By Patrick Bond

Horace Campbell is a superb analyst but occasionally – like all of us – he gets things wrong: ‘the BRICS formation will not succumb to the International Monetary Fund and the conditionalities of the IMF… The bigger danger for the dollar is the reality that other emerging states that want to break from the conditionalities of the IMF can benefit from the New Development Bank and Contingent Reserve Arrangement.’ [See: ‘BRICS Bank challenges the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar’ in this issue].

From that mistake, others follow. For contrary to rumour, the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa alliance confirmed it would avoid challenging the unfair, chaotic world financial system at the Fortaleza summit on July 15.

The BRICS ‘are actually meeting Western demands,’ reported China Daily, ‘to stabilize the global financial market.’ If such BRICS subservience continues, remarked financier [url=file:///C:/Users/pbond/Documents/blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/07/15/guest-post-does-the-world-really-need-a-brics-bank/]Ousmène Jacques Mandeng[/url] of Pramerica Investment Management in a Financial Times blog, ‘it would help overcome the main constraints of the global financial architecture. It may well be the piece missing to promote actual financial globalisation.’

Fawning to finance reminds us of the term Brazilian political economist Ruy Mauro Marini coined a half-century ago, ‘sub-imperialism’: i.e., ‘collaborating actively with imperialist expansion, assuming in this expansion the position of a key nation.’ Marini described Brazil’s ‘deputy sheriff’ role in Latin America, but the concept also applies to the global-scale imperialist project.

As part of the civil society counter-summitry, we launched a collection on this theme in the Fortaleza journal Tensoes Mundiais-World Tensions, co-edited with Rio de Janeiro political economist Ana Garcia. Two dozen writers including Elmar Altvater, Omar Bonilla, Virginia Fontes, Sam Moyo, Leo Panitch, James Petras, William Robinson, Arundhati Roy and Immanuel Wallerstein grappled with the BRICS’ contradictory geopolitical location.

By all accounts, the two overarching problems of our time – as the most recent Pew global public opinion survey confirms – are climate change and systemic financial instability. In both, the BRICS suffer what in psychology is termed ‘co-dependency.’ The word ‘comes directly out of Alcoholics Anonymous, part of a dawning realization that the problem was not solely the addict, but also the family and friends who constitute a network for the alcoholic,’ according to Lennard Davis in his 2008 book Obsession.

BRICS are friendly-family enablers of Western capitalists who are fatally addicted to speculative-centric, carbon-intensive accumulation. Suffering what increasingly appears to be the neurological impairment of a junkie, officials in Washington, London, Brussels, Frankfurt and Tokyo continue helter-skelter pumping of zero-interest dollars, euros and yen into the world economy. This is a hopeless drug-addict’s fix: maintaining policies of economic liberalization that lower national economic barriers and generate new asset bubbles.

BRICS elites are not enemies of the Western economic hedonists, as revealed in the Fortaleza declaration’s exceedingly gentle advice: ‘Monetary policy settings in some advanced economies may bring renewed stress and volatility to financial markets and changes in monetary stance need to be carefully calibrated and clearly communicated in order to minimize negative spillovers.’ (This refers to currency crashes suffered by most BRICS when the West began reducing ‘Quantitative Easing’ money-printing in May 2013 – yet another example of co-dependency.)

Another fatal Western obsession facilitated by the BRICS is emission of greenhouse gases at whatever level maximizes corporate profits – future generations be damned to burn. (The last time the world’s 1 percent seriously kicked the habit – and momentarily succeeded – was in 1987 when the Montreal Protocol was signed and CFCs banned so as to halt ozone hole expansion. But since that successful Cold Turkey episode, neoliberal and neoconservative fetishes took hold. Half-hearted efforts at the UN and other multilaterals to address global-scale environmental, economic and geopolitical disasters have conspicuously failed.)

The BRICS repeatedly enable the West’s most self-destructive habits during times of acute eco-financial crisis:

• the April 2009 G20 bailout of Western banks via consensus on a $750 billion IMF global liquidity infusion;
• the December 2009 Copenhagen Accord in which four of the five BRICS did a deal to continue emitting unabated (they “wrecked the UN,” according to Bill Mckibben of 350.org);
• the 2011-12 acquiescence to the (s)election of new European and US chief executives for the Bretton Woods Institutions, for despite a little whinging, the BRICS couldn’t even decide on joint candidates; and
• the 2012 agreement to pay over another $75 billion to the IMF even though it was apparent Washington wasn’t going to change its undemocratic ways (the US Congress has refused to allocate the BRICS a higher IMF voting share);

Washington’s co-dependents in Delhi and Pretoria are the most blindly loyal. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reactionaries and African National Congress (ANC) neoliberals have regular economic, political and even military dalliances with Washington, and the BJP is so irretrievably backward that it won’t countenance even a parliamentary debate about Israel’s Gaza terrorism.

Playing the role of a frosty, distant relative, the other BRICS elites in Moscow, Brasilia and Beijing occasionally fulminate against Washington’s internet snoopery and the Pentagon’s propensity to bomb random Middle Eastern targets. To their credit last September at the G20 summit, they pulled Barack Obama’s itchy trigger finger back after the Syrian regime apparently used chemical warfare against civilians. Vladimir Putin instead cajoled Assad’s chemical-weapon disarmament. And thank goodness the US whistle-blower spy Edward Snowden is at least safe in Russia. But it’s likely that BRICS promises to establish new internet connectivity safe from US National Security Agency data-thieves will be broken.

Another Fortaleza let-down: the refusal by Moscow and Beijing to support the other three BRICS’ ascension to the UN Security Council in spite of their repeated requests for UN democratisation, because that would lead to dilution of Russian and Chinese power.

The greatest heartbreak, however, will be the passing of sub-imperialism’s financial costs to BRICS citizenries and hinterlands. Before the Fortaleza summit, economic-justice activists hoped the BRICS would decisively weaken and then break dollar hegemony, especially given the inevitability of rising Chinese yuan convertibility and the Moscow-Beijing (non-$) energy deal a few weeks ago.

But revealingly, both the New Development Bank (NDB) and ‘Contingent Reserve Arrangement’ (CRA) announced have this feature: ‘The Requesting Party’s [borrower’s] central bank shall sell the Requesting Party Currency to the Providing Parties’ central banks and purchase US$ from them by means of a spot transaction, with a simultaneous agreement by the Requesting Party’s central bank to sell US$ and to repurchase the Requesting Party Currency from the Providing Parties’ central banks on the maturity date.’ That’s techie talk for ongoing $-addiction: a retox not detox.

The dollar is an inappropriate crutch in so many ways, but aside from an excellent article by University of London radical economist [url=file:///C:/Users/pbond/Documents/- http:/www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/john-weeks/brics-bank]John Weeks[/url], few analysts acknowledge that genuinely ‘inclusive sustainable development’ finance would not require much US$ (or any foreign-currency denominated) credits.

Hard currency isn’t needed if BRICS countries – or even future hinterland borrowers – want to address most of their vast infrastructure deficits in basic-needs housing, school construction and teacher pay, water and sanitation piping, road building, agriculture support, and the like. The US$ financing hints at huge import bills for future mega-project White Elephant infrastructure entailing multinational corporate technology. (Like most of our 2010 World Cup stadiums.)

Weeks continues, ‘The suspicion uppermost in my mind is that the purpose of the BRICS bank, as a project funding bank, is to link the finance offered, to the construction firms and materials suppliers located in the BRICS themselves. Certainly, the Chinese Government is notorious for doing this.’ (For example, a $5 billion loan from the China Development Bank to the South African transport parastatal Transnet announced at Durban’s 2013 BRICS Summit resulted in $4.8 billion worth of locomotive orders from Chinese joint ventures a year later.)

As Weeks also observes, ‘the voting proposal for the BRICS bank follows the IMF/World Bank model: money votes with shares, reflecting each government’s financial contribution. The largest voting share goes to China, whose record on investments in Africa is nothing short of appalling… The warm endorsement of the NDB by the president of the World Bank suggests enthusiasm rather than tension.’

But isn’t the CRA a $100 billion ‘replacement’ for the IMF, as was widely advertised? No, it amplifies IMF power. If a BRICS borrower wants access to the final 70 percent of its credit quota, the founding documents insist, that loan can only come contingent on ‘evidence of the existence of an on-track arrangement between the IMF and the Requesting Party that involves a commitment of the IMF to provide financing to the Requesting Party based on conditionality, and the compliance of the Requesting Party with the terms and conditions of the arrangement.’

The neoliberal BRICS bureaucrats who laboured over that stilted language – and over the (self-obfuscating) name of the CRA – may or may not have a sense of how close global finance is to another meltdown, in part because of [url=file:///C:/Users/pbond/Documents/eurodad.org/files/pdf/533bd19646b20.pdf]relentless IMF austerity conditionality[/url]. But it does reveal their intrinsic commitment to ‘sound banking’ mentality, by limiting their own liabilities to each other. Current quotas are in the range of $18-20 billion for the four larger BRICS and $10 billion for South Africa (though the latter will only contribute $5 billion, and China $41 billion).

Will it matter? According to Sao Paolo-based geopolitical analyst Oliver Stuenkel, ‘arrangements similar to the BRICS CRA already exist and have not undermined the IMF. The BRICS’ CRA is closely modeled on the Chiang Mai Initiative signed between the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations countries as well as China, Japan and South Korea in May 2000.’ The initiative is useless, Stuenkel observes, for no one has borrowed from it since. Likewise, he tells me, ‘The CRA is fully embedded in the IMF system!’

What might that mean in future? The last BRICS-country default managed by Washington was when Boris Yeltsin’s Russia – with $150 billion in foreign debt – required a $23 billion emergency loan in 1998. Fifteen years later, four of the five BRICS suffered currency crashes when the US Federal Reserve announced monetary policy changes, and with higher interest rates, hot money flooded back to New York.

An emergency bailout may soon be necessary here in South Africa, where foreign indebtedness has risen to $140 billion, up from $25 billion in 1994 when Nelson Mandela’s ANC inherited apartheid debt and, tragically, agreed to repay. Measured in terms of GDP, foreign debt is up to 39 percent and even the neoliberal SA Reserve Bank warns that we are fast approaching ‘the high of 41 percent registered at the time of the debt standstill in 1985.’

That crisis and an accompanying $13 billion default split the white ruling class, compelling English-speaking big business representatives to visit Zambia to meet the exiled liberation movement. Less than nine years later, capital had ditched the racist Afrikaner regime, in favour of bedding down with the ANC in what Mandela’s key military strategist Ronnie Kasrils termed the ‘Faustian Pact’.

SA Finance Minister Nonhlanhla Nene predicted that the first NDB borrowers would be African, to ‘complement the efforts of existing international financial institutions.’ But since Nene’s own Development Bank of Southern Africa is rife with self-confessed corruption and incompetence, and the two largest NDB precedents – the China Development Bank and Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development – epitomize destructive extractivism, is this really to be welcomed?

After all, the largest single World Bank project loan ever ($3.75 billion) was just four years ago, to abet Pretoria’s madcap emergency financing of the biggest coal-fired power plant anywhere in the world now under construction, Medupi, which will emit more greenhouse gases (35 million tonnes/year) than do 115 individual countries. A year ago, as Medupi came under intense pressure from community, labour and environmental activists (thus setting back the completion two years behind schedule), World Bank president Jim Yong Kim could no longer justify such climate-frying loans. He pledged withdrawal from the Bank’s dirtiest fossil fuel projects.

That’s potentially the gap for an NDB: to carry on filthy-finance once BRICS countries issue securities for dirty mega-projects and can’t find Western lenders. For in even the most backward site of struggle, the United States, a growing activist movement is rapidly compelling disinvestment from oil and coal firms and projects. (Here in South Durban, Transnet’s eight-fold expansion of the port-petrochemical complex is one such target of ‘BRICS-from-below’ activists, especially the 2014 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Africa, Desmond D’Sa.)

Of course there is a need for a genuinely inclusive and sustainable financial alternative, such as the early version, prior to Brazilian sabotage, of the Banco del Sur that was catalysed by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Launched a year ago in Caracas with $7 billion in capital, it has an entirely different mandate and can still be maneuvered not to ‘stabilize’ world finance but instead to offer a just alternative.

