Sunday, July 30, 2023

The Coming Conflict over Santa’s Home

December 25, 2013

St. Nick, the missus, their elves and eight tiny reindeer are about to be joined by major nations’ military forces, in what could lead to conflict over possession of the North Pole’s oil, gas, and fresh-water reserves.

Scientists consider the Arctic-one of the last vast wilderness areas-vital to biodiversity and extremely sensitive to global warming. The northern global sector, a wide ice-covered ocean surrounded by treeless permafrost, has seen recent years of warmer temperatures and melting sea ice.

But the jolly old elf’s homeland is also deep in natural resources, including oil, gas, and fresh water, along with fish and, in the subarctic, forestlands-all considered economic boons to the major nations. A number of those countries claim property rights to sections of the area. Those sovereignties include Canada, Russia, the United States (Alaska), Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. They are limited to a 200-nautical-mile economic zone around their border coasts which lie within the Arctic region.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country has ten years to claim an extended continental shelf beyond those 200 nautical miles. Russia, Canada, Norway, and Denmark all have started projects to claim extended territories. All are signees to the U.N. convention on sea law.

Canada has made the most recent and controversial move, last week marking a claim, and it appears to be extensive. According to the article “Did Canada Just Claim the North Pole?” in The Diplomat, a Tokyo-based, online magazine covering politics, society and culture in the Asia-Pacific region:

Canada may have positioned itself to eventually claim sovereignty over the North Pole. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird made a statement last week that revealed that a scientific and geographical survey regarding its claim to Arctic territories will be submitted to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf and may contain data robust enough to lay claim to the North Pole. The submission is necessitated by Canada’s participation in the UN Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS). The move represents a bold political push by Stephen Harper’s conservative government to extend Canada’s rights in the Arctic.

The Canadian decision to assertively pursue a claim to the North Pole has a clear foundation in its national interest: the Arctic seabed is expected to contain over one-quarter of the world’s undiscovered energy resources, according to The Globe and Mail. The U.S. Geological Survey provides more specific numbers: the Arctic may contain 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves, 30 percent of undiscovered gas deposits, and 20 percent of the undiscovered natural gas liquids.

According to UK’s The Guardian newspaper, the Canadian move has led Russia to increase its military presence in the Arctic. Territorial claims before the U.N. could drag on for years, with other countries’ approval required. But that’s not stopping active military buildup, according to the paper:

In the meantime Canada and Russia have been stepping up their military footprint in the oil- and gas-rich region. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has said Russia will restore Arctic bases that fell into disrepair after the collapse of the Soviet Union, including one on the New Siberian Islands. On Tuesday he said this base and others were crucial to protecting Russia’s “security and national interests”.

How the U.S. will respond to Canada’s and Russia’s actions isn’t clear yet. But two things are clear:

First, the U.S. has not even signed the U.N. convention on sea law, even though it helped form it. Republican senators have opposed the convention and held back the Senate’s ability to attain a two-thirds majority vote favoring the treaty.

Second, America’s vast military seems to need conflict to survive, having a record of constant invasion of foreign lands ranging from the Middle East to Africa, either through direct fighting or as “advisers” or supporters of reigning governments. Congress doesn’t ever seem to declare war or call them wars anymore. It just keeps funding presidents’ decisions to militarily enter other nations’ borders for “regional conflicts,” with U.N. approval or no.

And the U.S. is preparing militarily for a move in the Arctic, according to a Reuters Nov. 22 article:

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on Friday the Pentagon’s first Arctic strategy to guide changes in military planning as rapidly thawing ice reshapes global commerce and energy exploration, possibly raising tensions along the way.

So stay tuned. And if your kids want to write Santa a thank-you letter after hauling in their loot this Christmas, suggest to them they warn St. Nick to stay alert for invading foreigners. Meanwhile, you may want to contact your senators and find out if they’re going to approve the U.N. sea-law convention, and if they want to send Americans to fight in the Arctic.

Merry Christmas.

This column was first published in The Clyde Fitch Report, and is now in my book The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond: Writings on Water Wars, Nuclear Devastation, Endless War, Economic Revolution, and Surveillance Versus Freedom.

The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond: Writings on Water Wars, Nuclear Devastation, Endless War, Economic Revolution, and Surveillance Versus Freedom - Kindle edition by Armbrust, Roger. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Is War a Racket? An Honored Marine General Said “Yes!”

Roger Armbrust

June 17, 2014

Have you heard of Smedley Butler? Perhaps not lately. He was a U.S. Marine who received the Congressional Medal of Honor TWICE. Also the Corps’ highly respected Brevet Medal and the Army and Navy Distinguished Service Medal. He retired as a Major General in 1939.

