received more than US$400 million with the objective of buying politicians, policemen and members of the Bolivarian National Armed Force, to put them at the service of foreign nations’ interests.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced this Sunday that the country’s right-wing has received more than US$400 million with the objective of buying politicians, policemen and members of the Bolivarian National Armed Force, to put them at the service of foreign nations’ interests.
During an interview for the ‘Jose Vicente Hoy’ show, Maduro affirmed that despite bribes, the Venezuelan Armed Forces have remained loyal to the Constitution, the Venezuelan people, and the Bolivarian Revolution.
The head of state informed there are people imprisoned for giving in or being caught taking such illegal money.
“We have dismembered, with the participation of our own armed force officers, more than 47 attempts to recruit officers to put them at the service of Colombia’s strategy and the gringos,” Maduro said.
He added that the Venezuelan Armed Forces “will never again kneel down to the gringos, nor will it ever again serve the oligarchy of this country.”
The Venezuelan head of state also referred to the coup in Bolivia against the legitimate President Evo Morales, saying that “Evo is the only one who can restore the peace in Bolivia,” in the face of the police repression unleashed by the Bolivian president’s resignation.
“The order to arrest Evo and to assassinate him was given to a paramilitary group in Santa Cruz and another in Potosi, it is the intelligence information that reached us,” he said.
He added that the coup was financed from Washington and organized at the U.S. embassy in La Paz.
Maduro also denounced the ongoing U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, and in that sense, he stressed that the country “has the industrial economic power and the wealth to circumvent these sanctions and achieve economic stability, real growth and the protection of the social rights of our people.”
The Venezuelan president affirmed that, despite Washington’s harassment to his country, the government maintains solid access to health care, education, employment and housing plans, among other social programs.
Referring to the negotiation talks with the opposition, he emphasized his belief “in coexistence and peace.”
Dictatorship has returned to Bolivia
In an exclusive interview with teleSUR, Bolivian President Evo Morales said that “the people will resist this dictatorship with great courage, force, and energy.”
The elected President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, told teleSUR on Saturday that the dictatorship has returned to Bolivia, given the recent events that triggered intense repression exerted by the de-facto government chaired by Senator Jeanine Áñez.
“The Bolivian people and the whole world know that we guarantee political stability. They said ‘Evo dictatorship’, now what Bolivia is living in is what we call a dictatorship.”
The Bolivian President said he was appalled by the recent reports regarding the civilian deaths at the hands of this new dictatorship.
“The people will always be united. The Bolivian people have never been taken from my memory. At any moment we will be as always sharing a resistance against economic policies, but for now, for democracy, for life, my dear Bolivia,” President Morales said.
On the media censorship imposed by the de-facto government in Bolivia, President Morales said that “now there is no freedom of expression” in the country. “The de facto communication minister who answers to the dictatorship in Bolivia said that seditious journalists, national and international, will be arrested.”
He also highlighted how the integration processes promoted by past governments such as those of Venezuela, Ecuador (by former President Rafael Correa) or Brazil (with former president Lula da Silva) are being tried to be destroyed by the interests of the U.S. empire.
“Unfortunately, some countries subject to the U.S. empire, destroy the integration processes: Unasur a political instance, Mercosur an economic instance, Celag, an integration of all Latin America towards the liberation of the peoples,” President Morales continued.
In this sense, the legitimate President of Bolivia stressed that “we, Latin Americans, have the enormous responsibility, regardless of an economic, programmatic or social liberation, to free ourselves from the technological part.”
“Those who seek disintegration are not thinking about technological liberation, they are instruments of the capitalist system that will never like us to free ourselves from the technological part to establish sovereignty in our Latin America,” he added.
UN and IACHR condemn killing by armed forces in Bolivia
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the “disproportionate use” of police-military force in the repression that took place Friday in the city of Cochabamba where nine coca growers died and dozens were injured.
The IACHR expressed “concern about the actions of the armed forces in the operations carried out in Bolivia since the beginning of the week” and recalled that the “Inter-American standards establish the duty to limit their participation as much as possible in the control of internal disturbances,” through its Twitter account.
