Archives: Articles

By SatyaRaj

A leaked Hillary Clinton email has now confirmed that the Obama administration, with Hillary directing policy, orchestrated a civil war in Syria to benefit Israel’s geopolitical interests and stability.

The new Wikileaks release shows that Clinton, then Secretary of State orchestrated the war in Syria to overthrow the government of President Assad, because it is “best way to help Israel”.

Newobserveronline.com reports:

The document was one of many unclassified by the US Department of State under case number F-2014-20439, Doc No. C05794498, following the uproar over Clinton’s private email server kept at her house while she served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

Although the Wikileaks transcript dates the email as December 31, 2000, this is an error on their part, as the contents of the email (in particular the reference to May 2012 talks between Iran and the west over its nuclear program in Istanbul) show that the email was in fact sent on December 31, 2012.

The email makes it clear that it has been US policy from the very beginning to violently overthrow the Syrian government—and specifically to do this because it is in Israel’s interests.

“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad,” Clinton forthrightly starts off by saying.

Even though all US intelligence reports had long dismissed Iran’s “atom bomb” program as a hoax (a conclusion supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Clinton continues to use these lies to “justify” destroying Syria in the name of Israel.

She specifically links Iran’s mythical atom bomb program to Syria because, she says, Iran’s “atom bomb” program threatens Israel’s “monopoly” on nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

If Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, Clinton asserts, this would allow Syria (and other “adversaries of Israel” such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt) to “go nuclear as well,” all of which would threaten Israel’s interests.

Therefore, Clinton, says, Syria has to be destroyed.
Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly.
An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today.
If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself.

It is, Clinton continues, the “strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria” that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security.

This would not come about through a “direct attack,” Clinton admits, because “in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel” this has never occurred, but through its alleged “proxies.”
The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel’s leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests.
Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly.
Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted.

Clinton goes on to asset that directly threatening Bashar Assad “and his family” with violence is the “right thing” to do:
In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria.
With his life and his family at risk, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s mind.

The email proves—as if any more proof was needed—that the US government has been the main sponsor of the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, and all in order to “protect” Israel.

It is also a sobering thought to consider that the “refugee” crisis which currently threatens to destroy Europe, was directly sparked off by this US government action as well, insofar as there are any genuine refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria.

In addition, over 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which has spread to Iraq—all thanks to Clinton and the Obama administration backing the “rebels” and stoking the fires of war in Syria.

The real and disturbing possibility that a psychopath like Clinton—whose policy has inflicted death and misery upon millions of people—could become the next president of America is the most deeply shocking thought of all.

Clinton’s public assertion that, if elected president, she would “take the relationship with Israel to the next level,” would definitively mark her, and Israel, as the enemy of not just some Arab states in the Middle East, but of all peace-loving people on earth.

2 October 2016

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

A young boy was found dead in Noida. The family and the people alleged that it is the Africans who have drugged him so he got cardiac arrest and after that the crowd swell and become violent against them. Police as usual arrest some of the Nigerian students and found nothing incriminating against them so release them later but the people are dissatisfied. The shocking part of this violence is a rumour when the boy was missing his mother felt that these Negros must have eaten him up. Earlier too some dogs were missing from the area. Now, in an area which could not trace the likes of Mohinder Singh Pandher and his associate for what they had been doing for years, accused of kidnapping children and eating them up. They are in jail but we do not hear any sensitivity on the issue. It is very easy to make any stereotype against African. Police swung into action, found the boys dead body but still the people continue to protest. Now, they twist the story that the boy was drugged.

Yes, drugs are a big problems but are these problems created by the Africans here. Our children are too ‘naive’. Indians have not even learnt how to grow their children. They think except their children, everybody else is a crooked and here all those who do not look like them. A society which lives in false arrogance, where children are not taught that the world is diverse, that there are different languages, different colours of skins, diverse religions and regions, we will only grow in prejudices.

Though India remained a society with high prejudices against their own countrymen where caste, gender and religious prejudices are running high yet at the level of government as well as in the media there was a veil of decency to oppose it even if it in their heart they were not fully convinced. Political class was not that rampant to keep silent on such prejudiced violence as happening now. The state apparatus at the moment has kept mum now. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj knows it well how difficult it has become for her Ministry to defend the indefensible

After Yogi’s ascendency to power in Uttar Pradesh there is a tendency growing up among the powerful communities to take law unto their hand as they feel they have now got power and can do anything and get away with it. Already Muslims in the state are feeling enormous pressure in the name of closing of ‘slaughterhouses’ in the name of legal verses illegal debate. The state government knows fully well as who owned them and need to clarify it. Any slaughterhouse can become illegal if the government does not give it permission. Similarly, issue of threatening the opponents. The language is becoming shriller and arrogant day by day.

The Noida incident is not isolated one and a sudden eruption of such feelings. These feeling will grow as we educate our children about our own ‘greatness’ and the masculine power of our civilisation. It is not that one should not respect ones values but there are certain values which are universal. Civilisations have grown when they have capacity to include various other ingredients that are brought by diverse ethnicities and other civilisation. No civilisation grow out of an isolation and without any amalgamation of various value systems. India’s strength was its diversity and strength to absorb but all this is under the attack. Nobody is better than us. If we appreciate others, it is ‘appeasement’. If we critique our own racial and caste based prejudices then we are ‘western liberal’ ignoring the wider fact that right from Buddha to Kabir to Ravidas, Ambedkar, Phule, Periyar, Rahul Sankrityayan, Vivekananda have spoken about the dirty of untouchability and caste discrimination in our society. Those who glorify our past have rarely done anything to do away with the caste discrimination.

Africans have been our friends and have historical ties with us. In their war against colonialism, they learnt a lot from us and vice versa. Even when we have caste discrimination and our biases our political leadership always stood with the rights of Africans but today it is under severe strain. The biases in our minds exists even those who live in East Africa, Uganda or Kenya. Africans in these countries have reported how they face prejudices from Indians.

