The announcement last week by the United
States of the largest military aid
package in its history – to Israel – was
a win for both sides.
Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast
that his lobbying had boosted aid from
$3.1 billion a year to $3.8bn – a 22 per
cent increase – for a decade starting in
2019.
Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a
rebuff to those who accuse him of
jeopardising Israeli security interests
with his government’s repeated affronts
to the White House.
In the past weeks alone, defence
minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared
last year’s nuclear deal between
Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich
pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr
Netanyahu has implied that US opposition
to settlement expansion is the same as
support for the “ethnic cleansing” of
Jews.
American president Barack Obama,
meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own
critics who insinuate that he is
anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a
fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the
Democratic party’s candidate to succeed
Mr Obama in November’s election.
In reality, however, the Obama
administration has quietly punished Mr
Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli
expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal
were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu
stalled negotiations last year as he
sought to recruit Congress to his battle
against the Iran deal.
In fact, Israel already receives
roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s
assistance on developing missile defence
programmes is factored in. Notably,
Israel has been forced to promise not to
approach Congress for extra funds.
The deal takes into account neither
inflation nor the dollar’s depreciation
against the shekel.
A bigger blow still is the White
House’s demand to phase out a special
exemption that allowed Israel to spend
nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on
weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will
soon have to buy all its armaments from
the US, ending what amounted to a
subsidy to its own arms industry.
Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed
military largesse – in the face of
almost continual insults – inevitably
fuels claims that the Israeli tail is
wagging the US dog. Even The New York
Times has described the aid package as
“too big”.
Since the 1973 war, Israel has
received at least $100bn in military
aid, with more assistance hidden from
view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid
half of Israel’s military budget. Today
it still foots a fifth of the bill,
despite Israel’s economic success.
But the US expects a return on its
massive investment. As the late Israeli
politician-general Ariel Sharon once
observed, Israel has been a US
“aircraft carrier” in the Middle East,
acting as the regional bully and
carrying out operations that benefit
Washington.
Almost no one blames the US for
Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq’s
and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A
nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have
deterred later US-backed moves at regime
overthrow, as well as countering the
strategic advantage Israel derives from
its own nuclear arsenal.
In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored
military prowess is a triple boon to the
US weapons industry, the country’s most
powerful lobby. Public funds are
siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies
from American arms makers. That, in
turn, serves as a shop window for other
customers and spurs an endless and
lucrative game of catch-up in the rest
of the Middle East.
The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive
in Israel in December – their various
components produced in 46 US states –
will increase the clamour for the
cutting-edge warplane.
Israel is also a “front-line
laboratory”, as former Israeli army
negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the
weekend, that develops and field-tests
new technology Washington can later use
itself.
The US is planning to buy back the
missile interception system Iron Dome –
which neutralises battlefield threats of
retaliation – it largely paid for.
Israel works closely too with the US in
developing cyberwarfare, such as the
Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s
civilian nuclear programme.
But the clearest message from
Israel’s new aid package is one
delivered to the Palestinians:
Washington sees no pressing strategic
interest in ending the occupation. It
stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran
deal but will not risk a damaging clash
over Palestinian statehood.
Some believe that Mr Obama signed the
aid package to win the credibility
necessary to overcome his domestic
Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the
hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly
before he leaves office, that corners Mr
Netanyahu into making peace.
Hopes have been raised by an expected
meeting at the United Nations in New
York on Wednesday. But their first talks
in 10 months are planned only to
demonstrate unity to confound critics of
the aid deal.
If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure
Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid
agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu
need not fear US financial retaliation,
even as he intensifies effective
annexation of the West Bank.
Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right
lesson from the aid deal – he can act
against the Palestinians with continuing
US impunity.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf
The Empire Strikes Back
By Chris Hedges
October 03, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Truth
Dig"
-
A
decade ago left-wing governments, defying
Washington and global corporations, took
power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay,
Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. It
seemed as if the tide in Latin America was
turning. The interference by Washington and
exploitation by international corporations
might finally be defeated. Latin American
governments, headed by charismatic leaders
such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales
in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won
huge electoral victories. They instituted
socialist reforms that benefited the poor
and the working class. They refused to be
puppets of the United States. They took
control of their nations’ own resources and
destinies. They mounted the first successful
revolt against
neoliberalism and corporate domination.
