Spreading Emancipatory Consciousness

For Franz

2011-05-22T20:23:00.002-04:30

Until Forever

There are moments
When words don't matter
But the fist in the air
The battle cry and hope
And the tears
That water with infinite tenderness
Mother Earth
In which we have sown you.

¡Franz Vive! ¡La lucha sigue!

Prospects of a radiant future: From Chernobyl to Fukushima

2011-03-30T11:58:00.002-04:30

By: Jutta Schmitt

Less than a month away from the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, I remember it as if it had been yesterday. The cover-up was in operation from the point go. I was working for a German airline at that time, and on the 29th of April 1986, three days after the explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's infamous reactor 4, I was on duty on board a DC-10, covering the route from Frankfurt to Toronto. The captain called the crew into the cockpit, informing us that he had received information which confirmed that an accident had occurred a few days earlier at a nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and that it was feared radioactive material could have been released into the atmosphere to a considerable extent. However, there was no accurate information as to what exactly had happened and more than anything else, confusion reigned. On the ground in Toronto, the crew gathered in the lounge of the hotel, trying to catch up with the bits of information or rather speculation that the international media had begun to transmit about the incident. A mixture of fear and incredulity got hold of us. For a brief moment, we considered trying to find a way to prolong our layover in Toronto at least until we would have clarity about what was going on.

But it wasn't until way into the second week of the disaster that the silhouette of the real picture had begun to emerge. In the case of Germany, it was revealed that radioactive fallout from Chernobyl had reached the German South as soon as four days after the reactor explosion in Chernobyl, with much of it raining down on Bavaria. Although government authorities in Southern Germany had undertaken measurements of radioactive fallout in the days after news of the accident had transcended, results were deliberately withheld so as to avoid an "unnecessary concern" among the general public. As of May 6th, 10 days into the nuclear catastrophe, the values measured in Erding County near Munich - although admitted to be "relatively high" - kept being undisclosed to the public, (1) whereas the German Federal Government was quick to confirm it would hold the course of the nuclear energy option.

Uncertainty, fear and confusion spread amongst the population. On the initiative of Ekkehard Krueger, physicist and former staff member at Munich-Garching's famous Nuclear Research Reactor (dubbed the "nuclear egg" for its shape), a group of concerned environmental activists in Munich, tired of the silence from government authorities with regard to critical radiation fallout data, founded an independent research institute which was to measure radioactivity levels in the environment in order to unveil the plain and uncensored results to the public. The citizen-based Umweltinstitut Muenchen e.V. (Munich Environmental Institute -MEI-), was born. (2) The Institute focused specifically on measuring the radioactive contamination of food, making the results directly available to the people and to the media. In addition, by measuring the radioactivity of fencepost tops all over the region of Bavaria, the MEI had detected a method by which to determine the exact distribution of the radioactive fallout throughout Bavaria and thus elaborated a register of contaminated land in Southern Germany.

For taking a radical, zero-contamination stance with regard to food safety and for the mere fact of disclosing the results of their measurements to the public and the media, the Munich Environmental Institute became a headache for government authorities from its very inception. Both, the Bavarian State Office for Environment and the Federal Radiation Protection Office, waged an information war against the MEI, disavowing the accuracy of its measurements, whereas the latter, in turn, denounced the deliberate scaling-down of measured values or the arbitrary rising of 'legal' radiation thresholds as well as the overall disinformation campaign, practiced by government authorities.

In 1989, the year my brother joined the MEI doing his community service, the radioactive contamination of food and land had not subsided. Milk and milk products, as well as mushrooms, berries, nuts, vegetables, fresh produce in general and processed food, too, all were radioactively contaminated beyond the established 'legal' limits. My brother used to call me several times a week to give me the latest "war report" on radioactive contamination, according to the items measured by the MEI, which often forced me to dispose of determined food items I had bought because their level of contamination was too hazardous. Given the different ways of radiation exposure, for example through inhalation of airborne particles and dust, food and water intake, contact with contaminated soil, etc., the team working at MEI, apart from food, tested everything ranging from air and soil samples to people's clothes and the contents of vacuum cleaner bags. And everything they tested was still considerably contaminated.

Also and due to my brother's work at MEI, we learned that a considerable part, that is, 20%, of the radioactive contamination of our environment is due to the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons conducted in the 50's and 60's, which caused the massive dispersion of radionuclides all over the planet and which have been identified as one of the causes for the world wide rise of cancer, along with medical radiation exposures and exposures from radiation in close range vicinities of nuclear power plants, where cancer rates in children are 60% up from 'normal'. (3)

Today and in spite of the massive cover-up that tried to bury the facts of the Chernobyl accident under a disinformation sarcophagus, we know that worldwide almost one million people died from exposure to the radiation released from the explosion of its infamous reactor block number four. (4) We also know, that radioactive emissions from the Chernobyl reactor may have been up to 200 times greater than initially estimated, exceeding by far the fallout from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. (5) And today, as we are nearing the 25th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident, the catastrophe and cover-up are repeating themselves in Fukushima, in what can only be described as a kind of 'Chernobyl to the nth power'. Russian politician and leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, echoed later by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, may perhaps turn out to be the person who's had the most accurate foresight for things to come, when - flirting with the idea of benefiting from Japanese labor potential - he suggested to offer Japanese the chance to resettle in the underpopulated areas of Russia's Far East. (6)

Considering that Fukushima power plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japanese government have been downplaying the catastrophe and covering up the true scope of the disaster to avoid a mass panic amidst an already extreme situation, delaying critical information about damages to reactor cores, containment vessels, ongoing partial meltdowns, radiation levels in air, seawater and food, and considering that a scenario as bad as the release of plutonium into the environment has been unfolding ever since last week, the question arises indeed, if the whole of Japan could be rendered uninhabitable if things continue along this path.

However, TEPCO and the Japanese government authorities are not the only actors involved in cover-up and downplay, engaging in a desperate effort of damage control of whatever is left to be 'controlled'. The March 26th online edition of Mainichi Daily News reported that the International Commission of Radiological Protection (ICRP) "has recommended the Japanese government temporarily raise the annual limit of radiation exposure for the general public in light of the ongoing crisis at the quake- and tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture. The government stipulates that regular citizens in Japan should be exposed to no more than 1 millisievert of radiation per year, but the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) on March 21 recommended the limit be tentatively raised to 20 to 100 millisieverts per year, with the nuclear crisis showing no signs of abating. [...] it suggested, even after the power plant crisis is resolved, the government should keep the upper limit at 1 to 20 millisieverts per year before it gradually brings it back to its original 1, in order to prevent residents of Fukushima Prefecture from abandoning their hometowns." (7) Drastically put, in order to avoid having to accept the Russian offer of resettlement in its Far Eastern territories, all that the Japanese government has to do is raise the limit for radiation exposure and the problem is solved! Let the darn reactors spew a whole fireworks of highly radioactive and toxic particles, all you have to do is rise the legal threshold for radiation exposure and all will be just fine.

It is along a similar line of 'damage control' that the European Union has begun to act with regard to imports from Japan. In a joint press statement of yesterday, March 29th, the Berlin-based organization Foodwatch and the already mentioned Munich Environmental Institute have expressed their criticism of Germany's 'information' policy with regard to radioactive contamination of food imports from Japan. The criticism is directed against the German Federal Consumer Affairs Minister, who talks about "reinforced control mechanisms" and "special protection standards" for imports from Japan, but has kept silent about the fact that the European Union has just recently raised the legal thresholds for radioactive contamination of food coming from the affected regions of Japan. The organizations warn that the EU has elevated the threshold for cumulated radioactivity from caesium-134 and caesium-137 from 600 becquerel per kilogram to 12.500 becquerel per kilogram for determined products imported from Japan, which amounts to an almost twenty-fold increase of the formerly established values. (8) With regard to the above mentioned "base threshold" of 600 becquerel per kilogram it must be said that any food item measured by the Munich Environmental Institute back in 1989 which would have amounted to 30, 20 or to even 15 becquerel per kilogram would already have been cause for concern, and anything beyond 100 becquerel per kilogram would have been considered unsuitable for consumption.

Meanwhile, The Guardian UK is reporting that the radioactive core of reactor 2 has melted through the containment vessel and fallen onto the concrete floor, which will conduct to a major release of radiation. The Guardian cites Richard Lahey, former head of safety research for Boiling Water Reactors at General Electric, as saying: "The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell, ... I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards." (9)

It is beyond doubt that both, Chernobyl and now Fukushima with their respective, nefarious crisis mismanagements and their criminal disinformation campaigns, have paved the way for a radiant future. But we will not exactly be beaming with joy.

Notes

(1) http://www.greenpeace-berlin.de/tschernobyl/tag10.html
(2) http://umweltinstitut.org/
(3) See documents available on http://www.ippnw.org, and http://www.naturalnews.com/025767_Radiation_Ct_Scans.html and
    http://www.lebenshaus-alb.de/magazin/004743.html respectively.
(4) http://janettesherman.com/2011/03/22/casualties-of-chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-“official”-and-other-versions/
(5) http://janettesherman.com/2011/03/22/casualties-of-chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-“official”-and-other-versions/
(6) http://rt.com/politics/zhirinovsky-russia-japan-immigration/ and
    http://www.eurasiareview.com/medvedev’s-offer-to-resettle-japanese-angers-nationalists-analysis-22032011/
(7) http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110326p2a00m0na005000c.html
(8) http://foodwatch.de/presse/pressearchiv/2011/atom_katastrophe_in_japan/index_ger.html
(9) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/29/japan-lost-race-save-nuclear-reactor

Achieving big things in small spaces: Towards Venezuelan food sovereignty

2010-10-24T16:40:00.000-04:30

By: Jutta Schmitt

Under the slogan "Big things can be done in small spaces", on Saturday, October 16^th, in the preschool facilities of the small community of Las Mesitas de Higuerones, located in the Parish Ignacio Fernández Peña, of Campo Elías Municipality in the state of Mérida, an ecological training project was presented, titled: ''Agriculture and nutrition with the use of ecological techniques: Camacho Dugarte Family Garden“.

Under the National Training Program for Agriculture and Nutrition, guided and supervised by Professors Simón Hoyo and Marcial Bracho, agronomists and coordinators of that program in Merida, a group of female students from the Technical College Institute of Ejido (IUTE) presented the results of their one years' work, realized in the community of Las Mesitas de Higuerones with the objective of developing an agro-ecological Family Garden Project.

Professor Simón Hoyo opened the event with words of welcome to the community members who had come to the place, and first referred to the great personal responsibility implicated in the participation in this important project, which forms part of the National Government's policy to establish food security for the Venezuelan population. He then told the audience that the agro-ecological Family Garden Project has a total duration of one year and is performed in three consecutive stages, that is, the diagnosis and location of the community and family on whose land the project will be realized, the stage of implementation or execution of the ecological activity as such, from planting to harvesting, and finally, the presentation of the work that's been performed to the members of the community concerned.

Subsequently, the five students who had carried out the project, applicants to the degree of Ecological Agronomist, Ana Camacho, Keila Molina, Kerly Toro, Coromoto Paredes and Yamilet Rojas, proceeded with the presentation, step by step, of the project: ''Family Garden, Dugarte Camacho Unit.''

The general objectives that had been set up included the establishment of a home garden by means of ecological techniques, the comprehensive protection of the environment and human health, obtaining healthy and tasty products, the improvement of quality of life, providing support for family supplies and the promotion not only of family unity, but of the unity and cooperation of the entire community. Among the specific objectives, the students mentioned the optimal use of a basically limited, physical space and the planting of vegetables suitable for the region, with their selection depending primarily on agro-climatic conditions, which, in this case, resulted in the selection of green onions, cilantro, sweet pepper, paprika, tomato and lettuce, including the planting of four aromatic species according to the basic requirements of agro-ecological techniques, in this case, basil, rosemary, aloe and tobacco.

