Evo Morales: Ten commandments against capitalism, for life and humanity

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

We share this planet; we do not own it.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HELP THE PLANET TODAY?


“Our vision of the Communitarian Socialism of Living Well is based on rights and not on the market. It is based on the full realization of human happiness of peoples and populations, through the full complementarity of the rights of peoples, persons, states and Mother Earth”


On December 21, at a solstice celebration in Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes, Bolivian president Evo Morales introduced the “Manifesto of Isla del Sol.”  His talk, translated below, includes the full text of the manifesto.

“Vivir Bien” has long been a key element in Morales’ political philosophy. The phrase literally means “living well,” but its meaning in Bolivia is closer to “living in the right way” or “living appropriately, so that others may also live.”

Thanks to Richard Fidler for the translation, which was first published, along with his introduction and commentary, on Life on the Left.


Click image for the original Spanish edition of the Manifesto of Isla del Sol. The cover shows Morales arriving at the Island of the Sun in a replica of the balsa rafts that Andean peoples used for centuries on Lake Titicaca

Click image for the original Spanish edition of the Manifesto of Isla del Sol. The cover shows Morales arriving at the Island of the Sun in a replica of the reed boats that Andean peoples used for centuries on Lake Titicaca

TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR CONFRONTING CAPITALISM
AND CONSTRUCTING
A CULTURE OF LIFE

Sisters and brothers, I want to express my surprise at the size of this huge gathering that today brings together, on this Isla del Sol, sisters and brothers from Abya Yala, America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Greetings to our Vice-President of Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera; to the Vice-President of Nicaragua, Moisés Omar Halleslevens Acevedo; to the Minister of Communications and Information of Venezuela, Ernesto Villegas, and to the deputy ministers of Venezuela for Latin America and the Caribbean, Verónica Guerrero, and for North America, Claudia Salerno; to the Minister of Culture of Cuba, Rafael Bernal Alemany; to the ministers and ambassadors of Bolivia, of all of America, of Asia and of Europe.

Greetings, as well, to our leaders, men and women who are leading the social movements and organizations of the various sectors that were debating around this 21st of December and expressing some profound thoughts on political, economic, social issues and on the environment and Mother Earth. They are engaged in an ongoing debate about equality and social justice.

Today we are all reunited here, in the time of Pachakuti, in the time of change.

The Isla del Sol, the birth of a new time

From the Isla del Sol, from the Sacred Lake Titikaka that we share between Peru and Bolivia, we want to tell you that we are reunited today, the 21st of December 2012, not in the expectation that the world is to end, as some were saying. The world will never come to an end. We are here to provide hope in this new dawn for the peoples of the world.

In this Isla del Sol, where a thousand years ago the time of the sun began, Manco Kapac and Mama Ocllo, who were to found Tahuantinsuyo, were born. That is why this island is the founding island of the time and the history of the children of the sun. But later, darkness arrived with the foreign invaders. Emboldened by greed, they came to our continent, Abya Yala, to subject the indigenous nations. It was the time of darkness, of pain and sadness, a time that for the children of the Willka was a time of no time.

Today, from this same island that gave birth to Tahuantinsuyo, we are closing the epoch of darkness and of no time, and we are opening a new time of light: the Pachakuti.

Again, the peoples of the world, the social movements, the marginalized people, discriminated, humiliated, are organizing, mobilizing, gaining consciousness and arising again as in those times of the Pacha, the times of Pachakuti.

That is why, sisters and brothers, this great unprecedented historical event is a great surprise, as it is, too, for our brothers in Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador and in other countries of the world that today are mobilizing to receive the Pacha.

This morning, with the brother Vice-President Álvaro García and with the brother Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Choquehuanca, we were informed that the peoples of North America, both in Canada and in the United States, are mobilizing to express their hope in this summer solstice.

Sisters, brothers: The world is being hit by a world-wide multiple crisis that is manifested in a climate, financial, food, institutional, cultural, ethical and spiritual crisis. This crisis indicates to us that we are living in the final days of capitalism and unbridled consumerism; that is, of a model of society in which human beings claim to be superior to Mother Earth, converting nature into an object of their merciless predatory domination.

The ideologues of capitalism argue that the following are the solutions to the crisis of the capitalist system:

On the one hand, more capitalism, more privatization, more commoditization, more consumerism, more irrational and predatory exploitation of natural resources and more protection for companies and private profit.

On the other hand, fewer social rights, less public health, less public and free education, and less protection for human rights.

Today the societies and peoples of the developed countries are tragically experiencing the capitalist crisis created by its own market. Capitalist governments think that it is more important to save the banks than to save human beings, and it is more important to save the companies than to save people. In the capitalist system the banks have priority economic rights and enjoy first-class citizenship, which is why we can say that the banks are worth more than life. In this unfettered capitalism, individuals and peoples are not brothers and sisters, they are not citizens, they are not human beings; individuals and peoples are debt defaulters, borrowers, tenants and clients; in short, if people do not have money, they are nothing.

We are living in the kingdom of the colour green. Green like dollars are the monetary policies, green like dollars are the development policies, green like dollars are the housing policies, green like dollars are the human development policies and environmental policies. That is why, faced with the new wave of crisis of the capitalist system, its ideologues have come out in favour of privatizing nature through the so-called green economy or green capitalism.

However, the recipes of the market, of liberalism, of privatization simply generate poverty and exclusion, hunger and marginalization.

The images that unfettered capitalism leaves to the world are sinister:

  1. More than 850 million hungry people in the world, almost 200 million more than those who existed 30 years ago;
  2. Life expectancy of the poorest in the world continues to be the same as it was in 1977, that is 44 years of age;
  3. Approximately 1.3 billion people live in conditions of poverty;
  4. There are close to 230 million unemployed in the world, 40 million more than there were 30 years ago;
  5. Finally, the developed countries annually waste 700 million tons of food, that is, three times more than what Sub-Saharan Africa produces in a year.

Among the structural causes of the global crisis of capitalism are the following:

  1. The accumulation and concentration of wealth in a few countries and in small privileged social groups,
  2. The concentration of capital in production and marketing of resources and goods that produce the quickest and greatest profit,
  3. Promotion of massive and excessive social consumption of products in the belief that to have more is to live better,
  4. Massive production of disposable products to enrich capital and increase the ecological footprint,
  5. Excessive and unsustainable extractivist productivist use of renewable and non-renewable natural resources at high environmental costs,
  6. Concentration of capital in processes of financial speculation for the purpose of generating quick and generous profits,
  7. Concentration of knowledge and technology in the rich countries and in the richest and most powerful social groups,
  8. Promotion of financial practices and extractive and commercial productive schemes that undermine the economy and sovereignty of states, particularly in the developing countries, monopolizing the control of natural resources and their earnings,
  9. Reduction of the role of states to that of weak regulators, converting large investors into managers of the property of others, and states and peoples into weak servants or partners with the myth that foreign investment can solve everything.

Sisters and brothers of the world: Capitalism has created a civilization that is wasteful, consumerist, exclusive, clientelist, a generator of opulence and misery. That is the pattern of life, production and consumption that we urgently need to transform.

The planet and humanity are in serious danger of extinction. The forests are in danger, biodiversity is in danger, the rivers and oceans are in danger and the earth is in danger. This beautiful human community that inhabits our Mother Earth is in danger owing to the climate crisis.

The causes of this climate crisis are directly related to the accumulation and concentration of wealth in a few countries and in small social groups; to massive, excessive and expensive consumption resulting from the belief that to have more is to live better; to pollutant production of disposable goods to enrich capital, increasing the ecological footprint; as well as the excessive and unsustainable extractive use for production of renewable and non-renewable natural resources at high environmental costs.

Sisters and brothers: The Plurinational State of Bolivia, echoing the voice of the world’s peoples, accepts an ethical obligation to the planet and advocates the need for human beings to recover a sense of unity and relevancy with Mother Earth.

