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By Israel Shamir

Summer reigns all over Europe, from Greece to Sweden. Vacations have emptied the offices, and filled the beaches. Flowers bloom all over, and their fragrance flows like a river. Endless festivals, performances and art compositions embellish the quaint old cities. But things are not as ever before. The old continent is sick. Living is easy, but not for you. Fish are jumping, and unemployment is high.

‘Austerity for all but banksters and the corrupt politicians’ is the motto of the day. The welfare state shrinks, but military budgets expand, and NATO grows despite the austerity. The EU member countries (save Germany) are de-industrialised, their workers lose skills and go into services. A golf caddy is less likely to cause trouble than an industrial worker. Never has democracy felt so much a sham as nowadays.

After the Syriza debacle of Greece, there is a very little trust for left-wing rhetoric. In the whole modern history of Europe, there was not such a shameful surrender, or even treason. ‘Alexis Tsipras’ is a Greek translation of ‘Vidkun Quisling’ or of ‘Maréchal Pétain’. The man received the full support of his people, and chickened out. (The first step of Syriza after the fiasco was to enter into military cooperation with Israel.) Now only the far-right Golden Dawn speaks loudly against surrender to the bankers, but this is a party in opposition, and it risks nothing by speaking out.

The parties of the left and of the right are now quite similar. Europe has neither true Left nor true Right anymore. The pseudo-Left supports imperialist wars and unmans the man. The pseudo-Right supports imperialist wars and cuts taxes for the wealthy. It was more fun with the traditional parties, with the Right hating financiers, supporting tradition, church, and family, and the Left fighting the bourgeoisie, caring for workers, and aiming for social justice. In Douglas Adams’ words, “men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.” Now they all promote women to the boards of multinationals, compete for Jewish donations and argue who is better for the gays.

In important questions, they are same-same, as my Chinese landlady used to shrill. Both left and right stands for more immigration, though the left explains that by humanitarian reasons and by anti-racism, while the right looks for a cheap work force to keep native workers obedient. The bottom line is the same.

People threatened by mass immigration often vote for the right, as they mistakenly think some token racism will be translated into action. Alas, in vain. Consider Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French President. He would drop a racist line, to flirt with his electorate, but by bombing Libya he sent more immigrants to France than any left-winger would. Well, perhaps François Hollande, the present President, can compete with him, as his support for Syrian rebels did send a million refugees to Europe.

In the UK, Tony Blair destroyed Labour. He turned the old party of workers and miners into Tory Lite. Blair supported every American military campaign and earned the honourable title of the British Poodle. A great friend of Israel and of the Israel Lobby is another of his titles. Blair is out, but his party supporters are still in. And they keep losing.

The Labour rank-and-file would like to see Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. Blair hates him, and this is surely a good recommendation. He is supposed to be a new Michael Foot, who was a great man in pre-Thatcher Britain. Corbyn stands for nuclear disarmament, he spoke positively of Hamas and Hezbollah, voted against American Drang nach Osten wars. Littlewood called him “the antidote to zionist bite”. He would change things, if he ever makes it. Probably they will keep him out: the people behind the parties prefer weak and wet politicians.

The far-right BNP claims to be the heir of true Labour. They say the British workers vote for them. Their claim is not entirely without merit. True Left – whether the Soviet variety, the Chinese or the Cuban one – was strictly against immigration. But immigration is only one issue among many, while the BNP narrowed its field to anti-Muslim politics. They do not even try to deal with the real problem – the excessive wealth of the few built upon the impoverishment of the many.

The Front National in France has more redeeming features, and more supporters. In reality, the FN is probably the only alive and kicking French party, the rest are dead. The FN is for taking France out of NATO and out of the EC, for friendship with Russia and for regaining France’s lost sovereignty. Their arrival at Palais d’Elysée would change things in Europe: if it would ever occur.

The main problem of Europe is American occupation. This is the source of trouble. In 1945, the continent was shared between the US and the USSR. In 1991, the Russians moved out, but no freedom came: the Americans moved in, occupying the whole of Europe from Narva in Estonia to Oeiras in Portugal, from Souda Bay on Crete to Ørland in Norway. Beside military hardware, they enforced their political agenda. Their yoke lies heavy upon Europe’s grey stones. The steps they force the European leaders to take hurt the continent. The leaders make wrong decisions, and the people pay for them.

Europe had a great buyer for its output. Russia bought its machinery and cheeses, abundant wine and cars, and delivered cheap gas and oil. The US stopped this profitable trade in its tracks. Now the Europeans dump their apples and cheese, spend more on military purchases and import expensive American gas.

Europe had a maverick friend over the sea, a retired colonel Kaddafi. He sold cheap oil, imported European goods for his prosperous small population, and kept millions of Africans occupied in Libya. Under American guidance, NATO bombed Libya, the colonel was sodomized by a gun barrel and lynched, his country destroyed. Africans went to Europe on every small boat they could find.

Europe had a friend in Damascus, an ex-eye doctor from London. He bought European goods, kept his country ship-shape, visited Paris. Under American guidance, this gentle man was called a ‘génocidaire’; weapons were delivered to his enemies, the fanatic Muslim takfiris. His country was devastated, and millions of Syrian refugees escaped to Europe.

They followed the Iraqis, whose country was laid low by the US invasion of 2003. The most advanced country of the Middle East, with free education and free medical care, with best engineers and a strong army, was turned into a nest of sectarian strife, while millions of Iraqis went to Europe. The Afghanis, Palestinians, Arabs, Africans pour into Europe from their countries smashed by the iron fist of the US Armed Forces.

My friend, Roger van Zwanenberg of Pluto books, thinks that terrible destruction of the Middle East in the US-led wars is due to Zionist influence and it serves Israel’s desire to fragment the region and subdue it in the Greater Land of Israel from Nile to Euphrates paradigm. It is a plausible thought, bearing in mind the recent scene of Netanyahu’s veneration in the US Congress. The promoters of the wars were mainly Israel-firsters, neocons, Wolfowitz, Perle et al. They pushed for invasion of Iraq, they demanded war on Iran.

But why would these megalomaniacs limit their dreams of dominance to the Middle East? Why not world dominance? If they want to break into pieces the old societies of the Middle East, they can do it in Europe as well, by the same coin. Europe is a victim of the conflict. Without these wars, waves of immigration would not cover Europe. So whoever planned and executed these wars probably intended to undo Europe as well as the Middle East, and Europe was the most important intended victim, as it needed to be subdued on the path to world dominance. And the Middle East is not the only source of refugees and immigrants.

Once the EU was a union of successor states of Charlemagne’s empire, and perhaps, a conceivable idea. But the US took control over Brussels, and forced them to accept East European states, all led by anti-communist devotees of America. Within the EU, the developed countries of the old union devoured the less developed outsiders. The Baltic states lost over third of their populations. Latvia went down from 2.7 million in the end of Soviet days to 1.9 million now. Lithuania went down from 3.7 to 2.9 million. Romania, once freed by the iron will of Nicolae Ceausescu from its debts, now once again is indebted to the hilt. Their impoverished citizens crowded the cities of the Western Europe.

Consider Sweden. This is coldest summer for many years in Sweden. July was as cool as April, but the cold did not stop the inflow of refugees. In front of every supermarket, of every underground and rail station of Sweden, from Kiruna to Lund, sits a gypsy beggar with a plastic cup for alms in his or her hand. They came from Romania and Hungary, fellow EU states, with quite a low standard of living, but within the Schengen Zone, so they do not need a visa. They do not come by their volition, they were sent by their barons who build huge castles and furnish them in the best garish gypsy style on the levy the beggars pay them. After three months on the Swedish pavements, they go home to be replaced by another bunch of beggars.

The Swedish police does not interfere with these beggars. They say there is no law to stop gypsies. They are afraid to be condemned for race profiling if they will. The gypsies are colourful; there are men and women, old and middle age, no more than two at every place. Logistics can’t be easy: so many people so evenly distributed, but the gypsy barons manage it smoothly: I never observed a fight, or even a quarrel, between the beggars. They have been trained to smile; something you never see in Eastern Europe, where beggars are as grim as 1950s buildings.

Refugees from Somalia and Sudan, victims of previous US interventions, do not beg. They crowd smaller Swedish towns; the Swedish state pays for their accommodation and provides some small money for their living. They are not allowed to work, and there is no demand for their labour anyway. They just sit and wait while their applications for refuge are being processed and (usually) declined. Then they disappear from the radar.

Do not weep for all the Swedes, though. The landlords make a fortune from this arrangement, so do officials. The Swedish state pays SEC 500 (€50) per night per room for the refugees. This is a very good business in small far-away towns. Usually, the state prefers bigger landlords with many rooms to offer, and they are able to offer a kick-back to the official in charge of the accommodation. Amusingly, the man considered “the most outspoken Swedish racist” and a fighter against immigration, Bert Karlsson, made mega-bucks renting rooms for the Somalis.

In addition to refugees and immigrants delivered to Sweden by the US wars and US-dictated enlargement of the EU, Sweden and other West European countries are undermined by the US-led gender rearrangement of life. There are few children; schools are being closed. Gays have their fullest rights; women have priority in taking jobs. Boys have fewer opportunities: from state TV to barbershops, the jobs are taken by women. The priests of the Swedish church are mainly females; the state appointed bishops known for their support for female priesthood.

“Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism”, quipped Julian Assange, the Wikileaks’ founder, imprisoned for the third year in the Ecuador embassy in London. He is an expert: two Swedish girls complained he raped them because he had consensual but unprotected sex with them. The Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny said that in such cases, a man should be in jail, even if it turns out he is innocent. Sweden has the highest rate of rape complaints, and the highest rate of these complaints dismissed as untrue. This does not promote love between sexes.

The education amounts to unmanning of men, and gorgeous Swedish girls often prefer more masculine foreign males. (I know, as a tanned and moustachioed foreign male, I married a gorgeous Swedish girl, many years ago). Swedes marry less and less, and have fewer children, despite very generous government assistance.

Many conservative observers put the blame on feminists. Yet even though men have clearly lost the war, the victory of women wilts under examination. Once upon a time women had a choice: they could join the business world or stay at home with the kids. Once upon a time women could raise a family without guilt. Once upon a time women could enjoy being flirted with. Not any more. The unmanning of man was quickly followed by the un-womaning of woman.

