The problem after a war is the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?
A.J. Muste. 1941. Geciteerd in A People's History of the United States
Corporate media coverage of the crisis in Ukraine demonstrated a Cold War eagerness for increasing the conflict, a panic over the US failure to control events and a failure to properly examine relevant history… But making Russia 'pay dearly' is harder than it sounds, especially since the recent completion of the East Siberia/Pacific Ocean pipeline gives it direct access to the Asian market—meaning that Europe needs Russia more than Russia needs Europe, now more than ever (Pando, 3/17/14).
And for all the enthusiasm for the US replacing Russia as Europe’s energy source, there are tremendous obstacles. The fact that there is not a single facility in the United States that can ship liquefied natural gas abroad (In These Times, 3/19/14) is as clear a sign as any that this is not exactly a quick and easy way to make Russia feel pain. (In case the political motivations behind all of this aren’t explicit, one bill in Congress is actually named the Fight Russian Energy Exploitation Act.)
In These Times reporter Cole Stangler (3/26/14) noted that the Ukraine crisis sparked intense congressional interest in exporting natural gas, as industry-friendly analysts pushed their line with receptive lawmakers. 'We didn’t gin up the Ukrainian crisis,' he quoted the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas President Bill Cooper saying, who went on:
'We didn’t gin up the idea that it ought to be connected in some way to LNG exports. But Congress did, obviously, and a lot of editorials, experts and geopolitical analysts have all jumped on that. We appreciate the attention that LNG exports are receiving, and if it does provide a catalyst to make something happen that heretofore has not, then we’re going to be very happy with that.'
And Stangler pointed out that amidst all this enthusiasm for fossil fuels, very few brought up climate change—which requires the US to curtail, not expand, drilling. The future of the planet is not as important, it seems, as teaching Putin a lesson.
Peter Hart. ‘Radioactive’ Putin Is ‘Stalin’s Spawn.' 1 mei 2014
We want it now. And if it makes money now, it is a good idea. But it isn't necessarily a good idea if the things we are doing are going to mess up the future. Don't deal on the moment. Take the long-term look at things. It's important that we do the right thing by the soil and the climate. History, is of value only if you learn from it.
Wayne Lewis. Beaver County. Oklahoma in Ken Burns' documentaire The Dust Bowl.
Inderdaad, 'de toekomst van de planeet is niet zo belangrijk, lijkt het, als Putin een lesje leren.' De krankzinnigheid van de economische macht en hun westerse politici en hun 'vrije pers' neemt met de dag toe nu de neoliberale ideologie doorgaat haar eigen ondergang voor te bereiden. Wat moeten mijn collega's van de commerciële pers anders verdedigen dan de waanzin? Wat kunnen de mainstream opiniemakers als Geert Mak en Henk Hofland anders dan hun publiek bedriegen, door de heersende wanorde te verkopen als 'orde.' Moeten ze de werkelijkheid vertellen? Dat zou hun eigen demasqué betekenen, hun imago van alwetende opiniemakers vernietigen, en vooral ook, hun portemonnaie schade toebrengen. Wat kunnen ze doen in hun positie? Ze hebben een heel werkzaam leven lang het kapitalisme verdedigd, meegedaan aan de Koude Oorlogsretoriek, het neoliberalisme bejubeld, en worden nu geconfronteerd met de eigen leugens. Dergelijke opportunisten zijn dermate gecorrumpeerd dat ze uit een reflex opnieuw de Koude Oorlogsretoriek omarmen om op die manier hun positie veilig te stellen. Ondertussen negeren ze de ware problemen die de hele mensheid bedreigen, omdat die niet in de huidige ideologie passen. De werkelijkheid dient zich namelijk aan te passen aan het winstprincipe en niet andersom. De propaganda van de 'vrije pers,' in dienst van de gevestigde orde, maakt de consument blind voor de realiteit. In de westerse cultuur speelt het verleden noch de toekomst een rol van betekenis. Alleen het 'nu' geldt.
'We want it now!' zijn de illustrerende woorden van Wayne Lewis in Ken Burns' documentaire over de gigantische zandstormen die in de tweede helft van de jaren dertig van de graanschuur in het Midwesten een zandwoestijn maakten. 'We want it now,' de toekomst is onbelangrijk in de kapitalistische roofbouw-ideologie van het nu of nooit. Als kind maakte Lewis een milieuramp mee, die als de 'Dust Bowl' de geschiedenis inging, zonder dat het kapitalisme hier voor eens en altijd een les uit trok. Het verhaal van Ken Burns' documentaire The Dust Bowl, waarin onder andere Wayne Lewis optreedt, is nog niet afgelopen. Hoewel in 1935 'some 850 million tons of topsoil blew away,' en een overheidsrapport meldde dat 80 procent van de 'Great Plains was in some stage of erosion,' als gevolg van 'an attempt to impose upon the region a systeem of agriculture to which the Plains are not adapted,' gingen de speculanten en herenboeren gewoon door met het verkrachten van de natuur toen de graanprijzen in de Tweede Oorlog stegen.
THE DUST BOWL, a two-part, four-hour documentary series by Ken Burns, will air November 18 and 19, 2012, 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings). The film chronicles the environmental catastrophe that, throughout the 1930s, destroyed the farmlands of the Great Plains, turned prairies into deserts, and unleashed a pattern of massive, deadly dust storms that for many seemed to herald the end of the world. It was the worst manmade ecological disaster in American history.
Until the arrival of European and American settlers in the late nineteenth century, the southern Plains of the United States were predominantly grasslands, the home and hunting grounds of many Native American tribes and the range of untold millions of bison. It was seldom used for farming. Bitterly cold winters, hot summers, high winds and especially low, unreliable precipitation made it unsuitable for standard agriculture. But at the start of the 1900s, offers of cheap public land attracted farmers to the region, and in World War I, in the midst of a relatively wet period, a lucrative new wheat market opened up. Advances in gasoline-powered farm machinery made production faster and easier than ever. During the 1920s, millions of acres of grasslands across the Plains were converted into wheat fields at an unprecedented rate.
In 1930, with the Great Depression underway, wheat prices collapsed. Rather than follow the government's urging to cut back on production, desperate farmers harvested even more wheat in an effort to make up for their losses. Fields were left exposed and vulnerable to a drought, which hit in 1932.
Once the winds began picking up dust from the open fields, they grew into dust storms of biblical proportions. Each year the storms grew more ferocious and more frequent, sweeping up millions of tons of earth, covering farms and homes across the Plains with sand, and spreading the dust across the country. Children developed often fatal "dust pneumonia," business owners unable to cope with the financial ruin committed suicide, and thousands of desperate Americans were torn from their homes and forced on the road in an exodus unlike anything the United States has ever seen.
Ken Burns:
In the first five years of the 1940s, land devoted to wheat expanded by nearly 3 million acres. The speculators and suitcase farmers returned. Parcels that had sold for $5.00 dollar an acre during the dust bowl now commanded prices of 50, 60, sometimes a 100 dollars an acre. Even some of the most marginal lands were put back into production. 'The same process,' Howard Finnell (landbouwkundige, erosie specialist. svh) warned, 'is starting again in the very same place.'
