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By Mehdi Hasan

1 Oct 2018 – Meddling in foreign elections is bad. I think we can all agree on that.

And almost everyone — bar Donald Trump — seems to believe that the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election. So that should be condemned.

Here’s the problem, though: U.S. politicians and pundits cannot credibly object to Russian interference in U.S. elections without also acknowledging that the United States doesn’t exactly have clean hands. Or are we expected to believe that Russian hackers were the first people in human history to try and undermine a foreign democracy?

In this video, I examine the ways in which the United States has, in fact, spent the past 70-odd years meddling in elections across the world.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS).

Mehdi Hasan is a columnist and senior contributor at The Intercept. He is the host of The Intercept podcast “Deconstructed.” Hasan is also the host of Al Jazeera English’s “UpFront.” He has interviewed, among others, Edward Snowden, Hamid Karzai, Ehud Olmert, and Gen.

29 October 2018

Source:https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/10/a-short-history-of-u-s-meddling-in-foreign-elections/

By Ann Garrison

17 Oct 2018 – The imperial aggressions of western governments have inflicted multiple holocausts on the Congolese people.

This week I spoke to Swiss Congolese historian, activist and coordinator of the Congolese movement Likambo Ya Mabele, Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko, about recent developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ann Garrison: On February 12, 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that there were 4.49 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 630,500 refugees in neighboring countries. The IDP population had nearly doubled in the previous year alone, mainly as a result of clashes and armed attacks. It sounds like conditions on the ground in Congo are getting worse, much worse.

Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko: Congo is indeed in a critical situation. We know how much its people have suffered since the genocides in Rwanda and all the displacement they caused, then by the wars that Rwanda and Uganda waged against Congo from 1996 to 1997 and then from 1998 to 2003, with the support of the US, UK, and their allies. Today some observers speak of Congo as a post-conflict country, but it’s still in a low-intensity conflict, off and on, hot and cold. A conflict that drags on like this can become even deadlier than declared war, as it has in the North and South Kivu Provinces bordering Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. More than a million of the 4.49 million internally displaced people are in North Kivu Province.

In the past two years the situation has also deteriorated in the Kasai region, where people are being exterminated or displaced to Angola. There has also been an increase in attacks against the populations of the former Katanga Province, which was split into the Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba and Haut-Katanga Provinces in 2015. Congo and its people are not on the brink of the abyss, they have long since fallen into it.

“People are being exterminated in the Kasai region or displaced to Angola.”

AG: It’s hard to know what to say about so much suffering. What would you most like to say about it here?

BKN: Suffering should inspire compassion, but compassion should inspire reflection. Is the person who looks at a suffering human being able to ask himself if he is not involved in one way or another in the suffering of the individual in front of him? Can he or she grasp the causes of the crimes perpetrated against that human being and the political implications that arise from these acts? If we stop at the suffering of the Congolese people, we won’t be able to address its particularities and causes. It will be no different than the depressing and fatalistic images that have shaped the image of Africa in people’s minds. We must examine Western governments’ imperial aggression against Congo and Africa as a whole.

AG: Dr. Denis Mukwege, the Congolese gynecologist who became known as “the man who heals women” for treating the victims of brutal rape in eastern Congo, finally won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Does that give you any hope?

BKN: I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Mukwege in person. I saw this man with women from all over the world who had all been raped during conflicts. They came from Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, and Iraq. I could see how this man spoke to these women, the concern he had for them and his way of telling them that their word counted. He has all my admiration.

That said, it seems to me that there is also something cynical about presenting him with the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s an organized, staged reality that obliterates the imperial aggression in Congo and encourages a global consensus to stop the rapes but continue the war. It makes the Western Nobel Peace Prize audience feel good about themselves and their compassionate response to the victims of African savagery. This was reinforced by Nadia Murad, the Iraqi rape survivor who shared this year’s Peace Prize with Dr. Mukwege. She said that she would continue as a global advocate for victims of rape and torture, and for persecuted minorities, like the Kurdish Yazidi minority she belongs to.

“The Nobel Peace Prize encourages a global consensus to stop the rapes but continue the war.”

The deeply political discourse imposed by the Nobel Committee is intended to bolster, not disturb, the dominant order. It is part of the Western will to write official history, where the important thing is constructing a discourse on the woman, on the brutalities she has to suffer. It’s a discourse wholly accepted in Western societies because of the feminist struggles. In this discourse, Dr. Mukwege is the man of an inter-world, a Black man who is meant to become white. He is like the white man who knows how to defend the rights of women against the barbarism of uncivilized men—Black in this case—who are essentially defined by their savagery.

AG: Male rape is also a weapon of war in Congo and elsewhere. It’s rarely reported, though it was given some attention in “The Nobel committee shines a spotlight on rape in conflict ,” an October 11 “Economist” report that said it’s hard to estimate its frequency because so many men fear to report it because they’re so humiliated and may fear being accused of the crime of homosexuality. Uganda’s Refugee Law Project explained this profoundly in their film Gender Against Men , which I recommend to anyone reading this. The rape of both men and women as a weapon to destroy community makes it more clear that there is an ongoing genocide against the Congolese people, not just “femicide.” Could you talk about how the singular focus on violence against women hides that?

BKN: I have always been disturbed by the speech of Margaret Wallström, the former UN Special Envoy for violence against women and children in conflict. In 2010, after a stay in Congo, she claimed that this country was the rape capital of the world, and urged the Security Council to act to stop it. This statement associated the crime of rape with a specific nation, Congo, and with all the male individuals within. The word “capital” typically refers to the most central location, the brain and heart of a nation, the carrier of the cultural values. So one of Congo’s cultural values would be rape?

This perception of a pathological Congolese society filled with male rapists is also shared by a lot of Western women who campaign for Congolese women, like Eve Ensler. They even go so far as to call what is happening in Congo a femicide, a war against women. This portrays the Congolese male as an atavistic rapist.

“The perception of a pathological Congolese society filled with male rapists is also shared by a lot of Western women who campaign for Congolese women.”

The extreme focus on Congolese women’s bodies is not intended to defend them but is part of a broader discourse on the savagery of Congolese men and Black African male populations in general. Congo is the world capital of rape. Congo is the capital of a savage nation in the heart of Black Africa where Congolese men rape women to destroy them. Who could regret seeing such a deviant society cleared off the face of the earth?

