Once again, Israel bombed Syria, ostensibly to destroy weapons meant for Hezbollah. Instead, the air strike on Saturday, May 4, 2013 killed 15 troops from Bashar al-Assad’s elite Republican Guard, together with more than 100 other Syrian soldiers. As Russia, China and the United States scrambled for a solution to the conflict in Syria that threatens to turn into a regional sectarian war, Russia Today Television (RT TV) called on News Junkie Post Editor-in-Chief Gilbert Mercier to analyze the geopolitics of the situation.

Mercier cautioned that “Israel is playing with fire” and explained that he thinks they are testing “the international community to see how they are going to react. According to various Washington sources, the attack on Saturday wasn’t green-lit by the White House. They were not even consulted…. Apparently it is a complete fait accompli. They might be testing the waters to see how the international community would move if [Israel] would attack Iran….”

He pointed out that the attack has won the sympathy of Turkey, “which is mainly a Sunni country and not a friend of the Assads. [Turkish Prime Minister] Erdogan basically stated that the attack by Israel was absolutely unacceptable, and this is [seconded] by the opposition in Syria.”

When asked about the possible outcomes of today’s meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Levrov and United States Secretary of State John Kerry, Mercier proposed that “The international community should look into… a potential balkanization of Syria: perhaps splitting the… Alawite, Sunni, and Kurd areas into three parts, following the model of the former Yugoslavia…. Nobody has really considered this, and it could be a way out. Otherwise, the 1.2 million Alawites — providing Assad falls — would become very likely victims of a genocide.”

Regarding the claims of chemical weapons in Syria, Mercier said that the “deja vu of Iraq… doesn’t fly too well with the international community,” although the US insists that it just wants to make sure it is right on the chemical weapons issue. He also noted the implied threat against Assad in President Barack Obama’s comparison today of possible plans for Syria to previous US actions against Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi.

Mercier warns that Israel is “trying to provoke Hezbollah into a retaliation…” but appears not to have considered that it cannot “handle a front against Lebanon and a front against Syria at the same time.”

Editor’s Note: Photograph by AFP/HO/SANA

By Gilbert Mercier and Dady Chery

We might never learn the motive behind the Boston Marathon bomb attack on Monday, April 15, which is reported to have killed three people and injured more than 170. It could be as simple as an unhinged individual going postal on tax day or a sinister  message to Americans from a foreign national illustrating the proverb “You can run, but you can’t hide.” In any case, the improvised explosive devices (IED) were amateurish and ineffective at causing maximum casualty. According to investigators, the crude IED were made from rigged pressure cookers loaded with gunpowder, nails plus ball bearings, and triggered by egg timers. The clumsy work suggests an unbalanced individual rather than an organization. Nevertheless, all day Monday and Tuesday the United States and world media talked about a “terrorist attack,” and the story became the only story. What matters more, however, is the way the incident will be exploited worldwide by policy makers and their media sycophants.

Boosting fear and paranoia to reinforce the global police state

Overall, the tragedy is a minor incident in the scope of world affairs. Around the same time: in Iraq for example, a wave of bomb attacks killed 50 people and injured 300; in Afghanistan, 30 people at wedding party were killed and about 90 wounded because a US bomb missed its target. Nevertheless the Boston bombing has already raised the level of fear and paranoia. Just like 9/11 was used to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the start of the global war on terror, the Boston Marathon incident will be exploited by repressive governments to justify an ever-growing war economy that benefits the industrial-military complex. Private security and surveillance companies will thrive even more, and US citizens may expect the Department of Homeland Security to grow into a bigger monstrosity. One can easily foresee that, at upcoming big crowd gatherings such as sporting events, drones of  all functions, shapes and sizes — some presumably designed to look like hummingbirds — will fly overhead to protect us from ourselves. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, many young Americans joined the military with the fervor of naive patriotism. With unemployment still high, it is likely that the Boston marathon incident will lure more young men and women into becoming cannon fodder for the war machine.

A story to hide others: Guantanamo, CISPA and Bradley Manning

Before the Marathon incident, the top news stories in the United States suggested that Americans might be regaining their senses and worrying about the erosion of their civil liberties. A foremost concern was the free dissemination of information and protection of privacy. Earlier this year, the Cyber Intelligence Protection Act (CISPA) was reset into motion by an executive order and a vow from President Barack Obama, during his State of the Union address, to “strengthen cyber defenses by increasing information sharing.” CISPA is about to be put to a vote in the House of Representatives. If passed in its current state, it will allow companies to collect the confidential e-mail and web-browsing histories of private individuals and share the information with the government, including its military and intelligence agencies, ostensibly to counter cyber threats.

To the US government, the epitome of a cyber threat is Pfc Bradley Manning. Mr. Manning has been detained for over a year without trial and more than 1,000 days without a conviction for blowing the whistle about US attacks on Iraqi and Afghan civilians. He is charged with espionage, not because he knowingly shared classified information with a foreign agent but because some of his information was published online and might have been used by a hostile foreign agent for some unspecified nefarious purpose. Mr. Manning enjoys considerable sympathy, and it is not lost on the internet community that some of the charges against him represent an attack on all online publishers, who obviously have no control over who uses their information.

For what seemed to be the first time since 9/11, Americans began again to express publicly their sympathy toward some Muslim foreign nationals. In a New York Times editorial of April 14 that was exceptional for allowing an incarcerated Muslim to present his plight directly to the US public, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel detailed some of the horrors he suffered in Guantanamo during his 11 years of detention there without trial. The story was damning. More than half of the 166 prisoners at Guantanamo are on a little-publicized hunger strike that started over two months ago, and 16 of them, including Moqbel, are being force fed. One man weighs only 77 pounds. Moqbel, whose weight has dropped to 132 pounds, describes that: “During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual…. It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused…. When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. [Extreme Reaction Force] team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.”

Comments about the editorial were overwhelmingly sympathetic; the readers recognized, not only that prisoners everywhere are entitled to decent treatment, but also that Moqbel, in particular, has never been charged with or found guilty of anything. This outpouring of sympathy stopped as suddenly as the Boston Marathon explosions, which are presumed, without proof, to have been orchestrated by a Muslim.

International ramifications either real or manufactured

There are already some alarming signs of the ways the Boston Marathon tragedy might be used in a broader geopolitical context. On Wednesday, April 17, The Times of Israel  announced that police chief Yohanan Danino and “other police officers” left the Jewish state on Tuesday to help the FBI with the Boston Marathon investigation. This is the highest ranking police delegation ever sent overseas by Israel. President Shimon Peres, during a foreign diplomatic gathering, expressed his condolences and jumped on the opportunity to crank up the terror narrative. “Today the real problem is terror, and terror is not an extension of policy: their policy is terror, their policy is to threaten. Terrorists divide people, they kill innocent people,” said Peres.