To help BRICS elites stop jonesing for the Western model of exclusionary, unsustainable capitalism, a revamped 12-step program will be necessary. The first two steps of the classic Alcoholic Anonymous program are obvious enough: ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable [and] came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.’

The cleansing power of political-economic sanity absent in the BRICS elites comes from only one place: below, i.e., social activism. For example, just like any rational South African who loved the World Cup and hated its Swiss Mafiosi organizers from Fifa, Brazilian society remains furious about Sepp Blatter’s politically-destructive relationship with Workers Party president Dilma Rousseff. That and other neoliberal tendencies – such as raising public transport prices beyond affordability – mobilised millions of critics, which in turn was met by vicious police repression.

In Russia, activist challenges come as a result not only of Putin’s expansion into Ukraine, but attacks on protesters. Civil society has been courageous in that authoritarian context: a democracy movement in late 2011, a freedom of expression battle involving a risque rock band in 2012, gay rights in 2013 and at the Winter Olympics, and anti-war protests in March and May 2014.

In India, activists shook the power structure over corruption in 2011-12, a high-profile rape-murder in late 2012, and a municipal electoral surprise by a left-populist anti-establishment political party in late 2013.

In China, protesters hit the streets an estimated 150 000 times annually, at roughly equivalent rates in urban and rural settings, especially because of pollution, such as the early April 2014 protest throughout Guandong against a Paraxylene factory. But just as important are labour struggles, such as ongoing strikes against Nike and Adidas.

In South Africa, multiple resource curses[/ur] help explain what may be the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_in_South_Africa]world’s highest protest rate. Certainly the labour movement deserves its World Economic Forum rating as the world’s most militant working class the last two years. But South Africa’s diverse activists, including those who on 1882 occasions in 2013 turned violent (according to the police), still fail to link up and establish a democratic movement (though the metalworkers union seeks to change this through its United Front initiative).

In this extraordinary context, critics are opening up two crucial debates: first, is BRICS anti-imperialist as advertised, or potentially inter-imperialist as the Ukraine battleground portends, or merely sub-imperialist where it counts most: in the ongoing global financial and climate meltdowns?

Second, how can BRICS-from-below struggles intensify and link? The detox of our corrupted politics, a sober reassessment of our economies and fortification our ecologies – all catalysed by re-energized civil societies – rely upon clear, confident answers to both.

Prof Patrick Bond directs the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa, which networks critics of subimperialism through ‘brics-from-below’.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

The post In Fortaleza, BRICS Became Co-Dependent Upon Eco-Financial Imperialism – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Lawmakers in both houses of the U.S. Congress, including the outspoken Sen. Patrick Leahy, on Thursday and Friday condemned the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after its officers admitted “the Company” had spied on Senators and their investigators who were investigating claims that the CIA utilized “torture” when interrogating terrorist suspects.

While the current, Obama-appointed CIA Director John Brennan practically groveled in front of lawmakers and apologized to them and especially to the head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

In the past, Brennan denied the accusation, but now he admitted to Senators’ — and their staffers’ — computers had been accessed by the CIA.

While Feinstein displayed an enormous amount of anger about the allegations, it was Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who is known to many in the intelligence community and within law enforcement as “Leaky Leahy”, who displayed what critics called “the epitome of Chutzpah.”

“I am appalled that the CIA searched the computers of Senate staffers who were working to shed light on a very dark chapter in our nation’s history,” Leahy said.

“The CIA’s misconduct threatens the institution of the Senate and its role in ensuring the proper oversight of our government,” he scolded.

“Listen, I’m not going to defend lawlessness, but these Senators have failed to define what is and what’s not torture.The fact that there is evidence that such harsh interrogations led to the capture of dangerous Islamists and the killing of terrorism icon Osama bin Laden by the U.S. makes punishing the alleged torturers seem unfair,” said former anti-terrorism police unit member Jorge Cervesal.

“What gets my goat is hearing [Sen. Leahy] moaning and groaning about Senators being spied on, when, if I were in charge of the CIA counterintelligence division, I’d have my agents keep an eye on Leahy and his staff,” Cervesal noted.

Just how did Leahy garner the nickname “Leaky?” According to news reports, in 1987 news stories revealed that while he was a member of the Senate intelligence committee Leahy leaked secrets about a covert action being planned by the Reagan administration to oust Libya’s dictator Moamar Khadhafi.

Reports indicated that Leahy threatened the CIA’s director at the time, William Casey, with exposure of the operation and then the secret plan was reported verbatim by the Democratic Party cheerleaders at the Washington Post and that caused the plan to be quashed.

After other alleged leaks, Sen. Leahy was forced to resign his Intelligence Committee post after he again was caught leaking secret information to a reporter. However, it is he in his capacity as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who will probably conduct the probe into possible criminal actions by intelligence agents who could face disciplinary action or even criminal charges.

The post CIA Condemned By Sen. ‘Leaky’ Leahy Over Spying On Lawmakers – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Emil Ismayilov

Around 133.17 million barrels of oil were transported via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline through Turkey in the first half of 2014, compared to nearly 126.56 million barrels in the same period of 2013, Turkey’s Botas state pipeline company said.

In total, 249.62 million barrels of oil were transported via BTC through Turkey in 2013, versus 250.34 million barrels in 2012.

The total length of the BТС is 1,768 kilometers including a 443 kilometer long section running through Azerbaijan, a 249 kilometer long section in Georgia and a 1,076 kilometer long section in Turkey. The construction of the pipeline started in April 2003. It was filled with oil on May 18, 2005.

BTC Co. shareholders are: BP (30.1 percent), AzBTC (25 percent), Chevron (8.9 percent), Statoil (8.71 percent), ТРАО (6.53 percent), Eni (5 percent), Total (5 percent), Itochu (3.4 percent), Inpex (2.5 percent), ConocoPhillips (2.5 percent) and ONGC (2.36 percent).

Almost 15 million barrels of oil were transported via the Iraq-Turkey pipeline through Turkey in Jan.-June, compared to 48.29 million barrels in the same period of 2013. Some 91.88 million barrels were transported via the pipeline in 2013, compared to 145.63 million barrels in 2012.

About 11.69 million barrels of oil were transported via the Ceyhan-Kirikkale pipeline through Turkey’s territory in January-June, versus 10.28 million barrels in the same period of 2013. In total, 23.74 million barrels of oil were transported via the Ceyhan-Kirikkale pipeline in 2013, compared to 21.96 million barrels in 2012.

Some 6.33 million barrels of oil were transported via the Batman-Dordyol pipeline in Jan.-June, versus nearly 5.8 million barrels in the same period of 2013.

Some 11.57 million barrels of oil were transported via the Batman-Dordyol pipeline in 2013, compared to 11.25 million barrels of oil in 2012.

The post BTC Increases Oil Transportation Through Turkey appeared first on Eurasia Review.

“Recent history has repeatedly proven that nothing said by Washington and its officials should be accepted at face value. No other government in the world has been implicated in so many egregious lies as the United States.” Bill Van Auken, “US lies and hypocrisy on Gaza and Ukraine“, World Socialist Web Site

“Mendaci neque quum vera dicit, creditor.” Cicero (“A liar is not to be believed even when he speaks the truth.”)

Without a shred of public evidence to support their claim that Moscow was involved in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the United States and Europe have levied a new round of sanctions on Russia. The sanctions, which are designed to restrict Russia’s access to both capital and technology, will be imposed as soon as August 1, despite the fact that Moscow has repeatedly denied either involvement in the incident or of providing material support for the militants fighting in east Ukraine. Not surprisingly, Russia will not be given a chance to defend itself in court or present its case before an independent tribunal. Due process and the presumption of innocence are breezily jettisoned whenever US interests are involved. Instead, Washington will act as judge, jury and lord high executioner arbitrarily imposing penalties on the country that has provided hard evidence of what actually transpired prior to the crash using data it compiled from radar and satellite imagery. In contrast, the US hasn’t lifted a finger to help the investigation even though it has the most advanced, state-of-the-art surveillance systems in the world and even though it had a satellite — capable of reading a license plate from outer space — hovering directly overhead at the time the aircraft blew up. And here’s something else to consider from blogger Moon of Alabama:

“Pentagon officials told CNN (on Tuesday) that the Ukrainian government fired three ballistic missiles towards the federalists during the last 48 hours.” (Moon of Alabama)

If the Pentagon picked up the ballistic missile launches on their radar, they certainly saw the surface-to-air missiles that brought down MH17. Case closed.

So why hasn’t Washington been more forthcoming with the information they have? Why are they basing their judgment on the nonsense they’ve gleaned from social media and Twitter feeds instead of spy-in-the-sky photos and satellite imagery? Why are they dragging their feet and obstructing the investigation? And why, for God sakes, why has Europe agreed to go along with this charade when they know there’s not a scintilla of evidence linking Russia to the downed plane?

These are just some of the questions that remain unanswered a full two weeks after MH17 was downed by what appears to have been a surface-to-air missile launched from a BUK platform somewhere in east Ukraine. (Although even that fact is now in dispute given that MH17 was being allegedly being shadowed by two Ukrainian warplanes. Some analysts believe the aircraft was actually destroyed by air-to-air missiles fired from one of the two Su25 interceptors.)

One thing that’s clear, is that the lack of public evidence hasn’t stopped the Obama administration from smearing Russian president Vladimir Putin in the media or blaming Moscow for the tragedy that killed 298 passengers. The campaign to hold Moscow responsible started just hours after MH17 crashed and has only intensified over the last two weeks. This is amazing considering that, most of what we know about the incident has been provided by Russia. For example, it was Russia that provided the information about the two Su25 interceptors and the US satellite. It was also Russia that came up with the photographic evidence that showed Kiev had deployed anti-air missile systems (BUK) around the area where flight MH17 was downed. The Kiev government has repeatedly denied claims that it had BUK systems in the area, but on Friday, Russian military analysts released satellite images that made mincemeat of those denials. Here’s the story from RT:

“Satellite images Kiev published as ‘proof’ it didn’t deploy anti-aircraft batteries around the MH17 crash site carry altered time-stamps and are from days after the MH17 tragedy, the Russian Defense Ministry has revealed.

The images, which Kiev claims were taken by its satellites at the same time as those taken by Russian satellites, are neither Ukrainian nor authentic, according to a Moscow statement.

The Defense Ministry said the images were apparently made by an American KeyHole reconnaissance satellite, because the two Ukrainian satellites currently in orbit, Sich-1 and Sich-2, were not positioned over the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk Region shown in the pictures….

At least one of the images published by Ukraine shows signs of being altered by an image editor, the statement added.” (“‘Wrong time, altered images’ Moscow slams Kiev’s MH17 satellite data“, RT)

Ask yourself this, dear reader: Why would you provide “altered” photos that were taken on a different day to prove your innocence if you weren’t guilty as hell? And why would the US go along with this farce unless they were involved too?

Like we said earlier, there’s photographic evidence that Kiev had BUK systems operating in the area at the time of the crash. These “new” fake photos only increase the probability that it was a Ukrainian missile that brought down MH17. That’s why the administration hasn’t released any of its radar data or satellite imagery. It’s because they know the truth.

Consider this: The Obama administration has never inquired about the communications recordings between Air Traffic Control (ATC) and the aircrew of MH17.

Why? Don’t they want to know what happened?

Nor have they asked for:

“The information on the specific instructions from the Ukraine Aviation Administration to the air traffic control units of Ukraine with relation to the imposed restrictions on the airspace utilization in the area of Donetsk and Lugansk.” (RT)

Nor are they interested in why MH17 was rerouted over a warzone, 200 kilometers north of all previous flights for the last two weeks. Or whether MH17 was in fact being followed by Ukrainian warplanes. Or whether Ukrainian SAM units were active in the area before the incident took place.

How does one explain the Obama administration’s total lack of interest in any area of the current investigation? Doesn’t that suggest that they already know what happened? And doesn’t that also suggest that they’re trying to prevent the facts from leaking out?

Readers should take a quick look at the 28 questions that Russia’s Air Transport Agency would like the Ukrainian government to answer in order to clarify what happened to MH17. (See questions here.) This is the approach the Obama administration would take if they were genuinely interested in finding out what happened. The reason the administration hasn’t taken this approach, is because they’re not really interested in what happened. Why is that?

Most of the lies about MH17 have been coming from the State Department, where just last Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on all five Sunday morning talk shows claiming that Moscow had sent “a convoy of about 150 vehicles with armored personnel carriers, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, artillery, all of which crossed over from Russia into the eastern part of Ukraine and was turned over to the separatists.”

