31.8.14

Riesgos de la reforma energética: el segundo

José Antonio Rojas Nieto

Reiterémoslo. Un sistema eléctrico concentrado en un combustible es extremadamente débil. Incluso si se trata –como se argumenta con una buena dosis de demagogia– del gas natural, del barato gas natural que la revolución del gas de lutitas –la del controvertido y dañino fracking– está dejando. La tesis no es mía. La postulan decenas de empresas eléctricas del mundo. Hay, por ejemplo, a este respecto y en estos momentos, un debate académico muy intenso en Estados Unidos. Diversos argumentos se agrupan para mostrar severos inconvenientes de poner todos los huevos en la misma canasta. 1) Es cierto que la abundancia de gas natural derivada de la revolución del shale ha conducido sus precios a la baja. Incluso con un rompimiento histórico de sus cotizaciones con las del crudo, por cierto y por lo pronto, sólo en Estados Unidos y, consecuentemente, en México. No obstante –y por diversas razones– no es seguro que esta tendencia se ratifique para el largo plazo, al menos de ocho a 10 años en adelante. ¿Qué pasará con el gas natural en Europa? ¿Y qué en Corea y en Japón? Y no me refiero a los momentos de elevación estacional importante de las cotizaciones, que pueden causar problemas muy importantes a los consumidores, entre ellos –sin duda– las plantas de generación eléctrica.

Sí, las elevaciones estacionales o coyunturales que pueden implicar alzas importantes en los precios de un fluido eléctrico obtenido en el mercado mayorista de electricidad. Y no sólo por razones del clima, sino por problemas de transporte del combustible. Por todo esto es un riesgo muy grande, centrar buena parte de la expansión eléctrica en el gas natural, máxime si –lo diré una vez más– no hay plena seguridad de disponibilidad interna; 2) se ha difundido correctamente –pero no de manera completa– que el gas natural es menos contaminante que el combustóleo, el diesel, el carbón. Cierto.

Los datos oficiales del Panel Intergubernamental de Cambio Climático –recogidos inicialmente de manera correcta, pero luego tergiversados por el Congreso de la Unión en los cálculos del Impuesto al Carbono de la miscelánea fiscal de 2014– indican promedios de 56.1 toneladas de CO2 equivalente por unidad (Terajulio) para el caso del gas natural y de 77.4, 74.1, 94.6 toneladas de CO2 equivalente, respectivamente para combustóleo, diesel y carbón bituminoso (por cierto 91.7 toneladas de CO2 equivalente para desechos municipales que desean explotar los municipios).

Esto significa que la producción de un kilovatio-hora en centrales a gas natural se emite la mitad de CO2 equivalente, es decir un promedio de 393 gramos de CO2 equivalente en ciclos combinados de eficiencias que rondan 50 por ciento. En buen romance significa que un cumplimiento estricto de políticas ambientales –por cierto más difícil en un entorno de mercado eléctrico mayorista– obligará a instalar equipos de secuestro y captura de CO2. Y no sólo en plantas de combustóleo, carbón, coque y otros combustibles altamente contaminantes, sino aun en las de gas natural. Y si esto es así, aun manteniendo el diferencial de costo de producción de electricidad de las plantas a gas natural que, evidentemente, también requieren equipos de secuestro y captura, la disminución de precios de electricidad imaginada y publicitada inicialmente, no podrá ser tan grande como se estimó, si no se consideró –como parece ser por la misma publicidad que se difunde– la necesidad de instalar equipos de protección al ambiente; 3) un aspecto más y muy delicado a considerar en el caso del gas natural y que se menciona ampliamente en el debate sobre la excesiva concentración de las compañías eléctricas estadunidenses en él, es el de su entrega.

A diferencia del combustóleo o del carbón, por ejemplo, se envía a las plantas justo a tiempo (just in time). Así, cualquier falla de envío se traduce en cortes de la generación a gas y su sustitución –en el momento– por fuentes disponibles, probablemente más caras en el mercado mayorista; 4) un cuarto elemento de discusión sobre esta canasta de generación eléctrica no diversificada se ilustra con la presentación de lo que se denomina exacerbada competencia que puede darse en un mercado mayorista. Se presentan muchos generadores a gas natural que compiten entre sí. Y se orientan a bajar costos para ser despachados (en nuestro caso y ahora sí por el recién creado organismo público descentralizado llamado Centro Nacional de Control de Energía, el Cenace), antes que otros. Pues bien, una forma de bajar costos es –precisamente– el de disminuir al máximo los cargos por transporte de gas, lo que supone contratar tarifas más baratas de transporte. ¿Cuáles? Algunas interrumpibles, lo que –sin duda– también representa un riesgo enorme de suspensión del proceso de generación y de encarecimiento o eventual suspensión del suministro eléctrico.

Bueno, pero para no concentrar el análisis de riesgos en el gas natural, es necesario tratar los problemas de las fuentes renovables de generación –solar y eólica, entre ellas– donde los problemas de ocupación superficial o invasión de tierras ejidales o comunales sólo será uno de ellos, tanto en el caso eléctrico como en el de la explotación de crudo y de gas natural, convencional o de lutitas. Todo esto para ilustrar que el nuevo mundo feliz que se anuncia no es tal.

