Ukraine crisis: Poroshenko bruised by army retreat

20 February 2015 Last updated at 08:48
By David Stern
BBC News, Kiev


Damage in Vihlehirsk, near Debaltseve, testifies to the intensity of the fighting

Tensions in the ranks
Already there are rumblings of public discontent.

"I have seen this with my own eyes, on the battlefield and in the army headquarters, how military action is planned and executed," Semyon Semenchenko, commander of the volunteer Donbass battalion, told the BBC.

"I can assure you that we lost Debaltseve not because of the Russian military advantage, but because our generals refuse to take responsibility," he said.

Mr Semenchenko has proposed a "parallel" co-ordinating structure for the volunteer battalions fighting in the east. So far 13 battalion leaders have signed up, including Dmytro Yarosh of the nationalist Right Sector.

Mr Semenchenko insists this is not to replace, but to help, the army's general command in "information exchange, planning, logistical assistance and facilitating mobilisation."

Still, his announcement raised concerns. Eight battalion commanders have refused to join the body, calling on Mr Semenchenko to "end his daily populist and PR statements".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31552773

The night is long

By Vijay Prashad
Source: Frontline
February 20, 2015

Greece: ‘third world’ aid and debt

By Michael Roberts
Source: Michael Roberts Blog
February 22, 2015

BBC Breakfast - The horror of Dresden

Trapped and dying in Qatar

Emma Ruby-Sachs - Avaaz <avaaz@avaaz.org>
1:10 AM (9 hours ago)

Dear friends,

Thousands in Qatar are trapped working in horrific conditions, and barred from escaping home by abusive bosses. An American company could help free them and we can make their CEO act by bringing the slave horror right to her hometown. Join the call:

Forced to work under the desert’s scorching sun, denied food, drinking water, and barred from escaping home, thousands of men in Qatar are modern day slaves. And we can help free them.

Last year, one person died every other day building a billion dollar mega-project for Qatar's 2022 World Cup. A major part of the project is managed by an American company with a CEO who lives in a quiet part of Colorado. If more than 1 million of us stand together for freedom, we can confront her with our voices every time she leaves her house to go to work, or to ski, until she takes action.

This same tactic pushed Hilton Hotels to protect women against sex trafficking in days -- join the urgent call to help free Qatar's modern slaves:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/bloodiest_world_cup_loc/?bXOraab&v=54097

Qatar’s "guest worker" program is at the root of the problem. It lures people from Nepal and Sri Lanka with promises of good jobs, but when they arrive their employers confiscate their passports and force them to work long hours in 50 degree heat with no chance of escape.

The US company, CH2M Hill, say the local contractors and government laws are to blame, but CH2M Hill is the public face of World Cup construction. Their CEO can and must take a lead role in ensuring we don’t see seven more years of worker deaths. She could even threaten to take their business elsewhere unless this system is changed.

CH2M Hill has a responsibility to help stop this modern day slavery. Our call now could persuade CH2M Hill to speak out and then lead other companies to weigh in until every single worker has the freedom to return home. Click below to join the call -- when we reach 1 million, our voices will be delivered directly to CH2M Hill CEO Jacqueline Hinman again, and again and again:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/bloodiest_world_cup_loc/?bXOraab&v=54097

One big global outcry at the right time can save thousands of lives. When Hilton Hotels wasn't doing enough to protect women and girls from sex trafficking at their hotels, Avaaz staff brought our call to the CEO's front door and the policy was changed in days. Let's do it again

With hope,

Emma, Nell, Mais, Ricken, Alice and the whole Avaaz team

Sources:

Death toll among Qatar’s 2022 World Cup workers revealed (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/qatar-nepal-workers-world-cup-2022-death-toll-doha

Building a Better World Cup (Human Rights Watch)
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/qatar0612webwcover_0.pdf

At a Qatar Project Overseen by Americans, Workers Die Almost Daily (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-09-26/at-a-qatar-project-overseen-by-americans-workers-die-almost-daily

Qatar accused of dragging its feet over treatment of migrant workers
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/12/qatar-accused-dragging-feet-migrant-workers-world-cup-amnesty

Qatar risks losing World Cup without job reform (Reuters)
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/qatar-risks-losing-world-cup-without-job-reform-124324042--sow.html

(from an email)

Endless War Is Alive and... Bleeding

Published on Thursday, February 19, 2015
by Common Dreams

byRobert C. Koehler

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An armed motorcade belonging to members of Derna's Islamic Youth Council, consisting of former members of militias from the town of Derna, drive along a road in Derna, eastern Libya. (Photo: Reuters)

Venezuelan Opposition Mayor, Alias “The Vampire,” Arrested for Role in Blue Coup Plot

Last week, Ledezma, who is current Mayor of the Metropolitan Capital District of Caracas, signed a statement calling for a “National Transition Agreement” alongside opposition politicians, Maria Corina Machado and currently detained leader of the Popular Will party, Leopoldo Lopez.

The document calls on Venezuelans to unite behind a plan to remove elected President Nicolas Maduro and sets out an action programme for the would be provisional government. This includes facilitating the return of “exiled” Venezuelans, prosecuting current members of government and reaching out to international financial lending agencies such as the International Monetary Fund.

Circulated on February 11th, the statement was disclosed just a day before the attempted coup was set to unfold and was reportedly the signal to set the plan in motion.

“It has no base in any juridic text, it is a putschist act of conspiracy that is unfortunately to the liking of thousands of opposition militants who have been indoctrinated to attack democracy,” Constitutional Lawyer, Jesus Silva, told Venezuelanalysis.

1. Why would the U.S. want venezuela’s government overthrown?

There are straightforward principles and dynamics at work here. Washington wants to get rid of the Venezuelan government because it is independent of US designs for the region and because Venezuela has the greatest proven oil reserves in the world and uses its oil revenue to improve the quality of ordinary lives. Venezuela remains a source of inspiration for social reform in a continent ravaged by an historically rapacious U.S. An Oxfam report once famously described the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as ‘the threat of a good example’. That has been true in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez won his first election. The ‘threat’ of Venezuela is greater, of course, because it is not tiny and weak; it is rich and influential and regarded as such by China. The remarkable change in fortunes for millions of people in Latin America is at the heart of U.S. hostility. The U.S. has been the undeclared enemy of social progress in Latin America for two centuries. It doesn’t matter who has been in the White House: Barack Obama or Teddy Roosevelt; the US will not tolerate countries with governments and cultures that put the needs of their own people first and refuse to promote or succumb to U.S. demands and pressures. A reformist social democracy with a capitalist base – such as Venezuela – is not excused by the rulers of the world. What is inexcusable is Venezuela’s political independence; only complete deference is acceptable. The ‘survival’ of Chavista Venezuela is a testament to the support of ordinary Venezuelans for their elected government – that was clear to me when I was last there. Venezuela’s weakness is that the political ‘opposition’ — those I would call the ‘East Caracas Mob’ – represent powerful interests who have been allowed to retain critical economic power. Only when that power is diminished will Venezuela shake off the constant menace of foreign-backed, often criminal subversion. No society should have to deal with that, year in, year out.

2. What methods has the U.S. already used and would you anticipate their using to unseat the Bolivarians?

There are the usual crop of quislings and spies; they come and go with their media theatre of fake revelations, but the principal enemy is the media. You may recall the Venezuelan admiral who was one of the coup-plotters against Chavez in 2002, boasting during his brief tenure in power, ‘Our secret weapon was the media’. The Venezuelan media, especially television, were active participants in that coup, lying that supporters of the government were firing into a crowd of protestors from a bridge. False images and headlines went around the world. The New York Times joined in, welcoming the overthrow of a democratic ‘anti-American’ government; it usually does. Something similar happened in Caracas last year when vicious right-wing mobs were lauded as ‘peaceful protestors’ who were being ‘repressed’. This was undoubtedly the start of a Washington-backed ‘colour revolution’ openly backed by the likes of the National Endowment for Democracy – a user-friendly CIA clone. It was uncannily like the coup that Washington successfully staged in Ukraine last year. As in Kiev, in Venezuela the ‘peaceful protestors’ set fire to government buildings and deployed snipers and were lauded by western politicians and the western media. The strategy is almost certainly to push the Maduro government to the right and so alienate its popular base. Depicting the government as dictatorial and incompetent has long been an article of bad faith among journalists and broadcasters in Venezuela and in the US, the UK and Europe. One recent US ‘story’ was that of a ‘US scientist jailed for trying to help Venezuela build bombs’. The implication was that Venezuela was harbouring ‘nuclear terrorists’. In fact, the disgruntled nuclear physicist had no connection whatsoever with Venezuela.

All this is reminiscent of the unrelenting attacks on Chávez, each with that peculiar malice reserved for dissenters from the west’s ‘one true way’. In 2006, Britain’s Channel 4 News effectively accused the Venezuelan president of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran, an absurd fantasy. The Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, sneered at policies to eradicate poverty and presented Chávez as a sinister buffoon, while allowing Donald Rumsfeld, a war criminal, to liken Chavez to Hitler, unchallenged. The BBC is no different. Researchers at the University of the West of England in the UK studied the BBC’s systematic bias in reporting Venezuela over a ten-year period. They looked at 304 BBC reports and found that only three of these referred to any of the positive policies of the government. For the BBC, Venezuela’s democratic initiatives, human rights legislation, food programmes, healthcare initiatives and poverty reduction programmes did not exist. Mission Robinson, the greatest literacy programme in human history, received barely a passing mention. This virulent censorship by omission complements outright fabrications such as accusations that the Venezuelan government are a bunch of drug-dealers. None of this is new; look at the way Cuba has been misrepresented – and assaulted – over the years. Reporters Without Borders has just issued its worldwide ranking of nations based on their claims to a free press. The U.S. is ranked 49th, behind Malta, Niger, Burkino Faso and El Salvador.

3. Why might now be a prime time, internationally, for pushing toward a coup? If the primary problem is Venezuela being an example that could spread, is the emergence of a receptive audience for that example in Europe adding to the U.S. response?

Kicking Away the Ladder in Haiti

By Joe Emersberger
Source: teleSUR English
February 21, 2015

An overtly bigoted writer was recently given space in the New York Times op-ed pages to advocate his version of what the U.S. government has been imposing on Haitians for several decades – basically a sweatshop model of development.

Haitians are told to use extremely low wages to attract foreign investors to make as many products for export as they can. It has been done already and anybody who is interested can check the results. By 1985, under the U.S.-backed dictator Jean Claude Duvalier, Haiti became the ninth largest assembler of goods for the U.S. market. [1] Figure 1 shows that Haiti’s real GDP per capita declined throughout the 1980s. The golden age of the Haitian sweatshop model was a miserable failure – at least for the vast majority of Haitians. [2]

In addition to U.S.-led coups and economic sanctions, the destruction of local agriculture (points 1,2 and 5) is a huge part of the story of Haiti’s economic disaster since 1980. In 1980, 79 percent of Haitians lived in rural areas. About 43 percent still do today. Ruined farmers poured into the cities and exerted downward pressure on wages. The mass exodus also created huge urban shantytowns where people are vulnerable to earthquakes and floods.

Anyone interested in economic development should study Ha-Joon Chang’s concise and very readable “Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective.” Chang shows that when the USA was a developing country during the 19th century it used tariffs that averaged 40 percent to protect against rivals who were only 30 percent more productive. U.S. agriculture must be at least ten times (or 900 percent) more productive than Haiti’s which exposes the malevolence of forcing Haiti’s tariffs down from triple digit levels in the 1980s to single digit levels by the 1990s.[4] The World Bank doesn’t list agricultural productivity values for Haiti but does for neighboring states that are not as poor as Haiti. See Table 3 below.

The Coercion of Greece

By Mark Weisbrot
Source: Counterpunch
February 20, 2015

From ‘Demos’ to ‘Podemos’: Popular Uprisings in Greece and Spain

Published on
Thursday, February 19, 2015
by TruthDig

byAmy Goodman

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Greek opposition leader and head of radical leftist Syriza party, Alexis Tsipras (L) and Spanish Podemos party Secretary General Pablo Iglesias wave to supporters following a campaign rally in central Athens January 22, 2015. Photo: Reuters/Yannis Behrakis)