Resisting The World Trade Organization’s Culture of Terror and Impunity

Should Africa expect much from the WTO talks in Nairobi? The WTO political game is played with complete lack of any democratic or moral scruples. The Empire speaks of democracy and good governance, ad infinitum, but there is not a morsel of it within the WTO system of global economic governance. The Empire gets away with total impunity.

Anti-WTO Protesters: Seattle, WA 1999. (Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives)

By Yash Tandon
This article seeks to explain the process leading to WTO’s Tenth Ministerial Conference (WTO MC10). The next (final article in this series) will focus on the substance of negotiations. Of course, you cannot separate the process from the substance. But conceptually and strategically it is important to understand the difference as well as the interaction.

The most significant aspect of the process is its underlying power politics.

The WTO’s Underlying Power Politics

The Nairobi Declaration (if such is the outcome of the MC10) will be a negotiated text. What does that mean? Like in all previous MCs, it means, effectively, that the powerful get what they want and the weak surrender under the threat of sanctions, such as withdrawal of so-called ‘development aid’ and ‘market access’ to poor and weak countries. Yes, indeed, it is that simple. It takes collective efforts of the Global South, and the solidarity voices of the people of the world to beat Empire - as in Seattle in 1999, and Cancun, 2003.

In between the powerful and the weak are countries like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that do have some – but limited - negotiating leverage, provided they act in concert. Opposed to BRICS and the Global South is the Empire - a term that is not admissible in diplomatic – including WTO - discourse. But the Empire exists; it is an existential reality. Some readers may want to include China in this category, but in the WTO and broader geopolitical context, the Empire comprises of the USA, Europe and Japan. The WTO was created by the Empire with very little participation from the Global South – including China. The Empire structured well-thought-out built-in rules of the WTO that are lopsidedly pro-Empire. For example, in theory all countries can provide the so-called ‘green subsidies’ to agricultural production, but in practice only the Empire is able to apply this provision; even the BRICS are not able to provide these for various technical reasons.

However, the global geopolitics are shifting rapidly. The chaos in the Middle East is part of this shift. The Empire is in crisis, in decay. This opens the door for an alternative system to emerge. China is beginning to flex its political and financial muscle. It is possible that it will make its weight felt at MC10. This explains why the Empire is in a state of panic and in some urgency to ‘conclude’ the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), and move on to a new pro-imperial agenda.

Why The Doha Development Agenda Is So Significant

When the DDA was launched in November 2001 it was under overbearing pressure from the Empire. Following 9/11 (the terrorist attack on New York), the US had announced that if the Doha Round was not launched, those opposing it would effectively be ‘siding with the terrorists’. The emphasis during the negotiations was largely on market access – primarily for the benefit of the Empire. As a member of the Tanzanian delegation – then negotiating on behalf of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) - I remember how very disappointed we were at the outcome. [1]

However, at the last minute, on the insistence of the Tanzanian Minister of Trade, the word ‘development’ was inserted between ‘Doha’ and ‘Round’ making it the Doha Development Round (DDR) or Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The Empire did not at the time understand the significance of inserting that one word. This word has saved Africa – and the South. One must remember that the WTO is a trade – not ‘development’ - institution. Its ideological assumption is that ‘free market’ promotes development, which we know from hard evidence on the ground that it does not. However, following Doha, the developing countries have been able to use the word ‘development’ to argue for genuine development emerging out of the DDA. In other words, development first, then trade.

In the last 14 years the DDA has not shown much movement. This is the reason the Empire wants to jettison the DDA at the MC10 in Nairobi, to ‘conclude’ it. But for the Global South the DDA is their anchor; remove it and you never know to what destination the Empire might steer the WTO ship... For example, one area where the DDA anchor is not allowing the ship to drift is the so-called Singapore (and other new) issues. It gives the developing countries policy space to determine their own development priorities, to give preferences to local companies over foreign corporations and foreign imports. It is no wonder that the Empire wants to kill the DDA. The corporate interests that sit waiting to take over the helm are now even more powerful - but also more desperate - than they were fourteen years ago.

The Green Room, The Facilitators Summary, And Process

Let us get back to the process. At the apex of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference (MC) which usually meets every two years, often outside Geneva - like this time in Nairobi. In Geneva, however, the highest decision-making body is the General Council (GC) comprising of representatives (usually ambassadors) from all member governments. In between the MCs the GC has the authority to act on behalf of the MCs.

Below the GC, there is an official body called the Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) chaired by the Director General (DG) of the WTO – presently Roberto Azevêdo. However, most strategic and weighty negotiations take place within the cloistered chambers (called the ‘Green Room’ process). Admission to the Green Room – and the process itself - is wholly non-transparent and undemocratic. Negotiations take place among the Empire and a number of developing countries selected by the Empire. Also, there are a plethora of committees and ‘special sessions’, ad hoc negotiating groups and secret meetings. The Empire manipulates the process inside and outside the Green Room – including all kinds of wheeling and dealing and pressure on governments in Africa and other poor nations - and it gets away with what can only be described as terror and bully tactics. It enjoys unparalleled impunity from responsibility for serious violations of the principles of fairness and justice.

The DGs are not neutral and are appointed at the pleasure of the Empire – just like the Heads of the World Bank and the IMF – together with the WTO, the three primary institutions of global governance. Azevêdo is not neutral. He is a free market fundamentalist and buys into this ‘holy grail’. On 3rd June this year, for example, China and India rebuffed his proposal to change OTDS (Overall Trade Distorting Domestic Support) in favour of the developed countries. He comes from Brazil, which is the coordinator for the G-20 developing country farm coalition. But Brazil remained silent on this issue. [2]

On July 10 Uganda's Ambassador Christopher Onyanga Aparr challenged the DG. He is reported to have asked the DG : ‘We called for a discussion on the nature and scope of the work program, but apparently the call has not yet found a landing zone… what is so wrong with the Doha Work Program?’ [3] Needless to say, he got no response from Azevêdo.

