By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jun 9 2015 (IPS)

Only 50 years of Cold War (and the fact that German Chancellor Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany) can possibly explain the strange political power of the United States over Europe.

After a bilateral meeting between Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama (so much for transparency and participation), the Jun. 7-8 G7 summit opened in Germany and we found out that there had been a trade-off.

Roberto Savio

Merkel agreed that Europe should continue the sanctions against Russia – and so the other members of the G7 duly agreed – and Obama toned down the U.S. position on Greece.

That position had been forcefully expressed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew a few days earlier to European leaders: solve the Greek problem, or this will have a global impact that we cannot afford. This had suddenly accelerated negotiations, with the hope then that everything would be solved before the G7 summit.

But Greece did not accept the plan of the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, which was suspiciously close to International Monetary Fund (IMF) positions.

At the G7 summit, Obama softened the U.S. position on Greece, and even said that “Athens must implement the necessary reforms.”

Obstinacy on sanctions against Russia ignores the fact that, in a very delicate economic moment, Europe has lost a considerable part of its exports because of Russia’s retaliatory block on European imports. It is also difficult to see what advantage there is for Europe in pushing Russia into the arms of China. We will soon be seeing joint naval exercise between the two countries, which will only escalate tensions.

But let us look at Greece given that its tug of war with Europe has now been going on for five years.

Let us recall briefly. Greece had been spending much more than it could by distributing public jobs under any government, by giving easy pensions to everyone, and so on. Then, in 2009, the centre-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) won the elections and we found out that the figures Athens had been giving Brussels were false.

The real deficit stood at almost 12.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), confirmation of what the European Union and its bodies had long suspected but which it had done nothing about.“Europe is now led by Germany and the Germans are convinced that what they did at home is valid everywhere. Together with the countries of northern Europe, they look on the people of southern Europe as unethical, people who want to enjoy life beyond their means”

To avoid going into the agonising details of the continuous negotiations between Greece and the European Union, I jump to the January elections this year which the left-wing Syriza party won and its leader Alexis Tsipras was named Prime Minister on a clear programme: stop the austerity programme imposed by the “Troika” – IMF, EU and the European Central Bank (ECB) – on behalf of the European countries, led by Germany, Netherlands, Austria and Finland.

Greece is on its knees. Officially, unemployment has gone from 11.9 percent in 2010 to 25.5 percent today, but it is widely considered to be around 30 percent. Among young people, it is close to 60 percent. GDP has gone into a 25 percent decline, Greek citizens have lost about 30 percent of their revenues and public spending has been slashed to the point that hospitals have great difficulty in functioning.

Yet, the request (order) of the “Troika” is simple – cut everything the deficit has been eliminated.

So, for example, cut pensions, which have been already been cut twice. In any case, this would reap a paltry 100 million euros but would cripple people who are living on less than 685 euro a month. Or, raise VAT on tourism, from the present 6.5 percent to 13.6 percent, which would be a deadly blow to Greece’s only important source of income.

This is the plan presented by Juncker, whose arrival as head of the European Commission was accompanied by a grandiose Marshall Plan for Europe, a plan which has since disappeared totally from the scene.

In an article a few days ago titled ‘Europe’s Last Act?”, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, argues that the idea of austerity as a uniform recipe for Europe is missing reality.

“The troika badly misjudged the macroeconomic effects of the program that they imposed. According to their published forecasts, they believed that, by cutting wages and accepting other austerity measures, Greek exports would increase and the economy would quickly return to growth. They also believed that the first debt restructuring would lead to debt sustainability.

“The troika’s forecasts have been wrong, and repeatedly so. And not by a little, but by an enormous amount. Greece’s voters were right to demand a change in course, and their government is right to refuse to sign on to a deeply flawed program.”

It is on austerity that the paths of the United States and the European Union divide.

The United States has embarked on investing for growth, despite pressure from the Republican party for austerity, and the U.S. economy is picking up again.

But Europe is now led by Germany and the Germans are convinced that what they did at home is valid everywhere. Together with the countries of northern Europe, they look on the people of southern Europe as unethical, people who want to enjoy life beyond their means. As The Economist put it in an article on the Greek crisis: “In German eyes this crisis is all about profligacy”.

It did not help that another very minor crisis – that of Cyprus between 2012 and 2013 – confirmed Germany’s view about the profligacy of the south of Europe. In the case of Cyprus, the “Troika” settled the crisis at a cost of 10 billion euros.

There is widespread agreement that the crisis of Greece, which represents just two percent of the total European budget, could have been settled at the beginning with a 50-60 billion euro loan. But only since Tsipras became prime minister, and with popular support started to refuse to accept the creditors’ plan, has Greece has become a very important issue.

There is now talk of a “Grexit”, or Greece’s exit from the European Union. This would have a cascade effect, and it would mean the end of Europe as a common dream, of a Europe based on solidarity and communality.

In the G7, Obama has insisted on investments and demand as a way out of the crisis. Merkel has again repeated that Europe does not need stimulus financed by debt, but stimulus coming from the reform of inefficient economies. At this point, perhaps “everything is always about something else”, as the late award-winning Sri Lankan journalist Tarzie Vittachi once told me.

An enlightening comment on the Greek situation has come from Hugo Dixon writing in The New York Times of Jun. 7. The Greek prime minister “will have to choose between saving his country and sticking to a bankrupt far-left ideology. If he is smart, he can secure a few more concessions from creditors and a goodish deal for Greece. If not, he will drag the country into the abyss.”

And then, it is interesting to note that one of the main reasons for being so hard with Syriza is that the citizens of Spain, Portugal and Ireland, who were the first to swallow the bitter pill of austerity, would revolt if they saw a different path for Greece, and it just happens that those countries have conservative governments.

The entire European political system reeled with shock at the victory of Syriza, and again a few days ago at the victories of the left-wing anti-establishment Podemos party in municipal elections in Spain.

For some reason, the very authoritarian and conservative government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the victory of the very conservative Andrzej Duda as president in Poland, as well as the rise of Matteo Salvini’s anti-European and anti-immigration Lega Nord party in Italy create no panic, not even if Salvini looks to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s right-wing Front National, as figures of reference.

So, the real issue now in the case of Greece is to punish an anti-establishment figure like Tsipras and show that the radical left cannot run a country.

Who really believes that there will masses of citizens in Madrid, Lisbon or Dublin taking to the streets to protest if Europe does a somersault of solidarity and idealism, and lowers its requests or dilutes them over more time? (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, May 19 2015 (IPS)

The victory of the Conservative Party and the debacle of the Labour Party in the recent British general elections is yet another sign of the crisis facing left-wing forces today, leaving aside the question of how, under the British electoral system, the Labour Party actually increased the number of votes it won but saw a reduction in the number of seats it now holds in Parliament (24 seats less than the previous 256).

Roberto Savio

If the proportional rather than uninominal system had been used, the Conservative Party with its 11 million votes would have won 256 and not 331 seats in Parliament (far short of the absolute majority of 326 needed to govern), while at the other extreme the United Kingdom Independence Party with nearly four million votes would have landed 83 and not just the one seat it ended up with – results that would be hard to imagine anywhere else and a good example of insularity.

To an extent, the recent British general elections mirrored the U.S. presidential elections in 2000 when Democratic candidate Al Gore won around half a million more popular votes than Republican candidate George W. Bush but failed to win the majority of electoral college votes on which the U.S. system is based. The outcome was eight years of George W.  Bush administration, the war in Iraq, the crisis of multilateralism, and all the paraphernalia of “America’s exceptional destiny”.

Let us venture now into an analysis that will have the politologues among us cringing.“The left has tried to mimic the winners, instead of trying to be an alternative to the process of neoliberal globalisation and, since the beginning of the world financial crisis in 2008 … it has had no real answer to the crisis”

It is now generally recognised that the end of the Soviet Union has given free way to a kind of capitalism without control, marked by an unprecedented supremacy of finance which, in terms of volume of investments, overwhelmingly exceeds the real or productive economy.

In its wake, neoliberal thinking has found the left totally unprepared, because part of its function had been to provide a democratic alternative to Communism, which was suddenly no longer a threat.

The left therefore has tried to mimic the winners, instead of trying to be an alternative to the process of neoliberal globalisation and, since the beginning of the world financial crisis in 2008 (with its bail-out cost so far of over four trillion dollars), it has had no real answer to the crisis.

Ever since the industrial revolution, the identity of the left had been to press for social justice, equality of opportunities and redistribution, while the right placed the emphasis on individual efforts, less role for the state and success as motivation.

Continuing with this brutal simplification, we have to add that the left, from Marx to Keynes, always studied how to create economic growth and redistribution – Marx by abolishing private property, social democrats through just taxation.

But it never studied the creation of a progressive agenda in the event case of an economic crisis such as the one we are now facing, with structural unemployment, young people obliged  to accept any kind of contract, new technologies which are making the concept of classes disappear, and rendering trade unions – erstwhile powerful actors for social justice – irrelevant.

It is unprecedented that the top 25 hedge fund managers received a reward in 2014 of 11.62 billion dollars, yet neither U.S. President Barack Obama nor Ed Miliband, then still leader of the Labour Party at the recent British general elections (until he resigned after election defeat), saw it fit to denounce this obscene level of greed.

Meanwhile, Europe as a political project is clearly in disarray, and now faces a “Grexit” on its southern flank and a “Brexit” on its northern flank.

In the case of a “Grexit” (the possible abandonment of the European Union by Greece), Greece faces the prospects of having to make substantial concessions to Europe, thus reneging on the promises of Alexis Tsipras who was voted in as prime minister in rebellion against years of dismantlement of public and social structures imposed in the name of austerity.

What is at stake here is the very neoliberal model itself and not only is ordoliberal Germany supported by allies like Austria, Finland and the Netherlands erecting a wall against any form of leniency, but countries which accepted painful cuts and where conservatives are now in power, like Spain, Portugal and Ireland, see leniency as giving in to the left.

A “Brexit” (the possible abandonment of the European Union by Britain) is a different affair. It is a game being played by British Prime Minister David Cameron to negotiate a more favourable agreement for Britain with the European Union.

A referendum will be held before the end of 2017 and the four million people who voted for the UKIP in the recent elections, plus the country’s “Euro-sceptics”, threaten to push Britain out of the European Union, especially if Cameron does not manage to obtain some substantial concessions from Brussels.

Meanwhile, if Europe is in disarray, the United States has a serious problem of governance. Analyst Moisés Naím, who served as editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine from 1996 to 2010, has pinpointed a few examples of how this has translated into self-inflicted damage.

One concerns China which, after waiting five years trying to get the Republican-dominated Congress to authorise and increase in its stake in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from a ridiculous 3.8 percent to 6 percent (compared with the 16.5 percent of the United States), got fed up and established an alternative fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Washington tried unsuccessfully to kill the initiative by putting pressure on its allies but first the United Kingdom, then Italy, Germany and France announced their participation in the new bank, which now has 50 member countries and the United States is not one of them.

Another example was the attempt by the Republican-dominated Congress to kill the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) which has provided support for U.S exporters to the tune of 570 billion dollars since it was set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934.  In just the last two years, China has provided 670 billion dollars in support for its exporters. Moral of the story: U.S. companies will be at a clear disadvantage.

As Larry Summers, a great proponent of U.S. hegemony, put it, “the US will not be in a position to shape the global economic system”.

The latest snub to the U.S. role of world leader came from four Arab heads of state who snubbed a U.S.-Gulf States summit at Camp David on May 14. The summit had been called by Obama to reassure the Gulf states that the ongoing negotiations with Iran over a nuclear agreement would not diminish their relevance, but the rulers of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain deserted the summit.

However, there is no more striking example of mistake-making than the joint effort by the United States and Europe to push Russian President Vladimir against the wall over his engagement in Ukraine by imposing heavy sanctions.

There was no apparent reflection on the wisdom of encircling a paranoid and autocratic leader, albeit one with strong popular support, by progressively also bringing in all Eastern and Central European countries. The result of this encirclement of Russia is that China has now come to the rescue of Russia, by injecting money into the country’s asphyxiated economy.

China will invest around six billion dollars in the construction of a high speed railway between Moscow and Kazan, is financing a 2,700 kilometre pipeline for the supply of 30 billion cubic metres of Russian gas over a period of 30 years, plus several other projects, including the establishment of a two billion dollar common fund for investments and a loan of 860 million dollars to the Russian Sberbank bank.

So, the net result is that Russia has been pushed out of Europe and into the arms of China, and the two are now starting joint naval and military manoeuvres.  Is this in the interest of Europe?

At the end of the day, the decline of Europe and the United States perhaps comes down to a decline of political vision, with democracy being substituted by partocracy, and the statesman of yesteryear being substituted by very much more modest and self-referential political leaders.

This is all taking place amid a growing disaffection with politics, which is now aimed basically at administrative choices, making corruption easy. At least this is what around one-third of electors now appear to believe when they are asked if they think that they can make a difference at elections … and this is why a rapidly growing number of people are deserting the ballot box. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

The results of a survey of what 3,500 young people between the ages of 18 and 24 – in all Arab countries except Syria – feel about the current situation in the Middle East and North Africa have just been released.

The report of the survey, which was carried out by international polling firm Penn Schoen Berland (PBS), is not a minority report given that 60 percent of the population of the Arab population is under the age of 25, which means 200 million people. Well, the outcome of the survey is that the large majority of them have no trust in democracy.

Roberto Savio

The word democracy does not exist in Arabic, being a concept totally alien to the era in which Muhammad created Islam. However, it is worth noting that the concept of democracy as it is known today is also relatively recent in the West, and we have to wait from its origins in the Greek era for it to make a comeback at the time of the French Revolution.