This intrusion of Israel into an investigation that the FBI should handle with the Boston Police indicates that the case will likely expand. Allegations — legitimate or not — might soon materialize to link the case to Iran or organizations like Hezbollah. To keep the global war on terror in the limelight is to lull the public into docility despite the continuous assaults on its civil liberties and human rights. So long as terror can regain its place as the number one public-opinion priority, CISPA may be implemented with the blessings of a large majority of US citizens, Bradley Manning may stay in prison, and Guantanamo may remain open.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Aaron Tang.

The housing divide

Who knows, perhaps Thatcher naively and seriously thought that everybody, by following the capitalist dream, could become rich. Anybody can see, die-hard bankers especially, that such a society could never exist under a capitalist system. Robert Tressell clearly shows how this system functions in The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, in a chapter called “The Great Money Trick.” There need to be factors of production to make the capitalist system work. This is why there is a one percent super-rich sector and the other 99 percent are destined to make their way through life as best they can. Many working-class people bought into the dream, buying their council houses below market value and quite probably thinking this was great when they came to sell these houses at a more realistic market value. This conjurer’s trick can only be worked once. It left in its wake a vast shortage of social housing and a populace of young people unable to afford a house, together with councils that are in debt because they have been robbed of their assets.

The financial divide

Likewise a dream of Thatcher’s — nightmare might be a better word — was to privatize pensions. People were bribed with £200 (paid from the state pension scheme) to contract out and invest in private pensions, because capitalists know better how to make your money grow. Most of the private schemes failed. So those without a proper pension came back into the state pension scheme. They did not pay £200 plus interest to get back in. The state pension scheme had remained solvent. It was not run by shady capitalists whose main motivation was how much profit they could screw you for.  Contributions paid into private pension schemes lined the pockets of the capitalists. The state pension scheme saw none of this; however, pensions paid to those who returned because they would otherwise have been without a pension, are today paid out of the state pension scheme, although they are entitled to some pension for the contributions they made. Similarly when banks go bust, taxpayers, who all economists know, provide most of the liquidity that enables banks to operate, are forced to bail them out. That is, unless there is a chance they might recover and provide profit to the rich. Even when banks continue to fail, bankers are paid disgusting bonuses at taxpayers expense.

The military divide

Thatcher was the first post second world-war prime minister to take us into war. It was an unnecessary war. A peace deal was on the table, but she chose to have Argentinian and British troops killed to bolster her flagging popularity. Because collectively the electorate is stupid — there can be no other word for it — she sailed back into power on the tidal wave created by the loss of these young lives. Every single prime minister since, of both main parties, and the coalitionist Nick Clegg, have taken us into unnecessary wars. Thatcher showed them the way. None of them has been big enough to say “No.” The electorate continues to support these wars. The world is in debt. The wars, which enrich capitalists, have caused this debt, which the rest of us will have to pay.

A fitting epitaph

Margaret Thatcher is dead. I shall not be dancing on the day of her funeral, another pompous affair aimed at brainwashing those sheep who have never read George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I shall not be having a street party in remembrance of her divisive policies. Instead I have combined the two mottoes from the introductory paragraph into a fitting epitaph to the old lady who did so much harm to my country.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by BBC Radio 4. Photographs two and three by Duncan C. Photograph four by Noaz and photograph five by R. Barraez D’ Lucca.

By Imtiaz Akhtar

There is a rather curious and utterly confessional account of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s failure to become an Englishman in his book: An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. In Chapter XV in particular, modestly titled “Playing the Englishman,” Gandhi makes himself the object of his own ridicule. His initial experience with the West was rather tormenting; the indictment of the West by his older self would become more modest and damning. Gandhi’s dismissive attitude was never shared by his contemporaries, most notably Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who vehemently registered their disagreement. Tagore rightly foresaw the inherent danger in the fight against colonialism: namely that this would mean that the people of colonies might be deprived of the benefits of knowledge produced in West merely on the grounds of it being western. That colonialism could lead to xenophobia is something Tagore found disturbing and on which few agreed with him.

A lot has happened since then. Post-1991 America has emerged as the world’s sole hegemonic power. I grew up in a densely-populated Muslim neighborhood of Kolkata (Calcutta), the capital of West Bengal where bright, colorful and overtly-lit shopping malls and shanties in black and white are part of our collective memory. The walls of our area were a canvas where Marxism and Urdu (an Hindustani dialect) had combined in a beautiful symmetry. Red-color hammer, sickles, stars and revolutionary slogans in Urdu: these are my earliest memory of my city. When the first gulf war took place in 1991, I was very young, but I do remember one day when I visited a watchmaker’s shop with my father, seeing for the first time a poster of the man whom I would later recognize as Saddam Hussein. It was easy to remember him. He shared my father’s surname. His posters with a parrot-green background proliferated everywhere, from walls to newspapers, to copies of children to barber shops where toothless old men sat and yawned while hearing All India Radio’s commentaries on cricket. A lot of money was made by people then, as my mother told me few days ago while we discussed this topic. It was around this time that people marched in the streets. The slogan “Saddam Hussein jang karo hum tumhare saath hai” (Saddam Hussein fight the war we are with you), would rise in the air of my city, crash with the walls only to fall back louder on my ear drums. I was thrilled. All around there were green and sometimes red flags.

Saddam is dead now, but the people’s anger has not abated. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have added red chilly powder to an injury. On September 11, when the World Trade Centers fell, there was a sense of relief in most people in our city, who experienced a tinge of pleasure from the secret knowledge that our neighbors too have had such an experience. What is disturbing is: How is it possible for people to chant wartime slogans and feel happy and united? Is it not a symptom of a deep civilizational crisis, when war is seen as the only way to redeem history? When children march in the streets against war, what is one to call it: madness or an act of utter desperation? And now, almost as if in a logical outcome of our collective madness, India is set to elect as Prime Minister Narendra Modi: a man whom the Supreme Court of India has publicly labeled a “modern day Nero” for his superintendence of communal riots in Gujarat in 2001. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Already, media houses such as India Today are hosting lavish conferences that present Mr. Modi as someone who is “not-such-a-bad-man.”

