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There’s no reason to celebrate the UK Palestine vote

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I hate to rain on a parade but I don’t quite understand why everyone is getting so excited over the UK parliament’s recognition of Palestine as a state, writes Roshan Muhammed Salih.

recognise Palestinian state uk

Certainly it was gratifying to hear so many MPs criticise Israel yesterday during the six-hour House of Commons debate, especially for its settlement policies on stolen land.

And it was also wonderful to see so many Israeli apologists up-in-arms over the motion which was passed by a resounding 274 votes to 12.

But ultimately the issue is not about the “state of Palestine,” it’s about what kind of state that state will be.

And anyone who followed the debate closely would realise that nearly all of the MPs were supporting the discredited “two-state solution” which effectively means that Israel gets to keep over 80 per cent of the land forever, while the Palestinians have to make do with a de-militarised open prison that will be dependent on Israeli largesse.

Palestinian opinion

Most Palestinians I spoke to yesterday before the vote wanted it to pass.

The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, told me that Britain was at last taking some responsibility for the historic wrongs it had committed against his people.

It was Britain, after all, who held a mandate over Palestine before the Zionists stole the land and ethnically cleansed it. And Britain has been one of the biggest international supporters of the Zionist state since.

Hassassian argued that the international community should continue to pressure Israel as there will never be a military solution to the conflict. He said he hoped the vote would spark other such motions across the EU until Palestinians achieve their goal of a viable state.

Meanwhile, British Muslim groups also welcomed the Yes vote.

Ismail Patel of The Friends of Al Aqsa, said: “The Labour Party asked MPs to vote in favour of the motion, while the Lib Dem and Conservative parties allowed members to vote freely.

FOA believes this is an indication of each party’s commitment to Palestinian freedom, although the vote was symbolic.

“This vote is not about one state or two states, it is not about borders, and it is not about refugees; this vote is a simple recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination, which has been denied to them by a military invasion and occupation since 1948 and 1967 respectively.”

Perspective

But despite the temptation to celebrate the vote as some sort of Palestinian victory, I think we need to put things into perspective.

This wasn’t a vote about how the UK arms Israel. And it wasn’t a vote about how Britain does roaring business with Tel Aviv while it commits its atrocities. Those would have been great subjects for a debate but they simply weren’t on the agenda.

Rather, this was simply a symbolic motion that the government can completely ignore if it chooses to do.

It is also quite possible that the government was happy for the motion to pass because that way they can:

1) placate public opinion which is infuriated with Israel after its Gaza massacre

2) put some mild pressure on an Israeli regime which is completely out of control.

The fact remains that the vast majority of those who voted for the motion are supportive of Israel to one extent or another, and that support won’t end anytime soon even though some mild criticism may be directed Tel Aviv’s way every now and again.

As for the two-state solution, it’s difficult to find anyone in Palestine who really believes in it anymore, apart from those who materially benefit from the “two-state solution industry.”

More generally, the notion that the international community – which is at least partially responsible for the Palestinians’ plight – will be their saviour is frankly ridiculous.

Only Palestinians can save themselves along with a regional alliance which will support them – politically, financially and militarily.

Roshan Muhammed Salih is the Editor of British Muslim news website 5Pillarz.com. He can be reached at @RMSalih

U.S. Intelligence Official: No evidence ISIL is planning imminent attack on America

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Obama’s plan to support the Shi’a and Kurds in Iraq could worsen sectarianism fighting, and a new report says arms sent to moderate Syrian rebels have ended up in ISIS’s hands.

– by The Real News Network

JESSICA DESVARIEUX, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT, TRNN: On the Hill, the jihadist extremist organization known as ISIS is on everyone’s radar.

REP. MIKE MCCAUL, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (R-TX): But the only way you can defeat ISIS is to attack them wherever they exist.

DESVARIEUX: At Wednesday’s hearing, titled “One Flight Away: An Examination of the Threat posed by ISIS Terrorists with Western Passports”, officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the State Department, all testified before the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security. When asked if ISIS posed a threat to the United States, the panelists were unanimous in their assessment.

TROY MILLER, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION OFFICIAL: I do believe that it could be a short-term and long-term threat to the United States.

DESVARIEUX: But on closer examination of the testimony from Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Jennifer Lasley said ISIS is not a threat to the U.S. in the near-term.

JENNIFER LASLEY, HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIAL: We currently have no credible information to indicate that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, is planning to attack the homeland.

As I said, we don’t see a near-term threat directly from them. No evidence yet of that.