The ideas which are being propagated and imposed upon Indian people are dangerous at the moment. The ideas of supremacy over others, of singularity, of so called oneness, which talks as if we are a homogeneous society rather than celebrating diversity of faiths, of regions, cultural values and races. It is becoming a society based on We and us which is not keen to accommodate ‘them’. The multiculturalism is a strength too but these days it has become the biggest whipping ground for the religious rights for whom every ailment of their society is because of ‘others’ who don’t follow their ‘faith” and ‘cultural value system”. Hence, you will find people who get suspicious of those who are non-vegetarian. There are people who look upon you as a criminal if you tell them that you eat meat or drink Vodka. If you are sitting late night, have a dancing group in which girls are partners, then immediately you are corrupt and the girls as ‘cheap’ and worst than ‘bigadail’.

We know well whether it is Africans or North Eastern regions of Indian friends, they face these prejudices. They are looked as all of them are druggists. As if all of them are potential ‘rapists’ and as if all of the girls who smile and go around with their friends are ‘prostitutes’. Such mindset need to go. India will stand to lose in the comity of nations if we do not educate our children and families look insidiously as what ails our society. Are African nationals in India responsible for crime happening here? Are they responsible for drugs or bad habits of our children? Are African girls responsible for brothels that are operating here from centuries?

We must think. We must not allow such farcical heroics to grow. It is time. If any African boy or girl are on the wrong side of the law, let it take its own course. The people have no right to decide on the street. You can not become a lynch mob and decide about it. International community is watching you and your behaviour pattern. It is time to grow. More than the people, it is the politicians who use people’s sentiments to grow in politics need to understand and behave as responsible spokesperson of the country. Indians face violence on such basis many places and we cry loud. Why do we engage in such things. Our administration and police need to be educated to handle such issues. At the top level, I would love to hear a Man ki Baat on the issue of untouchability, caste discrimination, racial and religious prejudices in our society. It remain the biggest challenge to India today whether we can rise above all these prejudices ?

Vidya Bhushan Rawat is a Radical Humanist, political analyst and human rights activist

29 March 2017

By Paul Craig Roberts

Just as President Putin has stated that governments and media in the West have destroyed Russia’s trust in the West, the governments and media in the West have destroyed the trust of their citizens, who have been transformed into serfs to whom government no longer is accountable.

I have stressed in many columns that the absence of trust between nuclear powers is a great threat to all life on earth.  Yet the Western governments and media continue to work 24/7 to worsen relations between the US and Russia and the US and China. Those of us who warn of the possible consequences are put on lists of “Russian dupes” and purveyors of “fake news.”  These lists show the desperation behind the orchestrated “Russian threat.”  A one thousand billion dollar annual military/security budget is at stake along with American financial and political hegemony.

In brief, greed for money and power are driving the world to destruction.

Greed and power have also driven Americans, indeed all of the Western world, into a more complete police state than George Orwell describes in his book, 1984.

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano describes the extraordinary spy capability of the US government and the ease with which it can be used against even the President of the United States.  Napolitano’s article appeared on LewRockwell.com, InformationClearingHouse.info, and antiwar.com.  The antiwar.com link has a link to the response from the UK’s GCHQ, which has full access to NSA’s digital collection of all electronic communications of Americans, to Napolitano’s suggestion that Obama could have used the British to avoid leaving US fingerprints on his spying activities against Trump. (Read Napolitano’s article, Did Obama Spy On Trump?, here.)

The British Government Communications Headquarters dismissed Napolitano’s suggestion as “nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”  In other words, the GCHQ did not deny that it has access to every electronic communication made by Americans, including the President of the US.  Instead, GCHQ tried to impugn Napolitano’s credibility.  Keep in mind that it was British intelligence that permitted Prime Minister Tony Blair to lie to the British Parliament in behalf of the George W. Bush regime’s orchestrated case for invading Iraq.

When you read Napolitano’s account of the completeness with which Americans have lost all privacy, you will understand that the US Constitution is erased, like the Confederate States of America and its battle flag. Our privacy is not only erased by government but also by private corporations.  Those Americans so insouciant as to respond to the fact that they are spied upon by saying, “I’m doing nothing wrong, so I have nothing to fear,” should read the statement below from the American Civil Liberties Union:

“Last year we won strong internet privacy rules. The Federal Communications Commission introduced protections that require companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon to get your permission before they sell your private information to the highest bidder.

“Now some politicians are caving to industry pressure. The Senate introduced a resolution to overturn this important FCC rule – and if passed by Congress, the FCC would be blocked from issuing similar rules in the future.

“Add your name to tell the Senate you don’t want companies selling your data without your permission.

“For years, internet service providers have been trying to find ways to collect, use, and sell the sensitive data they collect from you – every website you visit, the times you log into and out of your online accounts, and even your location. These companies collect data that can paint an intimate picture of your religious practices, sexual activities, health problems, and more.

“Who are the buyers? Advertisers, big-data brokers, and even government and law enforcement agencies.

“Protecting privacy is also about stopping discrimination. Retailers can offer different online prices based on customers’ locations, sometimes giving worse deals to residents of low-income neighborhoods where there are fewer stores to compete with online prices.

“Tell the Senate to keep common sense online privacy protections in place.

“We’ve been on the front lines of the long fight to restrict what profiteers can do with the sensitive data they sweep up from your online activity.

“Help put the pressure on politicians to keep crucial FCC rules in place.”

The ease with which the US government has been able to destroy the US Constitution in the 21st century illustrates the weakness of democracy.  Unconcerned and unaware people are incapable of protecting their civil liberties. Habeas corpus, due process, and privacy have been erased.  The only remaining protection is the Second Amendment, which cannot stand alone.