El asunto es mucho más complejo que la lamentable caricatura que se ofrece en los medios. Y obliga a una vigilancia y a una organización social más pero más rigurosa y atenta que antes. Mucho más. Por eso –justamente– es necesario concentrar esfuerzos en identificar los riesgos que en el caso eléctrico y también en el de los hidrocarburos será necesario cuidar. Entre ellos –y a reserva de retornar a él en algún momento– el de la generación y apropiación de excedentes petroleros (no todos renta petrolera, por cierto) en un entorno de contratos de licencia a privados, con costos de producción muy probablemente crecientes, como bien documenta el brillante compañero investigador Fabio Barbosa de la UNAM. Y –ahora sí– costos manipulados por los productores frente al fisco y los organismos reguladores. Exageradamente, incluso. De veras. Ya lo veremos. Sin duda.

29.8.14

Una omisión de la reforma energética

Olga Pellicer


Dentro de las interrogantes que no tienen respuesta se encuentra cuál es la vinculación entre el mayor peso que México busca en el panorama mundial de energía y la política exterior. Mucho se han mencionado “las mejores prácticas a nivel internacional” como un referente que ha inspirado la reforma energética y asegura sus beneficios. Pero nadie, al parecer, se ha preguntado sobre el papel de las cancillerías, u otras agencias del gobierno, en regular, orientar o determinar la relación con el exterior en materia de energía.

En Estados Unidos esa regulación es estricta. Ninguna compañía petrolera puede decidir libremente a quién exporta petróleo. Por su importancia estratégica, los hidrocarburos no son asuntos que se dejen totalmente en manos de las empresas privadas. El gobierno tiene sus objetivos prioritarios, relativos, entre otros aspectos, a la seguridad nacional.

En el Departamento de Estado existe una Subsecretaría para Desarrollo Económico, Energía y Medio Ambiente, de la cual forma parte la Oficina de Asuntos Energéticos, uno de cuyos propósitos es manejar la geopolítica de la energía en los tiempos recientes mediante una diplomacia fortalecida con los principales importadores y consumidores.

En el caso de Brasil, durante la época del presidente Lula se estableció al interior del poderoso ministerio de relaciones exteriores conocido como Itamaraty una dirección especial para asuntos de energía, que ha cumplido su responsabilidad de lograr una buena coordinación con Petrobras. La posición de la cancillería y la empresa estatal no siempre marchaban por los mismos canales. Por lo tanto, era urgente coordinar los puntos de vista de ambas dependencias. Desde entonces, Petrobras participa activamente en diversas actividades de Itamaraty, incluyendo visitas de Estado al exterior y participación en delegaciones para asuntos multilaterales.

Más allá de la relación institucional entre la cancillería y las empresas petroleras, la importancia de los hidrocarburos en la economía obliga a pensar en la conveniencia de participar en instituciones significativas para la marcha de los mercados petroleros, como es la Agencia Internacional de Energía. Uno de sus propósitos es implementar medidas coordinadas de respuesta a emergencias, como la racionalización del uso de combustibles o limitación de la producción.

Sería un error valorar a esta institución únicamente como un freno eventual a la libertad para decidir sobre volúmenes de producción. La ventaja es que supone aceptar y desempeñar un papel en la gobernanza internacional en materia de energía. Objetivo que sería necesario para quien, como ocurre con el gobierno de Peña Nieto, se presenta como “actor con responsabilidad global”. Asimismo, permite convivir con el conocimiento y las preocupaciones que tienen otros Estados petroleros.

Desde la perspectiva de la congruencia entre política exterior y política energética, el punto central es el del medio ambiente. El año entrante es altamente probable que se logre un documento jurídicamente vinculante sobre cambio climático. México, líder en la política internacional sobre el tema, seguramente lo firmará. Estas y otras preocupaciones a nivel mundial indican que el avance hacia energías alternativas será prioritario en política internacional, a un ritmo más acelerado de lo que se prevé en la reforma energética mexicana, cuyo centro de gravedad son los hidrocarburos.

Finalmente, no se puede dejar de lado la reflexión sobre los recursos energéticos como instrumento de política exterior. Mucho puede contribuir a determinar el posicionamiento de México en las relaciones de poder internacionales el factor energía. Es una riqueza que puede apoyarnos en la diversificación de las relaciones exteriores del país, o integrarnos, aún con mayor firmeza, a la región de América del Norte. Puede ser un factor que contribuya a la mayor independencia de México en materia de ciencia y tecnología, o que nos someta más al saber de empresas extranjeras que sólo comparten parcialmente sus conocimientos. Puede ser un factor que promueva la formación de capital humano para ser líderes en el mundo del petróleo, o que nos deje como actores de segunda línea en búsqueda de inversiones.

Ahora bien, hasta ahora nadie ha volteado los ojos a la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores ni se ha referido al aspecto político de la relación con el exterior en materia de energía; no se encuentra, en ninguno de los dictámenes que apoyaron las leyes secundarias, reflexión sobre el particular. Posiblemente ello indica que los únicos líderes de la nueva etapa del México petrolero serán “las fuerzas del mercado”. Frente a ellas, no existe proyecto para orientarlas y contrarrestar sus limitaciones. Desde esa perspectiva, las omisiones sobre la política exterior en la reforma energética son un motivo más para verla con escepticismo.