On the other side, the West, almost as a surreal joke, awards Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. To continue the joke, this year Clinton is a potential candidate for the prize. While the Western world takes pride in free speech and human rights, it imprisons and publicly harasses Julian Assange. The ban by the French Government on Sikhs from wearing their turbans outraged even the right wing of India’s Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). A sizable section in India does not take seriously the West’s argument to wage war to “promote grass roots democracy, respect for human rights and free speech,” which is why in 2001 the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government stopped sending Indian troops to fight the imperialist war in Afghanistan. New Delhi back then witnessed one of the most massive anti-war rallies organized by leftist parties. When western diplomats talk earnestly about democracy and human rights, most people here laugh at them. East and West, we live in the darkest of the times. Our beliefs have melted like slabs of ice under heat. What do we do? Where do we go? Madness has become our collective fate. Every morning one wakes up to see humanity hanging on a scaffold near one’s verandah.

Editor’s Notes: Imtiaz Akhtar has a law degree and is pursuing a master’s degree in comparative literature at Jadavpur University in Kolkata (Calcutta) India. He has worked as a journalist, as a lawyer and as an editor for a law journal. He lives in Kolkata, India. Photograph one by Miguel Donvez, photograph two by Akash Mondal, photograph three by de Erisch, and photograph four by Goutam Roy.

To address this question, one would do well to consider the late 19th to early 20th century that endured the coexistence of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and many like them. Economically, present-day United States, where the top one percent controls 40 percent of the wealth — and the top five percent about three quarters of the wealth — most closely resembles the “gilded age.” People spoke more eloquently then and called the rapacious rich in their ostentatious mansions: “the robber barons.” About the legislatures that slavishly subsidized the projects of these rich men, even as they mechanized their factories to put millions of skilled laborers out of work, Mark Twain wrote: “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.”

Nowadays, the name John D. Rockefeller no longer recalls the ruthless founder of Standard Oil who became the world’s first billionaire despite having started out as the son of an elixir salesman called “Devil Bill” and having had as his only business education a bookkeeping course of less than three months. The record of a pathological accumulation of wealth has been effectively expunged from Rockefeller’s name and replaced by a list of post-retirement philanthropic projects including the Rockefeller University, the University of Chicago, and the eradication of hookworm disease from the southern US. Andrew Carnegie is now also better known for his contributions of libraries, museums, and research institutes to the world than for his frenetic greed as a steel man for weapons production during the US Civil War. The same goes for the rest. Thus it would appear that by undertaking a project of alms giving, these thoroughly sinful men have become virtuous.

Even the most cynical among us would grant that every evildoer has the potential to repent his sins and deserves to be forgiven if this is done in the right spirit. But it would seem instead that the charitable works of these men were motivated, not by altruism but arrogance and a lust for power. To hang on to their wealth, they corrupted those they could and fought the rest. They maneuvered to pay as little tax as possible, the idea being that decisions on how to expend wealth should be up to them but not to a democratic process involving common laborers.

One billion dollars at the turn of the 20th century would be worth about $700 billion in 2013, and John D. Rockefeller gave away more than half of his wealth. So the level of today’s philanthropy from the super wealthy hardly matches that of the robber barons, even if one considers Warren Buffet’s much lauded $31 million gift to the Gates Foundation in 2006. Nevertheless, the lust for power has grown. The collaboration of today’s super rich in their philanthropy is a kind of humanitarian imperialism meant not only to rehabilitate their names but also impose their views on a global scale.

Mr. Bloomberg has recast himself as a do-gooder despite his origin as a cut-throat Wall Street investment banker and partner at Solomon Brothers. Likewise, Mr. Gates has metamorphosed into a saint, although his fortune originates from a corporation (Microsoft) that has been accused of unfair monopoly practices for bundling its operating system together with its own programs for browsers, etc. Such transformations of the wealthy are facilitated by news agencies like National Public Radio (NPR) that enjoy their donations. They enthusiastically promote, for example, the message that the world must urgently eradicate polio. Bill Gates himself has labeled polio the “world’s biggest problem.” Why?

Back in 2001, polio was disappearing on its own from improved nutrition and availability of clean water, and fewer than 500 cases remained in the entire world. Since the start of the Gate Foundation’s more than $8 billion eradication project, over 47,500 cases of an infectious disease with polio’s symptoms and twice the lethality — ironically labeled “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” (NPAFP) — have occurred in India in 2011 alone.  Nevertheless in a miracle of semantics, in 2012 India was held up as a great success because its cases of the standard “polio” dropped to zero from being half the world’s total.

Oral polio vaccine (OPV) contains a weakened live virus, which has long been known to be able to mutate to a deadly form. Nevertheless, OPV is the most popular polio vaccine administered in the third world today. By contrast, the US abandoned the use of OPV in the 1970′s and returned to using Jonas Salk’s traditional vaccine, which is called inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) and is prepared by killing a highly infectious virus. IPV is more costly because it must be prepared in special facilities and injected instead of swallowed. Nevertheless it was deemed preferable to OPV, which caused about 10 cases per year of vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP: an older, more candid name than NPAFP) in inoculated Americans. Concerns about not harming healthy people were waived for the citizens of poorer countries, presumably because polio is a grave public-health danger. But with only 291 cases of standard polio remaining in the world, how grave could this danger be, unless one also counts NPAFP infections as polio?

Curiously, all of the world’s supposed cases of standard polio are focused in areas associated with radical islam: namely northern Nigeria (70 in 2001, 168 in 2012) and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border (143 in 2001, 123 in 2012). The Taliban, which has long accused public-health workers of generating polio and spying on its fighters, recently had its case strengthened by the scandalous reports of NPAFP in India and the discovery that Dr. Shakil Afridi had, under cover of a polio vaccination campaign, collected DNA samples that helped the CIA to track down bin Laden. In December, nine health workers were murdered in Pakistan for vaccinating children against polio. Pakistani civilians, generally, are refusing OPV. In India, many individuals have received more than 10 doses of OPV. By contrast, a single “dose of trivalent OPV is administered to all enlisted accessions” of the US Army, which is by far the world’s wealthiest consumer of vaccines.

The Gates Foundation claims that it will wipe out polio; but, as clinicians and ethicists Neetu Vashisht and Jacob Puliyel point out, such an eradication has become quite impossible since 2002, when a group of US scientists manufactured the polio virus’ genetic information from scratch based on its genome sequence (about 7500 nucleotide bases), prepared an infectious version of it in a test tube that could cause flaccid paralysis, and published the genome information and their procedures. With current technologies, the entire process might take as little as one week. Therefore, whether or not every case of polio vanishes from the Earth, Pandora’s box has been opened. The polio virus can be recalled at any time.