The international body posted a video circulating on social media that shows five victims lying on the ground and condemned the “excessive use of force,” recalling the “State is under an obligation to ensure the right to life and physical integrity of peaceful protesters.”
“Firearms must be excluded from the devices used to control social protests,” warned the IACHR in its statement.
On Friday, thousands of coca growers tried to enter the city of Cochabamba in protest against the coup d’état against President Evo Morales that took place on November 10. The mobilization was intercepted in the Huayllani River, near the town of Sacaba, where there was a blockade by the military forces resulting in the death of nine people, more than 30 injured and 169 arrested, according to a preliminary report of the Ombudsman’s Office.
The human rights body also extended its warnings with a statement from the Office of the Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression regarding the “threats of expulsion of Bolivian authorities, attacks and use of gas tears by the police against journalists covering the protests,” such as the repressions suffered by Argentinean journalists from media such as TN, America 24, Cronica, and Telefe.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet also warned on Saturday about the dangerous path that protests are taking in Bolivia after the deaths in Sacaba.
“We have information that at least seventeen people have died in the context of the protests, including fourteen only in the last six days,” Bachelet said in a statement from Geneva.
The U.N. official expressed concern that in addition to the deaths and the hundreds of injuries left by the crisis in the country, there were multiple arrests and detentions, including more than 600 people arrested since October 21 many of them during the last days since the coup.
“I am really concerned about the situation in Bolivia that can get out of control if the authorities do not handle it carefully, according to international norms and standards that govern the use of force and with full respect for human rights,” said the High Commissioner.
Impunity to armed forces and police in Bolivia
The de facto government of Bolivia issued a decree Saturday exempting Armed Forces and National Police from criminal responsibility when committing acts of repression against protesters who have taken to the streets to reject the coup d’état.
“The personnel of the Armed Forces, who participate in the operations for the restoration of order and public stability, will be exempt from criminal responsibility when, in compliance with their constitutional functions, they act in legitimate defense or state of necessity,” the decree reads.
The document also states that security forces may use firearms to suppress protests, as they are allowed to “frame their actions as established in the approved Force Use Manual, being able to make use of all available means that are proportional to the operational risk,” it adds.
This comes as violent repression from the government escalates against protesters in Bolivia.
Over the last 24 hours, at least nine Bolivians have died as a result of repressive actions carried out by the security forces that support the coup-based government headed by Senator Jeanine Añez.
“23 people have died since the coup. The most recent victims are four people shot dead in La Paz and five in Sacaba,” La Paz Ombudsman’ Office delegate Teresa Zubieta told teleSUR.
While the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the “disproportionate use” of police-military force in the repression in the city of Cochabamba where nine coca growers died and dozens were injured.
The IACHR expressed “concern about the actions of the armed forces in the operations carried out in Bolivia since the beginning of the week,” and on Saturday the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet also warned on Saturday about the dangerous path that protests are taking in Bolivia after the deaths in Sacaba, as the situation could spin out of control.”
President Evo Morales was forced to resign on Nov. 10 after senior army and police chiefs called on him to do so following weeks of right-wing unrest and violence against his Oct. 20 elections victory, in what his government and world leaders have called a coup by opposition forces in the country.
Bolivia Senate’s new president
This Thursday, the Bolivian Senate swore in Monica Eva Copa, legislator from the Movement to Socialism (MAS), as its new president, and the Chamber of Deputies elected Sergio Choque, also a MAS member, as its new leader.
ALBA-TCP Political Council condemns coup
The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) Political Council held its eighth extraordinary meeting this Thursday in Managua, Nicaragua, and adopted a Final Declaration categorically condemning the coup against the government of Evo Morales Ayma, President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who emphasized, attended the event’s closing session. He said: “ALBA countries are small in size, but large in dignity. Since the conquerors arrived, we have fought for our self-determination, fought against the monster of colonial expansionism.
”The Final Declaration rejected coup plotters’ self-proclamations as legitimate authorities, which violate the constitutional order of Bolivia, and demanded respect for the institutionality represented by the National State Assembly.