Imagine making a bold statement like that on five different news programs without even one of the hosts demanding evidence to support the claim. Such is the state of the media in the US today.

So far, neither Kerry nor any of the US Intel agencies have produced proof that Russia is providing material support for rebels in east Ukraine. Zilch. It’s all uncorroborated speculation and unsubstantiated rumor.

Do you remember Kerry said he had proof that the Syrian government was responsible for the Aug. 21 Sarin gas attack outside Damascus, an incident that he hoped would lead the US to launch a war against Syria?

It was a lie. Here’s a clip from Robert Parry:

“A new report by two American weapons specialists, entitled “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack,” makes clear that the case presented by Kerry and the Obama administration was scientifically impossible because the range of the key rocket carrying Sarin was less than a third of what the U.S. government was claiming.” (“The Mistaken Guns of Last August“, Robert Parry, Consortium News)

And what about Kerry’s grandstanding repudiation of the fake leaflets in Donetsk that said “Jews had to identify themselves as Jews … or suffer the consequences.”

Right. That was another whopper Kerry used to promote his attack on Russia.

And what about this from CNN: “Kerry: ‘Drunken separatists’ interfering at MH17 crash site“. Or this from Vice News “MH17 Crash Site Reportedly Looted by Rebels“.

It’s all just more outlandish speculation intended to smear Russia. There’s a great article in the Wall Street Journal by journalist Paul Sonne titled “After Flight 17 Crash, Agony, Debris and Heartbreak in Ukraine Villages” that dispels a lot of the lies that have popped up in the media in the last couple weeks. First of all, the rebels have not prevented inspectors from accessing the site (as Kerry claims) Here’s Sonne in an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered” on Wednesday:

“The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has actually gotten very good access to the site with the exception of the first day they showed up, which was the day after the crash where their time there was limited to 75 minutes, and they said that they weren’t given access to every piece of the crash site that they had wanted to see. So after the sort of first day standoff that they experienced with some of the rebel militants, it did seem like they were getting pretty full access to the crash site. The problem was that the investigation team, which is now being led by the Netherlands, wasn’t ready and didn’t, in fact, really arrive in Donetsk until a few days ago. And after they finally assembled in Donetsk, it took, you know, about a week or more. Then, fighting had already started to encompass the crash site. And the reason that they’re not getting access to the crash site now is not because the rebels are not allowing them to go to the crash site. It’s because the crash site has turned into an active, violent fighting zone.”

So the inspectors have had access to the site the whole time except just recently when US-backed goons from the Ukrainian army resumed hostilities in violation of their promise to honor a temporary ceasefire. It sounds like Kiev might have something they want to hide at the crash site, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, according to the Independent, “John Kerry accused the separatists of displaying “an appalling disrespect for human decency” in carrying on fighting close to the area.”

Is Kerry lying again or is he just confused about the facts?

As far as the looting and drunken disrespect for the corpses of the victims; that’s all BS too. Sonne paints an entirely different picture of what took place on the ground. Just check out some of his description and see if it squares with Kerry’s breakdown:

“The plane’s cockpit and dozens of bodies plummeted into Rozsypne, about 2 miles from Petropavlivka. One body fell through a woman’s roof. A pilot strapped to a seat wound up next to a flight attendant in a nearby field. …Charred remains of an engine, landing gear and wings fell in a fireball next to Hrabove, with a tumbling storm cloud of at least 70 bodies, some of them largely intact…

No villagers on the ground died, but they are scared of what they might find next…

“We thought it was the end of the world,” the Orthodox priest says. He stayed on the ground in prayer, preparing to meet God, and then ran up the hill as burning pieces of the plane’s undercarriage and landing gear pelted a field like bombs. Then came a hail of bodies: arms, heads and fingers.

Farmers dashed to the village, afraid it would be engulfed by an inferno. Hrabove Mayor Vladimir Berezhnoi screamed at drivers and motorcyclists to get off the road as fire rolled across a field. When he saw bodies, Mr. Berezhnoi yelled at adults to take their children home.

A few miles away, Oleg Miroshnichenko, a retired miner who became the mayor of Rozsypne about 13 years ago, felt panic as he heard two loud blasts and watched the remains of about 40 passengers rain down on yards and homes. His phone started ringing off the hook.

“There’s a body here, a body there, another body,” he says…

“In mines, you don’t remove a body until they investigate it,” he says.

Villagers and emergency workers decided to start bagging bodies that were rotting in the sun. Local miners joined the effort. Heartbroken residents had been pleading in tears for the bodies’ removal.” (“After Flight 17 Crash, Agony, Debris and Heartbreak in Ukraine Villages“, Wall Street Journal)

See? These people were deeply traumatized by the experience, they weren’t throwing bodies around and disrespecting the dead. That’s pure bunkum, just like the claims that Russia has been firing rounds into Ukraine is bunkum. Just like the leaflets ordering “Jews to register or face deportation” were bunkum. It’s all bunkum. For whatever reason, the State Department doesn’t give a rip about its credibility anymore. They’ll say just about anything as long as they can skewer Moscow.

On Friday, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf was challenged by Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee, who demanded that Harf back up her claims that Russia has been firing rounds into Ukraine with something more substantial than the rubbish she’d read on Twitter. Here’s what the AP journalist said:

“I think that it would be best for all concerned here if when you make an allegation like that you’re able to make it up with something more than just ‘because I said so. You guys get up at the UN security council making these allegations , the secretary [of the State Dept., John Kerry] gets on the Sunday shows and makes these allegations, and then when you present your evidence to back up those allegations, it has appeared to, at least for some, fall short of definitive proof.”

The clearly-flummoxed Harf started backpeddling like crazy, unable to provide any hard evidence that her claims of Russian complicity were anything more than a complete fabrication. As it happens, the so called “satellite imagery data” and “electronic intelligence” that was used to incriminate Moscow was originally posted on coup-backer Geoffrey Pyatt’s Twitter account, which further underlines the fact that the real objective was to shape public opinion with propaganda not to reveal the truth. Here’s a bit more from Antiwar.com:

“During the past several days, there has not been a single report out of Ukraine of an artillery strike against any of their military bases, anywhere in the country. …And this is Ukraine we’re talking about, which comes up with its own dubious stories of Russian attacks on a near daily basis. If Russia was carried out concerted shelling against Ukrainian military targets, Ukraine would be harping on about it constantly. They aren’t even alleging anything close to that is happening. (“US Invents Reports of Russia Attacking Ukraine Bases“, antiwar.com)

A Twitter account, for god sakes! The US State Department is basing its theory on the crap they picked up on Twitter. It’s ridiculous.

Then there’s the State Department’s claim that Russia is massing troops along the border, another fairy tale that’s turned out to be complete baloney. In fact, an International team of inspectors were sent to Russia to check things out and here’s what the found:

“No instances of violations by Russia along the Ukrainian border had been registered by the inspectors,” the ministry said. “The last four months have witnessed 18 separate inspections along the Ukrainian border with the Russian Federation, all in line with the Vienna Open Skies Treaty and the Vienna agreement of 2011.” (RT)

If you’re starting to think that everything you’ve read about the MH17 crash is bullshit, you’re probably right. There’s not much truth to most of it.

But why would the administration lie about things that are so easy to disprove? What’s the point? Are they just getting sloppy and apathetic or is something else going on here?

To get a handle on what’s really going on, we have to understand that Ukraine is not just another bloody afterthought like Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria, none of which would dramatically impact the US’s role as the world’s only superpower. Ukraine is different. Ukraine is an essential part of Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia. If Washington is unable to achieve its objectives in Ukraine — create a chokepoint for vital resources flowing from Russia to the EU, establish NATO bases in the heart of Eurasia, and drive a wedge between Moscow and Brussels — then the plan to maintain US global hegemony for the next century will fail. And if the plan fails, then China will gradually become the world’s biggest and most powerful economy, economic ties between Moscow and Europe grow stronger, and the US will slide into irreversible decline. Get the picture?

This is the scenario that Washington wants to avoid at all cost. That’s why the anti-Russia hysteria in the media has been so ferocious and unrelenting. That’s why the State Department assisted in the coup d’état that toppled the Ukrainian government and triggered the crisis. And that’s why ruling elites of all stripes have thrown their support behind a policy that recklessly pits one nuclear-armed adversary against another. It’s because the bigshot money-guys who run this country are bound and determined to be the Kingfish for the next hundred years even if it means plunging the world into the abyss of a third world war. That’s just a chance they’re willing to take.

The post The Unanswered Questions Of MH17 – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

On July 28, 1914 the Austro-Hungarian empire declared war on Serbia and began a four-year-long war which engulfed Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, North America, Asia and Australia. The conflict came to be known as World War I, the Great War, the war to end all wars. World War I brought such horrors as trench warfare, the use of aviation as a weapon, poison gas attacks and the flame thrower. Technological advances were used to evil effect against millions of people.

Only twenty years later another war was fought throughout the world. From 1939 to 1945 human beings died on nearly every continent and it ended only when the United States unleashed the power of the atom on Japan. This is still the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against human beings.

World War II was followed by the Cold War between the United States and other western nations and the Soviet Union and its allies. For nearly fifty years proxy wars and crises took place between the two sides until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. During those decades humanity feared a hot war and the use of nuclear weapons but the competition ended without the military conflict that the world dreaded. The break-up of the USSR brought temporary hope that there would never be another catastrophic conflict.

The worldwide commemoration of the World War I centenary is celebrated amongst eerie circumstances, as the world’s most powerful nations are locked in the dangerous type of embrace which preceded past conflagrations. Most Americans learn a litany of shallow and simplistic explanations for the first great warsuch as the assassination of an archduke and the sinking of the Lusitania. The textbook explanations omit that the quest for expansion and economic competition among the powerful nations led the world into disaster. That cycle ominously appears to be repeating itself in 2014.

The fall of the Soviet Union wasn’t the beginning of a new and better age. Americans never got the “peace dividend” they expected as the threat of war seemed to end. Instead they got ever increasing military spending which now dwarfs that of the rest of the world’s nations combined. Capitalism is supposedly at its end stage but it seems that it won’t go down without a fight with it in an endless series of collapsing “bubbles” and austerity measures which punish the victims of worldwide capital and their collaborators in governments around the world.

The absence of a competing power only emboldened the United States to renew its long history of intervention, invasion and aggression. The Russian Federation was promised by a succession of American presidents that its former allies would not be used against them. Those words meant nothing as former Soviet bloc states were entreated to join NATO and the European Union.

The weaker nations of the world fare even worse. They face outright naked aggression from the United States. Iraq has suffered from two American invasions in twenty years. Nations that were ignored are instead attacked by western nations or their surrogates and then face years of destruction and chaos. Somalia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and the Congo are now shells of their former selves, racked by continuing bloodshed as the West turns them all to ruin. The rush to conquest creates odd alliances such as that which began in Afghanistan thirty years ago. The inevitable ending of the relationship between the United States and jihadists resulted in blowback culminating in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Like a child having a meltdown, the bad behavior of the United States doesn’t just continue. It gets worse and worse. Its own goals risk being undone by the same people it once called friends. Iraq is being destroyed yet again as one-time friends represented by ISIS threaten the entire imperial project in the region.

Now the United States and European nations aren’t content to attack the weak. They openly declare war on Russia. When they backed a coup in Ukraine they happily threw gasoline onto a fire but the fantasy was easier than the reality. Russia is a tough nut to crack and the instigation of civil war in Ukraine brought more than the West anticipated.

The alliances between Germany, Austria and the Ottoman empire on one side and France, Britain and Russia seem quaint in comparison to the United States upending regimes all over the world as its allies follow dutifully along. Malaysian airlines flight MH17 may be the Lusitania of the modern era. Had the West not caused conflict on Russia’s doorstep the incident would not have taken place but the propagandists are hard at work evading responsibility and assigning blame they ought to share.

It is impossible to look into the future and see how these conflicts will end. It is clear that they can’t go on forever and that great changes are coming. Only defeat will stop massacres in Gaza and regime change around the world. Of course those defeats will bring great suffering to the masses of people. Ironically, that suffering is the only certainty as the chaos continues.

The post The Causes Of World War III – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.

Does anyone seriously believe hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen is worth the $2.3 billion he raked in last year, despite being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine after his firm pleaded guilty to insider trading?