The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation also seems determined to control cholera, malaria, and other presumed scourges with vaccines of questionable efficacy. It hardly matters that clean water and other simple measures might work better than vaccines. When one is rich and powerful enough to control all the discourse about a vaccine project and smooth its path from the laboratory to publication, to approval by WHO and purchase by UNICEF and heads of state, one is always right. Vaccines aside, the world’s billionaires have challenged the Pope into a battle by developing a keen interest in women’s reproductive rates. On one hand, the Pope had continued to push, according to Catholic tradition, for all women to reproduce without control. On the other, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with Mrs Gates as its advocate, has initiated a campaign of birth-control education and promotion of contraceptives for African women, while paying scant attention to the reproduction rates of western people, despite their vastly greater consumption of the world’s resources. One might well ask if a desire to dictate on a global scale — instead of any altruistic need for service — guides our new gilded age’s philanthropic projects.  Their participants, from the top executives to the scientists, to the NGO members, revere money and hold democratic decision making in contempt. Thus the truth is suppressed and wealth, paradoxically, subverts its own ends.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by Elyce Feliz. Photographs four and eight by Keso, five by Rick Warden, and six and seven by TEDxTalks.

By Fidel Castro

President Chavez presented his annual report on activities carried out in 2011 and his program for 2012 to the Venezuelan Parliament. After thoroughly carrying out the formalities required by this important activity, he addressed the official state authorities, members of parliament from all parties, and supporters and opposition members who had come to the Assembly to participate in the country’s most solemn act. As usual, the Bolivarian leader was gracious and respectful to all those present. When anyone asked him for the floor to make a clarification, he granted it as soon as possible. When one of the members of parliament, who had warmly greeted Chavez as did other opposition members, asked to speak, in a great political gesture Chavez interrupted his report presentation and gave her the floor.

What surprised me was the extreme severity of the rebuke, launched against the president with words that really put to the test Chavez’ chivalry and calm. The MP’s statement was undoubtedly an insult, although this was not her intention. He alone was capable of calmly responding to the offensive word “thief” that she had used to judge the president’s conduct in terms of the adopted laws and measures. After verifying the exact term that was used, Chavez responded to the individual challenge for debate with an elegant and measured phrase, “An eagle does not hunt flies,” and without adding another word he calmly proceeded with his report. This represented an insurmountable test of mental agility and self control. Another woman, of unquestionably humble origins, expressed her astonishment in moving and heartfelt words over what she had just witnessed, and the overwhelming majority present broke out in applause. Judging by the sheer volume, the applause seemed to be coming from all of Chavez’ friends and many of his adversaries as well.

Chavez’ report lasted more than nine hours without the people ever losing interest. Maybe because of that incident, his words were heard by an immeasurable number of people. Many times I have given extensive speeches on difficult topics, always striving to make the ideas I was transmitting understandable. And I was really at a loss to explain how that soldier of humble origins was able to keep his mind so agile and his incomparable talent to deliver such an address without losing his voice or strength. To me politics is an extensive and decisive battle of ideas. Publicity is the work of publicists, who perhaps know the techniques to get listeners, spectators, and readers to do what they are told to do. If that science, or art, or whatever they call it, is employed for the good of human beings, then they deserve some respect: the same respect merited by those who teach people how to think.

Venezuela today is the site of a great battle. Internal and external enemies of the revolution prefer chaos —as Chavez has said— to the just, organized and peaceful development of the country. Being accustomed to analyze the events that have occurred over more than half a century, and to observe, with greater foundations for judgment, the eventful history of our time and human behavior, one learns to almost predict the future development of events. To promote a far-reaching Revolution in Venezuela was no easy task. Venezuela is a country full of glorious history, but extraordinarily rich in resources that are of vital importance to the imperialist powers that have, and continue to map out guidelines in the world.

Political leaders like Romulo Betancourt and Carlos Andres Perez lack the most minimal personal qualities to carry out such a task. Furthermore, Betancourt was excessively vain and hypocritical. He had many opportunities to learn about the situation in Venezuela. As a young man he was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Costa Rica. He had a strong grasp of Latin American history and the role of imperialism, of poverty rates, and the ruthless plundering of natural resources in South America. He could not ignore that in an expansively rich country such as Venezuela, the majority of the people lived in extreme poverty. The archival footage is irrefutable proof of that reality of life.

As Chavez has explained many times, for more than half a century Venezuela was the world’s major oil exporter. At the beginning of the 20th century, European and Yankee warships intervened to support an illegal and tyrannical government that handed the country over to foreign monopolies. It is well known that incalculable funds flowed out of Venezuela to swell the wealth of monopolies and the Venezuelan oligarchy.

I remember when I visited Venezuela for the first time —after the triumph of the Revolution, to give thanks for the support and friendliness afforded to our struggle—, oil was worth barely two dollars a barrel. Afterwards when I went to Venezuela to take part in the swearing-in ceremony for Chavez, the day he took an oath on the “dying constitution” held by Calderas, oil was worth seven dollars a barrel, despite 40 years having passed since my first visit and almost 30 years since the “distinguished” Richard Nixon had cancelled the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold and the US began to buy the world with pieces of paper. For a century, Venezuela was a supplier of cheap fuel to the empire’s economy and a net exporter of capital to developed and rich countries. Why did these repugnant situations prevail for more than a century?

Latin American Armed Forces’ officials went to their privileged schools in the United States, where the Olympic champions of democracies gave them special courses on maintaining the imperialist and bourgeois order. Coups d’état were always welcome if their objective was to “defend democracies,” safeguarding and guaranteeing this repugnant system, in league with the oligarchies. Whether voters knew how to read and write, whether they had homes, employment, medical services and education were unimportant as long as the right to property was kept sacred. Chavez brilliantly explains this situation. No one knows as well as him what happened in our countries.

Even worse was that the sophisticated nature of weapons, the complex workings and use of modern armaments that require years of learning, the training of highly qualified specialists, and the almost prohibitive cost of such weapons for the weak economies of the continent created a very strong mechanism of subordination and dependence. The US government, employing mechanisms that did not require prior consultation with the other governments, set guidelines and policies for the military. The most sophisticated techniques of torture were passed on to the so-called security agencies to interrogate those who rebelled against the dirty and repugnant system of hunger and exploitation. Despite all this, many honest officials, tired of so many indignations, bravely attempted to eradicate that embarrassing treason against the history of our independence struggles.

In Argentina, military official Juan Domingo Peron was able to design an independent and worker-based policy in his country. A bloody military coup overthrew him, expelled him from his country, and kept him in exile from 1955 to 1973. Years later, under the aegis of the Yankees, they once again attacked the government, murdering, torturing and disappearing tens of thousands of Argentines. They were not even able to defend the country during the colonial war that England carried out against Argentina with the conspiratorial support of the United States and henchman Augusto Pinochet with his cohort of fascists officers trained at the School of the Americas.