The methodology applied divided the project into two phases, the 'office' or planning phase which included data collection and the selection of the community, and the 'field' or application phase with the corresponding diagnostic of the objective conditions present, and the proper implementation of the project itself.

After having selected the community and family that would provide the physical space for the project, the students proceeded with the demarcation and adaptation of the selected area, namely the preparation of the field and loosening-up of the soil, the building and leveling of plant beds, and the preparation of the soil substratum including its disinfection and subsequent fertilization with organic fertilizer, such as the application of humus or compost, which is a substance composed of organic products stemming from the decomposition of organic waste in a compost pile or bin. Regarding the disinfection of the substratum to prevent the emergence of weeds, the students explained to the community members present, that, for this purpose, the soil is placed in a box, irrigated with hot water and then covered with a dark plastic foil with the aim of intensifying the temperature, leaving it covered for approximately three days, depending on the microclimate of the place. After having prepared the substratum, the students went to obtain the seeds (some certified) that were purchased from the local retailers and the farmer's market.

With regard to the planting and later transplantation of the saplings, the students emphasized the importance of the control and prevention of infestation and disease by inserting, in various parts of the garden, a variety of herbs and aromatic species such as rosemary, basil, yerba santa, peppermint, aloe and tobacco, which have the function to keep pests away from the crop plants, apart from being highly beneficial to human health as they are medicinal. The inclusion of such plants is also promoting the revival of the knowledge and application of our highly effective and powerful, natural, ancestral medicine.

In what could be called the topical application of 'organic insecticides' in case of a contamination of plants with pests, the community members were informed that excellent results can be achieved without resorting to the kind of harmful, chemical pesticides that have done so much damage to our soils, by spraying a mixture of onion, garlic and vinegar - liquefied in a liter of water, percolated and then diluted with pure water - onto the affected plants. Equally effective is the maceration of the leaves of a local tree called 'Rabo Ratón', diluting the juice extracted from the leaves with water, and spraying it onto those plants infested with pests.

The harvest obtained in a fairly limited space, only a few months after planting, was 6 kilograms of paprika, 6 kg of tomatoes, 5 kg of sweet pepper, 3 kg of cilantro, 5 kg of lettuce and 2 kg of onions. After the presentation of the project, when inspecting the Family Garden in question, the community members could appreciate 'live' the nice appearance and taste of these items produced exclusively with ecological techniques and virtually zero production costs, given the fact that recycled material and supplies had been used for nurseries and other devices.

Ending their presentation, the five students concluded that creating an ecological home garden is easy to do and inexpensive, as it encourages the recycling of used materials that can be applied for the construction of plant beds, nurseries, compost bins and other devices. In addition, agro-ecological activity not only promotes family unity but at the same time, neighborhood and community integration, promoting mutual learning among all parts involved and encouraging participation in a new experience with highly gratifying results.

The students called on those present to adopt a healthy diet to the benefit of their health and that of the environment, two objectives that can precisely be achieved through the construction of a home garden under agro-ecological principles and techniques. They wholeheartedly thanked their teachers, classmates, colleagues, family and community members for their cooperation and support and, in turn, received a warm applause from the audience for their excellent performance and hard work concerning this recommendable project.

After the presentation Simón Hoyo intervened with a comment on the nature of this project and explained that this is a type of project that is in harmony with our reality and therefore allows us to undertake a comprehensive, human and natural development in the very space in which we find ourselves, with the help of the natural and human resources available therein. He said that in this way we can contribute directly from our communities with the long term vision of the country in accordance with Article 305 of our constitution, which stipulates food security based on sustainable agriculture as one of its pillars. In addition, Hoyo warned that in the face of the environmental and climatic crisis our planet is confronting, it is absolutely necessary that we humans step down from our illusory throne and put ourselves in our real context, that is, from a a cosmological point of view, understanding ourselves as infinitely small and insignificant beings. We're not the greatest thing on the planet, and much less can we claim the right to subdue the Earth and other forms of life to our destructive whims. He ended his comment by stressing that all teaching and learning that is generated in any of the educational institutions in our country, necessarily has to include the communities in order to transmit and at the same time generate, new knowledge and new values in a process of mutual respect and learning.

By way of a general conclusion, Marcial Bracho expressed his thanks to the community of Las Mesitas, to its Community Council, to the tutor, the students, the audience and to the writer of this report, intended to share the experience of this extraordinary project with the readers of this article. Referring to the example of the young students, Bracho pointed out the overwhelming importance of a comprehensive education of our youth, who has to be skilled and responsible to our society and country, given that it has to replace the older generations in a not too distant future. He highlighted that in this sense, the national government's educational policies, in this case with regard to the teaching and application of ecological agriculture and nutrition, are addressed directly and specifically to the 'end user', that is, the people, the communities, to each and everyone of us. He regretted that the vast majority of our universities keep being isolated and exclusive places, enclosed into their four walls, unable to intertwine in an integrated way with our communities so as to share their teachings with the people and to help them solve the problems that affect them. He stressed the need for a comprehensive, humanist education, not only for our youth but for ourselves, so that we may learn to be servants of our communities and to always act under the principles of love, solidarity, equity, social justice and inclusion, our own ancestral values that have gotten lost in this perverse dynamics of capitalism which only promotes individualism, selfishness and greed. In this sense, Bracho evoked the formation of the new man with a deep sense of humanism and a new ethics.

He reminded the participants that the environmental problems that have emerged on a global scale like the destruction of the ozone layer, climate change, the pollution of soil, air and water, and deforestation, affect all of us without exception and can only be resolved by means of a humanist and ecological vocation, reason for which the importance of agroecology and its immediate application becomes so obvious, and whose feasibility has been conclusively demonstrated by the project presented.

He concluded his intervention by saying that the National Training Program for Agriculture and Nutrition currently has 54 home garden projects running nationwide, and that the five students form part of the first cohort of this program who will be promoting the development of organic food production with the purpose of establishing food sovereignty for our country in the future.

It is worth noting the significance of this interesting experience because, if effectively multiplied on a national scale, it will no doubt be a decisive step in the battle against the globally imposed, harmful, capitalist practices which use food as an instrument of domination. But then, and to definitely ensure our long-term food sovereignty, we must 'go to the grain', so to speak. The seeds are the 'alpha and omega' of agriculture and constitute its essential means of production. Since time immemorial, seeds were obtained naturally from crop and exchanged among farming communities. They were common, social property and had the power to self-reproduce by virtue of their natural cycles.

Only with the consolidation of capitalism and the industrialization of agriculture began the conversion of seeds into a commodity, and thus began the process of their modification, privatization, patenting and full integration into the perverse mechanisms of the capitalist market. Far from being regarded as the sources of our life and food, seeds have been converted into catalysts for the expansion of markets and profits, and therefore they had to suffer modifications which have induced and increased their dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and simultaneously have reduced their fertility and capacity to self-reproduce. The integration of various branches of science and production techniques such as chemistry, biology, pharmaceuticals and genetic engineering, along with the introduction of patents on seeds and accompanied by a process of concentration of capital, has led to the monopolization of the seed market by a handful of agribusiness corporations like Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Bayer, who are among the 10 largest seed companies that together control 57% of the global market. Monsanto, based in the U.S. is the world's largest transnational seed company which holds 90 per cent of patents related to agricultural biotechnology and which controls a fifth of the global seed market. The patents owned by these multinationals give them the power to control planting, harvesting and the reproduction of seeds, and are placing into their hands the almost exclusive decision over the type of items to be offered on the international market, always determined by calculations of the highest profit possible. And who controls the seeds, controls the global food production.

This is why it is absolutely necessary to develop a strategy for food sovereignty, which, together with the promotion of agro-ecological techniques in the family and community-based production of food, includes the right and duty to preserve, reproduce and exchange natural, native, non-modified seeds, as well as the building of a national seed bank in order to store seeds of crop plants and wild plants, so as to counteract the loss of biodiversity and to conserve and restore native varieties. This strategy should also include the relentless struggle against the patentability of plants, animals and even ancestral knowledge, as determined by Article 124 of our Constitution.

In any case, thanks to the enthusiasm and vocation of some young students and their teachers, members of the National Training Program for Agriculture and Nutrition, this past October 16^th in the community of Las Mesitas de Higuerones, joy and hope and a formidable sword have been sown to lead the fight for food sovereignty from the heart of our communities.

It's Now or Never: Hands Off Mother Earth! In Defense of our living planet and planetary life.

2010-04-25T16:12:00.003-04:30

By Jutta Schmitt

The Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth recently held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by the World's People - as opposed to the world's transnational corporations and their executive branches or 'Governments of, by and for the Elites' - has concluded with The People's Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (1). This final document makes it very clear that if the so called "Copenhagen Understanding" had its way, the damages already inflicted on Mother Earth would become totally irreversible, with a 20 to 30 percent of species condemned to extinction, our forests and glaciers at risk of disappearing for good, with deserts expanding and droughts and floods affecting different regions of the planet, jeopardizing world food production and dramatically increasing the number of the hungry on the planet, which already exceeds 1 billion people.

The document goes straight to the essence of the problem our world is facing today, when pointing towards the fact, that the governments of the so called 'developed' countries, in complicity with part of the scientific community, are trying to reduce the debate and urgent action needed to avert the huge danger environmental contamination and climate change pose for life on planet Earth, to its perceivable effects - rising temperatures - rather than addressing the underlying root cause, the capitalist system. The People's Agreement direly warns that we are witnessing the agony of a patriarchal model of civilization based on the oppression and destruction of human beings and nature, which had been sharply accelerated by the industrial revolution and which today encompasses the entire globe. It states that this model of civilization -capitalism - has ruthlessly imposed on us its logics of competition and its notion of 'progress', which equals wellbeing with unlimited economic growth, no matter the consequences. The document states that capitalism is a mode of production and consumption which has the sole purpose of seeking unlimited profits, alienating humans from nature and converting everything into a commodity: water, land, the human genome, our ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, people's rights, death and life itself.

The People's Agreement bluntly shows that humanity today faces the final disjunctive: Either continue the devastating path of capitalism towards depredation and death, or start paving the way to a model of society that learns to live in harmony with nature and respects and cherishes life. The knowledge, wisdom and the ancestral way of life of our indigenous peoples, anchored in the concept of Earth as a living being, that is, as the totality of all the living, moving processes of which human beings only form a part, is being considered as the only method to help Mother Earth with all her living relations - humans included - survive and recover. The document goes on to categorically state that an alternative society must either live in harmony and equilibrium with itself and with nature, foster the collective wellbeing based on complementarity, solidarity and equity, respect Mother Earth's rights, value humans by virtue of what they are and not by what they possess, eliminate all forms of colonialism, imperialism and interventionism and foster peace between the peoples and with Mother Earth, or otherwise perish.

Thus and according to the People's Agreement, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth must be adopted immediately and must comprise her right to life and to existence, her right to be respected, her right to continue her natural cycles and processes without alteration by humans, her right to maintain her identity and integrity as a totality of different, self-regulated and interrelated beings, her right to water as the spring of life, her right to clean air, her right to integral health, her right to be free from contamination, pollution, toxic and radioactive waste, her right not to be modified genetically, her right to be free from threats to a vital and healthy functioning, and finally, her right to a full and fast recovery from the violations of these rights by human activities.

In addition, the People's Agreement demands the creation of an International Court for Climate and Environmental Justice, and demands that the so-called 'developed' countries take their full responsibility as the major polluters and thus restore the environment including the atmospheric space above the so-called 'underdeveloped' countries, which has been contaminated by the pollutants of the 'developed' countries. Furthermore, the agreement demands that the 'developed countries' provide shelter to the hundreds of millions that will be displaced as a consequence of climate change provoked by THEIR greenhouse gas emissions and also provide the means to minimize and deal with the damage caused by these same emissions. This, of course, sets the stage for an inevitable confrontation between two radically antagonistic conceptions: The World People's Conception which places life over profit and which seeks an integral solution to climate change by identifying and tackling the root cause, and the World Elites' 'conception' or rather shortsightedness, which places profits over life and which seeks to make profit even from the demise of Mother Earth and life.