Where We Are Today In The Lead Up To MC10

The MC10 process began - practically speaking – almost immediately after the MC9. The outcome of MC9 was disastrous for Africa.[4] Since Bali, the trade technical experts from the member countries have been negotiating the implementation of the DDA and a possible future work program. After nearly seven months of intensive negotiations, the GC set up a three-person team of ‘facilitators’ - from Colombia, Kenya and Norway - who were asked to summarise the state of the negotiations up to that time and suggest a possible text for the Nairobi Declaration.

When the facilitators presented their report on December 1, it was immediately challenged by the Global South. Briefly, there were two things wrong with their report:

• To start with it said nothing on the DDA; it totally ignored the DDA mandate.
• Then, having claimed that it will not have language on New Issues, it opened the door to these in a roundabout way by, for example, looking at the systemic implications of Regional Trade Agreements s (RTAs) and their coherence with WTO rules.

It was a very serious setback for the South as their demand to continue talks on DDA was simply set aside. On December 2, the report by TNC Chairman, Azevêdo, was postponed. On December 3, the DG was forced by the Global South to insert specific language for DDA continuance post-Nairobi. The South was no longer in a mood to take further beating from the Empire and its agents within the very structure of the WTO.[5]

This is where we stand today. The process in Geneva has more or less reached an impasse and has moved to examining the various possibilities of the format in which the final outcome might be embodied in Nairobi.

VARIOUS POSSIBILITIES OF DECLARATIONS THAT MIGHT COME OUT OF MC10

Several scenarios are possible. I rank them in order from good to bad – that is, from the perspective of Africa and the Global South.

Summary And Conclusions

1. The WTO was created by the Empire and controlled and coordinated by it - like a war machine. There are differences among its constituent members (for example between the US and the EU), but on the DDA they are united – they are bent on killing it.

2. The WTO political game is played with complete lack of any democratic or moral scruples. The Empire speaks of democracy and good governance, ad infinitum, but there is not a morsel of it within the WTO system of global economic governance. And the Empire gets away with total impunity.

3. The WTO’ ideology of ‘free trade’ is a pure fiction. Nothing like that ever existed in history, not even during its ‘high point’ of 19th century English mercantile system.

4. The WTO is not neutral. Its DG - Azevêdo - is not neutral. He is a ‘free market fundamentalist and works for the Empire.

5. The Chairperson of MC10, Ambassador Amina Mohamed, is officially neutral. As the Chair she has to be. But she will be under huge pressure from the Empire, Azevêdo, and the WTO Secretariat to produce an outcome favourable to the Empire.

6. Of the seven possible scenarios presented above, for Africa and the Global South the first is the best; the second is a ‘fall-back’ position; the next two are not ideal but they do not close the door to the DDA; and the last three are where are the ‘no go’ areas.

Africa will be subject to ‘waterboarding’ by the Empire at the MC10 in Nairobi under the WTO process. [6] It is time Africa sits up and gets counted. It must resist the WTO's culture of terror and impunity for the Empire.

* Yash Tandon is a Ugandan policymaker, political activist, professor, author and public intellectual. His latest book, Trade Is War, was published in June 2015.


END NOTES

[1] See: ‘The Three-Layered Reality of the WTO’ in Yash Tandon, Trade is War, OR- Books, 2015.
[2] The best blow-by-blow accounts of these negotiations are given on a daily basis by a Geneva-based ‘third world’ South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) edited by Chakravarthi Raghavan, a doyen of trade negotiations since before the WTO was created. See SUNS #8048, 24 June, 2015.
[3] See: SUNS #8060
[4] See: ‘The long losing fight over S&D in Bali’ in Trade is War, op.cit.
[5] See: SUNS #8148
[6] Waterboarding is a form of torture widely used by the US government in which water is poured over the head of a captive making him feel as if he is drowning.

Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.

Israel's Oil Grab In Syria: How 'Islamist' Rebels Helped Engineer It

Illustration adapted from Mark Rain.

By Nafeez Ahmed
A US oil company is preparing to drill for oil in the Golan Heights.

Granted the license in February 2013 by Israel, Afek Oil and Gas is a subsidiary of Genie Energy Ltd, whose equity-holding board members include former US Vice President Dick Cheney, controversial media mogul Rupert Murdoch and financier Lord Jacob Rothschild. Also on the board is Brigadier General Effie Eitam, a former Israeli minister for infrastructure who currently resides in the Golan Heights himself.

Afek, which has exclusive rights to a 153-square-mile radius in the south of the Golan Heights, started “dirt works” in December 2014, to prepare the first site for drilling.

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Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War, annexing and occupying the territory in 1981 in violation of international law. As the conflict in Syria has escalated, the spillover into the Golan has invited Israel to label its de facto control over the territory as another security issue requiring military “defense.”

Accordingly, Israel has considered unilaterally creating a new buffer zone that would extend up to 10 miles inside Syrian territory on the pretext of securing the border from Islamist fighters.

Israel and the Islamists

The role of a prominent US energy company in the Golan Heights demonstrates that the Netanyahu administration has Obama’s unwavering backing in its effort to expand Israel’s energy footprint into Syria.

Yet there is considerable evidence that the burgeoning threat from Islamist militants in the Golan Heights is a direct consequence of Israel’s covert sponsorship of anti-Assad rebels in the region.

Last year, reports submitted by UN observers in the Golan Heights to the UN Security Council revealed a disturbing pattern of “cooperation between Israel and Syrian opposition figures” over a period of 18 months. The extensive reports confirmed that the Israeli army was assisting wounded Syrian rebels, and providing military assistance, from around March 2013 to summer 2014.

“Observers remarked in the report distributed on June 10 [2013] that they identified Israeli soldiers on the Israeli side handing over two boxes to armed Syrian opposition members on the Syrian side,” reported Ha’aretz.

Anti-Assad rebels receiving treatment and aid from the Israeli army included members of extremist al-Qaeda faction, al-Nusra Front, as well as the Islamic State (IS), according to a statement issued by Israeli Druze activists.

Yet during this period, the Syrian side of the Golan Heights was increasingly dominated by Islamist militants affiliated to al-Qaeda and IS.