In Santo Domingo, Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deño; in Peru, General Velazco Alvarado; in Panama, General Omar Torrijos; and in other countries captains and officers who gave their lives anonymously were the antithesis of the traitorous behavior embodied by Somoza, Trujillo, Stroessner and the cruel tyrannies in Uruguay, El Salvador and other countries in Central and South America. The revolutionary military personnel did not expound elaborate theories, nor was this to be expected. They were not academicians educated in political science, but rather men with a sense of honor who loved their country.

But how far can honest men —who deplore injustice and crime— go along the path of revolution? Venezuela is an outstanding example of the theoretical and practical role that the military can play in the revolutionary struggle for the independence of our peoples, as they did two centuries ago under the brilliant leadership of Simon Bolivar. Chavez, a Venezuelan military officer of humble origins, stepped into the political life of Venezuela inspired by the ideas of the Liberator of America. On Bolivar, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, Marti wrote:

“he won sublime battles with soldiers barefoot and half naked [...] who never fought so much, nor fought better, in the world for freedom …”

“… Of Bolivar, he said, you can talk only after climbing up a mountain to use it as a platform [...] or after freeing a bunch of peoples united in one fist …”

“… what he did not do still remains undone today, because Bolivar still has things to do in the Americas.”

More than half a century later the famous, award-winning poet Pablo Neruda wrote a poem on Bolivar which Chavez frequently quotes. The final stanza reads:

“I came upon Bolívar, one long morning,
in Madrid, at the entrance to the Fifth Regiment.
Father, I said to him, are you, or are you not, or who are you?
And, looking at the Mountain Barracks, he said:
‘I awake every hundred years when the people awake.’”

But the Bolivarian leader is not limited to theoretical elaborations. His concrete measures are implemented without hesitation. The English-speaking Caribbean countries, which have to contend with modern and luxurious Yankee cruise ships for the right to receive tourists in their hotels, restaurants and recreation centers, quite often foreign-owned, but at least they generate employment, wwould always welcome fuel from Venezuela, supplied by that country with special payment facilities, when the barrel would reach prices that sometimes exceeded $100.

In the tiny state of Nicaragua, the land of Sandino, the “General of Free Men”, the Central Intelligence Agency organized the exchange of guns for drugs through Luis Posada Carriles after he was rescued from a Venezuelan prison. This operation resulted in thousands of deaths and mutilations among that heroic people. Nicaragua has also received the solidarity support of Venezuela. These are unprecedented examples in the history of this hemisphere.

The ruinous Free Trade Agreement that the Yankees intend to impose on Latin America, as they did with Mexico, would turn Latin America and the Caribbean not only into the region with the world’s worst distribution of wealth, which it already is. It will turn it into a huge market where corn and other staple foods that are traditional sources of plant and animal protein would be displaced by subsidized US crops, as is already happening in Mexico. Used cars and other goods are displacing Mexican industry manufactures; job opportunities are decreasing in both cities and the countryside; the drug and arms trades are escalating, growing numbers of youngsters aged 14 or 15 years are turned into fearsome criminals. As never before, buses or other vehicles full of people who even paid to be transported across the border in search of employment, have been kidnapped and mass murdered. Known figures grow from year to year. More than ten thousand people are now losing their lives each year.

It is impossible to analyze the Bolivarian Revolution without taking these realities into account. The armed forces, in such social circumstances, are forced into endless and wearisome wars.

Honduras is not an industrialized, financial or commercial country, or even a major producer of drugs. Nevertheless, some of its cities break the record for drug-related violent deaths. There instead stands the banner of a major base of the strategic forces of the United States Southern Command. What is happening there, and is already happening in more than one Latin American country, is the Dantesque picture painted above, from which some countries have begun to escape. Among them and first, Venezuela, not just because it has considerable natural resources, but because it has been rescued from the insatiable greed of foreign corporations and has sparked considerable political and social forces capable of great achievements. Venezuela today is quite another from the one I went to only 12 years ago, which had already deeply impressed me, seeing it as a Phoenix rising again from the ashes of its history.

Mentioning the mysterious computer of Raul Reyes, in the hands of the US and the CIA after the attack organized and supplied by them in full Ecuadorian territory, which killed Marulanda’s replacement as well as several unarmed American youths, a version has been released that Chavez supported the “narco-terrorist organization FARC.” The true terrorists and drug traffickers in Colombia are the paramilitaries that supplied drugs to American dealers to sell them in the largest drug market in the world: the United States.

I never spoke with Marulanda, but I did speak with honored writers and intellectuals who came to know him well. I discussed his thoughts and history. He was undoubtedly a brave and revolutionary man, which I do not hesitate to affirm. I explained that I did not agree with him on his tactics. In my view, two or three thousand men would have been more than enough to defeat a conventional army in the territory of Colombia. His mistake was to devise a revolutionary army with almost as many soldiers as the enemy. That was extremely expensive.

Today, technology has changed many aspects of war; the forms of struggle also change. In fact, the clash of conventional forces between powers possessing nuclear weapons has become impossible. We do not have to have the knowledge of Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and thousands of other scientists to understand that. It is a latent danger and the result is known or should be known. Thinking beings could take millions of years to repopulate the planet. Nevertheless, I hold on to the duty to fight, which in itself is something innate in man, to find solutions that will enable a more reasoned and dignified existence.

Since I met Chavez, now as president of Venezuela and from the final stages of the Pastrana administration, I always saw him interested in promoting peace in Colombia. He facilitated meetings between the Colombian government and the revolutionaries that took place in Cuba — note well — on the basis of reaching a true peace agreement and not a surrender. I do not recall ever having heard Chavez promote anything but peace in Colombia, nor mention Raul Reyes. We always addressed other issues. He particularly appreciates the Colombians; millions of them live in Venezuela and everyone benefits from the social measures taken by the Revolution, and the people of Colombia appreciate that almost as much as those of Venezuela.

I wish to express my solidarity and appreciation to General Henry Rangel Silva, Head of Strategic Operational Command of the Armed Forces, and newly appointed Minister of Defense of the Bolivarian Republic. I had the honor of meeting him when he visited Chavez in Cuba a few months ago. I could see in him an intelligent, well-meant, capable, and yet modest man. I heard his calm, brave and clear speech, which inspired confidence. He led the organization of the most perfect parade of a Latin American military force that I have ever seen. We hope it will serve as encouragement and example to other brother armies. The Yankees had nothing to do with that parade, and would not be able to do better. It is extremely unfair to criticize Chavez for the resources invested in the excellent weapons which were displayed there. I’m sure they will never be used to attack a neighboring country. The weapons, resources and knowledge must go along the paths of unity to see America, as The Liberator dreamed, ”… the greatest nation in the world, greatest not so much by virtue of her area and wealth as by her freedom and glory.”