17.8.14

Riesgos de la reforma energética: el primero

José Antonio Rojas Nieto

La celeridad con la que se aprobaron las leyes de la contrarreforma energética no deja de sorprender. Más la decisión presidencial de iniciar aceleradamente su aplicación. Es de temer –por decir lo menos– la primera resultante de este proceso. Se rige más por tiempos políticos. Se ignoran y desdeñan los plazos necesarios para la reorganización radical de lo petrolero y lo eléctrico. Hay aspectos muy pero muy delicados. Y riesgos enormes. 
Experiencias internacionales advierten. California entre ellas. Pero también las experiencias brasileña y ecuatoriana en petróleo. Y británica y española en electricidad. ¡Útil sería seguir la máxima del Evangelio! Astutos como serpientes. Prudentes como palomas. O, como dicen los estadunidenses. Esperar lo mejor.’

Prepararse para lo peor. Pierden la sociedad y las familias. Pero el ambiente no está para tomar precauciones. Una vez más la liturgia laudatoria y genuflexa domina. La ceremonia en Palacio Nacional es apenas un leve ejemplo. Nadie ve. Nadie oye. No obstante, intentemos señalar algunos de los principales riegos. Incluso so riesgo –válga la redundancia– de no ordenarlos por su importancia, empecemos ya. Uno de los principales, ligado a la nueva arquitectura institucional del sector energía en México, es el de la necesaria coordinación entre el mercado del gas y el mercado eléctrico. La impresionante tecnología de generación con base en ciclo combinado a gas natural, hace pensar –simplistamente– en sistemas eléctricos de alta concentra en esa tecnología y ese combustible. Hay tres razones iniciales para ello; 1) la enorme eficiencia de estas centrales, ya cercana al 60 por ciento, lo que significa sólo una pérdida de 40 por ciento de la energía primaria. En las tecnologías térmicas convencionales aún se pierde cerca de 60 por ciento; 2) la mayor disponibilidad de gas natural, por el momento en Estados Unidos (¿conviene depender de ellos en esto?) aunque muy probablemente también luego en México, donde el asunto de la facturación hidráulica requiere ser agudamente analizado; 3) el importante descenso del precio del gas natural, desde finales de 2008 desvinculado del precio del petróleo. Esta semana, por ejemplo, el precio de Texas, referencia para México, cerró en 3.90 dólares por millón de unidad térmica británica. En Europa en 7.18 dólares. Y en Corea y Japón con natural licuado (GNL), 10.83. Diferencia notable.

No obstante, mucho se debate sobre la evolución futura de estos tres precios. Hay opiniones que se orientan a pensar en la convergencia hacia el precio de Europa, una vez que Estados Unidos exporte gas natural a Europa para aligerar un poco la presión de las importaciones provenientes de Rusia. En cualquier caso habría que estar listos para identificar un ascenso importante del precio de referencia en Estados Unidos y, en consecuencia, del precio del gas natural en México. Incluso temporal pero drástico. Hay experiencias difíciles. Y prevenir su impacto en el precio de electricidad, próximamente determinado en una porción significativa en el mercado mayorista de electricidad. Si estas tres razones –eficiencia, disponibilidad y precio– no fueran suficientes para impulsar la instalación masiva de ciclos combinados, hay otras dos razones que parecieran abonar en el mismo sentido. Una es la menor emisión relativa de gases de efecto invernadero del gas natural en el proceso de generación de electricidad. Y otra, el importante papel de los ciclos combinados para atender –cuando no se tengan recursos hidroeléctricos disponibles– la intermitencia de las renovables y los problemas derivados de su creciente incorporación.

Ahora bien, en la medida que –por las cinco razones anteriores– los sistemas eléctricos tiendan –peligrosamente, insisto– a expandirse con una participación creciente de ciclos combinados y –en mi opinión– una excesiva dependencia de gas natural, surgen interrogantes fundamentales que, al menos por el momento, no se han respondido. Incluso, ni siquiera se han formulado en nuestro México de hoy, oficialmente extasiado por unas reformas que, justamente, no han contemplado, entre otros, el que comporta una excesiva concentración en una fuente de generación, cuya disponibilidad interna todavía no ha sido demostrada. Una de esas interrogantes es la de las formas, mecanismo, plazos y condiciones de coordinación entre la expansión eléctrica y la expansión de la red de gasoductos, lo que en un entorno de mercado loco es difícil. Y puede llevar a restricciones que no sólo elevarían el precio del gas natural, también el de la electricidad.  Tremendamente. Nunca olvidemos California. Otra de dichas interrogantes es el volumen de recursos que una expansión a gas natural exige, dados los déficits no sólo de gas natural sino de gasoductos y sistemas de compresión. No se han concluido las estimaciones sobre dichos requerimientos. Ni de los plazos y formas en que deban disponerse. Y los cambios en las formas e instrumentos de planeación, no ofrecen garantía de que se hará pronto.