De mainstream ging er domweg vanuit dat 'it couldn't happen again.' Maar het gebeurde wel degelijk opnieuw toen begin jaren vijftig 'the wet cycle ended and a two-year drought replaced it, the dust storms picked up once more.' De Amerikaanse historicus Timothy Egan, auteur van The Worst Hard Time. The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dustbowl (2006), winnaar van The National Book Award, verklaarde:
I think that the most basic lesson was: be humble. Respect the land itself. Listen to what it's trying to tell you. If the wind blows 60, 70 miles an hour for 50% of the year there's a reason why only one thing is growing there, and it's native grass. Don't try to put things in place there that don't belong there. Listen to the land itself.
Dit laatste kan het kapitalisme absoluut niet, om de simpele reden dat het gebaseerd is op groei, op expansie, waardoor alles onderworpen moet worden aan de dictatuur van nut en doelmatigheid. Wat niet nuttig is moet nuttig worden gemaakt of vernietigd worden, in een poging het toch nuttig te maken. Niets heeft het recht te bestaan louter en alleen omdat het bestaat. Het moet buigen of barsten, net zolang tot het terugslaat. In een roofbouw-cultuur is geen plaats voor de wetten van oorzaak en gevolg. En dus worden de prairies nog steeds geëxploiteerd, maar nu door water op te pompen uit ondergrondse reservoirs. Burns:
Now, instead of looking to the skies for rain, many farmers began looking beneath the soil, where they believed a more reliable — and irresistible — supply of water could be found — the vast Ogallala Aquifer, an underground reservoir stretching from Nebraska to North Texas, filled with water that had seeped down…
Wat hier gebeurt is een treffend voorbeeld van de westerse roofbouw-cultuur:
The Ogallala Aquifer is a shallow water table aquifer located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. One of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately 174,000 mi² (450,000 km²) in portions of eight states: (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas… The aquifer is part of the High Plains Aquifer System, and rests on the Ogallala Formation, which is the principal geologic unit underlying 80% of the High Plains.
About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States overlies the aquifer, which yields about 30 percent of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer… Certain aquifer zones are now empty; these areas will take over 100,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall…
The deposition of aquifer material dates back 2 to 6 million years, from the late Miocene to early Pliocene ages when the southern Rocky Mountains were still tectonically active…
Present-day recharge of the aquifer with fresh water occurs at an exceedingly slow rate…
The center-pivot irrigator was described as the 'villain' in a New York Times article, 'Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust' recounting the relentless decline of parts of the Ogallala Aquifer. Sixty years of intensive farming using huge center-pivot irrigators has emptied parts of the High Plains Aquifer. It would take hundreds to thousands of years of rainfall to replace the groundwater in the depleted aquifer. In 1950, irrigated cropland covered 250,000 acres. With the use of center-pivot irrigation, nearly three million acres of land were irrigated. In some places in the Texas Panhandle, the water table has been drained (dewatered). 'Vast stretches of Texas farmland lying over the aquifer no longer support irrigation. In west-central Kansas, up to a fifth of the irrigated farmland along a 100-mile swath of the aquifer has already gone dry.'
… farmers chose to plant more intensively, irrigate more land and grow thirstier crops rather than reduce water consumption…
Several rivers, such as the Platte, run below the water level of the aquifer. Because of this, the rivers receive groundwater flow (base-flow), carrying it out of the region rather than recharging the aquifer.
Accelerated decline in aquifer storage
According to a 2013 report by research hydrologist, Leonard F. Konikow, at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the depletion between 2001–2008, inclusive, is about 32 percent of the cumulative depletion during the entire 20th century. In the United States, the biggest users of water from aquifers include agricultural irrigation and oil and coal extraction. 'Cumulative total groundwater depletion in the United States accelerated in the late 1940s and continued at an almost steady linear rate through the end of the century. In addition to widely recognized environmental consequences, groundwater depletion also adversely impacts the long-term sustainability of groundwater supplies to help meet the Nation’s water needs.'
… Since the 1940s, however, substantial pumping from the Ogallala has drawn the aquifer down more than 300 feet in some areas… losses to the aquifer between 2001 and 2011 equated to a third of its cumulative depletion during the entire 20th century. The Ogallala is recharged primarily by rainwater, but only about one inch of precipitation actually reaches the aquifer annually. Rainfall in most of the Texas High Plains is minimal, evaporation is high and infiltration rates are slow.
Ken Burns:
With new technology farmers could pump the ancient water up, irrigate their land, and grow other crops, like feed corn for cattle and pigs, which require even more moisture than wheat.
Charles Shaw, 'dust bowl-survivor':
The only thing that's holding that ground together is the irrigation water that comes out of the Ogallala. The Ogallala is about 100 feet deep on the average. We've used over 50 feet of it now. We've got about 20 years of water left under these 8 states… and it's disappearing. It's gonna be gone in 20 years. If you lose the water you're gonna lose the land. And that's it in a nutshell.
Wayne Lewis, 'dust bowl-survivor':
My folks put in one of the first irrigation wells, and we thought it was a great idea. As I look back at it now, it was the beginning of a bad idea. Having irrigation water permitted us to do some things that weren't good for the long term. And some of these days it will be gone, but somebody is gonna be out of water. Folks are gonna have trouble getting enough drinking water. And they'll look back and say: 'And to think back there in the fifties and sixties, they used up our drinking water to raise hog feed.'
De enorme verspilling, 9 kilo graan is nodig om 1 kilo rundvlees te produceren, 3,5 kilo graan voor 1 kilo varkensvlees. De calorische waarde van het veevoer is veel hoger dan die van het geproduceerde vlees. Weggegooide energie. Dit systeem illustreert het gebrek aan historisch besef, de onverschilligheid ten opzichte van het nageslacht, de vernietiging van de soort, en allemaal voor het tijdelijke genot van een uiterst kleine economische elite die met steun van corrupte, kortzichtige politici en de al even corrupte en kortzichtige massamedia een roofbouw-cultuur in stand houden. Donald Worster, emeritus hoogleraar Geschiedenis, Kansas University:
I think the dust bowl can happen again, most emphatically (zeer zeker. svh) can happen again. It can become a creeping Sahara. The Sahara desert, a few thousands years ago, was a savannah. We know that it's possible to turn from savannah to a stark desert, and there's no reason to think that it can't happen in the middle of North America.
Het onvermogen van de economische en politieke macht om te leren van de ervaringen is inherent aan het kapitalistische ideologie dat als belangrijkste dogma heeft: het maken van maximale winst. In zijn The Dust Bowl laat Ken Burns daarentegen de stem van de ratio horen, het menselijke vermogen om te denken en te begrijpen. In zijn documentaire wordt onder andere uit brieven van Caroline Henderson geciteerd:
Born on April 7, 1877 in Wisconsin, Caroline Agnes Boa grew up on an Iowa farm. She graduated Mount Holyoke College in 1901. Until 1903 she taught English and Latin at a high school in Red Oak, Iowa, and then taught in Des Moines until 1907. From 1907 to her death in 1966, she farmed a land claim in the panhandle region of Oklahoma. In 1908, Caroline married a farmer named Wilhelmine Eugene Henderson, and they continued to farm, together, after their marriage, on land in Eva, Oklahoma. They raised one daughter, Eleanor, born in 1909. During their years of farming, her family weathered the droughts, dust storms, and blizzards that befell the region.
Caroline Henderson's letters about the events of the Dust Bowl period were published in Practical Farmer and in The Atlantic Monthly. Her letters detail both the prosperity of the period before the disaster, and the loss of crops, animals and other amenities during the Dust Bowl years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Henderson_(author)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Henderson_(author)
De wijze Caroline en Will Henderson bij hun boerderij: 'how difficult it is for some of us to learn that the results we must leave to the great silent unseen forces of nature, whether the crop be corn or character.'