In addition, condemned were opposition groups, which, with the support of foreign governments and the local oligarchy, are fully responsible for the violence unleashed in several of the country’s main cities, costing the lives of several Bolivian citizens.
“The countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples Trade Agreement declare in a regular consultation session, to consider joint action with all governments of the world to allow the Bolivian people to be accompanied in the restoration of legality and the restitution of Bolivian President, brother Evo Morales Ayma.
The Alliance calls for the defense of Bolívar’s favorite daughter!, stated Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, upon reading the statement. Bolivian Foreign Minister, Diego Pary Rodríguez, and Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ana Teresita González Fraga, among other representatives of ALBA-TCP member states, also participated in the special meeting.
March against fascism in Caracas
Chanting along with the “drums of peace” and holding the Bolivarian Revolution flags, thousands of Venezuelans on Saturday took to the streets to reject new destabilization attempts which U.S.-backed opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido promotes against Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
Workers, students, artists, and activists began the march from three different areas in Caracas. They marched to the Miraflores Palace, where Maduro was expected to receive the “March against Fascism.”
This massive event was aimed at raising a powerful message against military actions and coups that the U.S. President Donald Trump and the Organization of American States (OAS) are prompting.
The “March against Fascism” takes place amidst conspiratorial signs hinting that the Venezuelan opposition believes it can spark further destabilizing actions against Maduro.
This political strategy is fueled by the assumption that the coup d’état against Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has already broken the Latin American peoples’ will and resilience.
Over the last week, two U.S. Army airplanes made unauthorized incursions into Venezuelan airspace.
As soon as this happened, Maduro summoned the Bolivarian people to remain attentive to any violent act against this South American country. The March against Fascism is embedded in that call.
Opposition lawmaker Guaido, who proclaimed himself as “president” on January 23, also called for demonstrations in Caracas on Saturday, none of which gained notable size.
Since then, with the support of governments and organizations, which respond to the U.S. foreign policy agenda, Guaido has been promoting war-like actions against his own country.
Among these is the U.S.-driven financial blockade against the Venezuelan government, which is an arbitrary unilateral economic warfare sanction that violates international law principles.
Hong Kong: Protesters set massive fire on university, throw petrol
bombs
by Countercurrents Collective
Massive fires raged at the campus of Hong Kong Polytech University (PolyU), where anti-government protesters have holed up, and pelting petrol bombs at riot police, who have taken position around the university campus. The protesters feared police raid in the campus.
A New Age?
by David Anderson
Humans at large will be learning about the great delusive flaw that empowered this their Age; the belief that Nature is something separate from them, something that they can exploit according their own desires.
Cultural History – John Avery Offers Another Freely Downloadable Book
by John Scales Avery
John Scales Avery announces the publication of a new book, which reviews the lives and
thoughts of some of the women and men who have contributed importantly to the development of chemistry, from ancient times to the present.
America’s Arms Sales Addiction
by William D Hartung
The 50-Year History of U.S. Dominance of the Middle Eastern Arms Trade
The 50-Year History of U.S. Dominance of the Middle Eastern Arms Trade
It’s no secret that Donald Trump is one of the most aggressive arms salesmen in history. How do we know? Because he tells us so at every conceivable opportunity. It started with his much exaggerated “$110 billion arms deal” with Saudi Arabia, announced on his first foreign trip as president. It continued with his White House photo op with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which he brandished a map with a state-by-state rundown of American jobs supposedly tied to arms sales to the kingdom. And it’s never ended. In these years in office, in fact, the president has been a staunch advocate for his good friends at Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics — the main corporate beneficiaries of the U.S.-Saudi arms trade (unlike the thousands of American soldiers the president recently sent into that country’s desert landscapes to defend its oil facilities).
All the American arms sales to the Middle East have had a severe and lasting set of consequences in the region in, as a start, the brutal Saudi/United Arab Emirates war in Yemen, which has killed thousands of civilians via air strikes using U.S. weaponry and pushed millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine. And don’t forget the recent Turkish invasion of Syria in which both the Turkish forces and the Kurdish-led militias they attacked relied heavily on U.S.-supplied weaponry.
Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he cares far more about making deals for that weaponry than who uses any of it against whom. It’s important to note, however, that, historically speaking, he’s been anything but unique in his obsession with promoting such weapons exports (though he is uniquely loud about doing so).
Despite its supposedly strained relationship with the Saudi regime, the Obama administration, for example, still managed to offer the royals of that kingdom a record $136 billion in U.S. weapons between 2009 and 2017. Not all of those offers resulted in final sales, but striking numbers did. Items sold included Boeing F-15 combat aircraft and Apache attack helicopters, General Dynamics M-1 tanks, Raytheon precision-guided bombs, and Lockheed Martin bombs, combat ships, and missile defense systems. Many of those weapons have since been put to use in the war in Yemen.
To its credit, the Obama administration did at least have an internal debate on the wisdom of continuing such a trade. In December 2016, late in his second term, the president finally did suspend the sale of precision-guided bombs to the Royal Saudi Air Force due to a mounting toll of Yemeni civilian deaths in U.S.-supplied Saudi air strikes. This was, however, truly late in the game, given that the Saudi regime first intervened in Yemen in March 2015 and the slaughter of civilians began soon after that.
By then, of course, Washington’s dominance of the Mideast arms trade was taken for granted, despite an occasional large British or French deal like the scandal-plagued Al Yamamah sale of fighter planes and other equipment to the Saudis, the largest arms deal in the history of the United Kingdom. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, from 2014 to 2018 the United States accounted for more than 54% of known arms deliveries to the Middle East. Russia lagged far behind with a 9.5% share of the trade, followed by France (8.6%), England (7.2%), and Germany (4.6%). China, often cited as a possible substitute supplier, should the U.S. ever decide to stop arming repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, came in at less than 1%.
The U.S. government’s stated rationales for pouring arms into that ever-more-embattled region include: building partnerships with countries theoretically willing to fight alongside U.S. forces in a crisis; swapping arms for access to military bases in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other Persian Gulf states; creating “stability” by building up allied militaries to be stronger than those of potential adversaries like Iran; and generating revenue for U.S. weapons contractors, as well as jobs for American workers. Of course, such sales have indeed benefited those contractors and secured access to bases in the region, but when it comes to promoting stability and security, historically it’s been another story entirely.
The Nixon Doctrine and the Initial Surge in Mideast Arms Sales
Washington’s role as the Middle East’s top arms supplier has its roots in remarks made by Richard Nixon half a century ago on the island of Guam. It was the Vietnam War era and the president was on his way to South Vietnam. Casualties there were mounting rapidly with no clear end to the conflict in sight. During that stopover in Guam, Nixon assured reporters accompanying him that it was high time to end the practice of sending large numbers of U.S troops to overseas battlefields. To “avoid another war like Vietnam anywhere in the world,” he was instead putting a new policy in place, later described by a Pentagon official as “sending arms instead of sending troops.”
The core of what came to be known as the Nixon Doctrine was the arming of regional surrogates, countries with sympathetic rulers or governments that could promote U.S. interests without major contingents of the American military being on hand. Of such potential surrogates at that moment, the most important was the Shah of Iran, with whom a CIA-British intelligence coup replaced a civilian government back in 1953 and who proved to have an insatiable appetite for top-of-the-line U.S. weaponry.
The Shah’s idea of a good time was curling up with the latest copy of Aviation Week and Space Technology and perusing glossy photos of combat planes. Egged on by the Nixon administration, his was the first and only country to buy the costly Grumman F-14 combat aircraft at a time when that company desperately needed foreign sales to bolster the program. And the Shah put his U.S.-supplied weapons to use, too, helping, for instance, to put down an anti-government uprising in nearby Oman (a short skip across the Persian Gulf), while repressing his own population at the same time.
In the Nixon years, Saudi Arabia, too, became a major weapons client of Washington, not so much because it feared its regional neighbors then, but because it had seemingly limitless oil funds to subsidize U.S. weapons makers at a time when the Pentagon budget was beginning to be reduced. In addition, Saudi sales helped recoup some of the revenue streaming out of the U.S. to pay for higher energy prices exacted by the newly formed OPEC oil cartel. It was a process then quaintly known as “recycling petrodollars.”