The UN observer reports also revealed that the Israeli army was allowing Syrian rebels inside Israel. Last December, on his widely-read blog Tikun Olam, Israeli national security journalist Richard Silverstein cited Hebrew news reports showing that the Israeli army had established “a Camp Ashraf-style Syrian rebel encampment just inside Israeli territory on the border”. Israel’s plan, Silverstein surmised, is to “escalate its intervention by permitting rebels to operate openly inside Israel and engaging in cross-border sabotage-terror operations”. By creating “maximum instability inside Syria,” Israel hopes to weaken not just Assad, but also Iran and Hezbollah.

Silverstein’s reports of Israeli military assistance to anti-Assad rebels have been corroborated elsewhere. In August 2013, the French daily Le Figaro reported that an influx of 300 “hand-picked” Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels trained and directed by CIA and Israeli commandos was en route from the Jordanian border to the Syrian capital, Damascus. The joint US-Israeli military training in anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons had been taking place since 2012 at secret US-run camps in Jordan and Turkey.

Land for war

In March last year, Ha'aretz reported that prominent Syrian rebel leaders were “willing to give up claims to the Golan Heights in return for cash and Israeli military aid against President Bashar Assad”. Kamal al-Labwani, a top rebel leader, said, “Why shouldn’t we be able to sell the Golan Heights because it is better than losing Syria and Golan at once.”

The deal appears to have been struck. By August 2014, the Times of Israel reported that a FSA commander had “collaborated with Israel in return for medical and military support.” He had entered Israel five times to meet Israeli army officers, during which time he was provided with an Israeli mobile phone, medical support and clothing, 30 Soviet rifles, 10 RPG launchers with 47 rockets, and 48,000 5.56 millimeter bullets.

The following month, al-Labwani turned up in Israel on a 10-day tour. Despite giving lip-service to the cause of Syrian moderates, he criticised the war on IS: “Four thousand people have been killed by IS and 400,000 by the regime – who is the bigger terrorist? For me IS is only a small problem, but the Syrian government is a much bigger problem.” Although al-Labwani and others have been sidelined in the new covert assistance programme to the rebels, their thinking seems to reflect US-Israeli strategy.

In the same month, Israeli journalist Ehud Ya’ari, who once assisted Shlomo Gazit as coordinator of government activities in the Territories, reported the existence of an “undeclared truce” between Israel and al-Qaeda factions in Syria, whose “cadres prefer loose, ad hoc cooperation with other rebel factions, including those with ties to Israel.” Consequently, Ya’ari affirms that Israel will not attempt to “disrupt military strength” of al-Qaeda affiliates for now. “Some rebel groups maintain constant contact with the IDF, including frequent secret meetings reportedly held in Tiberias,” Ya’ari added, emphasizing that they are, however, the "moderate" variety. He admitted that Israel has supplied them “a modest amount of weapons,” including “rocket-propelled grenade launchers”.

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Waiting for Emancipation: The Prospects for Liberal Revolution in Africa

In the present decade, 7 out of the 10 fastest-growing economies (as conventionally measured) are African. In 1900 Africa was the world’s least densely populated and urbanized continent with 7.5% of world population. Today it is double that, with an urban share fast approaching the global average. According to UN projections, Africa will be home to 25% of all the people alive in 2050, 40% in 2100 (when Asia will contribute 42% and the rest 18%).—Keith Hart

80,000 South African Platinum Miners Strike For A Living Wage. (Screen capture
from YouTube video)

By Keith Hart
We live in a racist world. Despite the collapse of European empire and the formal adoption of a façade of international bureaucracy, the vast majority of black Africans are still waiting for meaningful emancipation from their perceived social inferiority.

Africans wait for emancipation in an unequal world

Now there is much talk of economic growth in Africa. In the present decade, 7 out of the 10 fastest-growing economies (as conventionally measured) are African. In 1900 Africa was the world’s least densely populated and urbanized continent with 7.5% of world population. Today it is double that, with an urban share fast approaching the global average. According to UN projections, Africa will be home to 25% of all the people alive in 2050, 40% in 2100 (when Asia will contribute 42% and the rest 18%). This is because Africa’s annual population growth rate is 2.5% while the rest of the world is ageing. The Asian manufacturing countries already recognize that Africa is the fastest-growing market in the world. This could provide an opportunity for Africans to play a stronger hand in international negotiations. If they succeed in standing up for themselves, it would be a world revolution, the end of the racist world order, no less.

The movement to abolish slavery was officially completed in the late nineteenth century. But emancipation is rarely as simple as that. In West Africa, abolition was a disaster. The internal drive to capture slaves continued apace and, despite a shift to their use in domestic production, supply soon exceeded demand. The price of slaves fell drastically, leading to their widespread abuse. Colonial empires were then justified by disorder in West Africa and by the drive to abolish the Arab slave trade in East Africa. Much later, when these regimes fell, Africans were offered emancipation once more, this time through national independence. Most African economies then regressed for a half-century. Apartheid was defeated in South Africa, but two decades later the country is more unequal and unemployment is rampant, while the government shoots its own people if they complain. Africans are still waiting for equal membership of world society. But they have never encountered more favourable conditions than now.

In the twentieth century, a population explosion was accompanied by a jump in Africa’s urban share from under 2% of the population to almost half. This urban revolution is not just a proliferation of cities, but also involves the installation of the whole package of pre-industrial class society: states, urban elites, intensification of agriculture and a political economy based on extraction of rural surpluses and the city bazaar.

The anti-colonial revolution unleashed hopes for the transformation of an unequal world. These have not yet been realized for most Africans. Africa’s new leaders thought they were building modern economies, but in reality they were erecting fragile states based on the same small-scale agriculture as before. Either machine production would be developed in some sectors of the economy or the state would devolve to a level compatible with its small-scale productive base. This structural weakness inevitably led them to exchange the democratic legitimacy of the independence struggle for dependence on foreign powers. Life support to Africa’s new ruling elites was switched off in the early 1980s. Many governments were made bankrupt and some countries collapsed into civil war.

