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By Colin Todhunter

“Food systems have been reduced to a model of industrialised agriculture controlled by a few transnational food corporations together with a small group of huge retailers. It is a model designed to generate profits… Instead of being dedicated to the production of food … it focuses increasingly on the production of raw materials such as agrofuels, animal feeds or commodity plantations… it has caused the enormous loss of agricultural holdings and the people who make their living from those holdings… it promotes a diet which is harmful to health and which contains insufficient fruit, vegetables and cereals.”

The above quote comes from the final declaration of the Nyeleni Europe food sovereignty forum in 2011. Nyeleni Europe represents community-supported agriculture collectives, organic farmer unions, local food cooperatives, seed swapping organisations, food activists, farmers’ markets and community gardens. The organisation forms part of the global resistance to the corporate hijack of food and agriculture that has resulted in bad food, poor health, environmental degradation and the marginalisation and displacement of small farmers along with the destruction of local (and global) food sovereignty and security.

The global agritech/agribusiness sector is poisoning people and the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other chemical inputs. The Rockefeller clan exported the petrochemical intensive ‘green revolution’ around the world with the aim of ripping up indigenous agriculture to cement its hegemony over global agriculture and to help the US create food deficit regions and thus use agriculture as a tool of foreign policy.

Last year, 31 pesticides with a value running into billions of pounds could have been banned in the EU because of potential health risks if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon. The global agrichemicals lobby is responsible for preventing public protection from chronic diseases and environmental damage. Certain industries are raking in massive profits to the detriment of the public’s health and the environment.

Also last year, a study by the University of Koblenz-Landau explained that no field data-based evaluation of the regulatory acceptable concentrations (RACs) and therefore of the overall protectiveness of EU pesticide regulations exists. The researchers found that 44.7 percent of the 1,566 cases of measured insecticide concentrations in EU surface waters exceeded their respective RACs. The findings challenged the efficacy of the regulatory environmental risk assessment conducted for pesticide authorisation and concluded that effective mitigation measures are urgently needed to reduce the risks arising from agricultural insecticide use.

In the US, some 34,000 pesticides are currently registered for use. Drinking water it is often contaminated by pesticides, more babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure and chemicals are so prevalent that they show up in breast milk. Many illnesses are on the rise too, such as asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases along with several types of cancer. The connection to pesticide exposure is clear.

Moreover, pollinating insects have been impacted by chemical herbicides and pesticides, which are also stripping the soil of nutrients. As a result, for example, there has been a 41.1 to 100 percent decrease in vitamin A in 6 foods: apple, banana, broccoli, onion, potato and tomato. Both onion and potato saw a 100 percent loss of vitamin A between 1951 and 1999.

In India, the impacts of depleted soils, water-guzzling cash crops and loss of food diversity and biodiversity due to green revolution practices have been condemned by campaigner and farmer Bhaskar Save and by botanist Stuart Newton. The fact that, according to Newton, mineral-depleted soils lead to undernourishment speaks volumes.

The unnecessary transportation of food over long distances also does not help, not least in terms of energy consumption and pollution and chemical treatment and processing.

The modern corporate-controlled food system is not only bad for our health and the environment but farmers’ incomes are also being forced downwards. Take the case of the India farmer, for instance.

According to the Navdanya website, a customer pays 10 rupees for a 50-gram packet of Pepsico’s Lays chips. A potato farmer in West Bengal gets only 50 paise (half a rupee) to one rupee for a kg of potato, which is only 0.02 percent of what the customers pays for the processed food packet.

While the customer pays 50 rupees for a kg of branded atta (wheat flour), the farmer only gets 14 rupees out of which he has spent a large share on buying chemicals and earns only 1,645 rupees per month per acre. This amounts to a mere 51.15 rupees per day. The daily legal wage for a skilled worker is 423 rupees. Even an unskilled worker’s minimum wage is 348 rupees per day. The farmer therefore earns only 1/10th of the minimum legal wage. According to Vandana Shiva,

“Farming is one of the most skilled vocations because a farmer is a soil scientist and soil conserver, a seed breeder, manager of water, weeds and pests. Industry produces the chemicals that are destroying the planet and our health. Only small farmers can take care of the soil and the health of the soil is linked to our health.”

The small-scale farmer, the backbone of global food production, especially in the Global South, is being discriminated against through various policies (see this, this and this), marginalised and forced from the land. At the same time, however, the urban consumer across the world seems ever more disconnected from agriculture. The consumer has often become what Vandana Shiva describes as an “ignorant link” in the food chain.

Ultimately, the crisis affecting food and agriculture results from the capture of governments and international policy-making bodies by corporate interests (see this, this and this) and the relations of profit-driven global capitalism that, for example, fuel distorted trade, food commodity and land speculation, poverty and food deficit areas, etc.

Restoring the link between producer and consumer

While we should rightly expose and campaign against this system and the international and national bodies and public officials that have been co-opted by global agribusiness and agri-chemical companies, there are many grass-root initiatives throughout the world that are challenging the corporate dominance of the food system by bringing small-scale farmers and consumers together. By raising consumer awareness and rebuilding what has become a broken link between the urban dweller and the farmer, the aim is to create a better food system from the bottom up: in other words, ‘food smart’ environments whereby citizens actually know what they are eating and where their food comes from.

In Kerala, India, for example, Thanal supports a sustainable form of agriculture that enhances incomes for local farmers and their families as well as food safety and security for consumers by promoting organic farming and linking farmers to consumers through its ‘organic bazaar’.

The bazaar provides a wide range of organic products produced by organic farmers across the state. It was launched in 2003 to bring organic farmers and consumers together and was made possible through consistent outreach and sensitisation among marginal farmers in different pockets of Kerala to enlarge the supply base. Consumer sensitisation and awareness programmes also played an important role in getting more consumers to support the initiative.

In Europe too, there is an increasing awareness that local farmers need to secure a decent price for their produce, that organic food is healthier and that locally sourced food eradicates many of the environmental and health-related problems associated with transporting food over long distances. Copenhagen Food Cooperative is a city-wide initiative that offers an alternative to the profit-driven supermarket chains, it focuses on offering fresh, organic seasonal fruits and vegetables at fair but affordable prices. Founded in 2008, the initiative now has 3,000 and 10 local outlets supplying five tons of vegetables each week sourced from local farms.

All members are expected to put in three hours of work each month on a voluntary basis. This could be packing vegetables in the shop, ordering vegetables, arranging debates, fixing the website, etc. Any profit is used to reduce the price of the vegetables or to develop the co-op or socially responsible projects in the city. By buying from local farmers the costs are lowered, the produce is fresh and the impact on the environment is kept to a minimum. The co-operative supports local farmers who produce organic or biodynamic produce, which in turn supports sustainable agriculture that is good for the soil, the farmer and the health of the consumer

Throughout Europe there are similar community-supported agriculture initiatives that are bringing farmers and urban consumers together to support local farmers who produce healthy food that both respects the environment and keeps rural communities alive. From farmers’ markets to food co-ops, many consumers are no longer ‘ignorant links’ in a globalised corporate-controlled chain.