It became an accepted value just after the end of the Second World War, and the end of the Soviet, Nazi and Japanese regimes.

As a matter of fact, it is still not a reality in large parts of Asia (just think of China and North Korea) and Africa.

Then we have governments, as in Hungary where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is openly preaching a style of governance à la Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by several of his esteemers, including the National Front party in France, and the Northern League in Italy. But few have such a negative view of democracy as young Arabs.After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent

After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent.

According to the survey, 39 percent of young Arabs agreed with the statement “democracy will never work in the region”, 36 percent thought it would work, while the remaining 25 percent expressed many doubts.

It is clear that the Arab Spring has been betrayed by the return of the army to power as in Egypt, or by the clinging of the old guard to power regardless of the costs, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

If you add to this the fact that 41 percent of young Arabs are unemployed (out of a total unemployment figure of 25 percent), and of those 31 percent have completed higher education and 17 percent have graduated from university, it is not difficult to understand that frustration and pessimism are running high among Arab youth.

It also contributes to explaining why so many young people feel attracted to the Islamic State (ISIS) which wants to topple all Arab governments, defined as corrupt and allied to the decadent West, and create a Caliphate as in Muhammad’s times, where wealth will be distributed among all, the dignity of Islam will be enhanced, and a world of purity and vision will substitute the materialistic one of today.

This is why ISIS is attracting youth from all over. Besides, according to experts, for the terrorist to have a geographical space and run it  as a state, where hospitals and schools function and there is a daily life to prove that the dream is possible, represents a great difference with previous terrorist movements like Al-Qaeda, which could only destroy, not really build.

But the survey also reveals something extremely important. To the question “which is the biggest obstacle for the Arab world?”, 37 percent indicated the expansion of ISIS and 32 percent the threat of terrorism. The problem of unemployment was mentioned by 29 percent and that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 23 percent.

It is worth noting that the threat of a nuclear Iran was mentioned by only 8 percent (contrary to the declarations of Arab governments), while 17 percent consider that the real problem is the lack of political leaders, while only 15 percent denounce the lack of democracy.

It is important to note that no interviews were carried out in Iran, which is not an Arab country but is a Muslim country. However Iranian Muslims are Shiites and not Sunnis, as in all Arab countries, except for Iraq and Bahrein, and perhaps Yemen, where Shiites are a majority. Of the world’s total Islamic population of 1.6 billion people, Shiites make up only 10 percent.

It is within Sunnite Islam that a dramatic conflict is going on, where Wahabism, a Sunni school born in Saudi Arabia and the official religion of the Saudi reigning house, has now split into those who want to return to the purity of the early times and those are considered “petrowahabists” because they have been corrupted by the wealth created by petrol (they are also called sheikh wahabists because they accept government by sheikhs).

Saudi Arabia has been spending an average of 3 billion dollars a year to promote Wahabism. It has built over 1,500 mosques throughout the world, where radical preachers have been asking the faithful to go back to the real and uncorrupted Islam.

It was with Osama Bin Laden that the Wahabist movement escaped from the control of Saudi Arabia, very much like the radical Hamas movement, originally supported by Israel to weaken the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Yasser Arafat, turned against the Israeli state. It is not possible to ride radicalism.

The survey also reveals that young Sunnis see ISIS and terrorism as their main threat, but we are talking here of a poll which should represent 200 million people between the ages of 18 and 25. Even if just one percent of them were to succumb to the call of the jihad, we are talking of a potential two million people … and this is now being felt acutely.

The polarisation inside Sunni society (Shiites are not part of that – there are no Shiite terrorists) is felt as the most important problem for the future.

In Europe and the United States, this should be the clearest of examples that ISIS and terrorism are first and foremost an internal problem of Islam and that to intervene in that problem will only unify the Arab world against the invader. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Mar 25 2015 (IPS)

The United Kingdom has been accused of “sleepwalking” into the Ukraine crisis – and the accusation comes from no less than the House of Lords, not usually considered a place of critical analysis.

In a scathing report, the upper house of the U.K. parliament has said that the United Kingdom, like the rest of the European Union, has sleepwalked into a very complex problem without looking into the possible consequences, letting bureaucrats taking critical political decisions.

Roberto Savio

It said that it was only when the conflict was well entrenched that political leaders decided to negotiate the Minsk ceasefire agreement, reached by Angela Merkel of Germany, Francois Hollande of France, Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation and Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, with the notable absence of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.

In fact, it was left up to bureaucrats of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to take decisions regarding Ukraine, the same kind of bureaucrats as those appointed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission who, with their usual arrogance, decided the European bailout conceded to Greece where it is widely known that the priority was to refund European (especially German) banks.

The media have a great responsibility in this situation. In all latter day conflicts, from Kosovo to Libya, the formula has been very simple. Let us divide conflicts into good and bad, let us repeat the declarations of the ‘good guys’ and demonise the ‘bad guys’. Let us not go into analytical disquisitions, complexities and side issues because readers do not like that. Let us be to the point and crisp.“The media have a great responsibility … the formula has been very simple. Let us divide conflicts into good and bad, let us repeat the declarations of the ‘good guys’ and demonise the ‘bad guys’. Let us not go into analytical disquisitions, complexities and side issues because readers do not like that”

The latest example. All media have been talking of the Iraqi army engaged in taking back the town of Kirkuk from the Caliphate, the Islamic State. But how many are also informing that two-thirds of the Iraqi army is actually made up of soldiers from Iran? And that the Americans engaged in overseeing this offensive are in fact accepting cooperation from Iran, formally an archenemy?

How many have been reporting that the ongoing negotiations over the nuclear capabilities of Iran are really based on the need to restore legitimacy to Iran, because it has become clear that without Iran there is no way to solve Arab conflicts? And how many have informed that all radical Muslims have received financial support from  Saudi  Arabia, which is intent on supporting Salafism, the Muslim school which is at the basis of al-Qaeda and now of the Islamic State?

Recent history shows the West has gone into a number of conflicts (Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012), without looking beyond the immediate consequences, and without any consideration for long-term analysis. The costs of those conflicts have always exceeded the benefits foreseen. An auditor company could not certify any of those conflicts in terms of costs and benefit.

Let us start from the collapse of Yugoslavia, and let us remind ourselves that the West has three principles of international law under which to shield itself as a result of its actions.

One is the principle of inviolability of state borders, which was not applied to Serbia, but is now the case for Ukraine. The second is the principle of self-determination of people, which was used in Kosovo for the Albanian minority living in that part of Serbia but it is not considered valid now for the Russian populations of East Ukraine. The third is the right to intervene for humanitarian interventions, which was used first in Libya, and is now under consideration for Syria.

The drama of the Balkan conflicts was due to a very unilateral action by Germany, which decided to extrapolate Croatia and Slovenia from the Yugoslav federation as its zone of economic interest. The then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, pushed this in an unprecedented way throughout the West.

It was the first time that Germany had play an assertive role, with U.S. support, and it was a Cold War reflex – let us eliminate the only country left after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which still inspires itself to a socialist state and not to a market economy.

Serbia, which considered itself heir to the Kingdom of Serbia (out of which Josep Broz Tito had created the socialist Yugoslavia), intervened and a terrible conflict ensued, with civilians paying a dramatic cost.

That conflict renewed dormant ethnic and religious divisions, about which everybody knew, but Genscher, who was then no longer in the German government, explained at a meeting in which the author participated: “I never thought the Serbians would resist Europe.”

It is interesting to note in this context that just a few weeks ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that neither Serbia nor Croatia had engaged in a genocidal war. The news was reported by many media, but without a word of contextualisation.

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been destroyed to implement the winning theory of “free market against socialism”. Did the creation of five mini-states improve the lives of the people? Not according to statistics, especially of youth unemployment, which was unknown in the days of Tito.

Then there was Iraq where, in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack in September 2001, the rationale for attacking the country was based on assertions that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was both harbouring and supporting al-Qaeda, the group held responsible for the attack, and possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to the United States and its allies. These, which turned out to be lies, were blindly propagated by the media

But if, as is widely believed, petroleum was the cause, let us look at figures as an accounting company would do. That war is estimated to have cost at least two trillion dollars, without considering human life and physical destruction.

Iraq’s annual petroleum output at full pre-war capacity was 3.7 million barrels per day. Now a part of that is under the control of the Islamic State and Kurds have taken more than one-third under their control. But even at the full production, it would have taken more than 20 years to recoup the costs of the war.

It is, to say the least, unlikely that the United States would have had all that time – and since the war, has spent more than a further trillion dollars just in occupation and military costs.

And what about Afghanistan where there is no petroleum? Two trillion dollars have also been spent there … and the aim of that war was just to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden!

Among others, it was said that democracy would be brought to Afghanistan. Now, after more than 50.000 deaths, nobody speaks any longer of institutional building, and the United States and its allies are simply trying to extricate themselves from a country whose future is bleak.

Now, the question I want to raise here is the following: what has happened to looking beyond the immediate consequences and long-term analysis in foreign policy?

Is it possible that nobody in power questioned the wisdom of an intervention in Libya for example, even assuming that Muammar Gaddafi was a villain to remove?  Did any of them ask what would happen afterwards? Did any of those in power ask what it would mean to support a war to remove Bashar al-Assad in Syria and what would happen after?

It appears that the House of Lords is right, we are taken into conflict by sleepwalkers. The West is responsible either for creating countries which are not viable (Kosovo), or for disintegrating countries (Yugoslavia and now probably Iraq), or for opening up areas of instability (Libya, Syria).

Without mentioning Ukraine where intervention is aimed at pushing the country towards Europe and NATO, thus provoking the potential retaliation of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Those errors have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced millions of people and, altogether, cost at least seven trillion dollars. Who is going to wake the sleepwalkers up? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

For a long time, citizens of the United States have firmly believed that their country has an exceptional destiny, and continue to do so today even though their political system has become totally dysfunctional.

The three pillars of U.S. democracy – legislative, executive and judicial – are no longer on speaking terms,  so dialogue or the possibility of bipartisan policy has virtually disappeared.

In this context, to please his opponents, and with a view to the U.S. presidential elections in 2016, President Barack Obama is increasingly being pushed to act as strong guy.

Roberto Savio

This is the only reasonable explanation on why he has suddenly declared Venezuela a security threat to the United States, just months after starting the process of normalisation of relations with Cuba, a long-time U.S. enemy in Latin America and ally of Venezuela.

The country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, is extremely happy because his denunciations of a U.S. plot with Venezuela’s opposition to have him removed have now been officially justified – by no less than the United States itself. Even the New York Times, in an editorial on Mar. 12, wondered about the wisdom of such move.

The problem is that, behind Obama’s back, U.S. Republican senators are doing unprecedented things, like writing an admonitory letter to the Supreme Guardian of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, indicating that any nuclear agreement made with Obama would last only as long as he remained in office.

That letter must have made Khamenei and Iran’s hardliners very happy, because they have always said that the United States cannot be trusted, and that the ongoing nuclear negotiations make no sense."This escalation [over Ukraine] has already taken a direction that clear heads should exam with a long-term perspective. Are the members of NATO – an institution that needs conflict to justify its new life now that the Soviet Union no longer exists – ready to enter a war, just to keep making the point? "

We are now facing an extension of the concept of the exceptional destiny of the United States, in which its foreign policy can also be exceptional, not subject to logic and rules.

Across the Atlantic, what is certainly exceptional is that while Europe has practically always followed U.S. foreign policy, even when it is against its interests as is the case of the confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, the United Kingdom – which has a special relationship with the United States – is now indulging in some divergent action.

Through its Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, the United Kingdom has announced that it intends to join the Chinese initiative for the creation of an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), in which Beijing is investing 50 billion dollars. This has raised the ire of the United States because the AIIB is seen as an alternative to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, in which the United States (and Japan) have powerful interests.

Shortly after Cameron’s move, France, Germany and Italy followed, while Australia will also join and South Korea will have to do so. This will leave the United States isolated, opening up a new “exceptional” dimension – economic might (China) is more attractive than military might (United States).

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has responded to U.S. irritation by declaring that the United Kingdom is joining the AIIB because “we think that it’s in the UK’s national interest”.

Of course, Cameron is playing up to his financial constituency, which is very aware of its interest, even when it does not coincide with U.S. interest. After all, China’s share of global manufacturing output, which was three percent in 1990, had risen to nearly 25 percent by 2014.

Even worse is that Cameron has also decided to cut spending on defence and while the U.K. government currently meets the two percent of GDP target that the United States expects all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to pay into the alliance, it has only committed itself to continuing that until the end of the current Parliament in May.

For the U.S. administration, this could be taken as a sign of weakness by Russian President Vladimir Putin who, it argues, should be put under growing pressure and shown that the confrontation over Ukraine will escalate until he backs down.

This escalation has already taken a direction that clear heads should exam with a long-term perspective. Are the members of NATO – an institution that needs conflict to justify its new life now that the Soviet Union no longer exists – ready to enter a war, just to keep making the point?

The signals are those that precede a war.

U.K. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has declared that Russia is “as great a threat to Europe as ‘Islamic States’.” Troops are amassing in the Baltic States to serve as a deterrent for a possible Russian invasion. The U.S. Republican Congress is overtly asking for the supply of massive and heavy weapons to the Ukrainian army.  Hundreds of U.S. troops have been assigned to Ukraine to bolster the Kiev regime against Russian-backed rebels in the east. The United Kingdom is sending 75 military advisers.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, the Polish government is supporting the creation and training of militias, and plans to provide military training to any of the many Poles who are increasingly concerned that “the great Russian behemoth will not be sated with Ukraine and will reach out once again into the West.” The same is happening in the Baltic States, which all have a sizable Russian presence and think Putin could invade them at any moment.

Media everywhere have engaged in a frenzy of personal vilification of Putin and in the popular pastime of using Putin and Ukraine to justify military expansionism – to advocate tit for tat what Putin is doing.

It is difficult to look to Putin with sympathy, but this confrontation has again pushed the Russian people behind its leader, and at an unprecedented level that now stands at around 80 percent.

The Guardian has reported veteran Russian leftist Boris Kagarlitsky as commenting that most Russians want Putin to take a tougher stand against the West “not because of patriotic propaganda, but their experience of the past 25 years”, and it would be a mistake to underestimate the role that humiliation can play in history.

It is commonly accepted that Hitler emerged from the frustrations of the German people after the heavy penalties that they had to pay the victors after the First World War. The same sense of humiliation made the war of Slobodan Milosevic against NATO popular with the Serbian population.

It is the humiliation of the Arabs divided among the winners of the First World War which is at the roots of the Caliphate, or the Islamic State, which claims that Arabs are finally going to be given back their dignity and identity.

And it is also humiliation over the imposition of austerity which is now creating a strong anti-German sentiment in Greece, to which Germans respond with a sense of righteous indignation (52 percent of Germans now want Greece to leave the Euro).

Has anyone considered who is going to take over Russia if Putin goes away? Certainly not those who are now in the opposition. Has anyone considered what it would mean to take on responsibility for a very weak state like Ukraine?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has now approved a 17.5 billion dollar relief fund for Ukraine but warned that the country’s rescue “is subject to exceptional risks, especially those arising from the conflict in the East.”

In fact Ukraine needs to plug a hole of at least 40 billion dollars in the immediate term, and economists all agree that the country does not have a viable economy. It will require many years of consistent help to reach some economic equilibrium – if there is no war.

Europe is close to recession and apparently unable even to solve the problems of Greece, but goes headlong into supporting Kiev against Russian-backed rebels. NATO can support Ukrainian soldiers up to their last man, but it is impossible that they will beat Russia. Will the West then intervene or back off and lose face, after many deaths and much waste and destruction?

A widespread view now is that sanctions should starve Russia, which will have lost its revenues from oil. What if Putin does not back down, sustained by the Russian people? Are Europeans ready to go to war to please the Republican Congress in the United States? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Billboard for the referendum called to strengthen a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption in Slovakia in February. It says: WE ARE DECIDING ABOUT CHILDREN'S FUTURES. LET'S PROTECT THEIR RIGHT TO A MOTHER AND FATHER. Credit: Pavol Stracansky/IPS

By Pavol Stracansky
BRATISLAVA, Mar 15 2015 (IPS)

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) groups in Central and Eastern Europe, which still faced mixed prospects as they fight for rights and acceptance, are now taking some heart from the “failure” of a referendum in Slovakia, a member of the European Union.

Last month, a referendum called to strengthen a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption in Slovakia was declared invalid after only just over 20 percent of voters turned out.

The controversial plebiscite was heavily criticised by international rights groups, which said it pandered to homophobic discrimination and was allowing human rights issues affecting a minority group to be decided by a popular majority vote.

The campaigning ahead of the vote had often been bitter and vitriolic, including public homophobic statements by clergy, and a controversial negative commercial about gay adoption, which Slovak TV stations refused to broadcast and eventually only appeared on internet.The reasons behind the relative societal intolerance towards LGBT groups in Central and Eastern Europe vary from entrenched conservative attitudes rooted in countries’ isolation under communism, to local political aims and the influence of the Catholic Church.

The commercial showed a child in an orphanage being told that his new parents were coming to collect him and, after two men appear at the door, asking: “Where’s Mum?”

Activists here say that the referendum’s outcome was a sign that, despite this campaigning, Slovaks know that LGBT people pose “no threat” to society and has positively furthered discussion about allowing registered partnerships in the country.

Martin Macko, head of the Bratislava-based LGBT rights group Inakost, told IPS: “The referendum showed that people consider the family important, but that they do not see same-sex families as a threat to traditional families. The long-term perspective regarding discussions on registered partnerships in Slovakia is positive.”

Importantly, the result has also been welcomed in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe where many LGBT groups still face intolerance and discrimination.

Evelyne Paradis, Executive Director of international LGBT rights group ILGA-Europe told IPS: “LGBT activists across Europe have welcomed the outcome of the Slovak vote … hopefully the referendum will lead to a constructive discussion about equality in Slovakia. At the same time, we know that there is a broad diversity of views in the region which means that much work remains to be done before full equality is realised.”

Compared with Western Europe, attitudes in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe to LGBT people and issues are often much more conservative and in some states actively hostile.

The Czech Republic, whose larger cities have relatively open and vibrant gay communities, is the only country in the region which allows for registered partnerships of same-sex couples.

In other countries, such as Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Poland, marriage is defined constitutionally as only between a man and a woman. In January this year, Macedonia’s parliament voted to adopt a similar clause in its constitution.

Adoption by same sex couples is banned in all states in the region while other important legislation relating to LGBT issues is also absent. In Bulgaria, for instance, inadequate legislation means that homophobic crimes are investigated and prosecuted as ‘hooliganism’. This, activists claim, creates a climate of fear for LGBT people.

Poor records on minority rights in general in places like, for instance, Ukraine, mean that while the state may ostensibly be committed to LGBT rights, such communities are in reality extremely vulnerable.

In Russia, legislation actively represses same-sex relationships, with federal laws criminalising promotion of any non-heterosexual lifestyle, while Lithuania has legal provisions banning the promotion of homosexuality.

Deeply negative attitudes towards homosexuals are widespread in some societies. A 2013 survey in Ukraine showed that two-thirds of people thought homosexuality was a perversion, while a study in the same year in Lithuania showed that 61 percent of LGBT people said they had suffered discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Isolated verbal and physical attacks and passive intolerance among more conservative groups are common across the region. But in some countries, specifically Russia, anyone even suspected of being non-heterosexual faces open, organised and sometimes lethally violent persecution.

Natalia Tsymbalova, an LGBT rights activist from St Petersburg, was forced to flee Russia in September last year after receiving death threats. Now claiming asylum in Spain, she was one of at least 12 LGBT activists who left Russia last year.

Speaking from Madrid, she told IPS about the continuing repression of LGBT people in her home country.

She said that although state propaganda campaigns had “switched to ‘Ukrainian fascists’ and the West” being portrayed as the public’s greatest enemy instead of LGBT people since the annexation of Crimea and the start of the Ukraine conflict, “state homophobia has not disappeared”.

“It has just faded into the background,” she added, “no longer making top headlines in the news, but it is still there and it has never left. The number of hate crimes is not falling, and they are being investigated as badly as before.”

The reasons behind the relative societal intolerance towards LGBT groups in Central and Eastern Europe vary from entrenched conservative attitudes rooted in countries’ isolation under communism, to local political aims and the influence of the Catholic Church.

In Slovakia, a strongly Catholic country where the Church’s influence can be extremely strong in many communities, supporters of the referendum welcomed Pope Francis’ personal endorsement of their cause.

It has been speculated that the conservative Alliance for Family movement, which initiated the referendum, is funded by Slovakia’s Catholic Church and that the Church was the driving force behind moves to bring about the vote.

In Lithuania, another strongly Catholic country, Church officials have supported laws restricting LGBT rights and have openly called homosexuality a perversion.

However, some rights activists also say that politicians in countries struggling economically or looking to entrench their own power can often use minorities, including LGBT people, as easy political targets to gain voter support.

ILGA’s Paradis told IPS: “Unfortunately many political leaders use the LGBT community as scapegoats … from activists we often hear that they do this to hide ‘real problems’ in countries, such as youth unemployment, access to education and healthcare. They promote ‘traditional family values’ as the way to rescue society. Sadly, in doing this, political leaders build a climate of intolerance and hatred.”

Saying that Russian politicians are now using homophobia to push wider agendas, Tsymbalova told IPS: “Homophobia plays an important role in the anti-Western rhetoric of President [Vladimir] Putin and his fellows. It is one of the main points of the conservative values that they try to promote and the public still has negative attitudes toward LGBT communities.”

The outcome of the Slovak referendum has left activists there more optimistic about the future for LGBT people in their country.

They are now pushing for discussions with the government about introducing registered partnerships and they hope that LGBT communities in other countries in the region will be heartened by the result or that, at least, people hoping to organise similar referendums will reconsider what they are doing.

Macko of Inakost told IPS: “Religious groups in some Balkan and Baltic countries are considering organising similar referendums and we really hope this will discourage them.”

Paradis told IPS that while the Slovak referendum had already been welcomed by many of its member groups in Central and Eastern Europe, progress on LGBT issues in many countries, including registered partnerships, was unlikely to be swift. “There indeed is more discussion in the region on granting rights to same sex partnerships, but what we see is a very mixed picture.”

However, the outlook for LGBT people in some places remains grim. Tsymbalova told IPS that many LGBT people in her home country have given up hope of any positive changes in the foreseeable future.

“In our community, there is almost no one who believes that the situation for LGBT people in Russia will seriously change for the better any time soon. Under the existing regime, which promotes and exploits homophobia, these changes will not happen and there is almost no hope of a regime change, so expectations are gloomy.”

She added: “Many LGBT activists have either left Russia, like me, or are going to. [As] for same-sex registered partnerships, it would take several decades to be accepted in Russia and I don’t believe I will see this in my lifetime. It is completely out of the question for the next 20 or 30 years.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

By Emma Bonino
ROME, Feb 27 2015 (IPS)

When I am asked whether Europe is still a relevant “protagonist” in the modern world, I always answer that there is no doubt about it. For a long time now, the continent has been shaken by financial crises, internal security strategy crises – including wars – and instability within its borders, which definitely make it a protagonist in world affairs. 

If the question asked were about what the leading role of the European Union actually is, it is enough to take a look at a few days’ entries in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s diary.

Emma Bonino

On Thursday Feb. 5 she was in Moscow with French President François Hollande for negotiations on the Ukraine crisis with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the following day she met Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for talks in Kiev. At the weekend she was back in Munich, where she argued publicly for resistance against increasing pressure from the United States to arm the Ukrainian forces.

On Monday Feb. 9 Merkel was in Washington, where she obtained – at least temporarily – U.S. President Barack Obama’s agreement to her stand against providing arms to Ukraine, in order to maintain a favourable climate for the negotiations that were about to be held in Minsk.

Next she went to Minsk to participate in three exhausting days of talks including a 17-hour debate with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, which led to a proposal of truce in Ukraine, presented on Thursday Feb. 12 to an informal meeting of E.U. heads of state in Brussels.

This brief overview, and the reports and images disseminated in the media, clearly show that Angela Merkel personifies the global role of Europe and puts other European heads of state and institutions in the shade.

Other protagonists on the international stage, like Obama and Putin, show a similar perception when they make important agreements with the German Chancellor.

In my federalist vision of Europe, it would be just perfect if Merkel were the president of the United States of Europe. Unfortunately, that is not the case.“I am convinced that Berlin is aware that Germany is called on to shoulder strategic responsibilities that go beyond its status as an economic superpower”

I do not want to dwell on the oversimplified dilemma that has been exercising think tanks for years: Are we moving towards a Europeanised Germany, or towards a Germanised Europe?

But I am convinced that Berlin is aware that Germany is called on to shoulder strategic responsibilities that go beyond its status as an economic superpower. This view is reinforced by the certainty that the proposal to reform the United Nations Security Council by granting Berlin a permanent seat is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

And if, at some date far in the future, such a reform of the Security Council is approved, the Council’s powers may by then have been reduced.

I believe this because in the last few months, while the events that are public knowledge were happening in Syria, in Iraq, with respect to the Islamic State, in Ukraine, in Sudan, Libya and Nigeria, the Security Council was conspicuous by its absence.

Furthermore, it is a disappointing surprise to witness the almost non-existent resilience of the institutions created by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, which reformed the European Union. At the time they were praised as a new departure in the framework of international law and as the consolidation of a united European foreign policy.

While we watched the serious conflict in Ukraine on our continent, many of us asked ourselves what the top E.U. authorities, who had been elected transnationally for the first time, were doing: E.U. President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini.

What credibility can possibly remain for structures that are systematically side-lined when conflicts become red-hot?

The problem does not lie in the persons who perform these functions. Such an analysis would be too superficial.

It is rather a question of ascertaining whether European institutions are sufficiently robust to resist what many call a return to the Westphalian system, that is, to the treaties of 1648 that demarcated a new order in Europe founded on the nation-state as the basis of international relations.

Outside Europe, this tendency has been developing for some time. The role of global power is increasingly taken over by “mega states”: the United States, Russia, China, India, and soon to include Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia.

The European Union has difficulty matching up to these as a valid counterpart.

I am afraid that this tendency may lead to the definitive crisis of the European federalist project. However, we federalists must resist the trend and reflect on the best way to face the situation.

Since 2008, the economic and political measures taken by EU member countries have aimed at “renationalising” their interests, with the exception of actions implemented by Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank.

Consequently, Europe has abandoned the pursuit of a common foreign policy and has reverted to inter-governmental practices that prioritise national interests.

The dilemma is clear: either the European Union is a global power and is recognised as such, or Europe will be represented by others in crucial debates.

In this context, what is emerging is that Germany is increasingly taking on a new role.

This process began with the bizarre designation in 2006 of a group of countries to negotiate with Iran, known as 3+3, or more commonly, outside Europe, as 5+1: the five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France) plus Germany.