The Carter Years and the Quest for Restraint
The freewheeling arms trade of the Nixon years eventually prompted a backlash. In 1976, for the first (and last) time, a presidential candidate — Jimmy Carter — made reining in the arms trade a central theme of his 1976 campaign for the White House. He called for imposing greater human-rights scrutiny on arms exports, reducing the total volume of arms transfers, and initiating talks with the Soviet Union on curbing sales to regions of tension like the Middle East.
Meanwhile, members of Congress, led by Democratic Senators Gaylord Nelson and Hubert Humphrey, felt that it was long past time for Capitol Hill to have a role in decision-making when it came to weapons sales. Too often Congressional representatives found out about major deals only by reading news reports in the papers long after such matters had been settled. Among the major concerns driving their actions: the Nixon-era surge of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, then still an avowed adversary of Israel; the use of U.S.-supplied weapons by both sides in the Greek-Turkish conflict over the island of Cyprus; and covert sales to extremist right-wing forces in southern Africa, notably the South African-backed Union for the Total Independence of Angola. The answer was the passage of the Arms Export Control Act of 1978, which required that Congress be notified of any major sales in advance and asserted that it had the power to veto any of them viewed as dangerous or unnecessary.
As it happened, though, neither President Carter’s initiative nor the new legislation put a significant dent in such arms trafficking. In the end, for instance, Carter decided to exempt the Shah’s Iran from serious human-rights strictures and his hardline national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, undercut those talks with the Soviet Union on reducing arms sales.
Carter also wanted to get the new Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) he established — which eventually morphed into the U.S. Central Command — access to military bases in the Persian Gulf region and was willing to use arms deals to do so. The RDF was to be the centerpiece of the Carter Doctrine, a response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Shah of Iran. As the president made clear in his 1980 State of the Union address: “An attempt by any outside forces to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including the use of force.” Selling arms in the region would prove a central pillar of his new doctrine.
Meanwhile, most major sales continued to sail through Congress with barely a discouraging word.
Who Armed Saddam Hussein?
While the volume of those arms sales didn’t spike dramatically under President Ronald Reagan, his determination to weaponize anti-communist “freedom fighters” from Afghanistan to Nicaragua sparked the Iran-Contra scandal. At its heart lay a bizarre and elaborate covert effort led by National Security Council staff member Oliver North and a band of shadowy middlemen to supply U.S. weapons to the hostile regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. The hope was to gain Tehran’s help in freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. North and company then used the proceeds from those sales to arm anti-government Contra rebels in Nicaragua in violation of an explicit Congressional ban on such aid.
Worse yet, the Reagan administration transferred arms and provided training to extremist mujahedeen factions in Afghanistan, acts which would, in the end, help arm groups and individuals that later formed al-Qaeda (and similar groups). That would, of course, prove a colossal example of the kind of blowback that unrestricted arms trading too often generates.
Even as the exposure of North’s operation highlighted U.S. arms transfers to Iran, the Reagan administration and the following one of President George H.W. Bush would directly and indirectly supply nearly half a billion dollars worth of arms and arms-making technology to Iran’s sworn enemy, Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein. Those arms would bolster Saddam’s regime both in its war with Iran in the 1980s and in its 1991 invasion of Kuwait that led to Washington’s first Gulf War. The U.S. was admittedly hardly alone in fueling the buildup of the Iraqi military. All five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the U.S., the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China) provided weapons or weapons technology to that country in the run-up to its intervention in Kuwait.
The embarrassment and public criticism generated by the revelation that the U.S. and other major suppliers had helped arm the Iraqi military created a new opening for restraint. Leaders in the U.S., Great Britain, and other arms-trading nations pledged to do better in the future by increasing information about and scrutiny of their sales to the region. This resulted in two main initiatives: the United Nations arms trade register, where member states were urged to voluntarily report their arms imports and exports, and talks among those five Security Council members (the largest suppliers of weapons to the Middle East) on limiting arms sales to the region.