The growth of cities should normally lead to rural-urban exchange, as farmers supply food to city-dwellers and in turn buy the latter’s manufactures and services. But this progressive division of labour requires a measure of protection from the world market and it was stifled at birth in post-colonial Africa by the dumping of subsidized food from the tax-rich West and later of cheap Asian manufactures. ‘Structural adjustment programmes’ imposed by the World Bank and IMF meant that Africa’s fledgling national economies had no protection. Tax collection in Africa was never as regular as in Eurasia; and governments still rely on whatever they can extract from mineral royalties and the import-export trade. Rents secured by political privilege are the chief source of wealth. This constitutes an Old Regime ripe for liberal revolution.

African development in the twenty-first century

‘Development’ refers first to humanity’s hectic dash from the countryside to the city since 1800. The engine driving this economic growth is assumed to be ‘capitalism’. Development then means trying to understand how capitalist growth is generated and how to make good the damage it causes in repeated cycles of creation and destruction. A third meaning refers to the developmental states of the mid-twentieth century, the idea that governments are best placed to engineer sustained economic growth with redistribution. The most common usage, however, refers to the commitment of rich countries to help poor countries become richer. This was at first real enough, even if the means chosen were often flawed. But after the 1970s, it has faded. If the rapid growth of the world economy encouraged a belief at first that poor countries could become rich, from the 1980s ‘development’ has meant freeing up global monetary flows and applying sticking plaster to the wounds inflicted. Development is the label for political relations between rich and poor countries after colonial empire.

There are two pressing features of our world: the unprecedented expansion of markets since the Second World War and massive economic inequality between (and within) nations. Becoming closer and more unequal at the same time is a recipe for disaster. Africa, with a seventh of the world’s population, had 2% of global purchasing power around the millennium. What could Africa’s new urban populations produce for the world economy? Apart from exporting raw materials, when they could, the world market for food and other agricultural products is skewed by western farm subsidies. Manufacturing as an alternative faces intense competition from Asia. African countries should argue collectively in the councils of world trade for some protection from international dumping, so that their farmers and infant industries might supply their own populations first.

Exchange between cities and their hinterlands has been frustrated for a post-colonial Africa whose international bargaining position is undermined by being fragmented into 54 states. The fastest-growing sector of world trade is the production of culture: entertainment, education, media, sports, software and information services. The terrain is less rigidly mapped out here than in agriculture and manufacture and Africans are well-placed to compete in this field because of the proven global preference for their music, films and plastic arts.

Classes for and against a liberal revolution

The classical liberal revolutions were sustained by three ideas: that freedom and economic progress require increased movement of people, goods and money in the market; that the political framework most compatible with this is democracy; and that social progress depends on science, the drive to know how things really work. The energies generated by Africa’s urban revolution are already manifested in economy, technology, religion and the arts; and they could be harnessed to radical change if freed from the Old Regime.

Miners on strike in Marikana, South Africa where 44 miners were ultimately massacre by police.
(Screen capture from YouTube video)

Rousseau’s condemnation of eighteenth century France rings as true for our world: “It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined… that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry multitude goes in want of necessities”. The institutions of agrarian civilization are alive and well, not just in post-colonial Africa. The greatest riches are no longer acquired through selling products cheaper than one’s competitors; rents secured by political privilege -- such as Big Pharma’s income from patents, monopoly revenues from DVDs and CDs or tax revenues, used to bail out the Wall Street banks – keep the superrich afloat today.

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon provided a blueprint for a class analysis of decadent societies ripe for revolution. Political parties and unions were weak and conservative in late colonial Africa because they represented only a tiny part of the population: the industrial workers, civil servants, intellectuals and shopkeepers of the town, classes unwilling to jeopardize their own privileges. They were hostile to and suspicious of the mass of country people.

The latter had customary chiefs supervised by the military and administrative officials of the occupying power. A nationalist middle class of professionals and traders confronted the superstition and feudalism of traditional authorities. Landless peasants joined the urban lumpenproletariat. Eventually colonial repression forced the nationalists to flee the towns and take refuge with the peasantry. Only then, with the rural-urban split temporarily healed by crisis, did a mass movement take off. Fanon’s method might help us identify the potential for another African revolution.

Clearly, trade and finance are not organized, in Africa or the world at large, with a view to liberating a popular movement. A liberal revolution would need allies with significant wealth and power. Africans will have to develop their own transnational associations to combat the huge coalitions that would deny them self-expression. One of the strongest political movements today is the formation of large regional trading blocs in response to neoliberal globalization. A national framework for development never made sense in Africa and it makes even less sense today. The coming revolution could leapfrog many of the obstacles in its path, but not if African societies still wear the national straitjacket they inherited from colonial rule.

Freedom and protection in the early modern revolutions

The American, French and Italian revolutions all combined mass insurgency with an extended period of warfare focused on removing fragmented sovereignty, unfair taxes and restrictions placed on movement and trade; German unification had a similar focus, but followed a different political trajectory. The success of the British in establishing a global free trade regime in the nineteenth century and the revival of that regime as economic orthodoxy today have obscured the complex dialectic of freedom and protection whose imperatives were laid out by Sir James Steuart in Principles of Political Economy (1767).

Impediments to trade caused by divided sovereignty within and between states had to be overcome. Development under these circumstances depended on removing these barriers to trade. At the same time, these incipient free trade areas needed a measure of protection, so that their own agriculture and manufactures could benefit from supplying newly consolidated home populations. The French revolution is a striking case in point.

In 1793, the Terror was unleashed and the Bretons raised a ‘Royal and Catholic Army’ against which the revolutionary Republic sent out an army of its own to fight in the War of Vendée. Nantes, France’s largest port, was heavily involved in slavery and trade with the Caribbean. It stood out for the Republic and was besieged by the Royalist army. The ensuing battle was decisive for the Revolution; the shippers financed the Republican army. Why did the Nantes bourgeoisie risk so much for the Revolution? France, although a central monarchy, was then a patchwork of local fief-holders, each of whom exacted what they could from people and goods moving through their territory. The Republic promised to end all that and establish a regulated home market. The Nantes shippers wanted to reduce the costs of moving their trade goods inland and so they allied themselves with the Republic.