The peoples of the West have allowed themselves to be deceived by lies, misled by orchestrated “threats,” and distracted into irrelevant matters.  Consequently, they have lost their liberty. And they might lose their lives.

22 March 2017

By Bill Van Auken

The Pentagon has formally asked the Trump White House to lift limited restrictions imposed by the Obama administration on US military aid to the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s near genocidal war against the impoverished people of Yemen.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis, a recently-retired US Marine general, had submitted a memo earlier this month to Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster, an active duty US Army lieutenant general, for the approval of stepped-up support for military operations being conducted in Yemen by both the Saudi regime and its principal Arab ally, the United Arab Emirates.

The memo, according to the Post, stressed that such US military aid would help to combat “a common threat.”

This supposed “threat” is posed by Iran, US imperialism’s principal regional rival for hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. Both the Saudi monarchy and the Trump administration have repeatedly charged, without providing any significant supporting evidence, that Iran has armed, trained and directed the Houthi rebels who seized control of the Yemeni capital and much of the country, toppling the US-Saudi puppet regime of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in 2014.

A major escalation of the US intervention in Yemen will be directed principally at provoking a military confrontation with Tehran, with the aim of weakening Iranian influence throughout the region. Trump himself campaigned in the 2016 election denouncing the Obama administration for being too “soft” on Iran and for joining the other major powers in negotiating what he characterized as a “disastrous” nuclear agreement with Tehran. His advisers, including his ousted first national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, and Defense Secretary Mattis, have all voiced bellicose hostility to Iran.

The immediate impetus for the call for increased US aid to the Saudi-led war is reportedly a proposed Emirati operation to seize control of the key Red Sea port of Hodeida. The effect of such an offensive would be to cut off the large portion of the country and its population under Houthi control from any lifeline to the outside world. Fully 70 percent of the country’s imports now come through the port. Even before the war, Yemen was dependent upon imports for 90 percent of its food. Aid agencies have warned that a military offensive on the port could tip the country into mass starvation.

The proposed US escalation in Yemen coincides with the second anniversary of the Saudi war on the country, launched on March 26, 2015 in the form of an unending bombing campaign directed largely against civilian targets, along with a halting offensive on the ground.

The anniversary was marked in the capital of Sanaa and other Yemeni cities by demonstrations of hundreds of thousands denouncing the murderous Saudi military campaign. The Houthis have won support that extends far beyond their base in the country’s Zaidi-Shia minority because of popular hatred for the Saudi monarchy and its crimes.

As the war enters its third year, Yemen is teetering on the brink of mass starvation, confronting one of the worst humanitarian crises anywhere on the planet. This war, waged by the obscenely wealthy royal families of the gulf oil sheikdoms against what was already the poorest nation in the Arab world, has killed some 12,000 Yemenis, the overwhelming majority of them civilians, and wounded at least 40,000 more.

Saudi airstrikes have targeted hospitals, schools, factories, food warehouses, fields and even livestock. Coupled with a de facto naval blockade, the aim of this total war against Yemen’s civilian population is to starve the Yemenis into submission. A US-backed campaign to seize the port of Hodeida would serve to tighten this deadly stranglehold.

In a statement issued Monday marking the beginning of the war’s third year, the United Nations emergency relief agency reported that “nearly 19 million Yemenis—over two-thirds of the population—need humanitarian assistance. Seven million Yemenis are facing starvation.”

UNICEF, the UN’s children’s agency, reported that roughly half a million children are suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen, while 1,546 have been killed and 2,450 have been disabled by the fighting. The agency said that the rate of child deaths had increased by 70 percent over the past year, while the rate of acute malnutrition had increased by 200 percent since 2014.

The deliberate Saudi bombing of hospitals and clinics has left 15 million people without any access to health care, while the destruction of water and sanitation facilities has led to epidemics of cholera and diarrhea. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 children have lost their lives due to the lack of clean water and medical services since 2015.

Washington, under both the Obama and the Trump administrations, has been fully complicit in the war crimes being carried out by the Saudi regime and its allies against the Yemeni people. Washington poured a staggering $115 billion worth of arms into the Saudi kingdom under the Obama administration, resupplying bombs and missiles dropped on Yemeni homes, hospitals and schools. It set up a joint US-Saudi logistical and intelligence center to guide the war and provided aerial refueling by US planes to assure that the bombing could continue round the clock.

While a part of this decisive military aid was curtailed for public relations purposes following the horrific October 2016 Saudi bombing of a funeral ceremony in Sanaa that killed over 150 people, the US Navy entered directly into the conflict that same month, firing Tomahawk missiles at Houthi targets based on unsubstantiated charges that missiles had been fired at US ships.

Nonetheless, the request by Mattis would mark a qualitative escalation of the US intervention. While the Post reported that an Emirati request for US Special Operations troops to participate directly in the siege of the port of Hodeida was not part of Mattis’s proposal, it went on to warn that the Gulf sheikdom’s military “may not be capable of such a large operation, including holding and stabilizing any reclaimed area, without sucking in US forces.” Indeed, the Emirati army is in large measure a mercenary force, having recruited former members of the Colombian, Salvadoran and Chilean military to do the ruling royal family’s dirty work.

The Post goes on to report: “A plan developed by the U.S. Central Command to assist the operation includes other elements that are not part of Mattis’s request, officials said. While Marine Corps ships have been off the coast of Yemen for about a year, it was not clear what support role they might play.”

As numerous reports have indicated, the Trump White House has essentially given free rein to Mattis and the US military commanders to conduct armed operations as they see fit. The result has been the more than doubling of the number of US troops on the ground in Syria along with an escalation of the US intervention in Iraq, as well as a request for another 5,000 troops to be deployed in Afghanistan.