We are in a crucial moment for the definition of the future of our planet. In our hands and in our consciousness lies the responsibility to agree on the road we are going to follow to guarantee the eradication of poverty, the distribution and redistribution of wealth, and the creation and strengthening of our social, material and spiritual conditions in order to live in harmony and equilibrium with nature.

The rich and industrialized countries must contribute to promoting the socialization of wealth and welfare in harmony with nature while the poor and developing countries must distribute the little wealth that they have. There is no future for humanity if egoism and greed prevail, with the accumulation and ostentation that are part of a system in which he who has more rules over those without. We must share and complement each other in knowledge, wealth, humanity and respect for nature.

This 21st of December is the day of the initiation of the Pachakuti, which translates into the awakening of the world to the culture of life. It is the beginning of the end of unfettered capitalism as well as the transition from the time of violence between human beings and violence to nature to a new time in which human beings will constitute a unity with Mother Earth and all will live in harmony and equilibrium with the cosmos as a whole.

This day is for the age-old societies the moment when major telluric-cosmic changes will occur in the planet and it is the omen that the culture of death, hunger and injustice will have reached its end. It means the end of a state of things and the beginning of profound changes in the world.

Likewise, this new time must be the beginning of the end of the monarchies, the hierarchies, the oligarchies and the anarchies of the market and of capital.

The Pachakuti has arrived, and you who now join with us in the sacred Isla del Sol, in Lake Titikaka, we are the Rainbow Warriors, we are the warriors of Vivir Bien [Living Well], we are the insurgents of the world.

In this context, let us suggest ten commandments to confront capitalism and construct the culture of life:

1. IN POLITICS:
Refound democracy and politics, empowering the poor and serving the peoples

The world is experiencing a crisis of political systems because they no longer represent the peoples, they are elitist, exclusive, governed by oligarchical leaderships with the vision of filling the pockets of a few and not serving the people. The so-called democracies are the pretext for handing over the natural resources to transnational capital. In those false democracies, politics has been converted into an instrument for profit and not a vocation of service. Anachronistic forms of governments still survive that no longer respond to the demands of the world’s peoples. We must refound democracy. We do not want a colonial democracy in which the politicians are an aristocratic class and not militants in the cause of the poor and of service to the poor.

Democracy is not viable if it does not empower the poor, the marginalized, and does not respond first and foremost to the urgent needs of the neediest. A democracy in which a few become rich and the majority become poor is not a democracy.

Refounding democracy, refounding states, refounding republics and refounding politics requires the following actions, among others:

  1. Refound the political systems, burying all forms of hierarchy, monarchy, oligarchy and the anarchy of the market and of capital. Democracy is the government of the peoples and not of the market.
  2. Go beyond representative democracy, in which power is at the service of the interests of the elites and minorities, to communal democracy in which there are neither majorities nor minorities, but instead decisions are taken by consensus, and it is reason that prevails, not votes.
  3. Promote the idea that political action means full and ongoing service to life, that is, in turn, an ethical, human and moral commitment to our peoples, recovering the codes of our ancestors: do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy and do not be obsequious.
  4. Service to the fatherland cannot be understood as using the fatherland as if it were a business; politicians cannot employ the administrative, legal and economic instruments of the state for their private and personal interests.
  5. The people, through their social and community organizations, must take political power, building new forms of plurinational states, so that we shall govern ourselves within the framework of mandar obedeciendo (leading by obeying).

2. IN SOCIAL LIFE:
Greater social and human rights, vs. the commoditization of human needs

An insulting and outrageous reality that persists in today’s world is the gap between rich and poor, the result of unequal distribution of income and unequal and discriminatory access to basic services. Capital and the market are no solution to inequality and poverty; they only privatize services and profit from needs. We have had a tragic experience with the privatization of basic services, especially water.

To overcome the serious social inequalities, it is necessary to undertake the following actions, among others:

  1. It is imperative that we recognize, in international legislation and in national standards in all countries, that basic services such as water, electricity, communications and basic sanitation are a fundamental human right of the people in all corners of the planet.
  2. In particular, water must be an essential human right because it bears directly on the development of life of all beings on the planet and is a fundamental component in the mobilization of all productive processes.
  3. In addition to the recognition of basic services as a human right, we must proceed with the nationalization of those services, since private owners exclude the majority of the population from access to services that are fundamental to life, giving them an economic value that is unattainable for many.
  4. There is a need to concentrate more economic resources in the hands of the state and to create mechanisms for distribution of this wealth between the regions and among the people who are the neediest and most vulnerable, in order to eliminate in the next few years all forms of social, material and spiritual poverty in the world through the democratization of economic wealth.
  5. It is necessary to develop the formation of a new, full human being who is neither materialist nor a consumer, but focused consistently on the search for Living Well, with a profound revolutionary ethics based on harmony and solidarity, recognizing that all the peoples of the world make up a great family.
  6. We must end the transnational monopoly of the pharmaceutical industry and recover and strengthen our ancestral and natural medicinal knowledges and practices.

3. IN CULTURAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE:
Decolonize our peoples and our cultures, to build a communitarian socialism of living well

Sisters and brothers: We are living in a society in which everything is globalized and homogenized, in which cultural identities seem to smack of the past that everyone wants to ignore. The ancient and ancestral cultures are marginalized in economic and political processes and their cultural and spiritual force and energy are discounted. This has led to a profound dehumanization in the world and discrimination in the spiritual and cultural resources that can give us the necessary strengths to stop the brutality of capitalism. We must:

  1. Decolonize ourselves of racism, fascism and all types of discrimination.
  2. Decolonize ourselves of commoditization and consumerism, luxury, egoism and greed, and promote Living Well.
  3. Recover the knowledges and codes of the ancient cultures of the world, to strengthen the awareness of individuals and societies of Mother Earth, understanding what it means to be a living and sacred being, that we are her daughters and sons and we are nourished by her, respecting the cycles of nature and understanding that all existing things are part of the balance and harmony of life. We are born from the womb of Mother Earth and we shall return to her womb.
  4. Where there are multiple cultures in countries it is imperative to promote the construction of plurinational states that respect social, economic, legal and cultural pluralism.

4. IN RESPECT TO THE ENVIRONMENT:
For the rights of Mother Earth, to live well and in opposition to the environmental colonialism of the green economy

In recent years the ideologists of the capitalist system have promoted the “green economy” as the salvation of this model of society. This simply means the commoditization of nature in the context of a green capitalism. The green economy is the economy of death, because in the context of protectionism of nature it is a death sentence for the world’s peoples. That is why we condemn the green economy as the new environmental colonialism and green capitalism. Similarly, the climate crisis of the planet is a matter of concern to us because the human community that inhabits our Mother Earth is in imminent danger owing to the catastrophic consequences of natural disasters.

To transform this situation the peoples of the world must promote the following actions:

  1. Demand that the countries that have caused the climate crisis fulfil their historic responsibility to pay the climate debt to the peoples of the South, and drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions within the framework of binding international agreements.
  2. We must implement the policies and actions that are needed to prevent and avoid the exhaustion of natural resources, accepting that life depends on sustaining the capacity for regeneration of the life systems of Mother Earth and the full and sustainable management of their components. We must always bear in mind that the planet can live better without human beings but human beings cannot live without the planet.
  3. This is the century of the battle for universal recognition of the rights of Mother Earth in all legislation, treaties and national and international agreements, so that we human beings begin to live in harmony and equilibrium with the cosmos.
  4. The countries of the world must promote decisively and aggressively the non-commercialization of the environmental functions and natural processes of Mother Earth, as well as the integral and sustainable management of her components. We cannot sell our sacred Mother Earth solely on the basis of false illusions that markets will promote some financing for our peoples. Our peoples and Mother Earth cannot now or ever be for sale.