On the other hand, what’s the worth to society of social workers who put in long and difficult hours dealing with patients suffering from mental illness or substance abuse? Probably higher than their average pay of $18.14 an hour, which translates into less than $38,000 a year.

How much does society gain from personal-care aides who assist the elderly, convalescents, and persons with disabilities? Likely more than their average pay of $9.67 an hour, or just over $20,000 a year.

What’s the social worth of hospital orderlies who feed, bathe, dress, and move patients, and empty their ben pans? Surely higher than their median wage of $11.63 an hour, or $24,190 a year.

Or of child care workers, who get $10.33 an hour, $21.490 a year? And preschool teachers, who earn $13.26 an hour, $27,570 a year?

Yet what would the rest of us do without these dedicated people?

Or consider kindergarten teachers, who make an average of $53,590 a year.

That may sound generous but a good kindergarten teacher is worth his or her weight in gold, almost.

One study found that children with outstanding kindergarten teachers are more likely to go to college and less likely to become single parents than a random set of children similar to them in every way other than being assigned a superb teacher.

And what of writers, actors, painters, and poets? Only a tiny fraction ever become rich and famous. Most barely make enough to live on (many don’t, and are forced to take paying jobs to pursue their art). But society is surely all the richer for their efforts.

At the other extreme are hedge-fund and private-equity managers, investment bankers, corporate lawyers, management consultants, high-frequency traders, and top Washington lobbyists.

They’re getting paid vast sums for their labors. Yet it seems doubtful that society is really that much better off because of what they do.

I don’t mean to sound unduly harsh, but I’ve never heard of a hedge-fund manager whose jobs entails attending to basic human needs (unless you consider having more money as basic human need) or enriching our culture (except through the myriad novels, exposes, and movies made about greedy hedge-fund managers and investment bankers).

They don’t even build the economy.

Most financiers, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants are competing with other financiers, lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants in zero-sum games that take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another.

They’re paid gigantic amounts because winning these games can generate far bigger sums, while losing them can be extremely costly.

The games demand ever more cunning innovations but they create no social value. High-frequency traders who win by a thousandth of a second can reap a fortune, but society as a whole is no better off.

In fact, these games amount to a huge waste of societal resources and talent.

In 2010 (the most recent date for which we have data) close to 36 percent of Princeton graduates went into finance (down from the pre-financial crisis high of 46 percent in 2006). Add in management consulting, and it was close to 60 percent.

Graduates of Harvard and other Ivy League universities are also more likely to enter finance and consulting than any other career.

The hefty endowments of such elite institutions are swollen with tax-subsidized donations from wealthy alumni, many of whom are seeking to guarantee their own kids’ admissions so they too can become enormously rich financiers and management consultants.

But I can think of a better way for taxpayers to subsidize occupations with more social merit: Forgive the student debts of graduates who choose social work, child care, elder care, nursing, and teaching.

The post Work And Worth – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Over 380 people were killed and around 1,800 injured after an earthquake measuring from 6.1 to 6.5, according to different estimates, toppled thousands of buildings in China’s southwestern Yunnan province.

The majority of the dead were from Ludian County, which Chinese state television said was at the epicenter of the quake. Ludian authorities said at least 296 people were killed in their jurisdiction, where an estimated 12,000 houses collapsed and some 30,000 were damaged, BNO News reports.

At least 1,300 people from the county have been injured and 181 remain missing, Yunnan’s information bureau reported earlier, and it is unknown how many people could still be trapped under the rubble.

The quake also caused serious damage in Qiaojia County, where another 60 people were killed according to China’s Civil Affairs Ministry. Ten more people reportedly died in Huize County.

The overall death toll reportedly reached 381 by Monday morning local timewith over 1,800 injured.

The post China Earthquake Death Toll Rises To 381, Over 1,800 Injured appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Eight Lebanese soldiers were killed in clashes with gunmen that continued overnight in and around the border town of Arsal near Syria, a Lebanese army statement said Sunday.

“The army continued its military operations throughout the night and this morning in Arsal and its environs, as it pursued armed groups and clashed with them,” the statement said.

Four wounded troops were sent Sunday to a hospital in Hermel, according to The Daily Star’s correspondent in the town.

Lebanese army units continued their attacks with heavy artillery on the militants’ bases in the mountainous outskirts of the village.

Lebanese security officials told Reuters Sunday that at least 11 militants and three civilians had been killed in the fighting and that around 16 members of the security forces had been taken hostage.

Security sources said that most of the gunmen attacking the army came from refugee camps inside Arsal and its outskirts.

Syrian armed groups Saturday killed two Lebanese soldiers in an attack on a checkpoint in Wadi Hmayyed, northeast Lebanon, as the Lebanese army freed two troops kidnapped earlier in the area.

Tensions have risen dramatically in the Bekaa Valley after an army arrest of a Syrian militant sparked a standoff Saturday afternoon in Arsal, with armed men laying siege to government facilities in the border town, demanding the release of the captive.

After several hours of intermittent gunfire and a tense standoff, militants stormed the police station in Arsal, taking control of the building and releasing several Syrian detainees held there, a security source told The Daily Star. The source said two civilians were killed while trying to prevent the militants from attacking the station.

Al-Nusra Front’s YouTube channel posted a video allegedly showing members of the Internal Security Forces announcing their defection “from the Lebanese army and Hezbollah.”

The clashes in Arsal also sparked tensions in the northern city of Tripoli, where gunmen attacked army posts and vehicles in the city, wounding two soldiers.

The army had released a statement Saturday, accusing the armed groups launching the attacks of implementing a plan against Lebanon.

“What happened today is the most dangerous incident Lebanon and the Lebanese have ever faced, because it’s made clear that there is someone planning and preparing to attack Lebanon as well as planning to sabotage the Lebanese Army and the residents of Arsal,” the statement said.

Army sources say the operation against the gunmen will continue until armed presence in the village is eradicated.

Original article

The post Eight Lebanese Soldiers Killed In Syria Border Clashes appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(RFE/RL) — Britain’s Cameron has called on NATO to rethink ties with Russia

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that NATO needs to review its long-term relationship with Russia to reflect the fact that Moscow sees the alliance as “an adversary.”

In a letter to other NATO leaders and alliance secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen ahead of a summit in Britain next month, Cameron said the alliance must change to be able to better defend its members from a potential Russian military threat.

According to Cameron, NATO has to be a “robust presence” in Eastern Europe because of Russia’s “illegal” actions in Ukraine.

He proposed drafting a new schedule of military exercises, pre-positioning equipment and supplies, and enhancing the NATO Response Force of up to 25,000 troops.

The alliance has suspended all practical cooperation with Russia and stepped up exercises in Eastern Europe after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in March.

The post Britain’s Cameron: NATO Must Be Changed appeared first on Eurasia Review.

As of 1 August, the cumulative number of cases attributed to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone stands at 1,603 including 887 deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a Monday update.

According to WHO, the distribution and classification of the cases are as follows: Guinea, 485 cases (340 confirmed, 133 probable, and 12 suspected) including 358 deaths; Liberia, 468 cases (129 confirmed, 234 probable, and 105 suspected) including 255 deaths; Nigeria, 4 cases (0 confirmed, 3 probable, 1 suspected) including 1 death; and Sierra Leone, 646 cases (540 confirmed, 46 probable, and 60 suspected) including 273 deaths.

WHO said that it continues to work closely with national authorities in Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo in identification of contacts and contact tracing as well as in preparing response plans as a result of the recent visit by and death of a Liberian national to Nigeria from Ebola and the new Nigerian Ebola probable case, who travelled to Guinea.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization visited Guinea and held high-level meetings with the Presidents of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone to review the status of the Ebola epidemic and adopt common strategies to eradicate Ebola from the sub-region. A Joint Declaration of Heads of State and Government of the Mano River Union (comprised of Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) was issued and leaders pledged to commit additional resources to the outbreak.

Those measures include:

• Actions at the inter-country level to focus on cross-border regions, including isolation of specific areas by police and military and material support to the citizens in these areas. Health-care centers in these zones will be strengthened for treatment, testing, and contact tracing. Burials will be done in accordance with national health regulations.

• Provision of incentives, treatment, and protection for health personnel so they can feel safe in their jobs and perform their duties. In addition, security for national and international personnel supporting the fight against Ebola will also be assured.

• A commitment by Heads of State to do their part to bring the outbreak to an end as soon as possible. To this end, the international community will support affected countries to build capacity for surveillance, contact tracing, case management, and laboratory capacity.

• Mobilization of the private and public sectors to work in synergy and increase sensitization efforts to enable communities to understand EVD for effective and efficient eradication.

• Involve all sectors in immediate implementation of necessary interventions outlined in national response plans; harmonize and coordinate these measures; deploy national and international human resources with appropriate skills; mobilize and allocate appropriate financial resources; strengthen surveillance of cross-border movement.

• Improve information and communications systems in an effort to strengthen sensitization and promote community participation, taking into account cultural contexts.

• Improve infection prevention and control measures in all treatment centres to prevent health personnel from contracting and dying from EVD.

• Put in place a monitoring and evaluation system of regional strategies and conduct research around the disease.

The post Ebola Outbreak Death Toll Close To 900 appeared first on Eurasia Review.

More than 400 Ukrainian troops have been allowed to cross into Russia after requesting sanctuary. It’s the largest, but not the first, case of desertion into Russia by Ukrainian soldiers involved in Kiev’s military crackdown in the east of the country.

According to the Rostov Region’s border guard spokesman Vasily Malaev, a total of 438 soldiers, including 164 Ukrainian border guards, have been allowed into Russia on Sunday night.

One of the Ukrainians was seriously injured on his arrival in Russia. He was taken to the hospital for surgery, the officials added.

The other Ukrainian soldiers have been housed in a tent camp deployed near the checkpoint via which they entered Russian territory. The Russian border guards are providing them with food and bedding.

Footage taken by the Russian media at the scene showed the Ukrainian soldiers being handed ration packs and resting in their temporary shelter. Those who agreed to speak on camera said they were relieved to be in safety for the first time in weeks.

“We were given an order to leave out positions and go to Russia trough a corridor. We were told it would be safe. Of course they, I would say, made us go fast from behind,” one of the soldiers, a BMP driver who would not reveal his name or even show his face on camera, said.

“It was so bad back there. Hot, and so many deaths and bad things,” another one, Dmitry, said. “Folks can rest here. They gave us a chance to wash, gave us new clothes. We are thankful.”

“We have been in those fields for more than six months and are very tired,” he added.

Another one, Yaroslav, said he wishes to go back to his family in Ukraine.

“I want to do something peaceful. My contract expired four months ago,” he explained.

On Sunday, the Ukrainian anti-government militia reported that it was in negotiations with a large contingent of Ukrainian troops they encircled in Lugansk region on a possible surrender. The negotiations were being hampered by the troops’ intention to destroy some 70 armored vehicles in their possession before laying down arms, which the militia wanted to capture intact.

The Gukovo border checkpoint, through which the Ukrainian troops crossed into the Russian territory, is located on Russia’s border with the Lugansk Region of Ukraine, indicating that these are the same troops that were negotiating with the militia. If so, it was not immediately clear whether the vehicles they had were really destroyed.

The flow of deserters from the ranks of Ukrainian Army and National Guard seems to be increasing amid the escalating violence in Donets and Lugansk Regions, where Kiev is fighting against armed anti-government militias.

In late July 41 Ukrainian troops fled to Russia to escape fighting in eastern Ukraine. They are now being prosecuted in Ukraine for deserting in the heat of battle.

The post Over 400 Ukrainian Troops Cross Into Russia For Refuge appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Deepak Kumar Nayak

On July 28, 2014, a Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadre was killed and three personnel of the 150th battalion of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), including an Assistant Commandant, Alok Kumar, were injured in an encounter in the forest near Ramaram village under the Chintagufa Police Station limits in Sukma District. Police recovered the body of the slain Maoist after the exchange of fire was over. Police later claimed that reliable sources indicated that another ten Maoists, including ‘five commanders’, were killed, though Police did not recover any other bodies.

Earlier, on July 7, 2014, two troopers of the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) of the CRPF were injured in an encounter with the Maoists in forested patches of Karikunda under Bhejji Police Station limits in Sukma District. According to Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP), Neeraj Chandrakar, during a combing operation in the forested patch, the Security Forces (SFs) suddenly came under indiscriminate firing by the Maoists.