In Yemen, they are preparing to drag the American people into another criminal war against one of the world’s most vulnerable populations, threatening to hasten the deaths of millions of starving people. The strategic aims underlying this vast war crime are the imposition of US imperialist hegemony over the Middle East through a military confrontation with Iran and the preparation for a global conflict with Washington’s principal rivals, Russia and China.

First published in WSWS.org

Bill Van Auken is a politician and activist for the Socialist Equality Party and was a presidential candidate in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, announcing his candidacy on January 27, 2004. His running mate was Jim Lawrence.

28 March 2017

By Jadaliyya

The following is the resignation letter by ESWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf in response to the formal request by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that ESCWA withdraw the publication of a scholarly report (below) that found Israel guilty of apartheid.

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

I have carefully considered your message conveyed through the Chef de Cabinet and assure you that at no point have I questioned your right to order the withdrawal of the report from our website or the fact that all of us working in the Secretariat are subject to the authority of its Secretary-General. Nor do I have any doubts regarding your commitment to human rights in general, or your firm position regarding the rights of the Palestinian people. I also understand the concerns that you have, particularly in these difficult times that leave you little choice.

I am not oblivious to the vicious attacks and threats the UN and you personally were subjected to from powerful Member States as a result of the publication of the ESCWA report “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid”. I do not find it surprising that such Member States, who now have governments with little regard for international norms and values of human rights, will resort to intimidation when they find it hard to defend their unlawful policies and practices. It is only normal for criminals to pressure and attack those who advocate the cause of their victims.  I cannot submit to such pressure.

Not by virtue of my being an international official, but simply by virtue of being a decent human being, I believe, like you, in the universal values and principles that have always been the driving force for good in human history, and on which this organization of ours, the United Nations is founded. Like you, I believe that discrimination against anyone due to their religion, skin color, sex or ethnic origin is unacceptable, and that such discrimination cannot be rendered acceptable by the calculations of political expediency or power politics. I also believe people should not only have the freedom to speak truth to power, but they have the duty to do so.

In the space of two months you have instructed me to withdraw two reports produced by ESCWA, not due to any fault found in the reports and probably not because you disagreed with their content, but due to the political pressure by member states who gravely violate the rights of the people of the region.

You have seen first hand that the people of this region are going through a period of suffering unparalleled in their modern history; and that the overwhelming flood of catastrophes today is the result of a stream of injustices that were either ignored, plastered over, or openly endorsed by powerful governments inside and outside the region. Those same governments are the ones pressuring you to silence the voice of truth and the call for justice represented in these reports.

Given the above, I cannot but stand by the findings of ESCWA’s report that Israel has established an apartheid regime that seeks the domination of one racial group over another. The evidence provided by this report drafted by renowned experts is overwhelming. Suffice it to say that none of those who attacked the report had a word to say about its content. I feel it my duty to shed light on the legally inadmissible and morally indefensible fact that an apartheid regime still exists in the 21st century rather than suppressing the evidence. In saying this I claim no moral superiority nor ownership of a more prescient vision. My position might be informed by a lifetime of experiencing the dire consequences of blocking peaceful channels to addressing people’s grievances in our region.

After giving the matter due consideration, I realized that I too have little choice. I cannot withdraw yet another well-researched, well-documented UN work on grave violations of human rights, yet I know that clear instructions by the Secretary-General will have to be implemented promptly. A dilemma that can only be resolved by my stepping down to allow someone else to deliver what I am unable to deliver in good conscience.  I know that I have only two more weeks to serve; my resignation is therefore not intended for political pressure. It is simply because I feel it my duty towards the people we serve, towards the UN and towards myself, not to withdraw an honest testimony about an ongoing crime that is at the root of so much human suffering. Therefore, I hereby submit to you my resignation from the United Nations.

20 March 2017

By wsws.org

The WSWS has received the following correspondence from a reader and supporter in Damascus on the situation in Syria after six years of a civil war instigated and abetted by the major imperialist powers.

We are now in the seventh year of a bloody nightmare. But until now we haven’t seen any signs of the end of a very complex battle.

Life goes on. On the streets of the old city of Damascus restaurants and cafes are full, especially at night. Despite all the difficulties of everyday life, the situation is manageable compared with the situation in Aleppo.

Syria has been destroyed. Material losses have been estimated at more than $300 billion, an astronomical sum for a country like Syria with a pre-war population of 22 million.

One the most important dimensions of the Syrian crisis is demographic. The change in the population, with hundreds of thousands of deaths, countless numbers disabled and the emigration of a great many young people, will shape the coming period of reconstruction. Social and health programs have suffered the loss of many highly experienced people. Health organisations in both the public and private sectors are all deeply damaged.

During the decade prior to 2010, the health public sector made great progress thanks to the two five-year plans. In 2010, there were more than 1,700 public-sector health care centres covering most of the country and providing free health care services, including dental services. The national pharmaceutical industry was prosperous and used to provide more than 95 percent of the country’s needs.

But during the six years of the fighting, the health care sector lost an important part of its human resources. Hospitals and health care services centres were favourite targets for the armed rebels’ attacks. In many regions, such as al-Hassakeh, Deir el-Zur, Idlib and the Aleppo and Damascus countryside, the health care infrastructure has been destroyed. Pharmaceutical factories have been destroyed or looted, leading to many categories of medical drugs not being available.

The situation is similar in the education sector, with thousands of schools destroyed or damaged.

The main achievement of the regime of the previous president, Hafez Al-Assad, was self-sufficiency in the agriculture sector, with cultivation of all sorts of fruits, vegetables and, most importantly, the production of about 4 million tons of cereals, with a strategic stockpile of wheat. But now, the agricultural sector faces big problems because much of the agricultural lands are unsafe.