Una tercera interrogante es la de los mecanismos y formas para garantizar la adecuada coordinación en tiempos de construcción, pruebas y operación de centrales eléctricas y gasoductos. De no darse, se pueden generar enormes problemas de abasto y cargas financieras. Y pueden encarecerse tremendamente en ciertas regiones los precios. De uno y de otra. O crear problemas muy delicados de transmisión y transporte de electricidad y gas natural, con graves efectos sobre los consumidores. Y también sobre los precios. Una interrogante más exige analizar las diferencias entre la agenda eléctrica y la de operación de gasoductos. Se abastecen demandas con formas y ritmos distintos. Uno más, al menos, es la ausencia de experiencia en la determinación de reglas de mercado de electricidad y de gas natural, reglas que atiendan y enfrentar los riesgos, dada la urgencia impresa a una transición que, para decir, lo menos, empieza sin ponderar con justeza no sólo los plazos que exigen los cambios –a decir de experiencias internacionales puede llevar años– sino el tratamiento profesional y laboral razonable y justo a obreros, técnicos y profesionistas que deberán afrontar esta problemática, esta transición tan compleja. Sin duda.

14.8.14

The return of George Orwell and Big Brother’s war on Palestine, Ukraine and the truth

John Pilger


The other night, I saw George Orwells's '1984' performed on the London stage. Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell's warning about the future was presented as a period piece: remote, unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said, "To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country."

Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other distractions beckoned. "What a mindfuck," said the young woman, lighting up her phone.

As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular. In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in '1984'. "Democracy" is now a rhetorical device. Peace is "perpetual war". "Global" is imperial. The once hopeful concept of "reform" now means regression, even destruction. "Austerity" is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich: an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few.

In the arts, hostility to political truth-telling is an article of bourgeois faith. "Picasso's red period," says an Observer headline, "and why politics don't make good art." Consider this in a newspaper that promoted the bloodbath in Iraq as a liberal crusade. Picasso's lifelong opposition to fascism is a footnote, just as Orwell's radicalism has faded from the prize that appropriated his name.

A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that "for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life". No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damns the corruption of the ruling class, no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin reveal the moral disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw have no equivalents today. Harold Pinter was the last to raise his voice. Among the insistent voices of consumer-feminism, none echoes Virginia Woolf, who described "the arts of dominating other people... of ruling, of killing, of acquiring land and capital".

At the National Theatre, a new play, 'Great Britain', satirises the phone hacking scandal that has seen journalists tried and convicted, including a former editor of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. Described as a "farce with fangs [that] puts the whole incestuous [media] culture in the dock and subjects it to merciless ridicule", the play's targets are the "blessedly funny" characters in Britain's tabloid press. That is well and good, and so familiar. What of the non-tabloid media that regards itself as reputable and credible, yet serves a parallel role as an arm of state and corporate power, as in the promotion of illegal war?

The Leveson inquiry into phone hacking glimpsed this unmentionable. Tony Blair was giving evidence, complaining to His Lordship about the tabloids' harassment of his wife, when he was interrupted by a voice from the public gallery. David Lawley-Wakelin, a film-maker, demanded Blair's arrest and prosecution for war crimes. There was a long pause: the shock of truth. Lord Leveson leapt to his feet and ordered the truth-teller thrown out and apologised to the war criminal. Lawley-Wakelin was prosecuted; Blair went free.

Blair's enduring accomplices are more respectable than the phone hackers. When the BBC arts presenter, Kirsty Wark, interviewed him on the tenth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, she gifted him a moment he could only dream of; she allowed him to agonise over his "difficult" decision on Iraq rather than call him to account for his epic crime. This evoked the procession of BBC journalists who in 2003 declared that Blair could feel "vindicated", and the subsequent, "seminal" BBC series, 'The Blair Years', for which David Aaronovitch was chosen as the writer, presenter and interviewer. A Murdoch retainer who campaigned for military attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria, Aaronovitch fawned expertly.

Since the invasion of Iraq - the exemplar of an act of unprovoked aggression the Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson called "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" - Blair and his mouthpiece and principal accomplice, Alastair Campbell, have been afforded generous space in the Guardian to rehabilitate their reputations. Described as a Labour Party "star", Campbell has sought the sympathy of readers for his depression and displayed his interests, though not his current assignment as advisor, with Blair, to the Egyptian military tyranny.

As Iraq is dismembered as a consequence of the Blair/Bush invasion, a Guardian headline declares: "Toppling Saddam was right, but we pulled out too soon". This ran across a prominent article on 13 June by a former Blair functionary, John McTernan, who also served Iraq's CIA installed dictator Iyad Allawi. In calling for a repeat invasion of a country his former master helped destroy, he made no reference to the deaths of at least 700,000 people, the flight of four million refugees and sectarian turmoil in a nation once proud of its communal tolerance.

"Blair embodies corruption and war," wrote the radical Guardian columnist Seumas Milne in a spirited piece on 3 July. This is known in the trade as "balance". The following day, the paper published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the bomber were the words: "The F-35. GREAT For Britain". This other embodiment of "corruption and war" will cost British taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered people across the developing world.