But before he retired, in 1935, he wrote a book. Was it called Courage in Battle? No. Was it called We Defend the World? No. Was it called America, Love It or Leave It? No. It was called War is a Racket.

Based on his career as a military officer, Butler discussed—first in a speech then later in book form—how business profiteered from war. In the book, he summarized his view this way:

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

Butler suggested three actions to quell the war racket. First, take the profit motive out of war:

It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labour before the nation’s manhood can be conscripted. … Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our steel companies and our munitions makers and our ship-builders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted — to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Second, decide to go to war only by a limited referendum, with the only eligible voters being those who would fight on the front lines.

size0 — U.S. military seems mired in the Middle East.

Third, limit the military to only actions of self-defense, with the Navy staying within 200 miles of the U.S. coastline, the army held within the country’s territorial limits.

By 1940, he was dead at age 58, via an illness similar to cancer.

By 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower, another war hero and a Republican president, was warning America of the military-industrial complex’s potential to take over Washington. By 1964, we saw it spreading with our invasion of Vietnam, followed in our new century with the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Which brings us to this week, and the Obama administration beginning to ingrain us again in Iraq. This from today’s Associated Press:

Obama met with his national security team Monday evening to discuss options for stopping the militants known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Officials said the president has made no final decisions on how aggressively the U.S. might get involved in Iraq, though the White House continued to emphasize that any military engagement remained contingent on the government in Baghdad making political reforms.

Still, there were unmistakable signs of Americans returning to a country from which the U.S. military fully withdrew more than two years ago. Obama notified Congress that up to 275 troops would be sent to Iraq to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the American Embassy in Baghdad. The soldiers — 170 of which have already arrived in Iraq — were armed for combat, though Obama has insisted he does not intend for U.S. forces to be engaged in direct fighting.

“We are hard-wired into their system,” the fledgling democracy that America helped institute, said Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad. “We can’t walk away from it.”

This, of course, is an exercise in military frustration and continued corporate profit. Frustration because a foreign nation that’s a couple of hundred years old (America) is trying to end a 14-centuries-old religious rivalry. National Public Radio summarized that yesterday in a report, which you can read and listen to here.

Meanwhile, the multinational corporations will benefit by continuing to support America’s efforts in nationalism and endless war, and also in rebuilding destroyed areas in the aftermath. And don’t forget how both the U.S. and Russia profit from weapons sales.

You can find a listing of corporations profiting from the military here. A good place to begin as you get organized, get educated, and get active in changing your government’s racket that Washington doesn’t want to change.

Originally published in The Clyde Fitch Report, now in my book The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond:

NukeBuild: This Will Not End Well

By
Roger Armbrust
-

June 22, 2015

US President Barack Obama (L), Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (C)

While the corporate media’s flashing you constant images of 2016 presidential candidates and the tragic Charleston massacre, don’t let it cloud your focus on the rising conflict that won’t end well: the U.S. challenging both China and Russia – all three nations possessing and increasing nuclear arms. Let’s call the growing tensions NukeBuild.

Peculiar Progressive wrote recently of the growing belligerence between Washington and Beijing: “China, the U.S. and Looming War”. We stressed how the U.S. is planning a 30-year, $1 trillion rebuilding of its nuclear arsenal. How China knows this. And how this, President Obama’s effort to solidify his “Asian Pivot” with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Pentagon’s war words about controlling the South China Sea and Pacific have all led China to publicly voice its own global military action plan.

Meanwhile, last week Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a smaller modernizing of Moscow’s nuclear arms. Not a lot. Just enough to incinerate and/or poison the planet:

Mr Putin said that “more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) able to overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defence systems” would be added to Russia’s nuclear arsenal this year…

…The president also announced that the military was beginning testing a new system of long-range early warning radar “to monitor in the western direction”.

After Mr Putin’s address, Russia’s deputy defence minister Anatoly Antonov told Russia Today his country was being “pushed into an arms race” by NATO.

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is heavily funded and influenced by Washington, which supported the fascist overthrow and replacement of a democratically elected government in Ukraine – a voter-selected regime supporting Moscow, and also corrupt.

That regime change and the move by the eastern Ukraine region of Crimea to secede and be annexed by Russia has led NATO’s effort to move troops closer to Russia’s borders. NATO’s foreign ministers in April 2014 announced they would “suspend all practical civilian and military cooperation between NATO and Russia.”

This chess-playing with Ukraine lives also led Washington to push the European Union to agree on U.S.-EU economic sanctions against Russia. The EU just extended those sanctions through the end of 2015.

All this has led Moscow to begin expanding its military and nuclear strength.

China, U.S. Meet This Week

China and the U.S. on Monday, June 22 began its seventh annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, three days of banter about serious issues which will come to a head in September when China’s President Xi Jinping travels to the U.S. capitol to meet with President Obama.