Caroline Henderson:
August 1, 1965.
Another hot and desolate day. We are both quite weakened by our struggles, either with asthma or a desperate cough, I believe largely the result of working with the dusty wheat. We had reason to hope for a good rain for the feed crop, just now in need of encouragement, but the moisture was cut off with only a light shower.
Ken Burns:
On her homestead in no man's land, Caroline Henderson carried on without resorting to irrigation water from the Ogallala Aquifer. It had been nearly 60 years since she first arrived, full of dreams of farming her own land and prospering from its bounty. In this 60 years she and Will had seen only 10 bumper crops (record oogsten. svh) — and oftentimes she expressed feelings of failure to those she knew best.
As they approached the age of 80, they were still using the farm equipment they had purchased in the 1920s because Caroline refused to borrow money for land or machinery. But they were free of debt, their daughter had become a successful doctor and had given them a grandson with a bright future. In her old age, Caroline steadfastly refused to turn her land over to a farm management company — 'strangers of some far-away money-gathering corporation,' she called them, 'with no possible interest in this small bit of the good earth.'
In 1965, with both of them in bad health, she finally agreed to come to Arizona to live with their daughter. They returned to no man's land the next spring for a final visit. Will died 3 days later. Caroline joined him — passing through what she called 'The Western Gate' — within a few months. In accordance with her wishes, the homestead was placed in trust, on the condition that it never be plowed again.
Caroline Henderson:
To prepare the ground as well as we may, to sow our seeds, to cultivate and care for — that is our part. Yet how difficult it is for some of us to learn that the results we must leave to the great silent unseen forces of nature, whether the crop be corn or character.
Maar net als de kredietcrisis en de economische depressie werden veroorzaakt door het winstprincipe, is ook de komende water-crisis in de graanschuur van Noord-Amerika het logische gevolg van het egoïstische korte-termijn-denken. Tegenover de stem van de ratio, staat de irrationele propaganda van de neoliberale woordvoerders als Geert Mak, die, op zoek naar 'hoop,' het volgende benadrukken:
de EU is een markt van bijna een half miljard mensen met de hoogste gemiddelde levensstandaard ter wereld. Alleen al voor Nederland is de Unie goed voor tweederde van onze totale export, een vijfde van het nationale product. We hebben nu een open toegang tot die markt. Gaan we die deur echt dichtgooien?
Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel, geen Brussel zonder Jorwert. 2013
Geert en Mietsie Mak: 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel.'
Het marktprincipe is in strijd met de werkelijkheid, omdat het berust op het irrationele en in de praktijk totalitaire Vooruitgangsgeloof. Deze ideologie biedt geen ruimte aan de waarheid dat de mens onderworpen is aan 'the great silent unseen forces of nature, whether the crop be corn or character,' en dat hij noch de natuur noch zijn eigen karakter dient te verkrachten door tegen de natuurwetten in te gaan. Waar niets is verliest de keizer zijn recht. Als men dit niet goedschiks leert, dan gebeurt het kwaadschiks.
The problem after a war is the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?
Die vraag blijft actueel aangezien de mainstream opiniemakers de aandacht proberen af te leiden door bijvoorbeeld stemming te maken tegen Rusland. Zo beweert Geert Mak met grote stelligheid dat niet het Westen, maar 'Rusland met de rug naar de toekomst de 21e eeuw binnenloopt, dat niet echt moderniseert, dat opnieuw gedomineerd wordt door graaiende tsaren en bojaren.' Wie leert de Makkianen 'a lesson,' dat hun 'modernisering' gelijk staat aan zelfvernietiging?
Een berg van buffelschedels. Eén van de talloze voorbeelden van de westerse roofbouw-cultuur. 'It is estimated that in 1840, as many as 60 million buffalo roamed the Great Plains, from Canada to north Texas, an area that covered more than a million square miles; by 1886 one scientific survey could find fewer than a hundred free-roaming buffalo in the United States.'
http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/oldzephyr/archives/buffalo.html
‘Nation’ Exclusive: Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras Take on America’s Runaway Surveillance State
(Laura Poitras: AP Images. Edward Snowden: Courtesy, The Guardian)
On April 30, in a ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, the Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation awarded their annual Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and filmmaker Laura Poitras. The bestselling author and journalist James Bamford, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the US intelligence community, presented the award to Snowden and Poitras, who were present by live video link. Here are excerpts from their remarks.
James Bamford: I’m very honored to be here to introduce two extraordinary people, Laura Poitras and Edward Snowden.
Many years ago when my first book about the NSA, The Puzzle Palace, was published, the joke was that “NSA” stood for “No Such Agency” or, for those on the inside, “Never Say Anything.” Recently I’ve heard from some of my deep-cover sources up at Fort Meade that the old joke has changed. “NSA,” they say, now stands for “Not Secret Anymore.” Having warned of the dangers of the NSA for the past three decades, I very much prefer the latest definition. And no one is more responsible for that than Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras.
I first met Laura several years ago in London. I had just returned to England after working on the defense team for Thomas Drake, an NSA whistleblower and a previous Ridenhour award winner. Laura told me the extraordinary story of how nearly every time she flew into or out of the United States—dozens and dozens of times—she was pulled aside by Homeland Security, searched, interrogated for hours and often had her electronic equipment seized.
Treated like a suspected terrorist, she was an even greater threat to the Bush and Obama administrations. Instead of a bomb, she carried a video camera and was producing an explosive trilogy of feature-length films documenting the country’s tragic post-9/11 descent into bloody wars, civil liberties abuses and mass surveillance. She had completed the first two—My Country, My Country, a compelling and courageous story about life for Iraqis under US occupation, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and The Oath, a moving account of two Yemeni men caught up in America’s “war on terror,” which won at Sundance. Now, she told me, she wanted to turn her focus to the third film, the one on NSA surveillance.
Then, in January 2013, she received an anonymous message: “I am a senior member of the intelligence community,” it said. “This won’t be a waste of your time.” Sent by Edward Snowden, it would be the understatement of the century.
Years earlier, Ed Snowden enlisted in the Army Reserve as a Special Forces recruit, broke both legs in a training accident, and later joined the CIA and then became a contractor at Dell and Booz Allen for the NSA. Soon the documents crossing his computer screen began to greatly trouble him. Rather than hunting for terrorists, the agency was hunting for virtually everyone, everywhere, all the time, and conducting dragnet surveillance, often with little regard for the law or the Constitution.
The NSA had become a runaway surveillance train. Without an emergency brake on the inside, Ed Snowden hoped to stop it the only way he could, on the outside, and thus passed the evidence to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. He knew that without the documents, the agency would simply make every effort to discredit the information, as they tried to do with previous NSA whistleblowers, including Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe and Tom Drake.
While I was in Rio, Glenn showed me a document that indicated just how close that train had come to what Frank Church had warned was “the abyss from which there is no return.” In a memorandum, Gen. Keith Alexander suggested going after not terrorists or criminals but “radicalizers,” including innocent Americans, by searching the Internet for their vulnerabilities, such as visits to porn sites. Then, by secretly leaking this information, the NSA could discredit them in the eyes of their followers. Nearly half a century earlier, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had the same idea. He used the same tactic against a radical of the day, Martin Luther King Jr., by secretly leaking to the press details of King’s sex life.