In a village in Afghanistan, inhabited by the poorest of the poor, I filmed Orifa, kneeling at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed in the adjacent house. A "precision" 500-pound bomb fell directly on their small mud, stone and straw house, leaving a crater 50 feet wide. Lockheed Martin, the plane's manufacturer's, had pride of place in the Guardian's advertisement.

The former US secretary of state and aspiring president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, was recently on the BBC's 'Women's Hour', the quintessence of media respectability. The presenter, Jenni Murray, presented Clinton as a beacon of female achievement. She did not remind her listeners about Clinton's profanity that Afghanistan was invaded to "liberate" women like Orifa. She asked  Clinton nothing about her administration's terror campaign using drones to kill women, men and children. There was no mention of Clinton's idle threat, while campaigning to be the first female president, to "eliminate" Iran, and nothing about her support for illegal mass surveillance and the pursuit of whistle-blowers.

Murray did ask one finger-to-the-lips question. Had Clinton forgiven Monica Lewinsky for having an affair with husband? "Forgiveness is a choice," said Clinton, "for me, it was absolutely the right choice." This recalled the 1990s and the years consumed by the Lewinsky "scandal". President Bill Clinton was then invading Haiti, and bombing the Balkans, Africa and Iraq. He was also destroying the lives of Iraqi children; Unicef reported the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five as a result of an embargo led by the US and Britain.

The children were media unpeople, just as Hillary Clinton's victims in the invasions she supported and promoted - Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia - are media unpeople. Murray made no reference to them. A photograph of her and her distinguished guest, beaming, appears on the BBC website.

In politics as in journalism and the arts, it seems that dissent once tolerated in the "mainstream" has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground. When I began a career in Britain's Fleet Street in the 1960s, it was acceptable to critique western power as a rapacious force. Read James Cameron's celebrated reports of the explosion of the Hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, the barbaric war in Korea and the American bombing of North Vietnam. Today's grand illusion is of an information age when, in truth, we live in a media age in which incessant corporate propaganda is insidious, contagious, effective and liberal.

In his 1859 essay 'On Liberty', to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mill wrote: "Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end." The "barbarians" were large sections of humanity of whom "implicit obedience" was required. "It's a nice and convenient myth that liberals are peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers," wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, "but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature: its conviction that it represents a superior form of life." He had in mind a speech by Blair in which the then prime minister promised to "reorder the world around us" according to his "moral values".

Richard Falk, the respected authority on international law and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, once described a "a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence". It is "so widely accepted as to be virtually unchallengeable".

Tenure and patronage reward the guardians. On BBC Radio 4, Razia Iqbal interviewed Toni Morrison, the African-American Nobel Laureate. Morrison wondered why people were "so angry" with Barack Obama, who was "cool" and wished to build a "strong economy and health care". Morrison was proud to have talked on the phone with her hero, who had read one of her books and invited her to his inauguration.

Neither she nor her interviewer mentioned Obama's seven wars, including his terror campaign by drone, in which whole families, their rescuers and mourners have been murdered. What seemed to matter was that a "finely spoken" man of colour had risen to the commanding heights of power. In 'The Wretched of the Earth', Frantz Fanon wrote that the "historic mission" of the colonised was to serve as a "transmission line" to those who ruled and oppressed. In the modern era, the employment of ethnic difference in western power and propaganda systems is now seen as essential. Obama epitomises this, though the cabinet of George W. Bush - his warmongering clique - was the most multiracial in presidential history.

As the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to the jihadists of ISIS, Obama said, "The American people made huge investments and sacrifices in order to give Iraqis the opportunity to chart a better destiny." How "cool" is that lie? How "finely spoken" was Obama's speech at the West Point military academy on 28 May. Delivering his "state of the world" address at the graduation ceremony of those who "will take American leadership" across the world, Obama said, "The United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it. International opinion matters, but America will never ask permission..."

In repudiating international law and the rights of independent nations, the American president claims a divinity based on the might of his "indispensable nation". It is a familiar message of imperial impunity, though always bracing to hear. Evoking the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Obama said, "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being." Historian Norman Pollack wrote: "For goose-steppers, substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while."

In February, the US mounted one of its "colour" coups against the elected government in Ukraine, exploiting genuine protests against corruption in Kiev. Obama's assistant secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, personally selected the leader of an "interim government". She nicknamed him "Yats". Vice President Joe Biden came to Kiev, as did CIA Director John Brennan. The shock troops of their putsch were Ukrainian fascists.

For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism in the borderland through which Hitler's invading Nazis took millions of Russian lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre of Jews and Russians they called "vermin". The UPA is the historical inspiration of the present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelling Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato Enlargement Project. Reneging on a promise made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand "one inch to the east", Nato has, in effect, militarily occupied eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato's expansion is the biggest military build-up since the Second World War.

A Nato Membership Action Plan is Washington's gift to the coup-regime in Kiev. In August, "Operation Rapid Trident" will put American and British troops on Ukraine's Russian border and "Sea Breeze" will send US warships within sight of Russian ports. Imagine the response if these acts of provocation, or intimidation, were carried out on America's borders.