The reduction in electricity generation and the shortage of petrol have deprived the sector of one of its mainstays—irrigation, which used to include millions of private water pumps. The use of fertilizers and pesticides is in decline. Agricultural production is in free-fall. The cost of transporting the crops to the main commercial centres has become incredibly high, putting the price of many foodstuffs out of reach of many families.

The animal production sector faces additional difficulties. The Syrian interior used to provide grazing pasture for millions of sheep whose high quality meat was highly prized in the Gulf States. There were strict regulations to protect the livestock and its value, with annual quotas for export. Most Syrians ate imported meat. The transformation of the pastoral regions into battlefields has changed the situation dramatically.

These are the horrendous conditions that have driven millions of Syrians to seek refuge in government-controlled areas. In fact, the majority of Syrians live in the conurbations where the government provides public services and security and pays regularly the salaries for both working and retired public sector workers.

Inflation has a direct and heavy impact on the standard of living. In 2011, a US dollar was equal to 50 Syrian pounds. Now, a US dollar buys 530 Syrian pounds.

Going on seven years of the systematic destruction of the land has demonstrated that the events in Dara’a, and what followed in March 2011, had nothing to do with “revolution.” Now, many Syrians believe that CIA agents were running the events of 2011 from their office in Jordan. They had already provided the weapons and cash needed to fuel the flames of an armed rebellion in Syria. With enough money and weapons, you can start a rebellion anywhere in the world. Syria had to be made to pay for its political opposition to Washington.

But this simplistic point of view cannot explain the bloody fighting and the language of sectarian hatred.

We have to admit that the systematic destruction has realized the main goal—depriving Syria of its strength.

The economic reforms adopted in the last decades were, in fact, indicated by a new orientation that tore up many decades of protectionist policies by which national production was insulated. The import of luxury products had been severely limited. The policy of open doors resulted in the collapse of thousands of small factories and left hundreds of thousands of workers without a job.

The succession of dry seasons in eastern regions drove more than 200,000 peasants with their families to the relatively prosperous cities. They found refuge in the miserable outskirts of the principal cities. These deprived young people found a sort of compensation in the mosques and received subsidies from so-called charitable associations, financed by Wahhabi networks. The situation was ideal to be manipulated by the secret services, which provided all sorts of provocative false propaganda.

The decline and collapse of many of the production and service sectors had adverse effects on everyday life. The poorest of the population had to change their diet. The exorbitant price of fruit and meat forced them to subsist on vegetables. But millions of people could not have survived without assistance from charities.

The crisis has redistributed the national wealth to criminals. A new rich layer has emerged thanks to corruption and the black market. The armed rebel groups’ administration was a failure and they have no popular support.

My hope comes from a positive development among young people living in the country. One could speak of a general disillusionment about the position of Western countries, and especially the USA, France and Germany. Many Syrian youth use to be fascinated by the Western model. But the years of crisis have made them aware that the situation in those countries is so far from the picture given out by the mass media.

They adopt a critical position toward both the government and the opposition and refuse to accept the simplified answers that describe the situation in black and white. The traditional parties and the newly formed parties fail to attract them.

They don’t trust the old generation. They believe in the responsibility of the whole generation that has failed to build a Motherland for the residents of this country.

Because of the crisis, Damascus hosts nearly 6 millions citizens, one third of all Syrians remaining in the country. The 3 million additional inhabitants are displaced people who have felt the horror of armed groups. For more than four years they have had to face the same problems and risks: exorbitant prices, housing crises, transport difficulties, shortages of electricity and potable water.

The crisis was like a giant furnace that melted the heterogeneous social groups. The situation could be channelled to produce a good result and consolidate the social fabric. I think the everyday suffering has created a new sort of solidarity. There is a new sentiment of solidarity growing up in the ranks of the poor people. Syrians say that the homeland belongs to the rich, while the poor’s share in it is patriotism: they have to defend it. I think that the new generation and the youth will shape the new Syria.

Concerning the World Socialist Web Site, I have a long acquaintance with the mysterious Leon Trotsky since my attending a Trotskyist meeting in Lyon, France in 1976. At that time, I was a member of the Syrian Communist Party, which was a very Stalinist one. I wanted to know more about the man who played a principal role in the October revolution. First I read Literature and Revolution, then The Revolution Betrayed. I discovered another Trotsky that I appreciated.

In 1982, I read the trilogy written by Isaac Deutscher about Trotsky and I read his biography of Stalin. I discovered that Stalinism was a vulgarized version of Marxism and that the idea of the permanent revolution is more cohesive than the nationalist orientation. We didn’t have in Syria a Trotskyist movement, but some thinkers were influenced by him. But this was something limited to intellectual discussions.

I discovered the WSWS by chance three or four years ago. I used some of the information as the basis of many articles. I shared some articles on my Facebook account. The reaction of my friends was encouraging. I noticed that the Arabic translations were so modest compared with the others. So I took the initiative to contact the site with the suggestion to translate some articles into Arabic.

I registered for the lectures on the Russian Revolution because I am convinced of the importance of this event.

The building of an international anti-war movement for me means the fight against the conditions that pave the way for wars. The idea has reinforced my hope that the fight is not over, and knowing that the idea of the permanent revolution is still alive is a good sign. A fight must be permanent. That is right on both the national and international level.

18 March 2017

By Niles Niemuth

An Apache gunship opened fire on a boat carrying Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen early Friday morning killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens of others.

The boat, which came under attack 30 miles off the Yemeni coast, was reportedly ferrying more than 100 men, women and children from Sudan.

Bullets from the attack helicopter riddled the boat ripping through the passengers, many of them women and children. Pictures posted online show the bloodied bodies of the victims being brought ashore. A number of the wounded taken to hospital were missing arms and legs.

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed, the boat’s pilot, told the Associated Press that the panicked passengers scrambled to hold up flashlights in order indicate that they were migrants and stop the surprise attack. All of those on the boat had official documentation from the UN Refugee Agency certifying that they were refugees.