As someone who has watched that train heading for the abyss for a long time, I’m very thankful for Ed Snowden’s great courage and Laura Poitras’s great wisdom.
Laura Poitras: Thank you all so much. I’m deeply honored to receive this award by a man who exposed war crimes. I’d like to share this award with my beloved friend and colleague, Glenn Greenwald. Without Glenn’s courage and focus, I would not have been able to do this reporting. Nor would I’ve had as much fun in the past months, or been able to handle the amount of stress that we’ve been placed under. So this is also for Glenn.
I’m especially honored to receive this award with Ed Snowden. One year ago, last April, I received an anonymous e-mail from the source I’d been corresponding with for several months. And he wrote something that sent my heart racing and my head spinning. Until that day, I assumed that the source claiming to have evidence of massive NSA illegal surveillance intended to remain anonymous and that it would be my responsibility to protect his identity and to report on these disclosures.
In his e-mail, he patiently explained that I needed to change my expectations. He told me that I could not protect his identity and that he did not want me to. He said he intended to claim responsibility for his actions and that he would outline his motivations that led him to come forward and the dangers that he saw inside the agency. He simply asked one thing of me, which was to safely return this information to the American public so they could decide the kind of government that they wanted to live under.
Reading this e-mail a year ago today, I never imagined I’d be speaking here in this room. I have spent many years in war zones, and I have not experienced the kind of fear and intimidation that I have during my reporting on the NSA. So it’s wonderful to be here—although I can’t be there in person, given some of the experiences I’ve had with the US government in response to my reporting.
It’s wonderful to see the amount of support and encouragement for the reporting and the international response to the information that Ed has brought forward. At this point, the responsibility lies in the hands of citizens to move forward with this information.
Edward Snowden: I have to agree with Laura about at least one thing, which is that a year ago there was no way I could have imagined that I would end up being honored in this room. When I began this, I never expected to receive the level of support that I did from the public. Having seen what had happened to people who came before—specifically Thomas Drake—it was an intimidating thing, and I realized that the most likely outcome of returning this information to public hands would be that I would spend the rest of my life in prison. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.
Now, what’s important about this is that I’m not the only one who felt this way. There were people throughout the NSA that I worked with that I had private conversations with—and I’ve had conversations since in other federal agencies—who had the same concerns I did, but they were afraid to take action because they knew what would happen. I can specifically remember a conversation in the wake of James Clapper’s famous lie to Senator Wyden where I asked my co-worker, “You know, why doesn’t anybody say anything about this?” And he said, “Do you know what they do to people who do?”
I knew what would happen. I knew that there were no whistleblower protections that would protect me from prosecution as a private contractor, as opposed to a direct government employee. But that didn’t change my calculus of what needed to be done. And the fact that I knew there were so many others who had the same concerns, who knew that what we were doing had gone too far, had departed from the fundamental principles of what our US intelligence community is all about—serving the public good—that I was confident that I could do it knowing that even if it cost me so much, it would be giving back so much to so many others who were struggling with the same problems that it would be worth it.
And so because of this, I have to say that although I am honored to be in the company of so many distinguished Ridenhour awardees, this prize is not just for me. This prize is for a cohort of so many people, whistleblowers who came before me—the Binneys, the Drakes, the Wiebes. And the other intelligence officers throughout the intelligence community who remember that the first principle of any American intelligence official is not an oath to secrecy but a duty to the public, a commitment to speak truth to power, to prevent the sort of intelligence failures that lead us to wars, that don’t protect our country, that don’t keep anybody safe. And, in fact, put us all at risk.
There’s been a lot said about oaths, and the oath that I remember is James Clapper raising his hand swearing to tell the truth, and then lying to the American public. I also swore an oath, but that oath was not to secrecy. That oath was to protect and defend our Constitution and the policies of this nation—[from] all enemies, foreign and domestic.
But what I saw was that our Constitution is being violated on a massive scale. And I did report this internally. I told all of my co-workers; I told my superiors. I showed them “Boundless Informant,” which is a special kind of map that any NSA employee could see that showed the level of incidents of NSA interception, collection, storage and analysis of events around the world. And I asked these people, “Do you think it’s right that the NSA is collecting more information about Americans in America than it is about Russians in Russia?” Because that’s what our systems do. We collect more information about our own people than about any other population in the world. When you pick up the phone and when you make a call, when you make a purchase, when you buy a book—all of that is collected. And I could see it at my desk, crossing my screen.
People had questions about whether or not it was true, whether or not it was really possible, whether or not I was exaggerating when I said I, sitting at my desk, could wiretap anyone in America, from a federal judge to the president of the United States. And I’m telling you, that is not hyperbole. So long as I had a private e-mail address or some other digital network selector, it’s true. And what is truly frightening but has not been reported at all since these disclosures is that it’s happened before. In 2009, The New York Times reported that an NSA analyst inappropriately accessed Bill Clinton’s e-mail. We also saw the stories of the disclosures to Congress about a program where NSA analysts, military analysts, were abusing these tools to monitor their wives, their girlfriends, their lovers.
The question we have to ask ourselves is: When they committed these crimes—when James Clapper committed a crime by lying under oath to the American people—were they actually held accountable? Was anyone tried? Were charges brought? It’s been years since these events occurred, whereas within days of the time I went public, three criminal charges were filed against me personally.
We have to ask ourselves: If we can hold the lowest, most junior members of our community to this high standard of behavior, why can’t we ask the same of our most senior officials? James Clapper is the most senior intelligence official in the United States of America, and I think he has a duty to tell the truth to the public. Since that time, thanks to the work of our free press, thanks to the work of our elected representatives, thanks to the work of our civil society, these policies, these abuses, are changing. And though they’re not finished yet and we haven’t won the day, we have to continue to press for reforms; we will get there so long as we try. “A republic, if you can keep it,” as they say.
And we have to remember that the world has changed, and the way we live has changed, but our values have not changed. Hopefully, we’ll see the USA Freedom Act, which is the only act that really starts to address these concerns, get passed, and we’ll see changes made by principled, skilled technologists throughout the US academic community and around the world working to enshrine our values of privacy and the commitment to freedom into the very fabric of our global infrastructure. So not only do we protect American citizens’ freedoms, but we protect the freedoms of citizens everywhere, whether they’re in Russia, whether they’re in China. So it doesn’t matter if some government somewhere passes these terrible laws. Our technology can enforce our rights even where governments fail to do so.
This is the way forward: it’s cooperation, it’s working together, it’s thinking and having a public dialogue. It’s getting government out from behind closed doors and restoring the public to its seat at the table of government. And together, we can restore the balance of our rights to what our Constitution promises and in fact guarantees. Thank you.
Bamford: Since we’re here at the Truth Telling Prize, the question I’d ask Ed is: What advice, if any, would you give to somebody else that was in your position, somebody else that may be sitting at the NSA today and seeing something going across their desk that is very questionable or illegal?
Snowden: This is always a difficult question, because I think every case is unique. It depends on what you see, how do you see it, what is involved. What I would say is that Thomas Drake and Bill Binney showed us that even if you reveal classic waste, fraud and abuse, frivolous spending, things like that, and you take it to Congress, there’s a very good chance the FBI will kick in your door, pull you out of the shower naked at gunpoint in front of your family and ruin your life. Tom Drake was a senior executive at the National Security Agency, and now he works at an Apple store. Our own inspector generals in the DoD and the NSA are the ones who reported him to the DoJ.