In reclaiming Crimea - which Nikita Kruschev illegally detached from Russia in 1954 - the Russians defended themselves as they have done for almost a century. More than 90 per cent of the population of Crimea voted to return the territory to Russia. Crimea is the home of the Black Sea Fleet and its loss would mean life or death for the Russian Navy and a prize for Nato. Confounding the war parties in Washington and Kiev, Vladimir Putin withdrew troops from the Ukrainian border and urged ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon separatism.

In Orwellian fashion, this has been inverted in the west to the "Russian threat". Hillary Clinton likened Putin to Hitler. Without irony, right-wing German commentators said as much. In the media, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis are sanitised as "nationalists" or "ultra nationalists". What they fear is that Putin is skilfully seeking a diplomatic solution, and may succeed. On 27 June, responding to Putin's latest accommodation - his request to the Russian Parliament to rescind legislation that gave him the power to intervene on behalf of Ukraine's ethnic Russians - Secretary of State John Kerry issued another of his ultimatums. Russia must "act within the next few hours, literally" to end the revolt in eastern Ukraine. Notwithstanding that Kerry is widely recognised as a buffoon, the serious purpose of these "warnings" is to confer pariah status on Russia and suppress news of the Kiev regime's war on its own people.

A third of the population of Ukraine are Russian-speaking and bilingual. They have long sought a democratic federation that reflects Ukraine's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither "separatists" nor "rebels" but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland. Separatism is a reaction to the Kiev junta's attacks on them, causing as many as 110,000 (UN estimate) to flee across the border into Russia. Typically, they are traumatised women and children.

Like Iraq's embargoed infants, and Afghanistan's "liberated" women and girls, terrorised by the CIA's warlords, these ethnic people of Ukraine are media unpeople in the west, their suffering and the atrocities committed against them minimised, or suppressed. No sense of the scale of the regime's assault is reported in the mainstream western media. This is not unprecedented. Reading again Phillip Knightley's masterly 'The First Casualty: the war correspondent as hero, propagandist and mythmaker', I renewed my admiration for the Manchester Guardian's Morgan Philips Price, the only western reporter to remain in Russia during the 1917 revolution and report the truth of a disastrous invasion by the western allies. Fair-minded and courageous, Philips Price alone disturbed what Knightley calls an anti-Russian "dark silence" in the west.

On 2 May, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. There is horrifying video evidence. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as "another bright day in our national history". In the American and British media, this was reported as a "murky tragedy" resulting from "clashes" between "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) and "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). The New York Times buried it, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims - "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Obama congratulated the junta for its "restraint".

On 28 June, the Guardian devoted most of a page to declarations by the Kiev regime's "president", the oligarch Petro Poroshenko.  Again, Orwell's rule of inversion applied. There was no putsch; no war against Ukraine's minority; the Russians were to blame for everything. "We want to modernise my country," said Poroshenko. "We want to introduce freedom, democracy and European values. Somebody doesn't like that. Somebody doesn't like us for that."

According to his report, the Guardian's reporter, Luke Harding, did not challenge these assertions, or mention the Odessa atrocity, the regime's air and artillery attacks on residential areas, the killing and kidnapping of journalists, the firebombing of an opposition newspaper and his threat to "free Ukraine from dirt and parasites". The enemy are "rebels", "militants", "insurgents", "terrorists" and stooges of the Kremlin. The current campaign to blame the Russian government for the downing of the Malaysian airliner is part of this propaganda. In truth, the crime of the airliner's shooting down is a direct result of Obama's putsch in Ukraine. Summon from history the ghosts of Vietnam, Chile, East Timor, southern Africa, Iraq; note the same propagated tags, the same false flags. Palestine is the lodestone of this unchanging deceit. Following the latest Israeli, American equipped slaughter in Gaza of more than 800 Palestinians - including 120 children - an Israeli general writes in the Guardian under the headline, "A necessary show of force".

In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; it was her 'Triumph of the Will' that reputedly cast Hitler's spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior. She replied that the "messages" in her films were dependent not on "orders from above" but on a "submissive void" in the German population. "Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked. "Everyone," she replied, "and of course the intelligentsia."

6.8.14

Ya poca Palestina queda. Paso a paso, Israel la está borrando del mapa

Eduardo Galeano

Para justificarse, el terrorismo de Estado fabrica terroristas: siembra odio y cosecha coartadas. Todo indica que esta carnicería de Gaza, que según sus autores quiere acabar con los terroristas, logrará multiplicarlos. Desde 1948, los palestinos viven condenados a humillación perpetua. No pueden ni respirar sin permiso. Han perdido su patria, sus tierras, su agua, su libertad, su todo. Ni siquiera tienen derecho a elegir sus gobernantes. Cuando votan a quien no deben votar, son castigados. Gaza está siendo castigada. Se convirtió en una ratonera sin salida, desde que Hamas ganó limpiamente las elecciones en el año 2006. Algo parecido había ocurrido en 1932, cuando el Partido Comunista triunfó en las elecciones de El Salvador.