In the United States, American and Dutch smugglers led resistance to the East India Company’s tea monopoly and to British taxes offsetting the crown’s military costs. The Italian Risorgimento too was backed financially by the industrialists of Milan and Turin who wanted a national home market freed of territorial fragments and unrestricted access to world trade. In all three cases, the power of merchant and manufacturing capital played a decisive part in the revolution.

Long before the European Common Market became the European Union, the Prussian Zollverein was launched in 1818 and culminated in the German Empire. In each case political unification was preceded by a customs union lasting half a century. The Zollverein was a piecemeal attempt to harmonise tariffs, measures and economic policy in scattered territories controlled by the Prussian ruling family. The Germans attributed their vulnerability to extreme political fragmentation (some 40 states in 1815). Prussia’s main aim was to expand a protected zone of internal free trade from which the Austrians were excluded. By the 1860s, most of what became Germany had joined the customs union. Their leading economist, Friedrich List, proposed a ‘national system’ of political economy. He emphasized the scope for innovation within an expanded free trade area protected from the world market. Similar proposals were espoused by Americans like Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay.
Towards greater integration of African trade

President Mbeki’s idea of an ‘African renaissance’ expressed the belief that a black majority government in South Africa might be a catalyst for an African economic revival based on greater political coordination between what had before been easy pickings for the world’s great powers. His initiative was aimed exclusively at the very political class that has failed Africa so often since independence. He did not factor civil society movements into his plans.

Africa currently consists of a labyrinthine confusion of regional associations which do little to strengthen their members’ bargaining power in world markets. On the ground, however, African peoples maintain patterns of long-distance movement and exchange developed over centuries despite their rulers’ attempts to force economy and society into national cages.

This is one major reason why so much of the African economy is held to be ‘informal’: state regulations are routinely ignored, with the result that half the population and most economic activity are criminalized and an absurd public effort is wasted on trying to apply unenforceable rules. Classical liberalism offers an answer to this chaos -- the widest area possible of free trade and movement, with minimal regulation by the authorities. Neoliberal globalization has done much to discredit this recipe, since political initiatives, even in pursuit of free trade, are anathema. Yet the policy conclusion is inescapable: the boundaries of free commerce and of state intervention should be pushed beyond the limits of existing sovereignties.

China occupied a similar slot to Africa in western consciousness not so long ago. In the 1930s, people often spoke of the Chinese as they do of Africa today. China was then crippled by the violence of warlords, its peasants mired in the worst poverty imaginable. Today the country is an economic superpower. This profound shift in power from West to East does not guarantee that Africa will escape soon from the stigma of inferiority, but the structures of North Atlantic dominance that once seemed inevitable are perceptibly on the move; and that makes it easier to envisage change. Humanity is entering a new era of social possibility. Africans’ drive for emancipation from an unequal world society affects all of us. In that sense an African revolution would be a world revolution.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

The Incredible US "Peace Plan" for Syria

The Syrian people have won two successive wars in four years. Yet the country does not yet know peace. Not only are Washington "liberal hawks" doing everything in their power to prolong the crisis, but they have devised a plan to prepare a third war. This is how they intend to use to their advantage the peace conference planned to be held in Moscow in late January 2015.

Former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen conspired with General David Petraeus to sabotage the Syria peace plan at the Geneva 1 Conference. President Barack Obama had him placed under surveillance and managed to prevent his appointment as head of NATO. However, he managed to stay in office despite the charges against him (while Petraeus was forced to resign from the leadership of the CIA). Become commander of the anti-Daesh Military Coalition, he supports the shenanigans that General Petraeus leads from the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Global Institute. He is director of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the think tank of "liberal hawks".

By Thierry Meyssan
When, in 2001, President George W. Bush decided to place Syria on his list of targets to destroy, he had three objectives:

Breaking the "Axis of Resistance" and encouraging Israeli expansion;
Laying hands on the huge gas reserves;
Reshaping the "Broader Middle East".

The war plans failed in 2005 and 2006, eventually taking the form of the "Arab Spring" in 2011: a 4th generation type of warfare which was to carry the Muslim Brotherhood to power. However, after a year of media manipulation, the Syrian people came out of their torpor and supported their army.

France withdrew from the game after the release of Baba Amr, while the United States and Russia shared the region at the Geneva 1 Conference (June 2012). But to everyone’s surprise, Israel managed to upset the negotiating table by leaning on the new French president, Francois Hollande, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus. A second war, of a Nicaraguan type this time (that is to say, fuelled by the continual arrival of new mercenaries) again bloodied the region. Anyway, this second war also failed without leading to lasting peace. On the contrary, John Kerry changed the format of the Geneva 2 conference two days before and tried to turn it into a pro-Saudi forum. In this disorder came the third war, that of Daesh: suddenly a small group of a few hundred jihadists turned into a vast army of over 200,000 well equipped men and launched an attack on the Sunni part of Iraq and the Syrian Desert.

Several months ago, I explained that the Daesh project corresponds with the new US map of the division of the Middle East, published by Robin Wright in The New York Times in 2013 [1]. In continuation of the Sykes-Picot, the US plan aimed to further drastically reduce Syria. Also, when the US - after having waited for Daesh to complete the ethnic cleansing in Iraq for which they had been created - began bombing the jihadists, the question arose as to whether the liberated areas of Daesh would or would not be returned to Baghdad and to Damascus.

As the United States has refused to coordinate its military action against Daesh with Syria, and in view of the fact that Russia is preparing a peace conference, "liberal hawks" in Washington have set new goals.

Since the Syrian people did not believe in the "revolution" as staged by al-Jazeera and company, and since they refused to support the Contras against the Republic, it is not possible to "change the regime" in the short term. It is clear that the new constitution, though imperfect, is both republican and democratic; and that President Bashar al-Assad was elected by 63% of the electorate (88% of the vote!). Thus, the United States must adapt its rhetoric to reality.