UN envoy Margaret Wallström didn’t call for an end to the imperialist war waged against Congo and Africa in general. She said nothing about the imperial powers who commissioned the war crimes, including rape, against the Congolese people. She did not call on the Security Council to establish a tribunal to prosecute the crimes that were evidenced in the 2010 UN Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993-2003 , which revealed most significantly the crimes of longstanding US ally Rwanda. Instead, she called Congo the rape capital of the world and called on the Security Council to intervene against savage Congolese men.

AG: Some people have proposed that Dr. Mukwege, the most internationally recognized moral authority in Congo, should head a transitional government there. They include our mutual friends Patrick Mbecko and Jean-Claude Maswana, both of whom are highly respected Congolese scholars and activists. What do you think of that idea, and how do you imagine “transitional government” in Congo?

BKN: The fact is that I often wonder what people mean when they say that they want a transitional government. I’m sure that our friends Patrick Mbeko and Jean-Claude Maswana have very specific ideas on what it means, but when I read many other Congolese on “transition,” it seems that this is a kind of magic bag that would help us get rid of President Joseph Kabila, his troops, and the Rwandan occupiers. It does not in any way address, for example, the problem of neocolonialism or the case of the so-called Congolese opposition. The latter are, in my opinion, people who must be removed from the political sphere in Congo. They have flagrantly participated in sustaining Kabila’s tyrannical reign, even when the so-called constitution didn’t allow him to stay in power anymore. In addition, they never had the courage to explain to the population what role Rwanda and Uganda were playing in Congo’s tragedy. Are we going to include them in that transitional government? The transition presented this way has no appeal to me, even if it is led by Dr. Mukwege.

“Only a deep and radical rupture would give us the possibility of rebuilding the Congo state.”

I instead subscribe to the thought of another of my friends, Father Jean-Pierre Mbelu. For him, we cannot speak of transitional government in Congo, because it presupposes that there has been a form of democracy that should be restored after a period of crisis. The problem of Congo, however, cannot be summed up by a political crisis. The country is rather subjected to a permanent coup d’etat, and only a deep and radical rupture would give us the possibility of rebuilding the Congo state.Calling for transitions has been the solution that the international community has wanted to systematize in several African countries, including Congo, but its results leave much to be desired. The transition away from Kabila puts, in my opinion, too much weight on Kabila. It does not insist enough on revealing who created Kabila and does not inform us on the type of government and society we want to build after Kabila.

AG: Liberal Democrats and even leftists in the US are now so horrified by Donald Trump that our politics have been largely reduced to pro- and anti-Trump politics. You have the same problem regarding Kabila in Congo, don’t you?

BKN: Yes, and it is an eminently dangerous position because it means in fact no choice. It is an enclosure in a dichotomous circle that does not allow any escape or possibility to imagine other systems than the ones that exist. In this case, we are in the middle of a democratic illusion. Democracy according to this meaning is the right to be for or against. It is the right to change between two sides of the same coin while the ideology that creates the coin remains unchanged. This refers to the fundamental problem posed by capitalism. It is indeed a system that organizes a non-choice, that creates the illusion of choice for the benefit of the oligarchies that rule us. The tragedy of countries like ours is that they run after what they believe to be democracy, a binary system where it is only possible to be pro- or anti-X. It is even sadder because we’ve forgotten that this binary system never existed on the African continent prior to colonization but forms of real democracy did, especially in the Kongo Kingdom.

AG: Kabila should go, as Trump should, but what other forms of organizing are needed to alleviate the suffering and put Congolese on a path to claim their country’s enormous wealth and potential?

BKN: If we think about change, we need to understand that we all live within the context of globalized capitalism. We need also to understand that capitalism appears in different shapes and forms according to the space it is targeting. In Congo, it creates permanent chaos so as to maintain people in that chaos, with no boundaries to the violence because the state exists only as the most minimal simulacra of Western institutions. These are the prerequisites for plundering the country, draining it of its minerals and other natural resources, some of which have been declared strategic for US security. It not only kills and displaces Congolese but also dismantles their communities and so disorients them that they are unable to understand the global capitalist world and the role that Congo is relegated to within it. It all but eliminates their capacity to defend themselves. One must understand and broaden the understanding of this to fight back effectively and bring about change.

The individual alone, even if he or she understands what is at stake, cannot change anything, but Congo is hammered again and again with the idea that only an individual can change the course of events, so people are waiting for that particular individual. It is therefore not surprising to see the extreme focus on who will be the next president. That focus is fundamentally disorientating. It is a key element of the collaboration between the national comprador class and the imperialists, which summarizes the political history of the Congo since its independence.

“Political sovereignty can be regained only at a democratic community level, where pro-poor and rights based policies can be elaborated and ultimately shape the future of Congo.”

So we need to reverse things in a way that distributes power from the base to the top. It is therefore important not for the individual but for the communities to gain a level of control over different aspects of their daily lives. This means that we need strong base-building organizations that will be able to generate power and undertake collective actions to challenge the existing order. Such commitment requires that Congolese come to understand that power as it exists is a social construct put in place by the colonizers 500 years ago. Political sovereignty can be regained only at a democratic community level, where pro-poor and rights based policies can be elaborated and ultimately shape the future of Congo. And again, Congo has in its past known those forms of community-based organizations, so they have to be recovered and adapted to defeat the realities of neoliberalism as differentiated from formal colonialism and neocolonialism.

It will also be necessary to organize self-defense forces because we must not be fooled. Those who exploit us have weapons, and they are not ready to let go of Congo. This must be a war of liberation.

AG: Lastly, could you break down the latest developments in Rwanda’s ongoing occupation of Congo? Rwandan political prisoners Victoire Ingabire and Kizito Mihigo were released earlier this month. Then, last week, Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo won her bid to head the International Organization of La Francophonie . Also last week, a French prosecutor asked a French judge to dismiss charges against Rwandan Patriotic Army officers for assassinating Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira in 1994.

BKN: These last two years, Kabila, who is the proconsul of Kigali in the Congo, has worked to strengthen the Rwandan occupation of the country by appointing senior Tutsi officers in the national army and appointing men like Azarias Ruberwa at the head of the Ministry for Decentralization, which Congolese call the ministry for balkanization. This shows that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and those surrounding him have no intention of withdrawing from the Congo, a country whose wealth allows them to build big shiny buildings in Rwanda’s capital, then point to them and as proof of Rwanda’s economic growth even though most Rwandans are still very poor and the country still relies on foreign aid for 40% of its annual budget.