The two sides feel they can expand some issues of mutual agreement. But the reality is this: China continues to grow as an equal economic power with the U.S., and Washington is trying to find ways to prevent that. Meanwhile China and Russia are growing closer while both are experiencing deep disagreements and distrust with the U.S. and its military threats. Both sides have been involved in cyber warfare.

According to Channel NewsAsia:

The two sides will try to ease tensions by stressing areas of cooperation, including climate change, shared concerns about Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programmes, the fight against Islamist militancy, and support for global development.

‘We have agreed with the Chinese that we are going to try to expand those areas where our interests overlap and expand cooperation in those areas,’ the [unnamed] US official said. But the aim was not to ‘paper over’ contentious issues, or to ‘agree to disagree,’ but to narrow differences to avoid miscalculations.

It’s those “miscalculations” which concern Peculiar Progressive, seeing the belligerent dialogue and military “shoving” by the three powers as the dangerous buildup grows toward war, and even nuclear war. And we’re not alone.

Roberts Sees ‘Armageddon’

nuclear-explosion — Big Three rebuild nuclear arsenals.

Paul Craig Roberts was an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan, and was part of the brain trust in forming Reaganomics. He realizes the Washington neocons’ shoutings are efforts at activating Reagan’s hawkish actions toward Russia — only without Reagan’s willingness to negotiate. And he basically said so in a speech to the Conference on the European/Russian Crisis, in Delphi, Greece this past weekend. The talk’s title: “Washington is Impotent to Prevent Armageddon”.

Roberts, tracing the American attitude of exceptionalism and efforts to build empire, opens his talk with this:

The United States has pursued empire since early in its history, but it was the Soviet collapse in 1991 that enabled Washington to see the entire world as its oyster.

The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the rise of the neoconservatives to power and influence in the US government. The neoconservatives have interpreted the Soviet collapse as History’s choice of “American democratic capitalism” as the New World Order.

He moves on to discuss the Wolfowitz Doctrine and its chief priority of hegemony. The two chief enemies of the doctrine are Russia and China he says, adding:

We come to the bottom line. Washington’s position is not negotiable. Washington has no interest in compromising with Russia or China. Washington has no interest in any facts. Washington’s deal is this: ‘You can be part of our world order as our vassals, but not otherwise.’

European governments and, of course, the lapdog UK government, are complicit in this implicit declaration of war against Russia and China. If it comes to war, Europeans will pay the ultimate price for the treason of their leaders, such as Merkel, Cameron, and Hollande, as Europe will cease to exist.

War with Russia and China is beyond Washington’s capability. However, if the demonized “enemy” does not succumb to the pressure and accept Washington’s leadership, war can be inevitable.

He also notes, “The agenda of American hegemony serves the interests of Wall Street and the mega-banks.”

You can read Roberts’ entire speech here. Perhaps it will help urge you to get organized, get educated, and get active in changing the destructive dynamic we’re all being drawn into.

Originally published in The Clyde Fitch Report, now in my book The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond:

Prepare to Fight Fascism: 2017 and Beyond

Roger Armbrust

November 14, 2016

When Donald Trump takes the presidency next year – bringing with him the likes of Rudolph Giuliani and Chris Christie – you’ll need to protect yourself against efforts to turn our oligarchic state into a fascist state.

First, here’s why. And lastly, here’s how.

Why

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines Fascism:

…a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

Fascism defines Donald Trump

This, of course, also defines Donald Trump, his professed philosophy, actions and where he plans to take us. Voters seem to think they elected (via the electoral college, not the popular vote, which he lost) a populist, garrulous, successful entrepreneur — a powerful corporate leader opposed to the establishment. That’s a media illusion developed through a decade on his “reality” TV show. It’s a corporate media that, first, loved him because of his TV ratings, then, second, began to attack him when they realized they had helped him become a viable candidate.

So, now, he is about to take command of the most powerful, war-aggressive military in world history, massive government spy apparatus and abusive federal legal system.

Trump, in his youth, was weaned by a real-estate father to be a business “killer” (his father’s term), and a winner and not a loser, according to PBS Frontline. In young adulthood, he was trained by the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn made his name as a legal henchman for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the notorious ’50s “Red-Scare” politician. Cohn represented Trump in business for years, pushing him to (1) never admit to anything negative, (2) propagandize every negative into a positive and (3) if anybody sues you, countersue. That’s not what you would call an honest life, but it is a way to help protect yourself legally.

You can get a clear view of Trump’s history, as well as Hillary Clinton’s — the formation of their thinking, philosophy, speech and actions — in the powerful PBS Frontline documentary “The Choice 2016”.

Trump has applied those three Cohn dictums in his aggressive business and political behavior for decades. And he will apply them as president. He’s let no one stand in his way. When he personally made millions off his failed Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, he sloughed off the millions of dollars stockholders lost, saying they should have monitored their investments better, according to Frontline.