DESVARIEUX: But an attack on the homeland is what seven out of ten Americans think ISIS is capable of, according to a recent CNN/ORC poll. And almost half of Americans see ISIS as a very serious threat to the U.S. That’s about the same percentage of those that thought the same of al-Qaeda in 2003. On the Hill, ISIS is being compared to al-Qaeda, which may strike an emotional chord with many Americans, since the anniversary of 9/11 is on Thursday. But critics are concerned that another push for a war against terrorism won’t get to the root causes of Sunni extremism.

MATTHEW HOH, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY: So what you have is, say, in Iraq with the Islamic State, is you have this organization that requires war, it requires chaos to function. It’s a parasitic organization. And it needs the United States to come in and be involved, because it eats the United States to be a villain, it needs the United States to fulfill that Crusader motif. It also needs the Sunni population–this is the most important thing–it needs the Sunni population to feel that they need the Islamic State’s help, that the Islamic State is actually fulfilling a role for them.

So if the United States jumps back into the Iraqi Civil War, takes the sides of the Shia or the Kurds, well, that pushes the Sunnis up against the wall, because you have this intersectarian, interreligious fighting going on in Iraq. If we go in and take one side, well, then the other side becomes desperate, and they turn to groups like the Islamic State.

And so, I think, by not understanding that dynamic, not understanding the political situation that exists in these countries, this sectarian fighting, this interreligious fighting, one side pushing the other side, one side persecuting the other side, that if we just lay over this veneer of this simple good-versus-bad narrative that we possess, then it becomes very complicated and we play right into the hands of these extreme groups.

DESVARIEUX: Matthew Hoh served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq. He says that the civil war in Iraq was caused by our decade-long occupation of the country, and more military involvement will only prolong the civil war. Hoh said the American public should be wary of any officials trying to trap Americans into another conflict.

HOH: You have both the head of our counterterrorism center and Homeland Security saying that the Islamic State has no sleeper cells, has no members in the U.S., and that the Islamic State is not an imminent threat to the United States. And so I’m afraid that we’re falling right into this trap, falling right into this debate that the Islamic State needs and wants. They need us to come into the conflict, because they need the conflict to be continue to be stirred up. They need to have the U.S. as a villain to play that Crusader role in order to, one, fit their narrative and aid in their recruitment.

And the second thing is they want to fight us. These are men and women who believe in this religious conflict. And so they want to fight us. So by jumping right back in, rushing right back into the conflict, we give the Islamic State exactly what they need, and also what they want, as well as making the conflict much more difficult to achieve any type of political solution, because if we go in there on behalf of the Shias and the Kurds, then what incentive do the Shias and the Kurds have to give any concessions to the Sunnis? What reasons do they have to enter into any real negotiations? Why would the Kurds give up that increased territory they took over the last few months? Why would the Shia in Baghdad make any real reformations, bring the Sunnis back into the government, if the Americans are on their side? Why would you do that?

DESVARIEUX: But Democrats and Republicans both want further militarization.

HARRY REID, U.S. SENATOR (D-NV): As commander in chief, the president has the authority he needs now to act against ISIS. I believe the vast majority of members of Congress agree with that. For now, it’s critical we support our commander in chief as he takes this decisive action.

DESVARIEUX: This action would mean giving the White House authority to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels. The White House wants Congress to tack on what’s known as Title 10 authority to a stopgap spending bill that lawmakers were hoping to pass this week. That bill, if passed, would prevent another government shutdown. But there are those cautious to arm such factions, since evidence has been released linking ISIS with these moderate Syrian rebels.

A recent report by Conflict Armament Research found that ISIS is now in possession of lethal weapons formerly owned by moderate Syrian rebels, as well as a bulk of arms produced in the United States. You can see in pictures like these some of the arms that they mention. The report states that antitank rockets captured from ISIS forces in Syria are identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the Free Syrian Army umbrella in 2013.

Such evidence could raise some questions. The White House has invited all members of Congress to a special closed briefing on ISIS on Thursday. But we’ll have to see if any members will question the president’s decision.

For The Real News Network, Jessica Desvarieux, Washington.

Israel's plan to build 600 new homes in E. Jerusalem earns UN’s anger

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United Nations

– by RT

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed his frustration at Israel’s settlement program, which plans 600 new homes in East Jerusalem. The new units are set to expand four existing settlements in the Palestinian city.

“I once again strongly condemn the continued settlement activity by Israel,” the UN chief told journalists after a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah.

The Israeli government also plans to seize one square kilometer of farmland near Bethlehem, “intended for the construction of settlement units, parks, a synagogue and agricultural roads,” according to a report by the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

It is possible to appeal the seizure within a period of two months, in line with Israel’s tax law. The new construction plans come shortly after last month’s announcement of the most significant construction plan in the past several decades – the idea of building more than 2,500 homes in the area with a majority Arab population.