Rwanda’s shiny surface and the widespread fable about Rwandan economic growth also give Kagame credibility among Africans, and this is why the appointment of Mushikiwabo has been rather well received in Africa. Most Africans are, like the rest of the world, ill-informed about Rwandan realities. They have interpreted Mushikiwabo’s appointment as the victory of an African leader against Europe, France in particular. They forget that France plays the leading role in La Francophonie and France chose Mushikiwabo. [See “The ugly facts about the Francophonie .” When France says that they want a particular person to lead the organization, they more often than not get their way.

“Rwandan President Paul Kagame and those surrounding him have no intention of withdrawing from the Congo.”

Having Mushikiwabo as president is a way for France to regain the influence in Central Africa that it lost to the United States after Bill Clinton’s arrival in the White House. In this French/Rwandan bargain—because that is what it is—Kagame must have demanded that the long-running French investigation of his attack on Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane be permanently closed because it was an aggravating refutation of the panegyric that he is Rwanda’s savior. Some call this a victory for Rwandan diplomacy, but it’s more like a small hit man in the middle of an international mafia using blackmail to achieve his ends. On the French side of the bargain, it helps them reestablish France’s access to the immensely rich Congolese subsoil.

It is also important for France not to appear to be associated with a brutal regime that imprisons female opponents. Thus Kagame was forced to release political prisoners Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and Diane Rwigara to polish his image.In a country that boasts of having worked so hard on the advancement of women, these high-profile female political prisoners, both of whom attempted to challenge Kagame for the presidency, hugely stained his image. But the good news is that these two women refused to keep silent about what was happening in Rwanda after their release. They presage a much more difficult future for Kagame and the deadly system he put in place. It is therefore a great joy to see these women free again and more determined than ever. They are among the leaders and organizers that this long suffering region has hoped for.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

29 October 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/10/congo-in-the-abyss/

By Rick Sterling

The October 16 issue of NY Review of Books has an article by Janine di Giovani titled “Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets”. The article exemplifies how western media promotes the White Helmets uncritically and attacks those who challenge the myth.

Crude & Disingenuous Attack

Giovani’s article attacks several journalists by name. She singles out Vanessa Beeley and echoes the Guardian’s characterization of Beeley as the “high priestess of Syria propaganda”. She does this without challenging a single article or claim by the journalist. She might have acknowledged that Vanessa Beeley has some familiarity with the Middle East; she is the daughter of one of the foremost British Arabists and diplomats including British Ambassador to Egypt. Giovanni might have explored Beeley’s research in Syria that revealed the White Helmets founder (British military contractor James LeMesurier) assigned the name Syria Civil Defence despite the fact there is a real Syrian organization by that name that has existed since the 1950’s. For the past several years, Beeley has done many on-the-ground reports and investigations in Syria. None of these are challenged by Giovanni. Just days ago Beeley published a report on her visit to the White Helmets headquarters in Deraa.

Giovanni similarly dismisses another alternative journalist, Eva Bartlett. Again, Giovanni ignores the fact that Bartlett has substantial Middle East experience including having lived in Gaza for years. Instead of objectively evaluating the journalistic work of these independent journalists, Giovanni smears their work as “disinformation”. Presumably, that is because their work is published at alternative sites such as 21st Century Wire and Russian media such as RT and Sputnik. Beeley and Bartlett surely would have been happy to have their reports published at the New York Review of Books, Newsweek or other mainstream outlets. But it’s evident that such reporting is not welcome there. Even Seymour Hersh had to go abroad to have his investigations on Syria published.

The New McCarthyism

Max Blumenthal is another journalist singled out by Giovanni. Blumenthal is the author of three books, including a NY Times bestseller and the highly acclaimed “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel”. Giovanni describes his transition from “anti-Assad” to “pro-Assad” and suggests his change of perspective was due to Russian influence. She says, “Blumenthal went to Moscow on a junket to celebrate RT’s tenth anniversary. We don’t know what happened during that visit, but afterwards, Blumenthal’s views completely flipped.” Instead of examining the facts presented by Blumenthal in articles such as “Inside the Shadowy PR Firm that’s Lobyying for Regime Change in Syria”, Giovanni engages in fact-free McCarthyism. Blumenthal explained the transition in his thinking in a public interview. He also described the threats he experienced when he started to criticize the White Helmets and their public relations firm, but this is ignored by Giovanni.

Contrary to Giovanni’s assumptions, some western journalists and activists were exposing the White Helmets long before the story was publicized on Russian media. In spring 2015 the basic facts about the White Helmets including their origins, funding and role in the information war on Syria were exposed in my article “Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators”. The article showed how the White Helmets were a key component in a campaign pushing for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria. It confirmed that the White Helmets is a political lobby force.

In spring 2016, Vanessa Beeley launched a petition “Do NOT give the Nobel Peace Prize to the White Helmets”. That petition garnered more support than a contrary petition urging the Nobel Prize committee to give the award to the White Helmets. Perhaps because of that, the petition was abruptly removed without explanation from the Change.org website. It was only at this time, with publicity around the heavily promoted nomination of the White Helmets for a Nobel Peace Prize that RT and other Russian media started to publicize and expose the White Helmets. That is one and a half years after they were first exposed in western alternative media.

White Helmets and Chemical Weapons Accusations

Giovanni ignores the investigations and conclusions of some of the most esteemed American journalists regarding the White Helmets and chemical weapons incidents in Syria.

The late Robert Parry published many articles exposing the White Helmets, for example The White Helmets Controversy and Syria War Propaganda at the Oscars. Parry wrote and published numerous investigations of the August 2013 chemical weapons attack and concluded the attacks were carried out by an opposition faction with the goal of pressuring the US to intervene militarily. Parry also challenged western conclusions regarding incidents such as April 4, 2017 at Khan Shaykhun. Giovanni breathlessly opens her article with this story while Parry revealed the impossibility of it being as described.

“Buried deep inside a new U.N. report is evidence that could exonerate the Syrian government in the April 4 sarin atrocity and make President Trump look like an Al Qaeda dupe.”

Legendary American journalist, Seymour Hersh, researched and refuted the assumptions of Giovanni and the media establishment regarding the August 2013 chemical weapons attacks near Damascus. Hersh’s investigation, titled The Red Line and Rat Line, provided evidence the atrocity was carried out by an armed opposition group with active support from Turkey. A Turkish member of parliament provided additional evidence. The fact that Hersh had to go across the Atlantic to have his investigation published suggests American not Russian disinformation and censorship.