However, the P-5 talks, as they were called, quickly fell apart when China decided to sell a medium-range missile system to Saudi Arabia and President Bill Clinton’s administration began making new regional weapons deals at a pace of more than $1 billion per month while negotiations were underway. The other suppliers concluded that the Clinton arms surge violated the spirit of the talks, which soon collapsed, leading in the presidency of George W. Bush to a whole new Iraqi debacle.
The most important series of arms deals during the George W. Bush years involved the training and equipping of the Iraqi military in the wake of the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But $25 billion in U.S. arms and training was not enough to create a force capable of defeating the modestly armed militants of ISIS, when they swept into northern Iraq in 2014 and captured large swaths of territory and major cities, including Mosul. Iraqi security forces, short on food and equipment due to corruption and incompetence, were also short on morale, and in some cases virtually abandoned their posts (and U.S. weaponry) in the face of those ISIS attacks.
The Addiction Continues
Donald Trump has carried on the practice of offering weaponry in quantity to allies in the Middle East, especially the Saudis, though his major rationale for the deals is to generate domestic jobs and revenues for the major weapons contractors. In fact, investing money and effort in almost anything else, from infrastructure to renewable energy technologies, would produce more jobs in the U.S. No matter though, the beat just goes on.
One notable development of the Trump years has been a revived Congressional interest in curbing weapons sales, with a particular focus on ending support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. (Watching Turkish and Kurdish forces face off, each armed in a major way by the U.S., should certainly add to that desire.) Under the leadership of Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA), Congress has voted to block bomb sales and other forms of military support for Saudi Arabia, only to have their efforts vetoed by President Trump, that country’s main protector in Washington. Still, congressional action on Saudi sales has been unprecedented in its persistence and scope. It may yet prevail, if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2020. After all, every one of the major presidential contenders has pledged to end arms sales that support the Saudi war effort in Yemen.
Such deals with Saudi Arabia and other Mideast states may be hugely popular with the companies that profit from the trade, but the vast majority of Americans oppose runaway arms trading on the sensible grounds that it makes the world less safe. The question now is: Will Congress play a greater role in attempting to block such weapons deals with the Saudis and human-rights abusers or will America’s weapons-sales addiction and its monopoly position in the Middle Eastern arms trade simply continue, setting the stage for future disasters of every sort?
William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Originally published in TomDispatch
A Changed Israel – Only route to Middle East peace
by Dan Lieberman
The only equitable solution to the Palestinian crisis exerts pressure on Israel — to have Middle East peace, Israel must have a makeover. This salutary demand needs explanation, an explanation that answers four questions: 1. Why must Israel change? 2. What will happen if Israel does not change? 3. Can Israel change? 4. What will be the new Israel?
Letting the Side Down: Prince Andrew, the Royal Family and Jeffrey Epstein
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
The choking cloud of Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophilic legacy has been floating over the Atlantic for some time. It does its best (or worst) in matters of US and British celebrity, warts and all. It has not, for instance, exempted the British Royal Family, whose cupboard stocked with misbehaviours and raunchiness got just more crowded with the antics of the Duke of York.
The choking cloud of Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophilic legacy has been floating over the Atlantic for some time. It does its best (or worst) in matters of US and British celebrity, warts and all. It has not, for instance, exempted the British Royal Family, whose cupboard stocked with misbehaviours and raunchiness got just more crowded with the antics of the Duke of York.
Prince Andrew’s performance on Saturday on the BBC’s Newsnight was an object study of how not to self-exonerate. The prince had been thick with Epstein, though hardly a luminary when compared to that particularly chocked address book. The meetings between them were sufficiently frequent to warrant questions. Madeleine Aggeler reminds us: Mar-a-Lago in 2000; his presence at Epstein’s spacious abode in 2010; the foot massages from “two well-dressed Russian women” in 2013.
But when it came to alleged misdeeds, the prince can count himself high up in the rankings, with one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, adamant that she was forced when underage to have sex with the royal on three separate occasions.
In September, it became clear that the FBI was conducting an investigation into Prince Andrew’s Epstein link. As a member of the US Department of Justice revealed, “The US investigation is focusing on several potential victims in the hope that they can provide more details about Prince Andrew and his connection to the Epstein case.”