Sukma was carved out of Dantewada as a separate District in January 16, 2012, and occupies an area of 5635.79 square kilometres, with a population of 250,159 (census 2011). It shares its borders with Maoist-infested the Bastar, Bijapur and Dantewada Districts of the State to the north and west, Malkangiri District of Odisha to the east and Khammam District of Telangana to the South. Some 3,500 square kilometres of Sukma, more than 75 per cent of its total area, are under thick forest cover. The forest cover, terrain and location of the District give the Maoists a distinct advantage in their campaigns to establish disruptive dominance and evade action by SFs.

The location of major incidents (each involving three or more fatalities) as part of Dantewada District, the newly established Sukma District caught the attention of the nation with the high-profile abduction of the District’s first Collector, Alex Paul Menon, on April 21, 2012. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), the District has already registered 23 fatalities (2 civilians 20 SF personnel and one Maoist) in five incidents of killing in 2014, out of a total of 67 fatalities in Chhattisgarh. There were 56 fatalities in 16 incidents of killing in the District in 2013 (out of 128 in Chhattisgarh), and 16 fatalities in nine incidents of killing in 2012 (out of 108 in Chhattisgarh).

While Maoists fatalities have increased since the formation of the District, civilians and SF fatalities reflect a sharper increase, and account for about 36 per cent and 48 per cent of the total, respectively.

The District has witnessed four major incidents since its formation in 2012, resulting in 31 fatalities [two civilian, 20 SF personnel and nine LWEs]. These major incidents were:

April 9, 2014: Three personnel of the CoBRA unit of the CRPF were killed and another three were injured in a CPI-Maoist ambush near Chintagufa village.

March 11, 2014: Fifteen SF personnel (11 personnel of the CRPF, four of the District Police) were killed in a CPI-Maoist ambush near the forested road in Jeeram Ghati in Sukma District of south Chhattisgarh. One civilian, Vikram Nishad, also died in the crossfire, while another three were injured.

November 12, 2013: A day after the first phase of polling in Bastar zone, two BSF personnel and a civilian driver were killed and as many were injured in a landmine explosion triggered by CPI-Maoist cadres at Kerlapal, when the troopers were returning from poll duties.

April 16, 2013: Nine Maoists were killed in an encounter with SFs in the forest area of Puarti village.

According to partial data compiled by SATP, there have been at least 36 encounters between the SFs and LWEs in Sukma, since the formation of the District in January 2012. The Maoists have also attacked and fired at SF helicopters on at least three occasions and fired at SF camps on two occasions. On one occasion, the Maoists use a rocket launcher to attack the Gollapalli Police Station in the District, though the rocket missed the target and failed to explode. The Maoists have set ablaze vehicles on five occasions to disrupt road construction works.

Sukma lies at the core of the Maoist ‘guerrilla zone’ in Chhattisgarh, and the state’s presence in many areas of the District is negligible, with the exception of the urban centres. Indeed, some of the worst Maoist attacks have been executed in the Sukma area before the District’s formation, including the Chintalnad-Tadmetla massacre [April 6, 2010, 76 SF personnel killed]; the Chingavaram IED attack targeting persons returning from a Police recruitment examination [May 17, 2010, 44 killed]; Geedam [October 7, 2011, three Sashastra Seema Bal troopers killed]; Bhejji [June 11, 2011, three CRPF personnel killed]; Borguda [May 17, 2011, five CRPF personnel killed]; Gollapalli [June 23, 2010, three Chhattisgarh Police personnel killed]; Kerlapal [December 6, 2009, four civilians killed]; Tongapal [June 20, 2009, 12 CRPF personnel killed]; Kistaram [May 16, 2009, 11 persons, including eight CPI-Maoist cadres and three Special Police Officers (SPOs) killed]; Minta [April 10, 2009, 10 CRPF personnel, including a Deputy Commandant, and three suspected CPI-Maoist cadres killed]; Banda [June 19, 2008, three SPOs killed]; Tarlaguda [December 20, 2007, 12 Policemen killed]; Konta [November 29, 2007, 10 Mizoram Reserve Police personnel and two civilian drivers killed]; Jagurugondo [August 29, 2007, at least 12 SF personnel killed]; among others.

One of the most visible signs of Maoist dominance in Sukma is the condition of National Highway 221, which connects Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. In the 80-km stretch from Sukma to Konta, there is hardly any asphalt cover on the road. The contract for a 198-crore project to repair NH 221 was given awarded two years ago, but work is yet to begin.

Facing a shortage of contractors for carrying out development work in Naxalite-hit areas in the State, Chief Minister Raman Singh, during his meeting with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in June 2014, sought two technical battalions of the Special India Reserve Battalions (SIRB) comprising engineers and trained construction personnel for projects in Chhattisgarh. Meanwhile, CRPF has for the first time taken upon itself to build a 7km stretch in Sukma District. The particular project route is being kept under wraps for security reasons.

Ironically, Sukma was carved out of the Dantewada District as part of an effort to improve administrative efficiency. Addressing a public gathering to mark the creation of Sukma District Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, had said, “all arrangements for better education, healthcare, infrastructure would be in place soon for the newly-carved out District to enable speedy development in all areas”. However, things have hardly changed. On February 5, 2014 State Health Minister Amar Agrawal disclosed in the State Assembly that, in Sukma District, out of 55 posts of doctors sanctioned, 46 (84 per cent) were vacant, and there were no doctors in 13 hospitals. This compares abysmally with the generally poor condition of hospital administration in Chhattisgarh at large, where there are 1,012 Government hospitals, for which 2,948 posts of doctors are sanctioned, and of which 1,432 doctors were at work and 1,516 posts (51.42 per cent) were vacant.

Similarly, Revenue Minister Prem Prakash Pandey informed the State Assembly on February 7, 2014, that, of 62 posts of Patwari, three posts of Revenue Inspector (RI) and three each for Tehsildar and Nayab Tehsildar sanctioned in the District, 17 posts of Patwari, 2 posts of RI and 4 posts of Tehsildar and Nayab Tehsildar, as well as one post of Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) were lying vacant.

The primary education system in the District is also in a shambles. Media reports indicate that more than half the children have no access to classes. In the Konta Block, no teachers have been recruited or given charge in nearly 100 schools (primary, middle and higher secondary) since 2006. Further, the existing teachers find ways to get transferred to schools in villages mostly along highways, while in the interior areas there are school buildings but no teachers. Thus, for example, the Government school at Bhejji (Konta Block) along the highway has 11 teachers for just 33 students, while schools in villages like Ketemargu, Palachalma, Sakaner and Vinda, among others, are without teachers.

Interestingly, the State Employment Exchange itself faces an acute shortage of staff, despite the State Government’s sanction to fill the vacant posts, and is struggling to find suitable candidates for its own Head Office. S.S. Bhagat, Joint Director, State Employment Exchange, agreed that the staff crunch is affecting the routine work.

Almost 70 per cent of Sukma’s population of over 250,159 is tribal, and this is among the most impoverished areas of the country. Reliable poverty statistics are unavailable and, ironically, at least 62,759 cards for below poverty-line (BPL) and marginal households under the Antyodaya and Priority Category programmes for access to subsidized foodgrain, have been issued (Chhattisgarh Economic Survey 2013-14), against a total population of 55,647 households in the District (Census 2011). The literacy rate in Sukma stands at 29.8 per cent, against a State average of 60.2 per cent. Only 34.3 per cent of the population has access to electricity supply, against a State average of 75.3 per cent. Just 7.4 per cent of Sukma’s population has access to a toilet on their premises; 5.1 per cent of the population have access to tap water; and 94 per cent of the population relies on wood as the energy resources for cooking.

On June 20, 2014, around 200 villagers from the Chintagufa village in Sukma approached the Sukma Superintendent of Police (SP), D. Shrawan, seeking an end to the “daily atrocities” committed by CRPF personnel stationed near the village. These allegations could be genuine or ‘managed’; but in either case do not bode well for the security situation.

Earlier, during the Salwa Judum (anti-Maoist vigilante movement) period, the Sukma-Konta area, then part of Dantewada District, suffered untold miseries due to activities of Salwa Judum groups and the retaliation by Maoists. Thousands of tribals in the Sukma-Konta region were displaced by the conflict, and at least six Salwa Judum relief camps – Dornapal, Errabor, Injeram, Konta, Bangapal, Kasoli – housing 27,727 persons were established. .

In 2012, the District Police had 800 personnel, 700 assistant constables (earlier called SPOs) and some 3,000 CRPF personnel for security in the District. Though current level of deployment in the District are not available, after the March 11, 2014, ambush, State Police officials argued that “excessive deployment” may have triggered the attack.

Sukma is a clear demonstration of the pattern where Maoists have capitalized on the absence of the state and its agencies, consolidating their mass base in a political and administrative vacuum, and evolving operational capabilities in a situation of widespread security vulnerabilities. Given the sheer magnitude of the cumulative deficit across all dimensions of security, governance and development, there is little hope that the people of this unfortunate region will experience any measurable relief from the crushing burdens of deprivation and violence in the foreseeable future.

Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

The post India: Sukma, Chhattisgarh Region Of Sorrow – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Pakistan exist under a rule of terror imposed by a military-mullah combine, and it is, consequently, not surprising that the medium which attempts to unravel this truth and to criticize the prevailing order, has been under constant attack.

Indeed, workers and offices of Express News, one of the major media groups in Pakistan, have been relentlessly targeted. On January 17, 2014, unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants shot dead three Express News workers, after ambushing a Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) vehicle in the North Nazimabad area of Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh. Ehsanullah Ehsan, former ‘spokesman’ of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack and, by way of ‘explanation’, argued, “I would like to present some of its reasons: At present, Pakistani media is playing the role of (enemies and spread) venomous propaganda against Tehreek-e-Taliban. They have assumed the (role of) opposition. We had intimated the media earlier and warn it once again that (they must) side with us in this venomous propaganda.”

On March 28, 2014, the analyst and Express News show Khabar Se Agay (Beyond News) anchor Raza Rumi survived a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) assassination attempt in Lahore, in which his driver, Mustafa, was killed, and his guard was injured. Rumi has persistently and sharply criticized extremist groups on his programme.

Again, on April 6, 2014, a hand grenade was lobbed on the house of Express News Peshawar Bureau Chief, Jamshed Baghwan, damaging the main gate and a portion of the house, located in the Murshidabad area of Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Another explosion on July 2, 2014, damaged Baghwan’s house and car. Earlier, on March 16, 2014, Security Force (SF) personnel had recovered and later defused a bomb planted at the house.

The Express News had been under attack in 2013 as well. Four unidentified assailants opened indiscriminate fire outside the entrance of the Express News office in Karachi on August 16, 2013, injuring two members of the staff. Again, on December 2, 2013, three persons were injured when unidentified assailants hurled two hand grenades and opened indiscriminate fire at the same location in Karachi.

These attacks are not aberrations. Top Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir (47) was seriously wounded in a targeted shooting in Karachi on April 19, 2014. Mir’s car was ambushed as soon as it left Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport and was on the way to his Jang group-owned Geo TV’s office. Mir had earlier told his family, friends, colleagues, Army and Government officials in writing that he would hold Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. General Zaheerul Islam responsible if he was attacked. Hamid Mir had been relentlessly highlighting the issue of missing persons in Balochistan. The incident also demonstrated the ruthless attempts by the military establishment to silence an increasingly critical media, with the civilian Government expectedly toeing the Army’s line.

In 2011, the ISI has been accused of abducting, torturing and killing Saleem Shahzad, a journalist working as the Pakistan Bureau Chief of Asia Times Online (Hong Kong) and Italian news agency Adnkronos (AKI). Shahzad disappeared in the evening of May 29, 2011, from Islamabad and his dead body was later discovered on May 31 from a canal in Mandi Bahauddin District of Punjab. His body bore marks of severe torture. Human Rights Watch researcher, Ali Dayan Hasan, claimed he had “credible information” that Shahzad was in the custody of ISI. Indeed, Shahzad’s friends and colleagues revealed that the ISI had warned Shahzad at least three times prior to his death. In October 2010, Shahzad was summoned to ISI headquarters the day after publishing a sensitive article on Afghan Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar’s capture.