Like Ban, the EU has joined the international chorus of condemnation, strongly suggesting that such plans threaten to upset a very fragile peace with the Palestinians.

The UN chief also urged the two sides to return to the negotiating table.

“I urge Palestinians to show courage and continue engaging in the… peace process… [and] Israelis to do the same,” Ban warned, adding, “Time is not on the side of peace. We need to act immediately to prevent a deepening of an already unsustainable status quo.”

President Mahmoud Abbas has also recently warned the UN General Assembly that continuing the occupation would ensure that the Palestinian population would eventually turn into fragmented ghettos. He will be seeking a UN resolution and a “firm timetable” to stop the Israeli occupation.

But the move also comes as the government admitted to a covert building freeze in the disputed area. Israeli media is alleging that Ban got the entire matter wrong and sees his comments as misdirected. They believe the UN head might have been referring to building tenders in a wholly Jewish neighborhood in the capital, leaving intact the building freeze.

According to Arutz Sheva daily, the decision was in fact the approval of building tenders at some future date in the Jewish neighborhood of Israel’s capital, and leaves intact the building freeze gripping the area.

This summer’s 50-day military conflict between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Administration has caused immense damage and loss of life. Dubbed operation Protective Edge, it killed more than 2,200 people – the vast majority of them Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children.

Ban’s visit to Ramallah comes on the heels of combined efforts by the US, EU, Turkey, Qatar, Germany and Kuwait to rebuild the Gaza Strip. So far they’ve raised $5.4 billion, smashing through the $4 billion target set by the Palestinian Authority.

The U.S. Soldier who killed herself after refusing to take part in torture

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us-suicide-soldier

– by Greg Mitchell, Huffington Post

More than a decade ago, when I was the editor of Editor & Publisher, I was, as far as I know, the first writer with a national platform who regularly drew attention to the then largely-hidden tragedy of the rising rate of suicides among American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan–and then after they return home.

Despite the decline in fighting in those two theaters for many years, that suicide rate remains at very high or record levels. Last year there was this troubling report.

I have written about dozens of sad, tragic, individual cases. But one of the saddest of all concerns a young soldier who died eleven years ago last month. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what most would call torture — another wrong turn by the United States following 9/11 — Alyssa Peterson refused, then killed herself a few days later, on September 15, 2003.

Of course, we now know from the torture memos and the US Senate committee probe and various press reports that the “Gitmo-izing” of Iraq was happening just at the time Alyssa got swept up in it. I featured her in my book on Bush and media falures in Iraq, So Wrong for So Long.

Spc. Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers who died in Iraq. Her death under these circumstances should have drawn wide attention. It’s not exactly the Tillman case, but a cover-up, naturally, followed.

Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Arizona, native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. She was a valuable Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on September 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”

A “non-hostile weapons discharge” leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials “said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson’s own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian.” And that might have ended it right there.

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, “just on a hunch,” he told me in late 2006. He made “hundreds of phone calls” to the military and couldn’t get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations.

Here’s what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston worked, reported:

Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed.

The official probe of her death would later note that earlier she had been “reprimanded” for showing “empathy” for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of the report, in fact, is this: “She said that she did not know how to be two people; she… could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire.”

She was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. “But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle,” the documents disclose.

The official report revealed that a notebook she had written in was found next to her body, but blacked out its contents.

The Army talked to some of Peterson’s colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told me:

The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were.

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, which suggested that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note. It did not emerge.

Peterson a devout Mormon — her mother, Bobbi, claims she always stuck up for “the underdog” — had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and was sent to the Middle East in 2003, reportedly going in place of another soldier who did not wish to go.

A report in the Arizona Daily Sun of Flagstaff — three years after Alyssa’s death — revealed that Spc. Peterson’s mother, reached at her home in northern Arizona, said that neither she nor her husband Richard had received any official documents that contained information outlined in Elston’s report.

In other words: like the press and the public, even the parents had been kept in the dark. (Someone has posted a song tribute at YouTube, “The Ballad of Alyssa Peterson.”)

Kayla Williams, an Army sergeant who served with Alyssa, told me that she talked to her about her problems (including questioning her religious faith) shortly before she killed herself. Williams also was forced to take part in torture interrogations, where she saw detainees punched. Another favorite technique: strip the prisoners and then remove their blindfolds so that the first thing they saw was Kayla Williams. (Here’s the sad story of another soldier who revealed in his suicide note that he’d been forced to commit war crimes.)