The level of Buckingham Palace’s seriousness regarding such claims is measured by the degree royal excursions are shortened. The palace has not been quite so sympathetic to Prince Andrew as they might, a point made by the shortening of a golf vacation in Spain over the summer.
Feeling some pressure to make a statement on the matter, the prince took the plunge with Newsnight. It became clear early on that levels of remorse were low. Knowing Epstein, for instance, had been a “useful” matter. “I wanted to know more about what was going on in the international business world, and so that was another reason for going there.” As for Epstein himself, the prince felt “regret that he quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming”.
Staying friends with Epstein despite his conviction did niggle Prince Andrew. He saw little trouble with those regular accusations of Epstein being a sex offender, but once the law had caught up with him, the prince had to “kick” himself “on a daily basis because it was not something that was becoming of a member of the Royal Family and we try and uphold the highest standards and practices and I let the side down, simple as that.” Trust a royal to deploy a sporting metaphor to paper over misdeeds.
Prince Andrew conceded making errors, but these were more in the case of being caught out. His visit to Epstein in New York in December 2010 had been advertised as their “breakup” meeting, as doing so by phone would have been a “chicken’s way of doing it”. This particular process seemed lengthy and luxuriant, taking four days and a dinner party. Put it down to convenience, explained Prince Andrew, a nice place to crash. Even better, put it down to a matter of honour: “I admit fully that my judgment was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable, but that’s just the way it is.”
As for Giuffre, the prince dug in. He had never met her, or at least never recalled doing so. An evening in March 2001 spent at the home of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and able procurer-in-chief, had escaped his memory, despite a photograph showing the Royal arm clasping Giuffre’s waist. “I’ve said consistently and frequently that we never had any sort of sexual contact whatever. I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.” That same royal could apparently bi-locate: while this kanoodling was supposedly taking place, he was at home with his family after a visit to the Pizza Express at Woking with daughter Beatrice.
In a darkly comical effort to sink Giuffre’s claims, notably one involving both dining and dancing at the Tramp Nightclub in London, Prince Andrew suggested a most curious alibi. Giuffre had recalled profuse sweating. Impossible, retorted the prince. “There’s a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time and that was… was it… yes, I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at”.
Such a specimen devoid of empathy impressed, albeit negatively, the Sunday Mirror. “No sweat… and no regret.” Read in a different way, Prince Andrew was being the consummate Britannic Royal: incapable of remorse or being flustered. In the face of such impropriety, the prince could summon smiles and even laugh, chided The Guardian.
That said, the prince’s sociopathic tendencies proved catching. Ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, only had praise for this man, an unusual species that combines honesty and “pure real truth”, remaining “steadfast and strong to their beliefs.” Perhaps her own degree of combination of pure real truth, with a pinch of honesty, could best be summed up by the assistance Epstein once gave her in the lean years: a gift of $15,000 to tie her over. That’s balance for you.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
India Exits the RCEP: What Happens Next?
by Kavaljit Singh
The full text of PM Modi’s address at the RCEP Summit is not yet available, but according to a tweet by Prasar Bharati (India’s official broadcaster), Mr. Modi stated: “The present form of the RCEP Agreement does not fully reflect the basic spirit and the agreed guiding principles of RCEP. It also does not address satisfactorily India’s outstanding issues and
concerns. In such a situation, it is not possible for India to join the RCEP Agreement.”
Travesty of Justice
by Adv Dr Shalu Nigam
Much remains on the courts themselves to uphold the rule of law and to act as neutral arbiters of justice for justice cannot be guided by political will but by conscience and the values enshrined in the constitution. Justice in true sense needs to ensures freedom from oppression, and the one which fosters dignity and liberty of individuals, communities and societies.
Ayodhya: Can a Dispute Reach Closure if it Still Causes Pain?
by Subhash Gatade
The genesis of the 9 November Supreme Court ruling lies in the verdict given by the three-member Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court in 2010, which had effectively turned a property dispute between three parties into a matter of beliefs and
sentiments; paving the way for facts to exit. One result of making this shift is the jubilation we witness in the Hindutva camp today. After all, the Hindutvadis’ long-standing demand has been to keep matters of faith above the law.
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