In addition to ignoring the findings of widely esteemed journalists with proven track records, Giovanni plays loose with the truth. In her article she implies that a UN investigation blamed the Syrian government for the August 2013 attack. On the contrary, the head of the UN investigation team, Ake Sellstrom, said they did not determine who was responsible.

“We do not have the evidence to say who did what ….The conflict in Syria is surrounded by a lot of rumors and a lot of propaganda, particularly when comes to the sensitive issue of chemical weapons.”

First Responders or Western Funded Propagandists?

Giovanni says, “But the White Helmets’ financial backing is not the real reason why the pro-Assad camp is so bent on defaming them. Since 2015, the year the Russians began fighting in Syria, the White Helmets have been filming attacks on opposition-held areas with GoPro cameras affixed to their helmets.”

In reality, the ‘White Helmets” have a sophisticated media production and distribution operation. They have much more than GoPro cameras. In many of their movie segments one can see numerous people with video and still cameras. Sometimes the same incident will be shown with one segment with an Al Qaeda logo blending into the same scene with a White Helmets logo.

Giovanni claims “The Assad regime and the Russians are trying to neutralize the White Helmets because they are potential witnesses to war crimes.” However the claims of White Helmet “witnesses” have little credibility. The White Helmet “volunteers” are paid three times as much as Syrian soldiers. They are trained, supplied and promoted by the same western states which have sought to regime change in Syria since 2011. An example of misleading and false claims by a White Helmets leader is exposed in Gareth Porter’s investigation titled “How a Syrian White Helmets Leader Played Western Media” . His conclusion could be directed to Giovanni and the NYReview of Books:

“The uncritical reliance on claims by the White Helmets without any effort to investigate their credibility is yet another telling example of journalistic malpractice by media outlets with a long record of skewing coverage of conflicts toward an interventionist narrative.”

When the militants (mostly Nusra / al Qaeda) were expelled from East Aleppo, civilians reported that the White Helmets were mostly concerned with saving their own and performing publicity stunts. For example the photo of the little boy in east Aleppo looking dazed and confused in the back of a brand new White Helmet ambulance was essentially a White Helmet media stunt eagerly promoted in the West. It was later revealed the boy was not injured, he was grabbed without his parent’s consent. Eva Bartlett interviewed and photographed the father and family for her story “Mintpress Meets the Father of Iconic Aleppo Boy and says Media Lied About his Son”.

A Brilliant Marketing Success

The media and political impact of the White Helmets shows what money and marketing can do. An organization that was founded by a military contractor with funding from a western governments was awarded the Rights Livelihood Award. The organization was seriously considered to received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize just three years after its formation.

The Netflix infomercial “The White Helmets” is an example of the propaganda. The scripted propaganda piece, where the producers did not set foot in Syria, won the Oscar award for best short documentary. It’s clear that lots of money and professional marketing can fool a lot of people. At $30 million per year, the White Helmets budget for one year is more than a decade of funding for the real Syrian Civil Defence which covers all of Syria not just pockets controlled by armed insurgents.

Unsurprisingly, it has been announced that White Helmets will receive the 2019 “Elie Wiesel” award from the heavily politicized and pro-Israel Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. This, plus the recent “rescue” of White Helmets by the Israeli government, is more proof of the true colors of the White Helmets. Vanessa Beeley’s recent interview with a White Helmet leader in Deraa revealed that ISIS and Nusra terrorists were part of the group “rescued” through Israel.

The Collapsing White Helmets Fraud

Giovanni is outraged that some journalists have successfully challenged and put a big dent in the White Helmets aura. She complains, “The damage the bloggers do is immense.”

Giovanni and western propagandists are upset because the myth is deflating. Increasing numbers of people – from a famous rock musician to a former UK Ambassador – see and acknowledge the reality.

As described in Blumenthal’s article, “How the White Helmets Tried to Recruit Roger Waters with Saudi Money”, rock legend Roger Waters says,

“If we were to listen to the propaganda of the White Helmets and others, we would encourage our governments to start dropping bombs on people in Syria. This would be a mistake of monumental proportions…”

Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria, sums it up like this:

“The White Helmets are jihadi auxiliaries… They are not, as claimed by themselves and by their supporters… simple rescuers. They are not volunteers. They are paid professionals of disinformation.”

Giovanni claims her article is a “forensic take down of the Russian disinformation campaign to distort the truth in Syria.” In reality, Giovanni’s article is an example of western disinformation using subjective attacks on critics and evidence-free assertions aligned with the regime change goals of the West.

Rick Sterling is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and an investigative journalist who lives in the SF Bay Area, California.

29 October 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/10/western-media-attacks-on-critics-of-the-white-helmets/

By Kabir Deb

O Mother, do not cry
For I have died but the battle stays
My death is not the full stop
It’s just a question which you must ask!

O Mother, I have been in pain
But the grave I taste is dying in vain
Don’t let her die! Save her from the predators
Once you free her, you would see me in peace

O Mother, I know how hard it’s for you to gasp
When your son bleeds to blend with the roses
I can feel how broken your heart is
When you bid me the great farewell

O Mother, I am not in peace
For their heaven is my home sweet home
She has been pierced a million times
But me and my friends die to save her

O Mother, the bullets won’t scare us
You have caressed my dead skin with your love
Please, take my death to my friends
To make them know what’s life all about!

O Mother, it’s not the Hirsohima I read
For that land died once and my land dies everyday
See the sky above sinking in my bleeding cloud
She too knows, how much we can endure!

O Mother, you have to go to my friends
Give them the lessons you just learnt from me
Through the unspoken words and cold body
Say them, “Freedom has no alternative”

O Mother, kiss me for the last time
Do come everyday to feed me with freedom
Your son today is more caged
But your love is what freedom promised me

O Mother, take my last breath
Store it in the jar and free it when we win
Goodbyes are for hell, not for heaven
Let your love ignite the healing revolution.

Kabir Deb was born in Haflong and completed his schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Karimganj.

27 October 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/27/harps-of-kashmir-bleed/

By Peter Koenig

The European Parliament has asked yesterday (25 October) for an immediate embargo on the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, hence sanctioning the Kingdom of rogue Saudi Arabia which is joining the United States and Israel as the main purveyor of crime throughout the Middle East and the world. France still said they will apply sanctions only if it is proven that Riyadh was indeed involved in the killing of the controversial Saudi journalist. Madame Merkel at least days ago said that Germany would no longer supply the Saudis with arms – as a result of the heinous crime committed on Jamal Khashoggi.