She also opted out, but survived, and is haunted years later. She wrote a book about her experience in the military, Love My Rifle More Than You.

Here’s what Williams told Soledad O’Brien of CNN:

I was asked to assist. And what I saw was that individuals who were doing interrogations had slipped over a line and were really doing things that were inappropriate. There were prisoners that were burned with lit cigarettes.

Kayla Williams would end up attending her memorial service.

When I wrote a piece about Peterson a few years ago, her brother, Spencer Peterson, left a comment:

Alyssa is my little sister. I usually don’t comment on boards like this, and I don’t speak for the rest of my family (especially my folks), but I think she probably did kill herself over this. She was extremely sensitive and empathetic to others, and cared a lot more about the welfare and well-being of the people around her than she cared about herself…. Thank you to everyone for your continued support of our troops and our family. Alyssa’s death was a tremendous loss to everyone who knew her, and we miss her sweet and sensitive spirit. No one is happier than I am that (many of) our troops are coming home from Iraq, and I pray that the rest of our brave soldiers return home safely as soon as possible. Support our troops–bring them home!

Bolivia's Evo Morales claims election victory

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A prominent member of the bloc of socialist and anti-U.S. leaders in Latin America, Morales dedicated his victory to Cuba’s former communist leader Fidel Castro.

Morales has promised to consolidate 'indigenous socialism' that has extended the state's role. Photo: AP

Morales has promised to consolidate ‘indigenous socialism’ that has extended the state’s role. Photo: AP

– by Al Jazeera and agencies

Evo Morales has won a third term as Bolivia’s president with a landslide win, according to an unofficial quick count of the vote.

Morales, a native Aymara from Bolivia’s poor Andean plateau, received 59.5 percent of Sunday’s vote against 25.3 percent for cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina, the top vote-getter among four challengers, according to a quick count of 84 percent of the voting booths by the Ipsos company for ATB television.

Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor Lucia Newman, reporting from La Paz, said Morales’s ecstatic supporters waved flags, set off firecrackers and sang songs, celebrating his victory.

“Morales, who has been struggling to recover from a bad cough, spoke to his supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace,” she said.

“He thanked them for supporting the ‘fight for liberation’ and vowed to continue his fight against imperialism and capitalism. He also said that in this third term he would build a nuclear power plant ‘for peaceful energy purposes’ and turn Bolivia into an energy hub.”

Morales, a former coca grower, has promised to consolidate his brand of “indigenous socialism” that has extended the role of the state in a booming natural gas-powered economy.

He has pledged to consolidate his socialist system that has expanded the role of the state in the economy and sharply reduce poverty levels.

Economic growth has averaged five percent annually, well above the regional average.

Nearly six million Bolivians cast their ballots on Sunday in presidential and congressional polls.

Morales was more than 40 points clear of his rival in the pre-election public polls.

Commodities boom

Since Morales first came to office in 2006, a boom in commodities prices has increased export revenues ninefold and the country has accumulated $15.5bn in international reserves.

Morales’ rivals accuse him of using his power to control the courts and of violating the constitution which limits a president to two consecutive terms.

Last year, the Supreme Court decreed his 2006-2009 period in office should not be counted as a first term as it preceded the adoption of the new constitution. Opponents criticised the decision.

Morales has also drawn opposition from environmentalists and many former indigenous allies by promoting mining and a planned jungle highway through an indigenous reserve.

Despite Bolivia’s economic advancements, it remains one of South America’s poorest countries and many economists think it depends too much on natural resources.

In the first half of 2014, natural gas and minerals accounted for 82 percent of export revenues.

Last year, Transparency International’s perception index ranked Bolivia as South America’s third most corrupt country after Venezuela and Paraguay, and Morales’ opponents say he has spent millions in government money on his campaign, giving him an unfair advantage.

Bill Maher isn't a 'politically incorrect' liberal, he's just a bigot

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bill-maher

– by Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept

Like many others, of late I’ve been sharing in the surreal experience of watching Bill Maher transform from a mildly interesting, “edgy,” talk show host into a crude, overbearing demagogue. It hasn’t been pleasant viewing, but Maher really does appear to be in rare form these days. Between him sharing his fears about the terrifying number of babies today being named Muhammad, to complaining about Muslims in America who “bring that desert stuff into our world” — the first question that comes to mind is: this guy is a liberal?

Watching his increasingly outlandish public performances, one gets the sincere impression that Maher believes that since he smokes weed and supports gay marriage it’s impossible for him to be a bigot. Needless to say, it’s become glaringly obvious that self-awareness is not really his strong suit.