There is an understanding between the holders of power that feminised men are easier to control – this is a reason why they encourage homosexuality. Unmanning men is a linchpin in the reprogramming of mankind into an obedient herd, because strong men are unpredictable. Strong men are prone to rebellion, ready for sacrifice and primed for action. It is no coincidence that the enemies of Empire are all masculine males, be they Qaddafi, Castro, Chavez, Lukashenko, Putin – or Julian Assange. It appears the men have been targeted for elimination; the working ants need no sex.

Swedes have made a cult of blacks, also imported from the US, if we can judge by Rachel Dolezal. The blacks are supposed to be better and smarter than whites. In the Terminator movie, it is a black scientist who invents the marvellous chip; he fights together with the white woman-fighter against evil white men. A black Morpheus in the Matrix is a Zion (sic!) operative, saving human race. There was a black President in the Fifth Element before Obama. Many childless Swedes adopt imported black and Asian children, another American cultural trend established by Angelina Jolie. This reverse racism is no different from the ordinary variety. Blacks are fine, but in no way they are better than pink-and-white Swedes.

Ordinary Swedes are unhappy. In a small town with high percent of refugees and immigrants, some 40% vote for the far right party, the Sweden Democrats. They have got 12% in the whole of the country despite a ferocious campaign against them in the media.

The Left received a relative majority of the seats in the Parliament, after years of Right rule. After the election, the mainstream Left and Right joined forces on a compromise agenda, ostensibly – to keep the Sweden Democrats out. The Left voters felt cheated. Why bother and vote, if the result is a compromise between the parties?

Do not weep over the Sweden Democrats’ fate, either. This is a timid pro-Zionist party whose best known political action to-date was to stage a gay parade through a Muslim neighbourhood. They extoll the Jewish state, as their brethren in other European countries do. They accept the gender agenda of the New World Order. They are against immigrants and refugees, never against those who send the waves of the immigrants to Sweden. The other way around: they support the Kiev regime, this pet bastard of the Neocons, and hate Russia as every good NWO supporter should.

So, it is difficult to see where the freedom of the continent will come from, and whether it can come at all.

Israel Shamir, also known by the names Jöran Jermas and Adam Ermash, is a citizen of Sweden and Russian writer and journalist.

8 August 2015

By Shlomo Sand

His past was Jewish, but today he sees Israel as one of the most racist societies in the western world. Historian Shlomo Sand explains why he doesn’t want to be Jewish anymore

During the first half of the 20th century, my father abandoned Talmudic school, permanently stopped going to synagogue, and regularly expressed his aversion to rabbis. At this point in my own life, in the early 21st century, I feel in turn a moral obligation to break definitively with tribal Judeocentrism. I am today fully conscious of having never been a genuinely secular Jew, understanding that such an imaginary characteristic lacks any specific basis or cultural perspective, and that its existence is based on a hollow and ethnocentric view of the world. Earlier I mistakenly believed that the Yiddish culture of the family I grew up in was the embodiment of Jewish culture. A little later, inspired by Bernard Lazare, Mordechai Anielewicz, Marcel Rayman and Marek Edelman – who all fought antisemitism, nazism and Stalinism without adopting an ethnocentric view – I identified as part of an oppressed and rejected minority. In the company, so to speak, of the socialist leader Léon Blum, the poet Julian Tuwim and many others, I stubbornly remained a Jew who had accepted this identity on account of persecutions and murderers, crimes and their victims.

Now, having painfully become aware that I have undergone an adherence to Israel, been assimilated by law into a fictitious ethnos of persecutors and their supporters, and have appeared in the world as one of the exclusive club of the elect and their acolytes, I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew.

Although the state of Israel is not disposed to transform my official nationality from “Jew” to “Israeli”, I dare to hope that kindly philosemites, committed Zionists and exalted anti-Zionists, all of them so often nourished on essentialist conceptions, will respect my desire and cease to catalogue me as a Jew. As a matter of fact, what they think matters little to me, and still less what the remaining antisemitic idiots think. In the light of the historic tragedies of the 20th century, I am determined no longer to be a small minority in an exclusive club that others have neither the possibility nor the qualifications to join.

By my refusal to be a Jew, I represent a species in the course of disappearing. I know that by insisting that only my historical past was Jewish, while my everyday present (for better or worse) is Israeli, and finally that my future and that of my children (at least the future I wish for) must be guided by universal, open and generous principles, I run counter to the dominant fashion, which is oriented towards ethnocentrism.

As a historian of the modern age, I put forward the hypothesis that the cultural distance between my great-grandson and me will be as great or greater than that separating me from my own great-grandfather. All the better! I have the misfortune of living now among too many people who believe their descendants will resemble them in all respects, because for them peoples are eternal – a fortiori a race-people such as the Jews.

I am aware of living in one of the most racist societies in the western world. Racism is present to some degree everywhere, but in Israel it exists deep within the spirit of the laws. It is taught in schools and colleges, spread in the media, and above all and most dreadful, in Israel the racists do not know what they are doing and, because of this, feel in no way obliged to apologise. This absence of a need for self-justification has made Israel a particularly prized reference point for many movements of the far right throughout the world, movements whose past history of antisemitism is only too well known.

To live in such a society has become increasingly intolerable to me, but I must also admit that it is no less difficult to make my home elsewhere. I am myself a part of the cultural, linguistic and even conceptual production of the Zionist enterprise, and I cannot undo this. By my everyday life and my basic culture I am an Israeli. I am not especially proud of this, just as I have no reason to take pride in being a man with brown eyes and of average height. I am often even ashamed of Israel, particularly when I witness evidence of its cruel military colonisation, with its weak and defenceless victims who are not part of the “chosen people”.

Earlier in my life I had a fleeting utopian dream that a Palestinian Israeli should feel as much at home in Tel Aviv as a Jewish American does in New York. I struggled and sought for the civil life of a Muslim Israeli in Jerusalem to be similar to that of the Jewish French person whose home is in Paris. I wanted Israeli children of Christian African immigrants to be treated as the British children of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are in London. I hoped with all my heart that all Israeli children would be educated together in the same schools. Today I know that my dream is outrageously demanding, that my demands are exaggerated and impertinent, that the very fact of formulating them is viewed by Zionists and their supporters as an attack on the Jewish character of the state of Israel, and thus as antisemitism.

However, strange as it may seem, and in contrast to the locked-in character of secular Jewish identity, treating Israeli identity as politico-cultural rather than “ethnic” does appear to offer the potential for achieving an open and inclusive identity. According to the law, in fact, it is possible to be an Israeli citizen without being a secular “ethnic” Jew, to participate in its “supra-culture” while preserving one’s “infra-culture”, to speak the hegemonic language and cultivate in parallel another language, to maintain varied ways of life and fuse different ones together. To consolidate this republican political potential, it would be necessary, of course, to have long abandoned tribal hermeticism, to learn to respect the Other and welcome him or her as an equal, and to change the constitutional laws of Israel to make them compatible with democratic principles.

Most important, if it has been momentarily forgotten: before we put forward ideas on changing Israel’s identity policy, we must first free ourselves from the accursed and interminable occupation that is leading us on the road to hell. In fact, our relation to those who are second-class citizens of Israel is inextricably bound up with our relation to those who live in immense distress at the bottom of the chain of the Zionist rescue operation. That oppressed population, which has lived under the occupation for close to 50 years, deprived of political and civil rights, on land that the “state of the Jews” considers its own, remains abandoned and ignored by international politics. I recognise today that my dream of an end to the occupation and the creation of a confederation between two republics, Israeli and Palestinian, was a chimera that underestimated the balance of forces between the two parties.

Increasingly it appears to be already too late; all seems already lost, and any serious approach to a political solution is deadlocked. Israel has grown used to this, and is unable to rid itself of its colonial domination over another people. The world outside, unfortunately, does not do what is needed either. Its remorse and bad conscience prevent it from convincing Israel to withdraw to the 1948 frontiers. Nor is Israel ready to annex the occupied territories officially, as it would then have to grant equal citizenship to the occupied population and, by that fact alone, transform itself into a binational state. It’s rather like the mythological serpent that swallowed too big a victim, but prefers to choke rather than to abandon it.

Does this mean I, too, must abandon hope? I inhabit a deep contradiction. I feel like an exile in the face of the growing Jewish ethnicisation that surrounds me, while at the same time the language in which I speak, write and dream is overwhelmingly Hebrew. When I find myself abroad, I feel nostalgia for this language, the vehicle of my emotions and thoughts. When I am far from Israel, I see my street corner in Tel Aviv and look forward to the moment I can return to it. I do not go to synagogues to dissipate this nostalgia, because they pray there in a language that is not mine, and the people I meet there have absolutely no interest in understanding what being Israeli means for me.

In London it is the universities and their students of both sexes, not the Talmudic schools (where there are no female students), that remind me of the campus where I work. In New York it is the Manhattan cafes, not the Brooklyn enclaves, that invite and attract me, like those of Tel Aviv. And when I visit the teeming Paris bookstores, what comes to my mind is the Hebrew book week organised each year in Israel, not the sacred literature of my ancestors.

My deep attachment to the place serves only to fuel the pessimism I feel towards it. And so I often plunge into despondency about the present and fear for the future. I am tired, and feel that the last leaves of reason are falling from our tree of political action, leaving us barren in the face of the caprices of the sleepwalking sorcerers of the tribe. But I cannot allow myself to be completely fatalistic. I dare to believe that if humanity succeeded in emerging from the 20th century without a nuclear war, everything is possible, even in the Middle East. We should remember the words of Theodor Herzl, the dreamer responsible for the fact that I am an Israeli: “If you will it, it is no legend.”

As a scion of the persecuted who emerged from the European hell of the 1940s without having abandoned the hope of a better life, I did not receive permission from the frightened archangel of history to abdicate and despair. Which is why, in order to hasten a different tomorrow, and whatever my detractors say, I shall continue to write.

Shlomo Sand is an Israeli emeritus professor of history at Tel Aviv University, known to the general public for his best-selling book The Invention of the Jewish People.

10 October 2014

By Franklin Lamb

Wadi Al Nasera, (Valley of the Christians), Syria: Wadi al Nasera (Valley of the Christians) encompasses approximately 40 picturesque Christian hamlets in western Syria, located amidst the green plush rolling hills between Homs and the Lebanese border. Thirty of its villages are Christian, four are mainly populated by Alawi Muslims and one, Al Qalaa (aka Hosn village), just under the Crak des Chevaliers medieval fortress, was Sunni Muslim. It was literally pulverized by heavy and sustained government forces aerial bombardment once it became a supply base in 2013 for rebels inside the medieval crusader fortress.