In this sense and consequentially, the People's Agreement categorically rejects the false solutions to climate change, offered by the Elites in complicity with the established scientific community and profit-hungry, transnational corporations, which range from 'bio-fuels', nanotechnology, genetically modified organisms to geoengineering. As for the latter, the necessity to protect our already contaminated skies and seas from being totally deprived of the little that is left of their vital functions by injecting toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and by dumping iron into the oceans, has led to the creation of the HANDS OFF MOTHER EARTH CAMPAIGN by a coalition of international civil society groups, indigenous peoples organizations and social movements, who participated at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The HOME campaign is aimed at raising public awareness with regard to large-scale manipulation of planetary sub-systems and provides a platform for individuals and organizations to voice their opposition to such geoengineering experiments.

Most importantly, the massive, already ongoing 'covert' - and at the same time openly visible experiments - of "Solar Radiation Management" MUST BE EXPOSED AND STOPPED.

The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth has concluded its session on the 22nd of April with the People's Agreement and the call for immediate coordination of international action so as to see for the dissemination of its findings and the implementation of its demands. The Conference calls for the construction of a World Movement of the People for the Defense of Mother Earth, because Mother Earth is the only HOME we have.

It's now or never: We have to defend our living planet and planetary life. Thus, join the Hands Off Mother Earth Campaign! Welcome HOME!

http://www.handsoffmotherearth.org/

Notes

(1) http://cmpcc.org/2010/04/23/acuerdo-de-los-pueblos/

Geo-Engineering Watch Communiqué to the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

2010-04-18T11:03:00.005-04:30

World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

Cochabamba-Bolivia

Geoengineering:
Incompatible with the Rights of Mother Earth!

The term geoengineering refers to the deliberate technological manipulation of the natural processes of the Earth. These comprise its dynamics, composition and structure, including the biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, the atmosphere with its different, superimposed layers, and outer space.

On the 5th of November 2009, the US House Committee of Science and Technology held its first hearing on geoengineering. Nobody from the general public, no representatives of environment defenders, agriculture or ocean scientists, medics, nor public agencies of either regional or national level, were invited to speak. The same occurred with the two hearings that followed in 2010.

The House Committee on Science and Technology and the Parliament of Britain have agreed to discuss geoengineering and its probable implementation within a global scheme of geoengineering administration, as proposed by the Royal Society and several climate scientists. Public and private meetings of groups of scientists, with little or no media coverage, have begun to take place in February and March 2010 in California to discuss possible geoengineering schemes with the objective to mitigate the effects of global warming and in the aftermath of the Copenhagen failure.

Among the proposals to mitigate the effects of global warming figure Solar Radiation Management. One of its aspects deals with the potential that aerosols may have in the stratosphere to limit and deflect incoming solar radiation. The experiments shall inject sulfate or other materials such as aluminium and barium into the stratosphere, with regional or global coverage, through dispersion by airplanes.

As a matter of fact, this kind of experiments has been conducted since years in the skies over North America and Europe, also Australia, and occasionally have been reported from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Mexico and Panama. Groups of concerned citizens have organized themselves to take samples of soil and water and have found alarming levels of aluminium, barium and strontium presence, associated with illnesses like Alzheimer, osteoporosis, anemia, respiratory difficulties, high blood pressure, changes of heart rhythm, stomach irritation, alteration of nervous reflexes, brain-, kidney- and liver-damage, etc. In some places of California for example, the maximum level for aluminium in drinking water has been exceeded 4610 times.

We need urgent knowledge and action to stop ongoing experiments and prevent their further expansion. The topic of geoengineering must be part of our agenda. Geoengineering can have unpredictable consequences for the Earth and for life. Geoengineering is not compatible with the Rights of Mother Earth.

www.geoengineeringwatch.org

'Solar Radiation Management' or Manhattan Project 2.0? Shielding Electronics from Electromagnetic Pulses

2010-04-10T21:10:00.007-04:30

By Jutta Schmitt

Every technology on the market today is based on alternating current technologies in relation with semiconductor technologies and if these were seriously threatened this would mean, in the final analysis, that everything that we nowadays need to live, work and recreate ourselves, could be destroyed. -- Uwe Behnken --

It's intriguing. Just barely a week after the Asilomar Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies had taken place in Pacific Grove, California, we heard honorable knights for the defense of global climate integrity, such as the American Enterprise Institute's Resident Fellow and Co director of the AEI Geoengineering Project Lee Lane, advocate a global imposition of geoengineering technologies on behalf of the advanced, industrialized states of the world in the firm conviction, that "geoengineering experiments shouldn't require global agreement“, because these would in any case be guided by the shining light of the government of the United States and its noble constitutional obligation to promote the welfare of the American people. This is how Lane evokes 'American national interest', this magic, self-sufficient concept that justifies the use of any means in order to obtain, that is, impose the desired objective. (1)

Why declare geoengineering experiments a matter of 'national interest' (read: national security interest)? Why not declare the wellbeing of the planetary climate and overall ecosystems a matter of national or planetary security interest for that matter, and subsequently demand the immediate discontinuance of irrational profit production and unbound consumerism, which got us into this mess in the first place? Why this sudden, violent interest in geoengineering experiments by scientists, international climate panels, United Nations entities, policy centers, research facilities, scientific communities and even Think Tanks with their scores of fellows and scholars? Why did we not see the same violent interest with regard to a binding commitment at the Rio, Kyoto or Copenhagen Earth Summits? And why call for the global imposition of geoengineering technologies on behalf of the 'advanced, more industrialized states' of the world?

Furthermore, if geoengineering experiments are all of a sudden being considered imperative, why does the so-called scientific community, as well as civil and military authorities in various countries of the world deny the fact that one of the proposed climate intervention techniques, pertaining to Solar Radiation Management, has already and progressively been implemented on a considerably large scale since years?

The hard facts on the ground – or in the sky, for that matter - don't go away by denying them. Solar Radiation Management by 'injection of sulfate or other materials into the stratosphere' as proposed by the working agenda of the past Asilomar Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies and as seen, photographed, filmed, documented, studied and analyzed during years by ordinary citizens, environmental activists, air traffic controllers, radar technicians, alternative journalists, meteorologists, chemists and physicians, has been occurring over North America and Europe since the nineties. The question is, if the massive blasting into the stratosphere of a mixture of metals and polymers to form a haze-like layer in the skies in order to deflect solar radiation is actually that good of an idea, given the extreme toxicity of the materials being sprayed and given the fact that they finally do come down back to the surface of the Earth. Thus, to a far-sighted, ecological, nature-preserving mind it seems utterly illogical to resort to this kind of measures which have a heavily contaminating effect on the overall environment - air, water, soils, humans, animals, plants, that is, life on the planet as such.

For the sake of (relative) brevity, we will not go into detail to describe and explain Chemtrail Spraying in this article, but instead encourage our readers to get active and do a thorough research on the Internet by themselves. Suffice it to say here, that the until now publicly denied operations of ongoing Chemtrail Spraying are, in fact, related to 'Solar Radiation Management', consisting of the massive injection of a combination of metallic and other particles - microscopic in scale - into the stratosphere. Interestingly and essential for us to note, it was the late Edward Teller, member of the Manhattan Project and father of the Hydrogen Bomb, co-founder and director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who proposed this geoengineering technique together with Roderick Hyde and Lowell Wood and who designed a variety of mixtures according to the specific tasks they have to perform, among which figure the deployment of "electrically-conducting sheets“ or "metallic 'nets' of ultra-fine mesh-spacing“ in the stratosphere. (2) Equally interesting is the fact, that Teller himself did not only doubt that society's carbon dioxide emissions were responsible for global warming, but questioned global warming as such, when stating in a 1997 article, titled 'The Planet needs a Sunscreen', that "It's wonderful to think that the world is so very wealthy that a single nation -- America -- can consider spending $100 billion a year on a problem that may not exist.“ (3) He explicitly repeated this doubt in a 2002 co-authored paper on 'Active Climate Stabilization.' (4) So, by all means, why then seriously bother about the research, development and actual deployment of 'geoengineering techniques' such as spraying the stratosphere with chemicals, in order to to 'fend off solar radiation' ?!

Considering the counter-productivity of the whole concept of 'solar radiation management' – deflecting solar radiation by creating a layer of highly toxic, artificial 'clouds' may as well block and trap outbound heat from the Earth and thus worsen 'global warming' – the question arises, why it is actually being done.

The very logics of global capitalism and capitalist globalization that dictates each and every consideration, each and every action undertaken by the transnational corporations of this world and their political and military executives on a national and international scale, and which impose their decisions on billions of people, indicates that Solar Radiation Management is NOT being conducted to 'mitigate the effects of global warming' but to address an immediate problem, as severe as that of global warming for the survival of human civilization as we have known it, and which can best be described as the Electronic Achilles Heel of Modern Civilization.

In a 2009 interview with Ludwig Glinz about 'Sferic Frequencies, Semiconductor Technologies and their effective Preservation and Protection', Uwe Behnken, founder of LiveNet Concept 2010 and long time activist against Chemtrail Spraying, suggests that the massive injection of toxic substances into the stratosphere ever since the nineties bears a direct relation to the protection of highly sensitive semiconductor technologies.

   „[..] Natural electromagnetic pulses are known to everybody ever since the film 'The Day After' where we learnt what happens if these are created artificially by means of the explosion of an atom bomb. If an atomic weapon explodes, the electromagnetic pulse causes semiconductor technologies to stop functioning. The same electromagnetic pulses can be registered in the event of elevated sferic frequencies or nuclear electromagnetic pulses stemming from elevated sun activities, and from our perspective this is another reason why it is undertaken to repel these sferic frequencies with the help of toxic substances, like aluminium oxides and barium-chlorides so as to protect semiconductor technologies.“ (5)

For a better understanding of this statement and its consequences, we'll briefly examine some basic concepts related to semiconductor technology and the reasons for its growing vulnerability.

All modern technology is based on semiconductor technology, used in the production of microelectronic integrated circuits (microchips) on an ever more minute scale and with an ever greater number of in-built 'components' per unit, so to speak. No applied technology in our computerized age, be it in the realm of production, energy, communication, trading, finance, transportation, scientific research and development, space exploration and military operations, works without semiconductor technology. A semiconductor is a material like silicon or germanium (6) characterized by an "intermediate conductivity" which oscillates between that of a conductor and an insulator and which displays a rapid variation of conductivity depending on temperature. The current in semiconductors is either carried by the flow of electrons or by the flow of positively-charged "holes" in the electron structure of the material. An external electrical field may change a semiconductor's resistivity or 'behavior' for that matter. (7)

One of the problems related to semiconductor technology and as derived from some of its specific characteristics is, that upon exposure to various types of particles of atmospheric radiation - alpha particles, various ions, protons, and neutrons which can 'hit' the device - it can change state or alter its output, leading to an error. This phenomenon is widely known by the manufacturers and has been called 'Single Event Effect' (SEE), which, in turn, is classified in three basic categories: A soft error or 'single event upset' (SEU), a soft or hard error or 'single event latchup (SEL) and a hard failure or 'single event burnout' (SEB).