Maher last week got into a rather heated argument on his show with Ben Affleck over the broadly defined subject of Islam and Muslims. Maher, who became visibly scandalized by Affleck’s suggestion that most Muslims are normal people, launched into an indignant tirade about the Muslim world, alleging, among other things, that Islam “acts like the Mafia” comprised of people who will “fucking kill you” for trying to leave.

Fox’s New Favorite Racist

The fact that this is both impossible and false was apparently no deterrent. Maher and his utterly hapless sidekick Sam Harris defended their position against allegations of racism by basically just repeating it over and over. At one point Harris simply stated that “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas,” in response to which Maher blurted “that’s just a fact”.

Maher’s primary defense against Affleck’s charges was that “Islam is not a race” but an idea, a claim Harris has repeated. Strictly speaking of course this is true. Islam is certainly not a “race”, at least not in the way in which the term is popularly understood in America. But because many people buy into the myth that theocratic governments or even groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS speak for all Muslims, Muslims have become — undeniably — a racialized group after 9/11.

Aside from the near-daily instances of assault and harassment against Muslims as a result of anti-Islamic prejudice, there are countless Sikh and Hindu-Americans in America today being beaten up and even killed for the crime of “looking Muslim.” These acts aren’t being committed by people who have interrogated their victims innermost existential beliefs, they’re basic racism.

While it’s depressing that this apparently needs be repeated anew every generation, making incendiary and ignorant generalizations about vast groups of people is never a good idea. Moreover, anyone with a modicum of familiarity with the Muslim world that goes beyond American pop culture can also tell you that the characterizations Maher makes are broadly incorrect.

Insisting on framing problems like apostasy laws in certain Muslim countries simply as issues with “Muslims” — thus implicating ordinary people who in the majority of cases are largely aloof from said laws — is not activism but pure bigotry. Despite this, that’s exactly what Maher does, night after night. Incredibly enough, he also seems to think that his rhetoric in this context represents some kind of act of personal bravery.

If that’s true, then Fox News must be the bravest news organization in the country. Maher, for all his supposed liberalism, has in fact become the new poster-boy of the right-wing network. He’s even won the enthusiastic support of luminaries like Robert Spencer thanks to his zealous “liberal” chauvinism.

Maher’s Weird Unraveling

To anyone who has followed Maher’s career over the long-run, his bizarre unraveling over the past several years has been at times agonizing to watch. Maher’s favorite rhetorical targets now — women and minorities — are people who simply don’t have access to the same resources that he does to make their voices heard in society. This is how, improbably enough, Ben Affleck became an overnight hero to many Muslim people in America and around the world for using his voice to speak on their behalf during another one of Maher’s tirades. It was both a touching gesture and a sad reflection of what things have come to.

In a revealing interview a few weeks earlier on Charlie Rose, Maher had complained:

“In this country, if you just use the wrong word about women, they go nuts …in all these other countries…They’re doing things like making them wear burkas. They’ve been brainwashed.”

Here, if I may, is liberal celebrity Bill Maher in a nutshell. Talking down to people who don’t have the power or apparently even the agency to talk back, while shamelessly seeking more latitude to engage in his own preferred prejudices at home. Neither Muslims nor women have any say in his characterizations of them – and Muslim women in particular who may disagree with him are blithely written off as a brainwashed zombies. It’s pretty gross, and over time it’s just getting grosser.

Needless to say, I don’t really have high expectations for the “civil dialogue about Islam” Maher is planning on holding along with fellow Islamic scholar Glenn Beck.

China just overtook the U.S as the World's largest Economy

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Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

– by Mike Bird, Business Insider

Sorry, America. China just overtook the US to become the world’s largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Chris Giles at the Financial Times flagged up the change. He’d also alerted us back in April this year that it was all about to happen.

Basically, the method used by the IMF adjusts for purchasing power parity, explained here. The simple logic is that prices aren’t the same in each country: a shirt will cost you less in Shanghai than San Francisco, so it’s not entirely reasonable to compare countries without taking this into account. Though a typical person in China earns a lot less than the typical person in the US, simply converting a Chinese salary into dollars underestimates how much purchasing power that individual, and therefore that country, might have. The Economist’s Big Mac Index is a great example of these disparities.

So the IMF measures both GDP in market exchange terms, and in terms of purchasing power. On the purchasing power basis, China is overtaking the US right about now and becoming the world’s biggest economy.