So you have to be careful about the system as it is. I would say, ideally, work with Congress in advance to try to make sure that we have reformed laws, that we have better protections, that all these shortcomings and failures in our oversight infrastructure are addressed so that the next time we have an American whistleblower who has something the public needs to know, they can go to their lawyer’s office instead of the airport. Right now, I’m not sure that they have a real alternative. But if they’re going to do something, they better use encryption, and they better do it from an IP address that’s not at their home.
Poitras: Recently, Betty Medsger published an extraordinary book that documented the activists in Media, Pennsylvania, who broke into an FBI office [in 1971] and ultimately revealed COINTELPRO. And I’m just curious if that’s a case you had known about before, and any thoughts you might have on that?
Snowden: I think that everyone in the intelligence community was familiar with COINTELPRO. But the actual act of how it became public, for me, was a surprise. I hadn’t known the story and the pathology behind it. And it is incredible, the courage that they had. It takes a lot of chutzpah to actually break into the FBI office to steal from them and then send it to the press. But it’s important to realize that even though they broke the law to do that, they revealed some of the most important government abuses of the last century.
And I think that’s really something that we all have to remember, is that there are cases—and there have been throughout history, and there will continue to be throughout time—where what is lawful is not necessarily right or necessarily moral. It doesn’t take long for an American to think back to periods when things were legal but they weren’t ethical, when they weren’t moral. And I think today when we see similar policies, every citizen has a duty to resist those and to try to build a better, more fair society.
Watch Next: Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras accept their Ridenhour Prizes
http://www.thenation.com/article/179737/nation-exclusive-edward-snowden-and-laura-poitras-take-americas-runaway-surveillance-#
Call the Cops at Your Peril — Paul Craig Roberts
Call the Cops at Your Peril
Paul Craig Roberts
“Live free or die” is the motto of the state of New Hampshire. I hope the residents are
prepared to die, because living free is not what they do. NH is merely a cog within the
Amerikan Stasi State, but I am referring to what goes on within NH itself, not the police state existence imposed by Washington. On May 5 attorney William Baer was arrested at a school board meeting at which he went over a 2-minute speaking rule while trying to get some explanation from the Gilford, NH, school board for assigning sexually explicit reading material to his 14-year old daughter’s English class. The evasiveness of the school board angered Mr. Baer, and he spoke out again in support of another parents protests, and was promptly arrested by a goon thug cop.http://www.dailypaul.com/318393/fox-news-to-interview-william-baer-father-arrested-in-new-hampshire-for-going-over-two-minute-rule-in-school-board-meetin
The school board chairman, Sue Allen, who has no legislative power nevertheless managed to create a law backed by police violence. After all if Bush and Obama can create laws by edict, why not a school board chairman? Under Allen’s edict, if a parent violates the 2-minute rule that Allen imposed, she has the parent arrested. The goon thug cop wasn’t embarrassed to arrest a parent for making a legitimate complaint during the public comment period of a school board meeting.
prepared to die, because living free is not what they do. NH is merely a cog within the
Amerikan Stasi State, but I am referring to what goes on within NH itself, not the police state existence imposed by Washington. On May 5 attorney William Baer was arrested at a school board meeting at which he went over a 2-minute speaking rule while trying to get some explanation from the Gilford, NH, school board for assigning sexually explicit reading material to his 14-year old daughter’s English class. The evasiveness of the school board angered Mr. Baer, and he spoke out again in support of another parents protests, and was promptly arrested by a goon thug cop.http://www.dailypaul.com/318393/fox-news-to-interview-william-baer-father-arrested-in-new-hampshire-for-going-over-two-minute-rule-in-school-board-meetin
The school board chairman, Sue Allen, who has no legislative power nevertheless managed to create a law backed by police violence. After all if Bush and Obama can create laws by edict, why not a school board chairman? Under Allen’s edict, if a parent violates the 2-minute rule that Allen imposed, she has the parent arrested. The goon thug cop wasn’t embarrassed to arrest a parent for making a legitimate complaint during the public comment period of a school board meeting.
Remember, we “freedom and democracy” ‘mericans have free speech and protest rights. Actually, don’t remember that, because you no longer have any such rights.These rights are dangerous. They enable terrorists and extremists such as those dangerous people who don’t believe The Government.
This is Amerika today. Mr Baer offered no resistance, but nevertheless was lucky that the goon thug cop did not taser him, pepper spray him, and call for a backup SWAT team to beat him senseless or even murder him.
Last month wedding guests at at the San Luis Hotel in Galveston, Texas, were set upon
without reason by 34 crazed goon thug cops. The guests, including the father of the bride and the bride’s brother were brutally beaten and maced along with many guests including 13 who were arrested for asking, “what is going on?” The brother was so badly injured by the goon thugs that he had to be rushed via helicopter to a hospital.
without reason by 34 crazed goon thug cops. The guests, including the father of the bride and the bride’s brother were brutally beaten and maced along with many guests including 13 who were arrested for asking, “what is going on?” The brother was so badly injured by the goon thugs that he had to be rushed via helicopter to a hospital.
The mayhem resulted from an off-duty goon thug witnessing a guest walk outside with an alcoholic beverage, thus violating the city’s “open container” law. Instead of advising
the guest of the open container law and recommending that he step back inside, the goon thug called the cops who arrived on the scene in mass and enjoyed themselves by beating up the wedding party.
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/galveston-wedding-beatdown/
the guest of the open container law and recommending that he step back inside, the goon thug called the cops who arrived on the scene in mass and enjoyed themselves by beating up the wedding party.
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/galveston-wedding-beatdown/
No charges have been filed against the goon thugs for gratuitously beating up wedding guests. The right of cops to beat and murder the citizens who pay their salaries is now a perk of the job. It is necessary in order to keep us safe from criminals and terrorists, descriptions that are ever expanding.
Don’t expect courts to put any restraint on police and prosecutors. Dave Lindorff and Molly Knefel have given accurate accounts of the frame-up of Cecily McMillan by a corrupt prosecutor and a corrupt goon thug. McMillan was convicted on the false charge of assaulting a police office when the goon thug seized her breasts from behind. The judge, Ronald Zwiebel, enabled the conviction by preventing the defense from showing the evidence. The gullible and very stupid jurors made certain that injustice was perpetrated. Now a young woman who was sexually assaulted faces a seven-year prison sentence for “assaulting” a goon thug.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38424.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/07/kangaroo-court-convicts-occupy-protester/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/07/kangaroo-court-convicts-occupy-protester/
This is Stasi Amerika today. And it gets worse. In Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, Eileen Battisti, a 53-year old widow, had her $280,000 home seized by Beaver County officials and sold at auction for $116,000 because of an unpaid $6.30 interest fee on the late payment of her school district taxes. A corrupt judge did not insist upon justice for the widow but instead upheld the robbery that benefitted both the county and the purchaser at auction of her home, S.P. Lewis. Lewis offered to sell the widow her home back for $250,000. http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/eileen-battisti/
To see what cops are really like, read this: http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/justice-for-arzy/
Whatever you do, never call the cops. However bad you might think the situation is, it
will be much worse once the goon thugs arrive: http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/candy-middleton/
will be much worse once the goon thugs arrive: http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/candy-middleton/
And do not show any compassion for animals. Showing compassion for animals is proof that you are an animal-rights extremist which lumps you in with terrorists. In Albion, Michigan, extremists who feed a stray cat are fined and locked away for three months. Mary Musselman, an 81-year old Alzheimer sufferer was locked away for 90 days for feeding stray cats on her own property. When you see a starving animal, turn your back and walk away. Your inhumanity will be rewarded but your humanity will be severely punished. http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/albion-michigan-cat-feeding/
Just keep in mind that “we have freedom and democracy” and we are “the exceptional and indispensable people.” Our president told us so. This designation removes you from any responsibility to other humans, much less animals. Don’t lose sight of the fact that Amerikans are so exceptional and indispensable that we have murdered seven entire countries in the new 21st century, and we are just getting started. As it is perfectly acceptable for Amerika to murder countries, how can it possibly matter if a goon thug cop murders you, your pet or your wife or husband or daughter or son?