The crisis is particularly acute in Balochistan, where state agencies, the ISI and their non-state proxies have executed the abduction and killing of a number of Baloch journalists who have sought to highlight the issue of forced disappearances of Baloch people. On August 21, 2013, for instance, the body of Haji Abdul Razzaq Baloch (42), a sub-editor at the Daily Tawar (Voice), a leading anti-military Baloch newspaper published in Urdu, was recovered from the Surjani Town area of Karachi. His face was mutilated, and his body showed signs of torture and strangulation. He was ‘disappeared’ from the Lyari area on March 24, 2013. Razzaq was also a supporter of the Baloch National Movement, a nationalist political organization.

Similarly, the mutilated body of Javid Naseer Rind, the former Deputy Editor of Daily Tawar, had been recovered from the Khuzdar area of Balochistan on November 6, 2011. He had been abducted by unidentified persons on September 10, 2011, from the Hub Chowki area of Lasbela town. His relatives blame ISI for his abduction and killing.

At least 91 media personnel have been killed in Pakistan since 2000. Another 504 have either faced assault or have been injured in attacks. At least 440 media persons have been abducted/ arrested, while another 347 have been intimidated. According to the partial data compiled by the SATP, 2014 has already witnessed the killing of three media persons in the January 17 incident targeting Express News.

Emboldened by the implicit support of a military and political establishment that refuses to relinquish terrorism as an instrument of state policy, terrorists continue to spread fear. Significantly, on January 23, 2014, TTP issued a fatwa (edict), titled “Right and Wrong: Historic Decree of the Shura of Mujahideen Ulema about Dajjali (deceitful or false) Media”. In the fatwa, the TTP blamed the media for acting against Islam and Muslims and promoting ideological anarchy by propagating ideas and deeds that go against Shariah. Signed by TTP ‘Central Deputy Chief’ Shaikh Khalid Haqqani, the fatwa singles out the reporters of five TV channels – Aaj, ARY, Express News, Geo TV and Samaa – who would be dealt with in accordance with TTP’s “jihad policy”. The cover page of the fatwa booklet displays a sword falling on the logos of large national and international media groups, including the Voice of America, Fox News, Associated Press, Pakistan Television, Geo, ARY, News 1, Samaa and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The fatwa also justified the killing of journalists affiliated with BBC, Deewa Radio, Mashaal Radio, Azadi Radio and Radio Apki Dunya.

Referring to the trend among Islamist terrorist formations that declare anyone who challenges the extremist ideology, or who dares to talk about a secular Pakistan, a traitor and to attack such persons, Raza Rumi warned of the “systematic purge” of intellectuals, writers and journalists: “Debating religion and its misinterpretation by some religious elements is frowned upon… Now dozens of militant groups are ready to ‘fix’ an errant writer or a speaker.”

David Griffiths, Amnesty International’s Deputy Asia-Pacific Director, notes,

Pakistan’s media community is effectively under siege. Journalists, in particular those covering national security issues or human rights, are targeted from all sides in a disturbing pattern of abuses carried out to silence their reporting.

Pakistan’s media community is effectively under siege. Journalists, in particular those covering national security issues or human rights, are targeted from all sides in a disturbing pattern of abuses carried out to silence their reporting.

Under the circumstances, many media groups those working and individual journalists have begun to eulogize extremism. Khan Zaman Kakar, an Islamabad-based scholar, thus observed, “A section of Pakistani media glorifies Taliban militants and their brand of Islam,” adding that extremist elements were keenly aware of growing public and media criticism.

Despite mounting pressures, Pakistani media professionals have vowed to maintain a free Press. Peshawar-based senior journalist and Khyber Union of Journalists President Nisar Mehmood told Central Asia Online on January 16, 2014:

The media have to convey a true picture to the masses. No doubt journalists, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [KP] and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas [FATA], are facing death threats, but still we have to depict a true picture of society and convey the truth.

Unfortunately, this is an increasingly unequal battle, as the extremist bullet and bomb put an end to every argument. Worse, where the Government was expected to act decisively and to protect media freedom, it has remained a silent spectator, or has engaged in meaningless public symbolism. Thus, the Chief Minister (CM) of Balochistan, Malik Baloch, on March 20, 2014, announced the formation of a Special Task Force to arrest culprits involved in the murder of around 30 journalists in the Province over the preceding seven years. “I order the formation of a task force to bring the killers of journalists to the book,” the CM declared before journalists protesting outside the Provincial Assembly. The President of the Balochistan Union of Journalists (BUJ), Irfan Saeed, however, pointed out on the same day, “Despite repeated assurances, the killers of journalists are still at large”.

Significantly, on February 7, 2014, a BUJ delegation headed by its President Irfan Saeed, met with Balochistan’s Inspector General (IG) Mushtaq Ahmad Sukhera to ask for immediate Government action to arrest those responsible for the killing of Mohammad Afzal Khawaja, a reporter for Daily Balochistan Times, on February 2. The IG had then promised that the Police department would take all measures to ensure the speedy arrest and trial of the reporter’s murderers. However, no arrest has yet been made in this case. Way back on May 17, 2006, then Balochistan Home Secretary Humayun Khan, talking to a delegation of journalists, had stated that the Government was taking ‘concrete measures’ to improve the law and order situation in the Province and had assured them of providing complete security to journalists. Eight years later, the media is more vulnerable than it was before.

Similarly, Karachi Police spokesman Atiq Sheikh asserted, on July 18, 2014, that law enforcement agencies were guarding writers and publishers who had received threats from the terrorist groups. Given the past record, however, such statements will have no bearing on the actual security of journalists in an environment of enveloping insecurity, where both state and non-state actors have joined hands to target the media.

Indeed, in a report titled, “A bullet has been chosen for you: Attacks on journalists in Pakistan”, published on April 30, 2014, Amnesty International notes:

Pakistani journalists live under the constant threat of killings, harassment and other forms of violence from both the state and non-state actors, political parties and armed groups like the TTP and their ideological affiliates.

Numerous journalists interviewed by Amnesty International during the compilation of the report complained of harassment or attacks by individuals they claimed were connected to the establishment.

The Pakistani media has remained surprisingly vocal and substantially committed to the values of freedom, democracy, and even secularism. In a state where the principal tools of political management have relied on the use of extreme force and the ideological manipulation of extremist Islam, these are dangerous positions. The assault on the media by both the state and Islamist extremist formations supported by and opposed to the state, constitutes an existential challenge to Pakistan in its present – albeit ambivalent – form. The fragile support structures of freedom in Pakistan are now under terminal risk.

The post Pakistan: Media In Shadow Of Death – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ravi Nitesh

The visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Nepal has given rise to many hopes in terms of not only improved bilateral relations, but also in terms of productivity and growth of both nations and with other neighbouring countries as well.

The bilateral visit of an Indian prime minister to Nepal comes after a long gap of 17 years when then prime minister of India I.K. Gujral visited the Himalayan nation. It is also to be noted that a week ago the foreign ministers of India and Nepal revived the Joint Commission after a gap of 23 years. Such progressive steps are expected to pave a strong pathway for future ties.

India and Nepal share a lot of similarities and brotherhood. These countries face similar challenges as well, in terms of poverty, education, energy and environment. Nepal and India are countries of the South Asian region along with others in the list as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. With all these advantages, this visit becomes important in terms of the South Asian environment of building relations and framing the outlines for collective growth.

Nepal and India form a unique relationship through their state borders. At a time when countries in South Asia have some sort of conflict with regard to defining their border lines and making it more rigid, more stringent, more vigilant and less accessible for even normal citizens to cross these borders, the Nepal-India border is an exception in the South Asian region. There lies a boundary between two countries, which gives the message of love, peace and mutual trust rather than hate, and restrictions.

This border is all about trust between the two countries. In fact, everyone knows about how humanitarian efforts are in progress for a visa-free South Asia and more accessible borders. It is also told about how such moves of less restriction on people’s movement and visits can help in developing trust and collective growth for the region. The example of the European Union has been given of how they are all very well connected with each other and moving towards development and growth together; while here in South Asia, in spite of all our similar challenges, of poverty and hunger as the common enemy, we are witnessing lack of trust among our governments and investing too much on border restrictions, vigilance, arms and ammunition.

Nepal and India also form a deep cultural bond. We would witness many marriages across the border, mostly with people who are living in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, as it is just adjacent to Nepal. In education, we can witness the bulk of Nepali students who are studying in India. Even old customs, like relations with security personnel, the existing ‘Gorkha Rifles’, are valid in the present days as well. People in India never see Nepal or its people with any kind of hatred, but find them similar. Such things only add positive and most important content in paving the way for governmental relations. Though in Nepal, there are some anti-India sentiments due to a few reasons (such as border conflict and reviewing old treaties etc), but with the frequent visits and the will to resolve these matters, is not too difficult for the two governments as the negotiations (if any) will automatically have the support of people in view of the deep cultural bond and frequent movements to each other.

With the concept of free borders, there are also some voices who claim these borders are used as the highway for human trafficking and smuggling. But in fact solutions to these things can be found by being a little vigilant without increasing restrictions to cross the border.

There can be a few more things required to be done, and most of them have been addressed in the JC a few days back. A few important points include reviewing the 1950 treaty of peace and friendship, to complete formalities of the bilateral investment protection and promotion agreement (BIPPA), road and rail links, scholarship to students of Nepal, power trade agreement and cooperation for development and conservation of places of historic importance.

Also, the upper house of the Indian parliament was informed by Minister of State for External Affairs V. K. Singh, in answer to an unstarred question 2337 dated July 31 by T. Subbarami Reddy, that integrated check posts, flood control measures, logistic assistance through buses and ambulances, medical assistance programmes, 3,000 annual scholarships and approximately 450 small developmental projects are planned.

We all hope that this visit will improve and strengthen our bilateral relationship and that its effect will be seen in strengthening of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Also, with increased trade and development, the basic problems of poverty and energy crisis will be removed in these countries.

On the political front, Nepal is already in a phase of change and has witnessed many political changes in recent years. At this juncture, Nepal may also utilize India’s assistance to strengthen itself in the SAARC region as well as in making itself more politically stable and strong in formulation and implementation of projects and policies for the welfare of its citizens.

For example, in making the Constituent Assembly, Nepal can get assistance from India and other SAARC countries, and it will only improve Nepal’s own strength and it will be seen as a forward step of diplomacy towards confidence building measures in the SAARC region. On the part of India, it must be noted that New Delhi needs to work in alignment with other South Asian countries as an equal partner with the same privileges and powers as others.

(Ravi Nitesh is a columnist for the Daily Times, Pakistan and core member of Aghaz-e-Dosti, a friendship initiative for youth from India and Pakistan. He can be contacted atsouthasiamonitor1@gmail.com)

This article appeared at South Asia Monitor.

The post Strong India-Nepal Ties Would Strengthen SAARC – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Two children were killed Monday evening in an Israeli airstrike on Rafah, with at least 21 Palestinians killed across the besieged enclave during the day.

Mohammad Amjad Oweida, 12, and Amal Amjad Oweida, 5, were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit their house in the al-Barazil neighborhood in Rafah while they were playing on a rooftop.

Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said 32 bodies were recovered on Monday and at least 21 Palestinians reported killed.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “the campaign in Gaza is continuing” following the end of a seven-hour humanitarian lull.

The unilateral truce was announced as international outrage grew over an Israeli strike near a UN school on Sunday that killed 10 people, among them refugees who had been seeking shelter.

It was the third such strike in 10 days.

With UN figures indicating most of the 1,865 people killed in Gaza so far were civilians, the world has stepped up its demands for an end to the bloodshed.

Bloodshed in Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, one Israeli was killed and five hurt when a Palestinian rammed an earth-mover into a bus, turning it over before the driver was shot dead by police, according to Israeli officials.

Shortly afterwards, an Israeli soldier was shot and seriously wounded near a bus stop not far from the site of the earlier attack, with police combing the area for his attacker.

Police said the attack on the bus was a “terrorist attack,” saying the driver was a Palestinian from annexed East Jerusalem.

An crowd of angry Israelis gathered at the scene, chanting “Death to Arabs” and dozens of people could be seen attacking a nearby bus filled with Palestinian workers.

The post Two Palestinian Children Killed In Airstrike On Rafah Home appeared first on Eurasia Review.