I spent the past week visiting some of the oldest Wadi al Nasara Christian villages which include Marmarita, Al-Hwash , Zweitina, Muzina, Nasra, Mqaabra, al Mishtiaya, Blat,Tanurin, Anaz, Joir al-Afes, Hab Nimra, `Ash al-Shuha, `Amar al-Husn, `Ayn al-Barda, `Ayn al-Ajuzi, `Ayn al-Ghara, Kafra, Mashta Aazar, Al-Qllatia, Kayma, Masraa, Muklous, Bahzina, Joineyat, Al-Talla, Daghla, Amar, Mishtayeh and Rabah, agrees with many who come to Wadi al Nasera (Valley of the Christians) that the valley is most beautiful and welcoming area of Syria or of anyplace in the Middle East that he has visited. Its people who include Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics and Armenian Orthodox among others, add to its splendor. Some visitors come repeatedly, others annually for summer holidays or to experience one or more of the valleys seasonal cultural festivals that makes this part of Syria a major tourist attraction.

Nonetheless, Wadi Nasera has suffered much, as has most of Syria from the continuing conflict and the devastating loss of loved ones from terrorist acts. For a variety of reasons, the proportion of Christians in the Middle East has contracted from around 20 percent at the start of the 20th century to around 5 percent currently. Less than 1 percent of the world’s more than 2 billion Christians currently live in the Middle East, and it is likely that number will decrease even further.

From the very start of the current conflict, history and religion have fueled passions on both sides in Syria. This has become more pronounced as the conflict drags on, turning bloodier and more vicious by the month. The main target of the most sectarian-minded rebels isn’t Christians, but rather Alawites, the minority group who make up about 12% of Syria’s population, about the same as Christians until recently. The Alawites are a heterodox sect that branched off from Islam, and are considered by Muslim takfiri extremists more heretical than Christians.

Approximately one quarter of the Christian valley’s population have been forced to flee as refugees, according to Roman Catholic Priest, Father Hanna Salloum, owner of the Al Wadi Hotel in the village of Mishtayeh, who generously gave this observer his time and insights into have life has been like for Wadi al Nasara over the past few years. Soon the places of those who fled the valley were taken by other arriving refugees who correctly believed they would be welcomed in the Valley of the Christians. Father Salloum, a devout Christian and Syrian nationalist, insisted that all the rooms in his large 5-star hotel be made available without charge to refugees fleeing Homs and elsewhere. Arriving Christians, Muslims or non-believers were given shelter gratis on a first come first served basis. For more than one year his hotel was a teeming home to his countryman until jihadists were expelled from their stronghold less than two kilometers from his Al Wadi Hotel. Father Hanna Salloum is my kind of Christian.

According to an aide to His Beatitude, Kyrios Youhanna X, formerly, Youhanna X Yaziji, Patriarch of Antioch and All The East, who briefed this observer on 8/4/2015 at the 6th century monastery of St. George, before the current crisis there were approximately 1.2 million Christians in Syria. Today there are estimated to be fewer than 400,000. The population of Wadi Nasera was reduced by approximately 20% during 2012-2013, many fleeing to Christian areas of nearby Lebanon as well as internally. This main exodus followed the early 2012 arrival of al Qaeda affiliated militants including Jund al Sham. The jihadists occupied the medieval fortress, Crac des Chevaliers which towers above the southern entrance to the Wadi, until the Syrian Army was able to evict them in March of 2014. Villages below were regularly targeted by jihadist snipers and mortars as well as middle of the night terrorists slipping down from Krac des Chevaliers fortress, sometimes using tunnels, to slit throats of unsuspecting villagers. This observer has repeatedly heard from residents of Wadi Nasera that while every house has a light weapon, such as an AK-47, the terrorists were heavily armed with a variety of weapons and it was difficult to overpower them when they attacked. Recently, the population of Wadi al Nasera has swollen by more than 150,000, mainly Christians, who view the Wadi as among the safest places in Syria.

I do not believe the current suffering and atrocities being committed against Christians in Syria will not break the will of Al Wadi Nasera, the Valley of the Christians. Rather, it will fortify their resolution and beliefs in the New Testament. And I agree with the sages whom I have met among this close-knit, vital, highly educated, large family community that the future of the Christians in this great country and beyond is with the Muslims. This has been the case since the advent of Islam and its movement into this region 600 years after the arrival of Christianity. Historically, local Christian communities have sometimes welcomed Muslim ‘overlords’ when they freed them from the oppressive rule of Constantinople or Rome. In many places in Syria the two groups continue to reach out to each other. Even many rebel extremists, to the dismay of skeptics, claim that “personally” they don’t have anything against Christians.

Neither massive emigration of Christians to the West nor establishing a Christian state is a long term solution to the current conflict. Throughout history invaders have arrived here, they have committed unspeakable atrocities, ruled for a period and disappeared while the Christian community has endured, prospered relatively and, in a sense, prevailed over the invaders. To wit, the Ottoman Turks, who ruled Syria from 1516 until World War I, relegated Christians to a second-class citizen status. Christians were allowed to practice their religion and govern themselves in matters that didn’t concern Muslims. But they were also required to pay special taxes to Constantinople, and there were plenty of restrictions on them when it came to interactions with Muslims. Wahhabism, the ascetic and harshly conservative form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, is even tougher on Christians. And many others seeking hegemony have passed through this country—the Byzantines, Tamerlane, the Mongols, Mamluks, the Persians. Their likes have failed to subjugate the Christians of Wadi al Nasera.

Among the factors unifying the residents of Wadi al Nasera is the presence of a group of Nuns who operated an orphanage at Mar Takla monastery in Ma’loula to the south. The group of Greek Orthodox nuns was kidnapped in December of 2013 and held for three months by Jabhat al and before being released three month later in a prisoner exchange. Their new temporary home is St. George Monastery across from Krac de Chaveliers. This observer was honored to spend time with this charming, passionate, energetic, group of sisters on 8/4/2015 and we discussed many subjects. I was happy to share with Mother Superior, Pelagia Sayyaf, head of the Mar Takla monastery in Maaloula and her sisters recently acquired updated information about restoration work being done to their orphanage in preparation for their early return. One of the Nuns asked me about the condition of their large kitchen. By chance, two weeks ago I took a special interest, and some photos which I shared with the Nuns, of the kitchen where I painted some doors. The reason was that as a wannbe chef, I could not fail to examine their 6 foot by maybe 4 foot steel stove which has two large ovens and eight cooking rounds on its surface. They were happy to learn it was in excellent shape and that volunteers had cleaned up the large kitchen. They seem unconcerned that the roof of the kitchen had been hit by a rebel mortar as was no more. The sisters want to return to Ma’loula as soon as possible and hopefully before the end of August. They promise to return regularly to St George Monastery in Wadi al Nasara and stay connected with their new family.

To paraphrase the words of a teacher this observer crossed paths with on 8/5/2015 at the Amigo grocery store on the main street of the village of al-Mishtayeh near, the Al Wadi Hotel at the base of Krac Des Chevaliers, ‘We shall fight for our freedom and fight for our faith. Many may die on the battlefield but no one surrenders. We are the defenders of faiths, ours and others, we will die or be free.”

Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com).

08 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Mahboob A. Khawaja

“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark…. This weapon is to be used against Japan … [We] will use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. … The target will be a purely military one… It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.” (Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd U.S. President, (Diary, July 25, 1945)

Towards Understanding the Global Complacency in Aggression

Truth is suppressed and political interpretations disguise the real consequences of nuclear detonation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were planned targets to inflict maximum human casualties. Those who plan egoistic wars fully understand the ultimate consequences in human terms and on-going impacts on the natural environment. More so, of the atomic bombing and continuing human sufferings. General MacRuther denied access to verifiable information as to the human costs of the nuclear attacks on Japan. It is a fatal underestimation that anyone could quote 297,000 human lives were burnt by radiation instantly in Hiroshima, whereas, the actual casualties were much higher in millions. Was the use of atomic bomb on Japan necessary to end the war? Why did America not use this option against Nazi Germany? Were there any ethnic, cultural and religious factors involved in the final decision making? History speaks loud and clear that aggressors surpassing transgression kept the legal definition of “aggression” open to discussion in international law and conveniently undefined within the UNO’s global system of governance. Insane egoism persists to this day that caused downfall of many societies during the WW2 diminishing any possibility of global peace and conflict management through peaceful dialogue and diplomacy. The European allies, the US, former USSR, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are all listed names to be called for committing aggression against the mankind. Never mind Geneva Conventions and Hague Conventions are merely paper-based historic academic exercises in utter futility. Who should regulate the implementation of international law if there is a law of accountability in global affairs? Why should the aggressors not be held accountable for the crimes against humanity? What have we learned from the historic fault lines? Japanese politicians claim to have reborn for a new Japan after the atomic experience. Could the US make the same claim after dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan? Could a victim identify its interests with the oppressor? Understandably, after being incapacitated and dehumanized, Japanese politicians and intellectuals remain captive of the US military dictum. The same is happening across the Arab world as the war on terror, ISIL ravages and Shia-Sunnis sectarian warfare is dehumanizing the entire region. Real issues of political change are subsided; political fantasy is carved up and imposed by the US. Transitory phenomenon of “power” leads to pride, vanity and militarization of nations, a sickening but frightening trend enforced for disastrous consequences in-waiting for the rest of the mankind.

Calls for Global Rethinking

Temples ring bells every year across Japan and hands are raised in prayers for peace and condemnation of the atomic bombs. But all are missing the real issues facing the future of global mankind. All wars are aimed at destruction of people, the habitats and the Nature of Things. The symbolic annual remembrance will not undo the infinite darkness shrouding the use of destructive atomic bombs to which large parts of the humanity are subjected. After 70 years, of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, there is no will and defined system to question the aggressors for destroying the lives of millions. Symbolic remembrances of the imposed tragedies on Japan signal a clear failure of the global political systems and are devoid of insight to tackle the crux of the problem. All wars have ripple effects as Japanese continued to face the unraveling impacts of the first nuclear bomb. Those who witnessed the horrible crime against humanity can just talk of peace and share an individual vision of the future. The victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki know it firsthand what is like to be living in man-made hell. Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe talks of nuclear disarmament that is nowhere visible in the 21st century. Kazumi Matsui, Mayor of Hiroshima (“Legacy of the Atomic Bomb: 70 Years after it fell on Hiroshima”) explains his concerns and noted:

“Our world still bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, and policymakers in the nuclear-armed states remain trapped in provincial thinking, repeating by word and deed their nuclear intimidation” ….”To coexist we must abolish the absolute evil and ultimate inhumanity that are nuclear weapons. Now is the time to start taking action.”