Everything unites us more than Europe or the United States itself, except the lack of independence imposed on us for 200 years.

Editor’s Notes: Edited from Cuba Debate’s translation of a text originally published in Spanish on January 25, 2012 by Fidel Castro Ruz. Photographs one to nine by Bernardo Londoy.

The regional escalation of Syria’s civil war is well on its way. On March 1, 2013, it took the form of a military intervention by Iraq against the so called Free Syrian Army (FSA), composed almost exclusively of Sunnis and backed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia with blessings of the West and assistance from Turkey. On February 28, 2013, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (a Shiite) warned that a victory of the Syrian opposition would spread chaos through the region. Iraqi forces shelled FSA positions across the border, and Iraq is currently deploying a substantial amount of military assets near its border with Syria. Maliki’s forecast is very similar to one I made more than a year ago. “If the opposition is victorious, there will be a civil war in Lebanon, divisions in Jordan, and a sectarian war in Iraq,” said Maliki in an interview with Associated Press (AP). This turn of events highlights even more the incoherence of the Obama administration’s evaluation and handling of Syria’s civil war.

Note: Below is my original article — same title, February 19, 2012 — that forecasted the same scenario.

Nobody is contesting that Syria has entered a civil war. Despite the efforts of Russia and China, the time for negotiating and defusing the crisis by a political solution seems to be over. In the power struggle within the Assad regime, which has been unfolding ever since the start of the uprising, the hardliners, with Maher al-Assad in the lead, took control of the brutal repression over the more conciliatory side of Bashar al-Assad. In retrospect, the situation could have been prevented at an earlier stage if Syria’s two key allies (Iran and Russia) would have put enough pressure on Bashar al-Assad to get rid off his own brother, Maher, or at least minimize his role.

This said, the situation has festered enough to have reached a point of no return. While the big regional and international players are interfering in Syria’s affairs by siding with the Assad regime or the so-called revolution, they are not addressing what should be a much bigger regional and global concern: can the civil war in Syria be contained or will it spread to surrounding countries and ignite a full-blown sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites? While the already precarious stability of the entire region is at stake, two countries are in the “direct line of fire” of a Syrian civil war domino effect: Lebanon and Iraq.

The Case of Lebanon

In a recent conversation with our Lebanese contributor, Anthony Zeitouni, this issue was addressed. Zeitouni said that “Lebanon is always five minutes away from a civil war.” Indeed, the balance in Lebanon between the three communities (Shiites, Sunnis and Christians) has been extremely fragile for decades. Hezbollah’s (Shiites) main backers are the Assad regime and Iran. The likely regime change in Syria will make them much weaker, and they might be inclined to show their strength, both internally and towards Israel, while they still can. In return, Sunnis and Christians could wrongly assess that the Syrian crisis is a perfect opportunity to diminish the power of Hezbollah by attacking it. In Syria, the small Christian minority (always tolerated by the Assad regime) has already left, seeking refuge in Lebanon or preferably in Europe, Canada or the United States. But in Lebanon, the much larger Christian population could be caught in the middle of a civil war between Hezbollah and the Sunnis.

The Case of Iraq

If in Lebanon a civil war is always “five minutes away,” in Iraq the sectarian conflict between the Shiite majority and Sunni minority is ever present and hardly needs a spark to reignite it. Since the official withdrawal of the US military, the increased sectarian tensions could, at any given time, reach a boiling point. Even if Prime Minister al-Maliki’s government is officially an ally of the US, al-Maliki must perform an increasingly tricky balancing act with Iran. Maliki has also to deal with the increasing power of the charismatic cleric al-Sadr, who is closely aligned with Tehran. In any case, sectarian issues (al-Maliki is a Shiite) would quickly supersede any other consideration for al-Maliki, including the alliance with the United States; any other choice would be suicide. Under pressure from al-Sadr, and Iraq’s Shiite community, al-Maliki might ultimately drop his alliance with the US and side with Iran.

How Syria’s Civil War Could Become a War Within Islam

Western powers assume that the Middle East operates according to national borders and interests but tend to forget that the main divide is between Sunnis and Shiites. The West, and especially the United States, has fueled this tension  for decades by implementing a rudimentary geopolitical strategy of “divide and conquer” through the clumsy instigation of conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites. Now Syrians — Sunnis and Shiites alike — are paying the ultimate price. The United States and its allies are siding with the Sunnis and their key Saudis backers. This is, needless to say, meant to be a master plan against Iran and its allies such as Hezbollah. The collateral damage, however, will be all the Shiite communities in the region. This disastrous geopolitical strategy might not have as its motive a war within Islam, but such a conflict is likely to be the outcome if the Syrian civil war spreads. Neither Sunnis nor Shiites, and certainly not Islam, have anything to gain from such a war.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Freedom House.

A decade on, and Blair claims to have discovered a conscience. Could he sell his plausibility to an unwitting public yet again? Kirsty Wark reminded him of how he wrote in his memoirs that every day of his life he thinks about those who died in Iraq. “What do you think about?” she asked. His answer was that he thought about the loss of life, the terrible consequences for the families of those who died, but — and with Blair there is always a “but” — he was “elected as prime minister to take these decisions.” Wark also reminded him that the removal of Saddam Hussein was not the reason he went to war, but Blair, in the way only Blair can, twisted his weasel words so as to make them sound like Hussein was the real reason, and there was a mandate to prosecute the war on those grounds.[4] Although the former prime minister has already lost a lot of credibility, he further added to his untrustworthiness by stating that every day of his life he thinks of those who died in Iraq. Such a statement would be ludicrous were this not so serious an issue.

There are other things on Tony Blair’s mind to distract him from never letting a day pass without remorse for the Iraqi dead. There is, for example, the £3 million per annum he reputedly gets from JP Morgan, the US investment Bank and Zurich International.[5] It all helps top up the reputed annual £20 million his consultancy company gets. This means he can console himself from daily contemplations of Iraqi losses by calling to mind that he is receiving, every year of his life, something in the region of £140 for each victim of his illegal war, based on a conservative death toll. Then there are the Blair family houses – or rather estates – which must be another distraction from his altruistic ponderings. His three children have had bought for them properties worth over £1 million. On top of this, the Blair property portfolio includes a mansion in Buckinghamshire, a family home in Connaught Square, plus several others.[6] This makes ordinary mortals ponder which of his many properties he uses for contemplating Iraqi losses. At his Buckinghamshire retreat, he is visited by a yoga teacher. Perhaps he uses the meditation session after his limb stretches and breathing exercises to assuage his guilt over those who can no longer stretch and breathe.