Bañados en sangre, los salvadoreños expiaron su mala conducta y desde entonces vivieron sometidos a dictaduras militares. La democracia es un lujo que no todos merecen. Son hijos de la impotencia los cohetes caseros que los militantes de Hamas, acorralados en Gaza, disparan con chambona puntería sobre las tierras que habían sido palestinas y que la ocupación israelí usurpó. Y la desesperación, a la orilla de la locura suicida, es la madre de las bravatas que niegan el derecho a la existencia de Israel, gritos sin ninguna eficacia, mientras la muy eficaz guerra de exterminio está negando, desde hace años, el derecho a la existencia de Palestina. Ya poca Palestina queda. Paso a paso, Israel la está borrando del mapa.

Los colonos invaden, y tras ellos los soldados van corrigiendo la frontera. Las balas sacralizan el despojo, en legítima defensa. No hay guerra agresiva que no diga ser guerra defensiva. Hitler invadió Polonia para evitar que Polonia invadiera Alemania. Bush invadió Irak para evitar que Irak invadiera el mundo. En cada una de sus guerras defensivas, Israel se ha tragado otro pedazo de Palestina, y los almuerzos siguen. La devoración se justifica por los títulos de propiedad que la Biblia otorgó, por los dos mil años de persecución que el pueblo judío sufrió, y por el pánico que generan los palestinos al acecho. Israel es el país que jamás cumple las recomendaciones ni las resoluciones de las Naciones Unidas, el que nunca acata las sentencias de los tribunales internacionales, el que se burla de las leyes internacionales, y es también el único país que ha legalizado la tortura de prisioneros.

¿Quién le regaló el derecho de negar todos los derechos ? ¿De dónde viene la impunidad con que Israel está ejecutando la matanza de Gaza ? El gobierno español no hubiera podido bombardear impunemente al País Vasco para acabar con ETA, ni el gobierno británico hubiera podido arrasar Irlanda para liquidar a IRA. ¿Acaso la tragedia del Holocausto implica una póliza de eterna impunidad ? ¿O esa luz verde proviene de la potencia mandamás que tiene en Israel al más incondicional de sus vasallos ? El ejército israelí, el más moderno y sofisticado del mundo, sabe a quién mata. No mata por error. Mata por horror. Las víctimas civiles se llaman daños colaterales, según el diccionario de otras guerras imperiales.

En Gaza, de cada diez daños colaterales, tres son niños. Y suman miles los mutilados, víctimas de la tecnología del descuartizamiento humano, que la industria militar está ensayando exitosamente en esta operación de limpieza étnica. Y como siempre, siempre lo mismo: en Gaza, cien a uno. Por cada cien palestinos muertos, un israelí. Gente peligrosa, advierte el otro bombardeo, a cargo de los medios masivos de manipulación, que nos invitan a creer que una vida israelí vale tanto como cien vidas palestinas. Y esos medios también nos invitan a creer que son humanitarias las doscientas bombas atómicas de Israel, y que una potencia nuclear llamada Irán fue la que aniquiló Hiroshima y Nagasaki.

La llamada comunidad internacional, ¿existe ? ¿Es algo más que un club de mercaderes, banqueros y guerreros ? ¿Es algo más que el nombre artístico que los Estados Unidos se ponen cuando hacen teatro? Ante la tragedia de Gaza, la hipocresía mundial se luce una vez más. Como siempre, la indiferencia, los discursos vacíos, las declaraciones huecas, las declamaciones altisonantes, las posturas ambiguas, rinden tributo a la sagrada impunidad. Ante la tragedia de Gaza, los países árabes se lavan las manos. Como siempre. Y como siempre, los países europeos se frotan las manos.

La vieja Europa, tan capaz de belleza y de perversidad, derrama alguna que otra lágrima mientras secretamente celebra esta jugada maestra. Porque la cacería de judíos fue siempre una costumbre europea, pero desde hace medio siglo esa deuda histórica está siendo cobrada a los palestinos, que también son semitas y que nunca fueron, ni son, antisemitas. Ellos están pagando, en sangre contante y sonante, una cuenta ajena.

(Este artículo está dedicado a mis amigos judíos asesinados por las dictaduras latinoamericanas que Israel asesoró).

5.8.14

Nightmare in Gaza

Noam Chomsky

Amid all the horrors unfolding in the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza, Israel's goal is simple: quiet-for-quiet, a return to the norm.

For the West Bank, the norm is that Israel continues its illegal construction of settlements and infrastructure so that it can integrate into Israel whatever might be of value, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to unviable cantons and subjecting them to repression and violence.

For Gaza, the norm is a miserable existence under a cruel and destructive siege that Israel administers to permit bare survival but nothing more.

The latest Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder of three Israeli boys from a settler community in the occupied West Bank. A month before, two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah. That elicited little attention, which is understandable, since it is routine.

"The institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life in the West helps explain not only why Palestinians resort to violence," Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani reports, "but also Israel's latest assault on the Gaza Strip."

In an interview, human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, who has remained in Gaza through years of Israeli brutality and terror, said, "The most common sentence I heard when people began to talk about cease-fire: Everybody says it's better for all of us to die and not go back to the situation we used to have before this war. We don't want that again. We have no dignity, no pride; we are just soft targets, and we are very cheap. Either this situation really improves or it is better to just die. I am talking about intellectuals, academics, ordinary people: Everybody is saying that."