We’ve just gone past that cross-over on the chart below, according to the IMF. By the end of 2014, China will make up 16.48% of the world’s purchasing-power adjusted GDP (or $17.632 trillion), and the US will make up just 16.28% (or $17.416 trillion):

IMF, Google Public Data Explorer

It’s not all sore news for the US. It’ll be some time yet until the lines cross over in raw terms, not adjusted for purchasing power. By that measure, China still sits more than $6.5 trillion lower than the US, and isn’t likely to overtake for quite some time:

IMF, Google Public Data Explorter

But in terms of the raw market value of China’s currency, it still has a long way to go.

Contractors ready to cash in on ISIS war

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Obama pledged that the war against ISIS won’t be fought with U.S. ground troops. He didn’t say anything about contractors, who see this as “the next big meal ticket.”

ISIS

– by Eli Lake, The Daily Beast

America’s rapidly-expanding war against ISIS won’t involve large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, President Obama is promising. And it’s clear that airstrikes alone won’t beat back the extremist group. Which means that if the President wants to have any hope of meeting his far-reaching goal of destroying ISIS, he’s going to have to rely on private military contractors.

At least, that’s what the contractors are hoping.

At the height of the Iraq war, these firms hired hundreds of thousands of people: guns-for-hire, IT geeks, logistics specialists, interrogators, and short order cooks to ladle out the slop at the military cafeteria. Over time, some of those contractors became the symbol for everything that was wrong with the Iraq war: hugely expensive, ineffective, and indifferent to Iraqi life. Contractors were at the middle of the war’s biggest scandals, from Abu Ghraib to Nissour Square. And it was the abductions and murder of Blackwater contractors that sparked one of Iraq’s biggest battles.

None of the five current and former contractors who spoke with The Daily Beast expected a replay of last decade’s Iraq war. But they all said a major opportunity was coming—both for them, and for Obama, who could use the private armies as a way to conceal just how many people will be fighting in this new conflict.

“Iraq this time around is not going to be as big as it was before,” said Roger Carstens, a former special operations officer who has served as a contracted military adviser in Somalia and Afghanistan. “That said, this new war will present an opportunity for the companies that have a resident train and advising capability to contribute to this new effort.”

President Obama has asked Congress to authorize $500 million to train a new Syrian opposition out of Saudi Arabia. That money would be part of a $5 billion fund Obama requested this spring from Congress to help train and equip U.S. allies to fight terrorists.

One U.S. military contractor working in Iraq who asked not to be named said, “I can tell you the contractor-expat community is abuzz thinking this will lead to more work. We expect a much larger footprint than he is showing right now.”

Those expectations were whet earlier this summer, as ISIS was gaining ground in northern Iraq and the first U.S. special operations teams were arriving in Iraq, when the Pentagon asked military contractors to participate in two important surveys.

The first one, issued in July, asked the industry to give a rough estimate of the costs associated with building a new network of ten ground based communications satellite stations, known as VSATs in military lingo. VSATs were used by the U.S. military in the last decade throughout Iraq to provide forward operating bases with secure internet and voice communications.

The second one was more specific. It asked for estimates of the cost for “Security Assistance Mentors and Advisers” for Iraq’s ministry of defense and the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service.

A Pentagon spokeswoman told the Daily Beast that the notice was not meant to be a request for proposal or the formal opening of the bidding process, but rather a chance to gauge the interest and capabilities of contractors down the road.

But contractors tell The Daily Beast that these bureaucratic notices—plus a pledge from Obama to wage a long war against ISIS and train up Syrian and Iraqi fighters—represent a business opportunity for an industry that has shrunk in recent years.

In 2008 there were 242,558 contractors working in the countries for U.S. Central Command, the area that includes Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen, three countries where the United States has helped train local forces and conducted air strikes, according to the Pentagon’s official estimate.

That was during the height of the last round of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By this July, that number had shrunk to 66,123, according to the Pentagon’s latest estimate of military contractors working in the countries covered by Central Command, with only 14,634 contractors operating outside of Afghanistan.

But that’s only a fraction of America’s privatized security apparatus operating overseas. The State Department also offers billions of dollars to conduct security for diplomats and other officials.  In 2011, the State Department awarded Triple Canopy a four year deal worth up to $1.5 billion to provide security for the airport in Baghdad, U.S. diplomats and other Americans in the country. A State Department audit of the contract (PDF) found that at a minimum the State Department overpaid for those services by millions.

“There has been consolidation after conflicts,” said Doug Brooks, the president emeritus of the International Stability Operations Association, a trade association for professional military contractors. “There is going to be business, you could say these are shoes instead of boots on the ground. But as in most cases these are going to be local faces who will be hired by these companies, who bring professionalism and training. They have been there already helping to build up the air force in Iraq. It won’t be like the past ten years, but there will be growth in services.”