“From start to finish, the Ukraine crisis has been instigated by US imperialism. Every action Washington has taken has been directed at exacerbating and intensifying this crisis. The longer this crisis goes on, the clearer it becomes that US policy is directed not so much at Ukraine as at Russia itself. Ukraine, it would seem, is meant merely to provide the pretext for a war with Russia.”

— Bill Van Auken, “Does Washington want war with Russia?“, World Socialist Web Site

German pilot and airlines expert, Peter Haisenko,  thinks that Malaysia Flight 17 was not blown up by a ground-based antiaircraft missile, but shot down by the type of double-barreled 30-mm guns used on Ukrainian SU-25 fighter planes.  Haisenko presented his theory in a widely-circulated and controversial article which appeared on the Global Research website titled “Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile”. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“The facts speak clear and loud and are beyond the realm of speculation: The cockpit shows traces of shelling! You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile….”  (“Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile””, Global Research)

Haisenko notes that the munitions used on Ukrainian fighters–anti-tank incendiary and splinter-explosive shells–are capable of taking down a jetliner and that the dense pattern of metal penetrated by multiple projectiles is consistent with the firing pattern of a 30-mm gun.

The fact that Russian radar spotted a SU 25 in the area where MH17 was attacked, has persuaded many that Haisenko’s analysis is credible.  Adding to the controversy, international monitor Michael Bociurkiw, who was one of the first inspectors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to reach the crash site and who spent more than a week examining the ruins–also appears to be convinced that the ill-fated jetliner was not hit by a missile but downed by machinegun fire consistent with the myriad bullet-holes visible on the fuselage.  Here’s what he told on CBC World News:

“There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pock-marked. It almost looks like machine gun fire; very, very strong machine gun fire that has left these unique marks that we haven’t seen anywhere else.

We’ve also been asked if we’ve seen any signs of a missile?

Well, no we haven’t. That’s the answer.” (“Malaysia Airlines MH17: Michael Bociurkiw talks about being first at the crash site“, CBC News. Note: The above quote is from the video)

The idea that MH17 was downed by a surface-to-air missile (from a BUK system) is a theory that originated with the US government and spread by the western media.  The theory has been repeated thousands of times in thousands of newspapers and TV programs without a shred of corroborating evidence.  Needless to say, the repetition of a fable, does not make it true. The public needs more facts to determine what really happened. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has been stonewalling the investigation, preferring instead to use the tragedy to advance their own narrow political agenda by attacking Putin and smearing Russia. This strategy has clearly backfired as we can see by the fact that Haisenko’s analysis has caught on like wildfire convincing many that the missile theory is a fake.

The burden of proof now falls on Washington to produce whatever hard evidence they may have via radar or satellite imagery that will persuade the public that their story is credible.  The best way to do that, would be to provide whatever relevant information and data they’ve compiled but refused to release for the last two weeks.

What we know about the crash so far, is that MH17 was rerouted from the flight-path that other Malaysia “Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur” flights had been taking for the two weeks prior.

Why was the flight path suddenly changed? Why was MH17 rerouted through a war zone? Why was the pilot told to fly at a lower altitude instead of the 35,000 ft he had requested?  Why was the flight path suddenly adjusted 14 kilometers north just as the plane entered the war zone? Was MH17 outfitted with Boeing’s Uninterruptible Auto Pilot (BUAP), and if so, was the system engaged when it suddenly flew off course and began to lose altitude? (And why hasn’t Boeing sent an investigative team to the crash site which is what they do whenever one of their planes goes down?)

The Obama administration hasn’t answered any of these questions. They’ve chosen instead to use the tragedy to bash Russia and blame Putin  without providing any solid evidence or data to support their claim that MH17 was downed by a missile launched from a BUK system. As a result,  public confidence in their allegations has steadily eroded. This situation can only be remedied by taking concrete steps to show the administration is serious about the investigation and genuinely wants to get to the bottom of what happened on July 17.

Here’s what Obama should do.

First, he should demand that the Kiev government hand over the Air Traffic Control cockpit tapes that were recorded on the day the flight went down. That’s number one. That will clarify why the pilot veered  “off course” 14 kilometers and why the plane suddenly lost altitude. (Once again, we ask: Was the Auto Pilot override system engaged or not?) The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) seized the recordings shortly after MH17 crashed and they haven’t been seen since. Why? Why hasn’t this critical piece of  evidence been handed over to the proper authorities, the EU’s team of investigators? Does anyone really believe that Kiev’s US-backed lackey regime made this decision by themselves or that Washington ordered them to grab the tapes to prevent the public from knowing what really happened in the final minutes of the flight?

Second, Obama should come clean and provide whatever radar and satellite data he has that will shed light on how the plane was downed. Most of what we know so far, has been provided by Moscow from a news conference that was moderated by Russian air force chief Lt. Gen. Igor Makushev. Naturally, the western media blacked out most of what Makushev had to say. Surprisingly, however, the right wing Wall Street Journal published an excellent article on the press conference which covered most of the important details. Here’s a brief excerpt from the article:

“On Monday, Gen. Makushev said that the two Russian radar stations near Russia’s border with Ukraine observed the presence of the second aircraft over a period of four minutes on the day of Flight 17′s crash….

Gen. Makushev said that Russian radars could only spot the aircraft at the point of its ascension because the on-duty radars only detected objects at above 5,000 meters. Russian radars spotted the unidentified plane patrolling in the vicinity of Flight 17, “controlling the development of the situation,” he said….

The defense ministry also said it registered the Su-25 fighter jet ascending within close range of several civil aircrafts, including the Malaysia Airlines jet….

Another top military official, Lt. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, said at the same news conference that the jet came as close as 1.8 miles to Flight 17, which is well within the range of the air-to-air missiles it is usually equipped with…

The suggested version of events echoed much of what has been reported on Russian state television in recent days, which has suggested that Ukraine could have shot down the plane, possibly via one of its fighter planes.

U.S. officials dismissed the Russian government’s claim that a second plane was present when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down last week as “desperate” propaganda.”   (“Russia Presents Its Account of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Crash“, Wall Street Journal)

Russia’s findings appear to support the Bociurkiw-Haisenko theory that MH17 was gunned down by Ukrainian fighters.  It’s up to the Obama administration to prove otherwise.

Here’s more from the WSJ:

“Similarly, Gen. Makushev said the Malaysia Airlines plane deviated from its course by close to 9 miles near Donetsk but then attempted to return to its course, crashing shortly after. Russian radars spotted the Flight 17 rapidly descending 32 miles away from the Russian border, Russian officials said…..He said Russia is prepared to hand all of the information it has to the European authorities, which included satellite imagery and data from its own radar.” (WSJ)

Why? Why was the pilot driving the gigantic 777 through a warzone like an intoxicated high-schooler out on a joyride? Does any of this sound suspicious to you, dear reader?

So far, the Obama administration hasn’t even admitted that they had a satellite overhead, preferring instead to stick with their pathetic propaganda strategy. Fortunately, CounterPunch has published an invaluable article by journalist Andre Vltchek that provides a translation of the Russian press conference to which the WSJ refers. Here’s an excerpt:

“According to our records from 17:06 till 17:21 Moscow time on the July 17 over the Southeastern territory of Ukraine, a US space satellite flew overhead. This is a special device of the experimental space system designed to detect and track various missile launches. If the US party has photos made by the satellite, please let us ask them to show them to world community for further investigation….(NOTE: The US satellite system MUST work, because just days later it detected the launching of  three ballistic missiles by the Ukrainian government.)

Is it a coincidence or not? However, the time of the Malaysian Boeing-777 accident and the time of the observation done by the satellite over the Ukrainian territory are the same. In conclusion, I would like to mention that all the concrete information is based on the objective and reliable data of the different Russian equipment, in contrast to the accusations of the US against us, made without any evidence…” (“The New Cold War–MH17 – Sacrificed Airliner“, Andre Vltchek, Counterpunch

In other words, Moscow caught the US “red handed”. They spotted the US satellite, they know the US saw what happened, and they’re calling them out on it.

Where are the photos, Obama? Where is the satellite imagery? We KNOW you have them, so pony up!

Now ask yourself this: Where does this line of inquiry lead? And does it really matter if the Malaysia 777 was shot down by a warplane or blown up by surface-to-air missile?

Of course it matters. It makes all the difference in the world. If MH17 was shot down by an Ukrainian SU 25, then we need to know who gave the order and whether the people who stand to benefit from the incident were directly involved or not. And who does benefit from the downing of MH17, that’s what we need to establish. Just like we need to know why the Obama team has been so cock-sure that Moscow was involved in the incident. Why all the fingerpointing? Why the need to make Putin look like a homicidal maniac? How does that help to reveal the truth?

Finally: Was the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 an accident, a premeditated act of murder or a false flag operation?

We need to know.

Addendum: On Sunday, BBC reports:  “Fresh fighting in eastern Ukraine has forced an international forensics team to halt operations in part of the vast crash site of Malaysian flight MH17. Observers had to withdraw from one village when they heard artillery fire although work is still continuing across much of the area.” (“Ukraine crisis: New fighting hampers MH17 crash probe“, BBC.)

Kiev has restarted hostilities realizing that if the Dutch inspectors find any shell casings or fragments that can be traced back to the SU 25s, the administration’s missile theory will collapse.

The post Was Malaysia Flight 17 Shot Down? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Dear President Obama:

Abraham Lincoln once said that “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.” Presumably, he meant Presidential action on popular issues can and should overcome influential interests.

At long last, the “public sentiment” seems to be aligning with some causes you are advancing.

First, support is increasing for restoring the federal minimum wage to account for the inflation that, since 1968, has greatly diminished its purchasing power. The federal minimum wage is presently stagnant at $7.25 per hour. You are supporting the Harkin-Miller bill (H.R.1010 and S.2223), which would raise it to $10.10 per hour over three years. You have already issued an executive order to require federal government contractors to pay their employees no less than $10.10 per hour, effective in 2015 (see timeforaraise.org for more information).

Restoring the purchasing power of the minimum wage has over 70% public support and would lift the wages of 30 million hard-pressed American workers. Had you pushed to raise the federal minimum wage in 2010 when the Democrats controlled Congress, the House of Representatives might not have been given over to the Republican Party in those November elections. In light of this missed opportunity, you can still pressure Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans to support raising the federal minimum wage by noting that Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and former Republican Governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, now support this effort.

Affected workers need you to step up the pressure in the remaining months of this forlorn Congress and get an existing discharge petition to the House floor for a vote.

Second, U.S.-chartered giant companies like Pfizer, Medtronic and, perhaps most foolishly, Walgreens— given its 8,000 protestable stores—are planning to move their headquarters to countries that lure them with lower tax rates, such as Ireland and Switzerland, abandon their U.S. “citizenship,” and re-incorporate in those jurisdictions. This is all for another tax escape to add to their existing ones, including large tax credits to Pfizer and Medtronic for research and development that corporatist lobbies have written into the U.S. tax code.

“I don’t care if it’s legal, it’s wrong,” you have indignantly exclaimed in recent speeches. You are supporting legislative efforts by Democrats in Congress (H.R.4679 and S.2360, sponsored by Representative Sander Levin (D-MI) and Senator Carl Levin (D-MI)) to prohibit such drains on corporate taxes intended for the U.S. Treasury and make the ban retroactive to May 2014.

Third, and perhaps most impressively, you are questioning the “economic patriotism” of many giant U.S. corporations who have received support (financial and otherwise) from U.S. workers, taxpayers and the public laws and benefitted from the infrastructure of our country. The mere implication that these companies are unpatriotically abandoning their native country has outraged the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (to which you paid a courtesy visit in 2011) along with the predictable Wall Street Journal editorial page.

That highly vocal reaction means you touched on a vulnerability that has been on the minds of tens of millions of Americans. May you continue to promote the importance of insisting on the patriotic character of corporations, since the U.S. Supreme Court (5 to 4) keeps telling us that corporations are people.

The public sentiment awaits your leadership on other positive redirections as well. Large majorities on both the left and the right: favor breaking up the “too big to fail” New York City banks; support cracking down on corporate crime and fraud (see the Hide No Harm Act of 2014); and, the more they know about its benefits and fairness, support a Wall Street speculation tax, a sales tax that could bring in about $300 billion a year, fund repairs of our public infrastructure, and dampen some of the reckless gambling with other peoples’ money, such as pension and mutual funds.

