Mongolia FM: NAM, counterweight to unipolar US-led system
He underlined the importance of interaction and dialogue between the NAM member states to accomplish the stated objectives of the summit.
Interview with Randy Short, Dignity, Human Rights and Peace, from Washington, to further discuss the issue.
Short is joined by Middle East expert Peter Eyre from London, and international lawyer Franklin Lamb from Beirut. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Lamb is joined by Middle East expert Peter Eyre in London and Randy Short with Dignity, Human Rights, and Peace in Washington. What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.
Q: Randy Short, let us expand on that a little bit more, because if we want to look at who is leading this war, it seems to be pretty obvious that it is the United States.
Because basically, it is the US who is asking other nations to contribute to this war, up to a billion dollars a year. Now, records vary whether other countries are doing that, that’s 50 countries.
Meanwhile, the US, they are contributing up to three billion dollars a year. So you have the 50 countries, one billion dollars; the US, three billion dollars. Why is the US so insistent on “carrying this war”?
Short: Well, I think that depending on who says being in Afghanistan is not in the strategic interest of the United States, it is for those persons that are in the major corporations and again the banks that launder the drug money.
If you look at the Obama doctrine, they want to encircle China and the Soviet Union. Afghanistan has a small border area with China. It is another way for them to curtail the growth of the world’s soon-to-be-largest economy. I mean, this is what has not been mentioned.
In addition to that, it is a way to keep Iran under pressure. Iran is a major threat to the strategic interest of the American empire in as much as they are now the leading nation in the Non-Aligned Movement [NAM].
Perhaps sometimes Afghanistan is not that important on one level, but on the strategic level it gives a presence. It is a way to put pressure on India, pressure on Pakistan; it is a way to choke point the Arabian Gulf or the Persian Gulf, depending on who you ask. America has a lot to lose.
In as much as the economic power of the country has decreased, now the only real force that America has is its organized violence through the military. So you keep the war going to show that, hey, look, the dollar may not work, we may not make anything anymore but we sure can be the hell out of you if we do not like you.
Q: Randy Short, I think this would be appropriate, this question to you since you represent Dignity, Human Rights and Peace. On two fronts the United States is losing.
One, its civilian side in terms of deaths in Afghanistan. Morally speaking, we have seen what that is doing to that country.
Then within the States, when it comes to the veterans whom are coming back, and we hear about these rather large numbers of suicides that are taking place almost on a daily basis, if not every other day, based on recent stats, is there a point that this is going to perhaps be a turning point when it comes to the veterans, especially of ones that are fighting currently, that this is not a war that they want to be involved in?
Do you see that coming up on the horizon?
Short: I think it’s a little more complicated because, of course, you would think that veterans would already be opposed to it.
But there’s certain things that happen with the veterans now. How many of them are deeply, deeply addled by the psychotropic drugs that they have been put on? We have people who are deeply indebted.
We also have a society where a large number of veterans are being killed. We had one shot to death just last week in Baltimore. We are having veterans who are coming back, a disproportionate number veterans that come back to the United States are homeless.
In particular, if they are the same color as I, there are hundreds of thousands of them. They are killed. They are marginal. No one really cares about them.
Right now this country has been militarized to the point where you hear this mantra of ‘support the troops if they are killing people abroad, but piss on them when they come home’. There has not been the support for the veterans to even be able to stand up.
The public is still largely blinded by 9/11. 9/11 becomes the ring or, I’m try to think of the term that you use when you hypnotize -- it’s a hypnotic disk that you keep saying “9/11” and therefore people can’t think or criticize.
So there hasn’t really been a question as to why all these wars? And persons who question that right now where you have this hyper-patriotism in the country, makes it very difficult.
If you look at it Occupy Movement, how brutal the police forces were against veterans -- this didn’t happen after Vietnam.
This country is very different and I don’t know what it will take for it to be a tipping point. I think that in terms of what the last gentleman said, what I think will happen in this country would be mass austerity. I believe it is coming.
Only when thousands of people suffer worse than what they’re doing now, will people began to ask why so much war? …There will be a tipping point when people really can no longer run from reality.
Q: And Randy Short, I do not know if you are aware but this 16th NAM summit is being held here in the capital of Iran, and one of the issues discussed has been declared in their communiqué on the meeting that they had, is the occupation and, of course, Afghanistan has got to come into the picture.
Do you think that since the UN has not reacted, we hear about depleted uranium being used in Afghanistan amongst other atrocities that have taken place, that it is up to an organization like NAM, that contains all these countries, to perhaps do more in order to solve the situation of this occupation that is going on?
Short: Forgive me, I am having a hard time hearing you. You are asking me a question about the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement in the conference that’s going on presently in Tehran? Am I correct?
Q: Yes, vis-Ã -vis the UN and their lack of action in terms of what’s happened in Afghanistan.
Short: Yes, wonderful. Let’s be real, the United Nations is going the way of the Buffalo and the League of Nations and the Dodo bird.
It has shown itself to work against national sovereignty, the rights of men and a range of things, and it’s become, essentially, the prostitute of the New World Order -- in fact, a mercenary prostitute that attacks those recourse-rich countries that are seeking to emerge as powers on their own right.
Some of the fundamentals of self-determination and human rights that would be part of the UN are no-longer on the table if the powerful nations in the Security Council that have imperialistic agendas can destroy them.
So this emergence of NAM is wonderful. It needs for more nations to step up and have a counterweight in a world that needs to be multi-polar; no-longer uni-polar just drawn by the former colonial powers of western Europe.
I think that this is the hope for some peace and hope for some deterrent inasmuch as since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The United States and its allies have gone crazier than Frankenstein on crystal meth and crack in terms of how they are treating the nations of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Something must stop and this looks like a promising, rational, humanitarian way for nations to come together to get themselves off the hit list because no one knows who is next anymore.
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