Ms. Thurlow was just 13 years old when she saw the atomic bomb falling on Hiroshima. Now, she is a peace activist across the globe but who will listen to her? So is Keiko Ogura, just 8 years old at the time witnessing the pieces of her mother’s body with her own eyes on August 6, 1945 at 8.15a.m. Aftermath of the nuclear detonation on Japan, all the encompassing facts were curtailed by the General Douglas MacRuther – the occupying ruler of Japan. The global community failed to come to grapple the real issues of war and peace. Who will assess the humanitarian cost of nuclear warfare? After 70 years, the global politicians failed miserably to agree to systematic elimination of nuclear weapons from Earth. The Hiroshima remembrance is staged but opportunity is missed to address the prevalent issues of war and peace. Instead, war commemoration are held throughout the world to mark the unending tragedy as if it did not happen and will not happen again from Hiroshima- Nagasaki onward to Kabul and Baghdad and more. The sadistic wars are continuing without an end insight. There is nothing to commemorate plausibly except remorse and unthinking of the use of nuclear warfare. Remembrance should be a moment of honest reflection – how ignorant the politicians are and how global wickedness continues to undermine the large segment of mankind in war theatres like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and across the Arab world. Fullogah was no threat to the US or Britain. But they used uranium enriched weapons to massacre the Iraqis and to subjugate the future generations. The contemporary global politicians defy logic and try to enforce egoistic vision of conflict-making and conflict-keeping to ensure marketability of new weapons. Who will tell the horrific impacts of the nuclear warfare? There is no hope and no optimism that contemporary so called five superpowers will ever give-in to law and justice for the interest of mankind. The International Red Cross (“Remembering Hiroshima” ICRC) questions the lawfulness of atomic weapons and reminds the powerful super States that:

“ War – which remains an anomaly in a civilized world – has undoubtedly become so devastating and universal, amidst the web of conflicting interests on the various continents, that every thought and every effort ought to be directed first and foremost at making it impossible…… The development of means of warfare and, therefore, of war itself, has been rendered all the more lethal by the use of discoveries in atomic physics as a weapon of war of unprecedented effectiveness…….Let us remember this fact of a period which has seen so many violations of the law and so many reprisals.”

Historic Checks and Balances

What was destroyed by atomic bombs, could it be rebuild by human rethinking, peaceful dialogue and continuous harmony? Those who wage wars are often indifferent to common human values of peace, harmony and solidarity. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected targets to demonstrate unthinkable power of the atomic weapons and to inflict maximum human casualties to enforce immediate surrender of the Japanese imperial government. President Harry Truman denied allegations of the civilians targets as if Hiroshima was the epic center of Japanese armed forces. But in an interview with Newsweek in 1963 ( “Legacy of the Atomic Bomb: 70 Years after it Fell on Hiroshima”) President Eisenhower successor to Harry Truman revealed that even he had reservations about using the atomic weapon: “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Military experts agree, arguing that Japan had already been defeated by July 1945 and they just wanted to know about the Emperor place of exile.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also changed the course of history by launching the global race for nuclear proliferation. At this time, there are more than 23 countries known to have the capability of nuclear weapons production or possession of ready made nuclear weapons including the US, the UK, France, Israel, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Most nuclear powers would argue for nuclear deterrence that having advanced nuclear weaponry would prevent opposing states from threatening nuclear option or attacking for the fear of immediate retaliation and for sure, “mutually assured destruction”

“No Comments” But How to Reflect on the Grieving Sense of Humanity

Professor Rodrigue Tremblay ( “The Moral Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” Global Research: 8/06/2013), narrates the following historic comments on the ethical standing of the US atomic bombing of Japan:

It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude.” (General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and 34th U.S. President from 1952 to 1960, (Mandate for Change, p. 380)

“Mechanized civilization has just reached the ultimate stage of barbarism. In a near future, we will have to choose between mass suicide and intelligent use of scientific conquests […] This can no longer be simply a prayer; it must become an order which goes upward from the peoples to the governments, an order to make a definitive choice between hell and reason.” (Albert Camus (1913-1960), French philosopher and author, August 8, 1945)

”As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one’s judgment of the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible.”(The American Federal Council of Churches‘Report on Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith, 1946).

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. ” – “The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.” (William Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (“I Was There”, p. 441) .
The 21st century politics is a game of vindictiveness, mutual fear and hatred – more so, amongst the competing superpowers including the United States, West Europeans, Russia and economically influential China. Japanese politicians cannot dare to question American rulers against the occupation and intellectual subservience. Most oil exporting Arab leaders enjoy the same deficient status. They are morally and intellectual conquered and dehumanized. Across the global culture of embittered animosities and mistrust – mass media dominated culture, a combination of pretension, willful deception, institutionalized manufactured lies and individualistic propaganda and fear mongering suspicion of the disbelief to manipulate the common folks to manage the informed herd and exploit their patriotism to serve the multiple interests of the 1% ruling elite. Despite its claims, the liberal democracy seemed at loss to provide any sense of moral or intellectual security to the 99% masses – the political engine of the democratic legitimacy. The well paid corporate news media networks boost the self-crafted fear of wars – the priority aims of the major weapon manufacturers – the agenda for continuous struggle as if peace is an endangered specie even in utopian configuration. The mankind lives in One World on One Planet. War waged by aggressors in one part of the planet, is a war against the whole of the mankind.

We live on One Earth and indeed embody One Humanity, shall we not ask for immediate Rethinking to what cruelty is happening in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Egypt and most of the Arabian peninsula engulfed with tragic warfare and increased weapon sales by the US and West European nations. Arab leaders are incapacitated on their own by greed and fear to think intelligently. There are reportedly 3500 US marines stationed in Iraq supporting the Shiite-led government of PM Al-Abaidi but 6,300 defense contractors are operating in Iraq. Are we perpetuating peacemaking or warmongering to besiege the humanity? Who is lying under international law that cannot be defined? Have the transgressors learned anything useful from the living history? Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence framed it logically:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments arc instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government………… (American Declaration of Independence: 07/04/1776)

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international relations – global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, May 2012

08 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By Christina Lin

Erdogan’s latest feat in beguiling US/NATO to back his demands regarding Syria is a masterpiece.

Employing a familiar Chinese stratagem of 瞒天过海 (mán tiān guò hǎi) often associated with Emperor Liu Bei’s (161-230 AD) military strategist Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms period, in one fell swoop of offering access to Incerlik air base to fight ISIS, Erdogan obtained what he’s coveted all along: buffer zone for anti-Assad rebels courtesy of US air force, prevention of Kurdish expansion along Turkey’s borders, opportunity to pummel PKK, and legitimacy for his actions from NATO

Mán tiān guò hǎi means deceive the heavens to cross the ocean–to use the ruse of a fake goal until the real goal is achieved.

To what end? The golden prize is likely the proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline to tap into EU’s lucrative market.

Erdogan gains pipeline dream

First proposed by Qatar in 2009, the natural gas pipeline would run through Syria’s Aleppo and Turkey unto Europe. However, Assad dampened this dream in 2011 when he instead forged a pact with Iraq and Iran to run an “Islamic pipeline” eastward to the European market.

Now coincidentally, around the Aleppo region is also where Turkey proposed for US to set up the buffer zone to supply “moderate rebel” forces.

Writing in Armed Forces Journal, Major Rob Taylor joined numerous other pundits in observing that the Syrian civil war is actually a pipeline war over control of energy supply, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey needing to remove Assad “so they can control Syria and run their own pipeline through Turkey.”

“Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as al Qaeda and other groups, are maneuvering to depose Assad and capitalize on their hoped-for Sunni conquest in Damascus. By doing this, they hope to gain a share of control over the ‘new’ Syrian government, and a share in the pipeline wealth.” Even if it includes Turkey surreptitiously supporting ISIS against Assad.

Thus, even if the Saudi/Qatar/Turkey backed Army of Conquest can control just enough land in Syria for a salafist statelet to build the Qatar-Turkey pipeline, then these sunni states can finally realize their pipeline dream.

Indeed, the 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report corroborates their desire to carve out a salafist statelet in Syria east of Assad-controlled territory in order to put pressure on his regime (In 2012 it was further east, but now that Assad has lost much territory it is just east of Latakia).

But what are the costs for this ploy?

Costs of US-Turkey bargain

Firstly, jihadists in charge of Syria would mean the further extinction of Mideast Christians, as well as genocide of other Syrian religious and ethnic minorities.

Secondly, US and NATO moral legitimacy would be eroded and rightly or wrongly, be perceived by the non-western world as complicit in backing al Qaeda terrorist groups and the persecution of religious minorities.

Thirdly, credibility of US as an ally would further corrode especially since Washington has betrayed the Kurds more than once. Already, US security experts are warning allies such as South Korea and Japan to hedge themselves and build nuclear weapons due to loss of trust in US security guarantee.

Additionally, as some Chinese scholars assessed, Syria/Turkey would become the new AfPak with a safe haven for salafist jihadists to gain power and launch attacks elsewhere, much like western-backed Afghan Mujahideen morphed into al Qaeda and continues to attack the west.

In fact, German politician Cen Ozdemir already called Turkey a “mini-Pakistan” and Berlin has issued a travel advisory, following in the footstep of China after violent anti-China protests broke out in July.

Finally, this risks escalation into a great power conflict by drawing in China, Russia and Iran into Syria.

Iran’s interest in sustaining Assad is already well documented, and as for Russia, the Qatar-Turkey pipeline to Europe directly challenges its dominant position as energy supplier.

That is why Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan tried to convince Putin to abandon Assad and promised that “whatever regime comes after” Assad, it will be “completely” in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will “not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports”.

Nonetheless Putin refused, and the Prince vowed military action.

Chinese interests are also harmed due to link of Uyghur insurgents with Turkey’s anti-Assad rebels, threatening Xinjiang secession and destroying the crown jewel and bridge head of Xi Jinping’s silk road grand strategy.

The Turkey/Qatar/Saudi-backed Army of Conquest includes Chinese Uyghur-led terror group, Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), that in April joined al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat-al-Nusra (JN), Uzbek-led Imam Bukhari Jamaat and Katibat Tawhid wal Jihad to defeat the Syrian army at Jisr al-Shughur in northwestern Syria’s Idlib governorate.

As such the rebel coalition now has a direct supply line open from Turkey’s Hatay Province to Idlib, further expanded by the new proposed buffer zone. Counter-terror expert Jacob Zenn assessed that the “rebels may have enough resources to establish a de-facto state in northwestern Syria led by JN and supported by several Central Asian militas.”

This de facto state poses a grave security threat to China s a safe haven for militant groups to launch attacks in the home front, especially with the recent revelation by Chinese security officials that Turkey has been issuing fake passports to recruit Chinese Uyghurs for its anti-Assad group.

TIP has already claimed numerous high-profile terrorists attacks against China over the past two years, including the Kunming train station attacks which Beijing calls her 9/11.

The Middle Kingdom has in the past threatened support for PKK as leverage over Turkey’s backing of Uyghur separatists. As Turkey continues to support Uyghur militants and attack PKK, it would be interesting to see if Emperor Xi levels the playing field and decides to arm PKK via the strategy of Jiè dāo shā rén (借刀殺人), or killing with a borrowed sword.

Dr. Christina Lin is a Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University.

1 August 2015

 

A Carbon Copy Of The Goldman Sachs/Global Too Big To Fail Banks’ Template

By Matthias Chang – Future Fast-Forward

All robbers and crooks have a method or master-plan on how to rob a bank or break into a bullion bank’s vault. In any criminal investigation, the police will analyse the clues to determine for example, how the robbers circumvented the security system, the way they penetrated the so-called unbreakable vault doors to get their hands on the gold bars and cash, their get-away plans etc.

The Jho Low/1MDB criminal syndicate likewise has a master-plan. But, not being clever and original, they borrowed the time-tested financial robbery template (i.e. Master-Plan) from banks such as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, UBS etc.

The template is rather simple. Use internationally accepted legal covers, instruments and conduits to illegally siphon off monies so as to escape and circumvent international anti-money laundering laws.

But, there is never any fool-proof master-plan! There is always a chink in the armour which exposes the robbers and crooks to detection and prosecution. At times, they may have inadvertently left clues that give away their most intricate plans.

Let me illustrate by analysing the first transaction of 1MDB’s joint venture with the Arabs.

This is the classic template by the very best in international high stakes financial con-job or scam which involves a government or a government controlled entity. When it involves a government or a government controlled entity, it is usually employed to financially rape the target country (a method favoured by dictators, corrupt governments and or financial institutions) and it is very difficult to uncover the crimes because of the resources deployed to cover up the crimes by the various enforcement and regulatory agencies, abusing their enormous powers. But, God works in mysterious ways!

Sometimes, it involves the collaboration of two corrupt governments who have a common agenda. The military dictatorships of South America and the Absolute Monarchs of the Middle East and their Intelligence Services use such templates to finance wars and enrich the members of their Oligarchies. It may also involve international drug cartels. In this type of financial rape, US$ Trillions are siphoned off! Every dirty option on the table would be used.

However, all the above actors can never pull off the scam and or the financial rape of a country without the active and conscious participation of global banks, international accounting firms and lawyers specialising in such cross-borders deals using shell companies registered in tax havens.

THIS IS NOT A SPIN or a fairy tale! Just Google “financial fraud and manipulation of markets by global banks” and you will get all the details. Established names such as Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan etc. will come out. And, these are the so-called reputable global banks. But, they are all criminal enterprises! I have done extensive research on these scams and even wrote a book on this – “The Shadow Money-Lenders”!

I am willing to pay US$1 Million to anyone who can show me that none of these banks were indicted for criminal activities, such as selling fraudulent financial products and money-laundering and the blatant manipulation of LIBOR (interest rates), currency, commodities and gold markets etc. But, if you take up the challenge and fail to prove me wrong, you need only pay me US$250,000.00. If you think these are good odds, take up the bet.

Honest people like you and I will never commit such a scam and even if we dare entertain such a thought, it would be close to impossible without access to the people who wields actual ultimate political power or their inner circles.

It takes two to tango!

Now let’s recap the 1MDB-PetroSaudi Ltd Joint Venture.

The whole scam was implemented by Jho Low and his “Malaysian Associates” within 1MDB and his Arab counterparts in the PetroSaudi group of companies headed by the “Chief Arab Crook” Tarek Obaid with the knowledge and approval of the Prime Minister cum Finance Minister.

Step 1:
On 18th September, 2009 a JV Company called 1MDB-PetroSaudi Ltd, was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands by the crime syndicate. This was even before the JV agreement was entered into and signed by 1MDB.
Joint ventures are legal and legitimate business transactions when two partners want to do business together. But, the give-away in this case was that it was registered in a tax haven, the British Virgin Islands. Not all businesses registered in a tax haven are criminal enterprises, but invariably all are trying to avoid paying taxes and to keep the prying eyes of honest government authorities looking too deeply into their affairs.

Step 2:
On 25th September, 2009 a loan was extended by a company called PetroSaudi Holdings (Cayman) Ltd amounting to US$700 Million to the JV Company 1MDB-PetroSaudi Ltd. This loan was stated to have been made to the JV Company to acquire the entire paid-up share capital of a company called PetroSaudi International Ltd (also registered in the Cayman Islands) which allegedly owned some oil and gas assets. But, at all material time, no such assets were owned by this company, PetroSaudi International Ltd or any
other PetroSaudi companies. The issued and paid-up share capital of this company was only US$1. A freaking 1US Dollar company!
It must be freaking madness to borrow US$700 Million to buy a 1US Dollar company.
This was done before the signing of the JV agreement. But, the loan was a fictitious loan.
Giving loans is another legitimate business, but in this case, the loan was to cover a non-existing transaction i.e. that PetroSaudi International Ltd (Cayman) had acquired assets and wants to sell to the JV Company. The fact that these assets were non-existent was never questioned by 1MDB officials or the Board of Directors which indicates that some of 1MDB officers were aware of this fraud i.e. there were no assets. There were valuation reports of the assets but no indication that PetroSaudi International Ltd owned the assets.
By analogy, what is the use of knowing the value of a property if you do not know the actual owner as indicated in the title and the same duly entered in the Land Office’s Registry? Would you buy a property from Mr. Arab if you have not checked whether Mr. Arab is the registered owner? Only a fool would do that. This is what 1MDB’s management did. And this was also approved by the Prime Minister cum Finance Minister. So, why would the Prime Minister approved such a transaction?

Step 3:
On September 28, 2009 the JV agreement was signed between 1MDB and PetroSaudi Holdings (Cayman) Ltd. 1MDB’s obligation was to pay US$1 Billion for 1 Billion shares in the JV Company. The Filthy Arabs were to inject the so-called assets worth US$2.5 Billion to be entitled to 2.5 billion shares as they wanted majority control.
Since there were no assets worth US$2.5 Billion that were injected into the JV Company, 1MDB – PetroSaudi Ltd, the Arab Crooks acting in concert with Jho Low and his associates would be getting 2.5 billion free shares. However, 1MDB must pay US$1 Billion cash for sham shares in a company with no assets.
This is how the crooks in 1MDB with their Arab partners used legal means and covers to get the US$1 Billion out of Malaysia on the false pretext that it was for an overseas investment through a joint venture company.

Step 4:
All of a sudden, on 29th September, 2009 the JV Company was asked to settle the said loan, a mere four days after it was granted.
Is it not strange that no one asked why a loan given on the 25th September, 2009 must be repaid almost immediately. According to the JV agreement, the loan must be repaid on or before the 30th September, 2009.
Therefore, without the complicity and direct knowledge at all levels of 1MDB’s management and the Ministry of Finance, the fictitious loan of US$700 Million would not have been repaid. Had 1MDB’s management checked whether there were actual assets owned by PetroSaudi International Ltd, they would have discovered that it was a sham and that there were no assets. But, they did not check because they were all part of the scam to cheat Malaysia and this was done with the knowledge and approval of the Prime Minister.

Step 5:
1MDB repaid the said loan of US$700 Million on 30th September, 2009. The money was not paid directly into the JV Company’s bank account but was directed to be paid by the Arab crooks via the US bank, JP Morgan Chase which in turn remitted the said US$700 million to RBS Coutts in Zurich for the account of Good Star Ltd, a company controlled by Jho Low and his associates.
By normal and proper procedure, if the JV Company actually borrowed the US$700 million to purchase actual assets then it is only right that the money (US$700 Million) be paid into the JV bank account to reflect that 1MDB had made part payment for the 1 billion shares. 1MDB must pay US$1 Billion for 1 billion shares. Then the JV Company can show that it has used part of the “share capital” (monies) to repay the outstanding loan. But, it was paid to a company that has nothing to do with the JV Company. It was paid to a company controlled by Jho Low and his associates.
Therefore, we can now see very clearly how good clean money from Malaysia was siphoned off for a legitimate investment as a cover but ended up in the accounts of the Jho Low/1MDB crime syndicate.
The balance of US$1 Billion i.e. US$300 million was paid into JV Company to defray alleged JV expenses etc. Again, this was not properly vetted and or accounted for. Likewise, part of this sum of US$300 Million was distributed to the members of the criminal syndicate.

Step 6:
The Arab crooks did not inject the US$2.5 Billion assets because at all material times, they were not owners of the assets. It was a big lie. The entire JV was a sham and a con-job to get US$1 Billion out of Malaysia for an ulterior purpose.
So the entire US$1 Billion was siphoned off from Malaysia under the cover of a legitimate business but, subsequently siphoned off for illegal purposes. Steps 1 to 6 illustrate the Template and Methodology of the financial scam practiced by sophisticated international con-men and women! 1MDB management was part of the scam. And the Prime Minister approved all the transactions.
From day 1 of the inception of the idea to set up 1MDB to its implementation, the objective of the entire exercise was criminal. 1MDB was and is a criminal enterprise to fleece Malaysia of US$1 Billion.

Step 7:
The JV agreement was terminated in March 2010, a mere six months after the full US$1 Billion was paid by 1MDB. What kind of JV is this? Have you ever heard of a JV approved by a Prime Minister of Malaysia (i.e. the last five Prime Ministers) which was then terminated within 6 months because the JV partner had no assets worth US$2.5 Billion to be injected to the JV Company?
PM Najib is the first Prime Minister to do such a deal. Why?
When all the monies have been siphoned off by the crooks, the legitimate business is closed down to hide all traces of illegality and money trails.

Step 8:
The crooks would then create another legitimate transaction to cover the previous transaction. In the case of 1MDB-PetroSaudi Joint Venture, they used the cover of an Islamic Financial Loan called the Murabahah Facility amounting to US$2.5 Billion (consisting of two tranches, the first being US$1 Billion, and the 2nd US$1.5 Billion) of which US1.83 Billion was siphoned off as a cover to hide the previous scam of US$1 Billion.
Having been cheated of US$1 Billion, 1MDB agrees to grant a loan (via a Islamic financial facility – “Murabahah”) to the Arabs allegedly to refund the US$1 Billion and an additional US$1.5 billion for other “investment” purposes, of which US$830 Million was drawn down.
Therefore, the total amount siphoned off is US$1.83 Billion.
What logic compels a company controlled by the Prime Minister who paid US$1 Billion for a shell company and then lend another US$1.5 Billion (total US$2.5 Billion) unless it is to cover the fraud as explained above? The Murabahah Financial Facility replaces the Joint Venture.
Scandalous!
We need not analyse this 2nd part of the scam as very few of you understand Islamic finance but, it is enough for the purpose of this article and exposé that all you need to understand is the first part of the scam – how the crooks with the knowledge and approval of the Prime Minister cum Finance Minister siphoned off US$1 Billion from Malaysia from this first transaction of 1MDB.
It is important that you understand the template and or methodology of the crime as otherwise you would be misled by the Prime Minister’s spin doctors
and sycophants that no monies were lost and that the Prime Minister and the Jho Low/1MDB crime syndicate were innocent of any crimes.
They committed the heinous crime of financially raping the country!
And they must be sent to jail for their crimes.

How US$1.83 Billion Was Shared By The Criminals
This much we know!

1. Tarek Obaid “Chief Arab Crook”
Out of the US$1.83 Billion, the Chief Arab Crook was paid the following sums on diverse dates:
US$85 Million on October 5th, 2009 as “brokerage fees” i.e. went to his pocket;
US$10 Million on October 28th, 2009 went to his pocket;
US$ 5 Million on November 18th, 2009 went to his pocket;
US$68 Million on January 13th, 2010 as conduit for onward transmission;
US$ 6 Million on March 4th, 2010 as conduit for onward transmission;
US$ 5 Million on March 14th, 2010 went to his pocket;
US$50 Million on May 5th, 2010 as conduit for onward transmission;
US$5.5 Million on August 9th, 2010 as conduit for onward transmission;
US$25 Million on September 13th, 2010 as conduit for onward transmission; and
US$300 Million on September 16th, 2010 as conduit for onward transmission.
The total = US$559.5 Million. However, US$105 Million went specifically to Chief Arab Crook’s pocket. The balance was used to implement partner-in-crime Jho Low’s more audacious schemes. Please see below.

2. HRH Prince Turki
US$77 Million on diverse dates, in different amounts went to his pocket.
Prince Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud (born 21 October 1971) is a member of the House of Saud and the seventh son of late King Abdullah, the ruler of Saudi Arabia then. He served as deputy governor of Riyadh Province from 2013 to 2014 and as governor of Riyadh Province from 14 May 2014 to 29 January 2015. Why was he paid US$77 Million?

3. Patrick Mahoney
US$33 Million on October 20th, 2009 went to his pocket. Why was he paid this sum?

4. Jho Low
The balance of the US$1.83 Billion amounting to approximately US$1.160 Billion (i.e. US$1.83 Billion less US$559.5 Million, less US$77 Million, less US$33 Million) went to two companies controlled by Jho Low and his associates, namely Good Star Ltd (Seychelles) and Abu Dhabi Kuwait Malaysia Investment Corporation (British Virgin Islands) which were then applied to various “investments” in Malaysia and overseas under various companies for himself and for his Ultimate Crime Boss.
Part of the balance sum was also disbursed through the JV Company 1MDB-PetroSaudi Ltd, even though the Joint Venture was terminated. The sum of US$830 Million via the Murabahah Islamic Facility was distributed through this corporate conduit.
The Prime Minister must explain to the entire country why he participated in this sordid affair!
The above is but a summary of how the crime was perpetrated so as to enable you to have a macro view of the whole scam.
The entire amount of US$1.83 Billion is tainted as it was applied for purposes other than approved by Bank Negara. When it was disbursed and distributed via a web of various conduits (through individuals as well as corporations), it was money-laundering pure and simple. And any gains/profits derived from such “laundered activities” would be tainted as well.

The Prime Minister by authorising and approving all the transactions relating to the 1MDB-PetroSaudi Joint Venture and the subsequent Murabahah

Financing has thereby participated in money-laundering.

This is a more serious crime than the receipt of RM2.6 Billion by way of an alleged donation to his personal accounts.

The Prime Minister has brought utter shame to the office of the Prime Minister as well as the country.

By Franklin Lamb

Ma’loula, Syria: As of today, approximately 900 Christians and 50 Muslims from the pre-2011 population of 5000, of whom 80% were Christian and 20% Muslim, have returned to Ma’loula, their 90 AD ancient village that many consider the second most historic Christian village, after Jerusalem.

Over the past five weeks, this observer has been surveying and updating data as part of an archeological research project, on a modest selected number of the 152 archeological sites here in Syria that have been severely damaged over the past four years. Ma’loula, is among the nearly 7000 historic places in Syria that have been looted, burned, or bulldozed or subjected to mindless jihadist iconoclasm as being ‘un-Islamic,” or which have sustained war damage from more than one source.

In some ways it has been a daunting task to visit some sites, given the security situation and need for securing various required permissions-which takes time, given currently conditions in Syria. Plus issues such as intense heat, finding a driver willing to make the trip for a reasonable fee, lining up crucial local experts at the site so one gets solid information and related matters.

On 7/27/2015, this observer and his friends and guides/historians from Ma’loula, Jesus and Moses (Issa and Musa) were delayed for two hours as we sat at the Ministry of Information waiting a green light from the Syria army that the road was now safe, following a night (7/26/2015) of heavy jihadist shelling from the East GoutaJobar suburb of Damascus with some mortars hitting near our planned M-5 route north.

Despite losing a few hours of daylight, this observers delayed third visit to Ma’loula, just 35 miles northwest of Damascus, turned out to be a spectacular heritage restoration ‘seminar’ during which we examined firsthand the results to date of the restorative work being done to the town and its religious sites. The experience was exhilarating to say the least.

One does not want to minimize the enormous preservation, restorative and protective work urgently required to salvage our shared global cultural heritage in the custody of Syria for ten millennia. Nor the effort also required in order to ready these sites for the return of international visitors including the archeologists who have work here for many years. But there is some very good news coming out of Ma’loula on this subject. And it is due to the efforts of the local returning villagers who are deeply connected to this cradle of civilization and who are not waiting for the end of hostilities to begin restoration and repair work of their homes and of our shared heritage sites.

The assaults on Ma’loula began in September 7 2013 when jihadists, without warning swarmed into and above Ma’loula and quickly controlled much of the rugged surrounding hills which rise up from the desert to 1,700 meters above sea level. The siege ended when the jihadist were finally driven out of Ma’loula on April 14, 2015 by a combination of the Syrian army, Hezbollah fighters and approximately 70 men from Ma’loula.

Most of the jihadists, after striping the village of much of its antiquities and then torching it, retreated to Lebanon or to the suburbs of Damascus while others made their way north to Aleppo and Idlib.

Christian clerics and scholars worry that Ma’loula’s priceless medieval icons and other works of art may have been destroyed or looted and will never be recovered. But some items are being founds and returned.

Residents who have returned recently to Ma’loula and who are today salvaging and repairing what they can, perhaps ten percent of the village, nearly unanimously emphasized to this observer their shock that the town was attacked at all and that the tight-knit community, where Christian and Muslim women dress alike in traditional Ma’loula and in this sense are indistinguishable. Their children often attend the French Institute in Ma’loula that teaches Aramaic, the language of Christ which is still spoken here and in parts of Afghanistan and elsewhere. And they always celebrated each other’s holidays.

In Ma’loula, as in most Syrian communities, pre-conflict religious issues rarely existed. The town never had the strategic value of other nearby areas, such as the city of Yabroud to the north, but it does possess vivid symbolic religious importance and has long been a signature site for Syria’s diverse assemblage of faiths and ethnicity. Our guides suggested that this is perhaps the main reason the unprotected and unsuspecting village was invaded, occupied and severely damaged. Three Muslim families from Ma’loula, who became infected with the spreading poisonous hate-filled sectarianism sweeping this region, one being Ktaiman Kamar who reportedly boasted to his Christian neighbors “We will crucify all of you” along with the Rafic Al Shami and Souhail Fadel families are still fighting with rebels and are forbidden to return to their former homes in Ma’loula. As of today, approximately sixty Muslims have returned to Ma’loula and they appear to be living in harmony with their Christian neighbors if amidst some mutual residual suspicion.

But there is good news from this incomparable community. The group of 13 nuns abducted by Jabhat al Nusra Islamic rebels who have been freed in a prisoner exchange are they now regularly visiting Ma’loula to help restore the Nunnery and St. Teccla Monastery as well as the orphanage that they operate. This observer was advised that they plan to return and live full-time in Ma’loula by late August and will re-open the orphanage. Several of the 40 damaged Churches and affiliated religious sites are being restored in a good workmanship manner with respect to the installation of new electric line, water pipes, roof and window repairs and painting. Local and an occasional foreign volunteer are helping.

Volunteers from any country are welcomed and surely more will come to Syria when conditions allows

To the credit of Lebanese authorities the 1,700 year old door of St. Trecla, shown below which was stolen on 9/13/2013 was returned in February 2015 when it was discovered in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley.

An American visitor and his guide Jesus (Issa) with the 1,700 year old door of St. Trecla, which was stolen on 9/13/2013 was returned in February 2015 when it was discovered in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley.

Approximately 65,000 archeological artifacts stolen by terrorists over the past for years have been recovered so far. This is roughly estimated to be around 10% of the total looted from Syria during this period with the two countries receiving the greatest number of stolen antiquities being Turkey and Lebanon.

During the occupation of Ma’loula, the jihadists removed just about every cross of any size they came upon. Many have already been replaced and work continues on painstakingly restoring, wherever possible, art work and icon which were slashed with knives and carved with chisels digging out the eyes from portraits of Christ, his mother Mary, and the disciples among others.

Some townspeople advised this observer that the obsession with gouging out eyes of pillars of Christianity was so that Jesus could not see what they were doing and punish them. Others speculated that much of their time in Ma’loula the jihadist were high on drugs such as captagon and drank regularly from the wine cellars which contained thousands of bottles of wine in this community which in Roman times was dedicated to the pagan god of wine, Bacchus. One thing this observer has repeatedly become aware of it that some jihadist “religious” militia around here who condemn alcohol on U-tube are among its most fervent partakers. Many also appear to be addicted to courage enhancing drugs- including cocaine and , sometimes fighting 24 hours for two days straight or more and then collapsing on their battlefield spot, only to be discovered by their enemies fast asleep or in a drugged out stupor.

Space does not allow here for a fuller detailed report chronicling all the work being done by the noble returning citizens of Ma’loula or by the Syrian people across this cradle of civilization, to restore our damaged cultural heritage. Without any international aid and not much local funding while facing massive survival problems.

Future reports may.

But what is a fact beyond peradventure is that the noble Syrian people, deeply connected to our shared cultural heritage, are achieving nothing less than preserving our identity as a specie and our cultural heritage past for those who will follow us.

Bless every one of them and may the hell that they are enduring end now.

Franklin P. Lamb, LLB, LLM, PhD, Legal Adviser, The Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program, Shatila Camp (SSSP-lb.com). Volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign (PCRC) Beirut and Washington, DC committed to help achieving the Right To Work and the Right to Home Ownership for every Palestinian Refugee in Lebanon.

01 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Rania Khalek

The savage burning alive of 18-month-old Palestinian baby Ali Dawabsha in the occupied West Bank village of Duma has elicited energetic condemnations from Israeli leaders.

To anyone paying attention to the widespread expressions of hatred emanating from many quarters of Israeli Jewish society, these stern platitudes are not only unconvincing, they are an obvious handwashing performance meant for external consumption.

It is difficult to find a single Israeli cabinet minister who has not encouraged or perpetrated racist violence against Palestinians, largely because this kind of incitement – and worse – gets them elected.

Ali was killed in the middle of the night, early Friday, when persons, later seen by witnesses fleeing back to the settlement of Maaleh Efraim, smashed the windows of the child’s family’s home and threw Molotov cocktails and flammable liquid inside.

His parents and 4-year-old brother barely survived the attack – they are fighting for their lives with burns covering almost their whole bodies.

An autopsy found that Ali’s “body was completely blackened, his features had melted, parts of his extremities disintegrated from the burns, while parts of the lungs and rib cage had melted,” Ma’an News Agency reported.

Burning children, from Gaza to Duma

The attackers spray-painted a Star of David and the Hebrew words for “Revenge” and “Long live the Messiah King” on the walls of a neighoring house which they also burned – no one was injured in it – leaving no confusion about their motive.

Similar nationalist and racist graffiti was found on the walls of homes occupied by Israeli soldiers in Gaza during last summer’s military assault.

This is just one of many reasons the award for most disingenuous posturing goes to the Israeli army, which issued statements condemning “this barbaric act of terrorism” and vowing to intensify efforts “to locate those responsible.”

The notion that the same Israeli army that protects and allows settlers to harass and attack Palestinians with impunity is going to hold the Dawabshas’ attackers accountable is far fetched.

This is also the army that completely destroyed or severely damaged more than 25,000 homes in Gaza last summer, wiping out entire families sheltered inside, “including nineteen babies and 108 preschoolers between the ages of 1 and 5,” according to an AP investigation.

The only thing that separates the Israeli soldiers responsible for those killings from the settlers who burned baby Ali is a uniform and explicit orders from the state.

Less than 24 hours since vowing to bring the killers to justice, the Israeli army has shot dead two Palestinian teens – Muhammad Hamid al-Masri in Gaza, and 17-year-old Laith al-Khaldi in the West Bank – while the killers of baby Ali remain at large.

From killer to leaders

As for the Israeli officials who rushed to denounce the Duma attack as “terrorism,” all have well-documented histories of engaging in anti-Palestinian incitement. Some have even killed Palestinians themselves and later bragged about it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of last summer’s 51-day assault that killed 551 Palestinian children in Gaza, responded to the settler attack with a statement that his government is “united in strong opposition to such deplorable and awful acts.”

This is the same man who, following the discovery of the bodies of three kidnapped Israeli teens one year ago, issued a call for blood vengeance, essentially lighting the match that burned alive 16-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Abu Khudair.

As journalist Dan Cohen observed, it seems vigilante burnings of Palestinian children have become a yearly Israeli ritual.

“Self-genocide”

Israeli education minister Naftali Bennett, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Habeyit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party, said, “Arson against a house in Duma and the murder of a baby is a disgusting act of terror.”

This is the same Bennett who famously bragged, “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that.”

Perhaps the settlers who murdered baby Ali were following in the footsteps of Bennett, who rose to prominence after playing a key role in triggering Israel’s April 1996 massacre of more than 100 civilians and UN peacekeepers sheltering at a UN base in Qana, Lebanon, during that year’s Israeli invasion.

Over half of those killed in the attack were children.

Had the settlers who burned baby Ali been wearing Israeli army uniforms when they set fire to the Dawabsha house, Bennett would likely be praising rather than denouncing them, much like he did in response to international outrage at the Israeli massacre of the four Baker boys on the beach in Gaza last summer.

Appearing on CNN at the time, Bennett accused Palestinians of “conducting massive self-genocide” to make Israel look bad.

“Chemotherapy”

Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon referred to the killing of baby Ali as “horrible terror attacks that we cannot allow” and promised to “pursue the murderers until we bring them to justice.”

This is the same Yaalon who guaranteed that Israel would not hesitate to kill Palestinian and Lebanese civilians including children, if it felt it had to, in any future war between Israel and its neighbors.

Like most Israeli leaders, Yaalon has a pattern of engaging in violent incitement and of acting on it.

During his stint as Israeli army chief of staff, he likened Palestinians to a cancerous threat that can only be eliminated by “applying chemotherapy.”

If the murderers of baby Ali are anything like Yaalon, they will evade justice and advance their careers while doing it, as Yaalon has successfully done time and again despite his participation in war crimes.

In Israel, killing Palestinians and advocating for genocide builds political careers.

Violent demagogues occupy key positions in government, not in spite of their anti-Palestinian incitement or the killings they have perpetrated, but because of them.

After endorsing a call last June for Palestinian mothers to be slaughtered in their beds to prevent them from birthing “little snakes,” Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked was rewarded by being appointed justice minister.

Killings babies permitted

Eli Ben-Dahan, the settler rabbi in occupied East Jerusalem who decreed that “[Palestinians] are beasts, they are not human,” is Israel’s recently appointed deputy defense minister.

He is now in charge of the “Civil Administration,” the name Israel gives to the military body that rules Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

It is no accident that clerics like Ben-Dahan have been largely silent about baby Ali. After all, they inspire an extreme messianic, eliminationist version of Judaism that drives settler violence.

Two of the most notorious are Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, who in 2009 co-wrote Torat Hamelech (The King’s Torah), a guidebook on when it is permissible to kill non-Jews.

The authors claim that Jewish law permits “killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”

Elitzur and Shapira run a hardline yeshiva – Jewish religious school – in the settlement of Yitzhar, home to some of the most violent settlers, not far from the Palestinian village of Duma.

In July 2014, Dov Lior, a leading West Bank settler rabbi who has endorsed Torat Hamelech, issued his own ruling that the complete “destruction of Gaza” was permissible.

“At a time of war, the nation under attack is allowed to punish the enemy population with measures it finds suitable, such as blocking supplies or electricity, as well as shelling the entire area … to take crushing deterring steps to exterminate the enemy,” Lior wrote.

Israeli settlers, who see themselves in a perpetual state of war against an “enemy population,” would certainly take heed of such clerical guidance.

In February, the Israeli army raided Yitzhar and confiscated weapons that settlers there planned to use against Palestinians, including flammable liquids, tear gas canisters and black face masks.

Despite the horror expressed by Israel’s most prominent politicians, they have yet to utter a word against the rabbis who incite attacks on Palestinians in the name of their extreme version of Judaism.

Growing racism

Meanwhile, this broad ideological spectrum of hate has consequences that extend beyond the settlements.

A recent report by the Coalition Against Racism in Israel revealed a sharp rise in anti-Arab attacks since 2013, which coincided with racist incitement by Israeli elected officials and decisionmakers during last summer’s attack on Gaza and the February elections.

Over the last year, the report documented 237 racist attacks, with 192 of them directed at Arabs, up from 113 in 2013.

This tally excludes settler attacks in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The culture of hate and extremism that led to Ali Dawabsha’s slaying is rooted not just in the settlements, but within the very fabric of Israeli political culture, its discriminatory regime and the Zionism that underpins them.

Politicians that rule a society where Palestinian babies are routinely called a “demographic threat,” and where many joyfully celebrate their slaughter, cannot claim innocence and purport to be “shocked” when settlers burn Palestinian children alive.

Rania Khalek is an independent journalist reporting on the underclass and marginalized

02 August, 2015
Electronicintifada.net

 

By Thomas Gaist

At least one Palestinian teenager was fatally shot Friday as thousands demonstrated throughout the West Bank in outrage over a terrorist attack by Zionist settlers that burned to death an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler, Ali Saad Daobasa. The attack left his parents and four-year-old brother in critical condition. According to the Jewish Journal, the four-year-old suffered burns over more than 60 percent of his body.

Arsonists affiliated with Israel’s extreme nationalist milieu torched the family’s home in the Kafr Duma village of the West Bank early Friday morning. They first spray-painted the Hebrew words “Revenge” and “Long live the king messiah” on the house’s walls, alongside a Star of David, then smashed its windows and threw in Molotov cocktails.

The family was sleeping when the attack came at around 2 AM. While the parents pulled out the badly burned four-year-old, burned and suffering smoke inhalation themselves, they were unable to rescue their youngest son as the flames engulfed the house.

A relative of the family who rushed to the scene of the fire told the Israeli daily Haaretz that he witnessed the parents of the murdered toddler in flames on the ground, and standing next to them two men, their faces masked by balaclavas.

At least one Israeli police officer was killed in the immediate wake of the murder, as enraged crowds hurled stones and improvised firebombs in eastern Jerusalem and in the nearby village of Isawiya, and unidentified gunmen fired on an Israeli patrol vehicle in the West Bank near Kochav Hashachar.

The Israeli political and military establishment has responded with a show of contrived sympathy for the family and with the announcement that it will further escalate its military and police activities under the pretext of “hunting down the terrorists” responsible for the murder.

“Terror is terror, and we must fight it in every place,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a public visit to the hospital where the survivors of the attack were being treated.

“I am in shock from this criminal and terrible act. We are talking about terrorism in every respect,” Netanyahu said Friday.

“The IDF strongly condemns this deplorable attack and has heightened its efforts in the field,” Israeli Defense Force spokesman Col. Peter Lerner said Friday.

Issued from a regime that has engaged in relentless violence against the Palestinian and Arab masses, such moral-humanitarian appeals are testament to the limitless hypocrisy and cynicism of Netanyahu and Israel’s entire military-political establishment.

In reality, political responsibility for Friday’s murder rests unequivocally with the entire Israeli ruling elite and the Zionist state.

The Israeli ruling class has systematically cultivated far-right death squads for decades. Friday’s murder bore all the hallmarks of the unrelenting crimes carried out by these fascistic elements, whose main social function is to do the dirty work of the Israeli state in driving Palestinians from their homes and clearing the way for further Israeli expansion.

Daobasa’s killing followed a familiar pattern, reprising tactics used in a spate of “price tag” killings and arson attacks against Palestinian communities.

There are undoubtedly real concerns within the Israeli state apparatus about the consequences of empowering such pathological elements, but the army, police and legal system have over and over again proven their complicity in these acts and reluctance to hold anyone accountable except in the handful of the most horrific attacks that provoke international revulsion and censure.

Clashes on Tuesday between settlers and Israeli police over limited demolitions of illegal housing units at a Zionist settlement near the West Bank capital of Ramallah, highlighted the potential for the Israeli far right to turn against its masters, biting the hand that has fed it and contributing to the destabilization of the regime.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to placate the settlers, a key base of support for his government, by authorizing the building of 300 new housing units in the same settlement.

There are already signs that the attack in Kafr Duma, whatever its precise origins, will be used to justify intensified military and police operations against the Palestinian population.

Emerging from discussions with Israeli military commanders Friday, Netanyahu announced that Israeli security forces would intensify operations in the West Bank, using “all means at their disposal” to find the killers and prevent further terrorism. There is no doubt, however, that any escalation of Israeli operations in the occupied territories will be directed first and overwhelmingly against Palestinian resistance.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization, which has become a pliant tool of Washington and Tel Aviv, policing the population while its leaders have become multimillionaires, was nonetheless compelled to indict the Israeli state for enabling the fascistic settlers.

“This is a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism,” the PLO noted in a statement Friday.

Somewhat sharper was the analysis of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, which said that further atrocities like Friday’s murder of a defenseless Palestinian infant were “only a matter of time.”

“Official condemnations of this attack are empty rhetoric as long as politicians continue their policy of avoiding enforcement of the law on Israelis who harm Palestinians, and do not deal with the public climate and the incitement which serve as backdrop to these acts,” the group said in a statement. It indicted an “undeclared policy of the Israeli authorities in response to these attacks as lenient and conciliatory,” adding that perpetrators are rarely tried and even police investigations are often never initiated.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded 120 terrorist attacks by Israeli settlers in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the year began, many of them carried out under the armed protection of Israeli security forces.

The escalation of Tel Aviv’s “counterterror” operations has done nothing to slow the tempo of these atrocities. Friday’s attack comes only one day after an Orthodox fanatic stabbed six marchers at a gay pride demonstration, grievously wounding a 17-year-old female. On the same day, the Israeli legislature passed a law authorizing the force-feeding—internationally recognized as torture—of Palestinian political prisoners who go on hunger strikes.

The latest atrocity on the West Bank has recalled for many the burning to death last summer of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year old Palestinian who was abducted by right-wing Israeli nationalists in Jerusalem, forced to drink gasoline and then burned to death amid the slaughter of more than 1,400 civilians in Gaza.

The boy’s father, Hussein Abu Khdeir, told the Israeli news web site Ynet, “We feel that our son was murdered all over again.”

“The Israeli government doesn’t want peace,” he added. “Half of the government are settlers; they don’t want peace.”

The criminality of the Tel Aviv government and its settler death squads flows inexorably from the deep-going crisis of Zionism, which employs endless war, repression against the Palestinians and the whipping up of right-wing nationalism as a means of deflecting immense internal tensions.

Underneath the attempts to portray Israel as some kind of nationalistic monolith, it remains one of the most socially polarized countries on the planet, with a poverty rate higher than that of Mexico and the highest per capita concentration of billionaires in the world.

The mobilization of extreme right-wing forces like those that carried out Friday’s atrocity, combined with an escalating assault on democratic rights, will be directed not only against the Palestinians, but also at suppressing all opposition to the policies of the Israeli state and defending the profit interests of Israel’s oligarchs against the working class.

01 August, 2015
WSWS.org

By Shamus Cooke

The road to war is paved with a thousand lies. A fresh fib was tossed on the lie-cluttered war path to Syria, when it was announced that the U.S. and Turkey would create a “safe zone” inside of Syria — supposedly to be aimed against ISIS.

This “safe zone” is a major escalation of war, but it was described in soft tones by the media. In reality a “safe zone” is a “no-fly zone,” meaning that a nation is planning to implement military air superiority inside the boundaries of another nation. It’s long recognized by the international community and U.S. military personnel as a major act of war. In a war zone an area is made “safe” by destroying anything in it or around that appears threatening.

Turkey has been demanding this no-fly zone from Obama since the Syrian war started. It’s been discussed throughout the conflict and even in recent months, though the intended target was always the Syrian government.

And suddenly the no-fly zone is happening — right where Turkey always wanted it — but it’s being labeled an “anti-ISIS” safe zone, instead of its proper name: “Anti Kurdish and anti-Syrian government” safe zone.

. The U.S. media swallowed the name change without blinking, but many international media outlets knew better.

For instance, the International Business Times reported “ [the safe zone deal]…could mark the end of [Syrian President] Assad…”

And The Middle East Eye reported:

“…[the safe zone] marks a breakthrough for Turkey in its confrontation with the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. If the no-fly zone does come into being it will be a body blow for Assad and his supporters”

Even U.S. media outlets acknowledged that the primary goal of Obama’s safe zone ally, Turkey, was defeating the Kurdish fighters and the Syrian government, both of whom have been the most effective fighters against ISIS.

Syrian regime change is also the goal of the ground troops who will be filling the void left by ISIS, who The New York Times labeled “relatively moderate Syrian insurgents,” a telling euphemism.

The New York Times confirmed the goals of the safe zone allies:

“…both the Turks and the Syrian insurgents see defeating President Bashar al-Assad of Syria as their first priority…”

If the Syrian government wasn’t the target of the safe zone, then Syrian government troops would be the ones to control the safe zone post ISIS, as they did before ISIS. And if regime change wasn’t the target, then the Syrian government would have been consulted and coordinated with to attack ISIS, since Syria is involved with heavy fighting against ISIS in the same region that the safe zone is being carved out.

These steps weren’t taken because the “safe zone” plan is much bigger than ISIS.

Obama hasn’t detailed who the “relatively moderate” fighters are that will control the safe zone, but it’s easy to guess. We only have to look at the Syrian rebels on the ground who are effective fighters and control nearby territory.

The most powerful non-ISIS group in the region recently re-branded itself as the “Conquest Army,” a coalition of Islamic extremists led by Jabhat al-Nusra — the official al-Qaeda affiliate — and the group Ahrar al-Sham, whose leader previously stated that his group was “the real al Qaeda.” The Conquest Army actively coordinates with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and is also populated with U.S.-trained fighters.

These groups share the ideology and tactics of ISIS, the only difference being their willingness to work with the United States and Turkey. It’s entirely likely that once the “safe zone” operation starts, many ISIS troops will simply change shirts and join Jabhat al-Nusra, since there is no principled difference.

Obama knows that the foreign ground troops controlling the “safe zone” are targeting the Syrian government; consequently, U.S. military planes will be acting as the de-facto air force for Al-Qaeda against the Syrian government.

Thus, direct military confrontation with the Syrian government is inevitable. President Assad is already attacking ISIS in the area that the U.S.-Turkey alliance wants to make “safe” via its coordinated military operation. Syrian fighter jets will eventually be targeted, since the goal is to allow extremist groups a “safe zone” to continue their attacks on the Syrian government after ISIS is dealt with.

This danger was also acknowledged by The New York Times:

“Whatever the goal, the plan [safe zone] will put American and allied warplanes closer than ever to areas that Syrian aircraft regularly bomb, raising the question of what they will do if Syrian warplanes attack their partners [“relatively moderate rebels”] on the ground.”

The answer seems obvious: U.S. and Turkish fighter jets will engage with Syrian aircraft, broadening and deepening the war until the intended aim of regime change has been accomplished.

This is exactly how events developed in Libya, when the U.S.-NATO led a “no-fly zone” that was supposedly created to allow a “humanitarian corridor,” but quickly snowballed into its real goal: regime change and assassination of Libya’s president. This epic war crime is still celebrated by Obama and Hillary Clinton as a “victory,” while Libyans drown in the Mediterranean to escape their once-modern but now obliterated country.

If Obama’s goal in Syria was actually defeating ISIS, this could have been achieved at any time, in a matter of weeks. It would simply take a serious and coordinated effort with U.S. regional allies, while coordinating with the non-allies already fighting ISIS: Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah.

If Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Jordan were involved in the fight on ISIS it would be quickly strangled of cash, guns, and troops, and be massively out-powered. War over.

The only reason this hasn’t happened is that the U.S. and its allies have always viewed ISIS as a convenient proxy against Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran, not to mention leverage against the Iran-friendly government of Iraq.

Turkey remains the biggest obstacle to defeating ISIS, since it’s been helping it for years. ISIS has long used the Turkish border to escape Syrian government attacks, seek medical assistance, and get supplies and reinforcements. ISIS is so welcomed inside Turkey that ISIS promotes Turkey on social media as the international transit hub for jihadis wanting to join ISIS. Turkish immigration and customs looks the other way as does the Turkish border control.

In discussing the “safe zone,” the U.S. media always ignore the concept of national sovereignty — the basis for international law. The boundaries of countries are sacred from the standpoint of international law. The only just war is a defensive one. When one country implements a no-fly zone in another country, national boundaries are violated and international law is broken by an act of war.

The Obama administration is aware of the above dynamics, but has again tossed caution to the wind as he did in 2013, during the ramp up to its aborted bombing campaign against the Syrian government.

A U.S.-Turkish no-fly zone will deepen an already regional war: Iran and Hezbollah have recently ramped up direct support of the Syrian government. As Turkish and the U.S. military enter the war space for the first time, confrontation is inevitable. Confrontation is the plan.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action. He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com
31 July, 2015
Countercurrents.org