In January 2006, Palestinians committed a major crime: They voted the wrong way in a carefully monitored free election, handing control of Parliament to Hamas.

The media constantly intone that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In reality, Hamas leaders have repeatedly made it clear that Hamas would accept a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus that has been blocked by the U.S. and Israel for 40 years.

In contrast, Israel is dedicated to the destruction of Palestine, apart from some occasional meaningless words, and is implementing that commitment.

The crime of the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished at once. The U.S. and Israel, with Europe shamefully trailing behind, imposed harsh sanctions on the errant population and Israel stepped up its violence.

The U.S. and Israel quickly initiated plans for a military coup to overthrow the elected government. When Hamas had the effrontery to foil the plans, the Israeli assaults and the siege became far more severe.

There should be no need to review again the dismal record since. The relentless siege and savage attacks are punctuated by episodes of "mowing the lawn," to borrow Israel's cheery expression for its periodic exercises in shooting fish in a pond as part of what it calls a "war of defense."

Once the lawn is mowed and the desperate population seeks to rebuild somehow from the devastation and the murders, there is a cease-fire agreement. The most recent cease-fire was established after Israel's October 2012 assault, called Operation Pillar of Defense .

Though Israel maintained its siege, Hamas observed the cease-fire, as Israel concedes. Matters changed in April of this year when Fatah and Hamas forged a unity agreement that established a new government of technocrats unaffiliated with either party.

Israel was naturally furious, all the more so when even the Obama administration joined the West in signaling approval. The unity agreement not only undercuts Israel's claim that it cannot negotiate with a divided Palestine but also threatens the long-term goal of dividing Gaza from the West Bank and pursuing its destructive policies in both regions.

Something had to be done, and an occasion arose on June 12, when the three Israeli boys were murdered in the West Bank. Early on, the Netanyahu government knew that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a rampage in the West Bank, targeting Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have certain knowledge that Hamas was responsible. That too was a lie.

One of Israel's leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of Hamas. Eldar added that "I'm sure they didn't get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act."

The 18-day rampage after the kidnapping, however, succeeded in undermining the feared unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli repression. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas members on July 7.

Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months, providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.

By July 31, around 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, mostly civilians, including hundreds of women and children. And three Israeli civilians. Large areas of Gaza had been turned into rubble. Four hospitals had been attacked, each another war crime.

Israeli officials laud the humanity of what it calls "the most moral army in the world," which informs residents that their homes will be bombed. The practice is "sadism, sanctimoniously disguising itself as mercy," in the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass: "A recorded message demanding hundreds of thousands of people leave their already targeted homes, for another place, equally dangerous, 10 kilometers away."

In fact, there is no place in the prison of Gaza safe from Israeli sadism, which may even exceed the terrible crimes of Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009.

The hideous revelations elicited the usual reaction from the most moral president in the world, Barack Obama: great sympathy for Israelis, bitter condemnation of Hamas and calls for moderation on both sides.

When the current attacks are called off, Israel hopes to be free to pursue its criminal policies in the occupied territories without interference, and with the U.S. support it has enjoyed in the past.

Gazans will be free to return to the norm in their Israeli-run prison, while in the West Bank, Palestinians can watch in peace as Israel dismantles what remains of their possessions.

That is the likely outcome if the U.S. maintains its decisive and virtually unilateral support for Israeli crimes and its rejection of the long-standing international consensus on diplomatic settlement. But the future will be quite different if the U.S. withdraws that support.

In that case it would be possible to move toward the "enduring solution" in Gaza that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for, eliciting hysterical condemnation in Israel because the phrase could be interpreted as calling for an end to Israel's siege and regular attacks. And - horror of horrors - the phrase might even be interpreted as calling for implementation of international law in the rest of the occupied territories.

Forty years ago Israel made the fateful decision to choose expansion over security, rejecting a full peace treaty offered by Egypt in return for evacuation from the occupied Egyptian Sinai, where Israel was initiating extensive settlement and development projects. Israel has adhered to that policy ever since.

If the U.S. decided to join the world, the impact would be great. Over and over, Israel has abandoned cherished plans when Washington has so demanded. Such are the relations of power between them.

Furthermore, Israel by now has little recourse, after having adopted policies that turned it from a country that was greatly admired to one that is feared and despised, policies it is pursuing with blind determination today in its march toward moral deterioration and possible ultimate destruction.

Could U.S. policy change? It's not impossible. Public opinion has shifted considerably in recent years, particularly among the young, and it cannot be completely ignored.

For some years there has been a good basis for public demands that Washington observe its own laws and cut off military aid to Israel. U.S. law requires that "no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."

Israel most certainly is guilty of this consistent pattern, and has been for many years.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, author of this provision of the law, has brought up its potential applicability to Israel in specific cases, and with a well-conducted educational, organizational and activist effort such initiatives could be pursued successively.

That could have a very significant impact in itself, while also providing a springboard for further actions to compel Washington to become part of "the international community" and to observe international law and norms.

Nothing could be more significant for the tragic Palestinian victims of many years of violence and repression.

© 2014 Noam Chomsky
Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate