Bulletin
N° 619
Subject: ON
REVOLUTION, COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD.
11 July 2014
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The practice of removing ideas from their material
context and sifting through disembodied abstractions until some pattern seems
to emerge that connects several of these ideas is a process that has a long
tradition. The ancient Chinese used techniques such as cracking bones and
thrown sticks to decipher the world around them. Closer to our own civilization
the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, and later the Greeks, came up with the
method of using chicken entrails and cloud formations to acquire ideas that
might bring them closer to reality. Other peoples have used animal torture and
human sacrifice as a means of transcending their surroundings and gaining new
insights into the world from elsewhere. For many of us, the methods for
understanding the world in which we live have changed very little over the
millennia. Our primitive minds, still search desperately for ideas that would
offer a sense of security and understanding, the illusion of control, while we routinely accept as normal
the cruel judgment that “ends” can be used to justify “means.” We simply close our eyes and wait!
No one understood this human capacity for
self-deception better than Frederick Nietzsche, whose judgment of man was: “he is the
sick animal” ("What do Ascetic Ideals Mean?" in Genealogy of Morlas, Anchor Books, 1956, p.257). To paraphrase Plato, most humans apprehend only shadows, and fail
to see the material reality from which these images are cast. And from these
representations they construct concepts which are always distortions of the
real relationships from which they originate. These images eventually become lodged
in our brains and exist as conventional understandings, replacing reason; they
gain influence and soon begin to govern our normative behavior. Very few of us
are permitted to live outside this Norm, which is to say to live our lives
guided by our faculties of reason and memory, rather than by automatically
following social conventions. Mathematicians, tenured professors, and death-row
inmates are among those few non-conformists, but they exhibit little or no
social solidarity and are easily dismissed.
Corporatism (sometimes known as Shintoism,
Fascism, Nazism, and Neo-Conservatism) is a political belief based on normative
behavior; it imposes a rigid hierarchical systemic ideology into the minds of a
susceptible population which has been convinced, one way or another, to accept
living as objects to be experimented on by self-appointed elites, whose bad
faith is apparent to anyone who has the courage to see. However, these norms
never last forever, and the self-destructive behavior of any ruling elite is of
paramount importance in historical studies, since the larger populations which
constitute the base of these pyramids have been largely neutralized, i.e.
deprived of leadership, confused with anxieties, urged to gratuitous acts of
violence and vengeance, benighted with ideals and accompanying feelings of duty and guilt, or
in other ways marginalized so that they can be more easily governed by a few
well-placed super-beings located, in their own estimations, somewhere towards
the top of the Great
Chain of Being.
In the meantime, we return to the minds of rulers
and of those they rule, whose motives, habits of thought, and evasions were a
subject of analysis in Nietzsche’s last essay, The
Genealogy of Morals (1887).
On slave morality, Nietzsche compares the mentality
of the slave with a more ‘noble’ mentality.
The slave revolt in morals begins by rancor
turning creative and giving birth to values –the rancor of beings who, deprived of the direct outlet of action, compensate by
an imaginary vengeance. All truly noble morality grows out of triumphant
self-affirmation. Slave ethics, on the other hand, begins by saying no to an
‘outside,’ an ‘other,’ a non-self, and that no is its creative act. This
reversal of direction of the evaluating look, this invariable looking outward
instead of inward, is a fundamental feature of rancor. Slave ethics requires
for its inception a sphere different from and hostile to its own. Physiologically
speaking, it requires an outside stimulus in order to act at all; all its
action is reaction. The opposite is true of aristocratic valuations: such
values grow and act spontaneously, seeking out their contraries only in order
to affirm themselves even more gratefully and delightedly. Here the negative
concepts, humble, base, bad, are late, pallid counterparts of the positive,
intense and passionate credo, ‘We noble, good,
beautiful, happy ones. . . . .