The "peace" plan of the "liberal hawks" consists therefore in achieving the original goals by dividing Syria in two: an area governed by Damascus and another by "moderate rebels" (read: the Pentagon). The Republic is to have the capital and the Mediterranean coast; the Pentagon: the Syrian desert and gas reserves (that is to say the Daesh zone liberated by the bomber raids of General John Allen). According to their own records, "liberal hawks" would leave only 30% of the territory to the Syrian People!

Remodeling map according Robin Wright

The principle is simple: at present, the Republic controls all major cities except Rakka and a small part of Aleppo, but no one can claim to control a vast desert, neither the government nor the jihadists. So the Pentagon suggests that what is not clearly governed by Damascus rightfully belongs to its mercenaries!

This is not all. Since the Syrians have elected Bashar Assad, he will be allowed to stay in power, but not his private consultants. Indeed, everyone knows that the Syrian state has managed to resist foreign aggression because it includes a secret part, difficult to identify and therefore to eliminate. This opacity was intended by the founder of modern Syria, President Hafez al-Assad, in order to resist Israel. The constitutional reform of 2012 did not make it disappear, but made the elected president responsible to the nation. Although it is regrettable that, in the past, some people have abused this opacity for their own private profit, to part with it now would be to abandon independence at term.

Of course, some will say, "liberal hawks" cannot hope to achieve this plan as a whole. But accomplishing just one hundredth of it would make a new war inevitable.

That is why Syria must ask as a prerequisite for any new peace conference that the country’s territorial integrity will not be up for discussion.

 

Reprinted with permission from Voltairenet

Militant Islam — What's Behind The Rise of Jihadists?: The US Has Bombed or Occupied 14 Muslim Countries Since 1980

Statue of Liberty torches bombing by Ares or
Aristides Hernandez Guerrero.

By Glenn Greenwald
Barack Obama, in his post-election press conference yesterday, announced that he would seek an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from the new Congress, one that would authorize Obama’s bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria—the one he began three months ago. If one were being generous, one could say that seeking congressional authorization for a war that commenced months ago is at least better than fighting a war even after Congress explicitly rejected its authorization, as Obama lawlessly did in the now-collapsed country of Libya.
When Obama began bombing targets inside Syria in September, I noted that it was the seventh predominantly Muslim country that had been bombed by the U.S. during his presidency (that did not count Obama’s bombing of the Muslim minority in the Philippines). I also previously noted that this new bombing campaign meant that Obama had become the fourth consecutive U.S. President to order bombs dropped on Iraq. Standing alone, those are both amazingly revealing facts. American violence is so ongoing and continuous that we barely notice it any more. Just this week, a U.S. drone launched a missile that killed 10 people in Yemen, and the dead were promptly labeled “suspected militants” (which actually just means they are “military-age males”); those killings received almost no discussion.

Sam Harris and Bill Maher - Chauvinists Posing as Liberals:
They conveniently forget that the murder and mayhem of the US and
other Western countries dwarfs any violence Muslims may be guilty
of.

To get a full scope of American violence in the world, it is worth asking a broader question: how many countries in the Islamic world has the U.S. bombed or occupied since 1980? That answer was provided in a recent Washington Post op-ed by the military historian and former U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich:

As America’s efforts to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State militants extent into Syria, Iraq War III has seamlessly morphed into Greater Middle East Battlefield XIV. That is, Syria has become at least the 14th country in the Islamic world that U.S. forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980.

Let’s tick them off: Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria. Whew.

Bacevich’s count excludes the bombing and occupation of still other predominantly Muslim countries by key U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, carried out with crucial American support. It excludes coups against democratically elected governments, torture, and imprisonment of people with no charges. It also, of course, excludes all the other bombing and invading and occupying that the U.S. has carried out during this time period in other parts of the world, including in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as various proxy wars in Africa.

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Behind The Anti-Terror Alibi: The Gas War in The Levant — A Justification for a War That Has Other Purposes

Ignoring international law, the American president, Barack Obama, fine tunes his aerial
bombing campaign in Syria with his allies in the Gulf (New York, September 23, 2014)

By Thierry Meyssan
Though everyone adheres to Washington and its Gulf allies’ anti-terrorist discourse, everyone understands that it is only a rhetorical justification for a war that has other purposes. The United States say they want to destroy the Islamic Emirate which they created and which performs for them the ethnic cleansing necessary to its plan for the remodeling of the "Broader Middle East". Stranger still, they say they want to fight in Syria alongside the moderate opposition which is composed of the same jihadists. Finally, they destroyed Rakka buildings that had been evacuated two days earlier by the Islamic Emirate. For Thierry Meyssan, behind these apparent contradictions the gas war continues.

The US air campaign in Iraq and Syria is puzzling: it is impossible to destroy a terrorist group exclusively by air strikes. In Iraq, the United States and the GCC coupled their actions with those of Iraqi troops and Kurdish ground forces. In Syria, they have no serious force to fight against the Islamic Emirate. And even in this case, "the bombings are not able to affect the capacity of the Islamic Emirate or its operations in other parts of Iraq or Syria," according to General William Mayville, chief of operations at the US Chiefs of Staff. [1]

Moreover, and despite official declarations, the Islamic Emirate is a creation of the United States and the GCC, and it unflaggingly serves their interests:

• In May 2013, Senator John McCain came to Syria illegally to meet the staff of the Free Syrian Army (moderate), including Abu Youssef, also known as Abu Du’a, alias Ibrahim al-Baghdadi, the current caliph Ibrahim (Head of the extremists) [2].

• In January 2014, Reuters revealed that President Obama had called a secret session of Congress during which it voted to fund and arm the "rebels" in Syria, including those of the Islamic Emirate until September 2014 [3]. It was indeed a secret session and not just behind closed doors. The entire American press complied with the censorship of this information.