Since then Berlin has taken on a leading role, not only in the European context but also in many international affairs, often on behalf of the European Union.

To sum up: the European Union works jointly to the extent that this is possible. After that there is a level at which decisions – and responsibilities – are taken by those with the power to do so. That is the scheme practised in today’s Europe. It is time for other Europeans to sit up and take notice. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Translated by Valerie Dee/ Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Dec 4 2014 (IPS)

The fact that in a referendum Switzerland has taken a path that goes in the opposite direction from that of Europe is an unusual fact which calls for reflection, especially because Switzerland has taken a much more progressive path, while we all were accustomed to see it as a very conservative country.

On Nov. 30, Swiss citizens were asked to vote on a proposal for reducing immigrants to a maximum of 17,000 per year, compared with 88.000 in 2013. This was rejected by 73 percent of the voters, after a unanimous campaign by the government, industrialists and trade unions that without immigrants there would be serious problems in keeping the economy expanding.

Roberto Savio

It is worth noting that foreigners account for 23.5 percent of the population in Switzerland, compared with an average of 4 percent in Europe as a whole.

Another proposal in the same referendum called for dedicating 10 percent of Swiss international cooperation to birth control in poor countries in order to reduce their birth rate. It was clearly a racist proposal, and was also defeated. Swiss citizens have no right to decide birth policies in other countries.

While the Swiss were voting, British Prime Minister David Cameron was making public his proposal to drastically restrict European immigration. Europeans would be expelled if they did not find a job within six months. They would have work continuously for four years before having access to the country’s social benefits of the country. They would also face restrictions to their right to bring their families with them, even after finding a job.“The real problem is that Europe has a dramatic lack of real statesmen or stateswomen who are ready to go against the polls for the good of their country”

The same debate is going on in Germany, where the government is also carrying out a media campaign to popularise its bill of law which also contemplates the expulsion of European immigrants who do not find a job within six months. It is obvious that this will have a cascade effect in several other European countries.

In both cases, this is an attempt to undercut anti-European parties – the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) which is on the rise in Britain and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany, although the AfD is not a threat like the UKIP and what Chancellor Angela Merkel is doing amounts to an act of populism.

There is a wave of xenophobia spreading throughout Europe. Marine Le Pen’s National Front is aiming to become the number one party in France. In Italy, the right-wing Northern League is growing by the day. Today there is a xenophobic and anti-European party in every country of Europe, with the notable exception of Spain, where the People’s Party has been able to make a right-wing party redundant.

What is striking is that all those parties are creating alliances and creating a pan-European rejection of the European Union. Marine Le Pen has just chaired a meeting in Lyon of seven extreme right-wing parties, like the Flemish Vlaame Belang in Belgium and the Dutch Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders.

What was even more striking was the presence of two leaders of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. Among Europe’s right-wing parties there is growing support for Putin, and a Russian bank, the First Czech-Russian Bank with headquarters in Moscow, has just given a loan of nine million dollars to the Le Pen’s National Front.

The reality is that Europe is in serious need of young immigrants to remain competitive internationally, and innumerable studies show that immigrants have a positive impact on the economy.

In England, immigrants account for 4.3 percent of the population, their rate of employment is 78.8 percent, slightly higher than the British average (73.6 percent), and just 15 percent of immigrants request some kind of subsidy. According to a study by University College London, European immigrants who arrived in the United Kingdom contributed more than 20 billion pounds to the country’s public finances between 2001 and 2011.

Similarly, all national and European studies on immigration show that immigrants request less subsidies than nationals, are net contributors in terms of taxation, and take jobs that nationals no longer want.

According to United Nations projections, Europe has a deficit of 20 million people if it wants to keep the pension system viable, but this is not simply “politically correct” at this moment. The very small minority of immigrants involved in crime is what everybody sees through strong media exposure, and the parties which are making their fortune are calling for a white and pure Europe again.

Pope Francis speaks about ethics and solidarity with immigrants, but if parties are able to ignore economics, just imagine ethics!

The Spanish National Institute of Statistics has just released its latest findings, and they are in line with similar studies everywhere in Europe. In 1976, 676,718 children were born in Spain – 18.7 babies for every 1,000 mothers. In 1995, there were 363,467 births – 9.2 babies for every 1,000 mothers.

For every 100 Spaniards of working age, 27.6 are over the age of 64 – by 2050, this figure will be closer to 73. An even more extreme figure comes from the Population Division of the United Nations. If the Spanish borders were to be closed and nobody could enter or leave, and with the growing reduction in the number of women of fertile age, by 2100 the Spanish population would stand at around 800,000 people!

We have just to look to the United States to see the opposite policy. Every year, young people bring constant expansion to the labour force and the economy. Not even the most rabid Republican speaks of abolishing immigration, just of keeping it at a lower rate.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is riding the issue of immigration due his shrinking popularity, but in the opposite direction. He wants to legalise as many illegal immigrants as possible … and there are already 52 million immigrants.

The real problem is that Europe has a dramatic lack of real statesmen or stateswomen who are ready to go against the polls for the good of their country. The best example is the powerful Angela Merkel, who has never taken any risk or any difficult decision (except on abolishing nuclear power, and that only because of the general aversion after the Japanese tsunami).

Merkel’s comment on the law on restricting European immigrants was: “Europe is not a social union”. In other words, the flow of capital is protected, the flow of workers is not.

In all this, the European Commission has been silent on immigration. And now, its President, Jean-Claude Juncker, unmoved by the revelations on how he helped hundreds of corporations to avoid taxes in Europe with deals in Luxembourg, is now presenting a development plan to which the Commission would contribute just 10 percent and the remaining 90 percent would be funded by the private sector… and that is his landmark!

Europe is clearly committing suicide and people will find out when it has already lost its position in world competition … only then, maybe, will the difference between a statesman and a politician become clear. (IPS/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Nov 26 2014 (IPS)

After the Italian sea search-and-rescue operation Mare Nostrum at a cost of nine million euros a month, through which the Italian Navy has rescued nearly 100,000 migrants – although perhaps up to 3,000 have died – from the Mediterranean since October 2013, Europe is now presenting its new face in the Mediterranean.

The European Union is launching Joint Operation Triton with a monthly budget of 2.9 million euros and funds secured until the end of the year. Its function is to enforce border controls – not to save “boat people” – and it will patrol just thirty nautical miles from the coast, which pales in comparison with Italy’s Mare Nostrum operation which saw patrols being sent close to the Libyan coast.

Roberto Savio

Even with this very limited operation, British Prime Minister David Cameron has said that the United Kingdom will not contribute because operations that save migrants make them more willing to try to cross the Mediterranean. Of course, there is a perverted logic in this: the more migrants that die, the greater will be the discouragement for others to try.

Following this logic through, the ideal situation therefore would be to reach a death rate that would stop illegal immigration once and for all!

In this context, it is worth noting that the U.K. government is considering withdrawal from the European Convention of Human Rights (something that even Russian President Vladimir Putin has never considered). The argument is that nobody can be above U.K. courts.

London is also refusing to pay its share of increased of contributions to the European Union and is considering how to put an annual cap on the number of Europeans who are entitled to work legally in the United Kingdom.“Since 1986, the year of signing of the Single European Act, Europeans have never been able to agree on a minimum social basis, which would have given them rights as workers to act collectively as Europeans in the face of a market which is economically unified, but with no common social legislation”

And finally, the U.K. government received with great uproar the sentence of the European Court of Justice, which placed a European cap on banker bonuses, rejecting Britain’s claims that it was illegal. The British argument was that pay levels (also of discredited bankers) were part of social policy and thus under the authority of member states not of the European Union.

Meanwhile, the same Court has issued another sentence under which E.U. member states are not obliged to support European citizens who do not have economic activities in the E.U. countries to which they have migrated. And the German Parliament is now preparing a law to expel European immigrants who do not find a job within six months.

Of course, this will open the doors to all other countries to reduce the free movement of Europeans in Europe, a cornerstone of the original vision of a solidary Europe. Now Europeans will be obliged to take any job, and therefore the law of market will become the primary criterion for their movements in Europe.

Since 1986, the year of signing of the Single European Act, Europeans have never been able to agree on a minimum social basis, which would have given them rights as workers to act collectively as Europeans in the face of a market which is economically unified, but with no common social legislation.

In fact, the point has now been reached where social criteria are the last to be used to judge whether a country is recovering or not, well after economic and financial criteria.

A devastated Greece is now again being considered in financial markets because its economic indicators are on the up. And, at the last G20 meeting in Brisbane, Spain was touted as the example that austerity policies – those indicated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the example for laggards like Italy and France – are the correct way out of the crisis.

At the same time, a very different source, Caritas, has reported that only 34.3 percent of Spaniards live a normal life, while 40.6 percent are stuck in precariousness, 24.2 percent are already suffering moderate exclusion and 10.9 percent are living in severe exclusion.

To understand the trend, six years ago, 50.2 percent of Spaniards had a normal life. Now, one citizen in four is suffering exclusion, and of those 11 million excluded citizens, 77.1 percent have no job, 61.7 percent no house and 46 percent no health care support.

According to UNICEF’s recent report on children under recession, 76.5 million children in the rich countries live in poverty, and in Spain, 36.3 percent of the country’s children (2.7 million) are living in a state of precariousness.

What is now new is that some major financial institutions have started to draw attention to social issues.

Janet L. Yellen, chairwoman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, has declared that she is concerned about the growing inequality of wealth and income in the United States, and that chances for people to advance economically appear to be diminishing. And Mario Draghi, governor of the European Central Bank, is now constantly mentioning the issues of “unbearable unemployment “and “growing exclusion”.

In the background there is the proven fact that countries which took emergency measures to reduce public borrowing have mostly had weaker growth, like most European countries (with the exception of Germany, helped by a boom in machinery exports to Russia and China), while those which introduced a policy of stimulus, like the United States, Japan and Britain, have done much better, also in reducing unemployment.

But Merkel continues to ignore calls from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other monetary institutions – she is only interested in pleasing her constituency, which is increasingly looking to its immediate interests and losing sight of European perspectives.

In all this, the banks continue to be uninterested in any social perspective. A few days ago, European and U.S. regulators imposed new fines worth 4.5 billion dollars on a number of major banks (we are now approaching the 200 billion dollar mark since the crisis started in 2008) for illegal activities.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the largest of them, JP Morgan, declared in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC that it is important that United States creates a “safe harbour” where JPMorgan’s illegal practice of hiring the relatives of political leaders “is not punished”.

In Dimon’s country, between 2009 and 2010, 93 percent of economic growth ended up in the pockets of one percent of the population, according to Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and the 16,000 families with wealth of at least 111 million dollars have seen their share of national wealth double since 2012 to 11.2 percent.

The last U.S. presidential elections cost 3.4 billion dollars, and most of that came from this small minority. Democracy, where all votes are equal, is increasingly becoming a plutocracy where money elects.

Meeting leaders of social movements on Oct. 26, Pope Francis told them: “They call me a communist [for speaking of] land, work and housing … but love for the poor is at the centre of the Gospel.” Certainly, governments are doing otherwise …

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

Immigrants in Russia could face a wave of violence following thousands of arrests in a crackdown on illegal immigration which has been condemned not only for human rights breaches but for entrenching a virulent negative public perception of migrants.

More than 7,000 people were arrested across Moscow – and more than 800 already served with deportation orders – under Operation Migrant 2014 which ran between Oct. 23 and Nov. 2 in the Russian capital.

The scale of the operation and methods used by the authorities has left international and local rights organisations outraged.

They say police used violence during raids on thousands of locations, including work places, markets, lodgings, hotels and people’s homes. They said that some migrants were forcibly taken from their families with no information given to relatives of where they were being taken.“Operations like this [Operation Migration 2014] only reinforce negative images of migrants in Russia and increase violence towards them. Once Russians see images of the raids in the news they will rally to support the government's actions” – Tolekan Ismailova, Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights

Some were deported without proper procedures being observed, according to local lawyers while others claim many of an estimated up to 100,000 migrants detained had money confiscated by police before being released without their detention being recorded.

Tolekan Ismailova, vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said: “This is simply an institutionalised way of intimidating migrants and their families. The operation violates Russia’s international obligations to respect human dignity and ban the practice of arbitrary detentions.”

But beyond the rights abuses, the highly-publicised raids are, critics argue, also helping foment and entrench a xenophobic attitude to migrants in wider society that increases the risk of violence against them.

Ismailova told IPS: “Operations like this only reinforce negative images of migrants in Russia and increase violence towards them. Once Russians see images of the raids in the news they will rally to support the government’s actions.”

The warnings come amid hardening attitudes towards what some Russian MPs estimate to be as many as 10 million migrants across Russia.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s large cities have been a magnet for migrants, mainly from former neighbouring Soviet states. Wages on offer in cities like St Petersburg and Moscow are often enough for immigrants to support entire families back at home. In some Central Asian countries, remittances sent home from workers in Russia account for as much as one-third of national GDP.

But successful assimilation of those migrants has been limited for a number of reasons. Migrants, especially those from Central Asia, have tended to interact within their own communities while support from Russian authorities and representatives of their own states has often been weak.

Rights groups say local employers routinely exploit migrants, refusing to give  them proper contracts, leaving them with no rights, often working in poor conditions and for low wages. Many are de facto working and residing illegally, and unable to access health care and pension systems.

Their situation also forces many to live in bad conditions and fuels criminality and violence in migrant communities, leading to further arrests and a perpetuation of negative attitudes towards migrants in wider society.

Ismailova told IPS: “Central Asian migrants are harassed because there is a culture of racism in Russia that perpetuates the stereotype that they are ‘black’ and they do the ‘black’ work in Russia. Many Russians have prejudices against Central Asians.”