5. IN RESPECT TO NATURAL RESOURCES:
Sovereignty over natural resources is a requisite for liberation from colonial and neoliberal domination and for the full development of peoples

In many countries the principal source of economic wealth is based on the use of natural resources. However, in most countries this wealth has been looted and appropriated in private hands and by transnational powers that enrich themselves at the expense of the peoples. We call on countries to develop the following actions in relation to natural resources:

  1. Put ownership of natural resources in the state, to benefit the peoples so they are oriented toward the enjoyment and benefit of all.
  2. In all countries that have strategic natural resources, promote the implementation of processes of nationalization, since it is only through such nationalization that we can stop the processes of economic colonialism and ensure the reinforcement of the state with economic resources that in turn promote better basic services for their peoples.
  3. Develop processes of industrialization of those natural resources, always bearing in mind the need for protection and respect for the rights of Mother Earth.

6. IN RELATION TO FOOD SOVEREIGNTY:
Know how to feed ourselves in order to live well, promoting the attainment of food sovereignty and the human right to food

The discussion of food security has been carried on world-wide from differing perspectives and approaches, such as food security, food sovereignty and the human right to food. Food is central to the life of individuals and the attainment of Living Well, and that is why states and peoples must promote a set of actions:

  1. To progress in the construction of “Knowing How to Feed Oneself in order to Live Well,” recovering the food knowledges and productive technologies of community nutrition, in which foods are medicine and part of our cultural identity.
  2. To try to guarantee in each country the basic foods consumed by its population through strengthening the economic, productive, social, cultural, political and ecological systems of rural producers, with an emphasis on community family agriculture.
  3. To protect the population from the effects of malnutrition, with an emphasis on controlling the marketing of foods that are harmful to human health.
  4. To punish financial speculation based on the production and marketing of food.

7. IN RESPECT TO INTEGRATION AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS:
The alliance of the peoples of the South against interventionism, neoliberalism and colonialism

Our ancestral peoples always lived integrated in cultures, integrated in trade, integrated in solidarity and in networks of collaboration. Today we must construct and strengthen our agreements of integration between peoples and communities, between states and governments, in a framework of support, collaboration and solidarity in order to strengthen life and humanity.

Faced with the diplomacy of death and war, commoditization, privatization, the plunder of natural resources, we must ourselves build the diplomacy of the peoples of the South in order to strengthen ourselves from the South.

The South is not and cannot be an obedient and servile pawn of the powers of the North. We are not the dump for the industrial and nuclear waste of the powers of the North, nor are we their inexhaustible source of raw materials. The South is emerging with the power of the peoples and the patriotic and sovereign governments, and is constructing projects of commercial, productive, cultural, technological, economic, financial and social integration. This is a time in which the peoples of the South, and together with the peoples of the North, must share, support ourselves and strengthen ourselves socially, economically and culturally.

Integration is conditional upon reliance on strong states and peoples, nationalist, patriotic, socialist governments with political will and national control, with projects and strategies for regional alliances to form a South that is building projects for regional power and integration.

The power of the South is its sovereignty, the right to development, the support and solidarity of peoples and states. The South is becoming stronger, becoming harmonized. There can be no strong South without sovereignty, patriotism, nationalism, a desire of peoples and states to break the chains of colonial and neoliberal servitude.

To achieve South-South integration, we must promote the following actions:

  1. Form powerful coalitions and alliances to underwrite Agreements of Life and to share knowledges, technology and provision of financial resources, and not Free Trade Agreements, which are treaties of death for the peoples of the South as well as for the peoples of the North.
  2. Construct a mechanism for integral development and integration between the states and peoples of the South that includes, among other things, areas of knowledge, technology, energy, food production, financing, health and education.
  3. Move ahead in the twinning of the peoples of the South with those of the North, to destroy imperialism and build the civilizing horizon of Living Well in harmony and equilibrium with Mother Earth.

8. IN RESPECT TO KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY:
Knowledge and Technology are fundamental tools to achieve integral development and the eradication of poverty and hunger

Knowledge and technology are fundamental to the provision of means of communication, education, basic services and industrial and energy projects, the transformation of raw materials and the production of food; in short, to drive our economies. Today the developed countries blindly protect their technologies through patents and licences and prevent us from accessing them. If we want technology we have to enter their technology markets. There is no solidarity, no technological complementarity possible with the developed countries. The monopoly of technology is an instrument of power to control the developing countries. The transnational powers of the rich developed countries and imperialism do not share technology because they only want to sell it in order to dominate us and create dependency.

That is why, now more than ever, it is fundamental to promote the following actions:

  1. Build convergence between the ancestral and community knowledges, wisdom, techniques and technologies and the practices and technologies of modern science in order to help create conditions for Living Well and protection of Mother Earth.
  2. Develop our own knowledge and technologies that break the technological dependency on the transnational powers of the North.
  3. In opposition to the commoditized egoism of the transnational powers of the North let us build collaboration, solidarity and complementarity of the peoples and countries of the South together with the peoples of the North.

9. IN RESPECT TO INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONALITY:
We must construct a world institutionality of the peoples, of the poor, of Mother Earth. We do not accept or permit interventionism or neoliberalism by the United Nations or the institutionality of the empire of capital

The colonial global institutionality is designed to subject and deceive the peoples. In the name of freedom and democracy organizations like NATO, including the UN through the renowned Security Council, invade countries, destroy peoples, legalize and assist in massacres. We cannot allow or admit the construction of military bases and war industries to dominate the peoples on the pretext of national security. The main thing is the security of the peoples, life and Mother Earth. The arms build-up is the business of death that enriches capitalism and destroys the planet.

The global institutional machinery of the so-called United Nations is designed to destroy the sovereign will of the peoples. That is where a bureaucracy works in the service of capital and imperialism. We, the peoples of the world, do not accept that international organizations should appropriate to themselves the right of invasion and intervention. The UN has no morality to impose. We, the peoples of the world, do not accept this elitist institutionality of the bureaucrats of the empire.

It was in the bowels of the UN that the privatizing green economy originated, which we understand as the black economy of death; from those entrails originate the recipes for privatization and interventionism. The UN seems to be the Organization for the Rich and Powerful Countries; perhaps it should be named the INO, Imperialist Nations Organization. That UN we do not want, we disown it.

That neoliberal bureaucracy, the bureaucracy of the green economy and privatization, the bureaucracy that promotes structural adjustments, those functionaries of capital and ideologists of domination and poverty, act with the patriarchal and colonial conviction that the peoples and developing countries are incapable and stupid and that to emerge from poverty we must faithfully follow their development recipes.

To construct a new institutionality of the peoples of the world, aimed at Living Well, we must develop the following actions:

  1. Build the institutional and legal conditions for our peoples and countries to live in dignity and sovereignty without interventionism and without foreign military bases.
  2. Free ourselves from the ideological and political bonds of the global financial agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and their satellites and intellectuals of neoliberal domination, and build our own institutions to design and advise on policies aimed at Living Well.
  3. Build a World Organization of the Poor, a World Organization of Justice, a World Organization of Sovereignty of the Peoples, a World Organization of Mother Earth, an Organization of the Assembly of the Peoples of the World.

10. IN THE ECONOMICS OF FINANCE:
Economic development must not be oriented to the market, to capital and to profit; development must be comprehensive and be oriented to human happiness, harmony and equilibrium with Mother Earth

Capitalism only globalizes poverty, hunger, and social injustice, destroys human rights and social, economic and cultural rights, and destroys the environment. Unfettered capitalism creates poverty and hunger. The global capitalist financial system is colonialist and imperialist, it is a weapon of the powerful countries for subjection of the developing countries and peoples, for privatization and commoditization, for subjecting us to the control of the oligarchies and the commoditizing anarchy of capital.

That is why we must disown and dismantle the international financial system and its satellites, the IMF and World Bank.

We call on the peoples and governments of the world to break the chains of this slavery by financial colonialism, because only financial and economic sovereignty can allow us to decide our future in a sovereign way.

To achieve sovereignty in economy and finance, we are challenged to take the following actions:

  1. We must configure a new international economic and financial order based on the principles of equity, national sovereignty, common interests, harmony with nature, cooperation and solidarity between states and peoples. This new order must be oriented to changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, substantially reducing the gap between rich and poor and between the developed and developing countries.
  2. We must build a new global, regional and national architecture and financial system that is free of the bonds and tentacles of power of the World Bank and IMF. A new architecture and a new financial order of the peoples and for the peoples.
  3. It is essential to build new legal and institutional frameworks at the national and international level and to develop a system of regulation and supervision of the financial sector. States and peoples have to control private finance and not be subject to the colonial servility of financial governance by private interests.
  4. We must free ourselves from that colonial bond called the External Debt, which serves only to blackmail us, to oblige us to hand over our assets and privatize our natural resources, and to destroy the sovereignty of peoples and states. The colonial External Debt is the mechanism of exaction and impoverishment that afflicts the developing countries and limits their access to development. We call for cancelling this unjust External Debt. No more inequality. No more poverty. It is time to distribute the wealth.
  5. As developing countries, we must create our own financial instruments. We must create the World Bank of the Poor and of the Sovereign Peoples of the World. We cannot depend on the donations and conditional loans of the capitalist colonial financial system. We must unite and integrate, and that means building our own financial, popular, community, state and sovereign financial systems.
  6. Build and strengthen regional markets based on solidarity and complementarity, substituting policies of complementarity arising out of the civilizing horizon of Living Well in place of the policies of competitiveness promoted by capitalism.

Our vision of the Communitarian Socialism of Living Well is based on rights and not on the market, it is based on the full realization of human happiness of peoples and populations, through the full complementarity of the rights of peoples, persons, states and Mother Earth in a complementary, inclusive and interdependent way.

The new epoch is that of the power of labour, the power of the communities, the power of solidarity of the peoples and the communion of all living beings so that together we constitute Mother Earth and the Communitarian Socialism of Living Well.

Sisters and brothers: I thank you for your patience in listening to this Manifesto of the Isla del Sol, which expresses ten commandments for Life and for Humanity. It is a Manifesto based on the experience of the Bolivian people, which can support the liberation of all the peoples of the world.

Sisters and brothers, leaders of Abya Yala, of America and the world, as a people and as social forces we have a huge responsibility: to save the planet, to save life and humanity. So we thank you for your presence on this historic day of the Summer Solstice, the beginning of the time of the Pachakuti.

Finally, I want to thank the original indigenous communities of the Isla del Sol for having allowed us to share our experiences. I thank the social organizations, the Armed Forces, the ministries, our departmental and national leaders for organizing an excellent festival of hope for the peoples of the world.

Join with me in saying:

Jallalla, peoples of the world!

Kausachun, peoples of the world!



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Net neutrality and the socialist moment

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Originally published: Canadian Dimension by Christo Aivalis (December 11, 2017)

In recent months, one of the United States’ most important debates has revolved around the broad concept of Net Neutrality (NN). Without delving into the technicalities, the concept of NN is that internet service providers (ISPs) cannot privilege or restrict internet data. Basically, once you’ve purchased your internet package with the requisite bandwidth parameters, your ISP cannot make your access to a certain site easier or harder, faster or slower.


But with developments in the United States, NN appears to be on its way out, which will give ISPs much greater leeway in how they can shape people’s internet experience. For instance, an ISP can form an official partnership with a streaming service, and in so doing, could restrict or slowdown access to all other streaming services. Without hyperbole, American internet users could in the near future see Verizon partner with Amazon Prime, making it harder for the former’s customers to use Netflix. More seriously, ISP’s could—based on financial or ideological objectives—prevent or promote access to certain digital news outlets. In such an environment, there’s nothing to stop American ISPs from systematically restricting access to strident left-wing journalism, including from this very website.But beyond these obviously disconcerting scenarios, why does the NN debate matter for the Canadian left specifically, and the general left more broadly? For Canadians, it matters because while NN in Canada doesn’t appear to be under assault from the current government, ISPs in Canada have been emboldened by the victories of their corporate analogues south of the border. Further, the fight against NN has been recently picked up by former Industry Minister and runner-up for the Conservative leadership Maxime Bernier. In both Bernier and the ISPs views, NN is little more than state interference into the rights of consumers and companies alike.


This is where the socialist moment reveals itself on the question of Net Neutrality. While many defenders of a free internet have made the argument that NN is actually the free-market capitalist way to run the internet, and the non-NN position is a ‘crony-capitalist’ bastardization, the reality is that opponents of NN are sincerely defending the ideals of liberal capitalism. They are quite correct—by the letter of capitalist law—that ISPs should be more than allowed to partner with certain websites to prioritize bandwidth to that site, or should be allowed to flex their market muscles to restrict access to their competitors’ holdings.Here’s the crux of the issue: many people see capitalism as synonymous with the free market. But what this episode has shown us, more than anything else, is that the free flow of information exists not because of capitalism, but in spite of it. Capitalism is not a system of free exchange; rather, it is a system of profit maximization for those who own the capital. In some cases this may coincide with what are understood as free markets, but in a great many cases capitalists profit most by restricting the freedom of others, be it their workers, their consumers, or democratic institutions. The reality is that if we allow major companies even more discretion in how they shape the internet, we will see an aggregate decline in freedom for the average internet user.


But the solution isn’t only the reversal of the United States’ current course away from NN, but an increased realization that the internet in our modern era must be seen—and treated—as a basic utility, the access to which should be seen as fundamental, and the control of which should be wrought through the state, and not private corporations. We must—in simple terms—nationalize and democratize the internet.As a baseline, the public should own the infrastructure that provides internet access, and should either directly own, or substantively control, the companies that currently act as ISPs. But over the longer term, it may need to go farther than that. One concept the NN debate has outlined is how a few powerful companies can induce the government to introduce a policy so wrong-headed that it benefits virtually no one but those companies. Essentially, this highlights the fatal limitations of liberal democratic institutions without the presence of economic democracy.It also shows plainly that the issues with the internet go beyond service providers and reach to some of the largest players like Facebook, Amazon, and Google, who control such a substantive proportion of their respective market shares that they are part of a narrow digital oligopoly. They have such power that they collect personal data on a mass scale, hold cities at ransom in the hopes of landing their warehouses, and propose to mould our public spaces using privately-owned and designed algorithms.

The fight for Net Neutrality is but the first salvo in a longer battle over the age-old debates about democracy. The left has to realize that the first stage of this battle is on easily winnable grounds. Capitalists and their ideological brethren have lined up to fight NN as a barrier towards their profit-making enterprise, and socialists can make the case that if capitalism means antagonism to the very concept that manifests a free internet, perhaps the owners of private industry shouldn’t be trusted with other important aspects of our daily lives. Winning this second stage—questioning the undemocratic ownership of major industry in general—is a harder slog altogether, but it must be won. We cannot have a democratic society where the internet is either constrained by ISPs, or dominated by a scant few companies. We cannot choose. The people—either directly or through their duly elected representatives—must control their own public venues, and in the 21st century, the internet is undeniably one of those most important public spaces. As British socialist Harold Laski once said:

The early history of socialism is most largely the record of a perception that the concentration of property…in a few hands is fatal to the purpose of the State…It is overwhelmingly right in its insistence that either the State must dominate property, or property will dominate the State.

This is a great opportunity for democratic socialists but only if the message is cast consistently and thoroughly that the fight for Net Neutrality is in reality a battle against capitalism’s logical conclusions.  


About the Author
 Christo Aivalis is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. His dissertation examined Pierre Trudeau’s relationship with organized labour and the CCF-NDP, and is being published with UBC Press in March 2018. His work has appeared in the Canadian Historical Review, Labour/le Travail, This Magazine Our Times Magazine, Ricochet, and Canadian Dimension. He has also served as a contributor to the Canadian Press, Toronto Star, CTV and CBC. His current project is a biography of Canadian labour leader A.R. Mosher. 

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Debunking the flagwaving myths about an attack on North Korea

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Debunking the flagwaving myths about an attack on North Korea

(This analysis was written for the Unz Review)

First, the bragging dummies

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]rump and Haley are still at it.  They want to force China to take action against the DPRK by threatening to take North Korea “into their hands” if China refuses to comply.  Haley saidBut to be clear, China can do more (…) and we’re putting as much pressure on them as we can. The last time they completely cut off the oil, North Korea came to the table. And so we’ve told China they’ve got to do more. If they don’t do more, we’re going to take it into our own hands and then we’ll start to deal with secondary sanctions.”

First, let’s reset this scene in a kindergarten and replay it.

Kid A has a fight with Kid B.  Kid A threatens to beat up Kid B.  Kid B then tells Kid A to go screw himself.  Kid A does nothing, but issues more threats.  Kid B keeps laughing.  And then Kid A comes up with a brilliant plan: he threatens Kid C (who is much much bigger than Kid B and much much stronger too!) by telling him “if you don’t make Kid B comply with my demands, I will take the issue in my own hands!“.  The entire schoolyard erupts in hysterical laughter.

Question: how would you rate the the intelligence of Kid A?

Anyway,

This would all be really funny if this was a comedy show.  But what this all is in reality is a slow but steady progression towards war.  What makes this even worse is the media’s obsession with the range of North Korean missiles and whether they can reach Guam or even the USA.  With all due respect for the imperial “only we matter” (and nevermind the gooks), there are ways “we”, i.e. the American people can suffer terrible consequences from a war in the Korean Peninsula which have nothing to do with missile strikes on Guam or the USA.

The lucrative target: Japan

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his summer I mentioned one of the most overlooked potential consequences of a war with the DPRK and I want to revisit this issue again.  First, the relevant excerpt from the past article:

While I personally believe that Kim Jong-un is not insane and that the main objective of the North Korean leadership is to avoid a war at all costs, what if I am wrong?  What if those who say that the North Korean leaders are totally insane are right? Or, which I think is much more likely, what if Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leaders came to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose, that the Americans are going to kill them all, along with their families and friends?  What could they, in theory, do if truly desperate?  Well, let me tell you: forget about Guam; think Tokyo!  Indeed, while the DPRK could devastate Seoul with old fashioned artillery systems, DPRK missiles are probably capable of striking Tokyo or the Keihanshin region encompassing Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe including the key industries of the Hanshin Industrial Region.  The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) and the Keihanshin region are very densely populated (37 and 20 million people respectively) and contain an immense number of industries, many of which would produce an ecological disaster of immense proportions if hit by missiles.  Not only that, but a strike on the key economic and financial nodes of Japan would probably result in a 9-11 kind of international economic collapse.  So if the North Koreans wanted to really, really hurt the Americans what they could do is strike Seoul, and key cities in Japan resulting in a huge political crisis for the entire planet.  During the Cold War we used to study the consequences of a Soviet strike against Japan and the conclusion was always the same: Japan cannot afford a war of any kind.  The Japanese landmass is too small, too densely populated, to rich in lucrative targets and a war would lay waste to the entire country. This is still true today, only more so.  And just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles!  The South Koreans have already made their position unambiguously clear, by the way. As for the Japanese, they are officially placing their hopes in missiles (as if technology could mitigate the consequences of insanity!).  So yeah, the DPRK is plenty dangerous and pushing them into their last resort is totally irresponsible indeed, nukes or no nukes.

Yet, for some reason, the western media rarely mentions Japan or the possible global economic consequences of a strike against Japan.  Very few people know for sure whether the North Koreans truly have developed a usable nuclear weapon (warhead and missile) or whether the North Korean ballistic missile truly can reach Guam or the USA.  But I don’t think that there is any doubt whatsoever that North Korean missiles can easily cover the roughly 1000 km (600 miles) to reach the heart of Japan.  In fact, the DPRK has already lobbed missiles over Japan in the past.  Some red blooded US Americans will, no doubt, explain to us that the US THAAD system can, and will, protect South Korea and Japan from such missile strikes.  Others, however, will disagree.  We won’t know until we find out, but judging by the absolutely dismal performance of the vaunted US Patriot system in the Gulf War,  I sure would not place my trust in any US-made ABM system.  Last, but not least, the North Koreans could place a nuclear device (not even a real nuclear warhead) on a regular commercial ship or even a submarine, bring it to the coast of Japan and detonate it.  The subsequent panic and chaos might end up costing even more lives and money than the explosion itself.

Then there is Seoul, of course.  US analyst Anthony Cordesman put is very simplyA battle near the DMZ, directed at a target like Seoul, could rapidly escalate to the point at which it threatened the ROK’s entire economy, even if no major invasion took place“.

SIDEBAR: Cordesman being Cordesman, he proceeds to hallucinate about the effects of a DPRK invasion of the ROK and comes up with sentences such as “Problems drive any assessment of the outcome of a major DPRK invasion of the ROK, even if one only focuses on DPRK- ROK forces. The DPRK has far larger ground forces, but the outcome of what would today be an air – land battle driven heavily by the overall mobility of DPRK land forces and their ability to concentrate along given lines of advance relative to the attrition technically superior ROK land and air forces could inflict is impossible to calculate with any confidence, as is the actual mix of forces both sides could deploy in a given area and scenario“.  Yup, the man is seriously discussing AirLand battle concepts in the context of a DPRK invasion of the South!  He might as well be discussing the use of Follow-on-Forces Attack concept in the context of a Martian invasion of earth (or an equally likely Russian invasion of the Baltic statelets!).  It is funny and pathetic how a country with a totally offensive national strategy, military doctrine and force posture still feels the need to hallucinate some defensive scenarios to deal with the cognitive dissonance resulting from clearly being the bad guy.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hy does Cordesman say that?  Because according to a South Korean specialist “DPRK artillery pieces of calibers 170mm and 240mm “could fire 10,000 rounds per minute to Seoul and its environs.”  During the war in Bosnia the western press spoke of “massive Serbian artillery strikes on Sarajevo” when the actual rate of fire was about 1 artillery shell per minute.  It just makes me wonder what they would call 10’000 rounds per minute.

The bottom line is this: you cannot expect your enemy to act in a way which suits you; in fact you should very much assume that he is going to do what you do not expect and what is the worst possible for you.  And, in this context, the DPRK has many more options than shooting an ICBM at Guam or the USA.  The nutcases in the Administration might not want to mention it, but an attack on the DPRK risks bringing down both the South Korean and the Japanese economies with immediate and global consequences: considering the rather shaky and vulnerable nature of the international financial and economic system, I very much doubt that a major crisis in Asia would not result in the collapse of the US economy (which is fragile anyway).

We should also consider the political consequences of a war on the Korean Peninsula, especially if, as is most likely, South Korea and Japan suffer catastrophic damage.  This situation could well result in such an explosion of anti-US feelings that the US would have to pack and leave from the region entirely.

How do you think the PRC feels about such a prospect?  Exactly.  And might this not explain why the Chinese are more than happy to let the USA deal with the North Korean problem knowing full well that one way or another the USA will lose without the Chinese having to fire a single shot?

The terrain

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ext I want to re-visit a threat which is discussed much more often: North Korean artillery and special forces.  But first, I ask you to take a close look at the following three maps of North Korea:

You can also download these full-size maps from here.

What I want you to see is that the terrain in North Korea is what the military call “mixed terrain”.  The topography of the North Korea article in Wikipedia actually explains this very well:

The terrain consists mostly of hills and mountains separated by deep, narrow valleys. The coastal plains are wide in the west and discontinuous in the east.  Early European visitors to Korea remarked that the country resembled “a sea in a heavy gale” because of the many successive mountain ranges that crisscross the peninsula. Some 80 percent of North Korea’s land area is composed of mountains and uplands, with all of the peninsula’s mountains with elevations of 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) or more located in North Korea. The great majority of the population lives in the plains and lowlands.

Being from Switzerland I know this kind of terrain very well (it’s what you would see in the Alpine foothills called “Oberland” or “Préalpes”) and I want to add the following: dense vegetation, forests, rivers and creeks with steep banks and rapid currents.  Small villages and *a lot* of deep, underground tunnels. There are also flat areas in North Korea, of course, but, unlike Switzerland, they are composed mostly of rice fields and marshes.  In military terms this all translates into one simple and absolutely terrifying word: infantry.

Why should the word infantry scare us so much? Because infantry means on foot (or horses) with very little that airpower (AA and MANPADS), satellites (can’t see much), armor (can’t move around), gunships, submarines or cruise missiles can do.  Because infantry means “no lucrative targets” but small, dispersed and very well hidden forces.  Company and even platoon-level warfare.  Because infantry in mixed terrains means the kind of warfare the US Americans fear most.

The adversary

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nd with that in mind, let’s repeat that besides its huge regular armed forces (about a million soldiers plus another 5 million plus in paramilitary organizations) the DPRK also has 200’000 special forces.   Let’s assume that the Western propaganda is, for once, telling the truth and that the regular armed forces are poorly equipped, poorly trained, poorly commanded and even hungry and unmotivated (I am not at all sure that this is a fair assumption, but bear with me).  But spreading that amount of soldiers all over the combat area would still represent a huge headache, even for “the best and most powerful armed forces in history” especially if you add 200’000 well-trained and highly motivated special forces to the mix (I hope that we can all agree that assuming that special forces are also demotivated would be rather irresponsible).  How would you go about finding out who is who and where the biggest threat comes from. And consider this: it would be extremely naive to expect the North Korean special forces to show up in some clearly marked DPRK uniforms.  I bet you that a lot of them will show up in South Korean uniforms, and others in civilians clothes.  Can you imagine the chaos of trying to fight them?

You might say [further] that the North Koreans have 1950s weapons.  So what?  That is exactly what you need to fight the kind of warfare we are talking about: infantry in mixed terrain.  Even WWII gear would do just fine.  Now is time to bring in the North Korean artillery.  We are talking about 8,600 artillery guns, and over 4,800 multiple rocket launchers (source).  Anthony Cordesman estimates that there are 20’000 pieces in the “surrounding areas” of Seoul.  That is way more than the US has worldwide (5,312 according to the 2017 “Military Balance”, including mortars).  And keep in mind that we are not talking about batteries nicely arranged in a flat desert, but thousands of simple but very effective artillery pieces spread all over the “mixed terrain” filled with millions of roaming men in arms, including 200’000 special forces.  And a lot of that artillery can reach Seoul, plenty enough to create a mass panic and exodus.

Think total, abject and bloody chaos

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o when you think of a war against North Korea, don’t think “Hunt for Red October” or “Top Gun”.  Think total, abject and bloody chaos.  Think instant full-scale FUBAR.  And that is just for the first couple of days, then things will get worse, much worse.  Why?

Because by that time I expect the North Korean Navy and Air Force to have been completely wiped-off, waves after waves of cruise missiles will have hit an X number of facilities (with no way whatsoever to evaluate the impact of these strikes but nevermind that) and the US military commanders will be looking at the President with no follow-up plan to offer.  As for the North Koreans, by then they will just be settling in for some serious warfare, infantry-style.

There is a better than average chance that a good part of the DPRK elites will be dead.   What is sure is that the command and control of the General Staff Department over many of its forces will be if not lost, then severely compromised.  But everybody will know that they have been attacked and by whom.  You don’t need much command and control when you are in a defensive posture in the kind of terrain were movement is hard to begin with.  In fact, this is the kind of warfare where “high command” usually means a captain or a major, not some faraway general.

You might ask about logistics?  What logistics I ask you? The ammo is stored nearby in ammo dumps, food you can always get yourself and, besides, it's your home turf, the civilians will help.

Again, no maneuver warfare, no advanced communications, no heavy logistical train – we are talking about a kind of war which is much closer to WWII or even WWI than Desert Storm.

SIDEBAR: As somebody who did a lot of interesting stuff with the Swiss military, let me add this: this kind of terrain is a battlefield where a single company can stop and hold an entire regiment; this is the kind of terrain where trying to accurately triangulate the position of an enemy radio is extremely hard; this is the kind of terrain where only horses and donkeys can carry heavy gear over narrow, zig-zagging, steep paths;  entire hospitals can be hidden underground with their entrance hidden by a barn or a shed; artillery guns are dug in underground and fire when a thick reinforced concrete hatch is moved to the side, then they hide; counter-battery radar hardly works due to bouncing signals; radio signals have a short range due to vegetation and terrain; weapon caches and even company size forces camps can only be detected by literally stepping on them; underground bunkers have numerous exits; air-assault operations are hindered by the very high risk of anti-aircraft gunfire or shoulder-fired missiles which can be hidden and come from any direction.  I could go on and on but I will just say this: if you want to defeat your adversary in such a terrain there is only one technique which works: you do what the Russians did in the mountains in southern Chechnya during the second Chechen war – you send in your special forces, small units on foot, and you fight the enemy on his own turf.  That is an extremely brutal, dangerous and difficult kind of warfare which I really don’t see the US Americans doing.  The South Koreans, yes, maybe. But here is where the number game also kicks in: in Chechnya the Russian Spetsnaz operated in a relatively small combat zone and they had the numbers.  Now look at a map of North Korea and the number of North Korean special forces and tell me – do the South Koreans have the manpower for that kind of offensive operations?  One more thing: the typical US American reaction to such arguments would be “so what, we will just nuke them!“.  Wrong.  Nuke them you can, but nukes are not very effective in that kind of terrain, finding a target is hard to begin with, enemy forces will be mostly hidden underground and, finally, you are going to use nukes to deal with company or platoon size units?!  Won’t work. [Not o mention you'll lethally contaminate everyone in the broader region.—Eds]

If you think that I am trying to scare you, you are absolutely correct. I am.  You ought to be scared.  And notice that I did not even mention nukes.  No, not nuclear warheads in missiles.  Basic nuclear devices driven around in common army trucks.  Driven down near the DMZ in peacetime amongst thousands of other army trucks and then buried somewhere, ready to explode at the right time.  Can you imagine what the effect of a “no-warning” “where did it come from?” nuke might be on advancing US or South Korean forces?  Can you imagine how urgent the question “are there any more?” will become?  And, again, for that the North Koreans don’t even need a real nuclear weapon.  A primitive nuclear device will be plenty.

I can already hear the die-hard “rah-rah-rah we are number 1!!” flag-wavers dismissing it all saying “ha! and you don’t think that the CIA already knows all that?”.  Maybe they do and maybe they don’t – but the problem is that the CIA, and the rest of the US intelligence community, has been so hopelessly politicized that it can do nothing against perceived political imperatives.  And, frankly, when I see that the US is trying to scare the North Koreans with B-1B and F-22s I wonder if anybody at the Pentagon, or at Langley, is still in touch with reality.  Besides, there is intelligence and then there is actionable intelligence. And in this case knowing what the Koreans could do does not at all mean to know what to do about it.

Speaking of chaos – do you know what the Chinese specifically said about it?

Can you guess?

That they will “not allow chaos and war on the peninsula“.

Enter the Chinese

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et’s talk about the Chinese now.  They made their position very clear: “If North Korea launches an attack that threatens the United States then China should stay neutral, but if the United States attacks first and tries to overthrow North Korea’s government China will stop them“.  Since there is no chance at all of a unprovoked North Korean attack on the South or the USA, especially with this threat by the Chinese to remain neutral if the DPRK attacks first, let’s focus on the 2nd part of the warning.

What could the Chinese do if the US decides to attack North Korea?  Their basic options depend on the nature of the attack:

  1. If the US limits itself to a combination of missile and airstrikes and the DPRK retaliates (or not), then the Chinese can simply provide technical, economic and humanitarian aid to the DPRK and denounce the US on a political level.
  2. If the USA follow up with a land invasion of some kind or if the DPRK decides to retaliate in a manner which would force the USA into a land invasion of some kind, then the Chinese could not only offer direct military aid, including military personnel, but they could also wait for the chaos to get total in Korea before opening a 2nd front against US forces (including, possibly, Taiwan).

That second scenario would create a dangerous situation for China, of course, but it would be even far more dangerous for US forces in Asia who would find themselves stretched very thin over a very large area with no good means to force either adversary to yield or stop.  Finally, just as China cannot allow the USA to crush North Korea, Russia cannot allow the USA to crush China.  Does that dynamic sound familiar?  It should, as it is similar to what we have been observing in the Middle-East recently:

  1. Russia->Iran->Hezbollah->Syria
  2. Russia->China->DPRK

This is a very flexible and effective force posture where the smallest element is at the forefront of the line-up and the most powerful one most removed and at the back because it forces the other side to primarily focus on that frontline adversary while maximizing the risks of any possibly success because that success is likely to draw in the next, bigger and more powerful adversary.

Conclusion: preparing for genocide

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he US has exactly a zero chance of disarming or, even less so, regime changing the DPRK by only missile and airstrikes.  To seriously and meaningfully take the DPRK “in their hands” the US leaders need to approve a land invasion.  However, even if that is not the plan, if the DPRK decides to use its immense, if relatively antiquated, firepower to strike at Seoul, the US will have no choice to move in ground forces across the DMZ.  If that happens about 500’000 ROK troops backed by 30’000 US military personnel will face about 1 million North Korea soldiers backed by 5 million paramilitaries and 200’000 special forces on a mix-terrain battlefield which will require an infantry-heavy almost WWII kind of military operation.  By definition, if the USA attacks the DPRK to try to destroy its nuclear program such an attack will begin by missile and air strikes on DPRK facilities meaning that the USA will immediately strike at the most valuable targets (from the point of view of the North Koreans of course).  This means that following such an attack the US will have little or no dissuasive capabilities left and that means that following such an attack the DPRK will have no incentive left to show any kind of restraint.  In sharp contrast, even if the DPRK decides to begin with an artillery barrage across the DMZ, including the Seoul metropolitan area, they will still have the ability to further escalate by either attacking Japan or by setting off a nuclear device.  Should that happen there is an extremely high probability that the USA will either have to “declare victory and leave” (a time-honored US military tradition) or begin using numerous tactical nuclear strikes.  Tactical nuclear strikes, by the way, have a very limited effectiveness on prepared defensive position in mixed terrain, especially narrow valleys.  Besides, targets for such strikes are hard to find.  At the end of the day, the last and only option left to the USA is what they always eventually resort to would be to directly and deliberately engage in the mass murder of civilians to “break the enemy’s will to fight” and destroy the “regime support infrastructure” of the enemy’s forces (another time-honored US military tradition stretching back to the Indian wars and which was used during the Korean war and, more recently, in Yugoslavia).  Here I want to quote an article by Darien Cavanaugh in War is Boring:

On a per-capita basis, the Korean War was one of the deadliest wars in modern history, especially for the civilian population of North Korea. The scale of the devastation shocked and disgusted the American military personnel who witnessed it, including some who had fought in the most horrific battles of World War II (…).  These are staggering numbers, and the death rate during the Korean War was comparable to what occurred in the hardest hit countries of World War II. (…)  In fact, by the end of the war, the United States and its allies had dropped more bombs on the Korean Peninsula, the overwhelming majority of them on North Korea, than they had in the entire Pacific Theater of World War II.

“The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating U.N. forces,” historian Charles K. Armstrong wrote in an essay for the Asia-Pacific Journal.  “The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others. American planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea—that is, essentially on North Korea—including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II.”  As Armstrong explains, this resulted in almost unparalleled devastation.  “The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”

Twelve to fifteen percent of the entire population was murdered by US forces in Korea during the last war (compare these figures to the so-called ‘genocide’ of Srebrenica!).  That is what Nikki Haley and the psychopaths in Washington DC are really threatening to do when they speak of taking the situation “in their own hands” or, even better, when Trump threatens to “totally destroy” North Korea.  What Trump and his generals forget is that we are not in the 1950s but in 2017 and that while the Korean War and a negligible economic impact on the rest of the planet, a war in the Middle or Far East Asia today would have huge economic consequences.  Furthermore, in the 1950s the total US control over the mass media, at least in the so-called “free world” made it relatively easy to hide out the murderous rampage by US-lead forces, something completely impossible nowadays.  The modern reality is that irrespective of the actual military outcome on the ground, any US attack on the DPRK would result is such a massive loss of face for the USA that it would probably mark the end of the US presence in Asia and a massive international financial shock probably resulting in a crash of the currently already fragile US economy.  In contrast, China would come out as the big winner and the uncontested Asian superpower.

All the threats coming out of US politicians are nothing more than delusional hot air.  A country which has not won a single meaningful war since the war in the Pacific and whose Army is gradually being filled with semi-literate, gender-fluid and often conviction or unemployment avoiding soldiers is in no condition whatsoever to threaten a country with the wide choice of retaliatory options North Korea has.  The current barrage of US threats to engage in yet another genocidal war are both illegal under international law and politically counter-productive.  The fact is that the USA is unlikely to be able to politically survive a war against the DPRK and that it now has no other option than to either sit down and seriously negotiate with the North Koreans or accept that the DPRK has become an official nuclear power.


ABOUT THE SAKER
 Like The Greanville Post, with which it is now allied in his war against official disinformation, the Saker's site, VINEYARD OF THE SAKER, is the hub of an international network of sites devoted to fighting the "billion-dollar deception machinery" supporting the empire's wars against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and any other independent nation opposing or standing in the way of Washington's drive for global hegemony.  The Saker is published in more than half a dozen languages. A Saker is a very large falcon, native to Europe and Asia. 

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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Did the CIA stop a bloodbath in Saint Petersburg?

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE SAKER

(Here is the original report, for my evaluation, please see below – The Saker)

RT reports:



Putin thanked Trump for CIA tip-off which helped Russia prevent terror attack

The Russian President Vladimir Putin has thanked his US counterpart Donald Trump for help in preventing a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. Data provided by the CIA enabled Russian security services to find and detain terrorists

The Russian leader expressed his gratitude in a telephone call, adding that the Russian security services would also always share information with their US colleagues, were they to obtain data on any planned attacks on US soil.

Putin also asked Trump to convey his compliments to the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, as well as to the operatives that gathered the information about the terrorists. He said that the data provided by the US was enough to track down and detain the members of the extremist cell.

The White House later said in a statement: “President Trump appreciated the call and told President Putin that he and the entire United States intelligence community were pleased to have helped save so many lives.” The White House also confirmed that US intelligence agencies provided Russia with information “concerning a major terror plot in St. Petersburg.”

Earlier, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested the members of a terrorist cell linked to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. The extremists were planning a series of attacks on public places, including a suicide bombing and an explosion in Kazan’s Cathedral in the center of the city.

During the raid, conducted overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, the FSB seized a large amount of explosives, weapons and ammunition and dismantled a bomb-making workshop. The members of the cell that coordinated their plans with IS masterminds abroad were plotting an attack on the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg – one of the most iconic landmarks of the city.

Earlier this week, FSB head Aleksandr Bortnikov reported foiling a terrorist plot which would have involved bombings during the New Year celebrations and the upcoming presidential election campaign. The schemes also involved a cell with links to IS. 