In the Atmospheric Radiation Effects Whitepaper, prepared by Ken Vranich in 2007, this author discusses the growing impact of atmospheric radiation effects on semiconductor devices, specifically the impact on avionics, identifying natural atmospheric radiation as the overriding cause of Single Event Effects or device failures due to the fact that semiconductor technology undergoes constant sophistication, which means it's being performed on an ever more minute scale. The scale we are talking about is so tiny that the collision of neutrons with the semiconductor material results in the deposition of a charge in this material and thus leads to an alteration of its state or even to the destruction of the device. The author explains these characteristic errors and failures of semiconductor devices as follows:

    "Single event upset (SEU) is a condition that causes corruption of data or logic state in a device resulting in erroneous output. This is a soft error, meaning that data could be updated or corrected or the part reset and normal functionality would be resumed. ... Single event latchup (SEL) is a condition in some [type of semiconductors] where the energy deposited locally in a device by the single particle has turned on parasitic transistors causing high current through the device. ... This SEL usually causes loss of device functionality. ... Single event burnout (SEB) is a condition in a high voltage device (voltages of 500 or 600 volts) resulting from the energy deposition by a single particle leading to a feedback mechanism that exceeds the breakdown voltage and therefore destroys the device. ... Single Event Effects can also cause secondary breakdown in bipolar junction transistors (BJTs), resulting in burnout of the transistor ... “ (8)

The Atmospheric Radiation Effects Whitepaper deals essentially with the uncomfortable fact that the failure rate in semiconductor devices has been increasing exponentially due to the steady advancement of semiconductor technology, making them not only vulnerable to high-energy or fast neutrons, but also to low-energy or slow (thermal) neutrons. The author estimates that it will take years until the big manufacturers of integrated circuits will respond to this challenge and warns of the unprecedented consequences that this will have, in this case for aviation electronics, concerning both commercial as well as military avionics and which may lead to the severe limitation of operations or even grounding of aircraft, due to intolerably high processor failure rates. For a combination of technical factors which the author does not specify, he identifies the military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s), crucial in America's ongoing and future warfare operations around the planet, as the type of aircraft most vulnerable to this threat, mainly because they are composed of so called 'commercial-off-the-shelf equipment', leading to what the author says is an "unacceptably high probability of 'loss of command and control'“. (9)

As for the natural causes of atmospheric radiation and their effects on semiconductor devices, the author explains that the exposure to the range of potentially hazardous particles increases with growing latitude and altitude, especially during times of elevated sun activity. As far as the latter is concerned, the author stresses the importance of solar events which can heavily impact radiation levels and thus significantly increase Single Event Effect rates:

    "The sun on an eleven year cycle produces varying sizes of solar flares. These flares send out energetic particles that strike the earth and can affect the entire planet, but especially in the Polar Regions where the earth’s magnetic field is weakest. These particles can cause an increase in the radiation that an aircraft sees by a factor ranging from 10-1000X. The next projected solar peak where these levels could occur is 2011.“ (10)

In this context and with regard to the growing vulnerability of semiconductor technology, in this case in aircraft, the author explains that "using today’s parts could translate into a 10-20% processor failure rate during a single flight on an aircraft in northern latitudes during a moderate solar event“, thus calling into question the "ability of these products to perform as advertised“. He concludes that "for avionics suppliers, this has the potential to create an intolerable liability and field support issue. For the commercial and military end users, this can translate into types of aircraft that would operate with limited mission capabilities or flight restrictions in certain geographic locations and grounding during significant solar events.“ (11)

Considering the impact of sun activities and solar events on semiconductor technology, we can understand the growing importance of solar event 'forecasts'. In May 2009, a team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sponsored by NASA, has revised the earlier peak prediction from 2007 which foresaw a peak in 2011, and estimates that Solar Cycle number 24 will peak in May 2013 with an intensity expected to be below the average. According to NASA Science News, however,

   "Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather. ... The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we’re predicting for 2013. The 1859 storm -- known as the "Carrington Event" after astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare -- electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices, and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause $1 to 2 trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery." (12)

This is more than a good reason for a really big headache and for mobilizing the world's best scientists in order to research and develop methods capable of shielding modern electronics from the effects of atmospheric radiation! Ken Vranich's observations and subsequent warnings regarding the decreasing reliability of semiconductor technology in the realm of avionics have been discussed earlier by experts of the US military, who fear that world-wide military operations could be dramatically endangered by an increasing dependence on ever more sophisticated electronic devices.

In this sense, Major Scott W. Merkle, in a 1997 paper titled 'Non-Nuclear EMP: Automating the Military May Prove a Real Threat' and which addresses the man-made causes of Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP), first describes the catastrophic consequences that the 'classic' scenario of the detonation of a high-altitude nuclear bomb, for example above Nebraska, would have, whose electromagnetic pulse would render each and every computerized circuit in the continental United States, southern Canada and northern Mexico, useless. In describing the effects, Merkle cites a 1982 writing of no less a man than Edward Teller, regarding heavy electromagnetic pulse radiation:

    "Today there is almost universal dependence on electronic computers. They are used by first-graders as well as research engineers. Industry, communications, financial records, are all at stake here. In the event of heavy EMP radiation, I suspect it would be easier to enumerate the apparatus that would continue to function than the apparatus that would stop.“ (13)

After revising the magnitude and probability of an EMP delivered by the detonation of a high-altitude nuclear bomb, which "could conceivably pulse us back to, shall we say, a simpler time when operations orders were done orally with a sandtable,“ Merkle proceeds to identify in general terms the threat coming from the development of advanced non-nuclear EMP weapons which, he observes, has started off a new arms race. (Although existent at the time, pulsed, directed energy beam weapons like HAARP systems are not explicitly mentioned in this paper). Considering the ever growing dependence of the United States' military on technological progress, Merkle regards the "pushing of the technology envelope" at all costs a serious problem, as "one burst of EMP" will render the most sophisticated equipment inoperable, stripping the high-tech infantry soldier of the 21st century naked and leaving him in the combat field without his "wondrous gadgets and gizmos“, to just name one example. Merkle thus concludes:

    "Non-nuclear EMP has the potential to reduce the battlefield equation to very simple terms ... as the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System, All-Source Analysis System, and most other "high tech" intelligence connectivity systems will not be working.“ (14)

Finally and with regard to the same concern, an assessment of 'Electromagnetic Pulse Threats to U.S. Expeditionary Operations in 2010', written by US Air Force Major Colin R. Miller, comes to the conclusion that both, nuclear and non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons "represent one of the most ominous threats to US National Security in the near term“. Miller subsequently suggests three types of counter-measures: Firstly, implementing specific protection or 'system-hardening' of semiconductor devices at the manufacturer level, secondly, individual shielding of crucial, high-tech components against EMP, and thirdly, shielding larger environments against EMP:

   "Shielding the environment is a cost-effective solution for EMP protection when a large number of essential electronic devices are collocated. An Air Operations Center (AOC) provides a good example. Incorporating a grounded metallic shield into the building structure and surge protecting power, communications, and antenna lines could protect an entire AOC from EMP. Mobile systems require a different means, such as a Faraday cage, which can protect individual components. A Faraday cage is simply a metallic mesh built around an electronic circuit (such as a fighter aircraft flight control computer) that protects it from EMP." (15)

Given the magnitude and severity of the exponentially growing threat for omnipresent, modern semiconductor technology (and thus modern civilization as we have known it) from nuclear and non-nuclear electromagnetic pulses, from both, natural and man-made sources as shown and documented in the paragraphs above, and connecting back with Uwe Behnken's statement we've mentioned at the beginning and which upholds a direct relation between the injection of toxic particles into the stratosphere and the protection of semiconductor technologies, let us put the whole concept of 'Solar Radiation Management' or 'Solar Radiance Engineering' as recently proposed by climate scientists, into a different perspective.

Considering that the late Edward Teller, father of the Hydrogen Bomb and first-hand expert of the EMP effects that result upon their detonation in space, who in the late nineties and as mentioned earlier, doubted that global warming is anthropogenic (caused by humans) and who even questioned global warming as such, nevertheless suggested that the Earth needed a 'sunscreen', purpose for which he had a specific mixture of metals and chemicals developed at National Livermore Laboratories for the massive injection into the stratosphere to 'cool' the earth with a 'sheet of superfine, reflective mesh', the following questions / hypothesis arise for further, urgent investigation and research:

1. Is 'Solar Radiation Management' or 'Solar Radiance Engineering' -- supposedly designed to mitigate the effects of global warming -- a smokescreen for the general world public behind which another objective is being pursued, that has nothing to do with 'global warming'?

2. Has the massive blasting of metallic particles into the stratosphere been designed to create and uphold a permanent 'metallic shield' in the form of a 'superfine mesh' as suggested by Teller, to build the equivalent of a huge kind of 'Faraday Cage' over certain regions of the Earth in order to protect semiconductor technology from being rendered useless by major, natural or man-made, nuclear and/or non-nuclear, electromagnetic pulse events?

3. Is the bringing-out and upholding of this superfine mesh of metallic particles coupled with HAARP technologies, and if so, in which way?

4. Other than shielding technology, which military applications derive from a superfine mesh of metallic particles in the stratosphere, that have electrically-conductive properties?

5. Considering that until now the vast part of experimental injection of particles into the stratosphere seems to have taken place above NATO countries (16), could it be derived from this that NATO is actively-preemptively preparing for nuclear or non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse events?

6. Are we seeing version 2.0 of the Manhattan Project, this time entrusted with the mission to develop a large-scale shield to fend off the devastating effects of Electromagnetic Pulses, employing thousands of scientists, experts, technicians, military and civil personnel without them knowing what purpose they are working for, by keeping information deliberately fragmented and separate?

7. Is this the real reason why "geoengineering experiments shouldn't require global agreement" but be imposed on behalf of 'the advanced industrialized states of the world', as advocated by scholars of US Think Thanks that are not precisely known for their love for Mother Nature?

From the countries of the Global South, from Latin America, from Venezuela, we call for a global investigation into these matters, for a global debate and for global, transparent and informed agreement with regard to alternative ways to protect technology, the environment, all forms of life on the planet and planet Earth as such! We say NO to whatever techniques that, for whatever reason, deliberately modify any of the geophysical subsystems of the Earth! We say NO to interfering with planet Earth's geophysical integrity!

Notes

(1) http://blog.american.com/?p=11895
(2) Edward Teller, Roderick Hyde and Lowell Wood, Global Warming and Ice Ages: Prospects for Physics-Based Modulation of Global Change, August 1997, pages 10,11.

http://www.rense.com/general18/scatteringEdTellerwithnotes.pdf
(3) E. Teller, The Planet needs a Sunscreen, reprinted by Hoover Digest,

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3522851.html
(4) Edward Teller, Roderick Hyde and Lowell Wood: Active Climate Stabilization: Practical Physics-Based Approaches to Prevention of Climate Change, April 2002, page 6,

https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/244671.pdf
(5) http://www.lnc-2010.de/Linkpool/Sfericstandard.wmv
(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_materials
(7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor
(8) Ken Vranich, The Growing Impact of Atmospheric Radiation Effects on Semiconductor Devices and the Associated Impact on Avionics Suppliers,
http://www.kva-engineering.com/pdf/SEU_whitepaper_FAA_Con.pdf, our emphasis.
(9) Ibidem, pages 1, 2.
(10) Ibidem, page 3, our emphasis.
(11) Ibidem, page 8.
(12) http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/29may_noaaprediction/
(13) Major Scott W. Merkle, Non-Nuclear EMP: Automating the Military May Prove a Real Threat, http://cryptome.quintessenz.at/mirror/emp-merkle.htm, our emphasis.
(14) Ibidem, our emphasis.
(15) Major Colin R. Miller (USAF), Electromagnetic Pulse Threats to U.S. Expeditionary Operations in 2010, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cst/bugs_ch12.pdf, our emphasis.
(16) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJPS9vo1pB8&feature=related

Messing with Disaster: International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies

2010-03-24T22:37:00.003-04:30

By Jutta Schmitt

This week, from March 22nd to March 26th, the 'Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies', hosted by the Climate Response Fund, is taking place in Pacific Grove, California-USA, where scientists discuss possible means to counter-balance climate change and its impacts. The kind of measures proposed to mitigate climate change pertain to the realm of geo-engineering and climate intervention techniques, and are outlined in the Conference's working agenda.(1)

The agenda itself can best be described as an array of proposals for 'disaster management', aimed at 'moderating' global climate change. Listed among the various physical science aspects of climate intervention are experiments related to Solar Radiance Engineering, which respond to 'Solar Radiation Management' or the 'management of climate change in the stratosphere and above', which test 'the potential for aerosols in the troposphere or stratosphere to limit incoming solar radiation'. Under the specific approaches for Solar Radiation Management figure the stratospheric injection of sulfate or other materials with global or regional coverage, satellite deflection of solar radiation, cloud brightening on a global or regional scale by sea salt or dimethyl sulfide (DMS) injection, 'ocean brightening' as another means to deflect solar radiation, arctic intervention and specific regional intervention relating to hurricane modification and redirection of storms, among others.

Hold on. - 'Spraying the stratosphere with sulfate or other materials'?! - 'Hurricane modification and redirection of storms'?! Until recently, suggesting that this kind of experiments were being considered in earnest by high level scientist panels or that they could already be going on as we speak, was denounced as the pathetic fantasies of global conspiracy theorists gone crazy! But now and as Copenhaguen went down the drain, all of a sudden we see the emergence of a Global Climate Crisis Management Team, ready to 'geo-engineer' us out of the mess.

Let's take a closer look at the proposed 'innovative' techniques to deflect solar radiation, especially as they've already been put into operation for quite some time. Since years, former German Greenpeace activist Werner Altnickel, who obtained the German and European Solar Prize distinctions for his alternative solar energy projects implemented successfully in his hometown, Oldenburg, has referred to the already ongoing spraying of the stratosphere with sulfate or other materials as described in the Climate Response Fund's working agenda, in terms of a chemical crime committed right above our heads, clearly visible to the public in form of the so called Chemtrails and documented in thousands of videos and photos posted on thousands of websites on the World Wide Web. (2) Altnickel warns that spraying the stratosphere with chemicals and metals (polymers, fibers, cadmium, barium, aluminium, titanium, mercury, lead (3)) is not only a highly questionable technological attempt to contain and mitigate climate change effects, but also a means to manipulate the weather and to create inductive fields, of special interest for military purposes such as enhancement or interruption of communication technologies. The spraying has taken place ever since the beginning of the nineties, with intense and wide-range Chemtrail spraying over North America and most of the Western European countries. Altnickel suspects that the US's retreat from the Kyoto Treaty under George W. Bush is in the first place due to the assumption that it is 'cheaper' for governments to spray the skies and more profitable for the companies that provide the logistics, technology and substances being sprayed, than implementing and actually sticking to regulations that effectively protect the environment. The environmental contamination as a result of the massive injection of chemicals and metals into the atmosphere and the subsequent dangers to public health by exposure to hazardous elements stand in stark contrast to the proposed 'mitigation of climate change effects'. For Altnickel, the only peaceful way that can lead to popular resistance against these contaminating and highly dangerous practices is making people aware of what is happening, furthering public knowledge and understanding of these phenomena with the help of the new communications technologies.

It is worth to note that among the chief Science Advisors of the Climate Response Fund, host of the Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies, are Edward A. Frieman, Research Professor, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University California, San Diego and Senior Vice President of Science and Technology at the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). (4) To our Venezuelan readers, Science Applications International Corporation is notoriously known and remembered as the Corporation which, by means of its subsidiary INTESA, owned and managed the technological and electronic components of Venezuelas State Oil Company, PDVSA, and which oversaw and conducted the electronic sabotage and shutdown of the industry's 'electronic brain' during the events of 2002-2003 that have come to be known as the management lockout and sabotage of Venezuela's industrial heart. According to a research undertaken by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele in March 2007, (5) SAIC is a private company, one of the main government contractors in the US, with a workforce of 44000 people and a true record of 9000 active individual government contracts with annual revenues between 8 and 12 billion dollars. The main product of the company is brainpower and expertise to guarantee 'national security':

„(...) SAIC is a body shop in the brain business. It sells human beings who have a particular expertise—expertise about weapons, about homeland security, about surveillance, about computer systems, about "information dominance" and "information warfare." If the C.I.A. needs an outside expert to quietly check whether its employees are using their computers for personal business, it calls on SAIC. If the Immigration and Naturalization Service needs new record-keeping software, it calls on SAIC. Indeed, SAIC is willing to provide expertise about almost anything at all, if there happens to be a government contract out there to pay for it—as there almost always is.“ (6)

Given the brief background sketched above with regard to the possible military applications of Solar Radiance Engineering, it is disturbing to think that the very Senior Vice President of Science and Technology at the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) is among the chief Science Advisors of the Climate Response Fund, which is hosting the Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies this week in Pacific Grove, California. The conference's commitment to take into consideration the social context of climate intervention, the international legal framework for climate intervention (ENMOD) as well as 'ethical principles' with regard to climate intervention technologies, does little to tranquilize the mind. And this is why the closing event of the conference will be a 'plenary discussion on climate change, public attitudes, the media, and insights on implications for public discourse on climate intervention / geoengineering', read a brainstorming effort to resolve the problem of how to spin-doctor the world public into accepting and approving the application of these messing-with-the-climate-disaster techniques.

The upcoming World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth to be held in Cochabamba, Bolivia (7) from April 19th to 22nd, will definitely have to address the danger posed by this emerging 'Climate Change Management Lobby', which rather than fight the root causes of the problem seeks to mess with the disaster in multiple ways. The three basic postulates of the World People's Conference on Climate Change, that is, to determine and fight the structural causes of climate change, to live in harmony with nature and to recognize and establish the rights of Mother Earth, are fundamental pillars in what can be considered the only viable way to effectively respond to the threats to human survival. Recognizing that climate change is "a product of a model of life and development under the capitalist system that is premised on the supremacy of human beings over nature“, that it is necessary to "challenge the current system based on consumption, waste and the marketing of all aspects of life and nature", and thus demanding that the rights of Mother Earth be recognized and defended, is imperative to planetary survival. Messing around with the climate disaster and exploiting it for the sake of making profit from new climate intervention technologies and techniques, surely will pave the road to hell. The World People's Conference on Climate Change must stand up against climate intervention technologies, geoengineering and global environmental warfare.

(Video-Clip 2 de 11)

(Video-Clip 3 de 11)

...

Notes

(1) http://climateresponsefund.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=137&Itemid=81
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czde8N6zu0U(3) http://www.chemtrails-info.de/chemtrails/chemikalien.htm
(4) http://climateresponsefund.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=60
(5) http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703
(6) Ibidem
(7) http://pwccc.wordpress.com/

Alan Woods: No light bulb will shine, no wheel will move, without the kind permission of the workers of this world.

2009-11-20T14:17:00.001-04:30

By Jutta Schmitt

Alan Woods held a meeting with workers and students last night (November 19) in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of The Andes in Merida, to talk about the systemic crisis of capitalism on a world wide scale. Alan observed, that ironically and as the world's ruling classes are celebrating 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, we are witnessing the renaissance of the ideas of scientific socialism as a historic necessity, and are experiencing concrete efforts to establish a socialist alternative to capitalist society here in Latin America, especially in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, reason for which these countries are being targeted for "regime change".

Given this context, Alan spoke about the urgent necessity for the working people to organise themselves in order to defend their class interests and exercise true popular power. He insisted that more than anything else, even than the external threat coming from the installation of seven US military bases in Colombia, the biggest menace for the fate and future of the Bolivarian Revolution comes from within, from what he calls the Fifth Column which operates from within the government and the State apparatus.

It is against this Fifth Column that the fight has to be directed in the first place, by means of the systematic, disciplined and solidaric self-organization of the working people who are the true forgers of socialism and who have to take consciousness of the invincible power they hold, not only in Venezuela but on a world scale. No light bulb will shine, no wheel will move, without the kind permission of the workers of this world, Alan reminded the audience. Thus, armed with class consciousness and organization, the Venezuelan working people have to take up the fight against the internal adversary, whilst the external threat to the Bolivarian Revolution has to be confronted by setting up armed people's militias.

The meeting had been organized by Eduardo Molina, Leonardo Badell, Ali Quero, Luis Regalado, Edwin Aguirre, Rafael Díaz and other members of the Marxist Revolutionary Current (CMR) of Mérida, was well attended and Alan's comments and suggestions were received with enthusiastic applause. The debate in the aftermath of Alan's speech gave way to an immediate initiative for effective organization among workers and students of the University of The Andes. Gerardo Sosa, general secretary of the University of The Andes Workers' Trade Union (SOULA), asked Alan to serve as a personal contact for international solidarity with similar organizations in Great Britain and Europe and thanked him for his inspirational speech.

Alan speaking to workers and students

Audience listening to Alan's suggestions

Prof. Franz J. T. Lee among the audience

Alan, Jutta, Franz, Eduardo, Leo, Edwin

and other members of the CMR-Mérida

International Financial Crisis and End of the Dollar Hegemony: United States versus ALBA

2009-09-14T19:24:00.009-04:30

By: Jutta Schmitt

The truth now is: “He who prints the money makes the rules”-- at least for the time being. (...) The goals are (...): compel foreign countries to produce and subsidize the country with military superiority and control over the monetary printing presses.          - Ron Paul



In November last year, at the third extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) - Peoples' Trade Agreement (TCP), the presidents came together with the intention to confront the crisis of the global capitalist system. Considering the volatility of the international financial system, the untenable situation of the capitalist model with its destructive logic, and the absence of proposals and categorical measures by the big global power centers in order to confront the crisis, the presidents of the ALBA member States shared the opinion that the international financial system cannot simply be re-founded but has to be replaced by a different one, based on solidarity, stability, ecological sustainability and social justice. The Heads of State concurred with each other in that the countries of our region, if their response to the crisis intends to be efficient, definitely have to break lose and protect themselves from the grip of transnational capital so as to be able to take a different direction that does not make them dependent on the eroded international economic and financial system, nor on the US dollar hegemony, artificially maintained and literally imposed by force. To this effect, they agreed on creating a Latin American monetary zone that would, in its first phase, comprise the ALBA member States and it was further detailed that the monetary zone would count with a Chamber for the Compensation of Payments and a Stabilization and Reserve Fund, financed by the contributions of its member States. What concerns the economic policies of the future Latin American monetary and economic zone, the Heads of State agreed on the implementation of an expansive policy of demand stimulation, Keynesian in nature, promoting investments to further the development of complementary economic activities. (1)
                                                                                                                                                                  Furthermore, the presidents agreed that the Latin American monetary zone would issue its own currency, the 'Unified System of Regional Compensation' or Sucre, in order to gain independence from the international financial markets and to break with the eternal dependency on the US Dollar as the main currency for trade and financial transactions, prevalent up to now in the trade relations between our Latin American countries.(2) The financial operations with the new currency are expected to begin next year, and there is trust that the ALBA member States can count on this instrument from the very 1st of January 2010 on.(3) Therewith, an extremely important step will be taken on the road to the necessary dismantlement of the present international economic and financial system which remains characterized by the hegemony of the US Dollar, enabling the United States to import goods and services from all over the world in exchange of a printed piece of green paper which is practically worthless.

The fact that the dollar today has no other real value than the value of the paper its printed on, makes the continuity of its world hegemony a matter of life and death for the United States of America. In a condensed overview of the history of the rise and fall of the US dollar, it is pertinent to remind the reader that after the Second World War the North American economy was the most powerful and solid of the entire world. It had enormous capacities of exportation and credit, which allowed it to finance the reconstruction of Western Europe through the famous Marshall Plan, in view of fostering a future European market to absorb US exports and investments, as well as containing the possible influence of the Soviet Union in Western Europe. The US Dollar transformed itself into the world's unchallenged, leading reserve currency, within the framework of the Bretton Woods international monetary system under the gold-exchange-standard. The Dollar figured as the anchor or reserve currency, convertible in gold, and fixed exchange rates were established between the different international currencies.

However, the growing trade deficit of the United States, combined with an inflationary monetary policy, especially during the Vietnam War, lead to the collapse of the Dollar's convertibility in gold, which ended with its unilateral suspension by the Nixon administration in 1973. Therewith, the original Bretton Woods system had collapsed and the dollar suffered a sensitive decline as international reserve currency, although it did not really get challenged by other currencies at that moment, given the absence of a sufficiently strong competitor who could have occupied this position. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods system lead to the devaluation of the dollar and thus caused a decrease of revenues from oil for the OPEC countries, as oil was priced in dollars only. This fact, in addition to the 1973 Jom Kippur war in the Middle East, lead to the rise of oil prices and the oil crisis of 1973/74, which, in turn, generated the phenomenon known as the 'recycling of petro-dollars' that ended up in strengthening once more the position of the US dollar. In the absence of an alternative international reserve currency or the existence of a petro-currency basket, the dollar got 'anchored' to oil in a kind of 'oil-standard', which enabled it to perpetuate itself, in spite of the enormous and growing balance of payments deficit of the US, as the primary international reserve currency and the only petro-currency, practically until our days. This panorama only had begun to change with the rise, at the beginning of the new millennium, of a strongly competing international reserve currency, the euro, and the displacement of the world economic center from North America to Europe and Asia. Today, with the collapse of the international financial system and the generalized capitalist crisis, the panorama looks troubling for the US dollar.

Until now, two main factors have helped sustain the privileged position of the dollar in the world: Firstly, the capital flows towards the United States as a result of the re-investment, in the United States, of the commercial surpluses obtained by nations and investors through their trade with the US. Secondly, the exclusive pricing, on a world wide scale, of oil transactions in US dollars, being this factor of vital importance to the United States for guaranteeing the perpetuation of their currency as the leading and indispensable international reserve currency. This allows the US to continue to encumber itself with debts denominated in their own currency, for which the US holds the exclusive printing monopoly. This means that the Federal Reserve has printed and continues to print dollars in the quantity and at the time it deems necessary, practically without restrictions, apart from the capacity and will of others to absorb them on a global scale, and the inflationary pressure generated by this on the domestic as well as international level. As if this were not enough, the immense capital flows towards the United States from abroad not only have financed its trade and balance of payments deficits, but, and perversely so, also the costs of its military spending which are the highest of the planet. This is how, on the one hand and given the astronomical costs of its military spending, US military supremacy would come down like a house of cards if the dollar would lose its role as the world's leading reserve and petro-currency; and on the other hand, it is the same US military supremacy by virtue of which the United States have been able to defend, in a 'preemptive' manner, their currency and its privileged position in the world on which the whole deficit-existence of the United States of America has comfortably rested until now.

In the words of US congressman, Ron Paul:

            "Ironically, dollar superiority depends on our strong military, and our strong military depends on the dollar. As long as foreign recipients take our dollars for real goods and are willing to finance our extravagant consumption and militarism, the status quo will continue regardless of how huge our foreign debt and current account deficit become." (4)

The price that a part of the world had to pay so that this perverse system would maintain itself intact, has expressed itself in pressures, coercion, threats, aggression wars, military coups and destabilizing operations, especially in the cases of those countries which, in one way or the other, have tried to establish another kind of financial framework which could have led, eventually, to the demise of the dollar hegemony. Remember the case of Iraq with the decision of Saddam Hussein, in November of the year 2000, to shift Iraq's international reserves from the dollar to the euro and to price the sale of Iraqi oil in euros; situation which was immediately reverted by the North American invaders once Iraq had been attacked and occupied in 2003. There is the case of the continuous threats against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country which in the year 2002 began to shift a big part of its international currency reserves from dollars to euros and which launched the project of an Iranian Oil Bourse to be set up on the island of Kish, which would price the sale of Iranian oil in euros and other currencies with exception of the dollar. The project was postponed various times for unknown reasons until the Iranian Oil Bourse finally opened its operations in February last year.(5) And then, there is the notorious case of our Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, victim of a military coup in the year 2002 and since then, of continuous destabilization operations which point to an eventual direct military intervention by the US Armed Forces, from Colombian territory; not only because of the appetite the government of the United States has for the natural and energy resources of Venezuela and the region, but also because president Hugo Chávez has pronounced himself in the past in favour of the pricing of Venezuelan oil in euros and other currencies, and also has traded certain amounts of Venezuelan oil for its respective equivalent in goods and services with other countries of the region, thus avoiding the use of the US dollar in inter-regional trade transactions. Russia and China, which holds the world's largest dollar reserves, have long considered that the dollar does not fulfill a meaningful role as the leading reserve currency and have proposed, at the last summit of the G-8 in July this year, that a new, supra-national unitary currency be implemented world-wide, based on a mixture of regional reserve currencies and considered to be indispensable to overcome the abysmal crisis of the international financial system.

The price that ultimately had to be payed for the artificial maintenance of the dollar hegemony on a global scale, has been the very collapse of the international financial system, payed, as always and naturally, by the workers of this world, who do not only see the future of the present generation of workers compromised, but that of many generations to come. Even the United Nations seem to have woken up, given that the recently published annual report of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) of the year 2009, suggests the replacement of the US dollar by a new, leading world currency. (6) And while a chorus of ever stronger voices is beginning to be heard, claiming for a new international financial order, our ALBA member countries, confident in their own strength, will and potentiality, are taking the first concrete steps in order to not only detach themselves from the dollar hegemony but to establish the parameters of a new kind of mutually beneficial and complementary trade relations. It is in this context that we can better understand why Latin America, at this moment and apart from its natural and energy resources being coveted by the global power centers, adopts special importance for the United States. A regional alliance like ALBA, with its own currency for trade and financial transactions, constitutes doubtlessly another nail in the coffin of dollar hegemony. This is at least one of the reasons for which, in the near future, the government of the United States will be pointing its guns against us, from Colombian territory.

Notes

(1) http://www.alternativabolivariana.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3730
(2) ibidem.
(3) http://www.alternativabolivariana.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5107
(4) Hon. Ron Paul of Texas Before the U.S. House of Representatives, February 15, 2006; http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr021506.htm
(5) Oil Bourse Opens in Kish; http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8611290655
(6) http://www.unctad.org/Templates/Webflyer.asp?intItemID=1397&docID=11867

Preparing the ground for military aggression against Venezuela and Latin America: The Big Lie Strategy in operation

2009-09-04T21:03:00.006-04:30

                                                                                                                    Preparing the ground for military aggression
against Venezuela and Latin America:
The Big Lie Strategy in operation

By Jutta Schmitt

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer,
but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

                              Sun Tzu

It is surprising and dismaying that the world’s only superpower does
not have a unified political-military strategy and a multidimensional
inter-agency organizational structure to confront Chavez’s challenge.
It is time to make substantive changes to deal better with irregular
contemporary conflict.
                                                      Max G. Manwaring

In a previous article we showed the relation that exists between the US Defense Department's most recent war doctrines and the 'Theory of the New Wars', an ideological construction originating from the realm of European academia developed at the beginning of the new millennium, which is nothing else but the 'moral' justification of the aggression wars and countless interferences all over the world of the European and North American ruling classes, in pursuit of their respective geo-strategic interests and global expansion. All the military doctrines, security strategies and political ideologies emanating from the global power centers have a common denominator: they are fully inscribed in the justification and defense of an economic, political and social order that is unsustainable and unjustifiable and the continuance of which, over time, has turned into a human security and survival problem on a planetary scale: capitalism. In order to justify the unjustifiable, we see the recycling and massive dissemination of myths that are profoundly rooted in the minds of millions of people who have been victims, since centuries, of mind control which adopts the most variegated forms. The main message that has been transmitted through these myths, especially in the past two decades, is to equate capitalism with the highest possible degree of human civilization, rejecting any search for an alternative as 'obsolete', 'anachronistic' and 'pre-modern'.

Who wants to break away from the established parameters and dares to take different ways than those prescribed by capitalist globalization has to confront an avalanche of obstacles, threats, covert and overt interventions as well as campaigns of defamation and ridicule. Any country or group of countries that does not stick to the rules and interferes with the interests of the global power centers, will be subjected to destabilization operations and is then declared a 'failed State' or 'crisis region' that merits military invasion in the name of the 'security' of the 'international democratic community' (the West).

Given this background it is troublesome to see how an encirclement is closing down on Venezuela and also on the countries that constitute the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), a proposal for Latin American integration which does not respond to the interests of big international capital. We are witnessing at this moment how the first step of an escalation is being executed that may well lead to an eventual military confrontation between the US-Colombian armed forces and those of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, as well as other countries of our region. It is sufficient to take a look at the strategic locations of the seven North American military bases that will be set up shortly on Colombian territory and at the full spectrum of marine, air force, army and special forces components which will operate from there, so as to realize that the projection of US military force from Colombia exceeds by far the supposed 'war against drugs' and clearly points towards control and vigilance of the whole of South America. Given that Colombia shamefully and literally is transforming itself into a US aircraft carrier for operations in Latin America, within short notice we will directly share boundaries with a nation the governments of which we can qualify, without hesitation, as the most interventionist and criminal of the world. (In the words of George H.W. Bush: If the North American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts.) The reasons for the deployment of US military forces on Colombian territory constitute a kind of layered rings of lies. The 'official' reason, the 'war against drugs', makes for the necessary background from which the destabilization operations against Venezuela and the ALBA countries will be staged, whereas the unofficial reason is expressed in the US military's 'strategic studies', in itself a set of clever distorsions to justify the one and only REAL reason: the open military defense of North American interests and of the continuity of the rules of the game of globalization in the region.

In one of these strategic studies concerning US security and defense matters in Latin America, entitled: 'Latin America's New Security Reality: Irregular Assymetric Conflict and Hugo Chávez'(1), Max G. Manwaring, professor for Military Strategy at the U.S. Army War College, presents president Chávez of Venezuela as an individual 'possessed' by Simon Bolívar's dream, pushing forward an agenda of open confrontation with the objective to conquer revolutionary power in the whole region, reason for which he is considered to be a national security threat to North America. The writing, published in August 2007, is a follow-up and deepening of an earlier study by the same author from the year 2005, entitled: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivarian Socialism, and Asymmetric Warfare, made public in Venezuela at the time by Eva Golinger.(2) The reading is sobering and gives us an idea of what will expect us if we do not prepare a timely response that goes beyond some mere declarations of protest on paper.

In his second writing about the alleged threat posed by Chávez, Manwaring, in line with the Theory of the New Wars and as if he wanted to discard from the beginning any doubts about the peaceful and defensive character of the United States of America, introduces his study with the categorical assertion that "war no longer exists".(3) Precising this assertion and citing the British military strategist General Rupert Smith from his writing: 'The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World', the author tells us that war as a confrontation between Nation States conceived of as a massive military event which decides over international disputes, has disappeared from the scene and has been replaced by 'wars among peoples' that involve a kind of combatants who are not necessarily soldiers or armies. (4)

Going into the detailed description of what he calls the 'hard facts' of this 'new paradigm of war', Manwaring points out that today's' combatants, rather than armies, tend to be "small groups of armed soldiers who are not necessarily uniformed, not necessarily all male but also female, and not necessarily all adults but also children."(5) Implicit in this statement lies a kind of 'technical-tactical' justification for the indiscriminate assassination of civilians as effectively has happened in the first two aggression wars of the 21st Century, undertaken by the government of the United States of America against Afghanistan and Iraq, in which civilians have been and continue to be massacred indiscriminately, with total impunity and on a large scale in a manner that is reminiscent of an expedition of collective punishment. The second 'hard fact' of this new paradigm according to Manwaring/Smith postulates that these small groups of combatants "tend to be interspersed among ordinary people and have no permanent locations and no identity to differentiate them clearly from the rest of a given civil population". (6) Implicit in this second 'hard fact' lies the technical-tactical justification of the deliberate and indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure like schools, hospitals, water reservoirs, electricity plants, and even centers of religious gatherings and densely populated poor quarters, as has effectively happened in the same aggression wars we just mentioned.

In addition, the author points out that contemporary conflict is being conducted on four interrelated levels, in a hierarchic top-down structure from the political, strategic, operational to the tactical level, what seems at first sight no different from the classical definition of war by Von Clausewitz according to which war is the continuation of politics by other means. However, and according to Manwaring/Smith, "contemporary conflict is now lengthy and evolves through two or three or more noncoercive organizational stages before serious coercion and confrontation come into play", being the military operations "only one of the many instruments of power employed by the combatants" (7). To "evolve through two or three or more noncoercive organizational stages" before entering direct confrontation could be translated, in the language of the now extinct international law, as a crime against peace, as is the planning, preparation and carrying out of an aggression war, such as the government of the United States has waged against Afghanistan and Iraq under the pretext of the 'war against terrorism', bidding farewell to international law and laying down the de-facto basis for the club-law or "New Wars" of the 21st Century. Certainly and in our latitudes, the recent coup in Honduras, followed by the agreement of the Colombian and North American governments on facilitating the use of seven military bases for the US on Colombian territory, in addition to the uncountable acts of open provocation against the governments of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela in the past months and years, give the impression that we are witnessing "two or three or more noncoercive organizational stages" before the government of the United States, in alliance with the Colombian ruling class and other ruling elites in the region that may offer themselves for the purpose, passes on to direct military confrontation with one or more of our Latin American countries.

Then, Manwaring proceeds to point out the 'transnational character' of modern conflict in which combatants hide in border regions and other countries' territories from where they stage their operations (which turns out to be quite a convenient 'hard fact' if, from one of the global power centers like the United States or Europe, one plays the card of destabilization and intervention of a nation or region). The author concludes the review of the essential elements of the new paradigm of war with the observation that the major military and nonmilitary battles in modern conflict take place among the people and if reported, become media events that may or may not reflect the reality on the ground. Here, of course, one cannot but think of the dictatorship of the international media that works hand in hand with the US military-industrial complex and sells us information that serves their strategical objectives. Finally, the author emphasizes that all means employed in this kind of conflict are "intended to capture the imaginations of the people and the will of their leaders, thereby winning a trial of moral (not military) strength" and that "the struggle is total, in that it gives the winner absolute power to control or replace an entire existing government or other symbol of power". (8) Apart from the concept and practice of 'regime change' pushed forward by the government of the United States where it deems it necessary, and its battle to "win hearts and minds", what comes to mind here is the concept and practice of the 'de-territorialization' of war, which, according to the Theory of the New Wars and its postulate of 'military humanism', bestows on the 'civilized nations' (United States and Europe) not only the self-proclaimed 'right', but even the obligation to intervene in conflict zones 'for the sake of their populations' and 'in the name of human rights', concept that goes hand in hand with that of a 'limited sovereignty' and of 'military export of stability'.

After enumerating the 'hard facts' we just mentioned and commented, as essential characteristics of the new paradigm of war according to a writing of British general Rupert Smith, Manwaring, in a sudden and grotesque twist, ascribes these to president Hugo Chávez as if he were the intellectual author of this paradigm, besides other doctrines of war:

   "These are the principal characteristics of what President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela now calls “4th Generation War” (4GW), “Asymmetric War,” “Guerra de todo el pueblo (“War of all the People,” “People’s War,” or “War Among Peoples”). President Chavez asserts that this type of conflict has virtually unlimited possibilities for a “Super Insurgency” against the United States in the 21st century. It appears that Chavez’s revolutionary (Bolivarian) ideas are developing and maturing, and that he and Venezuela, at a minimum, are developing the conceptual and physical capabilities to challenge the status quo in the Americas. This challenge is straightforward and is being translated into a constant, subtle, ambiguous struggle for power that is beginning to insinuate itself into political life in much of the Western Hemisphere." (9)

This maneuver clearly reveals the political-ideological, strategic-military background of the matrix of public opinion generated on a global scale with the complicity of the dictatorship of the international media, to justify an eventual aggression war against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, matrix that has already been successfully tested in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq: To present the country or government who will be attacked as the aggressor, according to an old technique called Big Lie Strategy, a term coined by Adolf Hitler in his autobiography, "Mein Kampf" (1925). The term refers to a lie of such proportions that nobody ever would suspect that anyone could be so imprudent as to distort the truth in such an infamous manner:

    "[...]in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." (10)

Considering the countless assaults against other governments and peoples of this world by the governments of the United States in the past and present, it is troublesome when a North American military strategist from the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College asserts that president Chávez is "encouraging his Venezuelan and other followers to pursue a confrontational, populist, and nationalistic agenda" by means of implementing a "totalitarian democracy" (in reference to the direct, participatory and protagonist democracy or 'government of, by and for the people' as proposed by Lincoln), and accuses Chávez of wanting to destroy North American hegemony by means of conducting an irregular Fourth-Generation War “Super Insurgency”. (11) Such an assertion announces bad things to come.

We don't want to conclude our observations without mentioning some other pieces of lie and propaganda like that of Ray Walser, Heritage Foundation's political analyst for Latin America (12) who, in his "Four concerns about Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez", holds that the latter, first, provides material assistance and sanctuary to the FARC, second, allows individuals operating for Hezbollah to work under Venezuelan diplomatic cover, third, hinders anti-drug efforts in the region and fourth, denies democratic opportunity to the opposition and opposes democratic government,(13), lies that Walser recycles in his articles. Not to mention the notorious Otto Reich, who recently shot his ammunition from the pages of the Foreign Policy Magazine, in a master piece of distortion and bellicose propaganda, entitled: 'Chávez’s Covert War: Obama needs to call Venezuela’s president what he is: a terrorist and a drug-trafficker', and in which Reich details what the title promises: infamous falsehoods. In this piece of provocation, Reich portrays president Chávez as a coward who only points his guns at his own, defenseless citizens and who does not have the guts to fight openly in the international arena:

   "Chávez has only ever pointed his guns at defenseless Venezuelan civilians. Bullies like him do not forewarn their intended victims. He does not fight openly, preferring to intervene covertly -- either directly or through his regional "anti-imperialist" alliance, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a collection of the highest-decibel, lowest performing leaders in the region, from countries including Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and, until June, Honduras." (14)

This is what best illustrates the objective of this co-ordinated avalanche of propaganda and provocation that has been flowing from the pens of military strategists, political analysts, ex State officials, columnists and journalists, all inscribed in the Big Lie Strategy. It therefore is imperative for us to study, know and debate this kind of propaganda, its historical precedents, its current context, the mental configuration of its promoters and its effects on the population in order to counter it effectively.

Notes

(1) Max G. Manwaring, Latin America's New Security Reality: Irregular Assymetric Conflict and Hugo Chávez, August 2007; http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?PubID=808
(2) Eva Golinger, El ejército de los Estados Unidos prepara doctrina para guerra asimétrica con Venezuela, http://www.aporrea.org/imprime/a18136.html.
(3) Manwaring op.cit. , pág. 1
(4) ibidem
(5) ibidem
(6) ibidem
(7) ibidem , pág. 2
(8) ibidem
(9) ibidem, pág. 3
(10) Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, chapter 10, cited in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
(11) Manwaring, op. cit., pág. 3
(12) Washington's biggest and most influential think tank and sponsor of the notorious Project for a New American Century.
(13) Ray Walser, Four Concerns about Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Heritage in Focus, video-clip, 21st of July, 2008, http://www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/wm2592.cfm
(14) Otto Reich, Chávez’s Covert War: Obama needs to call Venezuela’s president what he is: a terrorist and a drug-trafficker. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/28/chavez_s_covert_war

Fourth Generation Warfare: Twisting our minds into total submission

2009-08-29T19:00:00.003-04:30

Fourth Generation Warfare:
Twisting our minds into total submission
By Jutta Schmitt

In the context of the threat and open provocation that constitutes, for Venezuela and all of Latin America, the setting up of seven US military bases on Colombian territory (in addition to three bases US forces are already operating from), Venezuelan-American lawyer Eva Golinger warned in the television programme La Hojilla on August 14^th 2009, about a new war doctrine recently released by the Pentagon and already being executed here in Venezuela: Irregular Warfare. Considering the seriousness of what Golinger brought forward in the programme mentioned, it is pertinent to go more deeply into the matter in order to determine, how this new doctrine is connected with other concepts and realities as for example Fourth Generation Warfare as well as with ideological constructions like the so called Theory of the New Wars. The latter is a compound of arbitrary postulates originating from the academical realm and sold to the public as a 'theory' which dates back to the beginning of the new millennium and which has quickly found its way into the sphere of the national security strategies of both, the United States of America and the European Union. Once we've come to know the interrelations and the general context into which the latest war doctrines are inscribed we can better design our own defense strategies and even think of outlining a categorical counter-offensive.

In an update for the doctrine of Irregular Warfare released by the US Department of Defense in Dember last year, we find the following definition of the concept:

„ ... to fight unconventionally, such as by working with foreign security forces, surrogates and indigenous resistance movements to shore up fragile states, extend the reach of US forces into denied areas or battle hostile regimes.“ (1)

The directive then proceeds to explain the reasons for the update, referring in the first place to the emergence of irregular challenges that threaten the United States' national security:

„ The policy, a result of more than a year of debate in the defense establishment, is part of a broader overhaul of the US military's role as the threat of large-scale combat against other nations' armies has waned and new dangers have arisen from shadowy non-state actors, such as terrorists that target civilian populations.“ (2)

The idea that 'classical' or conventional wars between national states as experienced during the Twentieth Century are a thing of the past and that the new wars of the Twenty-First Century are of an essentially different character, is not that new. Since quite a couple of years already the US- american and european ruling classes, through their big means of mass communication, have been suggesting to the world public opinion that the protagonists of the wars of the Twenty-First Century are some 'bad guys' who operate as 'non-state-actors', in other words, terrorists. We are told that the wars of the Twenty-First Century are and will be inner-state armed conflicts with endemic roots, that is, home-made. We are further told that this type of conflicts are of an ethnical, religious or political-ideological nature, promote terrorism, open the doors for drug-trafficking and organized crime and thus erode any effort to guarantee public order and internal security, reason for which they necessarily lead to the so-called 'failed States'. 'Failed States', in turn, endanger the peace of their surrounding region and thus constitute a security challenge to the 'modern' or 'civilised' countries, especially in our globalized world. The latter, for being 'superior' with regard to their values and economic and cultural performance, are obligated to intervene in those 'chaotic regions' for the sake of helping the populations there to recover or gain the firm ground of 'western-democratic civilization'.

We have to have this crystal-clear: The spreading and penetration of this kind of ideas forms an intrinsical part of another war doctrine, that of Fourth Generation Warfare, the main theater of operation of which is the human mind of both, the populations of the metropolitan countries as well as the populations of those countries who do not pertain to this auto-proclaimed 'western-democratic-civilization'. The main objective of Fourth Generation Warfare fought on a world-wide scale is to bomb, weaken and then mold the human psyche so that the peoples of this world will succumb to the reality of globalized capitalism with its economic, financial, ecological, social and moral crisis, with its perverse concentration and monopolization of capital and power in the hands of some small elites, and to make the peoples of the world accept the eventual rise of a totalitarian, repressive and dictatorial system on a global scale, which we have referred to in earlier writings as 'globofascism'. (3) Specifically, the goal of Fourth Generation Warfare world-wide is to make the populations of the metropolitan countries adopt, as their own, a supposed 'civilizing and pacifying mission', based on the 'universal values of western democracy' which needs to be extended all over the world; and to make the populations of the 'periphery' give up on resistance and accept the forceful imposition of neoliberal, globalized capitalism and its rules of the game as the only viable way for humanity, thus making them refrain from seeking to establish alternative models, such as is the case here in our latitudes.

The cannons in this war against the human mind and psyche are the mass media and the artillery is 'information'. Amongst the army that moves this lethal machine figure journalists, columnists, scientists, military personnel, strategists, politicians, advisors, State officials, burocrats, diplomats and academics, all of them putting themselves knowingly or unknowingly at the service of irrestrict capital accumulation on a global scale, nevermind its nefarious consecuences, a thousand times proven, a thousand times suffered. The serfdom of its followers increases even more in times of a systemic crisis like the one we are experiencing at this moment, which is of a magnitude that only uses to be 'resolved' by means of a devastating world war.

So let us get acquainted with one of the fighters of the Fourth Generation Warfare, defender of globalized, neoliberal capitalism and exponent of the Theory of the New Wars: Thomas P. M. Barnett, US citizen, military analyst and geostrategist of the Pentagon, who identifies in his book, 'The Pentagon's new map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century' (4), a critical zone which hosts internal conflicts, possible failed States and threats for international security, and which he calls 'the non-integrated gap'. This dangerous blackhole comprises Central America and the Carribean, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, the African Continent except South Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East except Israel, Central Asia, Indochina, Indonesia y Fillipines. The 'non-integrated gap' stands in a stark contrast to what Barnett calls 'the functioning core of globalization', that is: the United States of America, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Western Europe, Russia, China, India, Japan and Australia. What characterizes the 'non-integrated gap' according to Barnett is its being composed of countries that are uncoupled from globalization and its rules of the game, reason for which they constitute a potential danger and a challenge for the 'functioning core' from the point of view of Western security policy. Thus and in the name of the security strategies of the 'functioning core of globalization', the countries of the 'non-integrated gap' will have to be forcefully integrated, that is, by military power. Behind this cumbersome terminology hides, of course, a simple reality: The open militarization of neoliberal capitalism and its unhindered expansion to all corners of the planet. In the words of Barnett himself:

“ If a country is either losing out to globalization or rejecting much of the content flows associated with its advance, there is a far greater chance that the U. S. will end up sending forces at some point. Conversely, if a country is largely functioning within globalization, we tend not to have to send our forces there to restore order or eradicate threats.“ (5)

The frontiers between the 'non-integrated gap' and the 'functioning core of globalization' are, according to Barnett, in any case (and conveniently) dynamic, and it may occur that a sector of the 'non-integrated gap' ends up forming part of the 'functioning core', as has effectively happened with Eastern Europe, which has been 'integrated' (or rather absorbed), after the neoliberal restructuring of its economies, into the European Union in the context of the Union's expansion towards the east ('Osterweiterung'). This occured in 2004, the year when Barnett published his book and when ten new member states, eight from Eastern Europe, joined the European Union, followed by another two in 2007. However, Barnett does not exclude the possibility either, that reversely, part of the 'functioning core' may decay and come to form part of the 'gap'.

Barnett's European equivalent is Robert Cooper, a British diplomat, strategist, European National Security Strategy advisor in 2003, main advisor of Javier Solana, the High Representative of Foreign Policy and Common Security of the European Union, and author of the book 'The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century'. (6) Cooper, like his American counterpart, divides the world in two: a 'postmodern' world, conceived as a voluntary association of States like the European Union and characterized by its security, transparency and the interdependence of its member States; and a 'premodern' world, conceived as a world of 'failed States', incapable of maintaining their monopoly of force and of defending their citizens from the actions of irregular groups, destabilizing factors or organized crime. Like a postmodern Macchiavelli, Robert Cooper openly and unscrupulously recommends the double standard as the method of international relations in our world of two worlds of the Twenty-First Century:

„ The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle. In the prolonged period of peace in Europe, there has been a temptation to neglect our defences, both physical and psychological. This represents one of the great dangers of the postmodern state.“ (7)

Let us take note then, that the United States of America as well as Europe see us, the peoples who conform Humanity of the South and who have been victims of their criminal assaults ever since the times of colonization, as a 'black hole', 'non-integrated gap', 'premodern world' or 'jungle'! Let us also take note, that the conflicts in our regions, products of our historic realities in which each stage since colonization has been marked by impositions and interventions from the capitalist power centers and often artificially stoked from outside, are 'home-made', tribal in nature, inter-ethnical, anachronical, just typical of the jungle! Once more, each and every word of Western propaganda transpires hateful racism and supremacism. However, there is an interesting detail when Cooper reveals the class character of the 'new' security and defense doctrines, underlining that it is essential for the elites of the 'postmodern world' to establish a set of beliefs in a 'civilizing mission' to convince their own population and others of their noble intentions:

„To persuade your own people to risk their lives in chaotic foreign countries requires the belief that you are spreading some gospel, pursuing a mission of civilization or (in the worst case) establishing the natural superiority of your race. It requires confidence and conviction. And then, if you are to be successful, you have to persuade the people that you are subjugating that you are doing this in their own interests and in the service of a higher good; most people are subjugated by ideas rather than by force.“ (8)

In their need to control the minds of their populations with this kind of 'new myths' within the context of Fourth Generation Warfare and to achieve that they affirm the ever more openly military character of the European Union, the European dominant classes can count on various erudites, true masters in hiding the cold interests of economic-imperial expansion of the European elites behind a mask of morality, humanism and the virtues of a guardian angel. Amongst them are Mary Kaldor, of British nationality, director of the Center for Studies of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science, member, at the time, of the Study Group of European Security Capacities in the service of Javier Solana and author of the book: 'New and old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era'. (9) Kaldor arguments in the same line as Cooper when she, too, states that we live in a world of two worlds: the world of 'modern cosmopolitanism' which is a world in peace, based on the values of inclusion, universalism and multiculturalism, and the world of 'premodern particularism', which is a world characterized by the implosion of those States which have been unable to cope with globalization and whose autonomy, monopoly of violence and capacity to defend their citizens has been broken, giving way to violence and the collapse of democracy. Thus, Kaldor pleads for the launching of a 'global civilizing process' in order to contain the threat that the premodern world poses for global security.

The german sociologist Ulrich Beck, in the same order of ideas, claims an 'European Cosmopolitan Empire', a kind of guardian angel who, in order to confront the dangers emanating from the premodern world, must impose by force the values of the postmodern world there, in the name of the unprotected citizens of the premodern world:

„A new policy is emerging, a postnational policy of military humanism, that is, the implementation of a transnational military power that has the goal of reinforcing the respect for human rights beyond national boundaries. [...] Thus, war becomes the continuation of ethics by other means.“ (10)

Finally, Herfried Muenkler, professor for Political Theory of the Humboldt University in Berlin and author of the book 'The New Wars' (11), defines these as characterized by 'de-nationalization' and 'asymmetricalization'. The latter concept refers to the unique, military supremacy of the United States of America in today's world, that can only be confronted, by any given adversary, by means of asymmetric strategies like terrorism or guerilla warfare. 'De-nationalization' refers to the decomposition of State authority which occurs, according to Muenkler, in the first place in countries of the so called 'Third World' and which is the result of the failure of modern State building processes there, with the blame lying on their inmoral and corrupt elites. Thus, Muenkler conceives the new wars as state-disintegration-wars. The State's loss of its monopoly of violence gives way to the emergence of violent private groups who finance themselves through smuggling and drug-trafficking with destabilizing consequences for politics and economics of the region, reason for which the West must intervene to avoid a major encroachment. In the words of Muenkler:

„International terrorism has its refuge in the first place there where State structures have collapsed in the course of an inter-societal war. No region exists today in the globalized world in which the collapse of State structures would not have serious consequences for global, political and economic structures, reason for which, from the point of view of security policy, the need for military export of stability emerges. The West has to be prepared to assume the armed pacification of entire regions.“ (12)

'Postmodern world' versus 'jungle world', 'military humanism', 'military export of stability', 'armed pacification' – these are the keywords of an ample literature of which we have barely presented some fragmentary extracts, the postulates of which have penetrated, like bullets, the brains of millions of people in Europe and North America. These ideological constructions, disseminated in the realm of academia, in books and strategic documents of security and defense, in the press and on TV, represent nothing less than the 'moral' legitimation of the 21^st century's aggression wars, ignoring any notion of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, self-determination of the peoples and the principle of non-intervention for considering them archaic, premodern concepts, proper of the jungle. The military export of stability in recent times to what was once Yugoslavia, to Afghanistan, Irak and Palestine, gives us an idea of what is awaiting us with the planned export of stability to Our America, Latin America, with the setting up of seven or more US military bases on Colombian territory.

With this general context in mind, having shown the connections between Fourth Generation Warfare and ideological constructions like the Theory of the New Wars, and taking into account their consequences for the thinking and attitude of millions of people in the metropolitan countries, let us get back once more to the concept of Irregular Warfare as introduced and explained by Eva Golinger in the programme 'La Hojilla' on the 14^th of August. Under the premise that we have entered (or never left) an era of perpetual warfare, the new doctrine of Irregular Warfare comes to be the core of the United States' military mission of the 21^st Century. Its goals are to materialize the stategic, mid- and long term objectives by means of unconventional methods, working on the adversary's physical and psychological erosion in the context of a protracted low-intensity-war which is being waged on a regional and global scale. All this in order to gain control over territories, natural and energy resources, geostrategic corridors and entire populations. Irregular warfare is about what the US Department of Defense, in correspondence with the concepts sketched above, calls 'stability operations', when in reality and reversely, the objective of these operations is the continuous and systematic destabilization of governments who are perceived as hostile or non-aligned with the interests of the US, or who simply defend their national sovereignty, territorial integrity and self-determination – 'premodern', 'achaic' ideas and concepts, according to the global elites.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the already mentioned North American strategist Thomas P. M. Barnett, in an article published on the 10^th of August, titled 'The New Rules: The Evolution of the U.S. Military', states in response to the „predictable condemnations from anti-American elements in South America“, that the installation of new US military bases in Colombia „simply reflects the increasing granularity of our efforts at promoting regional stability.“ (13)

'Stability operations' – there is certainly something striking about this concept: If there is anything the global ruling classes have tried to stabilize without success, it's this very system which is unstable in itself: capitalism. There is no capitalism without crisis, there is no crisis without capitalism. The capitalist economic crisis is being periodically generated by the internal contradictions of the system, and wars are its periodical 'solutions'. Economic crisis and its solution, war, are the two sides of capitalist instability. However, when capital and labour forces are being destroyed by wars the system gets a new lease of life as long as the 'reconstruction' lasts, and this is wherein its perverse stability and stable perversion lies.

Only with a social class consciousness and a consequently internationalist, antiimperialist and anticapitalist vision can we emerge without harm from the bombardments of mental manipulation and draw up a strategy that does not end up delivering us into the arms of the monster we are fighting.

Notes

(1) New Irregular Warfare Directive, in: Small Wars Journal, http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/12/new-irregular-warfare-directiv/
(2) ibidem
(3) Jutta Schmitt, On the objective function of terrorism and racism in the era of globalization (Acerca de la función objetiva del Terrorismo y Racismo en la Era de la Globalización), in: Franz J. T. Lee & Jutta Schmitt, Venezuela: La Revolución Bolivariana pasando el Rubicón, Editorial IMMECA, Mérida 2006.
(4) Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon's new Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, G.P. Putnam's Sons / Penguin Group Inc., New York 2004
(5) Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map, http://www.esquire.com/ESQ0303-MAR_WARPRIMER?click=main_sr
(6) Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, Atlantic Books, London 2003
(7) Robert Cooper, The new liberal imperialism, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/07/1
(8) Cited in John Keane, Remarks on Robert Cooper's Towards a European Army?, http://www.johnkeane.net/word_docs/robert%20cooper.doc.
(9) Mary Kaldor, New and old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era; Stanford University Press, Stanford-California 1999.
(10) Ulrich Beck, Ueber den postnationalen Krieg, en: Blaetter fuer Deutsche und Internationale Politik, Nr. 8 / 1999, S. 987, (http://www.blaetter.de/artikel.php?pr=467), my translation from German.
(11) Herfried Muenkler, Die neuen Kriege, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2002
(12) ibidem, pág. 221, my translation from German.
(13) Thomas P. M. Barnett, The New Rules: The Evolution of the U.S. Military , http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4181.