It was a revolt many in the United States
hoped to emulate here.
But
the movements and governments in Latin
America have fallen prey to the dark forces
of U.S. imperialism and the wrath of
corporate power. The tricks long practiced
by Washington and its corporate allies have
returned—the black propaganda; the
manipulation of the media; the bribery and
corruption of politicians, generals, police,
labor leaders and journalists; the
legislative coups d’état; the economic
strangulation; the discrediting of
democratically elected leaders; the
criminalization of the left; and the use of
death squads to silence and disappear those
fighting on behalf of the poor. It is an
old, dirty game.
President Correa, who earned enmity from
Washington for granting political asylum to
Julian Assange four years ago and for
closing the United States’
Manta military air base in 2009, warned
recently that a new version of Operation
Condor is underway in Latin America.
Operation Condor, which operated in the
1970s and ’80s, saw thousands of labor union
organizers, community leaders, students,
activists, politicians, diplomats, religious
leaders, journalists and artists tortured,
assassinated and disappeared. The
intelligence chiefs from right-wing regimes
in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay,
Uruguay and, later, Brazil had overseen the
campaigns of terror. They received funds
from the United States and logistical
support and training from the Central
Intelligence Agency. Press freedom, union
organizing, all forms of artistic dissent
and political opposition were abolished. In
a coordinated effort these regimes brutally
dismembered radical and leftist movements
across Latin America. In Argentina alone
30,000 people disappeared.
Latin America looks set to be plunged once
again into a period of dictatorial control
and naked corporate exploitation. The
governments of Ecuador, Bolivia and
Venezuela, which is on the brink of
collapse, have had to fight off right-wing
coup attempts and are enduring economic
sabotage. The Brazilian Senate impeached the
democratically elected President Dilma
Rousseff. Argentina’s new right-wing
president, Mauricio Macri, bankrolled by
U.S. hedge funds, promptly repaid his
benefactors by handing $4.65 billion to four
hedge funds, including Elliott Management,
run by billionaire Paul Singer. The
payout to hedge funds that had bought
Argentine debt for pennies on the dollar
meant that Singer’s firm made $2.4 billion,
an amount that was 10 to 15 times the
original investment. The previous Argentine
government, under Cristina Fernández de
Kirchner, had refused to pay the debt
acquired by the hedge funds and acidly
referred to them as “vulture funds.”
I
interviewed Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s
minister of foreign affairs and human
mobility, for my show “On Contact” last
week. Long, who earned a doctorate from the
Institute for the Study of the Americas at
the University of London, called at the
United Nations for the creation of a global
tax regulatory agency. He said such an
agency should force tax-dodging
corporations, which the International
Monetary Fund estimates costs developing
countries more than $200 billion a year in
lost revenue, to pay the countries for the
natural resources they extract and for
national losses stemming from often secret
corporate deals. He has also demanded an
abolition of overseas tax havens.
Long said the neoliberal economic policies
of the 1980s and ’90s were profoundly
destructive in Latin America. Already weak
economic controls were abandoned in the name
of free trade and deregulation.
International corporations and banks were
given a license to exploit. “This
deregulation in an already deregulated
environment” resulted in anarchy, Long said.
“The powerful people had even less checks
and balances on their powers,” he said.
“Neoliberalism is bad in most contexts,”
Long said when we spoke in New York. “It’s
been bad in Europe. It’s been bad in other
parts of the world. It has dismantled the
welfare state. In the context where we
already have a weak state, where
institutions are not consolidated, where
there are strong feudal remnants, such as in
Latin America, where you don’t really have a
strong social contract with institutions,
with modernity, neoliberalism just shatters
any kind of social pact. It meant more
poverty, more inequality, huge waves of
instability.”