Attitudes to migrants hardened in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008 and have worsened considerably since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012.

Critics say that the Kremlin is pursuing a xenophobic and anti-migrant policy in an attempt to distract Russians from wider problems in society.

They point to Operation Migrant 2014 as just the latest in a string of recent highly-visible crackdowns seemingly aimed at reinforcing the public perception of illegal immigrants posing a threat.

Operation Illegal 2014, similar to Operation Migrant 2014, was conducted in St Petersburg from Sep. 22 to Oct. 10, resulting in charges being brought against 437 migrants. And just last month, draft legislation was heard in parliament which would increase the penalties for foreigners exceeding maximum stay periods in the country.

Rights campaigners also point to other methods being used to fuel distrust of migrants, including authorities’ encouragement of citizens to report migrants they suspect of working illegally to a special hotline which passes the information to the police.

According to Ismailova, “this is exactly the same strategy that was used by the KGB. It creates a sense of distrust among people and is a major obstacle against securing human rights for migrants.”

The raids, arrests, anti-immigrant legislation and rhetoric from public officials – last month Moscow’s mayor said that were it not for illegal immigrants Moscow would be the safest city in the world – are little more than a “PR exercise” designed to deflect attention from other issues.

Tanya Lokshina, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Moscow, told IPS: “With the ruble suffering an alarming drop, the government is apparently trying to divert people’s attention from concerns over living standards by turning their discontent towards migrants and, at the same time, demonstrating its own ‘effectiveness’  by attacking that ‘enemy’.”

Lokshina also said that “part of the problem with irregular migration is that employers don’t provide migrant workers with proper contracts. No one wants to work without a contract or permit – they do it because they have no other option. The government should ensure that migrant workers have contracts and relevant guarantees.”

Authorities have defended the need to tackle illegal immigration. They say that, among others,  illegal immigrants put a massive strain on state resources, particularly the health care system – migrants seeking medical help costs Moscow alone a reported 150 million dollars each year.

But rights campaigners say the government should be looking to strengthen migrants’ rights instead of enforcing repressive crackdowns.

They say authorities should give more notification to migrants to have residency and other documents in order before any raids are carried out and that a current three-month entry and exit visa regime for many migrants should be cancelled.

Even migration experts have openly questioned the policy of mass arrests.

Vyacheslav Postavnin, president of the Migration XXI Century foundation which cooperates with the Russian government working on migration policy, told Russian news agency TASS last week: “There are a lot of question marks around operations like this. I can see no quantitative value in them.

“Even if a thousand people were detained, there are thousands more that have not broken laws. The question is why were they arrested, taken away somewhere  and to some extent humiliated? What happens when it is found out that they are working legally?”

Others warn that the situation for immigrants is becoming increasingly fraught and there are serious concerns about the risk of violence against the immigrant community in the near future.

The Russian public holiday of Unity Day on Nov. 4 is often marked by massive nationalist and anti-migrant demonstrations in major cities and was last yearpreceded by violent riots in Moscow after an ethnic Azeri was alleged to have killed a Russian. Meanwhile, in St Petersburg, a migrant of Uzbek origin was killed during the national holiday.

When asked whether further violence against immigrants could be expected following the publicity around the arrests, Lokshina told IPS: “It’s certainly likely.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Oct 22 2014 (IPS)

The new European Commission looks more like an experiment in balancing opposite forces than an institution that is run by some kind of governance. It will probably end up being paralysed by internal conflicts, which is the last thing it needs.

During the Commission presided over by José Manuel Barroso (2004-2014), Europe has become more and more marginal in the international arena, bogged down by the internal division between the North and the South of Europe.

Roberto Savio

We are going back to a new Thirty Years’ War – which took place nearly five centuries ago – between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics are considered profligate spenders, and there is a moral approach to economics from the Protestant side.

The Germans, for example, have transformed debt into a financial “sin”.  The large majority of Germans support the stern position of their government that fiscal sacrifice is the only way to salvation, and the looming economic slowdown will only strengthen that feeling. As a result, the handling of Europe’s internal governance crisis has largely pushed Europe to the side lines of the world.

It is a mystery why it is in the interests of Europe to push Russia into a structural alliance with China and, in such a fragile moment, inflict on itself losses of trade and investment with Russia which could reach 40 billion euro next year.“We are going back to a new Thirty Years’ War – which took place nearly five centuries ago – between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics are considered profligate spenders, and there is a moral approach to economics from the Protestant side.”

The latest issue of the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine – the bible of the U.S. elite – carries a long and detailed article on “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault” by Chicago academic John J. Mearsheimer, who documents how the offer to Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was the last of a number of hostile steps that pushed Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop a clear process of encroachment.

Mearsheimer wonders how all this was in the long term interests of the United States, beyond some small circles, and why Europe followed. But politics now has only a short-term horizon, and priorities are becoming conditioned by that approach.

A good example is how European states (with the exception of the Nordic states), have been slashing their international cooperation budgets. Not only have Spain, Italy and Portugal – and of course Greece – practically eliminated their official development assistance (ODA) budgets, but France, Belgium and Austria have also been following suit. Meanwhile China has been investing heavily in Africa, Latin America and, of course, Asia where the term ‘cooperation’ would not be the most appropriate.

But the best example of Europe’s inability to be in sync with reality is the last cut in the Erasmus programme, which sends tens of thousands of students every year to another European country. Has it been overlooked that one million babies have been born to couples who met during their Erasmus scholarships, and that this programme is being cut at a moment when anti-Europe parties are sprouting everywhere?

In fact, education – and especially culture (and medical assistance) – are under a continuous reduction in spending. As Giulio Tremonti, Finance Minister under Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, famously said, “you don’t eat with culture”.

The per capita budget for culture in southern Europe is now one-seventh that of northern Europe. Italy, which according to UNESCO holds 50 percent of Europe’s cultural heritage, has just decided in its latest budget to open up 100 jobs in the archaeological field with a gross monthly salary of 430 euro. In today’s market, this is half what a maid receives for 20 hours of work a week.

Italian politicians do not say so explicitly, but they believe that there is already such rich heritage that there is no need for further investment and, anyhow, the tourists continue to arrive. The budget for all Italian museums is close to the budget of the New York Metropolitan Museum … in the real world, this is like somebody who wants to live by showing the mummified body of his great grandmother for the price of a ticket!

It can be said that, in a moment of crisis, the budget for culture can be frozen because there are more urgent needs. But no need is more urgent than to keep Europe running in the international competition in order to ensure a future for its citizens. And yet, the budget for research and development, which is essential for staying in the race, is also being cut year by year.

Let us look at the situation since 2009. Spain has reduced investment in R&D by 40 percent, which has led to a 40 percent cut in financing for projects and a 30 percent cut in human resources. Italian universities have witnessed a total cut of 20 percent in spending which has meant a reduction of 80 percent in hiring and 100% in projects, while 40 percent of PhD courses have disappeared.

France has cut hiring in centres of research by 25 percent and in universities by 20 percent. Less than 10 percent of demand for projects receives financing because funds are no longer available.

Greece has cut budget for centres of research and universities by 50 percent since 2011, and has frozen the hiring of any new researchers.

In the same period in Portugal, universities and research centres have suffered a cut of 50 percent, the number of scholarships for PhDs has been cut by 40 percent and post-doctoral courses by 65 percent.

It is important to recall that the Lisbon Strategy, the action programme for jobs and growth adopted in 2000,  aimed to  make the European Union “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion” by 2010. Not only were most of its objectives not achieved in 2010, but Europe continues to slide backwards. The Lisbon Strategy had set 3 percent of GNP for R&D, but southern Europe is now below 1.5 percent.

A notable exception is the United Kingdom. The current government, which works in strong synchronicity with the City and its industrial constituency, has funded a 6 billion euro “Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth” plan to the applause of the private sector.

China is steadily increasing steadily its R&D budget, which is now 3 percent (what the Lisbon Strategy had set for Europe), but it aims to reach 6 percent of GNP by 2020 and, in just seven years, China has become the largest producer of solar energy, bankrupting several U.S. and European companies.

Is cutting Europe’s future in international competition really in the interests of Germany? Or it is that politics are losing the view of the forest while they discuss how many trees to cut, to reach a compromise between the Catholics and the Protestants?

We are now making of economics a moral science, which makes of Europe an unusual world. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

By Helge Luras
OSLO, Sep 18 2014 (IPS)

New military measures to deter what NATO perceives to be a direct threat from Russia were adopted at the alliance’s Heads of State meeting in Wales (Sep. 4-5). A few days earlier, President Barack Obama made promises in Estonia that the three tiny Baltic NATO member states would “never stand alone”. 

Since early 2014, Russia has done practically all that Western leaders have warned President Vladimir Putin in advance not to do. Crimea was occupied and annexed. Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine were encouraged and given practical support. Later, Russian personnel and equipment came more and more openly into conflict with Ukrainian forces.

Helge Luras

But the West’s warnings to Russia did not stop there. Already several months ago, establishment figures and the media began to associate events in Ukraine directly with the situation in the Baltics and in Poland. NATO has responded to the Russian offensive against Ukraine, a non-NATO country, by shifting military resources towards the areas of NATO that it claims, but only by conjecture, are threatened by Russia.

But did anyone at the NATO summit warn that the alliance might create a self-fulfilling prophecy? Did anyone have the foresight to consider how tensions between Russian speakers and Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians might increase as a result of the hyperbole of the Russian threat? One should not assume hostile intentions in today’s ethnically-charged world without good reason.

That some Western minds consider themselves, and by extension NATO, to be an idealistic force for peace, human rights and democracy, is beyond dispute. But the reality is that NATO countries – that is, the West – represent the world’s most powerful military force, both conventional and nuclear.

Up to now, NATO has not challenged another nuclear armed entity and therefore has survived its own political-military escalation tendency. But in the case of Russia, the erroneous Western perception of self could cause a catastrophic and total war.

Since the Cold War, the West has swallowed up a large area formerly under the influence, if not outright control, of Soviet Russia. The hegemonic mind saw this as just natural and of no business to an anachronism like Russia.“The problem is that Russian and NATO leaders are not drunken poets pathetically fighting with untrained fists at a literary reception. They may act so, but are in fact front men of substantive and institutional systems that can wipe out all human civilisation in a short time”

The future of humanity when expansion started in the 1990s was a Western future: liberal, democratic and free-market. Spheres of influence were the hallmark of others, exemplified by “reactionary” and authoritarian forces like Russia under Putin. Western influence is in another category – it is natural if not God-given.

In Russia, there is a clear and evolving bias in news reporting which the West characterises as “propaganda”. In the West, there is less need to instruct the media directly, there is a reverse bias due to cultural indoctrination. Evidently the West is a keeper of the right values. There is no cause and effect. Evil just pops up. All things Russian are bad, deceitful, not to be trusted. But in Russia this feeds an undeniable paranoia in the psyche.

The West has retained one “acceptable” bogeyman in the atmosphere of religious tolerance that creates such cognitive dissonance as it struggles to come to grips with core tenets of original (radical) Islam. The Western “liberal mind” has at least one cultural object left to legitimately hate: Russian political culture and the strong man it produces.

The problem is that Russian and NATO leaders are not drunken poets pathetically fighting with untrained fists at a literary reception. They may act so, but are in fact front men of substantive and institutional systems that can wipe out all human civilisation in a short time.

Western leaders undoubtedly perceive that their power is waning. No more state-building in faraway countries for us. The end of omnipotence, indeed of paradigm, is obviously traumatic and difficult to consider with a cool mind. But the diminution of Western political power occurs with no corresponding weakness in pure military muscle.

This leaves the temptation of a “Mad Man Doctrine”. If you can convince your opponent that you are willing to react disproportionately to what is at stake for you, he will fear you beyond the otherwise sensible. Everyone treats a mad man with caution.

In Ukraine, there is more at stake for Russia than for the West. Therefore Russia, as it has also shown, will not give up or allow itself or its allies to lose. In the Baltic countries, there is also more at stake for Russia than for the United States and for most other NATO countries as well.

For, in the post-Cold War, Russia has no ideology beyond nationalism. Its most ambitious claims, even if unopposed, would come to a halt at the geographical outer limits of the ethnic Russian nation.

This is not to say that Russian nationalism could not become a factor of instability beyond Ukraine. Trouble is latent. The partly Russian-populated Baltic countries are now in NATO, and NATO is an institutionalised form of the Mad Man Doctrine. The danger of miscalculating the reaction for NATO as well as for Russia is therefore significant.

Little suggests that the West understand how risky the games in progress really are. NATO and Russia are nuclear powers. Sensible leaders on both sides understood as much during the Cold War. Nuclear powers must not go to war with each other. If at all, the conflicts must remain by proxy. Such insights must be rediscovered today.

NATO should concentrate on finding a way to downplay the conflict with Russia, compromise on Ukraine, and not follow what the United States seem intent on doing; escalating, increasing defence spending across the bloc, sending more troops to the Baltic countries. Appeasement, if the starting point is dumb-headed NATO-expansionism, can be a virtue as well as a vice.

Military means are already at play in the conflict between NATO and Russia. Some call for even more. Before pushing Russia further in the direction they claim not to want – ethnic expansionism – politicians in the West must remember that nuclear arms are the last weapons in the arsenal of both.

Luckily, Putin seems quite sane, with superior rationality to many of his Western counterparts. The irresponsible comparison between Putin and Hitler is therefore wrong in many respects, but not least because Hitler never had the bomb. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

By Mairead Maguire
BELFAST, Sep 12 2014 (IPS)

While the United States, United Kingdom and NATO are pushing for war with Russia, it behoves people and their governments around the world to take a clear stand for peace and against violence and war, no matter where it comes from.We are at a dangerous point in our history of the human family and it would be the greatest of tragedies for ourselves and our children if we simply allowed the war profiteers to take us into a third world war, resulting in the death of untold millions of people.

Mairead Maguire

NATO’s decision at its summit in Wales (September 4-5) to create a new 4,000 strong rapid reaction force for initial deployment in the Baltics is a dangerous path for us all to be forced down, and could well lead to a third world war if not stopped. What is needed now are cool heads and people of wisdom and not more guns, more weapons, more war.

NATO is the leadership which has been causing the ongoing wars from the present conflict in the Ukraine, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and others.

NATO’s latest move commits its 28 member states to spend two percent of their gross domestic product on the military, and to establish a series of three to five bases in Eastern Europe where equipment and supplies will be pre-positioned to help speed deployments, among other measures. “We are at a dangerous point in our history of the human family and it would be the greatest of tragedies for ourselves and our children if we simply allowed the war profiteers to take us into a third world war, resulting in the death of untold millions of people”

This decision by the United States/NATO to create a high readiness force with the alleged purpose of countering an alleged Russian threat reminds me of the war propaganda of lies, half-truths, insinuations and rumours to which we were all subjected in order to try to soften us all up for the Iraq war and subsequent horrific wars of terror which were carried out by NATO allied forces.

According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OCSE) observation team, NATO’s reports, including its satellite photos which show Russian combat forces engaged in military operations inside sovereign territory of Ukraine, were based on false evidence.

While NATO is busy announcing a counter-invasion to the non-existent Russian invasion of Ukraine, people in Ukraine are calling out for peace and negotiations, for political leadership which will bring them peace, not weapons and war.

This spearhead military force will be provided by allies in rotation and will involve also air, sea and special forces. We are also informed by a NATO spokesperson that this force will be trained to deal with unconventional actions, from the funding of separatist groups to the use of social media, intimidation and black propaganda.

No doubt the current Western media’s demonisation of President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people, by trying to inculcate fear and hatred of them, is part of the black propaganda campaign.

NATO’s latest proposals of 4,000 soldiers, and a separate force of 10,000 strong British-led joint expeditionary force also proposed, is a highly aggressive and totally irresponsible move by the United States, United Kingdom and NATO. It is breaches the 1997 agreement with Moscow under which NATO pledged not to base substantial numbers of soldiers in Eastern Europe on a permanent basis.

NATO should have been disbanded when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated but it was not and is now controlled by the United States for its own agenda. When speaking of NATO, one of President Bill Clinton’s officials said “America is NATO”. Today NATO, instead of being abolished, is re-inventing itself in re-arming and militarising European states and justifying its new role by creating enemy images – be they Russians, IS (the Islamic State), and so on.

In an interdependent, interconnected world, struggling to build fraternity, economic cooperation and human security, there is no place for the Cold War policies of killing and threats to kill and policies of exceptionalism and superiority. The world has changed. People do not want to be divided and they want to see an end to violence, militarism and war.

The old consciousness is dysfunctional and a new consciousness based on an ethic of non-killing and respect and cooperation is spreading. It is time for NATO to recognise that its violent policies are counterproductive. The Ukraine crisis, groups such as the Islamic State, etc., will not be solved with guns, but with justice and through dialogue.

Above all, the world needs hope. It needs inspirational political leadership and this could be given if President Barack Obama and President Putin sat down together to solve the Ukraine conflict through dialogue and negotiation and in a non-violent way.

We live in dangerous times, but all things are possible, all things are changing … and peace is possible. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Sep 11 2014 (IPS)

At last, after the obligatory summer break, the European Union (EU) has some new faces to fill the top vacancies on the team that began to emerge from the May 25 parliamentary elections.

Before the recess, conservative Luxembourger Jean-Claude Juncker had been appointed to the presidency of the European Commission, the executive body of the 28-nation bloc.

Joaquín Roy

There was stiff opposition from some governments, particularly from British Prime Minister David Cameron, but in the spirit of the Treaty of Lisbon the post was offered to the candidate of the political group winning most seats in the new European Parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).

The second agreement was to leave German socialist Martin Schultz in his present post as president of the Parliament for another two and a half years. A balance was thereby struck between moderates of the right and of the left.

The thorniest issues remained to be faced. The traditional “Carolingian” (Franco-German) Europe was still in control of the bloc, and renewal was needed. Eastern Europe was demanding a larger role and there was a notable absence of women.

Juncker had already made it known that he would not accept a new Commission that did not have at least one-third women members. The established order, an unabashedly male-dominated club, gave no signs of correcting itself. The EU’s customary intricate balancing act was set in motion.“Renzi wanted to attack head-on Italy’s poor track record in European affairs in recent years, tarnished by the deplorable presence of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in power and in opposition, a handicap that affected his predecessor Enrico Letta before him”

The jigsaw pieces began to fall into place. Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s candidacy fell out of favour. Then followed a dual move by the community. First, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a conservative from the entourage of former president Lech Walesa, was appointed president of the EU Council, made up of its heads of state and government.

Secondly, Federica Mogherini, the Italian foreign minister, was catapulted to the position of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (FASP).

Proposing her candidacy, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi doggedly fought resistance from representatives of the Baltic states who regarded her as too soft on Russia, citing the example of her invitation to President Vladimir Putin to a meeting in July.

The sweetener of Tusk’s designation mollified the resistance of Eastern European countries, but not the reluctance of other nations that regarded the inexperienced Mogherini, just 41 in June, as not strong enough to face external enemies in a convulsed world.

However, Renzi, himself only 39, was playing a risky juggling act with several balls in the air. Mogherini was his message to the power clique in Rome to try to end the illusion that political respect requires having reached an age of around 100.

Moreover, Renzi wanted to attack head-on Italy’s poor track record in European affairs in recent years, tarnished by the deplorable presence of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in power and in opposition, a handicap that affected his predecessor Enrico Letta before him.

Furthermore, Renzi wanted to create an opportunity to influence European Union foreign policy through Mogherini’s cooperation.

Renzi’s bold proposal may backfire on him, precisely because of the weakness of the Italian system, which is tolerating leadership by a moderate Socialist so long as he does not shake its foundations.

Within the European community, Renzi will have to rely on the support of his Socialist counterparts, who have been going through a bad patch recently. They have suffered from the crisis, which has forced them to apply neoliberal austerity policies, causing heads to roll from Scandinavia to Portugal and Greece.

For her part, Mogherini will have to face traditional problems and new challenges. The establishment already mistrusts her because of her age. She will find little support from a group of people, most of whom could be her parents.

On the Commission, where she is vice president, she will hardly be comforted by the handful of women Juncker manages to recruit. On the Council she will have the support of only four ladies, led by Angela Merkel, in a boardroom full of boring men in dark suits and dreadful ties, each of them obsessed with managing foreign policy on their own terms and at their own risk.

The worst of the bad omens for the appointment is the suspicion that the EU’s hard core does not believe the position of High Representative to be important, given that the main security and defence competences remain in the national domains.

Mogherini’s second challenge, like that of her predecessor Catherine Ashton of the United Kingdom, is to cope with the enduring imprint of the founder of the position, Javier Solana of Spain.

However, her ambition and track record already surpass those of the eminently forgettable Ashton, a Brussels official who had already booked her ticket on the Eurostar train under the Channel back to London when she was unexpectedly appointed to FASP.

Mogherini can document her solid preparation for such a high-profile job over two decades, with her degree in Political Science, her exchange experience on an Erasmus scholarship in the French city of Aix-en-Provence, and her thesis on political Islam.

A mother of two with a gentle smile and light-coloured eyes, she gives the impression of an assistant professor working up the academic ladder towards a full professorship. But she could surprise some of the detractors who are already prophesying her failure.

She is a professional in a field that needs new vocations and fresh vision. She will lead the most impressive diplomatic team on the planet, made up of the ministries of 28 countries and the European External Action Service. She deserves good luck, not just for herself and Renzi, but for all Europeans and people beyond. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

July 2014 floods in Russia but authorities turning blind eye to climate change. Credit: takemake.ru

By Mikhail Matveev
MOSCOW, Aug 30 2014 (IPS)

The recent call from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev for “tightening belts” has convinced even optimists that something is deeply wrong with the Russian economy.

No doubt the planned tax increases (introduction of a sales tax and increases in VAT and income tax) will inflict severe damage on most businesses and their employees, if last year’s example of what happened when taxes were raised for individual entrepreneurs is anything to go by – 650,000 of them were forced to close their businesses.

Nevertheless, it looks like some lucky people are not only going to escape the “belt-tightening” but are also about to receive some dream tax vacations and the lucky few are not farmers, nor are they in technological, educational, scientific or professional fields – it is the Russian and international oil giants involved in oil and gas projects in the Arctic and in Eastern Siberia that stand to gain.

“In October [2013], Vladimir Putin signed a bill under which oil extraction at sea deposits will be exempt from severance tax. Moreover, VAT will not need to be paid for the sales, transportation and utilisation of the oil extracted from the sea shelf,” noted Russian newspaper Rossiiskie Nedra.“It looks like some lucky people are not only going to escape the ‘belt-tightening’ but are also about to receive some dream tax vacations and the lucky few are not farmers, nor are they in technological, educational, scientific or professional fields – it is the Russian and international oil giants involved in oil and gas projects in the Arctic and in Eastern Siberia that stand to gain”

Some continental oil projects were alsoblessedby the “Tsar’s generosity”: “For four Russian deposits with hard-to-recover oils [shale oil, etc.] – Bazhenovskaya [in Western Siberia] and Abalakskaya in Eastern Siberia, Khadumskaya in the Caucasus, and Domanikovaya in the Ural region – severance taxes do not need to be paid. Other deposits had their severance tax rates reduced by 20-80%.”

In fact, the line of thinking adopted by Russian officials responsible for tax policy is very simple. Faced with the predicament of an economy dependent on oil and gas (half of the state budget comes from oil and gas revenue, while two-thirds of exports come from the fossil fuel industry), they decided to act as usual – by stimulating more drilling and charging the rest of the economy with the additional tax burden.

There have been many warnings from well-known economists about the “resource curse” [the paradox that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources] – and its potential consequences for the countries affected: from having weak industries and agriculture to being prone to dictatorships and corruption.

For a long time, however, economists have been keen on separating the economic and social impacts of fossil fuel dependency from the environmental and climate-related problems. But now, these problems are closely interconnected, and Russia might be the first to feel the strength of their combination in the near future.

Medvedev may not have read much about the “resource curse” but he should at least be familiar with the official position of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), whose Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres has said that three-quarters of known fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground in order to avoid the worst possible climate scenario.

One should at least expect this amount of knowledge from Russia as a member of the UN Security Council and it will be interesting to note whether the Russian delegation attending the UN Climate Summit in New York on September 23 will be ready to explain why, instead of limiting fossil fuel extraction, the whole country’s economic and tax policy is now aimed at encouraging as much drilling as possible.

However, it is not just the United Nations that has been warning against the burning of fossil fuels due to the related high climate risks. In 2005, Russia’s own meteorology service Roshydromet issued its prognosis of climate change and the consequences for Russia, stating that the rate of climate change in Russia is two times faster than the world’s average.

Roshydromet predicted a rapid increase in both the frequency and strength of extreme climate events – including floods, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires. The number of such events has almost doubled during the last 15 years, and represent not only an economic threat but also a real threat to humans’ lives and their well-being,

Consider this summary of climate disasters in Russia during an ordinary July week (not including any of the large natural disasters such as the floods in Altai, Khabarovsk, and Krymsk, or the forest fires around Moscow in 2010):

“Following the weather incidents in the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk District where snow fell last weekend, a natural anomaly occurred in Novosibirsk, resulting in human casualties … Two three-year-old twin sisters died after a tree fell on them during a strong wind storm in the town of Berdsk, Novosibirsk District.”

“The flood in Yakutia lasted a week and resulted in the submersion of Ozhulun village in Churapchinsky district last Saturday. Due to the rise of the Tatta River, 57 house went under.”

“Flooding in Tuapse [on the coast of the Black Sea] occurred on July 8, 2014 … [and] has left 236 citizens homeless.”

Cars swept away in July 2014 floods in Russia. Credit: takeme.ru

Is it not worrisome that so many climate disasters have to occur before Russian officials start to realise that climatologists are not lying? Or perhaps they are simply not inclined to take the climatologists’ warnings seriously.

Another significant problem could arise for Russia if oil consumers start taking U.N. climate warnings seriously – and there is evidence that this is happening.

The European Union (still the main consumer of Russian oil and gas) has announced an ambitious “20/20/20 programme” – increasing shares from renewables to 20 percent, improving energy efficiency by 20 percent, and decreasing carbon emissions by 20 percent. The United States has decided to decrease carbon emissions from power plants by 30 percent. These are only first steps – but even these steps can help decrease fossil fuel consumption.

Fossil fuel use has only very slowly been increasing in the United States and decreasing in Europe in the last five years. On the other hand, demand for oil has continued to rise in China and Southeast Asia, and it is perhaps this – rather than the recent “sanctions” against Russia over Ukraine – that inspired President Vladimir Putin’s recent “turn to the East”.

But there are serious doubts that Asia’s greed for oil will continue into the future. China recently admitted that it will soon be taking measures to limit carbon emissions – for the first time in its history. China has already turned to green energy andled the rest of the worldin renewable energy investment in 2013.

Will other Asian countries follow suit? Perhaps – because they certainly have a very strong incentive. According to Erin McCarthy writing in the Wall Street Journal, South and Southeast Asia’s losses due to global warming may be huge, and its GDP may be reduced by 6 percent by 2060, despite the measures taken to curb its emissions.

What does this mean for Russia?

Well, if the oil-consuming countries meet their carbon emission targets, we can expect a 10-20 percent decrease in oil demand in the next ten years, maybe more. Any decrease in demand usually induces a decrease in price – but not always proportionally. Sometimes, especially if the market is overheated, even a small decrease in demand can trigger a drastic falls in price. Economists call such a situation a “bursting bubble”.

Today, the situation in the oil (and, in general, fossil fuel) market is often called a “carbon bubble”. Because of high oil prices, investors are motivated to make investments in oil drilling in the hopes of earning a stable and long-term income.

But once the world starts taking climate issues seriously and realises that most of the oil needs to be left in the ground, oil assets will fall in value. Investors will try to withdraw their money from the fossil fuel sector, and, facing a crisis, oil companies will be forced to decrease both production and prices.

If the “carbon bubble” bursts, Russia will be left with sustainable businesses (that are being choked by the nation’s own tax politics) and with a perfect network of shelf platforms, oil rigs, and pipelines (which will be completely unprofitable and useless). Thus, by making fossil fuels the core of its economy, Russia is taking twice the number of risks.

First, it risks ruining the climate, and second, it risks ruining its own economy. It looks like Russia will lose at any rate: if the leading energy consumers are unable to decrease their oil consumption, the climate will be ruined everywhere, including Russia. If they manage to decrease their dependence on fossil fuel, the Russian economy will be ruined.

This certainly is not looking pleasant, especially if we add in the high probability of a major disaster like the Gulf of Mexico Oil spill happening in the Arctic, as well as countless minor leaks possibly occurring along the Russian pipelines.

But maybe Russia just has no other alternative to an economy dependent on fossil fuels?

In that case, perhaps it is worth mentioning a recent article by Russian financier Andrei Movchan in the Russian Forbes magazine. Movchan convincingly shows that the Achilles’ heel of the modern Russian economy is its extremely underdeveloped small and medium-sized businesses. And it looks like the current tax plans would literally exterminate them.

If Russia were able to reverse this tax policy and make small businesses play as big of a role in the economy as they do in the United States or Europe, there could be economic growth comparable to the growth expected from oil and gas – without all the frightful side effects of an economy driven by fossil fuels.

Sounds like a dream, but the first step to making it a reality can be simple: get rid of big oil lobbying in the government and try to reform the taxation system to suit the interests of Russian citizens instead of the interests of the big oil corporations.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

* Mikhail Matveev is 350.org Communications Coordinator for Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia and Russia

The Sixth BRICS Summit which ended Wednesday in Fortaleza, Brazil, attracted more attention than any other such gathering in the alliance’s short history, and not just from its own members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Two external groups defined by divergent interests closely watched proceedings: on the one hand, emerging economies and developing countries, and on the other, a group comprising the United States, Japan and other Western countries thriving on the Washington Consensus and the Bretton Woods twins (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund).

The first group wanted BRICS to succeed in taking its first big steps towards a more democratic global order where international institutions can be reshaped to become more equitable and representative of the world’s majority. The second group has routinely inspired obituaries of BRICS and gambled on the hope that India-China rivalry would stall the BRICS alliance from turning words into deeds.The stature, power, force and credibility of BRICS depend on its internal cohesion and harmony and this, in turn, revolves almost wholly on the state of relations between India and China. If India and China join hands, speak in one voice and march together, then BRICS has a greater chance of its agenda succeeding in the international system.

In the event, the outcome of the three-day BRICS Summit must be a disappointment to the latter group. First, the obituaries were belied as being premature, if not unwarranted. Second, as its more sophisticated opponents have been “advising”, BRICS did not stick to an economic agenda; instead, there emerged a ringing political declaration that would resonate in the world’s trouble spots from Gaza and Syria to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Third, and importantly, far from so-called Indian-China rivalry stalling decisions on the New Development Bank (NDB) and the emergency fund, the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA), the Asian giants grasped the nettle to add a strategic dimension to BRICS.

With a shift in the global economic balance of power towards Asia, the failure of the Washington Consensus and the Bretton Woods twins in spite of conditionalities, structural adjustment programmes and “reforms”, financial meltdown and the collapse of leading banks and financial institutions in the West, there had been an urgent need for new thinking and new instruments for the building of a new order.

Despite the felt need and multilateral meetings that involved developing countries, including China and India which bucked the financial downturn, there had been no sign of alternatives being formed.

It is against this backdrop – of the compelling case for firm and feasible steps towards a new global architecture of financial institutions – that BRICS, after much deliberation, succeeded in agreeing on a bank and an emergency fund.

From India’s viewpoint, this summit of BRICS – which represents one-quarter of the world’s land mass across four continents and 40 percent of the world population with a combined GDP of 24 trillion dollars – was an unqualified success. The success is sweeter for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because the BRICS summit was new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first multilateral engagement.

For a debutant, Modi acquitted himself creditably by steering clear of pitfalls in the multilateral forum as well as in bilateral exchanges – particularly in his talks with Chinese President Xi Jiping, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff – and by delivering a strong political statement calling for reform of the U.N. Security Council and the IMF.

In fact, the intensification and scaling up of India-China relations by their respective powerful leaders is an important outcome of the meeting in Brazil, even though the dialogue between the Asian giants was on the summit’s side-lines. Nevertheless, Modi and Xi spoke in almost in one voice on global politics and conflict, and on the case for reform of international institutions.

The new leaders of India and China, with the power of their recently-acquired mandates, sent out an unmistakable signal that they have more interests in common that unite them than differences that separate them.

Against this backdrop, Indian Prime Minister Modi’s outing was significant for other reasons, not least because of the rapport he was able to strike up, in his first meeting, with Chinese President Xi. The stature, power, force and credibility of BRICS depend on its internal cohesion and harmony and this, in turn, revolves almost wholly on the state of relations between India and China. If India and China join hands, speak in one voice and march together, then BRICS has a greater chance of its agenda succeeding in the international system.

As it happened, Modi and Xi hit it off, much to the consternation of both the United States and Japan. They spoke of shared interests and common concerns, their resolve to press ahead with the agenda of BRICS and the two went so far as to agree on the need for an early resolution of their boundary issue. They invited each other for a state visit, and Xi went one better by inviting Modi to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in China in November and asking India to deepen its involvement in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

Modi’s “fruitful” 80-minute meeting with Xi highlights that the two are inclined to seize the opportunities for mutually beneficial partnerships towards larger economic, political and strategic objectives. This meeting has set the tone for Xi’s visit to India in September.

Although strengthening India-China relationship, opening up new tracks and widening and deepening engagement had been one of former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s biggest achievements in 10 years of government (2004-2014), after a certain point there was no new trigger or momentum to the ties. Now Xi and Modi are investing effort to infuse new vitality into the relationship which will have an impact in the region and beyond.

As is the wont when it comes to foreign affairs and national security, Modi’s new government has not deviated from the path charted out by the previous government. BRICS as a foreign policy priority represents both continuity and consistency. Even so, the BJP deserves full marks because it did not treat BRICS and the Brazil summit as something it had to go through with for the sake of form or as a chore handed down by the previous government of Manmohan Singh.

Before leaving for Brazil, Modi stressed the “high importance” he attached to BRICS and left no one in doubt that global politics would be high on its agenda.

He pointed attention to the political dimension of the BRICS Summit as a highly political event taking place “at a time of political turmoil, conflict and humanitarian crises in several parts of the world.”

“I look at the BRICS Summit as an opportunity to discuss with my BRICS partners how we can contribute to international efforts to address regional crises, address security threats and restore a climate of peace and stability in the world,” Modi had said on eve of the summit.

Having struck the right notes that would endear him to the Chinese leadership, Modi hailed Russia as “India’s greatest friend” after he met President Vladimir Putin on the side-lines of the summit.

India belongs to BRICS, and if BRICS is the way to move forward in the world, then BRICS can look to India, along with China, for leading the way, regardless of political change at home. That would appear to be the point made by Modi in his first multilateral appearance.

A poll carried out in April showed that 80 percent of Russians believe that homosexuality is a disease that can be treated. Photo credit: Bigstock

By Pavol Stracansky
ST. PETERSBURG , Sep 18 2013 (IPS)

“It’s okay to be gay in Russia if you live in a big city such as St. Petersburg or Moscow, study at university or work at a liberal company, but even here you can’t feel absolutely safe,” says Nikita Mironov, describing the climate of fear that many homosexuals face in Russia.

The editor of Queerculture.ru and a resident of St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, he tells IPS about the problems LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people experience in daily life.

“If you are openly gay in these cities, even then you get scared if you kiss your boyfriend in public or just take hold of his hand.” Then he adds, chillingly: “But if you live in a small town or the countryside, you have to keep your sexuality secret. If you don’t you’ll be beaten or killed.”

This is the daily reality for LGBT people across Russia, who are facing growing stigmatisation and attacks by homophobic neo-Nazi vigilante groups at the same time as politicians ramp up anti-LGBT rhetoric and new legislation criminalises support for non-heterosexual lifestyles.

“LGBT people in Russia have always faced prejudice, ignorance and discrimination, but now the government has formalised this at a legal level,” Natalia Tsymbalova, coordinator of the Straight Alliance for LGBT Equality group in St. Petersburg, tells IPS.

“Sexual minorities are officially ‘socially unequal’ by law and people are being fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation, while others are being beaten or killed by homophobes,” she adds.

Although homosexuality was made legal soon after the fall of communism, it has never been properly accepted in Russian society. A poll carried out in April showed that 80 percent of Russians believe that homosexuality is a disease that can be treated while in another poll in June this year 42 percent of respondents said that homosexuality should be a criminal offence.

The Orthodox Church has an extremely strong influence on social attitudes – the Church is widely seen as the country’s supreme moral authority – and its leaders openly and regularly denounce non-heterosexual orientations as a perversion or sickness.

But in recent years there has been an increasingly virulent anti-homosexual stance among politicians who have openly labeled homosexuality a perversion and propagate claims that homosexuality and paedophilia are linked.

Many commentators say that although legislators point to their own beliefs as grounds for their statements and policies, there is another agenda being followed.

They say the Kremlin is, in the face of public protests, trying to divert public discontent by portraying particularly vulnerable, already unpopular groups as enemies – including LGBT people and immigrants.

They also say this is part of Russia’s efforts to curb freedom of expression under the guise of promoting ‘traditional values’ and a continuation of anti-Western ideology; LGBT lifestyles are often described as being a social degradation, like AIDS and drug abuse, that has been imported from the West.

Controversial legislation passed this summer makes the “promotion of non-traditional sexual lifestyles” to minors a criminal offence. The law was supported by almost 90 percent of the population, according to surveys at the time.

“The level of ignorance in Russian society towards LGBT people is very high and it is easy to incite hatred [against LGBT people] in society and cast them as an enemy. Any totalitarian government needs an enemy. President [Vladimir] Putin is building a new ideology – statist, conservative and anti-Western,” Tsymbalova tells IPS.

In the run-up to the law’s passage and in its wake, physical attacks on LGBT people increased, including horrific assaults by homophobic vigilante groups. Images of some of the attacks have been later uploaded to the internet.

The law was condemned by the international community and there were calls for a boycott of the Winter Olympics due to be held in Sochi, Russia next year.

In response to the uproar, Putin said that “people of non-traditional sexual orientation are not discriminated against” and that he has no problem with them and would happily meet with LGBT organisations.

But rights groups are dubious about his intentions and no meetings have so far taken place.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have put forward a bill which would prevent non-heterosexual couples from being parents.

“This law will allow children to be removed from homosexual parents. There are same-sex families in Russia, although the law does not recognise them. For them to come out of the closet now would be to risk their children,” says Tsymbalova.

There is little hope for any change to the law from the Kremlin or a shift in Russian societal attitudes towards LGBT people. But international pressure may force some change, rights groups say.

“Russia’s international partners should really make it clear to Vladimir Putin and his government that….concrete steps should be made to repeal the law and protect LGBT people in Russia from discrimination and violence,” Tanya Lokshina, Russia programme director at Human Rights Watch, tells IPS.

She adds: “Russia’s partners should speak with one voice and press the Russian authorities to have the law repealed. The Sochi Olympics represent a huge window of opportunity for this.”

Until then though, the plight of LGBT people in Russia is unlikely to improve.

“The level of homophobia and relevant stigmatisation in Russia was high even before the ‘propaganda’ legislation was adopted and many LGBT people had reservations about coming out. The law is designed to keep people in the closet,” says Lokshina.

Tsymbalova paints an even grimmer picture: “The vast majority of LGBT people in Russia do not come out of the closet and a very small percentage of the population personally knows any LGBT person. People are afraid to be open about their sexuality, sometimes even to their loved ones.

“Russia has the highest number of teenage suicides in Europe and a large proportion of them are LGBT teens. The environment here of homophobic hatred turns the lives of LGBT teenagers into a living hell: it cripples their minds and sometimes simply kills them.”

Vitaly I. Churkin, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 13 2013 (IPS)

When the Cold War peaked in the late 1960s and ’70s, the United States and the then-Soviet Union were armed with one of the most effective non-lethal weapons in their diplomatic arsenal: a veto in the U.N.’s most powerful body, the Security Council.