All this stands in utter contrast to what is called
happiness among the impotent and oppressed, who are full of bottled-up
aggressions. Their happiness is purely passive and takes the form of drugged
tranquility, stretching and yawning, peace, ‘sabbath,’
emotional slackness. Whereas the noble lives before his own conscience with
confidence and frankness … , the rancorous person is
neither truthful nor ingenuous nor honest and forthright with himself. His soul
squints; his mind loves hide-outs, secret paths, and back doors; everything that
is hidden seems to him his own world, his security, his comfort; he is in
silence, in long memory, in waiting, in provisional self-depreciation, and in
self-humiliation. A race of such men will, in the end, inevitably be cleverer
than the race of aristocrats, and it will honor sharp-wittedness to a much
greater degree, i.e., as an absolutely vital condition for its existence. . . . The noble person will respect his
enemy, and respect is already a bridge to love . . . . Indeed he requires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction,
nor could he tolerate any other enemy than one in whom he find nothing to
despise and much to esteem. Imagine, on the other hand, the ‘enemy’ as conceived by the rancorous man! For
this is his true creative achievement: he has conceived the ‘evil enemy,’ the
Evil One, as a fundamental idea, and then as a pendant he has conceived a Good
One –himself. (from the First Essay:“’Good and Evil,’
‘Good and Bad’.”( pp.171-173)
And on the abuse of ideas, he describes the fraud of
‘objective idealism’:
But to return to business: our inquiry into the origins of that other notion of goodness, as
conceived by the resentful, demand to be completed. There is nothing
very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding
it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs
whisper among themselves, ‘These birds of prey are evil, and does not this give
us a right to say that whatever is the opposite of a bird of prey must be
good?’ there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument –though the
birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, ‘We have nothing against
these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender
lamb.’ –To expect that strength will not manifest itself as strength, as the
desire to overcome, to appropriate, to have enemies, obstacles, and triumphs,
is every bit as absurd as to expect that weakness will manifest itself as
strength. A quantum of strength is equivalent to a quantum of urge, will,
activity, and it is only the snare of language (of the arch-fallacies of reason
petrified in language), presenting all activity as conditioned by an agent –the
‘subject’ – that blinds us to this fact. For, just as popular superstition
divorces the lightening form its
brilliance, viewing the latter as an activity whose subject is the lightening,
so does popular morality divorce strength from its manifestations, as thought
there were behind the strong a neutral agent, free to manifest its stringy or
contain it. But no such agent exists, there is no ‘being’ behind the doing,
acting, becoming; the ‘doer’ has simply been added to the deed by the
imagination –the doing is everything. The common man actually do7ubles the
doing by making the lightning flash; he states the same event once as cause and
then again as effect. The natural scientists are no better when they say that
‘energy moves,’ ’energy causes.’ For all its detachment and freedom from emotion,
our science is still the dupe of linguistic habits; it has never yet got rid of
those changelings called ‘subjects.’ The atom is none such changeling, another
is the Kantian ‘thing-in-itself.’ Small wonder, then, that the repressed and
smoldering emotions of vengeance and hatred have taken advantage of this
superstition and in fact espoused no belief more ardently than that it is
within the discretion of the strong to be weak, of the bird of prey to be a
lamb. Thus they assume the right of calling the bird of prey to account for
being a bird of prey. We can hear the oppressed, downtrodden, violated
whispering among themselves with the wily vengefulness of the impotent, ‘Let us
be unlike those evil ones. Let us be good. And the good shall be he who does
not do violence, does not attack or retaliate, who leaves vengeance to God,
who, like us, lives hidden, who shuns all that is evil, and altogether asks
very little of life –like us, the patient, the humble, the just ones.’ Read in
cold blood, this means nothing more than ‘We weak ones are, in fact , weak. It is a good thing that we do nothing for which
we are not strong enough.’ But this plain fact, this basic prudence, which even
the insects have (who, in circumstances of great danger, sham death in order
not to have to ‘do’ too much) has tricked itself out in the garb of quiet,
virtuous resignation, thanks to the duplicity of importance –as though the
weakness of the weak, which is after all his essence, his natural way of being,
his sole and inevitable reality, were a spontaneous act, a meritorious deed.
This sort of person requires the belief in a ‘free subject’ able to choose
indifferently, out of that instinct of self-preservation which notoriously
justifies every kind of lie. It may well be that to this day the subject, or in
popular language the soul, has been the most viable of all articles of faith
simply because it makes it possible for the majority of mankind –i.e., the weak
and oppressed of every sort—to practice the sublime sleight of hand which gives
weakness the appearance of free choice and one’s natural disposition the
distinction of merit.
Would anyone care to learn something about
the way in which ideas are manufactured? Does anyone have the nerve? . . . Well then, go ahead! There’s a chink
through which you can peek into this murky shop. But wait just a moment, Mr.
Foolhardy; your eyes must grow accustomed to the fickle light . . . Al right,
tell me what’s going on in there, audacious fellow; now I am the one who is
listening.
‘I
can’t see a thing, but I hear all the more. There’s a low, cautious whispering
in every nook and corner. I have a notion these people are lying. All the
sounds are sugary and soft. No doubt you were right; they are transmuting
weakness into merit.’
‘Go
on.’
‘Impotence, which cannot retaliate, into
kindness; pusillanimity into humility; submission before those one hate into
obedience to One of whom they say that he has commanded this submission –they
call him God. The inoffensiveness of the weak, his cowardice, his ineluctable
standing and waiting at doors, are being given honorific titles such as
patience; to be unable to avenge oneself is called to be unwilling to avenge
oneself –even forgiveness (‘for they know not what they do –we alone know what
they do.’) Also there’s some talk of living one’s enemy –accompanied by much
sweat.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’m sure they are quite miserable, all
these whisperers and smalltime counterfeiters, even though they huddle close
together for warmth. But they tell me that this very misery is the sign of
their election by God, that one beats the dogs one loves best, that this misery is perhaps also a preparation, a test, a kind of
training, perhaps even more than that: some5thing for which eventually they
will be compensated with tremendous interest –in gold? No, in
happiness. They call this bliss.’
“Go on.”
“Now they tell me that not only are they
better than the mighty of this earth, whose spittle they must lick (not from
fear –by no means—but because God commands us to honor our superiors), but they
are even better off, or at least they will be better off someday. But I’ve had
all I can stand. The smell is too much for me. This shop where they manufacture
ideals seems to me to stink of lies.”
“But just a moment.
You haven’t told me anything about the greatest feat of these black magicians,
who precipitate the white milk of loving-kindness out of every kind of
blackness. Haven’t you noticed their most consummate sleight of hand, their
boldest, finest, most brilliant trick? Just watch! These vermin, full of
vindictive hatred, what are they brewing out of their own poisons? Have you
ever heard vengeance and hatred mentioned? Would you ever guess, if you only
listened to their words, that these are men bursting with hatred?”
“I see what you mean. I’ll open my ears
again –and stop my nose. Now I can make out what they seem to have been saying
all along: ‘We, the good ones are also the just ones.’ They call the thing they
seek not retribution but triumph of justice; the thing they hate is not their
enemy, by no means –they hate injustice, ungodliness; the thing they hope for
and believe in is not vengeance, the sweet exultation of vengeance (‘sweeter
than honey’ as Homer said) but ‘the triumph of God, who is just, over the
godless’; what remains to them to love on this earth is not their ‘brothers in
hatred, but what they call their ‘brothers in love’ –all who are good and
just.”
“And what do they call that which confronts
them in all their sufferings –their phantasmagoria of future bliss?”
“Do I hear correctly? They call it Judgment
Day, the coming of their kingdom, the ‘Kingdom of God.’ Meanwhile they live in
‘faith,’ in ‘love,’ in ‘hope.’”
“Stop! I’ve heard
enough.”(pp.178-182)
And, again…. on feelings of guilt, Nietzsche writes:
Then the guild-ridden man seized upon
religion in order to exacerbate his self-torment to the utmost. The thought of
being in God’s debt became his new instrument of torture. He focused in God the
last of the opposites he could find to his true and inveterate animal
instincts, making these a sin against God …. He stretched himself upon the
contradiction ‘God’ and ‘Devil’ as on a rack. . . . In such psychological
cruelty we see an insanity of the will that is without parallel: man’s will to
find himself guilty, and unredeemably so; his will to
believe that he might be punished to all eternity without ever expunging his
guilt; his will to poison the very foundation of things with the problem of
guilt and punishment and thus to cut off once and for all his escape from the
labyrinth of obsession; his will to erect an ideal (God’s holiness) in order to
assure himself of his own absolute unworthiness. What a mad, unhappy animal is
man! What strange notions occur to him, what perversities, what paroxysms of
nonsense, what bestialities of idea burst from him, the moment he is prevented
ever so little from being a beast of action! . . . All of this is exceedingly
curious and interesting, but dyed with such a dark, somber, enervating sadness
that one must resolutely tear away one’s gaze. Here, no doubt, is sickness, the
most terrible sickness that has wasted man thus far. And if one is still able
to hear –but how few these days have ears to hear it! –in this night of torment
and absurdity the cry love ring out, the cry of rapt longing, of redemption in
love, he must turn away with a shudder of invincible horror. . . . Man harbors too much horror, the earth has
been a lunatic asylum for too long.(from the Second
Essay: “’Guilt,’ ‘Bad Conscience,’ and Related Matters,” pp.226-227)
This should take care, once and for all, of
the origins of ‘Our Holy Lord.’ --A
single look at the Greek gods will convince us that a belief in gods need not
result in morbid imaginations, that there are nobler ways of creating divine
figments—ways which do not lead to the kind of self-crucifixion and
self-punishment in which Europe, for millennia now, has excelled. . . . [T]he Greeks, even in the heyday of their
prosperity and strength, allowed that foolishness, lack of discretion, slight
mental aberrations might be the source of much evil and disaster. Foolishness,
not sin . . . . But even those mental aberrations were a problem. ‘How can such
a thing happen to people like us, nobly bred, happy, virtuous, well educated?’ For many centuries noble Greeks would ask
themselves this question whenever one of their number
had defiled himself by one of those incomprehensible crimes. ‘Well, he must
have been deluded by a god,’ they would finally say, shaking their heads. This
was a typically Greek solution. It was the office of the gods to justify, up to
a point, the ill ways of man, to serve as ‘sources’ of evil. In those days they
were not agents of punishment but, what is nobler, repositories of guilt.(pp.227-228)
The 13 items below offer CEIMSA readers the
opportunity to evaluate the social and ideological obstacles which are often
confronted when we attempt to find collective solutions to our everyday
problems. These obstacles are seem more clearly than ever to exist as part of a
larger structure which serve as a function within a system that has been
designed to prevent us from orienting ourselves toward fulfilling some of our
most basic human needs, such as community, creativity, and respect (and in many
cases depriving us of our animal needs for uncontaminated air, water and food,
shelter, and affection.)
Item
A.,
from Moshé Machover, is a call for support for Palestinian resistance from the
organization Assawra, with a response by George Pumphrey.
Item
B.,
from The New York Times, is video report on
Israeli military tactics known as ‘cutting the grass’
to maintain the status quo in Gaza.
Item
C.,
from Black
Agenda Report, is an article by Glen Ford analyzing the shift of power relations in the Middle
East.
Item
D.,
from Fox News, is a damning report on
Neo-Con strategies and the US ‘loss’ of the Middle East.
Item
E.,
from Garance Upham, is
report on Argentina's 'vulture
fund' crisis, which threatens profound consequences for international financial
system.
Item
F.,
from The
Independent, is an article by Patrick Cockburn on the fiercest wars ahead in Iraq.
Item
G.,
from Syria News, is an interview with Middle
East political insider, Nabil Naim,
discussing (in Arabic, with English subtitles) the Grand Strategy in Middle
East of US-Israeli political elites and their latest tactics, according to Arabi Souri.
Item
H.,
is a Russian Television interview with NYU
Professor Mark Crispin Miller,
discussing ‘The Forbidden Bookshelf’.
Item I., from Information Clearing House, is an article by Glen Ford on the new curriculum in US universities: “The Terrorism Studies.”
Item
J., from Information Clearing House, is a copy of the original document
outlining the US-Israeli Grand Strategy (a.k.a. “Clean Break”) in the Middle
East, written at the end of the last decade by the Study Group on a New
Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.
Item
K.,
from ZNet, is an
article by Pepe Escobar on the Jihad Summer of 2014
and the new “Islamic State”.
Item
L.,
from Information
Clearing House, is some
good news by James Petras on the fruits of class struggle in China.
Item M., from National Security Archives, is
newly released documentation of the Brazilian
military regime’s use of a "sophisticated and elaborate psychophysical
duress system" to "intimidate and terrify" suspected leftist
militants in the early 1970s.
And
finally, we invite CEIMSA readers to visit the discussions on “The Phoenix
Program” and “The New Phoenix Program”: the history and the future of the social engineering in “Managed Chaos,”
with author Douglas
Valentine :
The ‘New’ Phoenix Program
http://wn.com/the_cia's_operation_phoenix_program_1968-1972
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
of American Studies
University
of Grenoble-3
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
_______________
A.
From Moshé Machover :
Dates: 9 July
2014
Subject : [Assawra1] Israël rattrapé par ses demons.
Assawra
Site du Mouvement démocratique arabe
"Résister à l'occupation, c'est vivre libre"
A
RESPONSE BY GEORGE PUMPHREY (from Berlin)
Dear
Francis,
I
have been receiving your mails for quite a few years. I congratulate
you on your work in keeping the
discussion going. If I were still in
France,
I would probably be participating more.
I
am now writing because in the link that you sent, I discovered a very
common mistake that
authors make when referring to attacks that take
place against
Israelis. The Israeli authorities almost always attribute
it to Palestinians as a first
suspicion. There is almost never a
confirmation of this first
suspicion, but the media has long since
transformed the suspicion
into a hard fact. The author
writes: "Tout
d’abord l’émotion, après l’annonce le 30 juin de l’abominable
assassinat
de trois adolescents israéliens en Cisjordanie,
vraisemblablement par
des militants du Hamas."
I
would allege that the Israeli government does not have the slightest
bit of evidence to attribute the
deaths to Hamas. The government is
seeking a reason to
"punish" Hamas for forming a unity government. So if
it links Hamas to the deaths - even
without evidence - the Israeli
population will find it
justified to AGAIN use the population of Gaza
for target practice.
For
your information, in the attachment I am including a paper I did a
few years ago, dealing with the
Zionist manipulation of "anti-Semitism." *
My
examples come from France. (In Germany it is nearly impossible to do
this research,
because there is no public follow-up on the cases. A
"suspicion" of Judeophobia
suffices for it to be classed as a
Judeophobic
attack.
(The paper is long. The part dealing with the
contradiction between first
suspicions and facts is in the sector
entitled
"Statistics another form of propaganda" at the bottom of page
8.)
*[For a copy of
this paper, please use the following link: http://www.palaestina-portal.eu/Stimmen_international/pumphrey_george_zionist_judeophobic_semitism.htm.]
Again,
thanks for the information. I wish you all the best.
George
Pumphrey,
Berlin,
Germany
B.
From The New
York Times :
Dates: 9 July
2014
Subject : « Cutting the Grass ».
'Cutting the Grass' of Hamas's
Militancy
How Israel's
latest airstrikes on Gaza are seen as part of a larger tactic known
metaphorically as "cutting the grass", the belief that military
incursions are inevitable to manage conflict.
(Video)
_______________
C.
From Black
Agenda Report :
Dates: 2 July
2014
Subject : The World Will Never be the Same.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/
The Superpower and the Caliphate
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/superpower-and-caliphate
by
Glen Ford
&
The Contradictions of the U.S. Riding the Jihadist Tiger
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12004
&
ISIS Declares Caliphate As US
Middle East Policy Continues To Unravel
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12059
_______________
D.
From : Fox News :
Dates: 6 July
2014
Subject : The Neo-Cons concede defeat?
Video purportedly shows ISIS leader delivering
sermon in Iraq
_______________
E.
From: Garance Upham :
Dates: 5 July
2014
Subject : UNCTAD on the consequences of the Argentina case –
debt.
[Argentina's 'vulture
fund' crisis threatens profound consequences for international financial system]
25
June 2014
In
a special online essay, UNCTAD reiterates its long-standing call for a
sovereign debt workout mechanism.
Global
and systemic implications of United States Supreme Court rulings in favour of hedge funds over Argentina on 2001 defaulted
bonds.
The
United States Supreme Court issued a ruling on 16 June 2014 declining to hear
Argentina's appeal against a lower New York court decision that had ordered it
to pay suing hedge funds $1.33 billion, which is principal plus interest for
holdout bonds. This was followed shortly by another decision by the Supreme
Court to order the relevant financial institutions of the United States of
America to turn over information to these hedge funds about assets that
Argentina holds worldwide, including accounts held by entities of the
Government of Argentina and by individual officials1.
These
two rulings targeted at Argentina's 2005 and 2010 debt swaps, in the wake of
its catastrophic 2001-2002 default on $100 billion bonds governed by New York
law, resonate well beyond the borders of Argentina and the United States. The
rulings are a resounding victory for the specific hedge funds that have held
out on Argentine debt swaps. They also open the door for other
"vulture" funds and holdout investors to come forward to request full
payment on Argentine bonds, estimated at around $15 billion. If Argentina pays
the holdout bond holders, it must extend full payment to the bond holders that
accepted the 2005 or 2010 debt swaps, due to a "Rights upon Future
Offers" clause in its law. This would amount to an estimated cost of over
US$120 billion2. In fact, the rulings could open floodgates to other similar
cases depending on interpretations given by courts under New York law, British
law or other laws. Copycats will abound.
But
they also set legal precedents which could have profound consequences for the
international financial system:
• First, by removing financial incentives
for creditors to participate in orderly debt workouts, the rulings will make
future debt restructuring even more difficult, in particular for outstanding
bonds without a Collective Action Clause, the actual amount of which is unknown
but is likely to be large.
• Second, obligating third-party financial
institutions to provide information about assets of sovereign borrowers will
have a significant impact on the international financial system as it forces
financial service institutions to provide confidential information on the
sovereign borrower's global financial transactions to facilitate the
enforcement of debt contracts for the creditors.
• Third, the ruling will erode sovereign
immunity.
A setback for
debt restructuring
After
defaulting on its $100 billion sovereign bonds in 2001, Argentina offered debt
swaps in 2005 and in 2010. Investors holding about 93 per cent of the old bonds
participated in these debt swaps. The Congress of Argentina passed a law in
February 2005 that forbade the Government to make payments on any bonds not
tendered, to later reopen the exchange or to settle with non-participating
creditors one by one on the side. However, a handful of hedge funds purchased
the bonds after the default when they were at deep discounts. Since then, they
have repeatedly demanded to be paid at 100 per cent of their face value. This
is considered by many as predatory. For example, NML Capital purchased the
majority of their Argentine bonds from June-November 2008, paying an estimated
$48.7 million for over $220 million in defaulted bonds, a price of just over 20
cents on the dollar3.
According
to estimates by Morgan Stanley, bond holders who accepted the 2005 offer have
received returns of about 90 per cent4 thanks in particular to a coupon linked
to gross domestic product growth, which significantly increased the amount
actually received. In response, the holdout bond holders led by NML Captial changed tactics and took out law suits (based on
the pari passu, or equal
treatment, clause in bond contracts) in New York's lower court which would tie
any future payments on restructured bonds to payment in full to holdout bond
holders This was an unheard of interpretation of the clause which shocked even
veterans in the debt restructuring world. However, on 18 November 2013, the
United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favour
of NML Capital. Argentina appealed the ruling to the United States Supreme
Court. With the Supreme Court leaving the lower court rulings intact, it has
created a precedent for awarding holdout creditors and penalizing creditors who
participated in a debt restructuring.
Since
the Argentine default, there has been a more prevalent introduction of the
Collective Action Clause in bond contracts which has the potential of
restricting the likelihood of a small number of creditors holding out on debt
restructuring. However, it is important to note that existing bonds without
Collective Action Clause will take years to expire. This means that, with the
Supreme Court rulings, the world has limited tools to initiate debt
restructuring for bonds with a pari passu clause and without Collective Action Clause. The
Supreme Court ruling has given bond holders a strong weapon to get full
payments. As stated in the recently published International Monetary Fund (IMF)
paper on debt restructuring, "in essence, the [United States] courts have
interpreted a 'boiler plate provision' of these contracts (the pari passu clause) as requiring a
sovereign debtor to make full payment on a defaulted claim (in this case, held
by the secondary market purchaser) if it makes any payments on the restructured
bonds"5.
Given
such consequences, the Governments of France and Germany supported Argentina in
its legal struggle. Economists such as Joseph Stiglitz
and Anne Kruger petitioned against the hedge funds.
Obliging
financial institutions to assist debt collectors
The
Second Circuit also rules that third parties (banks in this case) who make
payments on behalf of the Government of Argentina to bond holders which
participated in the two debt swaps will be punished and viewed and treated as
being in contempt of law if they continue to make such payments and holdouts
are paid in full. On top of this, the second ruling of the Supreme Court
confirmed NML Capital's request that banks involved in handling the payment of
Argentine bond holders must turn over information to holdout bond holders on
assets that Argentina holds worldwide. Obliging financial institutions to
provide information about assets of sovereign borrowers' assets worldwide will
have significant impact on the international financial system as it forces
financial service providers to provide confidential information on the
sovereign borrower's global financial transactions to facilitate enforcement of
debt contracts on behalf of the creditors. Third parties have been dragged from
the wings to centre stage. In addition, it also seems they are obliged to
assist holdout bond holders in reclaiming their debt. Once again, exchange
holders are punished and holdouts are rewarded.
Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member in the Supreme Court's group of justices deciding
the case, asked: "By what authorization does a court in the United States
become a 'clearinghouse for information' about any and all property held by
Argentina abroad?6" By setting this legal
precedent, it would not be surprising to see changes in the financial market
and ways to aid creditors in enforcing contracts and punishing borrowers.
Erosion of
sovereign immunity
The
ruling does not only impact the financial service providers involved, it also
severely erodes sovereign immunity and is not in compliance with the United
States Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The Government of the United States
filed a brief in favour of Argentina and stated that
a ruling in favour of bond holders would harm
international relations and could provoke "reciprocal adverse treatment of
the United States in foreign courts"7. An official representing the
Administration cautioned at the Court that "the United States would be
gravely concerned about an order of a trial court in a foreign country, entered
at the behest of a private person, seeking to establish a clearinghouse in that
country of all the United States' assets"8. However, the Chief Justice of
the United States Supreme Court did not seem to feel any apprehension. In
response to concern of the Government of the United States on non-compliance
with the Immunities Act, the Justice advised the Government to amend the Act.
With
the Supreme Court ruling, the likelihood of aggressive holdout investors
snatching assets of defaulted sovereigns might increase. In 2012, NML Capital
detained an Argentine navy vessel in Ghana as part of its effort to gain
repayment on the defaulted securities.
Following
an Argentine proposal to pay exchange bond holders in Argentina under Argentine
law on 17 June, one day after the Supreme Court rulings, the United States
Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that this kind of act is in violation of
the rulings and proceedings now in place in the Southern District of New York.
Restating the
case for a sovereign debt workout mechanism
The
United States Supreme Court rulings have once again demonstrated what can
happen in the absence of an international debt workout mechanism. This vacuum
has led to fragmentation of legal forums, thereby creating inconsistency and
unpredictability. Different courts have very different interpretations of the
same contractual clause and can impose a wide array of rulings. Politics and
interests groups can impact on the outcome of rulings and debt restructurings,
compromising consistency and fairness.
The
rulings have made future debt restructuring much more difficult as debtors are
left with only moral suasion and foreign relations as weapons to encourage
creditor coordination. They have also strengthened the hand of creditors even
though their behaviour can be among the underlying
causes of debt crises.
The
June 2014 IMF Policy Paper entitled "The Fund's lending framework and
sovereign debt - preliminary considerations" and its annexes (in a
separate paper) reviewed the lessons of past debt restructurings. However, when
it comes to possible directions for reform, the proposals are to maintain a
market-based approach (based on debt contracts) and debt reprofiling
- extending debt maturity - based on the IMF's judgement
that an unsustainable debt situation exists. Debt reprofiling
has the potential to trigger credit default swaps and is viewed by some as a
debt restructuring. One wonders whether the IMF is best positioned to give
timely and fair judgements and how unsustainable debt
could eventually be restructured when the world does not possess sufficient
tools to deal with the problems encountered so far. To rely on the market
approach under which different courts are to interpret clauses of the debt
contracts as the United States Supreme Court has done would lead to outcomes
with "broad systemic implications", just as the IMF warned.
In
this chaotic context, the formulation of global and harmonious rules and
principles guiding sovereign debt restructurings has become of paramount
importance. This is why UNCTAD has been a long-standing advocate of a sovereign
debt workout mechanism and is currently working on a project financed by the
Government of Norway to further clarify how it could work in practice. The list
of general principles and issues identified thus far by a group of experts
under the project includes:
• Standstill/stay of litigation
• Debt thresholds and indicators
• Transparency
• Comprehensiveness and seniority (equity
among creditors, collective action
issues)
• Legitimacy
• Impartiality (institutional)
• Institutional oversight and the relation
between international and domestic
levels.
________________________________________
2 Wall Street
Journal, 2014, Argentina wants to continue paying its debts: but they won't let
it, 21 June.
3 A Phillips and J
Johnston, 2013, Argentina vs. the vultures: What you need to know, 2 April,
Center for Economic and Policy Research.
4 D Benson, 2012, Billionaire
hedge funds snub 90% returns, Bloomberg News, 23 January.
5 IMF, 2014, The
Fund's lending framework and sovereign debt - preliminary considerations, IMF
Policy Paper, June.
6 United States,
Supreme Court of the United States, 2013, Syllabus, Republic of Argentina v.
NML Capital.
7 United States,
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 2013, Brief for the
United States of America as amicus curiae.
8 New York Times,
2014, Argentina's debt appeal is rejected by Supreme Court, 16 June.
_______________
F.
From : The Independent :
Dates: 6 July
2014
Subject : The Risk of a Ukraine Bloodbath.
A
demoralized army is hoping that the US will step in with drones, but their use
could bring devastating revenge attacks.
As Shia Shrines Are Targeted And Tikrit Is Strangled, The
Fiercest Of Wars Lies Ahead
by
Patrick Cockburn
_______________
G.
From : Syria News :
Dates: 2 July
2014
Subject : The ‘Clean Break” Strategy in the Middle East, and
its Latest Tactics.
http://www.syrianews.cc/author/arabi-souri/
Nabil Naim, an insider into the political and revolutionary
events in the Middle East, says that Muslims are being conned by a
sophisticated scheme drawn up by Zionists.
Exposed: Obama Regime's Support Of Al
Qaeda And ISIS
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39005.htm
(Video)
_______________
H.
From: Mark
Crispin Miller :
Dates: 25 June
2014
Subject : The Forbidden Bookshelf.
http://memoryholeblog.com/?s=clean+break
These 5 Censored Books
Tell a History the Establishment Wants Hidden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RcHRaxN-u5U
(interview with Professor
Mark Crispin Miller)
_______________
I.
From : Information Clearing House :
Dates: 6 July 2014
Subject : The New Curriculum in US Universities: “Terrorism
Studies”.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
The
military has commissioned U.S. universities to help it figure out how to deal
with dissatisfied and, therefore, dangerous populations all around the world,
including the United States.
U.S. Funds
“Terror Studies” to Dissect and Neutralize Social Movements
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39009.htm
by
Glen Ford
_______________
J.
From : Information Clearing House :
Dates: 6 July
2014
Subject : "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward
2000."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm
A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/142465246/A-Clean-Break-a-New-Strategy-for-Securing-the-Realm
&
History Commons
______________
K.
From : ZNet :
Dates: 6 July
2014
Subject : The Jihad Summer.
Arab Spring, Jihad Summer
by Pepe Escobar
Welcome
to IS. No typo; the final goal may be (indiscriminate) regime change, but for
the moment name change will do. With PR flair, at the start of Ramadan, the
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, or ISIL – the Islamic State of the
Levant – to some) solemnly declared, from now on, it will be known as Islamic
State (IS).
“To
be or not to be” is so … metaphysically outdated. IS is
– and here it is – in full audio glory. And we’re talking about the full
package – Caliph included: “the slave of Allah, Ibrahim Ibn
‘Awwad Ibn Ibrahim Ibn ‘Ali Ibn Muhammad al-Badrial-Hashimi al-Husayni al-Qurashi by lineage,
as-Samurra’i by birth and upbringing, al-Baghdadi by
residence and scholarship”. Or, to put it more simply, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
IS
has virtually ordered “historic” al-Qaeda – yes, that 9/11-related (or not)
plaything of one Osama bin Laden – as well as every other jihadi
outfit on the planet, to pledge allegiance to the new imam, in theological
theory the new lord over every Muslim. There’s no evidence Osama’s former
sidekick, Ayman “the doctor” al-Zawahiri
will obey, not to mention 1.5 billion Muslims across the world. Most probably
al-Qaeda will say “we are the real deal” and a major theological catfight will
be on.
After
all, in Syria, ISIL as well as Jabhat al-Nusra were initially fighting under the banner of al-Qaeda,
until the brand – in spectacular fashion – decided to dump al-Baghdadi. He and
ISIL went too far – with all those videos of decapitations and crucifixions and
serial profanation of Shi’ite, Sufi and Christian
sanctuaries.
Al-Baghdadi,
born Ibrahim al-Badri in Samarra, is an average Sunni
Iraqi cleric with a degree in pedagogy from the University of Baghdad. His
alter ago was born after Shock and Awe in 2003, and soon metamorphosed into a
de facto serial killer – blowing up Shi’ite kids at
ice-cream shops or scores of women at Shi’ite
weddings.
ISIL’s
track record in Syria includes banning every flag apart from its own; the
destruction of any “polytheist” temple or sanctuary (except if it is Sunni);
and strict imposition of Islamically
correct women wear. Most of all, it is a track record of terror. This is not an
army, rather a well-trained militia of professional mujahid,
European passport holders included, with battlefield experience in Iraq,
Afghanistan and, to a lesser degree, Chechnya. Heavy weaponizing
is petrodollar-financed – the usual, wealthy “Gulf donors”, which does not
exclude official connections.
Sources
of income diversified mightily when ISIL captured the oilfields surrounding Deir Ezzor in Syria; and after
the recent offensive across Niniveh province in Iraq,
they were able to lay their hands on vast arsenals of heavy artillery, lots of
cash and gold bullion and, why not, US Humvees left behind.
Their trademark, of course, are those columns of brand new white Toyota Land
cruisers – free off road advertising Toyota HQ in Japan may not find
particularly welcome.
Loaded
with oil and profiting from tax revenue, IS is now
firmly on its way to provide (minimal) services and support a (mighty) Jihadi Army – much like the Taliban from 1996 to 2001. One
may be sure IS will continue its massive “social engagement” strategy; talk
about a chatty Caliphate which loves YouTube, Facebook
and Twitter. No wonder they are a hit among Google generation recruits – as
well as becoming fund-raising aces via gruesome videos. In thesis,
indoctrination progresses hand in hand with “charity work”; residents of
Aleppo, for instance, can dwell on how ISIL (gruesomely) looks and feels on the
ground.
Mission forever
unaccomplished
It’s unclear how the
new IS reality will play on the ground. The new Caliph has in fact declared a
jihad on all that basket of corrupt and/or incompetent Middle East “leaders” –
so some fierce “battle for survival” reaction from the Houses of Saud and Thani, for instance, is expected. It’s not far-fetched to
picture al-Baghdadi dreaming of lording over Saudi oilfields – after
decapitating all Shi’ite workers, of course.
And
that’s just a start; in one of their Tweeter accounts IS has published a map of
all the domains they intend to conquer within the span of five years; Spain,
Northern Africa, the Balkans, the whole Middle East and large swathes of Asia.
Well, they are certainly more ambitious than NATO.
Being
such a courageous bunch, the House of Saud is now tempted to accept that
imposing regime change on Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq is a bad idea. That puts them in direct
conflict with the Obama administration, whose plan A, B and C is regime change.
Turkey
– the former seat of the Caliphate, by the way – remains mute. No wonder;
Ankara – crucially – is the top logistical base of IS. Caliph Erdogan’s got to be musing about his own future, now that
he’s facing competition. In theory, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan are all
saying they’re ready to fight what would be a “larger-scale war” than that gift
that keeps on giving, the original, Cheney junta-coined GWOT (global war on
terror).
And
then there’s the future of the new $500 million Obama fund to “appropriately
vetted” rebels in Syria, which in fact means the expansion of covert CIA
“training facilities” in Jordan and Turkey heavily infiltrated/profited from by IS. Think of hordes of new IS recruits posing as
“moderate rebels” getting ready for a piece of the action.
It’s
easier for Brazil to win the World Cup with a team of crybabies with no
tactical nous than having US Secretary of State John Kerry and his State
Department ciphers understand that the Syrian “opposition” is controlled by jihadis. But then again, they do know – and that perfectly
fits into the Empire of Chaos’s not so hidden Global War on Terror (GWOT)
agenda of an ever-expanding proxy war in both Syria and Iraq fueled by terror
financing.
So
13 years ago Washington crushed both al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Then the Taliban were reborn. Then came Shock and Awe.
Then came “Mission Accomplished”. Then al-Qaeda was
introduced in Iraq. Then al-Qaeda was dead because Osama bin Laden was dead.
Then came ISIL. And now there’s IS. And we start all
over again, not in the Hindu Kush, but in the Levant. With a
new Osama.
What’s
not to like? If anyone thinks this whole racket is part of a new live Monty
Python sketch ahead of their reunion gig this month in London, that’s because
it is.
______________
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan:
How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007),
Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge and
Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
_______________
L.
From:
Information Clearing House :
Dates: 7 July
2014
Subject : The Fruits of Class Struggle in China : Higher
Wages!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm
The
sharp and sustained rise in Chinese wages, resulting from the class struggle,
has world historical significance as it ripples through the global economy by
setting in motion a chain of positive socio-political movements.
Positive Thoughts on Dark Times
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39007.htm
by
James Petras
_______________
M.
From : National Security Archive :
Dates: 8 July
2014
Subject : BRAZIL: TORTURE TECHNIQUES REVEALED IN DECLASSIFIED
U.S. DOCUMENTS.
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
-BRAZIL:
TORTURE TECHNIQUES REVEALED IN DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUMENTS
-DICTATORSHIP-ERA
RECORDS GIVEN BY VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN TO PRESIDENT ROUSSEFF DETAIL
"PSYCHOPHYSICAL" SYSTEMS OF TORTURE, SECRET EXECUTIONS
-43
STATE DEPARTMENT RECORDS MADE PUBLIC BY BRAZILIAN TRUTH COMMISSION
National
Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 478
Posted July 8,
2014
Edited
by Peter Kornbluh
For
more information contact:
Peter
Kornbluh 202/374-7281 or peter.kornbluh@gmail.com
Washington, D.C.,
July 8, 2014 -- The Brazilian military regime employed a "sophisticated
and elaborate psychophysical duress system" to "intimidate and
terrify" suspected leftist militants in the early 1970s, according to a
State Department report dated in April 1973 and made public yesterday. Among
the torture techniques used during the military era, the report detailed
"special effects" rooms at Brazilian military detention centers in
which suspects would be "placed nude" on a metal floor "through
which electric current is pulsated." Some suspects were
"eliminated" but the press was told they died in "shoot
outs" while trying to escape police custody. "The shoot-out technique
is being used increasingly," the cable sent by the U.S. Consul General in
Rio de Janeiro noted, "in order to deal with the public relations aspect
of eliminating subversives," and to "obviate 'death-by-torture'
charges in the international press."
Peter
Kornbluh who directs the National Security Archive's
Brazil Documentation Project called the document "one of the most detailed
reports on torture techniques ever declassified by the U.S. government."
Titled
"Widespread Arrests and Psychophysical Interrogation of Suspected
Subversives," the document was among 43 State Department cables and
reports that Vice President Joseph Biden turned over on June 17 to President Dilma Rousseff during his trip to
Brazil for the World Cup competition for use by the Brazilian Truth Commission.
The Commission is in the final phase of a two-year investigation of human
rights atrocities during the military dictatorship which lasted from 1964 to
1985. On July 2, the Commission posted all 43 documents on its website,
accompanied by this statement: "The CNV greatly appreciates the initiative
of the U.S. government to make these records available to Brazilian society and
hopes that this collaboration will continue to progress."
The
records range in date from 1967 to 1977. They report on a wide range of human
rights-related issues, among them: secret torture detention centers in Sao
Paulo, the military's counter-subversion operations, attitudes of the Church on
human rights violations, and the regime's hostile reaction in 1977 to the first
State Department human rights report on abuses. Some of the documents had been
previously declassified under routine release procedures; others, including the
April 1973 report on psychophysical torture, were reviewed for declassification
as recently as June 5, 2014, in preparation for Biden's trip.
During
his meeting with President Rousseff, Biden announced
that the Obama administration would undertake a broader review of still highly
classified U.S. records on Brazil, among them CIA and Defense Department
documents, to assist the Commission in finalizing its report. "I hope that
in taking steps to come to grips with our past we can find a way to focus on
the immense promise of the future," he noted.
Since
the inception of the Truth Commission in May 2012, the National Security
Archive has been assisting the Commissioners in obtaining U.S. records for
their investigation, and pressing the Obama administration to fulfill its
commitment to a new standard of global transparency and the right-to-know by
conducting a special, Brazil declassification project on the military era.
"Advancing truth, justice and openness is precisely the way these
classified U.S. historical records should be used," according to Kornbluh. "Biden's declassified diplomacy will not
only assist the Truth Commission in shedding light on the dark past of Brazil's
military era, but also create a foundation for a better and more transparent
future in U.S.-Brazilian relations."
To
call attention to the records and the Truth Commission's work, the Archive is
highlighting five key documents from Biden's timely donation.
Check
out today's posting at the National Security Archive's website -
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB478/
Find
us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive
Unredacted, the Archive
blog - http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
________________________________________________________
THE NATIONAL
SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and
library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The
Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive
receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication
royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.