Blair likes to think of himself as a peacemaker. Others might have a different perspective on his character and even question his motivation for pretending to be a peacemaker. Greed might come high on the list of some. He takes credit for having brokered the peace deal in Northern Ireland in 1998. Taking credit for success is Blair’s way. “I won an election after Iraq in 2005,” he reminded Kirsty Wark. Those who are cynical about Blair’s peaceful intentions might be inclined to think it was Mo Mowlam who did the groundwork for brokering peace in Northern Ireland rather than Blair, but it was Blair who got all the glory. Making an illegal warmonger the Peace Envoy to the Middle East is almost as laughable as the incredulity of believing that he spares a thought every day for the loss of life in Iraq. Peace Envoy is another post for which he is paid for achieving nothing peaceful. The only kind of peace Blair could achieve in the Middle East is one based on what his Zionist masters tell him is an acceptable deal. His office in Israel gives him convenient access to Mr Netanyahu, and as Peter Oborne writes “This has meant the provision of cast-iron, copper-bottomed diplomatic cover for Mr Netanyahu’s settlement programme” which is illegal under international law.[7]

While the voice of BBC foreign affairs, John Simpson, informed an invited audience that the underlying tensions and conflict between Sunnis and Shi’as had always been there, even before the war, and these tensions were likely to erupt again at any time into another civil war, Professor Nadje al-Ali brought a little realism to the program. She described how women’s rights had grossly deteriorated, giving examples such as the fall in the number of girls who finish their school education, the rise in gender-based and domestic violence, the increase in forced marriages, and other abominations and mistreatments of women. Her findings are borne out by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal of May 2012.[8] As well as discussions of increases in childhood cancer, birth defects, deaths from clusters and landmines, and increases in drugs’ misuse, there have been disclosures about increases in child prostitution and sales of children into slavery.[9] Unite runs a campaign to put an end to the trade in Iraqi women and girls.[10] All this misery is the real legacy of George W. Bush and Tony Blair’s war in Iraq.

Keen observers will have been watching the large letter W which God, in his wisdom, has etched into Tony Blair’s forehead. It is becoming more evident as the years progress. For all his money there is little that can be done short of a “forehead job” to hide this branding. But in fairness, when you are a warmonger your forehead ought to be etched with the letter “W” so that everyone knows how you made your riches on earth. George W. Bush’s branding is in his name. Well, this is my interpretation of what the “W” stands for, although I am aware that others might have different ideas about its meaning.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by XPGomes12 , and photograph two by Mike Creighton.

References

[1] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2012/

[2] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq14sep14,1,3979621.story

[3] http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-children-of-iraq-was-the-price-worth-it/30760

[4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21576509

[5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8999847/Blair-Inc-How-Tony-Blair-makes-his-fortune.html

[6] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204154/Tony-Blair-takes-4-2m-loan-central-London-des-res-U-S-bank-advises.html

[7] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/9806139/Tony-Blairs-record-in-the-Middle-East-is-a-sorry-one-its-time-he-quit.html

[8] http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-children-of-iraq-was-the-price-worth-it/30760

[9] http://www.revolve-magazine.com/home/2011/11/13/karamatuna-women-trafficking/

[10] http://saynotoviolence.org/join-say-no/karamatuna-ou-dignity-campaign-stop-women-trafficking-middle-east

Bulgaria’s PM Borisov: “I will not participate in a government under which police are beating people.”

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister, Boiko Borisov, resigned today after several weeks of street protests against austerity measures which his center right government was trying to impose on Bulgarians. Borisov announced his resignation in front of Bulgaria’s parliament after a night of violent clashes between protesters and police. More than 30 people had to be treated at hospitals due to police brutality. Ironically, Borisov justified his resignation by his own police force’s brutality. “I will not participate in a government under which police are beating people. Every drop of blood is a shame for us,” said Borisov before leaving the parliament’s building.

Bulgarians had been holding massive protests against tough austerity measures and a steep rise in energy prices which most people say that they can no longer afford. Bulgaria is Europe’s poorest country. The power companies are private and some are foreign owned. In recent days, Borisov had made the promise to renationalize the energy companies, but this came too late to calm people and save his government. The  Bulgarian uprising is mainly composed of young people fed up with the system; it was not organized by unions or traditional political parties.

The economic policies of Borisov, very much in line with his technocratic colleagues of Western Europe, were designed to cut Bulgaria’s budget deficit to keep the currency aligned with the Euro. Just like his European colleagues, Borisov’s financial and economic austerity agenda were dictated by European central and private banks, not the welfare of Bulgaria’s people. Bulgaria is not part of the Euro-zone, but Borisov’s government had planned to join it eventually. All this could be put into question by the popular will of Bulgarians. General elections were scheduled for July 2013, but it is likely that, to avoid a power vacuum — Borisov has ruled out providing an interim government — the elections will be moved up as early as April.

Greece: Will the general strike be the start of a popular uprising?

It seems that the events in Bulgaria are already inspiring people in Greece, which was paralyzed today by a general strike. Massive anti-austerity protests took place, joining workers from both private and public sectors, and farmers. Once again, the Greeks are rallying against austerity measures which have as primary tools spending cuts and tax hikes. The leftist party Syriza, which is heading the opposition, wants to use today’s strike as a start to rally people against the conservative government of bank technocrat Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. The ultimate goal of Syriza is to topple Samaras’s government, which is aligned with European banks.

“We are fighting for collective bargaining agreements, for measures to be taken against unemployment, and to ensure our democratic and working rights,” said a representative of the GSEE, the largest private sector union. A Syriza party press release took the significance of today’s action a lot further. “The general strike is aimed at bringing down the government and at annulling the austerity agreements and measures. The relentless policy of the Samaras government must be met with a popular uprising. The general strike must be the start of this uprising.”

Will Bulgaria’s revolution have a European domino effect?

The events in Sofia last night, and the radicalization of the rhetoric from Syriza in Greece could be the indication that we are on our way to a wave of powerful protests across Europe: an European spring. People across the continent are fed up with their respective governments’ implementations of policies of austerity favored by bankers. All over Europe, despite pseudo political labels like the French “socialist” Hollande, technocrats in the back pockets of global finance are trying to impose measures that would more or less enslave people. But the Bulgarians in Sofia bring some hope by proving one thing: people with determination can topple a government, any government, no matter how brutal. What can be achieved in Bulgaria can be achieved in other parts of Europe that are being crippled by the same austerity punishment. It can be done in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy where the problems are the same.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by George Chelebiev.