Both superpowers never hesitated to deploy the veto to further their national interests or protect their allies from condemnation or sanctions – including Israel, Hungary, Algeria, Vietnam and Panama, and in the post-Cold War period, Myanmar (Burma), Zimbabwe and Syria."Big powers with worldwide interests are usually inclined to act more practically at the Security Council than their political rhetoric may sound." -- former U.N. assistant secretary-general Samir Sanbar

“Between the founding of the United Nations in 1945 and the advent of detente in the late 1960s, the Soviet Union used its veto power more than 100 times, almost always as the sole dissenting vote,” Dr. Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS.

The United States did not use its veto power once, he added.

By contrast, however, between 1969 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Soviets used their veto power less than a dozen times while the United States vetoed 69 resolutions, also usually as the sole dissenting vote, he said.

In the subsequent 22 years, the United States has used its veto power 14 times and Russia 10 times, most of the time as the only negative vote, said Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council.

Syria as a litmus test

As the rift between the United States and Russia has gone public over the granting of temporary asylum in Russia to U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, the next litmus test would possibly be a new Security Council resolution to sanction the beleaguered government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

But in the current environment will such a resolution survive?

The last three Western-inspired resolutions, and a stillborn draft, against Syria were vetoed by Russia, along with China.

The Snowden asylum has not only undermined relations between the two superpowers but also between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The New York Times last week quoted a Russian political analyst Andrei Piotovsky as saying: “Putin openly despises your president, forgive my bluntness.”

At a press conference last week, Obama couldn’t resist the temptation of implicitly taking a passing shot at Putin.

After confessing he did not have a “bad personal relation with Putin”, Obama told reporters, “I know the press likes to focus on body language, and he’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom.

“But the truth is that when we’re in conversations together, oftentimes it’s very productive.”

Besides any sanctions against the Syrian government, the two superpowers also have to deal with several other thorny issues, including missile defences in Europe, nuclear disarmament, Iran’s nuclear programme and an upcoming peace conference on Syria – where Russia is insisting on the participation of Iran, which the U.S. opposes.

More bark than bite?

Samir Sanbar, a former U.N. assistant secretary-general who once headed the department of public information, is confident the U.S.-Russia rift would have fewer negative consequences on the United Nations.

“Big powers with worldwide interests are usually inclined to act more practically at the Security Council than their political rhetoric may sound,” Sanbar told IPS.

He pointed out that even during critical moments in the Cold War era, like the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, “They first tried to pressure through their proxies or communicate through intermediaries, reserving their vetoes as a last resort in the knowledge that holding it as a [trump] card could be more effective than actually using it.”

During the “cold peace period”, he said, the exclusive club of two worked more in tandem than others presumed, for example, on the selection of a secretary general.

On certain crucial issues, they seemed to coordinate fairly closely to the point that some independent insiders wondered whether the two superpowers shared a joint list of operatives, said Sanbar, who served under five different secretaries-general.

On other issues, he said, they seriously disagreed with a real threat of veto, but the then-secretary general who sensed the risk would actively attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

Incidentally, one famous case of an earlier clash was about the 1950-53 Korean War when the Soviet delegation angrily boycotted the Security Council’s deliberations and thus was unable to block a swiftly-passed resolution approving the deployment of troops there.

Now, decades later, Russia voted for a South Korean, Ban Ki-moon, as secretary general, Sanbar said.

“And will he, or could he, make a special effort to ease tension before the high-level debate of the General Assembly next month or would U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov take care of business as usual?” speculated Sanbar.

U.S. “hypocrisy”

Zunes, who also serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told IPS the tough stance taken by the United States over Snowden’s temporary asylum has stirred up nationalist sentiments across the political spectrum.

He said the Russians can point to U.S. hypocrisy in Washington’s refusal to extradite former U.S. spy chief in Italy Robert Seldon Lady back to Italy to face kidnapping charges for abducting an Islamist cleric off a Milan street in 2003 and sending him to Egypt for torture; and the refusal to extradite Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Carlos Sanchez Berzan to Bolivia to face charges for ordering the massacre of scores of indigenous peasants.

Additionally, there was also the refusal to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, who is wanted in several Latin American countries for a series of terrorist bombings, including blowing up a Cuban airliner in Barbados which killed 73 people.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Asian diplomat told IPS, “I don’t think we are heading back to the days of the Cold War.”

Things have moved on since the “fall” of Communism and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989-1991, he said. And Russia is not the threat that it was perceived to be to the U.S. or to the rest of the non-Communist world.

He said relations between the U.S. and Russia are also not the same – they have more substantive ties at all levels.

“The relationship will get colder in some aspects but I don’t think the two sides will allow it to go cold again,” he said. “And the relationship between the U.S. and Russia will continue more or less in the same vein in Security Council.”

As the Syrian army has stepped up its attacks against opposition strongholds in Homs and elsewhere, the U.S. and its allies have achieved little consensus in choosing a course of action to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Though Washington has severely criticised the Assad regime in Syria for the scale of violence being used against the Syrian opposition – Human Rights Watch estimates the death toll in Homs from this past month alone at over 700 – policymakers have yet to agree on a path forward beyond the existing sanctions policies and the coordination of humanitarian aid.

Many figures have explicitly called for foreign military intervention by U.S. forces, or at a minimum, the provision of U.S. arms to the fledgling Free Syrian Army, a loose assortment of anti-regime fighters that have changed the nature of the anti-Assad opposition from non-violent demonstrations to armed counter-attacks and firefights.

On Monday, John McCain became the first U.S. senator to openly call for U.S.-led airstrikes on President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces.

“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organise and plan their political and military activities against Assad,” he is reported as saying in remarks on the Senate floor.

A congressional briefing last Friday featured a presentation by Dr. James Smith, founding director of the controversial military contracting firm Blackwater, who laid out a plan for the establishment of a “Benghazi-like” zone in northeastern Syria to use as a staging ground against the Syrian government.

Smith proposed that U.S. military and intelligence agencies coordinate with the existing Syrian opposition and the restive Kurdish population to establish a safe zone from which international military forces and humanitarian agencies would operate.

Smith, along with a significant portion of the neoconservative establishment, has called for intervention in Syria as a means to “confront Iran and Hezbollah by proxy”, by eliminating Syria’s role in the so-called “axis of resistance”.

Others who supported military action in Libya but have until recently expressed reservations about intervening in Syria have also been reconsidering their positions.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department who is close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called last week for “foreign military intervention” as “the best hope for curtailing a long, bloody destabilizing civil war”. She advocated the establishment of “no-kill zones” and “humanitarian corridors”, which she said could be enforced by internationally-armed local forces and unmanned aerial drones.

Such plans, however, are unlikely to gain significant traction until Washington is assured that its involvement would not further exacerbate the many problems facing the Syrian uprising and the rise of radical Islamist groups within it.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman made the case for the Syrian National Council’s “clear, credible opposition plan”, supported by “Arab leadership on the issue”, but also admitted that the opposition remains marred by “competing divisions, including an Islamist element”.

These fears have led many in Washington into the uncomfortable position of supporting opposition organisations such as the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, while simultaneously expressing concern over their viability in a post-Assad era.

Many analysts have been quick to respond to calls for Western intervention by raising the spectre of Libya, where readily-available weapons and leadership divisions appear to have contributed to a rise in post-civil war violence and the new government’s inability to exert control over the scores of militias that participated in the war.

At a panel sponsored by the Century Foundation in New York last week, Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation, warned that “Dumping arms into this conflict in an unorganised fashion is clearly going to make this conflict bloodier, and clearly going to prolong it.”

Those advocating a more direct international role in the Syrian uprising have been working to increase coordination and leadership within the disparate elements of the opposition, which remains divided not only between the various organisations but within them as well.

Hanna described the Free Syrian army as a “moniker for a local insurgency” that still lacks effective command and control.

The Syrian National Council has also faced growing divisions after a number of prominent members announced they were resigning from the group, citing a lack of progress and insufficient coordination with protestors on the ground.

The “Friends of Syria” meeting convened in Tunis last week exemplified many of these organisational contradictions. While representatives from some 70 countries and international organisations met to discuss ways to coordinate efforts to oust the Assad regime, they were unable to gain meaningful consensus on specific steps beyond the continuing application of diplomatic and economic sanctions.

Though there appeared to be widespread agreement over the need to coordinate humanitarian aid to Syria’s growing refugee population and the countless Syrians living with daily food and heating shortages, the scope of additional involvement proved to be a highly divisive issue.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal is reported to have stormed out of the meeting, angered by the unwillingness of the members to take stronger measures – he has explicitly endorsed arming the opposition.

Russia and China declined to participate in the Friends of Syria meeting, but many policymakers have reluctantly acknowledged that Russia is likely to a play a significant role in the outcome of the conflict despite its apparent intransigence.

“The only way to resolve this is through the Russians,” said former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz, speaking at the Century Foundation. He argued that perhaps Vladimir Putin will be more amenable to compromise after Sunday’s Russian election in which the Russian prime minister regained the presidency.

A new report issued Monday by the International Crisis Group warned that Russian cooperation would be essential to a properly managed transition.

The report suggests that “If Moscow can be convinced that its current course maximises the risk of producing the outcome it professes to fear most: chaos” then it could create a situation in which “the (Syrian) regime would be confronted with the choice of either agreeing to negotiate in good faith or facing near-total isolation through loss of a key ally.”

Feltman, who recently returned from a trip to Moscow to discuss a way forward on the Syria issue, reported that “contact with Russia on all levels is continuing.”

Given the degree to which the Kremlin has invested in defending Assad over the past year, however, finding common ground with Russia will be a daunting task.

Quiz: Over the next three months, three former Soviet republics will hold elections – Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Russia. Whose official outcome will most closely resemble the truth?

If you replied Russia’s upcoming presidential election, you are correct, which, given the apparent scale of fraud in its Dec. 4 Duma vote, says much about politics on the Caspian Sea oil patch: While Vladimir Putin reluctantly permitted a large election protest in Moscow – and may face more in the coming weeks – the popular will is likely to play almost no role in the voting along Russia’s southern rim.

Instead, the rulers of these self-styled sultanates, courted by the West since the 1990s for their hydrocarbons and geostrategic location, will declare outsized victories for their chosen candidates, unruffled by the turbulence that has terrified petrocrats elsewhere.

The rulers of this stretch of land seem to think they will simply hang on. One is led to conclude that they may be right, given the region’s history. Yet, their gamble is considerable – that the influences of the outside world, held at bay for so many centuries, will remain far, far away.

Two decades after the Soviet breakup, the Caspian is reaping the profits of more than 1.5 million barrels a day of oil exports. It is one of China’s choice suppliers of natural gas. And it is an increasingly crucial military staging ground for the United States, which originally embraced the republics in order to direct their oil and gas through new pipelines to the West, and now to facilitate the shipment of war supplies to Afghanistan.

Judging by the rulers’ behavior, this trifecta of factors has helped to make them feel insulated from the political and economic trends pushing and pulling the rest of the world. While the Arab Spring has persuaded even Saudi Arabia to shower 130 billion dollars in added payouts on its population as insurance against unrest, the rulers of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, along with Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, have more or less gone about their usual business.

Which is what? A drive through central Baku – the capital of Azerbaijan – reveals a sparkling horizon of luxury apartment houses, ultra-modern office complexes and posh hotels, most of them built by a tight and powerful clutch of wealthy clans that include and surround the family of President Ilham Aliyev.

In Kazakhstan, Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, has grown from dominating the oil sector to directing two-thirds of the entire economy through Samruk- Kazyna, a state-run investment fund that owns or controls the nation’s biggest industries.

Gulnara and Lola Karimova, the daughters of Uzbekistan’s president, have become wealthy through control of key businesses in the country.

And Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov presides over a country that, according to Transparency International, is tied with Uzbekistan as the fifth most-corrupt of the 183 nations evaluated in the organisation’s most recent survey. Berdymukhamedov is Turkmenistan’s sole decision-maker five years after succeeding Saparmurat Niyazov.

If they are immune to some maladies, the republics are still subject to at least one of the worst – terrorism. Oddly, Kazakhstan – the region’s most prosperous state, with the broadest middle class, the mildest autocrat and the most open approach to religion – has faced the greatest violence this year.

Since May, some 30 people have died in seven suicide, shooting and bombing attacks. The source of the mysterious trouble is not clear, although Kazakh security officials link it to Afghanistan and Pakistan. By comparison, Uzbekistan, where one has expected increasing trouble, has been relatively calm.

The leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have exhibited contrasting styles: President Nazarbayev has sought conciliation, jailing opponents only if they fail to yield to him, while Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov has embraced unapologetic brutality.

There are similarities – they have led their respective republics for the entire post-Soviet period, and neither suggests any readiness to set in motion a leadership transition. On the latter point – the disinclination to move on – Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev and Turkmenistan’s Berdymukhamedov also seem rather comfortable in their respective palaces.

Looping back to the original point, are these four leaders in fact safely screened off from the type of outside events that could challenge their rule? On the positive side of the ledger, all have proven good at balancing the highly ambitious forces in their countries, and doling out the spoils of hydrocarbon and mining wealth. None of their republics seems to suffer the social cracks that elsewhere have prefigured political instability.

Yet, one wonders how deeply any has thought through the risk. One comforting factor must be the safety of distance – Tunisia and Libya seem a long way away. But Moscow is less so, and therein one might become disquieted. One is reminded of the source of the last couple of disruptions to this remote region’s tranquility – first in 1917, then in 1991.

Editor’s note: Steve LeVine is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, and the author of The Oil and the Glory, a history of the post-Soviet oil rush on the Caspian Sea. LeVine was based in Central Asia and the Caucasus for 11 years, reporting for the Wall Street Journal and before that The New York Times. He is an adjunct professor in energy security at Georgetown University, and a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.