As if Americans didn’t already have enough to worry about in regards to the recently resurrected Red Menace, we can now add the fear that those devious Russians are threatening to–horror of horrors–bring down the Internet.

As the New York Times‘ David Sanger and Eric Schmitt report, “Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of conflict.”

As Navy spokesman Cmdr. William Marks adds, “It would be a concern to hear any country was tampering with communication cables.”Indeed. Well, unless those tampering with international communication cables happen to be working on behalf of the “good guys” in the National Security Agency, or their equally good partners in Britain’s GCHQ. In that case, don’t consider it “tampering,” but rather something more akin to protecting the homeland from 21st century threats.

Of course whenever official Washington warns of a looming foreign cyber threat (China and Iran being the other favorite punching bags of the Times in this regard), it’s worth remembering that it was in fact the U.S., in partnership with Israel, that was the first state to actually launch a major offensive cyber attack on a sovereign nation. The attack being the Stuxnet virus set loose back in 2009 on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. Such aggression was codified earlier this year when the Pentagon formally unveiled a cyber warfare doctrine sanctioning the use of preemptive strikes. But down the memory hole, it appears, with all that.

And so with all that out of mind, it’s back to Russia’s rising “aggression.” At least as the paper of record would have it.

And who, in the Arab world have the US and its allies attacked during the same period? The answer here is Iraq (2003), Lebanon (2006), Libya (2011) and Syria (2011-present).

That’s right, we have systematically attacked those societies where women can walk around uncovered in public and drive cars, where you can have a beer or a glass of wine when you want, and where Christians and other non-Muslims have lived fairly freely for centuries, while at the same time giving virtually unlimited and unqualified diplomatic and military support to the country where almost none of these things are possible.

Imagine going to your doctor and being told that, based on an initial examination, you may very well have a serious and fast-moving form of cancer, and then being a handed a referral to see a heart specialist first thing the next morning.

I think you’d agree that a doctor acting in this way is either deeply incompetent or flat out crazy.

Since the election of President Ollanta Humala in Peru in 2011 priority has been given to neoliberal policies, free trade agreements, integration into the Pacific market through the Pacific Alliance (with Mexico, Colombia and Chile), and the intent to increase exports in order to promote wealth in the country. It appears, if one takes a look at macroeconomic indicators, that the economic situation in Peru is going very well: the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has increased 25 percent since 2010 with a growth rate around 6 percent in the past 5 years, the country debt has decreased from 25 percent of the GDP to 20 percent, and inflation remains impressively low at about 3 percent.[1]

While the economy is on the rise, Peru´s economic model is based on a certain abundance of natural resources. The main exports of Peru are primary products due to excessive mining and deforestation leading to many problems for local populations and Indigenous People. Gold represents around 20 percent of the country’s exports, copper ore around 18 percent, the refined petroleum nearly 7 percent while lead and refined copper account for 4.2 percent each, which means that more than half of Peruvian exports are based on extraction of resources.[2] This economic model, based on primary resources, is now at its limits because of new global economic turmoil. The demand for commodities will decrease and competition will intensify among countries that export their resources with the decline for European markets and the difficulties of the Chinese to shift from an export-driven economy to one based on internal consumption. If this pessimistic forecast holds, decreasing commodity prices and increasing production due to competition will result in an environmental catastrophe.

Deforestation and economic development

Economic growth has been set as the most important goal of the Peruvian government under President Ollanta Humalla and is a priority that Peru wants to achieve at all costs. As stated by Mary Menton from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), an international center of investigation that conducts research on the use and management of forests in less-developed countries, “much of this growth is happening — and is likely to keep on happening — at the expense of the Peruvian Amazon.”[3]