As of this writing, no government has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was most likely carried out by the Saudi-led coalition which has been waging a brutal war against Yemen for the last two years. Saudi Arabia and the United Araba Emirates are currently the only militaries flying Apache helicopters in the region, and there were reports of intensified airstrikes in Hodeida Thursday night.

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, with direct military support from the United States, have been waging a brutal war against Houthi rebels who seized control of much of western Yemen in 2015 and ousted the US and Saudi-backed president Abd Rabbu Hadi.

The Saudi-led offensive has so far killed more than 10,000 civilians, targeting hospitals, schools, factories, market places, farm fields and social infrastructure with airstrikes in an effort to break the Houthi’s resistance. A naval blockade of Yemen by the coalition, enforced with the support of the US Navy, has pushed the country, which imported 90 percent of its food stock prior to the war, to the brink of famine.

The US has been waging its own war in southeastern Yemen since 2009, launching drone strikes against targets and individuals purportedly affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Trump administration has ramped up the offensive begun by Barack Obama which has already killed hundreds of people, including women and children.

Friday’s attack highlights the historic humanitarian crisis which is engulfing a significant portion of the African continent and Middle East, stretching from the Lake Chad region in West Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. The UN warned earlier this week of the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II as 20 million people in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria face imminent starvation.

Civil wars stoked by the US government and its European allies combined with historic drought conditions are pushing millions across the Africa continent to flee their homes. It is estimated that at least 5.5 million African are refugees in other countries, and another 11 million are displaced within their own countries.

Even with the ongoing war, which has pushed the country to the brink of a famine, Yemen remains one of the most popular destinations for refugees fleeing war and famine in Somalia. At the end of February there were nearly 256,000 UN recognized refugees from Somali living in Yemen; this was second only to the more than 317,000 in Kenya.

Tens of thousands of people from across the Horn of Africa transit the Bab el Mandeb strait every year in order to reach the poorest country in the Middle East. Many of those who flee to Yemen end up in the Khazar refugee camp, a former military barracks located in a hot, desolate desert region two hours north of the southern port city of Aden.

While most intend for Yemen to be a temporary transit point, many thousands have been stuck at the Khazar camp for years on end. The camp currently holds 16,000 people, mostly from Somalia and Ethiopia.

With few employment opportunities for African refugees in Yemen, those who are physically able make the increasingly treacherous trek onwards to Europe. Hundreds of Somali refugees drowned in the Mediterranean in 2016 desperately trying to reach Italy.

18 March 2017

www.wsws.org

By Afro-Middle East Cantre

On 5 March, the upper house of the Bahraini parliament passed a constitutional amendment which, critics say, will result in the country living under undeclared martial law. The amendment allows for civilians to be tried by military courts when the case involves the military. This was followed the next day by the justice ministry filing a lawsuit to ban the Wa’ad party, the second biggest opposition party after the now-banned Al-Wefaq party. The repression of dissent in Bahrain is clearly increasing.

The suspension of civil liberties implicit in this amendment as well as the removal of limitations in the constitution on who may be tried by a military court are both characteristics of martial law. When this amendment was initially passed by the lower house of parliament Sayed Alwadaei, the director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (based in London) accused Bahrain’s king of ‘effectively creating a police state’and of implementing ‘de facto martial law’. Bahrain is following in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia which has also redefined its anti-terror laws to increase the power of security forces in the face of political dissent. The government is using counter-terrorism measures to clamp down on political opposition, and cases of opposition leaders will be passed on to military courts to adjudicate as per the instruction of the Minister of Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments, Shaikh Khalid bin Ali Al Khalifa, who stated that judges of military courts should adjudicate cases concerning terror activities.

Anti-regime and pro-democracy protests have been occurring frequently in Bahrain since the 2011 uprisings. These have been led by members of the Shi’a majority against the ruling al-Khalifa monarchy, which is Sunni. High unemployment, systematic discrimination against Shi’as, a deteriorating human rights record and the increasing executive power of the Emir are grievances repeated by the opposition. Apart from Bahrain’s Bloody Thursday on 17 February 2011, where police raided sleeping protestors camping at Pearl Roundabout in Manama killing four and injuring about 300; protests have been largely peaceful but generally accompanied by a police response using excessive force.

On 14 March 2011 troops from both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia entered Bahrain at the request of the al-Khalifa regime, and crushed the rebellion. Three months of martial law followed, and hundreds of civilians were tried in military courts; tortured prisoners were given lengthy jail terms on little to no evidence. Peaceful protestors and even medics who had treated injured protesters were jailed. Both an independent inquiry commissioned by Bahrain’s rulers and international human rights’ organisations condemned the military courts. After martial law was lifted on 1 June 2011, the main opposition party, Al-Wefaq, led weekly demonstrations until protests were banned in October 2012. Despite the ban, protests have continued. The reintroduction of military courts to try civilians now is a disturbing development in the erosion of rights within Bahrain.

Government repression has included the stripping of citizenship from top cleric Shaykh Isa Qassim in June 2016, the banning of Al-Wefaq in July, and the execution of three men in January 2017. In contrast to the religious-based Al-Wefaq, Wa’ad (the National Democratic Action Society) – which has just been banned – is a leftist political party whose stated mission is to: ‘To strive towards achieving equal citizenship, safeguarding people’s sovereignty, protecting their rights and public freedoms, achieving equality and social justice for all and rejecting all forms of discrimination and sectarianism.’ As a secular bloc it has attempted to reach out to both Shi’a and Sunni opposition figures.

Wa’ad was previously banned in April 2011, but reinstated two months later. Its former secretary-general, Ibrahim Sharif, served four years in jail for his role in the 2011 protests, after being convicted by a military-led tribunal for plotting to overthrow the government. He was arrested again in July 2015 for a speech allegedly inciting hatred and spent a year in prison, and was again arrested and charged in November 2016 for ‘inciting hatred against the regime’ after an interview he gave to the Associated Press where he argued that a forthcoming visit by Britain’s Prince Charles would ‘whitewash’ human rights abuses. Wa’ad has been an unusual target for the government since the uprisings due to its moderate stance; this suggests that the government is unwilling to tolerate even mild dissent.

The international response to Bahrain’s increasing repression has been contradictory, with calls for condemnation ignored by both the USA and the UK. Various human rights NGOs, Amnesty International in particular, have been vocal in their concern for the deterioration of human rights. Amnesty claims that Bahrain is at ‘a tipping point’, and that the first weeks of 2017 saw ‘an alarming upsurge in arbitrary and abusive force by security forces’. The USA has announced its intention to approve an arms deal with Bahrain that was halted under the Obama administration. This would see the transfer of nineteen F-16 fighter jets to Bahrain. In December 2016 British Prime Minister Theresa May visited Bahrain and addressed the Gulf Co-operation Council, emphasising the fostering of stronger economic ties with Gulf countries on the eve of Brexit. There was no mention of human rights abuses.

14 March 2017

By Bill Van Auken

The Trump White House has secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to resume drone assassination strikes that in the latter years of the Obama administration had been largely reserved for the US military, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The Journal cited unnamed US officials revealing that the authorization was granted shortly after Trump visited CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia on January 21, the day after his inauguration. No announcement has been made as to the change in policy, and the White House as well as the CIA and the Pentagon have declined to comment on the matter.

According to the report, the authorization initially provided to the CIA was in relation to drone strikes in Syria, where the agency killed Egyptian Al Qaeda leader Abu al Khayr al Masri in an airstrike late last month.

It appears, however, that the policy has already been expanded globally, with an apparent CIA drone strike in Pakistan that killed two men, and a wave of strikes in Yemen—more in a single week this month than in any single year under the Obama administration—for which the Pentagon failed to take responsibility.

The return to drone assassinations by the US intelligence agency is part of a broader turn by the Trump administration toward jettisoning cosmetic restrictions imposed by Obama during his second term. These measures were aimed at providing a veneer of legality for the drone murder program, which had been greatly expanded by the CIA and the Pentagon under Obama, while firmly institutionalizing it as an instrument of the US state.

During the final years of the Obama administration, the CIA and the Pentagon worked in tandem in the drone killing program, with the intelligence agency providing surveillance and location of targets and the military sending in killer drones to fire the missiles.

The Obama White House presented this arrangement as a bid to lend the drone program a pretense of “transparency,” as the Pentagon would issue reports on its strikes, while the CIA routinely refuses to confirm or deny actions by its own operatives.

In reality, the Pentagon routinely ignores or grossly underestimates its own slaughter of civilians in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. And the Obama administration issued a secret order allowing the CIA to continue its covert drone war in northwestern Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas near the Afghan border, as part of the attempt to quell the Taliban and other insurgents challenging the US puppet regime in Kabul.

In July 2016, when the Obama administration issued its executive order purporting to sanitize the drone assassination program, the Director of National Intelligence provided an accompanying estimate of the number of civilians killed in drone strikes since Obama’s inauguration in January 2009. The figure given—between 64 and 116—was less than a tenth of the deaths conservatively estimated by independent monitoring groups.

The other consideration in shifting the responsibility from the CIA to the Pentagon was the blatant illegality of intelligence agents—who are not considered legitimate combatants under international law—carrying out lethal operations abroad. By 2013, court cases had been initiated in Pakistan charging CIA personnel with murder and terrorism, while a class action lawsuit by relatives of drone strike victims was also brought against the US government and the CIA. The change in policy was also initiated with an eye toward the threat of possible war crimes prosecutions.

In May of 2013, Obama delivered a speech at the National Defense University vowing that drone strikes would be launched only against “terrorists” who posed “a continuing and imminent threat to the American people,” and only under conditions of “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” The pretense of concern for civilians being blown to pieces as “collateral damage” inflicted by drone strikes was meant merely to provide a “humanitarian” cover for cold-blooded assassinations and massacres.

The executive order issued by Obama in July 2016 repeated this language, while institutionalizing the drone assassination program and reaffirming the supposedly inalienable right of the US president to order state murder by means of Hellfire missiles of anyone in any part of the world, including US citizens.

This is the criminal political legacy that Obama has handed off to the Trump administration. Trump is now dispensing with the pretense of humanitarian concern, while also satisfying the demands of the Pentagon and the CIA to streamline the killing process to allow commanders and operatives on the ground to order drone strikes without having them vetted through Washington.

This shift may signal a departure from the Obama administration’s signature “terror Tuesdays,” in which the Oval Office was turned into a headquarters for approving “kill lists” and organizing “targeted killings,” with the responsibility instead being delegated to US military commanders and CIA agents.

Citing senior US officials, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, “The Trump administration is close to finishing a review that would make it easier for the Pentagon to launch counterterrorism strikes anywhere in the world by lowering the threshold on acceptable civilian casualties and scaling back other constraints imposed by the Obama administration.”

The changes, the Post reported, “would empower the Pentagon to make decisions on targets without approval from the White House and potentially scrap the ‘near-certainty’ standard of no civilian deaths for strikes outside war zones.”

As part of the move to waive such restrictions, Trump has signed off on a request to designate three provinces of Yemen as “areas of active hostilities,” i.e., free-fire zones, where the rules on civilian deaths do not apply. His administration is reportedly about to grant similar approval in relation to Somalia.

Again, this is not an innovation on the part of the Trump administration, but follows similar dispensation granted by Obama in Libya during the bombardment of the coastal city of Sirt last summer.

Whatever the tactical differences between the Democrats and the Republicans over US foreign policy, both defend Washington’s right to murder people indiscriminately in every corner of the planet.

15 March 2017

By Nauman Sadiq

If we were to draw parallels between the Soviet-Afghan jihad of the ‘80s and the Syrian civil war of today, the Western powers used the training camps located in the Af-Pak border regions to train and arm the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.

Similarly, the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan are being used to provide training and arms to the Syrian militants in order to battle the Syrian regime with the support of Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies.

During the Afghan jihad, it is a known historical fact that the bulk of the so-called “freedom fighters” was comprised of Pashtun Islamic jihadists, such as the factions of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf and scores of others, some of which later coalesced together to form the Taliban movement.

Similarly, in Syria, the bulk of the so-called “moderate rebels” is comprised of Islamic jihadists, such as Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid Brigade, al-Nusra Front and myriads of other militant groups, including a small portion of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army (FSA).

Moreover, apart from Pashtun Islamic jihadists, the various factions of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks constituted the relatively “moderate” segment of the Afghan rebellion, though those “moderate” warlords, like Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abul Rashid Dostum, were more ethnic and tribal in their character than secular or nationalist, as such.

Similarly, the Kurds of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces can be compared with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan. The socialist PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria, however, had been allied with the Shi’a regime against the Sunni Arab jihadists for the first three years of the Syrian civil war, i.e. from August 2011 to August 2014.

At the behest of the American stooge in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, the Syrian Kurds have switched sides in the last couple of years after the United States policy reversal and declaration of war against one faction of the Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, when the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in June 2014.

Notwithstanding, George Santayana presciently said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The only difference between the Afghan jihad back in the ‘80s, that spawned the Islamic jihadists like the Taliban and al Qaeda for the first time in history, and the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, 2011-onward, is that the Afghan jihad was an overt jihad: back then the Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, used to openly brag that the CIA provides all those AK-47s, RPGs and stingers to the Pakistani intelligence agencies, which then distributes those deadly weapons among the Afghan Mujahideen to combat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

After the 9/11 tragedy, however, the Western political establishments and corporate media have become a lot more circumspect, therefore, this time around, they have waged covert jihads against the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Zionist Assad regime in Syria, in which the Islamic jihadists (aka terrorists) have been sold as “moderate rebels,” with secular and nationalist ambitions, to the Western audience.

Since the regime change objective in those hapless countries went against the mainstream narrative of ostensibly fighting a war against terrorism, therefore, the Western political establishments and the mainstream media are now trying to muddle the reality by offering color-coded schemes to identify myriads of militant and terrorist outfits that are operating in those countries: such as, the red militants of the Islamic State, which the Western powers want to eliminate; the yellow Islamic jihadists, like Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, with whom the Western powers can collaborate under desperate circumstances; and the green militants of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and a few other inconsequential outfits, which together comprise the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition.

Regardless, back in the ‘80s, the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” did not spring up spontaneously out of nowhere, some powers funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized those militants; how else could such ragtag militants had beaten back the super power of its time?

Then in 2011, in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in Libya, those same powers once again financed, trained, armed and internationally legitimized the Libyan militants by calling them pro-democracy, “armed” activists against the supposedly “brutal and tyrannical” rule of the Gaddafi regime.

Similarly, in Syria, those very same powers once again had the audacity to provide money, training and weapons to the Syrian militants; how else could such peaceful and democratic protests had mutated into a full-blown armed insurrection?

And even if those protests did mutate into an armed rebellion, left to their own resources, the best such civilian protestors could have mustered was to get a few pistols, shotguns and rifles; where did they get all those machine gun-mounted pick-up trucks, rocket-propelled grenades and the US-made TOW antitank missiles?

You don’t have to be a military strategist to understand a simple fact that unarmed civilian population, and even ragtag militant outfits, lack the wherewithal to fight against organized and professional armed forces of a country that are equipped with artillery, tanks, air force and navy.

Leaving the funding, training and arming aspects of the insurgencies aside, but especially pertaining to conferring international legitimacy to an armed insurgency, like the Afghan so-called “freedom struggle” of the Cold War, or the supposedly “moderate and democratic” Libyan and Syrian insurgencies of today, it is simply beyond the power of minor regional players and their nascent media, which has a geographically and linguistically limited audience, to cast such heavily armed and brutal insurrections in a positive light in order to internationally legitimize them; only the Western mainstream media, that has a global audience and which serves as the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments, has perfected this game of legitimizing the absurd and selling Satans as saviors.

Notwithstanding, for the whole of the last five years of the Syrian proxy war, the focal point of the Western policy has been that “Assad must go!” But what difference would it make to the lives of the ordinary Syrians even if the regime is replaced now when the civil war has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, created millions of refugees, displaced half of the population and reduced the whole country of 22 million people to rubble? I do concede that Libya and Syria were not democratic states under Gaddafi and Assad, respectively; however, both of those countries were at least functioning states.

Gaddafi was ousted from power in September 2011; five years later, Tripoli is ruled by the Misrata militia, Benghazi is under the control of Khalifa Haftar, who is nothing more than the stooge of Egypt and UAE, and the heavily armed militants are having a field day all over Libya. It will now take decades, not years, to restore even a semblance of stability in Libya and Syria; remember that the proxy war in Afghanistan was originally fought in the ‘80s and today, 35 years later, Afghanistan is still in the midst of perpetual anarchy, lawlessness and an unrelenting Taliban insurgency.

It’s very unfortunate that haughty and myopic politicians and diplomats do not learn any lessons from history, otherwise all the telltale signs are there that Syria has become the Afghanistan of the Middle East and its repercussions on the stability of the energy-rich region and the security threat that the Syrian militants pose to the rest of the world will have far reaching consequences for many decades to come.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and MENA regions, neocolonialism and Petroimperialism.

14 March 2017