When the Trump Taj Mahal and other Trump-titled assets began to fail in the ‘90s, banks kept from busting him, deciding they’d lose all their loan money if they took his name off the buildings. He’s gone to school on that, no longer starting new hotel projects, but selling his name worldwide while others actually own and develop the businesses. He may say he’s doing the constructing, but he’s not. That, and his illusive TV persona, carry him to this day.

Can’t you just see Trump turning into a Vladimir Putin, secretly making billions off of others’ businesses when he’s president? He’s been groomed for it. And if anyone gets in his way, now he can implement presidential power to overrun them. Look for him to operate with policymakers globally, publicly pushing American nationalism, but in private saying, “Let’s you and I make a deal. What’s in it for me?”

The Constitution

So you’ll have to, first, be prepared to defend your Constitution of the United States and its Bill of Rights.

Think immediately of the First Amendment, and particularly the freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Recall that Trump, during his presidential campaign often ostracized members of the press — refusing to let them into his campaign functions — if he didn’t like their questions or articles about him.

President Barack Obama took great pains to control the press. His Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) tapped the Associated Press’s emails. We included this in our column “None’s Well That’s Orwell”. And Obama’s Justice Department also tried to intimidate all reporters by going after Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen, threatening him with jail if he didn’t reveal the name of a whistle-blowing source. We wrote about this in detail in our column “National Security Depends on Press Freedom”.

Turkey's president-turned dictator Erdogan — Turkey’s president-turned-dictator Erdogan

Trump will be ready to put all the government power available to him to carry Obama’s press intimidation program even farther. How far will a fascist dictator go? Just research Turkey currently under its democratically-elected president-turned-dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Trump has also shown abusive disdain for minorities, immigrants, women and public protesters. And you can bet he’ll find ways to intimidate and jail them. And if he can’t pass a law to do it, he’ll simply sign a presidential executive order, and it will come into play before the public even realizes it.

Also, Congress has given the president broad emergency powers if he decides to declare a national emergency. These powers allow dictatorial control over the nation when the chief executive declares a national emergency. We wrote about the overwhelming emergency presidential powers in our column “July 4: Our Independence Versus Today’s Emergency Powers”.

Austerity and Police Power

Following the U.S. national midterm elections in 2014, we wrote the column “As U.S. Austerity Deepens, Prepare for Revolution”.

We saw the Millionaire Congress begin implementing its austerity, fighting health care, limiting unemployment compensation, caring little about hundreds of thousands returning military veterans from our endless wars with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), leading to daily suicides.

As the new Millionaire Congress (Republicans and Democrats) further ramp up austerity, and Trump supports it, look for the nation to move even closer to revolution. Hopefully peaceful revolution, but probably not.

During his campaign, Trump preached for more police control of the public, not less. Fear of revolution prompted the federal government under Obama to supply military hardware to local police forces. He reluctantly claimed to stop it late in his second term due to the public outcry. But expect Trump, flashing his mantle as Commander in Chief, to encourage greater militarizing of police nationwide.

Privatization

Internationally, American and European oligarchs have looked for chances to move into debt-torn countries and swallow up their public assets and natural resources at dirt-cheap prices, turning public services into private corporate operations. Washington has colluded with private corporations to do that, particularly in South America, as we wrote about in our column “Why Ecuador REALLY Gave Assange Asylum”.

That would be right up Trump’s alley. His top priority has always been “making a deal”, i.e. making money. And as president he’ll have national and global opportunities to secretly do that.

Cohorts will encourage it. Giuliani as mayor of New York pushed to both censor and privatize the arts, and keep the public from investigating budgets, but was stalled by federal court rulings. After his mayoral effort, he tried to privately control millions in a fund for families of 9/11 victims — until a group of police widows threatened to file suit. Christie, as governor of New Jersey, has moved water supply services from public control to the private sector.

These are the first issues to consider and respond to as Trump works to consolidate his power. We’ll be looking more at these and other issues — ranging from domestic to foreign affairs — as we move forward.

How

How can you defend yourself and your fellow citizens from the coming fascist onslaught? Peculiar Progressive for years has encouraged you to get organized (you can’t do it alone), get educated to each issue’s specifics and get active in bringing about change. It’s now going to take a massive effort to defend yourself, your children and your Constitution. It’s doubtful you’ll get much help from the Millionaire Congress — who could refuse to fund Trump efforts, but won’t — or from a conservative U.S. Supreme Court he’s about to make more conservative by appointing a ninth judge.

History shows that dictators move into power unexpectedly during economic downturns, coups d’etat, revolutions or states of emergency.

So, to your marks, get set, go.

Originally published in The Clyde Fitch Report, now in my book The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond: