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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

 

By Jack A. Smith

Washington’s extensive military maneuvers in the Middle East since Sept. 11, 2001, have largely failed, creating far worse calamities at great cost to the people and countries of the region — and there is little reason to suspect this will change for the better in New Year 2016.

Actually, it could get much worse despite UN talks in Vienna later this month to seek a temporary cease-fire in Syria and the beginning of discussions on an eventual new Damascus government. The abrupt break in diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, plus the formation of a new Sunni coalition to “fight terrorism” and new maneuvers by an assertive Turkey could exacerbate existing conflicts.

Here’s a brief look at the three largest wars in which the U.S. is deeply involved at the moment — in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria — plus additional information about the region:

• IN AFGHANISTAN, THE TALIBAN IS ON THE OFFENSIVE, battering Afghan troops in Helmand province. The so-called Islamic State (IS) is now a growing presence in the country. Al-Qaeda — the reason George W. Bush bombed and invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 — is making a comeback, according to the Dec. 30 New York Times which revealed:

“Even as the Obama Administration scrambles to confront the Islamic State and a resurgent Taliban, an old enemy seems to be reappearing in Afghanistan: Al Qaeda training camps are sprouting up there, forcing the Pentagon and American intelligence agencies to assess whether they could again become a breeding ground for attacks on the United States…. The scope of Al-Qaeda’s deadly resilience in Afghanistan appears to have caught American and Afghan officials by surprise.” Again.

A day earlier USA Today reported “Afghanistan’s security situation is so tenuous that the top U.S. commander there wants to keep as many U.S. troops there as possible through 2016 to boost beleaguered Afghan soldiers and may seek additional American forces to assist them.” There are nearly 10,000 U.S troops in Afghanistan today and half are scheduled to depart by the end of 2016 — but Gen. John Campbell, the U.S.-NATO commander in Afghanistan, suggested the larger number, and perhaps more, should remain indefinitely.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan has lasted 14 years and four months and is expected to continue for more years. The cost to U.S. taxpayers so far is over $1 trillion, according to the Financial Times, and the final cost will be much higher. The only American victory in this war will be that of the U.S. armaments industry.

• IN IRAQ, WASHINGTON’S DISASTROUS WAR has lasted nearly 13 years from March 2003 with the exception of two and a half years until returning in August 2014 to fight against the Islamic State (IS) — itself a product of the first war. President Obama propelled the second intervention soon after IS captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014. Late last month, after losing much ground, Iraqi forces backed by American air power recaptured the key city of Ramadi, destroying a large portion of the city in the process. The battle to recapture Mosul may take place this year.

However, many sources in and out of Congress argue that only a significant ground war will ultimately defeat the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. Aside from 3,500 U.S. military “trainers and advisers” in Iraq, President Obama is reluctant to engage in a major ground campaign in either country, given his past promises to avoid just that and the Pentagon’s difficulties in actually winning big wars in the Middle East. If political pressure doesn’t oblige him to deploy ground troops against IS this year, there is a likelihood his successor may in 2017. Regardless, the Iraq war will become more intense in 2016.

There are several other important problems regarding Iraq, but two stand out.

(1) The Islamic State is a militant Sunni “caliphate” based on Islamic fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrine mainly propagated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The IS evidently considers its main enemy to be the Shia branch of Islam, which departed from the Sunni version in the 7th century. Virtually all of the many Sunni jihadist groups follow aspects of fundamentalist Wahhabism or the nearly identical Salafism, and most condemn adherents of Shia Islam. The IS “state” occupies large portions of two Shia-governed countries, Iraq and Syria. Sunni Arabs in Iraq — most of whom appear not share fundamentalist views — constitute 15 to 20% of the Iraqi population. But many oppose the Shia controlled Baghdad government. Unless a substantial number of these Sunnis turn strongly against the IS, defeating it will be more difficult. A few Sunni tribes already fight IS in Iraq.

Kurds make up 17% of the Iraqi population and are described as “mainly secular Sunnis” who seek independence from Iraq in the future to build their own independent state — but at the moment they supply the most effective ground forces against the IS. The Shia represent up to 65% of the population but have long existed under Sunni rule, usually as secondary citizens. It was only after the U.S. destroyed the minority secular Sunni government of Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath Party that the Shia won power in an election. The Bush/Cheney Administration probably knew that regime change in Iraq — Iran’s enemy neighbor to the west — could strengthen the Shia government in Tehran, but since they initially planned to invade Iran (as well as Syria) after Iraq was subdued they ignored the risk. The U.S. sank so deeply in the Iraqi quagmire that it never was able to expand its ridiculous imperialist escapade.

(2) NATO member Turkey is intervening in Iraq against the wishes of the Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who leads the Sunni Islamist-leaning government in Ankara, persists in refusing a demand by Shia-governed Iraq to remove the several hundred soldiers and heavy equipment he sent to northwest Iraq Dec. 4, ostensibly to join a smaller Turkish unit training Sunni and Kurdish fighters against the IS takeover of Mosul.

Reflecting the worsening relations between Iraq and Turkey, the Baghdad government did not give Ankara permission to send more troops and insisted they depart immediately. Turkey responded by declaring its soldiers would remain until Mosul is freed from IS control, and criticized the Iraqi government for not moving faster to retake the city. Interestingly, the Arab League, which usually supports Sunni states, backed Iraq’s position Dec. 25, most likely because it is wary of allied but non-Arab Turkey grabbing more influence and territory in the region. (Arab lands were dominated by Turkey’s Ottoman Empire until the end of World War I when British and French imperialism then rearranged the old boundary lines to serve their own interests — a scheme that has contributed to the crises in Iraq and Syria today.)

On Dec. 9, Turkey instructed all its citizens in Iraq to leave the country, except those in Kurdish Iraq. Turkey is fighting against Kurds in Syria, and its own country, but not the Iraqi Kurds, which have cordial relations with the U.S.

Erdoğan, whom the New York Times editorially described Jan. 6 as “an authoritarian leader willing to trample on human rights, the rule of law and political and press freedoms,” has been taking a variety of aggressive steps in recent years to enhance Turkey’s and his own power in the region.

M. K. Bhadrakumar, a journalist and former Indian diplomat, reported in India Punchline Dec. 31: “President Erdoğan paid a daylong visit on Dec. 27 to Riyadh to meet King Salman. The Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awst reported the two leaders decided to form a ‘strategic cooperation council’ with a view to create a quantum leap in the strength of the relationship between the two countries so that it is strategic and serves the interests of the two countries and their peoples, and contributes to the creation of security and stability in the region.

“Evidently, the Turkish-Saudi entente is based on a congruence of interests. A prominent Russian pundit Yevgeniy Satanovsky, who heads the Middle East Institute in Moscow, has warned that Turkey and Saudi Arabia may be planning to step up their longstanding covert support of the radical Islamist groups operating in Russia’s North Caucasus. In recent statements President Vladimir Putin had also signaled that Moscow’s patience was wearing thin over Turkey’s support of subversive elements in Russia and things were coming to a pass in bilateral relations even before the downing of the Russian warplane.”

• THE SYRIAN CONFLICT IS IN TRANSITION after nearly five years of what has become a decimating civil war, pitting the Islamic State, al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front, scores of different jihadi organizations and a small number of secular forces against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. So far over 200,000 people have died on both sides and millions of Syrians are internally displaced or have fled the country for a very uncertain future.

Hostilities continue but the sudden intervention of Russia and its military forces on the side of Assad in late September dramatically changed the geopolitical landscape and strengthened Syria’s military struggle against rebel forces.

The United States — the regional hegemon toward whom nearly all Arab states offer deference — became a powerful supporter of regime change in Damascus beginning 2011, even though Washington did not dispatch combat troops to join the civil war. Obama’s most reliable supporters in the region are Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Gulf monarchies and other Sunni countries seeking to oust Syria’s Alawite/Shia led government. All have provided the rebels with abundant political and financial aid plus military equipment.

The objective of the U.S. and its allies is to replace an Alawite/Shia government friendly to Iran, Iraq and Russia with a Sunni led regime friendly to themselves, but not the fundamentalist regime desired by many of the rebel organizations and some of the Sunni governments. The U.S. and its NATO foreign legion will not allow a jihadi government in Damascus for obvious reasons. At most President Obama will tolerate some representatives of the fighting rebel forces to have a say from obscure posts in a new regime, but nothing more. The regional allies agree because that is what the U.S. wants. If any turned against Washington regime change could be their fate. Other reasons for obeying Obama include the increasing danger they all feel from IS and possibly a reinvigorated al-Qaeda, and the fact that Russia has now become a Middle Eastern power that may give them trouble.

Iran, Iraq and Russia supported the Assad government, but until President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian air force and navy to bombard rebel forces in Syria, their power was limited. Russia is now a major player, and when it talks Washington must listen if not necessarily act.

When Obama demanded that Assad step down in the early months of the war it had nothing to do with democracy, a frequent U.S. justification for regime change. He wanted to extract Syria from its allied relationship with Iran and its long term, mutually advantageous association with Russia, going back before its Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1980 during the Cold War. Washington also acted to cultivate its power relations with Sunni governments in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, that wanted to weaken the Shia Muslim political alliance of geographically contiguous Iran, Iraq and Syria.

The Oval Office has gradually came to realize — long after unsuccessfully seeking to create an anti-Assad leadership coalition largely composed of Syrian exiles — that jihadi militants are virtually in total command of the civil war and that unless dynamics change the removal of Assad could lead to a humiliating “terrorist” takeover in Damascus. Obama also was getting criticism because the military campaign against IS was not making sufficient progress.

Enter Russia — bombing rebel jihadis in Syria and the Islamic State while proposing the possibility of a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the Syria crisis. No one can predict the outcome at this stage. Although President Obama has often made clear his reluctance to share an iota of American unilateral “leadership,” he knows but doesn’t wish to acknowledge that Putin pulled him out of two, and now possibly three, of his most difficult dilemmas. Here’s how:

The first was in 2013 when Obama was about to launch a bombing campaign against Syria for allegedly violating his “red-line” against the use of chemical weapons. A majority of the American people and many in Congress opposed the move, but Obama felt he had no alternative that would allow him to save face. Putin then convinced Assad to dispose of his entire chemical arsenal, which provided the White House with a valid reason not to launch an unpopular war. The other instance is when Putin used Russia’s good relations with Iran to help bring about the now successful Washington-Tehran negotiations regarding nuclear matters.

The upcoming UN talks on a temporary cease-fire in the Syrian war and the beginning of discussions on an eventual new Damascus government largely depend on an agreement in next months or years between the U.S. and Russia.

Most fighting Jihadi rebels and their Sunni Arab and Western supporters want Assad to resign before negotiations for a new government. The Syrian regime and its supporters, including Russia, stipulate that Assad has considerable support in Syria and that he should be part of the decision on candidates. (According to the June 4, 2014, New York Times: “There is no doubt that Mr. Assad has considerable support in parts of Syria.”) It may in time be possible to resolve this exceptionally complex matter — but it is only half the equation.

Here’s the other half: Regarding a cease fire several score well armed and financed Sunni Islamist jihadi rebel fighting organizations are supposed to turn their guns away from the Syrian government and toward powerful Islamic State. The U.S. is behind efforts to help organize and finance this hoped for new coalition (although U.S. troops will not take part). Some Arab countries are supposed to send troops as well as the existing jihadists. The powerful Nusra Front has not been invited to join the coalition because of its al-Qaeda connection but since it views IS as an enemy rival it may well not be a coalition target unless it advances on its own to the gates of Damascus. The Nusra Front has worked in collaboration with many of the “moderate” jihadi groups that are supposed to become part of the coalition.

Washington seems naïve or desperate to think a significant number of jihadis will stop fighting Assad in order to take on the Islamic State even if there are big bribes to do so, unless the deal is to fight IS for a while then go back to displacing Assad. Obama’s latest efforts to create a “moderate” fighting coalition resulted in “four or five” recruits at the preposterous cost — hold your breath — of $500 million before the program was scrapped. Some rebel groups can no doubt be bought off but it seems possible others might join IS or Nusra Front or continue on their own to battle for Sunni Islamist control of the government.

Stratfor’s Dec. 29 summary of the Islamic State’s present strength and weakness in Syria is of interest:

“Though far from defeated, [the Islamic State] is nevertheless being harried across several fronts, experiencing significant losses in Syria as well as Iraq…. In northern Syria, the Kurdish-dominated [and U.S. backed] Syrian Democratic Forces are driving their offensive onward, crossing the Euphrates River in numbers after seizing the Tishrin dam [and] are now advancing westward toward the Islamic State-held town of Manbij in northern Aleppo…. Syrian government forces, with backing from foreign militias and the Russian air force, have also been pushing hard into Islamic State territory. The Syrian army is expanding its control over terrain close to the formerly besieged Kweiris air base, where a number of Syrian loyalists held position for years against persistent Islamic State attacks. On Dec. 29 the Syrian government also reportedly took back the strategic town of Maheen, 16 miles from the vital M5 highway controlled by the IS…. The Islamic State is unlikely to be pushed back everywhere in the short term, and it is still capable of carrying out its own offensive operations, as it has done in Deir el-Zour in late December. However, it is increasingly difficult for the group to achieve the major battlefield victories it won previously as it stretches its forces thin and encounters persistent aerial attacks.”

According to the Pentagon Jan. 5, IS lost 30% of the territory it once occupied in Iraq and Syria.

• A REGION IN TURMOIL

(1) The gravest charge against President Assad is that he has he killed 250,000 or 300,000 “of his own people,” which has repeatedly been broadcast by many U.S. TV news stations and repeated by a number of Congressional members. (Turkey’s President Erdoğan just upped the figure the other day to 400,000.) Without justifying the government’s seemingly indiscriminant use of “barrel bombs” in populated territory under rebel control, exception must be taken to these intentionally misleading calculations.

The Sept. 14 New York Times reported, after thorough investigation, that there were approximately 200,000 deaths in Syria up to that time, and that there were 84,404 civilian deaths, killed by both the government and the rebel forces. This remains a terrible casualty toll, but to condemn the Assad regime for all of an exaggerated number of civilian deaths is consciously distorted propaganda. According to the Times, the remainder of the deaths were those of government and rebel fighting forces. A few weeks earlier the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the Assad government, reported Aug. 5 that that 330,000 people died and that 111,624 were civilians killed, obviously by both sides. The total is higher but the percent of civilian deaths is lower. The Times, which opposes Assad, had to be aware of the higher estimate before it decided to rely on its own research.

(2) Long-term religious and political differences between Iran and Saudi Arabia escalated significantly after the Saudi kingdom announced Jan. 2 that it had executed prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, an outspoken resident of the kingdom who sought more rights for the Shia 15% minority mainly residing in Eastern Province, a region with very high oil reserves.

The Associated Press reported Jan 4: “Al-Nimr was a central figure in the 2011 Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority until his arrest in 2012. He was convicted of terrorism charges but denied advocating violence.” BBC reported Nimr was “a persistent critic of Saudi Arabia’s Sunni royal family who was said to have a particularly strong following among Saudi Shia youth. He was arrested several times over the past decade, alleging he was beaten by Saudi secret police during one detention.”

The charges against him were instigating unrest, undermining state security and making anti-government speeches and defending political prisoners. His unforgivable “crime” was openly calling for a more democratic society in a totalitarian theocracy.

Shia religious or political leaders throughout the world, especially in the Middle East, condemned the Riyadh regime for the execution. Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared: “The unjustly spilled blood of this oppressed martyr will no doubt soon show its effect and divine vengeance will befall Saudi politicians.” The leader of Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, accused Saudi Arabia of seeking to ignite a Shia-Sunni civil war across the world.

Protests began in Iran immediately after the news circulated. In one case a large group demonstrators spontaneously attacked the Saudi embassy, sacking part of the interior and starting fires. There evidently were no injuries. The Iranian government disapproved of the attack. Tehran authorities condemned the violence and police have made at least 50 arrests so far. This was not a government project.

Angry peaceful protests were continuing in Iran Jan. 3 when the Saudi regime retaliated by breaking diplomatic relations and expelling all Iran’s diplomats and staff as well as recalling its own embassy staff and ending airline travel between the two countries. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani responded: “The Saudi government has taken a strange action and cut off its diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran to cover its crimes of beheading a religious leader in its country…. Such actions can’t cover up that big crime.”

Several regional Sunni led countries either broke relations with Iran or reduced diplomatic staff in solidarity with the kingdom. More may do so. The Arab League will hold an emergency meeting Jan. 10 to discuss the issue.

What’s up and what next? In our view, the House of Saud knew precisely what the reaction would be in Iran if it decided to kill al-Nimr. There would at least be a riot in Teheran and profound criticism from Iran and the Shia community worldwide.

The monarchy could have avoided an increase in tensions and a break in relations by simply keeping Nimr in prison. So they killed him, hedging their bets to confuse the situation by executing 47 men the same day. The others were alleged to be Sunni jihadists mainly connected to al-Qaeda who had attacked Saudi Arabia and had been imprisoned for a number of years. By mixing one Shi’ite with 46 Sunnis, who could possibly think the royal family was religiously intolerant?

The kingdom sought an open confrontation with Iran for several reasons. Two stand out.

The first emanates from Riyadh’s extreme anger about the U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement and the ending of sanctions on Tehran. Only Israel can match their fury in this regard. Both countries exerted intense pressure on Washington to continue the sanctions and to forego the deal. They wanted Iran permanently impaired, each for their own reasons.

Saudi Arabia has both religious and political reasons for seeking to isolate and weaken the Tehran government and still counts on Washington’s assistance to accomplish the task. As the wealthy leading Sunni country in the Middle East the kingdom is deeply affronted by the existence of a brash, self-confident, militarily superior, independent and non-Arab Muslim Shia regime glaring face to face with itself across the Persian Gulf, a name the royals choke on and wish to change. It is of consequence that the Saudis responded so theatrically after the embassy brouhaha just two weeks after announcing the creation of an important new Sunni military “coalition against terrorism” that the kingdom will lead with U.S. backing (see below).

The Iranian government has a good idea about what’s actually going on. This sectarian chess game has lasted many decades, including when Saudi Arabia last broke relations from 1988 to 1991 over different issues. Tehran doesn’t fall for the one in 47 deception because both sides fully understand it’s only the “one” that counts. The execution was intended to increase tensions, but apparently within limits.

The Iranian government evidently was surprised by the cynical execution of Nimr which they had vigorously warned against in the past, and expressed its rage toward the Saudi regime — but also within certain limits. Threats will go back and forth, and tensions will increase but Tehran does not want this situation to become unacceptably worse; nor, I think, does Saudi Arabia wish it to get out of hand — at lest not yet.

(3) With air support from the U.S. and Russia, or Russia alone, a combination of the armies of Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Kurds could defeat IS on the ground — but the Obama Administration has opposed the formation of such an amalgamation. The reasons are political and geopolitical. He wants more Sunni and less Shia involvement. This will strengthen U.S. regional power.

Worldwide, there are 1.6 billion Muslims — 87 to 90% Sunni and 10 to 13% Shia. As global hegemon, the U.S. knows that numbers count far more than state-sponsored religious intolerance. The Shia are thought of, and often treated, as an outcast minority by most Sunni authoritarian states in the Middle East, virtually all of which receive America’s support as long as they genuflect to Washington’s strategic leadership. The fact that the Saudi monarchy and others want to displace Syria’s Alawite-Shia government is a prime reason why Obama has called for Assad’s removal for nearly five years.

The antediluvian Saudi absolute monarchy — Washington’s closest Arab ally since 1945 when the U.S. pledged to protect royal power in return for secure access to the country’s fabulous supply of petroleum — is the leader of the regional anti-Shia campaign, which the Obama Administration has not publicly criticized. The White House has long been aware that the kingdom repeatedly financed Sunni jihadist adventures from the 1970s (in Afghanistan, along with Pakistan and the United States) to the various rebel groups in Syria today.

For instance, according to Huffington Post in January last year: “A Wikileaks cable clearly quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying ‘donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.’ She continues: ‘More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba which operates in East Asia] and other terrorist groups.’ And it’s not just the Saudis: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are also implicated in the memo. Other cables released by Wikileaks outline how Saudi front companies are also used to fund terrorism abroad.”

Also weighing heavily on White House decisions is the Israeli government’s fabrication that Iran constitutes a threat to its existence, a position evidently shared by vocal majorities in the House and Senate and many liberal Democrats. Obama didn’t allow the Netanyahu regime to bomb Iran, which would have been a catastrophe, and recently reached agreement with unjustly sanctioned Tehran about its nuclear program, throwing billions Netanyahu’s way to calm him down. But in most other respects, except when the Israeli leader purposely humiliates him, Obama easily bends the knee to his manipulative, opportunist and obsessively mistrustful opposite number. But in nearly all cases, what Israel wants, Israel gets from Uncle Sam.

Even now, after Obama’s energy policies have resulted in U.S. oil output surpassing that of Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is keeping its original agreement of 70 years with the Saudis. Why? The main reason is because siding with Sunni kingdoms and dictatorships helped keep the USSR at bay at during the Cold War and now assures America’s continued domination of the strategic, fuel-rich Middle East.

Obama will not give permission or any support for a three nation Shia coalition plus the Kurds to unify with ground forces to fight against the Islamic State, especially with Russian air power for a few reasons: It would require ending the regime change war in Syria. It would be a slap in the face to its Sunni allies who might retaliate. It would increase the importance of Russia.

(4) To seal the bargain with the kings and dictators the U.S. enthusiastically supports Saudi Arabia and its allied emirates in their unjust, venomous nine month bombing campaign against Shia-affiliated Houthi rebels in Yemen, the poorest country in the region. Obama has supplied and re-supplied the aggressors with all types of killer weapons including internationally outlawed cluster bombs, earning the American “defense” industry $13 billion in sales last year. A few years earlier the kingdom stuffed $60 billion in U.S. war industry pockets.