Countries saw basic services, many already
inadequate, curtailed or eliminated in the
name of austerity. The elites amassed
fortunes while almost everyone else fell
into economic misery. The political and
economic landscape became unstable. Ecuador
had seven presidents between 1996 and 2006,
the year in which Correa was elected. It
suffered a massive banking crisis in 1999.
It switched the country’s currency to the
U.S. dollar in desperation. The chaos in
Ecuador was mirrored in countries such as
Bolivia and Argentina. Argentina fell into a
depression in 1998 that saw the economy
shrink by 28 percent. Over 50 percent of
Argentines were thrust into poverty.
“Latin America,” Long said, “hit rock
bottom.”
It
was out of this neoliberal morass that the
left regrouped and took power.
“People came to terms with that moment of
their history,” Long said. “They decided to
rebuild their societies and fight foreign
interventionism and I’d even say
imperialism. To this day in Latin America,
the main issue is inequality. Latin America
is not necessarily the poorest continent in
the world. But it’s certainly the most
unequal continent in the world.”
“Ecuador is an oil producer,” Long said. “We
produce about 530,000 barrels of oil a day.
We were getting 20 percent royalties on
multinationals extracting oil. Now it’s the
other way around. We pay multinationals a
fee for extractions. We had to renegotiate
all of our oil contracts in 2008 and 2009.
Some multinationals refused to abide by the
new rules of the game and left the country.
So our state oil company moved in and
occupied the wells. But most multinationals
said OK, we’ll do it, it’s still profitable.
So now it’s the other way around. We pay
private companies to extract the oil, but
the oil is ours.”
Long admitted that there have been serious
setbacks, but he insisted that the left is
not broken.
“It
depends on how you measure success,” he
said. “If you’re going to measure it in
terms of longevity, and how long these
governments were in power—in our case we’re
still in power, of course, and we’re going
to win in February next year—then you’re
looking at, more or less in Venezuela 17
years [that leftist governments have been in
power], in Ecuador now 10, and in Argentina
and Brazil it’s 13.”
“One of the critiques aimed at the left is
they’re well-meaning, great people with good
ideas but don’t let them govern because the
country will go bust,” he said. “But in
Ecuador we had really healthy growth rates,
5 to 10 percent a year. We had lots of good
economics. We diversified our economy. We
moved away from importing 80 percent of
energy to [being] net exporters of
electricity. We’ve had big reforms in
education, in higher education. Lots of
things that are economically successful.
Whereas neoliberal, orthodox economics was
not successful in the previous decade.”
Long conceded that his government had made
powerful enemies, not only by granting
political asylum to Assange in its embassy
in London but by taking Chevron Texaco to
court to try to make it pay for the
ecological damage its massive oil spills
caused in the Amazon, where the company
drilled from the early 1960s until it pulled
out in 1992. It left behind some 1,000 toxic
waste pits. The oil spills collectively were
85 times the size of the British Petroleum
spill in the Gulf of Mexico and 18 times the
size of the spill from the
Exxon Valdez. An Ecuadorean court
ordered Chevron Texaco to pay $18.2 billion
in damages, an amount later reduced to $9.5
billion. The oil giant, however, has refused
to pay. Ecuador has turned to international
courts in an attempt to extract the money
from the company.
Long said that the different between the
massive oil spills elsewhere and the
Ecuadorean spills was that the latter were
not accidental. “[They were done] on purpose
in order to cut costs. They were in the
middle of the Amazon. Normally what you’d do
is extract the oil and you’d have these
membranes so that it doesn’t filter through
into the ground. They didn’t put in these
membranes. The oil filtered into the water
systems. It
polluted all of the Amazon River system.
It created a huge sanitary and public health
issue. There were lots of cancers detected.”
“There are no boundaries in this struggle to
the death,”
Ernesto “Che” Guevara said. “We cannot
be indifferent to what happens anywhere in
the world, for a victory by any country over
imperialism is our victory; just as any
country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us.”
Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a
foreign correspondent in Central America,
the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He
has reported from more than 50 countries and
has worked for The Christian Science
Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas
Morning News and The New York Times, for
which he was a foreign correspondent for 15
years. |