What is so discouraging is that this article could be hundreds of thousands of pages long. I could sit here writing this article for the rest of my life, adding one incident after another, and not get beyond the tip of the iceberg.
The inhumanity of which Americans are capable and indulge in every day must scare Satan himself.
Parents arrested for protesting the assignment of pornographic reading material to 14-year olds by school boards, elderly and ill people imprisoned for feeding starving animals, pets murdered by police who are supposed to protect the citizens but instead mace them, beat them, body slam them, and shoot them and their pets gratuitously for the thrill of committing violence against life are the reason the public sector is in disrepute.
The worst people in the country are in our public institutions. This is why there is so little sympathy for the public sector unions now under attack by the Republicans. Americans look at their county commissions, their city councils, their criminal justice (sic) system, their governors, state legislatures, Congress, and the White House, and all that they see is evil and corruption.
There is nothing else there.
Americans who trust the criminal justice (sic) system are completely stupid. A case of
mass wrongful conviction that I wrote about years ago finally came to trial last November. Annie Dookham, a Massachusetts state chemist who falsified drug tests, thus sentencing thousands of innocent people to years in prison, destroying their lives and the lives of their families, was sentenced to 3 to 5 years in prison. Dookhan sent thousands of innocents to prison in order to aid prosecutors in attaining high conviction rates and in order to achieve her own rise as a highly productive state employee. The judge noted that Dookham had cost the state millions of dollars in settling wrongful convictions and had shaken to the core the integrity of the criminal justice (sic) system. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/11/22/annie-dookhan-former-state-chemist-who-mishandled-drug-evidence-agrees-plead-guilty/lhg1mwd9U3J8eh4tNBS63N/story.html
mass wrongful conviction that I wrote about years ago finally came to trial last November. Annie Dookham, a Massachusetts state chemist who falsified drug tests, thus sentencing thousands of innocent people to years in prison, destroying their lives and the lives of their families, was sentenced to 3 to 5 years in prison. Dookhan sent thousands of innocents to prison in order to aid prosecutors in attaining high conviction rates and in order to achieve her own rise as a highly productive state employee. The judge noted that Dookham had cost the state millions of dollars in settling wrongful convictions and had shaken to the core the integrity of the criminal justice (sic) system. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/11/22/annie-dookhan-former-state-chemist-who-mishandled-drug-evidence-agrees-plead-guilty/lhg1mwd9U3J8eh4tNBS63N/story.html
State officials say that Dookhan’s fake evidence could have tainted 40,000 cases. Ask
yourself, what kind of person would destroy so many people in order to advance herself? And progressives think that the public sector is the answer.
yourself, what kind of person would destroy so many people in order to advance herself? And progressives think that the public sector is the answer.
You can ask the same question about the New York State Police and the Texas police who dropped little bags of ground up wallboard in cars stopped at random, conducted illegal searches, and arrested the occupants for drugs. Hundreds of innocents were convicted until finally one brave public defender demanded presentation of the alleged drugs and had the evidence tested. It came back: wallboard. All other public defenders had accommodated the conviction scheme and arranged plea bargains for their clients. You can read about these and other atrocities in my book, coauthored with Larry Stratton: The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
It only gets worse: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38446.htm
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/08/call-cops-peril-paul-craig-roberts/ | China – De VS voert de spanning opby willyvandamme |
Terwijl de VS op dit ogenblik druk bezig is het met destabiliseren van het Midden-Oosten, Afrika en Oost-Europa is het – alsof dat nog niet te veel hooi op de vork is – ook bezig met het op de spits drijven van de spanning in het Verre-Oosten. Het lijkt wel alsof Barack Obama gans de wereld in vuur en vlam wil zetten en de economische groei wil fnuiken.
Japans nationalisme
Recent was Obama in Azië op bezoek en deed daar Japan, Zuid-Korea, de Filippijnen en Maleisië aan. En daar kwamen vooral de serie tussen China en een aantal andere landen betwiste eilanden aan bod.
Zo is er tussen Japan en China het verhaal van de Diaoyu/Senkaku eilanden, in wezen kleine stukken amper boven het water uitstekende rotsen. Deze hadden na het einde van de tweede wereldoorlog aan China moeten worden teruggegeven maar de VS vertikte het en liet alles in handen van Japan. China was toen immers onder controle gevallen van Mao Zedong en dus de vijand.
Die stukken rots waren privaat bezit maar vorig jaar besloot de Japanse regering van premier Shinzo Abe onder nationalistische druk die plots te nationaliseren en werden ze dus officieel in rechte Japans. En wat deed Barack Obama?
Hij riep niet op tot Japanse terughoudendheid maar stelde dat de VS verdragsmatig Japan militair zal steunen in geval van Chinese agressie rond die eilanden. De VS verklaarde daarbij wel dat het in dit conflict geen kant koos, maar anders dan kant kiezen kan men die verklaring moeilijk zien.
De huidige Japanse premier Shinzo Abe drijft de spanning met China en ook de beide Korea’s bewust op. Tot ongenoegen van onder meer het Japanse bedrijfsleven.
Geen handelsverdrag
Wel was het bezoek aan Japan niet echt succesvol en werd er onder meer geen handelsverdrag gesloten die de VS zou toelaten om de Japanse markt beter te kunnen penetreren. En dat was, liet Washington vooraf uitschijnen, de hoofdbetrachting van dit bezoek.
Het was dan ook een ferme Japanse slag in het gezicht van de VS waar men de ruzie rond het eiland Okinawa en de dolle avonturen van Toyota Amerika niet vergeten is. Het eiland Okinawa is de voornaamste militaire basis van het Pentagon in Azië en Japan wou die kleiner en naar elders doen verhuizen.
Wat de VS brutaal weigerde. Het kwam zelfs tot publieke ruzies met Robert Gates, de toenmalige Amerikaanse minister van Defensie. Waarna er plots allerlei herrie ontstond rond de auto’s van Toyota in de VS, de voornaamste markt voor deze industriële Japanse reus.
Ze waren ineens zo levensgevaarlijk dat Toyota dreigde te bezwijken onder de schadeclaims. Maar eens het probleem van Okinawa opgelost zoals de VS dat wou dan bleken die Toyota’s toch wel veilig te zijn. De herrie was ineens voorbij. Geen gruwelverhalen in de pers meer over levensgevaarlijke Toyota’s.