According to Madawi Al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science as well as a columnist for Al-Monitor: “The Saudi war on Yemen is not an inevitable war of self-defense [as the kingdom maintains]…. Instead, it was a preemptive strike to inaugurate an aggressive Saudi regional foreign policy.”

The UN estimates the human toll in Yemen last year was 8,119 casualties, including 2,795 dead and 5,324 wounded. The New York Times reported Jan 6. UN “human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, told the Security Council in December that the Saudi-led coalition had accounted for a ‘disproportionate amount’ of the damage to infrastructure and civilian premises, including schools and hospitals.”

Sent to do the dirty work by clean-hands-Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry was obliged Nov. 23 to tell embarrassing lies no one actually believes to the foreign minister of a member of the Saudi anti-Yemen coalition Nov. 23: “We respect what United Arab Emirates has been able to do to accomplish significant progress in Yemen. We understand completely and support the reasons that Saudi Arabia and the UAE felt compelled to take acts of self-defense and to protect the security of this region.” Meanwhile, units of both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are exploiting the confusion to grab more territory in Yemen.

(5) On Dec. 15 Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a new 34-state Sunni Islamic military coalition under its own leadership. This extremely important event is not connected to the kingdom’s much smaller anti-Yemen coalition, which continues to plod along, shooting here, bombing there. Major countries such as Egypt and NATO’s Turkey are members of the new formation. Syria and Iran were excluded from membership. Shia-governed Iraq was not excluded, evidently due to its continuing relationship with Washington.

Aljazeera reported: “The United States welcomed the announcement of the anti-terrorism alliance. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said: ‘We look forward to learning more about what Saudi Arabia has in mind in terms of this coalition…. But in general, it appears it is very much in line with something we’ve been urging for quite some time, which is greater involvement in the campaign to combat IS by Sunni Arab countries.'”

Washington was obviously involved in developing the new coalition and probably functions behind the scenes as a silent partner. Our surmise is that the Sunni alliance will eventually take moderately more action against the Islamic State — a change in some degree from their miniscule efforts to fight IS up to now. In addition, this new Saudi led military coalition seeks regime change in Syria, regards Shia Islam as a religious betrayal to be shunned, and conceivably might be deployed to politically to contain Iran or for worse purposes.

“Worse” may be near, or far. The Wahhabi Saud clan has just accumulated substantially more power and authority in the region, and — despite occasional differences in tactics —is blessed by the higher and more powerful strategic authority at the headquarters of modern imperialism on the banks of the Potomac.

The author is editor of the Activist Newsletter and is former editor of the (U.S.) Guardian Newsweekly. He may be reached at jacdon@earthlink.net or http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com
08 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

By Andre Vltchek

For now, Argentina is lost and Venezuela is deeply wounded, divided and frustrated. Virtually everywhere in socialist Latin America, well-orchestrated and angry protests are taking place, accusing our left-wing governments of mismanagement and corruption.

What was gained during those years of hard work and sacrifices, is suddenly evaporating in front of our eyes. And there seems to be no way to stop the trend in the foreseeable future. Whatever magnificent work our governments have done have been smeared. Western propaganda and its local serfs belittle the achievements of our people. In several countries, revolutionary zeal has almost entirely vanished.

***

It is clear, even with an unarmed eye that great progress had been made. Those of us who knew Ecuador two decades ago, (then a depressing country, humiliated and torn by disparities and racism), are now impressed by its wonderful social services, free culture and modern infrastructure.

Indigenous people of Bolivia are proudly in possession of their own land.

Venezuela has been inspiring the entire Latin America and the world by its internationalism and determined struggle against Western imperialism.

Chile, step by small step, has been dismantling the grotesque legacy of Pinochet’s dictatorship, moving firmly towards socialism.

There are hundreds of great and inspiring examples, all over the continent.

In less than two decades, Latin America converted itself from one of the most depressing parts of the world, to the most progressive one.

A few years ago, it really seemed that the Empire had finally lost. There was no way that South Americans would want to go back to the days of darkness. The achievements of socialism were too obvious, too marvelous. Who would want to go back to the gloomy nihilism, depressing feudal structures and the fascist client-state arrangements?

Then the Empire re-grouped. It gathered its local lieutenants, its lackeys, and began striking back with deadly force.

All the means of imperialist propaganda were applied. The goal was to convince people that what they see is not actually real. Another objective was to subvert, to torpedo most of the achievements.

***

We lost elections? What nonsense!

It was clean economic and political terror unleashed against us, and it was the most vicious propaganda, which began forcing out the left wing governments of Latin America from power!

The world was watching, still demanding more Western-style “democracy”, more concessions. The West administered a “Fifth Column” that damaged Latin American revolutions, after infiltrating both media and brains in Caracas, Buenos Aires, even Quito. It consisted especially of the liberals and those so-called ‘progressive forces’; the same people who tried to burry the Cuban revolution after the Soviet Union had been destroyed by Western imperialism. The same people actually who were cheering the demolition of the Soviet Union itself.

They kept pushing for anarchism and for some formulae of “participatory economy”, in fact for their own concepts, for Western, white concepts, for something that most of Latin American people who fought and won their revolutions never asked for!

Jealous and petty, they hate the true powerhouses of resistance against Western imperialism: Russia, China, Iran or South Africa and in fact, even Latin America itself.

Latin American people have always been intuitively longing for big, strong governments, like those in Cuba and those that lately emerged in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. And their natural allies should have been those countries from other, non-Western parts of the world, with powerful people-oriented leadership, not some European and North American individuals representing grotesque and defunct movements and “intellectual” concepts.

In several countries, Latin America lost its way and again got derailed by Western demagoguery. Suddenly there was almost nothing left here of Chinese or Russian or Vietnamese ideas, nothing of internationalism, only Western soft liberal egotists and countless irrelevant marginal groups.

History was forgotten. It was simple, decisive and powerful action by China that single-handedly saved Cuba, when the island-nation was hit by the Gorbachev and Yeltsin disasters. I wrote about it a lot, and Fidel quoted me, agreeing in his “Reflections”.

It was the Soviet Union that stood in solidarity with almost all revolutionary movements of Latin America throughout the 20th century. And it was Russia that was backing Chávez during the countless Western attempts to overthrow his government.

***

Playing with anarchism, liberalism and Euro-socialist concepts brought several Latin American revolutions to the brink of absolute calamity.

South America is at the frontline. It is under attack. There is no time for the flowery theories.

I know Latin American revolutionaries. I have met many, from Eduardo Galeano to several Cuban and Sandinista leaders.

I also met many of the South American ‘elites’.

One day, not long after Evo Morales came to power in Bolivia, I spoke to a man, a member of one of the ‘leading’ families, which has in its ranks Senators, owners of mass media outlets, as well as captains of local industry.

“We will get rid of Morales”, he told me, openly. “Because he is a dirty Indian, and because we will not tolerate lefties in this part of the world.”

He was not hiding his plans – he was extremely confident.

“We don’t care how much money we have to spend; we have plenty of money. And we have plenty of time. We will use our media and we will create food and consumer goods deficits. Once there is nothing to eat, once there are food lines in all the major cities, as well as great insecurity and violence, people will vote him out of power.”

It was clearly the concept used by the Chilean fascist economic and political right wing thugs, before the 1973 US-backed coup against President Salvador Allende. “Uncertainty, shortages”, and if everything failed – then a brutal military coup.

In Bolivia the “elites” tried and tried, but they were not successful, because there was great solidarity with the government of Evo Morales, coming from socialist countries like Brazil and Venezuela. When the Right tried to break the country to pieces, pushing for the independence of the richest, “white” province of Santa Cruz, Brazilian President Lula declared that he was going to send the mightiest army in the South American continent and “defend the integrity of the neighboring country”.

It is beasts, and actually extremely powerful beasts, who are heading the “opposition” in South America.

And to be frank, we can hardly speak about an “opposition”. These are oligarchs, landowners, Christian (many from the Opus Dei) demagogues and military leaders. In many ways they are still the true rulers of the continent.

Nothing except brute force can stop them. They have unlimited financial resources, they have a propaganda machine at their disposal, and they can always count on the Empire to back them up. In fact it is the Empire that is encouraging, training and sustaining them.

***

“Violations of democracy and human rights!” the “opposition” yells, whenever our governments decide to hit back. It is not that we are lately hitting back really hard, but any retaliation is packaged as “brutal”.

What do we in fact do? We arrest just a few of the most outrageous terrorists – those who are openly trying to overthrow or destabilize the state.

But when they, the ‘elites’ and their armies, came to power, they cut open people’s stomachs, and threw them from helicopters straight into the sea.

Their death squads violate children in front of their parents. Female prisoners are raped by specially trained German shepherds dogs, and tubes with starved rats are inserted into their vaginas.

Entire movements and parties are liquidated by fascist South American battalions of death (some of them trained in the United States), but we must use some nice and clean tactics and “democratic means” to prevent them from grabbing power again?

The white, racist, colonialist Christian implants from Europe have been forming so-called South American ‘elites’. They are actually some of the cruelest human beings on Earth. Thanks to them, before our latest wave of Revolutions, Latin America suffered from the greatest disparities on earth. Tens of millions of its people were murdered. It was racially divided. It was plundered. Its veins were, and to a great extent still are, open – to borrow from the terminology of the great storyteller Eduardo Galeano.

My friend Noam Chomsky wrote about it extensively. I wrote about it in several chapters of my two latest books: : “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Others have as well.

How can people still listen to those mass murderers, with a straight face?

***

One thing cannot be disputed: only a big and powerful government and its army could now defend its people. Latin American revolutionary leaders were given a mandate by the people, and they have no right to back up, to betray.

Indecisiveness could prove lethal.

Referendum after referendum, people expressed their support for the revolutionary Proceso, in Venezuela and elsewhere. Year after year the fascist “opposition” has been showing spite for the voices of the people, the same spite it has demonstrated for centuries.

Sabotage after sabotage was administered, one treasonous act after another committed. As was promised by the Bolivian ‘elites’, the Venezuelan capitalist bandits paralyzed their country by shortages. Even rolls of toilet paper became ‘a deficit’. All too familiar… Like in Chile before 1973!

The message is clear: “you want to be able to wipe your ass after shitting, then betray socialism!” Or: “You want to eat? Then down with the legacy of Chávez!”

The will of the people is being humiliated. The elites are spitting straight into the faces of the majority.

Some citizens are now voting for the right, simply because they are exhausted, because they are scared, because they see no solution. They are voting against their own will (as they used to in Nicaragua during the reign of Aleman), because if they vote for their own candidates, they would be made to eat shit, literally.

But solutions are there! They are available.

Instead of listening to some Euro-centric gurus from Slovenia or New England, the Latin American governments should ask for help and lean on such countries as Russia and China, immediately joining alternative financial institutions, forging defense treaties, working on energy and other deals with those who are actually standing up against Western imperialism.

Latin America should never lose its independence. But with proven good friends and true powerful alliances, independence is never lost.

Our leaders should shed their dependency on the Western Left. Mainly because the Western Left does not exist anymore, with some tiny, miniscule exceptions that proves the rule. What remain are a huge army of “liberals”, and then a tremendous multitude of selfish beings defending their own interests and concepts. They are horrified of those who are truly fighting and winning; therefore they openly hate Russia, China and other non-Western nations. Frankly, they are racist. Such people cannot inspire or impress anybody, and so they are trying their luck at the distant shores, diluting determination and perverting the essence of the South American revolutions.

This is the time to be focused. South America should fight, with all its might. It is not easy, but its treasonous families, those who are destroying the precious lives of tens of millions of human beings, should be identified, arrested and tried. It should be done immediately! What many of them are actually doing is not “being in opposition”. They are interrupting the democratic process in their own countries, selling their homelands once again to foreign powers and international capital.

***

Mass media outlets that are spreading misinformation, lies and foreign propaganda should also be immediately identified. They should be exposed, confronted, and if their goal is to destroy the socialist fatherland, shut down. Again, this is no time for liberal niceties.

Freedom of expression has nothing to do with the freedom of using newspapers and television stations to spread fabrications, fear and uncertainty, or to call for the direct overthrow of democratically elected governments.

And in South America, entire huge international newspaper and television syndicates have been working for years and decades for one single and deadly goal – to smear and liquidate the Left, and to deliver the entire continent back to the racist, fascist foreign imperialist rulers.

It has all gone too far, and it has to stop.

A few months ago, I was riding on the impressive Sao Paulo metro system, together with my Cuban friend.

“It is much better than any public transportation network that I have seen in Europe or in the United States”, I exclaimed.

“But people in Brazil think that it is total shit”, commented my friend, laconically.

“How come?” I was shocked.

“Because they are told so on the television, and because they read it in the newspapers”.

Yes, that’s how it is! Free art, including opera, given to the Brazilian public, is nothing more than crap, if one reads the mainstream Brazilian press. Free medical care, no matter how (still) imperfect it is, is not even worth praising. Free education in so many South American countries … New transportation networks, free or heavily subsidized books, brilliant parks with brand new libraries that are mushrooming in Chile and Ecuador… Financial support for the poor, the fight to keep children in school, the fight to save the environment, countless programs to protect indigenous communities…

Nothing, nothing, and absolutely nothing is positive in the eyes of the pro-Western South American propagandists!

This has become one huge counter-process, financed from foreign and local sources, aimed at discrediting all those great achievements.

***

Corruption!!! That is the new battle cry of the elites and their lackeys. Accusations of corruption are fabricated or inflated against all governments of the left: Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, even Michelle Bachelet of Chile. Cristina Kirchner’s back was almost broken by constant corruption charges.

But how on earth could anyone take such accusations seriously, if they are coming from those who have been plundering, for over 500 years, their own continent on behalf of Europe and then the United States and multi-national corporations? Like locust, the right-wing families have been looting all the natural resources, while forcing people into near slave labor. Under horrendous feudal and fascist rulers, Latin America was converted into the pinnacle of corruption – moral and economic.

Nothing was left intact, and nothing remained pure. In order to survive in such a vile system, people had to bend, twist, and maneuver.

Now these same bandit clans that have been destroying the continent are smearing, pointing fingers at the governments that are, step by step, trying to reverse the trend and serve the people.

The same bastards that were bombing restaurants and hotels in their own countries, planting bombs on passenger airliners, and assassinating thousands of innocent people, are talking about morality.

Are our people, our governments, expected to reach, to achieve total purity in just one or two decades, after the entire continent had been functioning for over 500 years as a bordello of Western colonialism and imperialism?

Are we going to allow ourselves to be on the defensive when facing those who robbed and raped almost everything and everybody in Latin America?

***

Yes, the people of Latin America were brutalized for several long centuries. They went through unimaginable suffering. They lost everything. But they never gave up. Since the holocaust performed by Spanish, Portuguese and other European barbaric conquerors, they have been rising, rebelling and fighting for their scarred land.

Pablo Neruda wrote a tremendous poem “Heights of Machu Picchu.” Eduardo Galeano wrote “Open Veins of Latin America”. It is all there, in those two tremendous works.

The fight goes on, to this very moment.

Most of the power is now, finally, in the hands of those who are determined to fight for the interests of their people.

We have no right to be defeated. If we do, hundreds of millions will lose their future and their hope.

Such an opportunity would not come back. It is here, for the first time in 500 years! Millions died to bring it here. If the Revolution is crashed now, it may not return in full force for who knows how many years. In simple terms it means that several more generations would be lost!

We have to counterattack now. What are we waiting for? Of what are we afraid? That the biggest terrorist on Earth – the West – would brand us as undemocratic? That the same West that has, for centuries, overthrown our governments, murdered our leaders as well as simple men, women and children would not give us its stamp of approval? That we would be criticized by those countries, which are still looting, violating, lying and ruining?

Our friends, our allies are not in the West. We all know how lukewarm was the support given to Venezuela, Cuba or Ecuador in Europe and North America by those “progressive forces”, and how hostile was the mainstream. We have to wake up and join forces with those who are now standing proudly and with great determination against Western imperialism and market fundamentalism.

There is no time for experiments. This is the fight for our survival!

As I wrote earlier, in order for the Revolutions to continue, we need big governments, determined cadres, loyal armies and mighty allies. We also need huge Latin American solidarity, true unity and integration. One monolithic South American block in fraternal embrace with other truly independent countries.

This is an extremely serious moment, Comrades! This is damn serious.

Anarchism and the concepts of the factories administered by workers will not save us right now.

Argentina has fallen, but Venezuela is still standing. Each creek, each boulder has now to be defended, be it in Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba.

We have to be tough, we have to be alert, and we cannot do it alone!

Venceremos nuevamente, camaradas!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries.

08 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

By Nathan Tempey

Administrators at a northern New Jersey high school are getting angry phone calls from Palestinian rights activists after a junior there says administrators accused her of bullying over tweets she made that were sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

Bethany Koval, 16, is prolific on Twitter, having dashed off more than 21,000 messages and gained nearly 4,000 followers since joining in February 2015. She got the attention of online activists including members of Anonymous this morning after tweeting about her trip to the principals office. The tweets include recordings of a man she says is an assistant principal saying she could be formally charged with bullying, which under New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act (pdf) can lead to suspension or expulsion.

Koval grew up in the New Jersey suburb of Fair Lawn and attends Fair Lawn High School, where part of the mission statement reads, “We believe that the optimal environment is one in which students feel free to challenge themselves and have opportunities to take initiative, to articulate clearly and imaginatively, to be creative, and to learn from their inquiry and experience.”
She said she became interested in politics over the last few years after realizing “I’ve been fed all kinds of kinds of propaganda and I started to question a lot of it.” She said she joined Twitter because “I really wanted an outlet to express my views and find people who had similar views.” Koval posted wide-ranging discussions of abortion rights, Hillary Clinton’s record, and the Syrian civil war. She said she has family in Israel and grew outraged about the country’s treatment of Palestinians in 2014 after seeing video of civilians bombed in Gaza.

“I was just really hurt by what was going on, hurt by how much money the United States gives to Israel,” she said. “I was so shocked because it seemed so undemocratic.”

Koval tweeted about the bombings and the Israeli-Palestinian political situation over her winter break, and said that it’s those tweets that caught the attention of a classmate who she describes as a former friend. In one, Koval described Hamas as “not extreme.”

Hamas is not extreme: Hamas is just painted that way Hateful rhetoric against Hamas is what allowed the Gaza bombing https://t.co/eprM2ahGHV
— benny (@bendykoval) December 23, 2015

In another, she described Israel as a “terrorist force.”

Israel is a terrorist force :(. Gaza bombing of 2014 death toll: 2,104 Palestinians innocents to 66 Israeli soldiers https://t.co/GpI0TtofWs
— benny (@bendykoval) December 23, 2015

Koval thinks that the reaction might have come more swiftly had she not been on holiday break, but says word got back to her that the unidentified girl was unhappy with what she’d said. Online, she speculated about the kind of trouble that her online activity could get her in.

But actually I can get in a LOT of trouble with my school for my anti-Israel sentiments on here A girl I know got in trouble for a BLM post
— benny (@bendykoval) December 27, 2015
@aberrating Valid point. But sigh, they could definitely call it hate speech, they could say I’m threatening Israeli people, etc
— benny (@bendykoval) December 27, 2015
She also celebrated the classmate unfollowing her.
im sooooo glad that pro-Israel girl from my school unfollowed me! I’m so FREE now like….. FUCK ISRAEL FUCK ISRAEL FUCK ISRAEL FUCK ISRAEL
— benny (@bendykoval) December 27, 2015
In another recording, the administrator seems to refer to that tweet, and possibly this one, perhaps the most directly confrontational:
@L_Chevere YOU’RE MY FAVORITE LOCAL. I’M DMING YOU THEIR NAMES RN
— benny (@bendykoval) December 26, 2015
Koval said she did message the girl’s name to L_Chevere, a classmate, “but of course it didn’t go farther. She didn’t even know the girl.”
This morning, she narrated the beginning of the fallout.
Principal just called me down. I’m about to be exposed for being anti-Israel. Pray for me.
— benny (@bendykoval) January 6, 2016
Ends with “the state law may interpret it differently”, if you couldn’t hear it.pic.twitter.com/fJsl5ygmsy
— benny (@bendykoval) January 6, 2016
Apparently a “smug attitude” is trying not to burst into tears. Do you know how bad a HIB report looks? pic.twitter.com/bqNLUmSc6b
— benny (@bendykoval) January 6, 2016
Koval said that upon arriving at school today, her teacher had received a memo and told her to report to the main office. There she says assistant principal Frank Guadagnino showed her printouts of the tweets, and said, “Do you realize that what you put out electronically can also get you in trouble in school, or put you in some kind of problem?”

“I haven’t put anything problematic out there,” she says on the recording. “Maybe controversial.”

“That’s your interpretation,” he replies. “There’s a state law that might interpret it different.”

Koval said she was let go, only to be called back and told to write a statement of the events. She said she told Guadagnino she wouldn’t do it without a lawyer but that he told her they could only go on the other girl’s account if she didn’t write it then and there.
I was denied my right to an attorney. I was forced to make a writer statement, but I begged them to revoke it. pic.twitter.com/izgyLANgMJ
— benny (@bendykoval) January 6, 2016
Koval said she has since been allowed to rescind this version of events and draw something up for tomorrow morning, when some sort of justice is supposed to meted out. Also, she said, concerned that she might have “filmed” the proceedings, administrators including Principal James Marcella told her the Department of Education could sue her if she had.

She said she thinks she’s been targeted “because I’m not pro-Israel.”

The response online was swift, prompting an #IStandWithBenny hashtag, and a deluge of calls and emails to the school from around the world. There was also reaction close to home. She said one boy at her school messaged her, “bitch let’s fight son.” When she got home this evening, she said the school called her mom and she overheard someone say the administration was getting calls from far and wide. Her mom walked into the other room for the rest of the call.

Koval said she is not especially concerned for her safety now that she is internet famous: “I’m just worried for my parents, really.”

Her parents, who she describes as “apolitical” are now “REALLY mad.”
Okay. My parents are really mad. REALLY mad. I have to get off Twitter for now. Thank you for your love and support. Keep fighting