The shrinking market for military contractors led some of them to seek new patrons. In 2010, for example, an African based military contractor named Saracen began training an anti-piracy force in Somalia with funding from the United Arab Emirates. When this reporter visited the base in 2012, it was a privately-run outpost in Puntland with its own electricity generator, barracks, armory with former South African military officers giving basic training to locals.

But that experience led to some instability. After one of the South African trainers was murdered in 2012 by one of the recruits, the United Arab Emirates pulled out of the project.

One reason why the new war on ISIS won’t be like the old one against al Qaeda is because for now Obama has promised not to send ground forces to Iraq or Syria. The presence of U.S. forces overseas presents a number of opportunities for military contractors in providing everything from the dining facilities to the logistical transport for U.S. soldiers at war.

Also the budgets to fight al Qaeda and other groups expanded dramatically after 9/11 when many government institutions did not know exactly how to fight the new war. Blackwater—the private military firm founded by former NAVY SEAL Erik Prince—became a virtual extension of the CIA’s special activities division working to develop the deadly capability to target and kill al Qaeda operatives all over the world.

It was also Blackwater contractors working in Iraq to protect diplomatic convoys that shot what the Iraqi government said were 17 innocent protestors in the heart of Baghdad at Nisour Square. (This summer, in the U.S. trial of the contractors, former employees of the company said they were responding to fire from the crowd.)

The legacy of Nisour square contributed to the decision of the Iraqi government in 2011 to decline to offer legal immunity to U.S. soldiers and military contractors. Carstens said that any new military contracts for Iraq that would involve training units of soldiers would have to include iron-clad guarantees that the contractors themselves would not be targeted by Iraqi courts. “The companies will need to know that their contractors in Iraq and other places will have legal protections in case anything happens,” he said.

Iraq recently promised immunity for U.S. troops—and it’s likely Baghdad will do the same for contractors too. After all, Iraq’s government has also formally requested U.S. assistance in fighting ISIS and that help was clearly going to include military contractors.

“They are looking for the next big meal ticket and this could be it,” said Sean McFate, a former military contractor for Dyncorp and the author of The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order. “The things they will provide are logistical support, training or retraining security forces.”

McFate said contractors gave Obama the opportunity to accomplish tasks normally associated with the U.S. military without sending boots on the ground. He said the training missions in particular “would look like Iraqi military boots on the ground and not the U.S. military.” But he said, “It’s a political disguise. This is an industry that is a proxy, it is creating the environment of security and protection without too many U.S. soldiers on the ground.”

Key Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, leave no doubt that endless war is official U.S. doctrine

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Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

– by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

Long before Americans were introduced to the new 9/11 era super-villains called ISIS and Khorasan, senior Obama officials were openly and explicitly stating that America’s “war on terror,” already 12 years old, would last at least another decade. At first, they injected these decrees only anonymously; in late 2012, The Washington Post – disclosing the administration’s secret creation of a “disposition matrix” to decide who should be killed, imprisoned without charges, or otherwise “disposed” of – reported these remarkable facts:

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”

In May, 2013, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether it should revise the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). A committee member asked a senior Pentagon official, Assistant Secretary Michael Sheehan, how long the war on terror would last; his reply: “At least 10 to 20 years.” At least. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed afterward “that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today — atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “Welcome to America’s Thirty Years War,” one which – by the Obama administration’s own reasoning – has “no geographic limit.”

Listening to all this, Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King said: “This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today.” Former Bush DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith – himself an ardent advocate of broad presidential powers – was at the hearing and noted that nobody even knows against whom this endless war is being waged: “Amazingly, there is a very large question even in the Armed Services Committee about who the United States is at war against and where, and how those determinations are made.”

All of that received remarkably little attention given its obvious significance. But any doubts about whether Endless War – literally – is official American doctrine should be permanently erased by this week’s comments from two leading Democrats, both former top national security officials in the Obama administration, one of whom is likely to be the next American president.

Leon Panetta, the long-time Democratic Party operative who served as Obama’s Defense Secretary and CIA Director, said this week of Obama’s new bombing campaign: “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war.” Only in America are new 30-year wars spoken of so casually, the way other countries speak of weather changes. He added that the war “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.” And elsewhere: not just a new decades-long war with no temporal limits, but no geographic ones either. He criticized Obama – who has bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries plus the Muslim minority in the Phillipines (almost double the number of countries Bush bombed) – for being insufficiently militaristic, despite the fact that Obama officials themselves have already instructed the public to think of The New War “in terms of years.”