Het is iets wat men in Japan zeker niet zal vergeten. En de behandeling van Obama is een teken aan de wand dat Japan niet met zich laat sollen zoals Obama dat wenst. Obama ging nadien naar Zuid-Korea en poogde daar ongetwijfeld de relatie tussen Tokyo en Seoul te verbeteren. Kwestie van een front te vormen tegen China.
Yasukuni
Die relatie tussen Zuid-Korea en Japan is al even slecht als die tussen Tokio en Beijing. Reden is het toenemende Japanse nationalisme. Dit is al decennia heel geleidelijk aan het groeien en kent onder de huidige premier een nieuwe stevige impuls.
Typerend zijn zijn bezoeken aan de Yasukuni tempel waar de geesten van overleden soldaten worden herdacht. En sinds een aantal jaren horen daar ook de militairen bij die tekenden voor de invasie van China en Korea. Terwijl zijn voorgangers hier voor terugschrikten is dat geen probleem voor Abe.
Barack Obama stelde publiek dat een handelsverdrag met Japan cruciaal was. Japan hapte tijdens het bezoek niet toe en dat betekende dus een slag in het gezicht van de Amerikaanse president.
Het waren Japanse militaire interventies die wegens hun gruwelijk karakter in China en Korea te diepe wonden hebben geslagen om ooit echt te vergeten. Waarbij men dient te beseffen dat Zuid-Korea – en nog erger de noordelijke buur in Pyongyang – qua politiek karakter erg nationalistisch is.
Bovendien is er tussen Zuid-Korea en Japan eveneens een geschil over de rotseilandjes Dokdo/Takeshima die nu Koreaans bezit zijn maar volgens Japan bij hen horen. Japanse schoolkinderen leren dat trouwens zo in de klas.
De poging om beide landen te verzoenen was dan ook een onmogelijke opdracht voor de VS. Het zijn theoretisch wel vazalstaten maar niet alle vazallen lopen even braaf in de pas als bijvoorbeeld de Britten of de Canadezen.
Filippijnse basis voor het Pentagon
Meer geluk had Obama in de Filippijnen waar hij tijdens zijn bezoek zijn voornaamste verlangen wel kon realiseren. En dat is het opnieuw stationeren van Amerikaanse militairen op de eilandenarchipel die ooit Amerikaans bezit was.
Dit komt dan na de nieuwe Amerikaanse basis die het in het noorden van Australië mag bouwen. Het is alsof de VS de ring van Amerikaanse legerbasissen rond China verder wil uitbouwen om het land zo militair onder controle te houden.
Typerend is het eind vorig jaar gepubliceerde rapport van het aan het Pentagon gelieerde US Centre for Strategic and Budgettary Assesments over de toekomst van de militaire alliantie tussen Australië, Nieuw Zeeland en de VS (ANZUS). Deze studie stelt:
"The heavy emphasis given in Chinese military doctrine on missile intimidation suggests that Australia's role as a supportive sanctuary (for US forces) to allied combat operations will become increasingly vital," says the US Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments report on the future of the ANZUS alliance.” (1)
“De zware nadruk in de Chinese militaire doctrine van intimidatie via raketten doet veronderstellen dat de Australische rol om via het ter beschikking stellen van basissen (voor Amerikaanse strijdkrachten) in toenemende mate essentieel zal worden voor de geallieerde gevechtsoperaties”, aldus het rapport van het US Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assesments over de toekomst van de ANZUS alliantie.”
En dus komen er in de Australische havenstad Perth aan de westkust Amerikaanse nucleaire Amerikaanse onderzeeërs en verkenningsvliegtuigen en bommenwerpers voor de lange afstand in het noorden van Australië. Gericht op China dus!
Internetspionage
Het is hierbij ook opvallend dat de VS regelmatig publiek stelt dat China niets anders doet dan inbreken in Amerikaanse computernetwerken en telecommunicatie. Met in de pers breed uitgesmeerde verhalen gebaseerd op beweringen van allerlei Amerikaanse in veiligheid gespecialiseerde informaticabedrijven.
Daarbij viseerde men vooral telecombedrijf Huawei, een wereldleider in de telecommunicatie. De leider van dit bedrijf had ooit in het leger gezeten en dus was Huawei een spionagebedrijf van het Chinese Volksbevrijdingsleger. Aldus het ultrakort door de bocht gaande verhaal in de klassieke media.
Tot dankzij Edward Snowden bleek dat de rollen hier juist omgekeerd waren en dat de VS alle Chinese computernetwerken zat te bespioneren en ingebroken had bij zowat iedereen in China, incluis ook bij Huawei. Hier had men zelfs de bedrijfsgeheimen zitten stelen. Niet verassend natuurlijk voor de echte specialisten.
De Filippijnse president Benigno S. Aguino III volgt getrouw op wat de VS van hem verlangt en laat de terugkeer van het Amerikaanse leger in zijn land toe. Het was het enige echte lichtpunt tijdens de recente rondreis door Azië van de Amerikaanse president.
Geen Shangri La
In die zin is het natuurlijk opvallend dat Obama eerder dit jaar plots de behoefte had om officieel een nieuwe ontmoeting te hebben met de Dalai Lama, de leider van het Tibetaanse nationalisme.
Gans diens hofhouding en propagandamachine wordt trouwens al jaren sinds zijn ontsnapping uit Tibet in 1959 door de VS onderhouden. Zoals ze ook de nationalistische verzetsbewegingen van de Oeigoeren in Xinjiang (Chinees Turkestan) financieren. En dat zijn ook hier zoals in Syrië jihadisten van het zuiverste Saoedische water.
Dat beide nationalistische groepen bloedige terreuraanslagen pleegden tegen de burgerbevolking, waaronder brandstichting bij nacht van door kinderen bewoonde huizen, is hier nooit een probleem geweest, noch voor Obama, noch in wezen voor de Dalai Lama.
Wat veel zegt over het boeddhistische karakter van de Dalai Lama. Het lamaïsme in Tibet stond dan ook gelijk met slavernij, geweld, hebzucht en folteringen. Het hier verspreidde verhaal van een soort Shangri La, een paradijs op aarde, is een grote fantasie dat nog best te vergelijken is met wat Walt Disney ooit produceerde.
Bemerk rechts onderaan een insteek waarbij via een stippellijn heel bewust de eilanden in de Zuid-Chinese Zee bij China werden gevoegd. Om haar rechten juridisch en diplomatiek veilig te stellen produceerde China tot heden steeds deze versie van haar landsgrenzen. Dat is al sinds het midden der zeventiger jaren een feit. De kaart komt uit het officiële Chinese weekblad Beijing Review en dateert van 22 december 1986.
Zuid-Chinese zee
Ook rond de eilanden in de Zuid-Chinese Zee werd de voorbije twee jaar de spanning plots opgedreven. Vooral met de Filippijnen en minder met Vietnam groeit het conflict. Zo zijn er met de Filippijnen vooral problemen rond Scarborough eiland/Huangyuan/Bajo de Masinloc (2), een onbewoonbare zandbank die bij hoog water amper boven zee uitsteekt.
Met Vietnam zijn er dan recent conflicten geweest rond de Paracel/Xisha/Hoang Sa eilandengroep, een serie atols, zandbanken en rotsen die op een uitzondering na praktisch geen begroeiing kennen.
Men ziet er olie en gas onder de grond zitten, die zee bevat veel vis en het is een drukke vaarweg tussen Azië en het Midden-Oosten, Afrika en Europa. Ze is dus strategisch erg belangrijk.
De archipel ligt in het noorden van de Zuid-Chinese Zee en werd deels in 1972 bezet door China. De rest werd in 1974 na een kort gevecht overgenomen van het toenmalig Zuid-Vietnamees leger. Opvallend hierbij was dat de VS gans de tijd bleef zwijgen. Hetzelfde voor de toenmalige Noord-Vietnamese regering. En zwijgen wordt in zaken als dit nogal gezien als toestemmen.
De gebiedsaanspraken in de Zuid-Chinese zee zijn in wezen een onontwarbaar kluwen gebaseerd op allerlei historische documenten waarbij China de beste papieren heeft. Zonder incident zal de toestand vermoedelijk blijven zoals ze is. Met China die de Paraceleilanden in het noorden bezet en de Spratly’s grotendeels Vietnamees bezit zijn.
Na de hereniging eiste Vietnam wel de controle over de Paraceleilanden op maar dat bleef dode letter. Wel bezet het Vietnamese leger 29 ‘eilanden’ van de zuidelijk gelegen Spratly eilandengroep (Nanshan/Quang Dao Truong Sa).
Deze verzameling van feitelijk onbewoonbare rotsen, zandbanken, atols en riffen worden allen wel door een of ander buurland bezet. Zo zijn er 29 in handen van Vietnam, hebben China en de Filippijnen er ieder 8, bezit Taiwan daar 1, zijnde Taiping, het grootste, terwijl er 5 in handen zijn van Maleisië en 2 onder de controle vallen van het sultanaat Brunei.
De VS is zich sinds een paar jaar plots merkwaardig genoeg voor dit diplomatiek wespennest gaan interesseren en poogde, tevergeefs, al die landen tot een blok te verenigen tegen dan China.
Ze wou daarbij tijdens de laatste topontmoeting tussen o.m. de VS en ASEAN (3) de landen van ASEAN, de associatie van Zuid-Oost Aziatische landen, dit probleem gebruiken om het tot een anti-Chinees blok te smeden.
De relaties tussen China met hier president Xi Jinping en de VS gaan moeilijke tijden tegemoet. Barack Obama wil China duidelijk onder druk zetten. Het probleem is hoe hij dat best kan doen. En dat is niet simpel.
Een stippellijn
Gastland Cambodja wist dit echter te verhinderen en daar kan men sindsdien rekenen op de wraak vanuit Washington. De recente rellen rond de door premier Hun Sen gewonnen verkiezingen en de stakingen in de textielindustrie kregen plots veel hulp vanuit allerlei lokale ‘mensenrechtenbewegingen’.
Verenigingen die zoals kon verwacht worden massaal financiële steun krijgen vanuit vooral de VS. Waarbij de vertegenwoordigers van die mensenrechtenbewegingen dan herhaaldelijk in de massamedia aan het woord kwamen als zijnde onafhankelijke experts en mensenrechtenactivisten. De klassieke truc. Hun Sen weerstond echter de storm.
En alhoewel er op 20 juli 2011 een akkoord was bereikt tussen alle betrokken landen over vele aspecten van de zaak blijft de spanning eigenaardig genoeg toenemen. Zo schreef Demetri Sevastopulo in de Financial Times op donderdag 8 mei in: ‘Disputes flare in South China Seas’:
“ China’s neighbours are concerned by the ‘nine-dash line’, a demarcation on China’s maps that encloses most of the South China Sea. Manila asked an international tribunal at the Hague to declare the line invalid.”
“De Chinese buurlanden zijn bezorgd over de negenstippenlijn, een demarcatie op Chinese kaarten die het grootste deel van de Zuid-Chinese Zee omvat. Manila heeft een internationaal tribunaal in Den Haag gevraagd om die lijn onwettig te laten verklaren.”
Raar want China gebruikt die stippellijn al een veertig jaar en die dient juridisch en diplomatiek vooral als een middel om haar soevereiniteit te verdedigen. Meer niet. Dat men het nu plots opwerpt en dat ook de VS zich dit ineens aantrekt is natuurlijk een veeg teken.
De VS wou dat ASEAN een front maakte met de VS tegen China. De Cambodjaanse gastheer Hun Sen wist dat te voorkomen. En kijk plots verschenen wat later daar door de VS gefinancierde mensenrechtenactivisten en waren er rellen. Hun Sen, een erg krachtig figuur en de langst regerende premier in Azië, wist de storm echter te doorstaan.
Het feit dat deze krant, spreekbuis van de Britse en Amerikaanse regeringen, dit niet wil zien is te merkwaardig om te negeren. Iedereen die professioneel met China’s politiek bezig is kent dat verhaal van die negenstippenlijn. En toch begint men nu plots hierover ruzie te maken en zit die krant hierover te manipuleren.
Tot heden heeft China op die manoeuvres niet of vrij mak gereageerd. Het heeft duidelijk geen zin om zich te laten provoceren. Maar dat Vietnam plots herrie begint te maken over de Paraceleilanden en de Filippijnen rond de Scarborough zandbank is natuurlijk een bedreiging voor de stabiliteit van de regio.
En het is de stabiliteit van de voorbije decennia die zorgde voor economische groei. Mede dankzij welke China dit jaar ‘s werelds grootste economische macht zal worden. Waardoor de VS voor het eerst sinds 1872 haar nummer 1 positie in de wereld verliest. Het lijkt er dan ook op dat de VS hier gewoon stokken in de wielen wil steken.
China groeide onder leiding van de Chinese CP uit tot ‘s werelds grootste economie en dat is niet naar de zin van de VS die graag de enige supermacht wil blijven. China wil daarentegen zoveel mogelijk in de schaduw werken en via stabiliteit verder groeien. Het zet maar zeer aarzelend zijn eerste stappen in de wereld als de economische grootmacht die het is.
Die projectie rond de Chinese economische macht is gebaseerd op een recente studie van het International Comparison Program (4) van de Wereldbank. Deze vergeleek de economieën op basis van de koopkracht en dat is een veel betere maatstaf dan die gebaseerd op de waarde van de lokale munten versus de dollar.
Daarbij werd Indië als de derde grootste economie gezien, na de VS die dan nummer twee wordt, maar dus voor Japan. Schokkend voor diegenen in Europa die zich nog steeds een imperialistische grootmachtenstatus aanmeten is de constatering dat de economie van Indonesië tegenwoordig praktisch even groot is als de Britse. Het is meer dan stof tot nadenken.
Wil de VS in een wanhoopsdaad die evolutie toch nog stoppen?
Willy Van Damme
2) Eerst werd voor de eilanden de westerse naam gegeven, dan de Chinese en dan die van respectievelijk de Filippijnen of Vietnam.
3) ASEAN bestond bij zijn oprichting in 1967 uit Thailand, Indonesië, de Filippijnen, Maleisië en Singapore. Het was in die zin een instrument van de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek gericht tegen vooral China en Rusland en minder Japan.
Sindsdien zijn daar ook zogenaamd communistische staten als Vietnam en Laos bijgekomen alsmede Myanmar, Cambodja en Brunei. Het is een erg diverse groep van landen die niet altijd goede relaties met elkaar onderhouden.
Zo waren er tussen een aantal lidstaten zelfs onderlinge militaire conflicten. Desondanks blijft er een zekere cohesie bestaan binnen de groep die bij handelsgesprekken zo sterker staat tegenover de grootmachten als China, Japan, Indië, de VS, Rusland en de EU. En daarover gaat het.
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