No doubt, it was a horrible murder that took place in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, with Jamal Khashoggi’s body possibly sawed to pieces, and according to latest accounts, buried in the Consulate’s backyard. And all that now admitted, executed by order of Riyadh. To soften the blow, for business purposes, some European countries would like to argue that it may not have been a premeditated assassination, but possibly a mortal “accident”, which would of course change the premises and lessen the punishment – and weapon sales could continue. It’s all business anyway.

Europe has no morals, no ethics no nothing. Europe, represented by Brussels, and in Brussels by the non-elected European Commission (EC), for all practical purposes is a mere nest of worms, or translated into humans, a nest of white-collar criminals, politicians, business people and largely a brainwashed populace of nearly 500 million. There are some exceptions within the population and fortunately their pool of ‘awakened’ is gently growing.

Even Switzerland, a neutral country according to her Constitution, not a member of the EU, but a staunch adherent to the (non-) European Union through more than 110 bi-and multilateral contracts, it was revealed yesterday, is assisting in Saudi Arabia converting the Swiss built (civilian) Pilatus helicopter into a ferocious war machine. Pilatus has always had that reputation of its controversial convertibility and was particularly known within Switzerland for that reason – but now, they surpass the limit of the tolerable, by helping the criminal and warmonger Saudis to mount a flying war machine in their, the Saudi’s, country – totally against Swiss law and against the Swiss Constitution, but fully tolerated by the Swiss Government.

Back to the real issue: It took the horrendous murder of a famous Saudi-critical and Saudi-national journalist, for the Europeans to react – and that, mind you, grudgingly. They’d rather follow Donald Trump’s line, why lose 110 billion dollars-worth of arms sales to the Saudis, for the murder of a journalist. – After all, business is business. Everything else is a farce.

For three and half years, the Saudi’s have waged a horrendous war on Yemen. They have slaughtered tens of thousands of Yemenis – according to the UN Human Rights Commission more than 50,000 children died by Saudi air raids with UK supplied bombs, and US supplied war planes – through lack of sanitation and drinking water induced diseases, like cholera – and an even worse crime, through extreme famine, the worst famine in recent history – as per UNICEF / WHO – imposed by force, as the Saudi’s with the consent of the European allies closed down all ports of entry, including the moist important Red Sea Port of Hodeida.

The European, along with the US, have been more than complicit in this crime against humanity – in these horrendous war crimes. Imagine one day a Nuremberg-type Court against war crimes committed in the last 70 years, not one of the western leaders, still alive, would be spared. That’s what we – in the west – have become. A nest of war criminals – war criminals for sheer greed. They invented a neoliberal, everything goes market doctrine system, where no rules no ethics no morals count – just money, profit and more profit. Any method of maximizing profit – war and war industry – is good and accepted. And the west with its fiat money made of hot air, is imposing this nefarious, destructive system everywhere, by force and regime change if voluntary acceptance is not in the cards.

And we, the people, have become complicit in it, as we are living in luxury and comfort, and couldn’t care less what our leaders (sic-sic) are doing to the rest of the world, to the so-called lesser humans, who live in squalor as refugees, their homes and towns destroyed, bombed to ashes, no schools, no hospitals, and to a large extent no food – yes about 70 million-plus refugees are everyday on the move, most of them from the west-destroyed Middle-East. Why should we worry? We live well. To the contrary, these refugees they could steal our jobs. Let them not invade our luxury havens. Rather keep bombing their countries into rubble.

Yemen, strategically highly sought-for, should, of course, not be governed by the Houthis, a socialist-leaning group of revolutionary Muslims which is part of the Shia Zaidi, a branch of the Shia Imamiya of Iran.They finally became sick and tired of the decades-long Washington manipulation of their government. And who better than the stooges of Saudi Arabia to do the dirty job for Washington? – And, yes, they don’t have to do it alone. Weapon supplies comefrom all over Europe, mainly the UK, and France, also Spain, and for a while also from Germany – and well, neutral Switzerland.

No matter that tens of thousands of children are killed, that according to the Human Rights Commission, up to 22 million Yemenis (out of about 30 million population), are in danger of severe famine, and that includes at least 8 million children – children who have for the most part no more access to schools, health services and food – an entire generation or more without education, a well-planned and premeditated gap in society, as is the case in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. By killing and depriving children of basic needs, the west is creating a widening gap of educated people, of people that can and would otherwise fight for their countries, for their societies. But – they are gone. That makes it so much easier for the west just to take over – their strategic position, their natural resources and suck empty the social safety funds accumulated by their labor force.

Isn’t that a thought for the illustrious populace who live in western luxury, to lean back in their fauteuils and think about? – What if, one day the tables are reversed – and we, the west would face justice? – Is anybody in the west bold and realistic enough to see such a picture? – And as we see these days – history is advancing in giant steps. It’s the 21st Century – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has more than made inroads in our society. And what if – if those that we consider inferior and our enemies, are in fact a few steps ahead of us in AI science – and could reverse the picture rather rapidly?

And while we wonder why Saudi-slaughtered Yemenis does not raise a fuss in the western media, but the Saudi killing of a journalist does, all-the-while our linear IMF provided projections increase western GDP by fantastic numbers by 2030, irrespective of the20% unemployment thanks to AI, that some predict – all these contradictory figures are unimportant, while we can make a killing from killing Yemeni children. But it takes the Khashoggi killing that might stop – if only temporarily, and if only we are lucky – the Saudi war machine. The population of Yemen is unimportant. Why?

Why does it take the assassination of a journalist – granted, a horrendous and grisly murder by his own country’s government – no matter how controversial Jamal Khashoggi was, he has been writing for our western MSM, for the truth tellers, such as the Washington post and the NYTimes. That may have helped making him more important than 50,000 slaughtered and maimed Yemeni children – more important in the sense that only through his abject murder, the European – maybe – will react and ‘sanction’ the Saudis.

But even that is not sure – as the Transatlantic Master Trump, has many trumps up his sleeve, that he may offer or coerce the EU puppets into following his heinous example and spare Riyadh from any punishment, especially as far as weapons are concerned. After all its business. Dead children are just that, dead Yemenis, a generation less to worry about.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst.

27 October 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/27/khashoggi-versus-50000-slaughtered-yemeni-children/

By Rene Wadlow

The co-laureate of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, Denis Mukwege, has become an eloquent spokesperson for the effort to outlaw the use of rape as a weapon of war. Rape has often been considered as a nearly normal part of war. When an army took a city or town, the rape of women followed, a reward to brave soldiers. Military commanders turned a blind eye.

However, whatever may have been past practice, rape has now become a weapon of war, often an effort at genocide. Women’s reproductive organs are deliberately destroyed with the aim of preventing the reproduction of a group – one of the elements of genocide set out in the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Denis Mukwege has created a clinic near Bukavu in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo – a country that is democratic only in name. He and a number of younger doctors whom he was trained try to care for women who have undergone rape by multiple men, one after the other, often in public in front of family members and others who know the woman. Known rape, even by a single person, can be a cause of family breakup, lasting shame, and an inability to continue living in the same village. There are also negative attitudes toward children born of a rape. Multiple rape is often followed by deliberate destruction of the reproductive organs.

The eastern area of Congo is the scene of fighting at least since 1998 – in part as a result of the genocide in neighboring Rwanda in 1994. In mid-1994, more than one million Rwandan Hutu refugees poured into the two Kivu states, fleeing the advance of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front now become the government of Rwanda. Many of these Hutu were still armed, among them the “genocidaire” who a couple of months before had led the killings of some 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda. They continued to kill Tutsi living in the Congo, many of whom had migrated there in the 18th century.

The influx of a large number of Hutu led to a desire to control the wealth of the area – rich in gold, tropical timber and rare minerals such as those used in mobile telephones. In the Kivu, many problems arise from land tenure issues. With a large number of new people, others displaced and villages destroyed, land tenure and land use patterns need to be reviewed and modified.

However, violence in the eastern Congo is not limited to fighting between Hutus and Titsis. There are armed bands from neighboring countries – Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda – who have come on the scene attracted by possible wealth from timber and mines of rare minerals. In addition, local commanders of the Congolese Army, far from the control of the Central Government, have created their own armed groups, looting, raping, and burning village homes.

There is a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Congo, the U.N.’s largest peacekeeping mission. However its capacity has reached its limit. Its operations are focused on areas with roads, leaving villages on small paths largely unguarded.

There has been a growing international awareness of the use of rape as a weapon of war. The issue was raised during the conflicts which followed the breakup of Yugoslavia as well as cases brought to the International Criminal Court. The Association of World Citizens has raised the issue in U.N. human rights bodies in Geneva.

Yet there is much yet to be done to make the outlawing of rape as a norm of humanitarian law and especially to prevent its practice. The Nobel Peace Prize to Denis Mukwege should be a strong step forward in this effort.

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

27 October 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/27/highlighting-the-need-to-combat-the-use-of-rape-as-a-weapon-of-war/

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

NEW YORK – “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” asked Henry II as he instigated the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in 1170. Down through the ages, presidents and princes around the world have been murderers and accessories to murder, as the great Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin and Walter Lunden documented in statistical detail in their masterwork Power and Morality. One of their main findings was that the behavior of ruling groups tends to be more criminal and amoral than that of the people over whom they rule.

What rulers crave most is deniability. But with the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by his own government, the poisoning of former Russian spies living in the United Kingdom, and whispers that the head of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, may have been executed in China, the curtain has been slipping more than usual of late. In Riyadh, Moscow, and even Beijing, the political class is scrambling to cover up its lethal ways.

But no one should feel self-righteous here. American presidents have a long history of murder, something unlikely to trouble the current incumbent, Donald Trump, whose favorite predecessor, Andrew Jackson, was a cold-blooded murderer, slaveowner, and ethnic cleanser of native Americans. For Harry Truman, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima spared him the likely high cost of invading Japan. But the second atomic bombing, of Nagasaki, was utterly indefensible and took place through sheer bureaucratic momentum: the bombing apparently occurred without Truman’s explicit order.

Since 1947, the deniability of presidential murder has been facilitated by the CIA, which has served as a secret army (and sometime death squad) for American presidents. The CIA has been a party to murders and mayhem in all parts of the world, with almost no oversight or accountability for its countless assassinations. It is possible, though not definitively proved, that the CIA even assassinated UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.

The CIA has only been held to public account on one occasion: the 1975 US Senate hearings led by Frank Church. Since then, the CIA has continued its violent and, yes, murderous ways, without any accountability for it or for the presidents who authorized its actions.

Many mass killings by presidents have involved the conventional military. Lyndon Johnson escalated US military intervention in Vietnam on the pretext of a North Vietnamese attack in the Gulf of Tonkin that never happened. Richard Nixon went further: by carpet-bombing Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, he sought to instill in the Soviet Union the fear that he was an irrational leader capable of anything. (Nixon’s willingness to implement his “madman theory” is perhaps the self-fulfilling proof of his madness.) In the end, the Johnson-Nixon American war in Indochina cost millions of innocent lives. There was never a true accounting, and perhaps the opposite: plenty of precedents for later mass killings by US forces.

The mass killings in Iraq under George W. Bush are of course better known, because the US-led war there was made for TV. A supposedly civilized country engaged in “shock and awe” to overthrow another country’s government on utterly false pretenses. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died as a result.

Barack Obama was widely attacked by the right for being too soft, yet he, too, notched up quite a death toll. His administration repeatedly approved drone attacks that killed not only terrorists, but also innocents and US citizens who opposed America’s bloody wars in Muslim countries. He signed the presidential finding authorizing the CIA to cooperate with Saudi Arabia in overthrowing the Syrian government. That “covert” operation (hardly discussed in the polite pages of the New York Times) led to an ongoing civil war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and millions displaced from their homes. He used NATO airstrikes to overthrow Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi, resulting in a failed state and ongoing violence.

Under Trump, the US has abetted Saudi Arabia’s mass murder (including of children) in Yemen by selling it bombs and advanced weapons with almost no awareness, oversight, or accountability by the Congress or the public. Murder committed out of view of the media is almost no longer murder at all.

When the curtain slips, as with the Khashoggi killing, we briefly see the world as it is. A Washington Post columnist is lured to a brutal death and dismembered by America’s close “ally.” The American-Israeli-Saudi big lie that Iran is at the center of global terrorism, a claim refuted by the data, is briefly threatened by the embarrassing disclosure of Khashoggi’s grisly end. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who ostensibly ordered the operation, is put in charge of the “investigation” of the case; the Saudis duly cashier a few senior officials; and Trump, a master of non-stop lies, parrots official Saudi tall tales about a rogue operation.