Then we have Hillary Clinton (whom Panetta gushed would make a “great” president). At an event in Ottawa yesterday, she proclaimed that the fight against these “militants” will “be a long-term struggle” that should entail an “information war” as “well as an air war.” The new war, she said, is “essential” and the U.S. shies away from fighting it “at our peril.” Like Panetta (and most establishment Republicans), Clinton made clear in her book that virtually all of her disagreements with Obama’s foreign policy were the by-product of her view of Obama as insufficiently hawkish, militaristic and confrontational.

At this point, it is literally inconceivable to imagine the U.S. not at war. It would be shocking if that happened in our lifetime. U.S. officials are now all but openly saying this. “Endless War” is not dramatic rhetorical license but a precise description of America’s foreign policy.

It’s not hard to see why. A state of endless war justifies ever-increasing state power and secrecy and a further erosion of rights. It also entails a massive transfer of public wealth to the “homeland security” and weapons industry (which the US media deceptively calls the “defense sector”).

Just yesterday, Bloomberg reported: “Led by Lockheed Martin Group (LTM), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.” Particularly exciting is that “investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq”; moreover, “the U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.” ISIS is using U.S.-made ammunition and weapons, which means U.S. weapons companies get to supply all sides of The New Endless War; can you blame investors for being so giddy?

I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless. Both Bush and Obama officials have explicitly said that the war will last at least a generation. The nature of the “war,” and the theories that have accompanied it, is that it has no discernible enemy and no identifiable limits. More significantly, this “war” fuels itself, provides its own inexhaustible purpose, as it is precisely the policies justified in the name of Stopping Terrorism that actually ensure its spread (note how Panetta said the new U.S. war would have to include Libya, presumably to fight against those empowered by the last U.S. war there just 3 years ago).

This war – in all its ever-changing permutations – thus enables an endless supply of power and profit to flow to those political and economic factions that control the government regardless of election outcomes. And that’s all independent of the vicarious sense of joy, purpose and fulfillment which the sociopathic Washington class derives from waging risk-free wars, as Adam Smith so perfectly described in Wealth of Nations 235 years ago:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace.They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war. 

The last thing the Washington political class and the economic elites who control it want is for this war to end. Anyone who doubts that should just look at the express statements from these leading Democrats, who wasted no time at all seizing on the latest Bad Guys to justify literally decades more of this profiteering and war-making.

Ex-Pentagon chief predicts 30-year ISIS war

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Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to 'repair the damage' by showing leadership after having 'lost his way' in the fight against ISIS. (File Photo: AFP)

Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to ‘repair the damage’ by showing leadership after having ‘lost his way’ in the fight against ISIS. (File Photo: AFP)

– by Al Arabiya News

The war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) could go on for decades because of poor decision-making on the part of the U.S. administration, the former chief of the Pentagon Leon Panetta said in an interview published Monday.

In the interview with USA Today, Panetta also criticized Obama for a deciding not the arm the moderate Syrian rebels in the early stages of the conflict in Syria.

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war” that could extend to threats in Libya, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, Panetta told the newspaper.

Panetta, a respected policymaker who served under Obama, blamed the challenges on decisions the president made over the past three years.

Among those decisions, he cited Obama’s failure to push the Iraqi government hard enough to allow a residual U.S. force to stay in the country after troops withdrew in 2011, saying that created a security “vacuum.”

The former defense secretary also pointed to Obama’s rejection of advice in 2012 from Panetta and then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton to begin arming Syrian rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad.

“I do think we would be in a better position to kind of know whether or not there is some moderate element in the rebel forces that are confronting Assad,” Panetta said.

And Panetta said Obama lost credibility when he warned Assad not to use chemical weapons against his own people and then failed to act when the Syrian leader crossed that “red line” last year.

Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to “repair the damage” by showing leadership after having “lost his way” in the fight against the extremist group that has seized chunks of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The former Pentagon chief was speaking ahead of the release of his new book, “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace,” set for Tuesday by Penguin Press.

USA Today said that Panetta is explicitly critical Obama in his book, writing that his “most conspicuous weakness” was “a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause.”

The president too often “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader,” the former defense chief added, saying that approach means Obama “avoids the battle, complains and misses opportunities.”

At times, Obama “gets so discouraged by the process” that he sometimes stops fighting, Panetta told USA Today.

But Panetta also expressed hope Obama would change course during his last two years in office and recover from his mistakes.

“My hope is that the president, recognizing that we are at a kind of critical point in his administration, will take the bit in his teeth and will say, ‘We have got to solve these problems,’” Panetta said.

(With AFP)

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