• Proud of this acknowledgement, Saudi state television clamored the fact that the Islamic Emirate was headed by Prince Abdul Rahman al-Faisal. [4]

• Meanwhile the head of Israeli military intelligence, General Aviv Kochavi, warned against a proliferation of anti-Syrian fighters and found that members of al-Qaida, including those of the Islamic Emirate (which it had not yet divorced) were trained in three camps in Turkey [under NATO control] located in Şanlıurfa, Osmaniye and Karaman. [5]

• In May 2014, Saudi Arabia handed over new heavy weapons and quantities of new Toyotas (purchased in Ukraine) to the Islamic Emirate to invade Iraq. The transfer was carried out by a special train chartered by the Turkish secret services.

• On May 27, Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, went to Amman to coordinate the invasion of Iraq between Iraqi Kurds and the Islamic Emirate. An additional meeting was held, also in Amman, with numerous Sunni partners on June 1. [“PKK revelations on ISIL attack and creation of "Kurdistan"”, Voltaire Network, 8 July 2014.]]

• In early June, the Islamic Emirate and the Local Government of Kurdistan went on the attack. The Islamic Emirate, in accordance with its mission, spread terror in order to accomplish the ethnic cleansing that the US army had been unable to achieve in 2003. Thus is realized, to use the expression of the US Chiefs of Staff adopted in 2001, the remodeling the "Greater Middle East".

So there is no reason for the United States to destroy the Islamic Emirate, if not the publicized - and suspect - death of three of their nationals, which cannot justify the deluge of fire.

While it is clear that the main target of the air campaign is not the one that is announced, no one is able to say precisely what it seeks to destroy. The most that can be said is that the United States and its GCC allies bombed empty buildings in Rakka - which had been evacuated two days earlier by the Islamic Emirate, and a dozen refineries in eastern Syria.

So what do these refineries signify in a war allegedly waged against terrorism? According to the Pentagon, they were controlled by the Islamic Emirate and brought it much income.

The answer is obviously false. When states under embargo try to sell gas or oil on the international market, they do not succeed. But the Islamic Emirate does, despite resolutions 1373 (2001) and 2170 (2014) of the Security Council. Publicly notorious, it steals oil in Iraq and Syria, routing it by pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, from where it is transported to Israel by tankers of the Palmali Shipping & Agency JSC, the Turkish-Azeri company of billionaire Mubariz Gurbanoğlu. At the port of Ashkelon, Israeli authorities provide false certificates of origin from Eilat, then they are exported to the European Union, which pretends to believe they’re Israeli.

Above all, the same firm serving also to export gas and oil stolen by the local government of Iraqi Kurdistan, the United States and the GCC, if they acted pursuant to resolutions 1373 (2001) and 2170 (2014) should also attack Iraqi Kurdistan. Instead, they support it (not against the Islamic Emirate, but against the central government in Baghdad). [6]

The bombing of these facilities cannot be understood as other than a desire to deprive Syria of its refining capacity when peace returns.

Prince Khaled, son of the heir to the throne of Saud, Prince Salman, participates in the
bombing of Syria at the controls of an F-15.

It is common knowledge that in this case, the United States relies on members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and particularly Saudi Arabia. In this regard, if it is clear that Saudi planes are not taking off from their country, information published by Iranian media according to which they are based in Israel, is still not ruled out, but probable.

We have often noted that one of the main aims of the war against Syria is the control of its gigantic reserves of natural gas and that of its territory by which could either pass a pipeline from Iran or its rival, Saudi Arabia from Qatar.

However, since the resistance of Novorussia and support provided by the Russian Federation, the European Union is trying to overcome its dependence on Russian gas. Hence the Iranian government’s idea to offer its gas on this market, as announced by Deputy Oil Minister Ali Majedi, August 9. [7] For Iran it would be an alternative to the blocking by the Islamic Emirate of Iraq’s road to Syria.

This option, which defends Iran state interests, but abandons the anti-imperialist struggle of President Ahmadinejad, could be approved by Washington as part of a broader agreement during the 5 + 1 negociations. Iran would be willing to abandon its groundbreaking research on a method for producing nuclear energy able to free the third world from its dependence on oil energy, while "Westerners" would lift their sanctions.

However, this changeover, if it is to occur, would significantly alter regional equilibrium. It would be hard to sell to Russia, which has just welcomed Iran into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In addition, it would involve an investment of $ 8.5 billion to build 1,800 miles of pipeline and connect production fields to the Nabucco system. Iranian gas would transit through Azerbaijan and Turkey and Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, to be distributed in the European Union from Austria. This was confirmed by Sheikh Hassan Rohani to President Hans Fischer, on the sidelines of the General Assembly of the United Nations. [8]

Iranian President Sheikh Hassan Rohani came to explain to his Austrian counterpart,
Hans Fisher, his proposal to deliver gas to the European Union (New York, September
24, 2014).

The revival of the Nabucco system would be a boon to Azerbaijan which could more easily export production from its Shah Deniz gas field. Thus, Baku would also move away from Moscow to be closer to Washington, which would explain the sudden purchase of arms from Israel.

From the Syrian perspective, a shift in Iranian energy policy is not necessarily a bad thing: most of the enemies of Syria - except Israel - would have no reason to continue the war. In addition, the removal of Iran would strengthen the usefulness of Syria to Russia. If the agreement were signed, Washington would further pursue instability in the Sunni areas of Iraq, to maintain a physical separation between Tehran and Damascus, and certainly would support Daesh in Deir ez-Zor, but leave the rest of the Syria in peace.


Translation
Roger Lagassé

[1] “U.S. Air Strikes Are Having a Limited Effect on ISIL”, Ben Watson, Defense One, 11 August 2014. [2] “John McCain, Conductor of the "Arab Spring" and the Caliph ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 18 August 2014.
[3] “Congress secretly approves U.S. weapons flow to ’moderate’ Syrian rebels”, par Mark Hosenball, Reuters, 27 January 2014.
[4] “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant led by Prince Abdul Rahman”, Translation Alizée Ville, Voltaire Network, 4 February 2014.
[5] “Israeli general says al Qaeda’s Syria fighters set up in Turkey”, par Dan Williams, Reuters, 29 January 2014.
[6] “Jihadism and the Petroleum Industry”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Al-Watan (Syria), Voltaire Network, 23 June 2014.
[7] « Iran ready to supply energy to Europe via Nabucco », Irna, 9 August 2014.
[8] « Iran Ready to Supply Energy to Europe », Shana, 24 September 2014.

Reprinted with permission from Voltairenet.

Does He Think He's 'God'?: NATO Can Put Troops Wherever It Wants — Says New Secretary-General of NATO

He can start World War III whenever he wants, too.

NATO E-3A AWAC. (Photo by Jerry Gunner)

By Reuters
New NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that the Western alliance could deploy its forces wherever it wants, apparently calling into question post-Cold War agreements that have been shaken by Russia's actions in Crimea and Ukraine.

Stoltenberg was visiting NATO member Poland to reassure it that NATO would provide the protection it sought against its former communist master, Russia, which in recent months has annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, and been accused by the West of sending troops and equipment to back pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

At a summit a month ago, NATO leaders agreed to set up a "spearhead" rapid reaction force that could be sent to a hotspot within days, and to pre-position equipment and supplies in eastern European countries to receive the force if needed.

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The U.S. Puppet Regimes In The Muslim World Are All Paper Tiger Tyrannies Hated By Their Oppressed People

Photo by m1ndy9876.

By Jack D. Douglas
The sudden implosion of the vast Iraqi Army of the Baghdad Puppet Regime constructed by the U.S. is an excellent early warning of the fates of the other U.S. puppet states in the Muslim World—Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, U.A.E., and lesser ones. As always, there are many differences among these puppet states, including degrees of being puppets of the U.S., but the general picture of them and their situation now are roughly similar. The U.S. War Against Islam, which began with the annihilations of Afghanistan and Iraq roughly thirteen years ago, led to a sudden, immense, secret transformation of the Muslim World from anxious allies of the U.S. to secret enemies and led to the rapid growth of the Holy Warrior guerrilla groups and parties started earlier by Hizbollah and al-Queda because of the U.S. support of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and Palestine and the growing hatred of the older U.S. puppets, especially Saudi Arabia.

The Islamic peoples had begun secretly turning against the U.S. in the 1950′s and 1960′s as the U.S. began more and more to quietly replace the retreating European empires in the region and support pro-American puppet regimes. The U.S. CIA with U.K. help worked with corrupt Iranian forces to overthrow the Iranian democracy in 1953 and replace it with the terrorist secret police state of the Shah and Savak. As that bit of U.S. treachery and conspiracy became more and more known in Iran, Iran became the first of the revolutionary Islamic states to turn against the U.S. Other peoples learned the same hard lessons over the decades and followed in their footsteps.

Since Bush et al. declared a “World War” against the “Islamic Axis of Evil” after 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington by al-Queda, a predominantly Saudi guerrilla group enraged at the U.S. over its puppet Saudi Arabian police state, the whole Muslim World of one and a half billion people have turned overwhelmingly against the U.S. and more and more secretly support guerrilla groups against the U.S. puppet regimes oppressing them. Pakistan, a huge nuclear state with about 150 millon people quickly went from pro-U.S. to fiercely anti-U.S. over the annihilation of Afghanistan, the systematic plane and then drone attacks on Pakistanis, and all the rest.

As far as I can tell from what we can see so far in this implosion of the al-Maliki puppet regime in Iraq, this small army of fierce Holy Warriors of somewhere between a few thousand and ten thousand was able to terrify and disperse the huge army and police forces of the Iraqi state numbering nearly 100,000 in the North [out of about one million nationwide] because the Sunni majority in those areas welcomed them or went along with them and, very importantly, I expect the Sunni minority in the Shia dominated national army and police did the same. It was probably this sudden desertion of tens of thousands of Sunni soldiers and policemen who had been working with them that threw them into panicky flight.

All of these puppet regimes who have tried to build nationwide security forces in nations that are very pluralistic and divided in their populations [like Iraq which is divided into the Shia, Sunni and Kurds] face the same danger. They are normally highly infiltrated by other ethnic groups who resent the dominant puppet regimes as well as by the major guerrilla forces, since guerrillas always do this, a crucial reason the U.S. and its puppet S. Vietnamese governments lost the war in Vietnam and the puppet forces suddenly imploded when seriously attacked by guerrillas and the North Vietnamese army.

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Playing 'God' With Other Peoples' Lives and Land: The British Agent Who Invented Iraq and Helped Set the Stage for Today's Chaos

Gertrude Bell at 41-years-old in Iraq, 1909. (Photo from
Wikimedia Commons)

By Clive Irving
The story of the British intelligence agent who rigged an election, installed a king loyal to the British, drew new borders—and gave us today’s ungovernable country.

She came into Baghdad after months in one of the world’s most forbidding deserts, a stoic, diminutive 45-year-old English woman with her small band of men. She had been through lawless lands, held at gunpoint by robbers, taken prisoner in a city that no Westerner had seen for 20 years.

It was a hundred years ago, a few months before the outbreak of World War I. Baghdad was under a regime loyal to the Ottoman Turks. The Turkish authorities in Constantinople had reluctantly given the persistent woman permission to embark on her desert odyssey, believing her to be an archaeologist and Arab scholar, as well as being a species of lunatic English explorer that they had seen before.

She was, in fact, a spy and her British masters had told her that if she got into trouble they would disclaim responsibility for her. Less than 10 years later Gertrude Bell would be back in Baghdad, having rigged an election, installed a king loyal to the British, re-organized the government, and fixed the borders on the map of a new Iraq. As much as anyone can be, Gertrude Bell could be said to have devised the country that nobody can make work as a country for very long—no more so than now.

The Middle East as we know it was largely the idea of a small coterie of men composed of British scholars, archaeologists, military officers and colonial administrators who were called the Orientalists—this is the “orient” according to the definition first made by the Greeks, meaning everything east of the Mediterranean as Alexander the Great advanced to seize it....
Among the explorers, a state of mind developed that was patronizing and paternalistic. If they had not made these discoveries, who would know of these great cities? If Arabs took the artifacts it would be, to these men, mindless looting; if the Western scholars shipped them home, often in vast consignments, it was to preserve them for posterity.

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