The many rallies in New York City, in front of the White House and around the country— some of which have been led by the National Nurses United—are pressing Congress for such a transaction tax. Such activities have laid the groundwork for your exercise of the “Bully Pulpit.”

Another easier initiative, pointed out in my new book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State, is to highlight, once again, the legislation that you as a Senator co-sponsored with Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) in 2006 to require that the full text of all federal government contracts above a minimum amount be available online.

As I’ve written previously, putting the full text of these contracts online will: give taxpayers both savings and higher quality performances; let the media focus more incisively on this vast area of government disbursements to inform the wider public; encourage constructive comments and alarms from the citizenry; and stimulate legal and economic research by scholars interested in structural topics related to government procurement, transfers, subsidies and giveaways.

There is already support by members of both Parties in the Congress for this measure. Online disclosure would provide for greater scrutiny of some $300 billion in annual contracts by the media, taxpayer groups, competitors and academic researchers.

Yes, indeed, Mr. President, wondrous and beneficial changes can come to our country when you and Congress heed the long-standing “public sentiment,” more recently called the “voices of the people,” and translate that “public sentiment” into beneficial action by our government.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

The post Ralph Nader: Obama And The ‘Public Sentiment’ – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By K.P. Fabian

Humanity heaved a sigh of huge relief when UN and US together announced that both Israel and the Hamas had agreed to a 72-hour cease-fire starting from 8 a.m. local time on Friday Aug 1 and that the negotiations between the two sides mediated by Egypt would begin in Cairo the same day. Alas, the relief was short-lived, only 90 minutes. The Israeli airstrike on Sunday (Aug 3) on a UN-run school only confirms the fragility of hope.

The Western media true to its tradition of biased reporting basically said that both sides were accusing each other to be the first to break the ceasefire. This assessment does not tally with what Israel’s military spokesperson Peter Lerner has told the media. According to him, around 9.30 a.m. a small number of Israeli soldiers, possibly three, inspecting a tunnel in the Rafah area were attacked by Hamas militants coming out of the tunnel. One of them had a vest with explosives; he killed himself and two Israeli soldiers; the third Israeli soldier, Hadar Goldin, 23, was missing.

It is important to analyze what has happened and why. Did the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) expect the Hamas fighters to surrender meekly once they were spotted? Did the fighters know that there was a ceasefire? The most important question is: How did any one expect the ceasefire to last when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made it clear that the operation of locating and destroying tunnels would go ahead despite the ceasefire? In other words, was it a ceasefire? It follows that the ceasefire promoters did not think through the implications of Netanyahu’s caveat about the tunnels.

Prime Minister Netanyahu subsequently sharply admonished US “not to second guess him” about the credibility of the Hamas when it agrees to a ceasefire. Did he believe that IDF could carry on with the destruction of tunnels and that the Hamas fighters coming in the way would surrender meekly? No. Most probably, he calculated that if the Hamas fighters come in the way and if they resisted that can be a good excuse for breaking the casefire.

The response of US President Barack Obama to the reported abduction of Hadar Goldin is worth studying. Obama “unequivocally condemned” the killing of two soldiers and the kidnapping of a third. “If they are serious about trying to resolve this situation that soldier needs to be unconditionally released as soon as possible”, he said. When Israel killed more than a dozen and arrested about a thousand Palestinians in the West Bank in early July, did Obama raise his voice? The inevitable conclusion is that the Nobel Peace Prize winner cares only for Israeli lives and that he is incapable of recognizing the Palestinians as fellow human beings who too have an “inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness” as the US Constitution proclaimed more than two centuries ago.

Hamas had declared that it was not holding any Israeli soldier, but Obama was not going to listen to them. On Aug 2, after much carpet bombing of Rafah and elsewhere, IDF announced that Goldin was dead. We do not know whether he was a victim of the bombing.

We conclude that it was an ill-conceived ceasefire that was not meant to last. Those who announced it are sufficiently worldly-wise to have known it beforehand.

The IDF has attacked seven UN shelters. The latest is a school in Rafah. The excuse given by Israel and its apologists is that the Hamas was keeping weapons and/or launching rockets from these shelters. Once again the Western media has consistently upheld the Israeli version.

Let us look at the facts as given by UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency)’s Commissioner General Pierre Krahenbuhl to the UN Security Council on July 31. “On three occasions we have found in empty UNRWA facilities rockets belonging to armed groups in Gaza. We immediately alerted all relevant parties to their existence, and we strongly condemned placement of weapons in our schools.” It would appear that IDF left out the empty shelters and attacked the ones with people. If this is not the case, let the IDF tell us of at least one empty UN facility it attacked because it had information of storage of weapons. So far there does not seem to have been no attack by IDF on UN facilities without killing the innocent.

Gaza has an area of 240 sq km and a population of 1.8 million, that works out to 75,000 per sq.km. Obviously, Hamas fighters and the civilian population will be sharing common space. Unlike IDF, Hamas does not have a headquarters protected by an Iron Dome.

Incidentally, the pro-Israeli propaganda has been so singularly successful that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to the conclusion that the Hamas is entirely responsible for the dance of death and destruction being staged in Gaza. He said this on July 30 after the UN and US held Israel responsible for the shelling of a UN school, killing 17 civilians. Harper was convinced that it was the responsibility of Hamas to have invited Israeli bombs on the school.

It is important to understand what is happening and why Israel is enjoying impunity. To my mind, Israel suffers from an eye disease called tunnel vision. Netanyahu sees the tunnels and he wants to destroy them. But, he refuses to ask himself why do the Palestinians build such tunnels? Any one in a prison will try to dig a tunnel to the outside to be free or to attack the invader. Israel should know that during the Bar Khokba Revolt (AD 132-136) Jews resisting Roman occupation did dig tunnels. Nor does Netanyahu recognize that Hamas fighters are only a small portion of the population of Gaza. Can he set fire to a house to kill a rat inside?

The economic blockade Israel imposed on Gaza with the culpable concurrence of Egypt was meant to prevent the Palestinians from living with dignity and to deny them the oxygen of economic activity essential for the survival of a community. A little more reflection will show that Israel’s illegal and illegitimate occupation, in contravention of UN resolutions, is the root cause of this endless conflict. It is intellectually dishonest to argue that it is the digging of tunnels or launching of rockets by the Hamas that originates and sustains this conflict whose human toll is mounting.

Israel is not the only one suffering from tunnel vision. The US, EU, and most of the rest of the so-called international community suffer from it. One wonders whether there is any true international community at all when a part of it is being subjected to genocidal attacks with impunity by a state that owes its being to humanity’s horror of the Holocaust and the associated genocide.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan did say that what Israel is doing is tantamount to genocide. Ironically, as the Holocaust Encyclopedia tells us the term ‘genocide’ was invented by the eminent Polish jurist, Raphael Lemkin, a Jew in 1944. He formed the word ‘genocide’ by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, derived from the Latin word for killing. In proposing this new term, Lemkin had in mind “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”

Israel’s impunity can be explained only by the tunnel vision shared by it, the West, and most of the rest. The prominent Israeli daily Haaretz (Aug 4) carries an editorial on Israel’s tunnel vision and endorses the need for Israel to seek peace with its neighbours seriously.

(K.P. Fabian is an eminent Indian diplomat who has dealt extensively with West Asia. He can be contacted atsouthasiamonitor1@gmail.com)

This article appeared at South Asia Monitor.

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By Vijay Sakhuja

At the 6th summit at Fortaleza in Brazil, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries announced a seed capital of US$50 billion and US$100 billion Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) for the New Development Bank which would support infrastructure and development projects of the developing world. This has attracted international attention and has been labelled as an attempt by the ‘emerging economies’ to challenge the well-established global financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) which are ‘controlled’ by the developed world.

These emerging economies are coastal states and the constants of geography endow them with enormous economic muscle. The Exclusive Economic Zones provide them with enormous quantities of living and non-living resources and the long coastlines are dotted with major ports. They have invested enormous capital to build maritime infrastructure and some of them are keen to support global projects such as the Maritime Silk Route mooted by China and the development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) through the Arctic by Russia. In essence, the BRICS countries are highly dependent on the seas and are connected with each other through the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and the Arctic Oceans over which more than 90 per cent of global trade by volume is transported.

Maritime security has been high on the agenda of the BRICS nations and the respective leaders have supported cooperative security structures based on the belief that the benefits of cooperation must be enjoyed by the whole maritime community. Significantly, four of the five BRICS countries have been actively engaged in counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. They have worked closely to support UN resolutions and cooperated with other nations at bilateral and multilateral levels to fight piracy. However, they have not explored the possibility of operating under the BRICS banner. This does not preclude them from conceptualising programmes and exercises to respond to myriad maritime asymmetric threats and challenges faced by the international community. It will be useful to mention that India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) are already engaged in trilateral maritime cooperation and have held exercises to address issues relating to maritime security. Such an arrangement can also be explored for the BRICS nations.

Geographically, the BRICS countries are located in different continents, yet have common interests in the Polar Regions i.e. the Arctic and the Antarctic. Till very recently, these nations had focused on scientific studies and established research stations in the Polar Regions. They have now expanded their interests to include resources and trade through the NSR. Among these, Russia is an Arctic country and climate-induced changes in the region directly affect it. Its other interests include routes through the Arctic which are navigable during summer months and offshore living and non-living resources particularly oil and gas which can now be exploited. China and India too have interests in the Arctic and have recently been inducted into the Arctic Council. Both countries have set up research stations to study climate, weather, geology and atmospheric sciences and are looking for opportunities to exploit the resources in the region. Brazil and South Africa have interests in Antarctica and send scientific expeditions to the region. Given the transnational and transoceanic nature of the impact of changes in the Polar Regions, BRICS countries are important stakeholders in any discourse, development and policy formulation for the Arctic and Antarctica. The BRICS countries are parties to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) and could develop common research programmes for the Polar Regions, undertake joint scientific expeditions, and share data.

One of the significant maritime projects currently under development by the BRICS countries involves the fiber optic cable from the Pacific to the Atlantic through the Indian Ocean. This 34,000 km long and 12.8 terabit capacity network, the third longest underwater cable in the world, connects Vladivostok in Russia, Shantou in China, Chennai in India, Cape Town in South Africa and Fortaleza in Brazil. This will help the BRICS to develop an exclusive and secure intranet and transact critical financial and security data. Apparently, the cable is meant to circumvent attempts to eavesdrop on the digital data sent through networks owned by IT companies which are alleged to have supplied information/records to the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US. It is important to mention that underwater cables are not free from the dangers of data interception and theft and the US possesses capabilities to undertake such covert operations.

In essence, the maritime domain offers the BRICS countries opportunities to develop common understanding on a host of issues that range from sustainable resource development, trade, safety and security of sea lanes, and ocean governance. These issues can potentially foster mutual trust and cooperation among the BRICS partners and contribute to global security.

Vijay Sakhuja
Director, National Maritime Foundation (NMF), New Delhi

The post BRICS: The Oceanic Connections – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Photos claiming to depict the latest Samsung Galaxy smartphone appeared on Chinese social media site Weibo. The photos show a decidedly grooved metal design — an iPhone trademark on generations 5 and later — not shared by past Galaxy models.

The leaked images are unverified, and Samsung has so far been silent on the existence of a new Galaxy. A metallic exterior would be a departure from previous Galaxy phones, which have typically brandished plastic backsides, sometimes textured to give the feel of leather or metal.

The chamfered edge would also be new for Samsung, although the accusation of stealing it from Apple would not be.

For those who are eager to get their hands on the phone, British retailer MobileFun is offering pre-orders of the so-called Galaxy Alpha for $939 without a SIM card. The website touts the Alpha’s fingerprint scanner and a 12-megapixel camera, putting it in the same league as the Galaxy S5.

Samsung rumor website SamMobile released images two weeks ago that reportedly showed early Alpha prototypes. However, while those photos showed only a black version, while the new photos display a white body, suggesting that Samsung may offer both colors for the Galaxy Alpha, as they have with previous Galaxy phones.

So far no pics of a gold Galaxy Alpha have turned up.

The Galaxy Alpha is expected to run Android 4.4 “KitKat” and start at 32GB of storage. The same Weibo page that leaked the photos claims that Alpha will come in both 4.7- and 6.7-inch sizes.

While Samsung itself has not confirmed a release date, SamMobile originally reported that the phone would be announced on Aug. 4. However, the site is now saying the date to watch is Aug. 13.

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