The Nyeleni Europe website contains some valuable information and serves as a resource for the food sovereignty movement in Europe. As a global movement, Nyeleni has a radical agenda that is committed to challenging, among other things:

“Imperialism, neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism and patriarchy, and all systems that impoverish life, resources and eco-systems, and the agents that promote the above such as international financial institutions, the World Trade Organisation, free trade agreements, transnational corporations, and governments that are antagonistic to their peoples.”

Less overtly political in scope, perhaps, is the concept of ‘food smart cities’. Some key principles underlying this concept include decentralized co-operation on food security and on sustainable development. In Europe, the initiative ‘Food Smart Cities for Development’ aims at creating a network of smart cities to guide European local authorities and civil society organizations in drafting, developing and implementing local food related policies. The initiative aims to maximise the contributions of local food policies to sustainable urban development and to increase understanding of the relation between local and global food systems. One aim is to enhance knowledge on how local food systems can contribute to sustainable cities worldwide and what role cities can take in the global challenge to optimise food sovereignty and sustainability.

While governments, trade agreements and regulatory agencies remain tethered to the interests of the powerful corporations that have come to define global food and agriculture in their own profit-driven image, local communities are fighting back with grass-root initiatives and city authorities are at least placing pertinent issues on the agenda for action and debate.

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer
16 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

By Isra Saleh el-Namey

It has taken Mansour’s mother a long time to learn to cope with her 12-year-old son’s changing personality.

Once a top student, Mansour has become aggressive and disobedient. His grades are down, his mother says, and he suffers night terrors.

Mansour’s mother can date his transformation to Israel’s war on Gaza in 2014.

“He was a top student before then. He used to be a cheerful boy,” she recalled.

During the assault, the family had to evacuate their home and move to a UN shelter, a school that was then also bombed. Since then, Mansour’s mother told The Electronic Intifada, he now prefers to be alone at school or at home. He has also started wetting the bed.

“He is easily terrified by loud sounds like thunder,” according to his mother who, like other families interviewed for this story, declined to be named in order to protect their privacy.

These are classic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, though as health care professionals at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) never tire of pointing out, in Gaza there is never any “post.”

GCMHP, Gaza’s best known mental health care provider founded in 1990, has noted a sharp rise in the number of children and adults with PTSD since the 2014 attack.

Psychological first aid

In the six months after the war, 51 percent of the children who received services from GCMHP were diagnosed with PTSD, according to the organization’s director, Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei.

“Since the war, people have been so absorbed with how to manage their lives that they neglect their psychological welfare,” Zahia al-Qarra, a mental-health professional with GCMHP told The Electronic Intifada.

The enormous stress endured during the 51 days of bombing — as well as during two previous large-scale Israeli assaults over the past eight years — and the nine-year Israeli blockade that is still preventing most reconstruction, has affected the whole population, al-Qarra said.

Studies prior to the 2014 attack had demonstrated already high levels of PTSD among the population in Gaza as a result of exposure to earlier wars and trauma.

In this situation, health care professionals are struggling to keep up.

“Our work is to intervene to provide the psychological first aid for affected communities,” al-Qarra said.

GCMHP has paid special attention to children. They have registered an alarming rise in the number of children exhibiting one or more symptoms of PTSD, attention deficit disorders, sleep walking, memory loss, nightmares and other anxiety disorders.

It has been nearly a year and a half since the war and Mansour still fears he is dying. He worries that poisonous insects will enter his room at night and bite him. “I feel I walk with a knife in my heart,” he said.

The source of his fear is no mystery. His family home still bears the scars of the intense bombardment the Beit Hanoun neighborhood in northern Gaza suffered during the 2014 onslaught.

There is neither money nor material to repair the holes in the walls.

The kind of visualisation of fear that haunts Mansour is very common among children, according al-Qarra.

GCMHP works with children like Mansour to allow them to express their fears in other ways.

“We see the scars of war explicit in children’s productions like narratives or drawings,” al-Qarra said. “What they tend to draw are pulverized buildings and mutilated bodies laid out on the ground.”

Priorities

GCMHP says it has mobilized 28 mental-health professionals into nine teams in mobile clinics in an effort to cope with the burgeoning needs.

According to al-Qarra, such clinics have reached nearly 21,500 children and adults who otherwise might never get treatment and who certainly cannot afford it.

It is clinics like these that reach children like Mansour, or Salim.

Just 9 years old, Salim has been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Since the 2014 attack, he is always touching surfaces, tables and walls. He has begun to pull out chunks of his own hair.

Salim’s mother contacted GCMHP because she didn’t have anywhere else to turn. “He lost a lot of his hair due to this habit. And he can’t stop,” she told The Electronic Intifada.

She has had to go to Salim’s school to explain his situation to his teachers and friends.

“I don’t want anyone to talk to him about his hair. Negative comments from others could hamper the treatment,” Salim’s mother said.

Treatment in a place where so many experience trauma is an almost insurmountable challenge, however. Due to the great demand, GCMHP prioritizes care for the families of the dead or injured, or those whose homes were completely or partially destroyed.

Group sessions are practical with such numbers, but the psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses working with GCMHP try to use a mix of approaches including group and individual therapy and play therapy for children.

Community support

But clinical interventions cannot succeed in the absence of wider social support.

“A community-based approach is an integral part of our treatment. The family, school and all other cultural and religious institutions play a part in supporting those with mental health issues,” al-Qarra said.

“We try to reassure the children, to make them feel as safe as we can,” al-Qarra added. “Memories of war are deeply embedded in their minds.”

But in Gaza no one feels safe. Successive Israeli attacks have wrought extensive damage to an impoverished territory that is defenseless against them.

Assurances that things will get better — the kind adults like to give children — ring false when houses are not rebuilt, when there are no jobs and there is no hope for the future.

There is no certainty that the horrors Palestinians in Gaza have already witnessed will be the last. “At every anniversary of the war, you start to listen to people’s speculations that another conflict is looming,” al-Qarra said.

International pledges in October 2014 for an unprecedented amount of money to rebuild Gaza gave people a rare moment of optimism.

Much of that money has not materialized and the Israeli blockade on supplies entering and exiting Gaza has remained in place. As a result, despair returned with even greater intensity, al-Qarra said.

Lost hope

Ayman, 8, is from Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, specifically the area Israel bombarded intensely as it implemented the so-called Hannibal Directive on 1 August 2014, after reports that the Palestinian resistance had captured one of its soldiers.

Israel’s ferocious shelling of homes killed scores of civilians in indiscriminate attacks Amnesty International concluded were often motivated by a desire for revenge.

At the time, Ayman’s family fled in fear. Their home was partially destroyed, though they were able to return and now live there.

Since then, Ayman shuns company and is prone to flashes of temper.

“He is terribly detached from the rest of the family,” his mother said.

He is easily irritated and avoids conversations about the war.

Ayman has been diagnosed with a panic disorder and now attends regular therapy sessions at a clinic affiliated with GCMHP.

But his mother still detects his fear and alienation.

“He lost hope of ever having an easy life. He is sure that he will fail.”

Isra Saleh el-Namey is a journalist from Gaza.

15 January, 2015
Electronic Intifada

By Patrick Martin

The final State of the Union speech delivered Tuesday night by President Barack Obama was a demonstration of the incapacity of the American political system to deal honestly or seriously with a single social question.

Obama evaded the real issues that affect tens of millions of working people in America every day of their lives. He painted a ludicrous picture of economic recovery and social progress that insulted the intelligence of his television audience—and went unchallenged by the millionaire politicians assembled in the chamber of the House of Representatives.

Summing up what he called “the progress of these past seven years,” Obama gave first place to “how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations.” The so-called “recovery” has been a bonanza for corporate profits, stock prices, and the wealth and income of the super-rich. For the working people who are the vast majority of the population, it has been a disaster.

By most social indices, the American people are worse off in January 2016 than when Obama took office seven years ago. The real wages of working people have fallen, social services have deteriorated, pension benefits have been gutted, and cities such as Detroit and San Bernardino have been forced into bankruptcy.

According to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment, the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values.

In 27 states, not a single county has recovered fully from the 2008 crash and the deep economic slump that followed. These include such major states as Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Obama, however, painted a picture of nearly unblemished economic advance, declaring, “The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.” He boasted, “We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s; an unemployment rate cut in half.”

The president did not acknowledge that the post-2008 “recovery” is the weakest on record, that the vast majority of the new jobs created have been low-wage and many of them part-time, or that the drop in the unemployment rate is primarily due to the withdrawal of millions of people from the work force because they lost all hope of getting a decent-paying job.

He went on, tellingly, to cite the auto industry as a symbol of success, declaring that it “just had its best year ever.” This perfectly expresses the utter blindness, not just of Obama, but of the entire political establishment. The “best year ever” was for General Motors, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, which enjoyed record profits, not for the auto workers who produced those profits.

Real wages for auto workers have dropped sharply since the Obama White House forced through a 50 percent cut in wages for all new hires as part of the bankruptcy reorganization of the industry in 2009. Mass discontent among auto workers was expressed at the end of 2015 in the rejection of contracts at Fiat-Chrysler and Nexteer, a major supplier, and in widespread demands for strike action, smothered by Obama’s stooges in the United Auto Workers union.

“Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” Obama concluded. The social position of the American working class has, in fact, suffered a dramatic decline, through the combined efforts of the corporate bosses, the unions and the two capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

The president conceded that economic inequality has grown in the United States, but he described it as the outcome of long-term trends such as globalization and automation, as though the policies of his administration—bailouts for Wall Street, budget cuts and wage cuts for workers—had nothing to do with it.

In the seven years since the financial crash, brought on, as he admitted, by “recklessness on Wall Street,” not a single banker or speculator has been prosecuted or jailed. On the contrary, the billionaires have greatly increased their wealth, gobbling up 95 percent of all new income since Obama entered the White House.

Obama listed a few other policy “successes,” claiming that “we reformed our health care system, and reinvented our energy sector… we delivered more care and benefits to our troops and veterans.” He was referring, however, to a series of social disasters: the reactionary attack on health benefits for workers and their families known as Obamacare; the devastation of Appalachia and other energy-producing regions; and the abuse of ex-soldiers, wounded in body and mind, by the Veterans Administration.

Obama sought to defend the foreign policy record of his administration from criticism, mainly from the Republican right, where demands are being raised for military escalation in the Middle East and stepped-up attacks on democratic rights at home in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

While he claimed to reject an American role as the world’s policeman, he nonetheless boasted, “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.”

He continued, “Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” winning the bipartisan standing ovation that always accompanies any mention of American soldiers engaged in combat overseas.

Obama indulged in the glorification of killing that has become an essential part of the degraded spectacle that passes for political discourse in America. Describing the US war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, he claimed, “With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we are taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps, and their weapons.”

He called on Congress to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS, but vowed to wage war with or without legislative approval. The leaders of ISIS, he proclaimed, “will learn the same lessons as terrorists before them. If you doubt America’s commitment—or mine—to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year…”

Then he declared, in language that will be noted by nations all over the world, that when it comes to waging war against potential adversaries, “our reach has no limit.”

Obama concluded his speech with an appeal to his Republican opponents to work with his administration and pull back from the extreme anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has characterized the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.

In a clear reference to Donald Trump, he argued that “we need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This is not a matter of political correctness, but understanding what makes us strong.”

Obama was making an argument, not so much that racism and bigotry are intrinsically wrong, but that they make it more difficult for American imperialism to maintain its dominant world role. “When a politician insults Muslims,” he said, “it makes it harder to achieve our goals.”
13 January, 2016
WSWS.org

 

By Joshua Frank

‘Tis the season once again. You should know it well by now: a “progressive” Democrat running in the primaries for president of the United States. We’ve seen it all before, from Jesse Jackson to Dennis Kucinich, left-leaning voters have time-and-again been asked to support candidates that are working to transform the corrupt and war-hungry Democratic Party from within. And each and every time this strategy has failed — not only to elect a progressive Democrat into the White House, but to alter the party that offer themselves up as a lighter shade of neo-con.

This time around that “progressive” Democrat is self-proclaimed “socialist” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Even though it’s early in the primary push, Bernie is hitting the trail, spreading a message of hope for working class people that he’s there to fight for their cause. He wants to create new jobs, challenge Wall Street crooks and take on the corporate control of our political quagmire. These are fine positions to take, but what Bernie isn’t about to tell you is that in order to radically alter the system in favor of workers, the Democrats must be abandoned altogether — for it’s their neoliberal policies, from Bill Clinton on down, that exacerbated the sell-out of the American workforce.

Sure, Bernie will talk tough when it comes to these failed policies. He’ll criticize fast tracked free-trade agreements and corporate plutocracy, but his hardy embrace of the Democrats continues to undermine his own criticisms. It’s as if Bernie got a job at a coal mining outfit in hopes of stopping the melting of ice caps in the Arctic. His bid for the White House is simply a dead end and a waste of scarce resources. Progressives would be better off working to reinvigorate the antiwar movement and Occupy than spending time and money on Bernie’s hollow campaign.

Even so, while Bernie may come across as sincere about class politics, make no mistake, he’s is a militarist that isn’t about to challenge U.S. supremacy. He supported the ugly war on Kosovo, the invasion of Afghanistan, funding for the endless Iraq disaster as well as the losing and misguided War on Terror. He voted in favor of Clinton’s 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which expanded the federal death penalty and acted as the precursor to the PATRIOT Act.

As for Israel, Bernie has been a hawkish advocate that would never halt the $3 billion the U.S. government sends to the country every year. Last summer he backed Israel’s murderous bombing of Gaza. He’s even had some nasty words about Palestine’s right to resist. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that several former members of Bernie’s staff have also been employed by AIPAC, including Israel apologists David Sirota and Joel Barkin. His is a disgusting record. Want to change in the U.S.’s meddling in the Middle East? Bernie isn’t your guy.

If the Senator’s support for ongoing war and the occupation of Palestine don’t make you squeamish, then you may as well stop reading. I doubt you’ll grasp the importance of challenging empire by refusing to cast a vote for a party that pumps fuel into the war machine’s tank. Such an effort requires a willingness to step out on the Democrats, especially at the national level, where they have waged war on workers at home and employed a blood-thirsty foreign policy abroad.

The Bernie Sanders campaign, while a slight breath of fresh air in the national debate on class issues, is a complete loser in terms of impact. There’s no sign he’ll break from the Democrats and challenge both parties down the road. Bernie doesn’t oppose U.S. power, nor does his campaign do a single thing to build independent politics in the country, perhaps the last chance to salvage any democracy we may have left. In the end, Bernie Sanders will play the lesser-evil card and plea for us all to hold our noses and vote for Hillary Clinton, who guarantees a future of more war and economic inequality.

That’s why Bernie’s is not a bandwagon I’ll be jumping on anytime soon.

JOSHUA FRANK is managing editor of CounterPunch. He is author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland and Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, both published by AK Press. He can be reached at brickburner@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter@brickburner.

3 June 2015

By Aidan Foster-Carter

North Korea’s latest nuclear test, announced triumphantly on Wednesday, is of course a worry. But a surprise it is not. Kim Jong-un has many reasons to do this, and all too few incentives not to.

Technology is one motive. Having taken the nuclear road, that threat has to be credible. This requires regular tests: in 2006, 2009, 2013 and now 2016. Pyongyang’s specific claims – this time, that it is an H-bomb – may be exaggerated, but we cannot be complacent. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) skilled scientists, slowed only slightly by UN and other sanctions, are steadily refining Kim’s arsenal. Two key steps are miniaturisation – making a bomb small enough to fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) – and perfecting the latter. North Korea has been testing submarine-based launches, which in principle would be a game-changer, allowing it to threaten the US, or indeed anywhere else on the planet.

Domestic politics is a second factor: specifically, loyalty and legitimation. Kim Il-sung made the initial nuclear choice, which was faithfully implemented by his son Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-un, young and insecure, has no option but to endorse and reinforce the legacies of his father and grandfather.

National pride is at play too. Like Iranians, ordinary North Koreans are proud of their country’s nuclear prowess – and also of the satellite launches which double up as partial ICBM tests. We may see another of those too – the last was in 2012 – to provide further patriotic fireworks in the run-up to this year’s big event in Pyongyang: the first full Congress of the nominally ruling Workers’ party (WPK) in 36 years, scheduled for May.

In a third arena, the international one, the gains appear less clear. North Korea well knows that its latest nuclear test, like the three before and indeed those ICBM tests, will attract near-universal opprobrium. The UN Security Council (UNSC) will meet for an emergency session and pass yet another condemnatory resolution. As ever, this will be unanimous: Russia and China deplore their sometime protege’s nuclear waywardness no less than the west does. Sanctions will be tightened still further, though in truth there is not a lot left to sanction. Some countries might now follow Japan and ban all trade; the UN specifies only military and luxury goods.

Beijing’s reaction will be crucial. Despite visibly warm ties with South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye – whose own attitude to the North is sadly unimaginative and contradictory: no hope there – Xi Jinping had been shifting back to a more balanced Korea policy. A senior Chinese politburo member attended the WPK’s 70th anniversary celebrations in October, and talk was growing of Kim Jong-un making a long overdue first visit to China as leader. That cannot now happen anytime soon. Beijing is furious, having on this occasion not even been afforded the brief advance warning which Pyongyang had given it before previous tests.

China is the DPRK’s most dominant trade partner by far and could, should it choose, put one or more fingers to Kim Jong-un’s windpipe simply by stopping buying North Korean coal, seafood and other exports. Kim is gambling Xi will not do that, for the same reason as always. China fears chaos on its borders, and generating refugee flows which could cause contagion within. The ongoing refugee crisis in Europe is a portent, the last thing China wants to face in its own back yard.

Kim is probably right to bet that China’s strategic calculus will not soon change. Still, North Korea’s nuclear option strikes outsiders as risky and perverse. Its costs in terms of squandered opportunity are huge. Keen to boost a backward economy, Kim Jong-un has created about 20 new special economic zones. But who will put their money into a country under UN sanctions, which also treats its few foreign investors so badly? The biggest, Egypt’s Orascom, is unable to repatriate profits from its mobile telecoms joint venture – which now faces a domestic DPRK competitor.

As both the nuclear test and Orascom’s fate show, the North Korean regime does not give a damn what the world thinks. While deplorable and to a degree self-defeating, this insouciant defiance also makes a grim kind of sense, both historically and reinforced by recent events.

The last century was extremely tough for Korea: it was brutally occupied by Japan, then sundered in 1945 by its liberators. Kim Il-sung’s bid for reunification by force precipitated the Korean war (1950-53) which saw the North bombed and napalmed mercilessly by the US on behalf of the UN.

To grasp the mentality this apocalypse bred, think Israel. Kim Il-sung resolved to ensure that no one would ever do that to his realm again. Taking aid where he could, but trusting friends no more than foes, he built a mighty, impregnable fortress – literally and metaphorically.

Just as in Jerusalem – which gets away with this, unlike North Korea – the view from the Pyongyang bunker is that, in a dangerous world, nuclear weapons are the only sure guarantee of security and survival. The argument is essentially the same as the National Rifle Association’s case against gun control. Fortunately most of the world’s 200-odd states do not think and act this way. Yet recent events can only have confirmed the DPRK in its worldview.

A decade ago, siren voices urged Kim Jong-il to emulate that sensible Colonel Muammar Gaddafi: give up weapons of mass destruction, come in from the cold. Pondering both Gaddafi’s miserable end and the state of Libya today, Kim Jong-un’s firm grip on his bomb makes a kind of sense.

Ignoring North Korea, as the US under Obama and other powers have done of late, is not a solution. There are no easy answers, but re-engaging Pyongyang is the only way forward. The dreary tit-for-tat of tests, sanctions, more tests, more sanctions has resolved nothing. Hopes of a collapse, which I used to share, appear wishful thinking.

Besides, be careful what you wish for. Loose nukes, chaos, millions of refugees: how is that better than the Korean status quo?

Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in Sociology and Modern Korea at Leeds University, and a freelance writer, consultant and broadcaster on both Koreas

6 January 2016

By Glenn Greenwald – The Intercept

It’s been almost one year since millions of people — led by the world’s most repressive tyrants — marched in Paris ostensibly in favor of free speech. Since then, the French government — which led the way trumpeting the vital importance of free speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings — has repeatedly prosecuted people for the political views they expressed, and otherwise exploited terrorism fears to crush civil liberties generally. It has done so with barely a peep of protest from most of those throughout the West who waved free speech flags in support of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.

That’s because, as I argued at the time, many of these newfound free speech crusaders exploiting the Hebdo killings were not authentic, consistent believers in free speech. Instead, they invoke that principle only in the easiest and most self-serving instances: namely, defense of the ideas they support. But when people are punished for expressing ideas they hate, they are silent or supportive of that suppression: the very opposite of genuine free speech advocacy.

Days after the Paris march, the French government arrested the comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala “for being an ‘apologist for terrorism’ after suggesting on Facebook that he sympathized with one of the Paris gunmen.” Two months later, he was convicted, receiving a suspended two-month jail sentence. In November, on separate charges, he was convicted by a Belgian court “for racist and anti-Semitic comments he made during a show in Belgium” and was given a two month prison term. There were no #JeSuisDieudonné hashtags trending, and it’s almost impossible to find the loudest post-Hebdo Free Speech crusaders denouncing the French and Belgian governments for this attack on free expression.

In the weeks after the Free Speech march, dozens of people in France “were arrested for hate speech or other acts insulting religious faiths, or for cheering the men who carried out the attacks.” The government “ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism.” There were no marches in defense of their free speech rights.

In October, France’s highest court upheld the criminal conviction of activists who advocate boycotts and sanctions against Israel as a means of ending the occupation. What did these criminals do? They “arrived at the supermarket wearing shirts emblazoned with the words: ‘Long live Palestine, boycott Israel’” and “also handed out fliers that said that ‘buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.’” Because boycotts against Israel were deemed “anti-semitic” by the French court, it was a crime to advocate it. Where were all the post-Hebdo crusaders when these 12 individuals were criminally convicted for expressing their political views critical of Israel? Nowhere to be found.

More generally, the French government seized “emergency powers” in the wake of the Paris attack that they originally said would last twelve days. It was then extended to three months, and there is now talk, as the deadline approaches, of extending those powers indefinitely or permanently. Those powers have been used exactly as one would suspect: to barge into places without warrants where French Muslims gather, shut mosques and coffee shops, detain people with no charges, and otherwise abolish basic liberties. They’ve also now been used beyond the Muslim community, against climate activists. If that sort of classic, creeping repression does not anger and upset you, then you may be many things, but a genuine advocate of free expression in France is not one of them.

Even before the Hebdo murders, prosecutions in Europe against Muslims for the expression of their political opinions were common, especially when those opinions were critical of Western policy. Indeed, a week before Hebdo, I wrote an article detailing that growing threat to free speech in the U.K, France and throughout the West. Those types of actions — carried out by the world’s most powerful governments — were, and remain, the greatest threat to free speech in the West. Yet they receive a tiny fraction of the attention that the Hebdo killings did.

Where were, and where are, all the self-proclaimed free speech advocates about all of that? It was only when anti-Islam cartoons were at issue, and a few Muslims engaged in violence, did they suddenly become animated and passionate about free speech. That’s because legitimizing anti-Islam rhetoric and demonizing Muslims was their actual cause; free speech was just the pretext.

In all the many years I’ve worked in defense of free speech, I’ve never seen the principle so blatantly exploited for other ends by people who plainly don’t believe in it as was true of the Hebdo killings. It was as transparent as it was dishonest. Their actual agenda was illustrated by how they invented a brand new free speech standard specially for that occasion: in order to defend free speech, one must not merely defend the right to express an idea, they decreed, but must embrace the idea itself.

This newly-minted “principle” is, in fact, the exact antithesis of genuine free speech protections. Central to an actual belief in free speech rights is the view that all ideas — those with which one most fervently agrees and those one finds most loathsome and everything in between — are entitled to be expressed and advocated without punishment. The most important and courageous free speech defenses have typically come from those who simultaneously expressed contempt for an idea while defending the rights of other people to freely express that idea. This is the principle that has long defined authentic free speech activism: those ideas being expressed are vile, but I will work to defend the right of others to express them.

Those who exploited the Hebdo murders sought to abolish this vital distinction. They insisted that it was not enough to denounce or condemn those who murdered the Hebdo cartoonists. Instead, they tried to impose a new obligation: one must celebrate and embrace the ideas of the Hebdo cartoonists, support the granting of awards to them, cheer for the substance of their views. Failure to embrace the ideas of Charlie Hebdo (rather than just their free speech rights) subjected one to accusations — by the world’s slimiest smear artists — that one was failing to uphold their rights of free expression or, worse, that one sympathized with their killers.

This cheap bullying tactic — trying to force people not merely to defend Hebdo’s free speech rights to but to embrace the ideas being expressed — has endured to this day (but only when it comes to speech critical of Muslims). A full year later, it’s still common to hear supporters of Western militarism falsely accuse portions of “the left” of having sanctioned or justified the attack on Charlie Hebdo solely on the ground that they refused to cheer for the content of Hebdo’s ideas.

This accusation is an absolute, demonstrable lie, an obvious slander. I’ve never heard a single person on the left express anything other than revulsion at the mass murder of the Hebdo cartoonists, nor have I ever heard anyone on the left suggest that the murders were “deserved” or that the cartoonists “had it coming.” I certainly did hear, and myself expressed, opposition to the relentless targeting of a marginalized minority in France by Hebdo cartoonists (that critique, just by the way, was most eloquently expressed by a former Hebdo staffer, Olivier Cyran: “The obsessive pounding on Muslims to which [Hebdo] has devoted itself for more than a decade has had very real effects. It has powerfully contributed to popularising, among ‘left-wing’ opinion, the idea that Islam is a major ‘problem’ in French society”). But objections to the substance of an idea quite obviously does not denote or even suggest a failure to uphold the rights of free speech for those who express that idea: unless you’re endorsing the noxious, deceitful, entirely novel concept that one can only defend the free speech rights of those with whom one agrees.

But this all highlights that free speech was not the principle being upheld here; free speech was just a weapon used by some tribalistic Westerners to try to force people into cheering for anti-Islam and anti-Muslim cartoons (not merely the right to publish the cartoons without punishment or violence, but the cartoons themselves).

And what even more powerfully demonstrates the sham at the heart of this post-Hebdo spectacle is that before the Paris march, and especially since, there has been a systematic assault on the free speech rights of huge numbers of people in France and throughout the West who are either Muslim and/or critics of the West or Israel, and the newfound Hebdo free speech crusaders have exhibited almost no opposition, and at times tacit or explicit support. That’s because free speech was their cynical weapon, not their actual belief.

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His most recent book, No Place to Hide, is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn’s column was featured at The Guardian and Salon.

8 January 2016

By Paul Findley

Twenty years ago the plight of Muslims in America was so serious, it led me to a weeklong international conference on Western images of Islam. It was held in Penang, Malaysia, half way around the world.

Leading the conference was Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, one of the founders of the Just World Trust (now known as the International Movement for a Just World(JUST) a non-governmental organization based in Penang. Although confined to a wheelchair, Muzaffar is a powerful speaker and leader. Born into a Hindu family in Malaysia, he converted to Islam.

Forty-two delegates attended. One of the six from the United states was the eminent Jewish Professor Richard Falk of Princeton University, long a champion of Arab human rights. The other 36 included Buddhists, Christians and Muslims from a dozen different countries.

Each morning delegates gathered n a laarge room where long tables were organized horseshoe-like against three walls. All delegates sat with backs to the wall, an arrangement that encouraged easy eye contact among all of them. Vigorous discussions continued all day, with a break for lunch. We were called on, one at a time, by Muzaffar for comment or to pass. Passing was rare. Discussion over various aspects of Islam continued in less formality after supper.

All agreed that Islamophobia was a fast developing cancer arising mainly from misinformation and ignorance, a disease that threatens everyone, not just Muslims.

On the final day, each participant was asked to state what he or she will do on returning home to help correct anti-Muslim bias. I promised to compose a brief statement that would be useful to U.S. Muslims in acquainting their neighbors with the truth about Islam.

Back home, I enlisted experts in Islam, Christianity and Judaism to help compose the statement. We sought text devoid of confrontational language. We wished it to be concise, clear, and fair, using words that deal calmly and truthfully with each topic. We were not attempting to win new adherents to Islam. We were simply truth-seekers. Working together for about a month, we completed A Friendly Note from Your Muslim Neighbor.

The text has passed the rigorous test of time. Over eight years, I distributed several hundred copies personally. Almost all encounters prompted civil discussion. At least 15,000 copies were distributed.

I divided most of the next five years between warning audiences about false images of Islam and writing a book about U.S. Muslims, titled Silent No More. The book featured Muslim men and women prominent in business, education, science, government and sports–and the important role of Muslims in American history. It detailed successful entry of Muslims into mainstream U.S. politics. The book includes the Friendly note.. as an appendix. Sales exceeded 60,000.

Much more needs to be done. These are days of great stress and pain for Muslims, including those who live in relative peace in Middle America. While several sects of Muslims live here peaceably with each other, they suffer pain at news of terrible violence between such groups in warring Middle East. Sunnis and Shias seem bent on killing each other. I sensed none of that hostility when I first visited the Middle East 25 years ago.

These days, media giants in the West misreport hateful acts as “Islamist.” Commentators often misspeak by wrongly using the words Islamic and Muslim. These word choices leave the false impression they are approved by recognized Islamic authorities.

True Islam deplores violence, extremism, suicide and killing of innocent people. Nevertheless, Isis, the major radical group in Middle East conflict, wrongly labels itself Islamic while mss beheading scores of innocent people at a time.

On 9/11, a small group of professed Muslims were charged with sending 3,000 innocent people to their death in crushed commercial airliners and destroyed Manhattan skyscrapers. False images of Islam suddenly spread like a torrential flood. They have kept law-abiding Muslims heavily on the defensive ever since. Recent polls suggest that more than one-half of our citizens are caught in the snares of Islamophobia.

It is time to fight back with the truth about Islam.. Take the offensive.

Written 20 years ago, the Friendly note. now seems composed precisely for today’s stormy trials. If ever there is a perfect time for the public to be introduced to it, it is now. It consists of two printed pages. Reading time about six to eight minutes.

I cannot conceive of a better New Year’s gift than the delivery of the two-page Friendly Note… to every household in America. Let’s get started.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

A Friendly Note from Your Muslim Neighbor.

Muslims have much in common with Christians and Jews.

Muslims, like Christians and Jews, worship the One God, creator of the universes. Allah is the Arabic word for God.

Muslims, like Christians and Jews, consider themselves spiritual descendants of Abraham.

Muslims, like Christians and Jews, pledge themselves to prayer, peace with justice, harmony, cooperation, compassion, charity, family responsibility, tolerance toward people of other faith traditions, and respect for the environment.

All three faiths have spread worldwide. Because of geographic dispersal, within each faith exist several sects with slightly different interpretations of politics, family, dress and social life.

We Muslims want you to know that:

Islam and democracy are compatible and complementary. Both rest on accountability, consultation, open discussion, delegation and consensus. The opening words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence express deeply felt Islamic sentiments.

Muslims honor Biblical prophets, accord special esteem to Jesus and his mother, the Virgin Mary, and recognize as sacred the scriptures revealed to Moses and Jesus, namely the Torah and the New Testament. Muslims are united in Islam, which means submission and peace. Submitting to the will of God and doing good define piety. The Quran is the final divine revelation, providing a complete guide for human behavior. Its text was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad between A.D. 610 and 632. Though revered by Muslims as the last of God’s prophets, Muhammad is not worshiped.

Muslim women, like men, have the right to obtain an education, own property and engage in business, professions and public life. Both women and men wear modest dress out of respect for public morality. If a society oppresses women or discriminates against them, it is in spite of Islam, not because of it.

Divorce is discouraged. Procedures vary by country, but either husband or wife may petition to dissolve a marriage. Polygamy, which was widely practiced in Biblical times, is subject to precise Qur’anic restrictions and is now seldom practiced, rarely where it violates public law, as in America.

Muslims assume personal responsibility for relatives and others in need. In Islam, a woman or elderly person is almost never obliged to life alone.

Muslims are committed to rules. Sadly, some people who say they are Muslims — like some professed Christians and Jews — grossly violate these rules and the rights of others. In doing so, they do not act as Muslims. It is erroneous to call them Islamic fundamentalists, a term unknown in Islam and used mostly in false stereotyping.

Jihad has two meanings: one, non-violent struggling within oneself for a life of virtue; the other, fighting for justice, a supreme goal in Islamic teachings. Islam eulogizes moderation and abhors extremism, terrorism, fanaticism, oppression and subjugation.

Muslims are proud to be Americans. They wish to be good citizens and neighbors by practicing their commitment to tolerance, charity, work, cooperation and interfaith activities for community betterment.

The above text was written in 1995 by former U.S. Congressional Representative Paul Findley and religion experts. He resides in Jacksonville, Illinois. He can be contacted at findley1@frontier.com

9 January 2016

 

By Stephen Gowans

The implication of a report written for the US Congress is that the United States is a state sponsor of terrorism in Syria. At the same time, the report challenges widely held beliefs about the conflict, including the idea that the opposition has grass-roots support and that the conflict is a sectarian war between Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect and the majority Sunnis.

Written in October 2015, the report was prepared by the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the United States Library of Congress. The Congressional Research Service provides policy and legal analysis to committees and members of the US House and Senate.

Titled “Armed Conflict in Syria: Overview and US Response,” the report reveals that:

1. The Syrian conflict is between Islamists and secularists, not Sunnis and Alawites.

Media reports often emphasize the dominant Sunni character of the rebels who have taken up arms against the Syrian government, while depicting the Syrian government as Alawite-led. What is almost invariably overlooked is that the largest Sunni fighting force in Syria is the country’s army. Yes, the rebels are predominantly Sunni, but so too are the Syrian soldiers they’re fighting. As Congress’s researchers point out, “most rank and file military personnel have been drawn from the majority Sunni Arab population and other (non-Alawite) minority groups” (p. 7). Also: “Sunni conscripts continue to fight for Assad” (p. 12). Rather than being a battle between two different sects, the conflict is a struggle, on the one hand, between Sunni fundamentalists who want to impose their version of Islam on Syrian politics and society, and on the other hand, Syrians, including Sunnis, who embrace a vision of a secular, non-sectarian government.

2. The Syrian Opposition Coalition is dominated by Islamists and is allied with foreign enemies of Syria.

According to the report, the Syrian National Council (whose largest member is the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood) is the “largest constituent group” of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC). The SOC is based “in Turkey and considered to be close to foreign opponents of Assad.” (p. 14) The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to base political rule on the Quran, which it sees as divinely inspired, rather than on a secular constitution.

3. “Political opposition coalitions appear to lack…grass roots support” (p. 27).

This is consistent with the findings of a public opinion poll taken last summer by a research firm that is working with the US and British governments. That poll found that Assad has more support than the forces arrayed against him.

The survey, conducted by ORB International, a company which specializes in public opinion research in fragile and conflict environments, found that 47 percent of Syrians believe that Assad has a positive influence in Syria, compared to only 35 percent for the Free Syrian Army and 26 percent for the SOC. [1]
An in-country face-to-face ORB poll conducted in May 2014 arrived at similar conclusions. That poll found that more Syrians believed the Assad government best represented their interests and aspirations than believed the same about any of the opposition groups. [2]

According to the poll, only six percent believed that the “genuine” rebels represented their interests and aspirations, while the ‘National Coalition/transitional government,” a reference to the SOC, drew even less support, at only three percent.

Assad has repeatedly challenged the notion that he lacks popular support, pointing to his government surviving nearly five years of war against forces backed by the most powerful states on the planet. It’s impossible to realistically conceive of his government’s survival under these challenging circumstances, he argues, without its having the support of a sizeable part of its population. [3]

4. A moderate opposition doesn’t exist. The United States is trying to build one to act as its partner.

The report refers to US efforts to create partners in Syria, a euphemism for puppets who can be relied upon to promote US interests.
“Secretary of Defense Carter described the ‘best’ scenario for the Syrian people as one that would entail an agreed or managed removal of Assad and the coalescence of opposition forces with elements of the remaining Syrian state apparatus as U.S. partners ….” (emphasis added, pp. 15-16).

Also: The Pentagon “sought to…groom and support reliable leaders to serve as U.S partners…” (emphasis added, p. 23).

To create partners, the United States is engaged in the project of building a “moderate” opposition. According to the report:

“On June 18, Secretary of Defense Carter said, ‘…the best way for the Syrian people for this to go would be for him to remove himself from the scene and there to be created, difficult as it will be, a new government of Syria based on the moderate opposition that we have been trying to build…” (emphasis added, footnote, p. 16).

In the report summary the researchers write that US strategy seeks to avoid “inadvertently strengthening Assad, the Islamic State, or other anti-U.S. armed Islamist groups” (emphasis added.) What’s left unsaid is that armed Islamist groups that are not immediately anti-U.S. may be looked upon favorably by US strategy. However, that “political opposition coalitions…appear to lack grass-roots support,” and that Washington can’t rely on an already-formed moderate opposition but needs to build one, shows that the set of rebels on which the US can rely to act as US partners who will rule with elements of the existing Syrian state in a post-Assad Syria is virtually empty. The conclusion is substantiated by the failure of a now-abandoned Pentagon program to train and equip vetted rebel groups. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the top American commander in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that despite the Pentagon spending $500 million training and equipping “moderate” rebels, only “four or five” were “in the fight.” [4] As the Wall Street Journal observed in late December, moderate rebels don’t exist. They’ve either been absorbed into Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrah al-Sham and ISIS—the extremist terrorist groups which dominate the opposition—or were Islamist militants all along. [5]

5. The United States is arming sectarian terrorists indirectly and possibly directly and covertly.

The report points out that not only has the Pentagon openly trained and equipped rebels, but that the United States has also covertly armed them. According to the Congress’s researchers:
“Then Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said in a September 2013 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Administration was taking steps to provide arms to some Syrian rebels under covert action authorities” (p. 23).

Also:

“Secretary Hagel said, ‘it was June of this year that the president made the decision to support lethal assistance to the opposition….we, the Department of Defense, have not been involved in this. This is, as you know, a covert action’” (footnote, p.23).

If the United States was prepared to overtly arm some rebel groups, why is it covertly arming others? A not unreasonable hypothesis is that it is arming some rebel groups covertly because they have been designated as terrorist organizations. To be sure, a number of press reports have revealed that rebels who have received training and arms from the United States are operating with terrorist groups in Syria. According to the Wall Street Journal, “insurgents who have been trained covertly by the Central Intelligence Agency…are enmeshed with or fighting alongside more hard-line Islamist groups, including the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate” [6]. Another report from the same newspaper notes that “al-Nusra has fought alongside rebel units which the U.S. and its regional allies have backed” [7]. A third report refers to collaboration between “CIA-backed Free Syrian army factions and extremist elements such as Nusra Front and Ahrar al Sham” [8]. Let’s be clear. Anyone who is enmeshed with and fighting alongside Al-Qaeda is a terrorist.

According to Congress’s researchers, weapons the US furnished to selected groups have made their way to jihadists. “Some Syrian opposition groups that have received U.S. equipment and weaponry to date have surrendered or lost these items to other groups, including to extremist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra” (p. 23).

When you consider that, as The Washington Post reported, “the CIA has trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years” [9] and that, at best, there are 700, and more likely only 70 “moderate” rebels in Syria [10], then the bulk of the large rebel force the CIA has trained and equipped is very likely made up of Islamist extremists. Concealing this shameful reality from the US public is probably the principal reason the program is covert.

6. Washington wants to contain ISIS, but not eliminate it, in order to maintain military pressure on the Syrian government.

Based on the US coalition’s less than vigorous air campaign against ISIS, many observers have questioned whether the United States is at all serious about eliminating ISIS just yet, and is simply trying to contain it, to keep pressure on the Syrian government. For example, veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk says: “I don’t think the U.S. is serious. Very occasionally, you can hear the rumble of American bombs. But they’re certainly not having much effect.” [11]

One day, soon after Russia began air operations in Syria, journalist Patrick Cockburn noted that “Russian planes carried out 71 sorties and 118 air strikes against Islamic fighters in Syria over the past two days compared to just one air strike by the US-led coalition – and this single strike, against a mortar position, was the first for four days.” [12] After ISIS captured Palmyra, and pushed into Aleppo, the US coalition did nothing to push back the ISIS advance, leading even rebels to question “the U.S.’s commitment to containing the group.” [13] Assad too has expressed scepticism about whether the United States is serious about destroying ISIS, pointing to the terrorist organization’s continued successes in Syria, despite the US coalition’s presumed war against it. “Since this coalition started to operate,” observed the Syrian president, “ISIS has been expanding. In other words, the coalition has failed and it has no real impact on the ground.” [14]

A tepid approach to fighting ISIS in Syria would fit with US president Barack Obama’s stated goal of degrading the Al-Qaeda offspring organization. Destroying it may be an ultimate goal, to be achieved after ISIS has served the purpose of weakening the Syrian government. But for now, the United States appears to be willing to allow ISIS to continue to make gains in Syria. The Congressional Research Service report concurs with this view: It concludes that “U.S. officials may be concerned that a more aggressive campaign against the Islamic State may take military pressure off the” Syrian government (p. 19).

By contrast, Moscow has pursued a more vigorous war against ISIS, and for an obvious reason. Unlike Washington, it seeks to prop up its Syrian ally, not give ISIS room to weaken it. It should be additionally noted that Russia’s military operations in Syria are legal, carried out with the permission of the Syrian government. By contrast, the US coalition has brazenly flouted international law to enter Syrian airspace without Damascus’s assent. It has, in effect, undertaken an illegal invasion and committed a crime of aggression, compounded by its training and arming of terrorists.

Conclusion

The report says that in the absence of grass-roots support for political opposition coalitions in Syria, the United States is relying on a number of tactics to pressure the current government in Syria to step down, including:

• Keeping ISIS alive as a tool to sustain military pressure on Damascus.
• Arming jihadist groups indirectly and (we can assume) directly (albeit covertly) to pressure Assad.
• Seeking to create a moderate opposition that will act as a US partner.
• Trying to co-opt parts of the existing Syrian state to take a partnership role in governing a post-Assad Syria.

The implication of points 1 and 2 is that the United States—as the trainer of, and supplier of arms, to rebels who are enmeshed with and fighting alongside Al-Qaeda in Syria, and in keeping ISIS alive, in order to use these terrorist organizations to achieve its political goal of installing a US-partner government in Syria—is a state sponsor of terrorism.

1. http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/syriadata.pdf

2. http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/syriadatatablesjuly2014.pdf

3. “President al-Assad: Russia’s policy towards Syria is based on values and interests, the West is not serious in fighting terrorists,” Syrian Arab News Agency, December 11, 2015, http://sana.sy/en/?p=63857

4. Philip Shishkin, “U.S. weighs talks with Russia on military activity in Syria,” The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2015.

5. Stuart Rollo,“Turkey’s dangerous game in Syria,” The Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2015.

6. Anne Barnard and Michael R. Gordon, “Goals diverge and perils remain as U.S. and Turkey take on ISIS,” The New York Times, July 27, 2015.

7. Farnaz Fassihi, “U.N. Security Council unanimously votes to adopt France’s counterterrorism resolution,” The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2015.

8. Sam Dagher, “Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Tries to Force the West to Choose Between Regime, Islamic State,” The Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2015.

9. Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung, “Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2015.

10. Robert Fisk, “Is David Cameron planning to include al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra in his group of 70,000 moderates?”, The Independent, December 1, 2015.

11. Thomas Walkom, “Journalist Robert Fisk explains why Canada should abandon ISIS war,” The Toronto Star, September 25, 2015.

12. Patrick Cockburn, “Russia in Syria: Air strikes pose twin threat to Turkey by keeping Assad in power and strengthening Kurdish threat,” The Independent, October 28, 2015.

13. Raja Abdulrahim, “Islamic State advances further into Syria’s Aleppo province,” The Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2015.

14. “President Assad’s interview with Russian media outlets, Syrian Arab News Agency, September 16, 2015 http://sana.sy/en/?p=54857
10 January 2016

By Matt Agorist

On Saturday, the Saudi Arabian government beheaded 47 people, one of whom was prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a senior opposition figure. He and the others were all killed for their charges of “undermining the national security” of the kingdom.

Immediately following the beheadings, countries across the globe–except for the United States– denounced the barbaric move.

Rightfully outraged with the beheadings, Shiite Muslims in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain angrily condemned the executions, and Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

These inhumane acts of murder on the part of the Saudis have forced the hands of those who sell them weapons; and on Monday, Germany became the first country to question their arms trade deal.

“We must now review whether in the future we should take a more critical stance” on selling arms to Saudi Arabia, German Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel said Monday.

While Germany has said they will review their decision, Belgium just took it a step further on Tuesday, by immediately declining Saudi Arabia’s request for military equipment supplies.

“We have rejected the request [for military equipment supplies to Saudi Arabia],” Geert Bourgeois told the Flemish Parliament, as quoted by the RTBF broadcaster. “If there is a possibility that the weapons may be used for internal repression, I refuse.”

The moves by Germany to advocate for a review, and Belgium to renounce the selling of weapons to such a repressive regime are heartening and should be a model for all those involved in arming a country who beheads more people than ISIS.
Of course, the US is not about to give up their largest weapons export contract, even if the weapons are used to oppress entire nations and murder their children.

Immediately after the beheadings, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce took to CNN to blame the Saudis’ executions on Iranians.

As Daniel McAdams reports for the Ron Paul Institute, Royce falsely claimed that the Iranian military invaded Yemen. But that is demonstrably untrue. It was the Saudis who invaded Yemen.

It seems that the Saudi influence over the United States is far and wide, even spreading to the presidential candidates, who all courtsey to “our Saudi ally” by pledging their blind support of the terrorist regime.

It’s no coincidence that President Obama was showered with $1.3 million in gifts from the Saudi King last year. Obama is responsible for forging the largest weapons sale in American history, all of which went to Saudi Arabia.

Matt Agorist writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com

January 8, 2016