A few government and business leaders have postponed visits to Saudi Arabia. The list of announced withdrawals from a glitzy investment conference is a who’s who of America’s military-industrial complex: top Wall Street bankers, CEOs of major media companies, and senior officials of military contractors, such as Airbus’s defense chief.

The US prides itself on being a constitutional democracy, yet when it comes to foreign policy, the president is little different from a despot. Trump has just announced the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty without so much as a mention to Congress.

Political scientists should test the following hypothesis: countries led by presidents (as in the US) and non-constitutional monarchs (as in Saudi Arabia), rather than by parliaments and prime ministers, are especially vulnerable to murderous politics. Parliaments provide no guarantees of restraint, but one-man rule in foreign policy, as in the US and Saudi Arabia, almost guarantees massive bloodletting.

Americans are rightly horrified by Khashoggi’s murder. But their own government’s murderous ways may be little different. The pervasiveness of state-sponsored killings is no excuse for treating murder as acceptable, ever. It is instead a rationale for subjecting power to strict constitutional constraints and especially to international law, including the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is our only true hope for survival and safety in a world where the casual resort to violence can easily be the end of all of us.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

24 October 2018

Source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/killer-politicians-include-american-presidents-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2018-10?a_la=english&a_d=5bd092ee78b6c757b4af03b5&a_m=&a_a=click&a_s=&a_p=%2Fcolumnist%2Fjeffrey-d-sachs&a_li=killer-politicians-include-american-presidents-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2018-10&a_pa=columnist-commentaries&a_ps=

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

President Donald J. Trump has made it his signature move to repudiate the signatures of others, and the latest, promised evacuation from the old US-Soviet pact otherwise known as the intermediate range nuclear forces (INF) treaty was merely another artefact to be abandoned.

When it came into force after 1987, it banned ground-launched short- and medium-range missiles within the range of 500 km and 5,500 km. Of primary concern to the US had been the deployment by the Soviets of the SS-20, the result of which was the deployment of Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe.

According to the Arms Control Association, the INF Treaty “successfully eliminated an entire class of destabilizing nuclear weapons that were deployed in Europe and helped bring an end to the spiralling Cold War arms race.” Some 2,700 missiles and their requisite launchers were destroyed in the arrangement. It suggested a certain degree of trust: both Washington and Moscow were permitted verification about installations.

The usual withdrawal technique (the Trump retraction style) has become known. Trump is an expert practitioner of interruptus, but the issue is what he replaces it with: a new vision with provisions and obligations, or butchered nonsense wrapped in ribbon? “I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out.” The Russians had “been violating it for many years.” This included the testing, and ultimate deployment of the 9M729, a ground-launched cruise missile that purportedly edged well and beyond the confines of the treaty. The initial response to such alleged violations was one of pressure, convincing Moscow to come back to the fold via an “integrated strategy”. That, evidently, proved too measured an approach.

Yet even now, the Russians, typified by the reaction of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, are both bemused and irritated. The veteran official preferred to avoid divining coffee grounds on where the White House might move next, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that no formal measures to exit the treaty have yet been undertaken. Ruslan Pukhov of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies was even optimistic: “If there’s good will on both sides, including ours, then probably the treaty can be saved.”

It was Russian President Vladimir Putin who had anticipated this circus of retraction, suggesting in 2007 with a degree of appropriate cheek that the treaty did not advance Russia’s interests. That huffing response had come as a direct response to Washington’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, yet another Cold War artefact confined to the mausoleum of agreements long dead.

The nuclear intermediate treaty was meant to eliminate merely one category of madness, another blubber of criminal insanity that typifies the creatures of the megadeath complex. (In any future war crimes court, they will always claim that weapons of mass murder were needed to prevent mass murder, even if they did ensure the logical consequences of such killing.)

The INF Treaty always troubled such national security hawks of the ilk of John Bolton, who felt as far back as 2011 that Washington should leave the treaty for no better reason than combating an impetuous China. That was hardly surprising for a man who subscribes to the view of Charles de Gaulle that, “Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: They last while they last.” The INF had “outlived its usefulness in its current form – so it should either be changed or thrown out.”

Trump’s arguments are those of his counterparts. Both Russia and the United States have been cheating, baulking, adjusting, reading between clauses and playing before their meanings. Violations have been treated as instances of mild infidelity, and even the European states have shown little by way of concern. They are the faithless partners in a marriage of inconvenience, but in so far as it lasted, it afforded a cover for the couple to behave at international forums with a degree of questionable decorum. In Trump’s era, decorum is an unnecessary encumbrance fit to be scorned. The animal must be set free, the hand must grab, and everything else is left to chance.

Such moves might well be cheered in the Kremlin. Washington, as Steven Fifer, former State Department official and arms control expert based at the Brookings Institute predicts, “will get the blame for killing the treaty.” The debate, if you could venture to use that term, was bound to “devolve into an exchange of charges, counter-charges and denials.”

In concrete terms, Trump has changed props, but risks unnecessary costs in attempting to develop weapons that would have fallen within the INF’s remit. For one, it will ruffle Russia’s security concerns regarding central and eastern European states. “Tomahawks with nuclear warheads could be loaded with anti-missile sites in Romania and Poland as soon as US leaves INF Treaty,” tweeted National Defense editor Igor Korotchenko. The enthusiasm by such governments for US hardware in combating the wily Russian bear makes that prospect a distinct possibility.

Then comes the more practical side of things, making such a decision unnecessarily boisterous. The US is more than capable in deploying various systems (both air and sea launched) that could threaten Russian targets, should Washington ever take leave of its senses.

The withdrawal also risks the direction of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), an agreement near and dear to weapons control experts. Yet for all this jazzing of the show, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev had his antennae up: the Kremlin was still keen to work with Washington to eliminate “mutual” grievances concerning the INF. The dance on these gruesome weapons continues to enchant even the most irritated, and irritating, of rivals.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.