In the three years since Haiti’s earthquake, the unemployment rate has climbed from 80 percent to more than 85 percent. Simultaneously, the gross domestic product (GDP) has gone from a five-percent decline in 2010 to a two-percent growth in 2012, according to a World Bank report released on January 15 and titled “Global Economic Prospects – January 2013: Assuring Growth Over the Medium Term.” The report predicts another six-percent growth in Haiti’s GDP for the current year. This rosy picture closely matches the forecasts for other developing nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as countries in South Asia and Africa: especially those that have suffered wars and other disasters. Libya, for example, represents a smashing success, with a 2012 GDP increase of 108 percent. By contrast, the growths of Japan and other developed countries, as measured by their GDP, have stagnated at values below three percent and sometimes negative.

If you are shaking your head, thinking there must be a mistake in the World Bank’s computations, think again. They are quite correct. The problem lies, not in the calculations of GDP, but in their use to gauge economic growth and the assumption that a country’s GDP correlates with its standard of living, quality of life, and even happiness of its citizens. GDP may be calculated in at least three ways, and in every case it amounts to all the money that changes hands in an economy during one year. One common approach is to define GDP as being equal to: private consumption + government spending + gross investment + (exports – imports).

Inspect this simple mathematical expression for a moment, and you will see its implication: namely that, with the exception of imports, everything gets added to the GDP, and nothing ever gets subtracted: not even government debt! A country’s GDP should not be confused with its net worth, which is never reported. Notions such as the subtraction of red ink from black ink (or debit from credit) are not for the high-flying technocrats of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and certainly not for today’s heads of state who come from their ranks or follow their lead, but for pesky little people, like the world’s certified public accountants and small businessmen and women, who insist on their economy being grounded in reality. A country’s GDP merely measures the flow of money through its territory. So long as money changes hands in transactions that involve banks, the GDP rises. The IMF and World Bank should rightly be delighted with GDP growth. It is a marvelous measure of the wealth of bankers.

Six things that are bad for GDP

1. Home ownership. If you choose, for example, to accelerate the payments on your house so that you own it free and clear and need no longer pay interest and a mortgage to the banks, this is terrible for GDP, although from a practical viewpoint, your decision is quite excellent for your quality of life. Indeed, home ownership is generally bad for GDP.

2. Unpaid labor. If you do the day-to-day repairs to your own house, as many people do, or you work in your home in child rearing and housekeeping, as many of the world’s women do, or you care for your elderly parents, or grow a vegetable garden, such actions are awful for the GDP. By contrast, if you substitute your unpaid work for your family with the paid labor of a professional class including babysitters, preschool teachers, restaurant staff, dry cleaners, nursing home workers, supermarket staff, etc., you grow the GDP. In other words, family cohesiveness subverts GDP growth. The same is true for altruistic volunteerism.

3. Barter. When you trade goods or services, and you and the other party both improve your standards of living, if the solution to your problems preempts the purchase of an item or service, then you hurt GDP growth. By contrast, if for example your car breaks down, and you borrow tens of thousands of dollars from a bank to buy a new one, this is great for GDP. Suppose further, that you are sold a lemon that runs for only one day, your unwisely spent money helps the GDP just the same.

4. Government services. Suppose your city government used to supply your drinking water, for example, and this service gets cut and you wind up having to buy bottled water more expensively; this is fantastic for GDP. Indeed, any payment for things that you used to get for free helps the GDP.

5. Good luck. An absence of disaster in your life is anathema to GDP growth. If you suffer the ravages of a near-fatal disease, a war, an earthquake, a tsunami, or a hurricane, and you must spend enormous sums on medical care, reconstruction of your house, etc., the GDP grows. Indeed the GDP will grow as long as money is spent and regardless of any improvement to your health or any other aspect of your situation. Losses from disasters are not subtracted from GDP. Nature’s services are not added to GDP. On the other hand, the funds borrowed to deal with a disaster nicely augment the GDP.

6. Population decline. Currently humans consume more than 40 percent of Earth’s primary productivity: all the food that there is on the planet. One might therefore reasonably assume that a drop in the human population would improve the quality of life for all by increasing the amounts of the available foods and other consumables, as well as reducing our wastes. This, however, would also decrease the GDP, since there would be fewer consumers. Indeed, the world’s GDP growth is driven in large part by nothing more than increased population.

The build up of Haiti’s GDP by agencies such as USAID, the Interamerican Development Bank, European Union, World Bank, and IMF is part of a project to force the country into a neocolonialist’s mold. For much of the last 200 years, Haiti enjoyed a lively agricultural economy run by small farmers. This economy was based, for the great majority of citizens on the barter of goods and services, ownership of modest homes, cooperative farm work by communities without exchange of money, and performance of other unpaid labor by members of extended families for each other.  When Haitians lived on organic foods that were in season, safely drank the waters from their springs and rivers and were, for the most part, self-employed as small entrepreneurs, the GDP was negative. When several of Haiti’s debts were forgiven immediately after the 2010 earthquake, the GDP was negative. But in the last two years, Haiti has had enough additional bad luck to grow its GDP by more than seven percent. The country’s agriculture has crashed, and it must import nearly all its food. The bankrupted farmers have been turned into wage slaves for a growing number of sweatshops. An epidemic of cholera, increased hunger and homelessness, together with a simultaneous dismantling of the municipal water systems of the country’s major cities have caused the health of Haitians to plummet.

Currently, most people who enjoy decent housing or employment in Haiti are foreigners who serve “non-governmental” organizations (NGO). The new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, for example, fittingly began his career as a co-founder of the well-heeled NGO Partners In Health (PIH). Mr. Kim visited Haiti on November 6-7 to finance projects including a reconstruction of the country’s sabotaged electrical grid; this project will enable the appropriation of massive areas of land as well as require that the country’s electric power be subsumed to that of the Dominican Republic. Fantastic for GDP growth, but hardly helpful for Haitians. GDP is the stuff of vultures.

Predictions in the World Bank report of a three-percent growth in global GDP and more substantive growths for the GDP of countries like Haiti, Mali, Niger, and the Ivory Coast should give one a chill, since such forecasts rely on expectations of continued overpopulation, the associated ravages of anthropogenic climate change, and even civil wars. Against this, we find the idea of a steady-state economy as something to strive for, and notions of eco-socialism and “decroissance” (degrowth) as routes to this improved economy. As Edward Abbey has noted: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” It is the duty of those who care about the quality of life on Earth to undermine GDP growth in every way possible.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one, two and four by Anders Sandberg. Photographs three, five, six and seven by Wellcome Images.