Evaluation:

First, some skeptics might, for good reason, suspect whether this is true or some  kind of smokescreen.  Let me assure you that this is for real.  Here is why: to put it gently, the USA and, even more so, the CIA, are not exactly popular in Russia, especially amongst former KGB foreign intelligence (PGU KGB SSSR) service officers like Putin.  They are even *more* unpopular amongst the power base of President Putin.  So, if anything, by publicly thanking not just the USA, but the CIA specifically, Putin is most definitely not doing just something politically advantageous to him.  Second, Putin could have just thanked Trump without mentioning the CIA by name.  Next, there is the visibility given to that event: an official telephone call, following by an official announcement on the Kremlin’s website.  Finally, this news item makes it to the first item on the most popular Sunday evening news show.  So, yes, this is for real, you can take that to the bank.

Apparently, the terrorist attack was also rather vicious: a major cathedral in Saint Petersburg was supposed to be targeted on a religious holiday (Sunday and the commemoration of Saint Barbara).  It could have been a carnage.

Finally, there are no indications that the Russian security services saw this one coming or had the suspects on their radars.

So, amazing as this might seen to some of us, in this case it appears that the US CIA really did prevent a bloodbath in Russia.

Frankly, I will admit that am personally very surprised by that.

There are still many questions to be answered: Who were the (already arrested) terrorists? Why did the CIA know about his?  What could be the motive of the CIA in actually warning the Russians?

At this point, your guess is as good as mine.  As I often say, I am neither a clairvoyant nor a prophet.  All I can offer at this point are guesses.  My first one would be that the bombers were somehow connected to the USA or to some branch of the US government and that the CIA decided to warn the Russians to spoil an operation by another branch of the US government.  Maybe the risk of having some US agency clearly involved was too big.  Other option: the US CIA and/or the Trump Administration really want the Russian to cooperate with them on something important, and preventing a terrorist attack in Russia’s “northern capital” was a way to show that the US and the CIA have some potentially very real benefits to offer to Russia.  After all, the relations between the USA and Russia have been so insanely bad (all by the USA’s fault) that some tangible sign of mental sanity and actual good-will could make things way better than they are now.  It is also possible that somebody in the White House has finally realized that the US has truly painted itself into a corner and that a country like Russia could be very, very, important to fix the utter disasters of US foreign policies (or lack thereof) in the Middle-East as East Asia. It is also entirely possible that, as the RT article indicates, the Russians recently helped foil a major terrorist attack in the USA and that the Americans decided to reciprocate.  Finally, as remote as this might seem to some, there is always the possibility of a key person in the Administration taking the decision to simply do what is right.  I know that many will call me naive for even considering such an apparently most unlikely possibility, but I strongly believe that there are decent people in some very corrupt places and that sometimes very corrupt people sometimes want to do what is right at least once.

Whatever may be the case, I welcome this development.  Lives were saved, some dangerous maniacs are behind bars and two nuclear superpowers did something together and did it right.  I am not holding my breath for the future, but any positive development deserves some recognition, especially in our otherwise very depressing times.

—The Saker


ABOUT THE SAKER
 Like The Greanville Post, with which it is now allied in his war against official disinformation, the Saker's site, VINEYARD OF THE SAKER, is the hub of an international network of sites devoted to fighting the "billion-dollar deception machinery" supporting the empire's wars against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and any other independent nation opposing or standing in the way of Washington's drive for global hegemony.  The Saker is published in more than half a dozen languages. A Saker is a very large falcon, native to Europe and Asia. 

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Parting shot—a word from the editors

The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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Challenging the Plutarchy

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

 


“I hope they see my humanity”~Ady Barkan

“I hope they see my humanity.” They. Don’t. See. It. Don’t because in order to see humanity, one must be empathetic, feel the suffering of others, bear witness to it. I look at Ady Barkan and I see my sons. Not only do I see my sons, I think, “Ady Barkan could be my son.”

Ady Barkan is my son. And he is yours.

Truth is, Ady Barkan is a friend of my son J and daughter-in-law L. The three were colleagues at Make the Road New York. A year ago, at the age of 33, Ady was diagnosed with ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. My son and his family spent this past Thanksgiving with Ady, his wife, and their 18-month-old son Carl. Later, J emailed a few photographs.

Last week, J called to tell me Ady would be in the halls of Capitol Hill, protesting the Republican tax bill, a big Merry Holiday to the uber-wealthy, that once signed by Trump could deny healthcare and life-sustaining medical equipment to Ady.


Pelosi welcoming Obama: a meeting of phonies. Whosoever trusts these people needs to have his head examined.

Backstory: Some years ago, I was a committed protester—going to rallies, marches, on the speaking circuit at peace events. I frequently took the train to D.C., gathering with peace friends, once for a two-week demonstration. I’ve walked the halls of Congress making statements, mostly to staffers. I’ve sent emails to Congressmen and women. Signed petitions. I was out there, dedicated and positive. When the Democrats took both houses in 2006, my fellow activists and I were jubilant. Soon, however, we met reality—the good cop/bad cop tactics of the Democrats and Republicans. A beaming Madam Speaker Pelosi, who’d condemned George Bush, posed with her hands affectionately on his shoulders. No more holding him accountable. “Look forward and move on.” Post-Occupy, I made a decision to disengage. I’d seen no progress, only expanded war, environmental degradation, and widening inequality. I didn’t exactly turn off. As most of you know, I continued writing articles. I wrote, wrote, wrote. But no more giving politicians any opportunity to say, “We honor dissent here. This is democracy in action. We can deliver it to your country.” If they noticed. Occasionally, the mainstream media mentioned the marches, but never the correct numbers, dropping two or three zeroes from 50,000 to 5000 or 500. Their allegiance was and remains with Wall Street, the donor class.

Yet, on Sunday, I drove to D.C. in support of Ady Barkan.

Leading economists decry the tax bill. Trickle down sounds promising, like a piñata spilling opportunities to workers. History proves otherwise. The goodie bag explodes upward, back into the accounts of CEOs and shareholders, many of whom live in other countries. The bill will create a massive deficit—a deficit used to cut social spending as required in the Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010. Billions cut from Medicare and other federal programs.

Check out Sen. Bob Corker, a fiscal hawk who opposed the tax bill … until he didn’t. When Corker discovered he’d benefit because he’s invested in LLCs, he repositioned. How many members of Congress have similar conflicts of interest and will profit? Democratic “leadership,” spitting outrage about the GOP’s largess towards the uber-wealthy in front of the camera and mic, no doubt will. Behind the scenes, they may be raising their goblets in a duplicitous toast.

I’ve detoured from the story, Ady’s story, and protesting.

I’ve never met Ady and his family, had only seen those photographs, but I was standing in the lobby of a D.C. hotel—the hotel where event organizers were explaining procedures. Looking out a window, I saw a tall, distinguished man pushing a stroller. As he approached, I stared at the little boy, his beautiful face, that curly hair, and I thought, “That’s Carl,” and then, “No, you’ve only seen a photo and not even a close up,” but when they entered a door near me, I walked towards them and said: “Is this Carl?” The man hesitated before saying yes, told me he’s Carl’s grandfather. I introduced myself, told him my son’s name, that Ady and his family and my son and his family had spent Thanksgiving together. We talked briefly. Then about 15 minutes later, I turned, saw the back of a wheelchair and two attendants helping a young man into a taxi. I said, “Ady?” When I told him I’m J’s mother, we embraced.

I’ve thought of little else since. Through tears.

Here’s a clip of Ady, before the Senate vote on Tuesday, the interview in which he said he hopes they see his humanity. I don’t want to be negative, but I see the future of healthcare for the working class and poor people. It’s a GoFundMe. Unless we reach through the miasma that separates us to engage with movements like The Poor People’s Campaign, uniting “across all races, creeds, religions, classes and other divides…” to challenge the plutarchy. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Missy Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in BaltimoreEmail: missybeat@gmail.com 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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