24 October 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/24/ditching-nuclear-treaties-trump-withdraws-from-the-inf/

By Ranjan Solomon

Observers from the outside more often, than not, have pre-conceived notions about resistance in Gaza: The bearded Hamas “militant” or the young man hurling stones across the border fence. Not many know about women and their place in the struggle. Palestinian women, both in Gaza and the West Bank, have a significant presence as activists, protesting against an unjust occupation. They are, in fact, the backbone of a fragmented and demoralized society argues a report from ‘The Conversation’. The report shows how women have been active in the Palestinian struggle since its early days. They were even in the thick of the struggle against the British in the time of the British mandate. At the time of the creation of State of Israel in 1948, they were protectors of their families, and repositories of the “national story”. It was vital that Palestinians, wherever they were in the world, did not forget what had happened and continued to insist on their right of return to their homeland. Women passed their memories of Palestine down to subsequent generations. When the Palestinian liberation movement emerged, several women turned militant. An icon from that era was Leila Khalid who hijacked several airliners on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and became widely known around the world for her courage and determination. In 1987 women joined men and children in the Intifada applying creative and alternative educational facilities for children after all the schools were closed. They also crafted an alternative economy based on home produce, as well as engaging in large-scale protests. “The Conversation” concludes as follows: “While it may be tempting to argue that the participation of women in violence is a sign of a society that has lost its way, the reality is more complex. Many Palestinian women point out that their community is powerless; it has neither the political leadership nor the weapons to fight a conventional war. Instead, it relies on all its members to participate and “tell the world” what is happening to them.

By protesting at the Gaza-Israel border to mark the anniversary of al-Nakba (“the catastrophe”), Palestinian women, as much as men, have assumed a vital stake in finding a solution to the conflict that will provide safety and certainty for the next generation. The militant Hamas has attracted the women to engage in grassroots organizing to meet head-on the Israeli occupation.

In this edition, we briefly report on three stories of three recent women icons that are also playing a powerful role in the fight for civil rights in “apartheid” Israel.

We share a powerful collection of pictures portraying angry women challenging the brutal occupation as created in 2016 by Activestills. It shows the hidden, yet significant, role of women in the struggle. Two years later the images still count for the intensity of women’s place in the struggle. We also share a defiant alternative view in an article: Palestinian woman: Active in struggle, obscure in media. This is a must read for those who foresee an inclusive Palestine when freedom dawns. .

Ranjan Solomon

21 October 2018

By Alexandre David

The examination of evidence carried out on the protagonists’ phones and computers continue to weaken the assertions by the civil party. Two years of messages sent by Henda Ayari harassing Tariq Ramadan following the alleged rape, between 2012 and 2014. Collusion between the plaintiffs and some of Tariq Ramadan’s notorious enemies but also among the accusers themselves. If some already suspected it, today the investigation proves and progressively reveals the truth.

Henda Ayari, two years of messages and sexual harassment

Henda Ayari, unable to provide a date or place of the alleged rape needs to confront her own contradictions. The investigation proves she sent hundreds of messages to Professor Tariq Ramadan, between 2012 and 2014. In other words, two years following the alleged rape.

These messages are of a sexual nature and amount to harassment. The forensic analysis also proves collusion between Henda Ayari and Paule Emma Aline (second plaintiff) long before Henda Ayari’s alleged rape complaint was filed in October 2017.

Conversations made public between Henda Ayari and Jean-Claude Elfassi, Tariq Ramadan’s sworn enemy, also show collusion. In one message, Henda Ayari says to Elfassi: “No man eats me, I eat them, a lioness is never devoured by wolves” and “I am authentic, when I engage in a collaboration, I see it through. For that to happen, one must live up to my standards. You should be blamed more than me in this story”.

Paule Emma Aline, collusion and lies

The examination of Paule Emma Aline’s mobile phone confirms there was no rape and proves [her] willingness to harm. This woman, now almost in her 50’s originally claimed to have lost her cell phone. She only handed it over to the authorities in April 2018.
Did she know what her cell phone contained? It seems she has hidden some messages. One thing is certain: the investigation into her cell phone definitely weakens the civil party.

It proves collusion between the accusers. Paule Emma Aline and Henda Ayari established a relationship and were communicating since long before Henda Ayari lodged her complaint.

What is even more worrying is that Paule Emma Aline and the Swiss plaintiff, “Brigitte”, have known each other since 2009.

Lastly, the investigation confirmed that there was collusion between the accusers and personalities who have notoriously opposed Tariq Ramadan. Several names are mentioned in the report: Caroline Fourest, Alain Soral, Ian Hamel, Jean-Claude El Fassi, Yasmine Kepel, Antoine Sfeir and Salim Laïbi.

The civil party does not reveal all

If Me Szpiner, ( the lawyer fired by the third plaintiff Mounia Rabbouj strongly attacked him via social media on his lack of transparency and integrity ) did not wish to comment, Paule Emma Aline’s lawyer, Me Morain, made no mention of messages sent by Paule Emma Aline and had to adjust her version.

He is now talking about a “partially consensual” relationship. He did not mention the exchanges proving collusion between the different French plaintiffs themselves nor with personalities opposed to Tariq Ramadan.

On the other hand, the very old links between Paule Emma Aline and “Brigitte”, the Swiss plaintiff, were also ignored, both by Morain and Paule Emma Aline herself, who lied about it during the confrontation with the judges. This case is far from being an issue of morals: it is a highly politicized file. Professor Tariq Ramadan is being kept in custody despite all the evidence that completely exculpates him.

An upcoming hearing could change the game, the two accusers’ lies having been exposed by this investigation. An investigation that appears to be used against Tariq Ramadan for the time being, both by some media and by the investigating judges who delay and divert the proceedings while the file, from the beginning, is empty of evidence.

Legitimate questions

Legitimate questions need to be asked as to the form and substance of the proceedings against Tariq Ramadan. Why is so much time being taken in addressing key and important investigations in the file? The photo that would prove that Paule Emma Aline was at the conference during the alleged has still not been examined by experts. If it is her, as witnesses have reported, it must certify be taken into account in a criminal investigation.

Six months later, certain analysises have still not been launched by the judges.

This procedure, in terms of time and instruction, is exceptional and opens the door to deep resentment among those who have faith in the justice system. It seems that not all litigants are equal before the law.

The investigation in the Tariq Ramadan case will undoubtedly be the judicial scandal of the century, but also the symbol of contempt that justice can sometimes have for the presumption of innocence. Awaiting the next legal steps, Tariq Ramadan remains in prison.
This does not bode well for the resumption of the investigation, the examination having brought its evidence and certainties.

Alexandre David

21 October 2018

Source: https://www.reveilcitoyenmedia.com/blog/tariq-ramadan-case-examination-of-evidence-continues-to-weaken-civil-party