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By Francis Khoo Thwe

The Myanmar government wants to censor the pope and Card Francis Charles Bo, Myanmar’s first cardinal, with regards to the term “Rohingya” insofar as it is used in relation to the Muslim minority in Rakhine State, western Myanmar, a group that has been subject to abuse and persecutions for years. As the country prepares for general elections on 8 November amid growing sectarian and racial tensions and open fighting with ethnic minorities, it is becoming increasingly clear that the pledges made in the past about progress in human rights, as well civil and political rights after decades of a brutal military dictatorship, are no longer a priority.

Pope Francis is one of the few world leaders to have spoken about the plight of Myanmar’s Muslim minority, and this on several occasions, referring to them as ‘Rohingya,’ a term unpopular with Myanmar’s rulers. The matter came to the fore before the archbishop of Yangon left for Rome to attend the Synod on the family. According to Burmese language Mizzima News, officials at the Myanmar Ministry of Religious Affairs approached the cardinal to ask him not to use the word “Rohingya” in the presence of Pope Francis when he is at the Vatican. Some Ministry officials “recently came to meet me regarding the term of ‘Rohingya,’” said Card Bo. “The Religious [Affairs] Minister wanted to meet me,” he explained, “but so far I haven’t met him”. “If the word Rohingya is used,” people will associate them with Rahkine State, which is what the authorities do not want. For this reason, they are pushing for the “term Bengali or Muslim from Rahkine State.”

The “situation there is very crucial,” Card Bo said. “I think that we have to solve this problem before it becomes too prolonged, before there is more violence,” also in relation to “international terrorism and other things.” When asked if he would use the term in front of Pope Francis he said he would use “Rohingya to indicate [the issue]” but would address the people as Muslims from Rahkine state because of the sensitivity of the subject. At the same time though, he said that he refuses to use the term “Bengali” for those who identify as Rohingya because their families have been in the country for over a century.

This attempt at censorship by the Myanmar government confirms once more the climate of ethnic and sectarian tensions that currently prevail in the country. The controversial laws advocated by Buddhist extremists against mixed marriages, conversions, adultery, and polygamy are starting to have their first negative effects.

Sources told AsiaNews that mixed Buddhist-Catholic families have stopped sending their children to catechism and to church for the sacraments. Fearing possible repercussions, bishops have ordered a stop to marriages involving mixed couples. Married couples from mixed backgrounds are already facing problems.

Recently, a convent of nuns was attacked and devastated in the city of Nyaungwon. Residents ransacked the monastery and destroyed everything, forcing the nuns to flee, after a 14-year-old Buddhist teenager was accused of killing a 4-year-old Buddhist boy whose body was found on church ground. Appeals for calm by the country’s bishops have had no effect so far. A witness said that in this climate, it is “no longer possible” for the Catholic community “to provide help and assistance to the poor if they are Buddhist.”

Christians also risk being accused of forced conversion because young people of other faiths go to Catholic schools. “The situation is becoming more difficult,” said the source, anonymous for security reasons. A Buddhist extremist movement is behind the escalating sectarian and ethnic tensions. According to well-informed sources, the group is operating with the approval of the country’s highest political authorities, in particular the military, who still hold real power in Myanmar. The climate of fear and tensions has not spared Buddhists, many of whom oppose the recent laws passed with the support of the main opposition party, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

The government’s decision to release common criminals and murderers whilst keeping political prisoners behind bars has made matters worse. Sources told AsiaNews that the military and the government are pursuing a strategy designed to increase tensions in order to discourage voting. At the same time, vote rigging appears to be well underway (with some people left off voters’ lists whilst the names of dead people are included inothers). “All these moves have one purpose: prevent Aung San Suu Kyi’s party from winning,” said the source. “The regime wants to divide people in order to hold on to power.”

2 October 2015

By Rori Donaghy

A senior member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family has circulated a letter expressing fear that the monarchy may collapse unless the king is urgently replaced and the position of deputy crown prince scrapped, Middle East Eye can reveal.

On 4 September, a grandson of the late King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud wrote a four-page letter calling on the royal family to hold an emergency meeting to address concerns that the House of Saud may be losing its grip on power.

“We [have] got closer and closer to the fall of the state and the loss of power,” the letter read.

“We appeal to all the sons of King Abdulaziz – from the eldest Prince Bandar to the youngest Prince Muqrin – to summon an emergency meeting with all the family to discuss the situation and do everything that is need to save the country.”

The letter was signed “a descendant of the King Abdulaziz of the House of Saud”. MEE spoke to the letter’s author, who confirmed he is a grandson of Abdulaziz, but asked not to be named for fear of negative repercussions.

The document has been carefully circulated among princes, using secure means of mobile communication, because royal family members are under surveillance by those in power, the letter’s author said.

Generational change and power politics

King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud established the modern state of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Since his death in 1953, the country has been ruled by his sons but this is expected to change when the incumbent King Salman’s rule ends, as the heir to the throne Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef is a grandson of Abdulaziz.

This generational shift in Saudi Arabia – despite 13 of Abdulaziz’s sons still being alive – is likely to have been the source of much debate among royals, leading to the letter being written, a regional expert told MEE.

“The most important recent development in Saudi Arabia has been the transition occurring within al-Saud itself in terms of moving from the sons of Abdulaziz to the grandsons,” said Christian Koch, director of the Saudi-funded Gulf Research Centre.

“It is not at all surprising that in light of these changes there is debate going on in the royal family about its future direction.”

The letter partly represents a generational conflict within al-Saud and comes after powerful wings of the family battled for supremacy in the aftermath of the late King Abdullah’s death this January.

The zero-sum game of Saudi politics was exemplified then by the newly anointed King Salman replacing his predecessor’s men with his own people – including the powerful head of the royal court Khalid al-Tuwaijri who was switched for his Salman’s inexperienced 30-year-old son Mohammed bin Salman.

It later emerged that during Abdullah’s final hours, Tuwaijri tried to secure his own position and the second generation of Saudi’s rulers by contriving to have Abdullah’s son Prince Meteb made deputy crown prince – the position now enjoyed by Salman’s son Mohammed. This attempt failed, but not before Tuwaijri also tried to have Salman declared mentally unfit to rule.

Foreign policy and financial crises

The letter, which is set in this context of internal House of Saud power struggles, claims problems began 10 years ago under Abdullah. It argues the need to bring back older members of the Saud dynasty by criticising “totally miscalculated” military decisions in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, claiming that these choices have “weakened the trust of our people and [incited] other peoples against us”.

There have been a series of sharp changes in Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy since Salman took over from Abdullah. Under the late king, Riyadh was understood to view the Muslim Brotherhood and its various offshoots as being enemy number one in the region.

This policy led to Saudi advisors reportedly being in touch with Houthi militiamen in Yemen, who they viewed as a being a bulwark against the local Brotherhood affiliate al-Islah. Under Salman, however, countering Iranian influence is viewed as a key policy priority, and, as such, his defence minister son in March launched a regional coalition against the Houthis, a group viewed by Arab Gulf states as being backed by regional rival Iran.

The war in Yemen, whilst gaining some achievements in pushing the Houthis out of southern areas of the country, has not been a shining success for Saudi Arabia. Dozens of Saudi soldiers have been killed amid an ongoing air and ground campaign, and the Houthis remain in control of the capital Sanaa, while there are reports of skirmishes inside Saudi Arabia by invading Houthis.

Meanwhile in Syria and Iraq, Riyadh joined the US-led coalition to bomb the Islamic State (IS) group in September last year, under the leadership of Abdullah. Since then the kingdom has seen IS claim deadly attacks on the minority Shia community and the government has claimed to have arrested hundreds of the group’s supporters across the country.

Also in Syria the Saudi leadership has actively supported rebel groups battling President Bashar al-Assad, in a civil war where more than 220,000 people have been killed.

As with Yemen, there is currently little to suggest that in Syria Saudi Arabia is close to achieving its military goals. Assad still retains control over swathes of the country, with the international community increasingly distracted by tackling IS, which appears to be no weaker than when the US-led coalition started bombing the group last year.

The royal letter penned by a grandson of Abdulaziz also pointed to financial challenges facing al-Saud, referencing a collapse in oil prices that over the past 12 months has seen the price of a barrel plummet from $120 to less than $50. The impact on the Gulf state, which relies on oil revenues for 90 percent of its income, has been stark – a Citibank analyst recently told MEE that this year the government would have a 20-percent gap between revenue and planned spending, leaving it with one of the largest fiscal deficits in the world.

This deficit has led to Riyadh plundering its sizable currency reserves to prop up spending. In the first half of 2015 the government spent $82bn of reserves, reducing savings to around $650bn, according to Saudi investment company Jadwa. With over 10 percent of currency reserves spent in six months the Citibank analyst warned that, without borrowing, the country’s savings could run dry within two or three years.

The scale of the country’s problems – both militarily and financially – led to the grandson of the country’s founder writing that change at the top may be necessary to protect al-Saud’s future as rulers.

“We will not be able to stop the draining of money, the political adolescence, and the military risks unless we change the methods of decision making, even if that implied changing the king himself,” the letter read.

A well-connected Saudi dissident who lives in London told MEE that the letter is evidence of the royal family recognising the seriousness of the crises ahead.

“There is an awareness in the mind of al-Saud that there is something going wrong and that it needs to be faced,” the dissident, who is in regular contact with royal family members, said on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals.

“This is a wakeup call to stop the collapse.”

Plotting a change at the top

The source said the royal family broadly falls into two camps when considering how to deal with their problems. On one side there are those who do not wish to raise any problems as they fear open disagreement may weaken themselves in the eyes of the public. On the other side there are royals who believe silence will lead to total collapse.

The letter suggested a solution for al-Saud to strengthen their position by returning power to older members of the family who have been side-lined under King Salman. The new ruler has favoured new, younger members of the family close to him – with Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef replacing the youngest of Abdulaziz’s sons Muqrin as crown prince, and his own son Mohammed becoming deputy crown prince.

“[We have neglected] the marginalisation of the elders and the carriers of experience, as well as the surrender of command to the new generations of foolish dreamers who are acting behind the façade of an incapable king,” the letter read.

“How could we accept the marginalisation of King Abdulaziz’s sons both in power and in the processes of policy making?”

Mohammed bin Salman has been roundly criticised for his role in leading the country’s troublesome war in Yemen. The London-based Saudi dissident said that the letter is part of an effort to side-line Mohammed, who is criticised in the text as being a “rotten thief,” and push forward a replacement king.

“The real story behind this letter is that it is preparation for [King Salman’s brother] Ahmed bin Abdulaziz to be pushed towards power,” the source said.

Seventy-three-year-old Prince Ahmed is the youngest member of the powerful Sudairi brothers – an alliance of seven sons of Abdulaziz born to the late king’s favourite wife Hassa bin Ahmed al-Sudairi. He served as deputy interior minister for nearly 30 years from 1975.

In 2012 he was made interior minister, in a move widely viewed as priming him to be a future ruler. However, he was dismissed just five months later in favour of the incumbent Mohammed bin Nayef, who is also the serving crown prince. And in 2014, when Abdullah appointed his brother Muqrin as crown prince, Ahmed was seen as having missed out on the chance to ever be king.

Despite this, the London-based dissident said the prince is viewed favourably among his peers.

“Ahmed is the healthiest and most honest of the senior royals. He doesn’t drink. He’s not a womaniser. He’s the least corrupt,” the source said.

“Everybody thought that he was the natural person to be appointed by Salman as crown prince. He is the real heir apparent in the minds of many people.”

The London-based dissident said that Ahmed is keen on the idea of being promoted but he is reluctant to make the move himself. The prince, while ambitious, is conscious of not appearing to be in conflict with his brother Salman and his son Mohammed.

“He wants others to push him forward for the throne,” the source said.

The grandson of Abdulaziz said in his letter that he will support royal family members being promoted “with meritocracy” by collecting signatures from princes to implement changes for the “common good”.

The letter also said that it is the responsibility of princes including Ahmed bin Abdulaziz “to collect the views and gather the ranks” of the royal family.

“They should isolate the incapable King Salman, the extravagant and vain Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and the rotten thief Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been devastating for the state, so that the greatest and most pious assume the control of the affairs of the state and of its people.”

“We also ask for a new king and a new crown prince to be invested and take over everyone and for the abolition of the peculiar office of the deputy crown prince.”

Another regional expert said it was highly likely family members will gather to discuss changes but expressed doubt Mohammed bin Salman will be side-lined in the near future.

“I would imagine the demand for an emergency meeting is inevitable – if it hasn’t already taken place,” said Christopher Davidson, author of After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies and reader in Middle East politics at Durham University.

“But the demand for removing the deputy crown prince seems unobtainable.”

The London-based Saudi source said that they had not been able to confirm whether the royal family had held an emergency meeting. However, they claimed to be “aware of discord and discussion about the letter”.

Mohammed bin Salman seeking a promotion

The source said that there is much speculation among al-Saud family members that once this year’s annual pilgrimage ends, which is expected to be on 26 September, the deputy crown prince will move to make himself heir to the throne.

“Some royal family members believe that once hajj is over Mohammed bin Salman will remove Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince – by orders of his father – and appoint himself,” the source said.

“They [the royal family members] are bracing themselves for this development because they see it as very dangerous. They think it will bring revolt and make it much more likely for action to be taken to push Ahmed [bin Abdulaziz] towards taking power.”

Mohammed bin Salman is increasingly being viewed as possessing much of the power behind the throne, especially amid unconfirmed rumours his 79-year-old father is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The deputy crown prince recently accompanied the king on a trip to meet with US President Barack Obama where it is believed the 30-year-old played a key role in strategic discussions.

After the visit, an unnamed Arab official told the Washington Post that it is possible King Salman could alter the succession process to name his son as heir.

“Let’s face reality,” the official said. “He’s the son of the king. There’s a strong chance he will be the next king. The longer Salman survives, the larger the chance that MBS (Mohammed bin Salman) is next.”

The impression that Mohammed may be plotting a route to be Saudi Arabia’s next king likely explains the strong feeling among both the grandson of Abdulaziz and the London-based dissident that royal family members are urgently seeking an emergency meeting.

However, the Gulf Research Centre’s Koch played down talk that Mohammed is plotting a way to remove the current crown prince and promote himself to be first in line to the throne.

“One thing to remember is that the ruling family is large and anyone who wants to assert authority will need to be able to put together a broad consensus from within,” he said. “As such, suggestions, as currently circulating, that Mohammed bin Salman in preparing for a coup are quite fanciful if you ask me.”

A prominent Saudi journalist also poured scorn on the idea that a power struggle may be emerging in the country and questioned the authenticity of the letter calling for change at the top.

“I know a prince who is always exchanging with me documents and articles,” Jamal Khashoggi, General Manager of Al Arab television, told MEE. “This letter hasn’t circulated. I still have my doubts [about its authenticity].”

Rori Donaghy founded the Emirates Centre for Human Rights, which was the first independent organisation to focus on human rights abuse in the United Arab Emirates and he has had his work published in the Guardian’s Comment is Free, Huffington Post, Jadaliyya and Open Democracy.

22 September 2015

By Kenneth Eade

Smedley Butler, the highest ranking USMC Major General of his time, put it best when he said, “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” He describes his military career as serving in “all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

The same is true of the “War on Terror.” Patriotism has, throughout history, been used as a tool to garner public opinion in support of war. The terror card played by George W. Bush, has been passed on to Barack Obama, who ironically won a Nobel Peace Prize for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and promotion of a “new climate in international relations, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world.” Our peace loving president, whose first effort to bomb Syria was quashed by Russian diplomacy, is now at it again, under the guise of attacking ISIS, an organization whose strength would not be possible without the U.S. intervention in Iraq as part of the “War on Terror.”

What are these wars on terror really about? Do they justify the large scale stripping of our constitutionally guaranteed rights in order to keep us safe? The answer can be found on the pages of the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Just a few short years ago, the United States was suffering from a fossil fuel shortage. Dependence on foreign oil seemed inevitable until the advent of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which has unlocked a massive oil and natural gas reserve formerly trapped in shale rock, and all we have to do is poison our groundwater to get it.

What to do with the 13.1 million barrels of oil a day by 2019 and the 44% increase in natural gas production? Well, the United States still needs a customer base, because, even though it is the largest consumer of gas and oil on earth, there is more being produced annually than we can sell at home. That is one of the reasons why the U.S. installed its own government in Ukraine, in an attempt to stifle European dependence on Russian natural gas. By 2015, a $12 billion liquefied natural gas terminal in Sabine Pass, Louisiana will come online and it, along with six other proposed terminals approved by the Department of Energy can supply half the daily gas that Russia now supplies to Europe.

The “gas wars” are also the current impetus behind the anti-terrorist rhetoric in fighting ISIS in Syria. Dubbed the “Islamic Pipeline,” a planned 3480 mile long Iran-Iraq-Syria natural gas pipeline going toward Europe from the Middle East, has the full support of the current Assad government. This pipeline project is competing with U.S. and European dreams to build a similar pipeline, originally contemplated to run from Qatar and Saudi Arabia through Syria to Turkey, to to supply European customers through Austria. According to an article in Mint Press News, Wikileaks has published State Department memos “revealing U.S. plans to overthrow the Syrian government through instigating civil strife.” It is apparent that Assad’s refusal to join the U.S. backed plan is the reason behind the current crisis. Russia, in the meantime, according to Agence France-Presse, continues its plans for a new gas pipeline to supply gas to Europe through Turkey. Moreover, according to a February 2014 article in Die Presse, Austria’s OMV may be contemplating a deal with Russia’s Gazprom. Russia, in the meantime, according to Agence France-Presse, continues its plans for a new gas pipeline to supply gas to Europe through Turkey.

The United States has already devastated the infrastructure and government in Iraq, giving rise to political chaos and power to fanatics like ISIS. The last thing we need is more destabilization in Syria and in Europe’s own backyard in Ukraine. The refugee crisis caused by the U.S. intervention in Syria is a sad side effect, which is already causing a tremendous strain on Europe. So, before waving the flag and congratulating your Congressman for signing the next Patriot Act, and before sending your next born child off to war in a foreign land, you should question what is really behind these political decisions.

Kenneth Eade (http://kennetheade.com) is an attorney and the best-selling author of The Brent Marks Legal Thrillers, including the recently released,A Patriot’s Act, the fictional story of a naturalized U.S. citizen, captured in Iraq and held indefinitely at Guantanamo.
01 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Eric Zuesse

U.S. President Obama’s central case against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad (and his central argument against Assad’s supporter Russia on that matter) is that Assad was behind the sarin gas attack in Ghouta Syria on 21 August 2013 — but it’s all a well-proven lie, as will be shown here.

President Obama said this to the UN on September 24th: “The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians. These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood and landed in opposition neighborhoods.”

As I wrote in an article earlier in September, summing up the evidence on this (and you can click through all the way to the ultimate published sources here):

The great investigative journalist Christof Lehmann headlined on 7 October 2013 at his nsnbc news site, «Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria», and he opened:

«Evidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry». (The U.S. has been allied with the Saudi royal family since 1945.)

Lehmann discussed the chemical-weapons attack «in the Eastern Ghouta Suburb of Damascus on 21 August 2013,» which attack U.S. President Barack Obama was citing as his reason for planning to bomb to bring down Syria’s pro-Russian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, whom Obama was blaming for the chemical attack. However, much like another great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh subsequently reported (using different sources) in the London Review of Books on 17 April 2014, Lehmann’s even-earlier investigation found that the U.S. had set up the chemical attack, and that it was actually carried out by Islamic jihadists that the U.S. itself was supplying in Syria, through Turkey. Lehmann reported:

«After the defeat of the predominantly Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood and Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces, which were reinforced by Libyans in June and July 2012, the U.S.-Saudi Axis was strengthened. Uncooperative Qatari-led brigades which rejected the new command structure had to be removed. The influx of Salafi-Wahhabbi fighters to Syria was documented by the International Crisis Group in their report titled «Tentative Jihad».»

Hersh’s report added to Lehmann’s, a powerful confirmation by British intelligence, which found that the source of the chemical-weapons attack couldn’t possibly have been Assad’s forces. However, the Brits, of course, didn’t publicly expose Obama’s lie; after all, just as Tony Blair had been George W. Bush’s «lap dog» in Iraq and Afghanistan, David Cameron is Obama’s lap dog in Syria and Libya.

Regarding Obama’s statement, “These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood and landed in opposition neighborhoods,” nothing like that is stated in the report by “U.N. inspectors,” though Obama says it is. However, here is what Matthew Schofield of McClatchy reported on 15 January 2014, months after that UN report:

A series of revelations about the rocket believed to have delivered poison sarin gas to a Damascus suburb last summer are challenging American intelligence assumptions about that attack and suggest that the case U.S. officials initially made for retaliatory military action was flawed.
A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated. …
The authors of a report released Wednesday [15 January 2014] said that their study of the rocket’s design, its likely payload and its possible trajectories show that it would have been impossible for the rocket to have been fired from inside areas controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In the report, titled “Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the question about the rocket’s range indicates a major weakness in the case for military action initially pressed by Obama administration officials.

That’s putting it mildly — i.e, it misrepresents what the Lloyd-Postal report found, which was (on the report’s page 11):

The US Government’s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.

Here is the “Bottom Line” to their excruciatingly detailed analysis of the evidence:

?? The Syrian Improvised Chemical Munitions [the rockets] that Were Used in the August 21, Nerve Agent Attack in Damascus Have a Range of About 2 Kilometers.
?? This Indicates That These Munitions Could Not Possibly Have Been Fired at East Ghouta from the “Heart” or the Eastern Edge of the Syrian Government Controlled Area Depicted in the Intelligence Map Published by the White House on August 30, 2013 [as charged by the White House].
?? This faulty Intelligence Could Have Led to an Unjustified US Military Action Based on False Intelligence.
?? A Proper Vetting of the Fact That the Munition Was of Such Short Range Would Have Led to a Completely Different Assessment of the Situation from the Gathered Data [namely, that the attack was perpetrated by opponents to Assad’s regime].
?? Whatever the Reasons for the Egregious Errors in the Intelligence, the Source of These Errors Needs to Be Explained.

Just as ‘intelligence errors’ (instead of Presidential lies) were blamed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq by President George W. Bush, ‘Egregious Errors in the Intelligence’ (instead of Presidential lies) were blamed here, even though the President continues saying, now even at the UN, “The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians. These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood and landed in opposition neighborhoods.”

That whole statement is a lie. Obama in his 24 September 2015 UN speech misrepresented the UN investigators’ finding (which was that a sarin gas attack had, indeed, occurred — and not by ‘advanced rockets’ but by two rockets, each of which was an “unguided rocket”), and he lied about what the analyses of evidence, after the UN’s report was issued, actually did find — namely, that the U.S. President has been (and he still is) lying (and it called these rockets “Improvised Chemical Munitions,” and gave detailed descriptions of both of these rockets that the President called “advanced rockets”).

According to Hersh’s account, Britain’s MI6 already knew that Obama was lying, but couldn’t go public about it.

So, why were there not boos from the audience at the UN when he repeated that by-now disproven old lie, which remains believable only by suckers — people who still believe a man who by now is a rampantly repeated liar? They’re all diplomats. So, the lie lives on. (Just click through to the sources here on this, and you’ll see that Obama was lying. The “intelligence” is not wrong; he simply lies about it.)

Meanwhile, Russian volunteer troops, who are now going public inside Syria about their direct on-the-ground military actions against ISIS and al-Nusra (the latter being al-Qaeda’s local affiliate in Syria), because the Russian Armed Forces are coming there with planes and such to back them and Assad’s forces up, say, “Terrorists have many American weapons, rockets and even night vision devices. Americans teach them. USA bombed our gas plants in the East.” Putin is, in effect, daring Obama to continue his sham ‘war against ISIS,’ now that proceding further with it would expose the reality of what Obama has been doing all along. Putin is working instead with the leaders of Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Israel, to kill the Islamic jihadists, who are backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the U.S. (The way Germany’s highly reliable global-news source, German Economic News, puts the pro-jihadist alliance is: “Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qartar, Turkey, but also the United States”; but, of course it’s actually led by the U.S.) Instead of trying to take over the world, like the U.S. is doing, Putin is trying to organize an alliance against Sunni jihadists, who constitute a real threat to peace and security in his and many other nations.

With American Presidents such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama — has this “perpetual war for” perpetual ‘indispennsable nation’ hood, ‘American exceptionalism’ (Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., and even Ukraine) become a bad habit of America’s actually heisted political system? And can a nation that’s ruled by lies — lies for which there is no personal accountability — be actually a democracy? Are not lies coercion against the victim’s mind, just as theft is coercion against the victim’s property, and just as violence is coercion against the victim’s body? The victims here are the public, including all American voters, who are deceived that the American government still represents them. Coercion comes in all three types. Not all tyrannies function the same way, yet all of them are tyrannies, none the less.

When will a stop be put to the recently emergent tyranny in America? Perhaps the first step is to call the spade a spade, not continue the lie that it’s still a ‘democracy.’ Isn’t honesty basic to any real democracy? Doesn’t it need to be restored? Isn’t calling it what it is, the first step?

The UN isn’t set up to do that for us. No one should blame the UN for not doing that, which it cannot do. Only Americans can — if they will.

Tyranny isn’t permanent, any more than is democracy.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity
01 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ram Puniyani

India is undergoing a regressive attack in different fields of life. Apart from the political undermining of secularism, pluralism and Indian nationalism, the cultural pluralism and valued syncretic traditions are also under severe attack. The intensity is increasing. On the back of the murders of dissenting rationalists (Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M M Kalburgi), the bans on food,, a literary siege is being erected. The writers steeped in a multicultural, plural milieu are under attack on sectarian grounds.

From Kerala known for the culture which has kept the identity of different religions and has also led to their intermixing, comes the news that the renowned literary critic and Malayalam scholar, Dr. M.M. Basheer was threatened and told to stop his column on Ramayana, Ramayana Jeevithasaramritham. There have been major non Hindu writers like Thomas Mathew, poet and popular lyricist, the late Yusuf Ali Kecheri who have contributed to such themes which so far have looked beyond the religious divide. Basheer got abusive phone calls as to how a Muslim like him has any right to criticize the Hindu God. He was just commenting on Valmiki’s criticism of Lord Ram to call Sita for Agni Pariksha(trial by fire). Basheer, a practicing Muslim, for the first time was made to feel that he is a Muslim. Unable to bear the barrage of aggression of Sangh Parivar elements, Hanuman Sena in particular, he stopped his series. As such he has contributed over 50 articles on the theme.

There are two major points which are very disturbing in the ongoing assault on plural ethos of the country. The first one is that there are innumerable literary people and saints, who irrespective of their own faith have contributed to the cultural aspects of religion in the sub continent. The legendary classic contributions of Rahim and Raskhan on the life of Lord Krishna cannot be eroded from the literary history of the sub continent. Who can forget the contributions of Dara Shikoh’ in translating the Upanishads into Persian. The Nawab of Bijapur had number of Veena players in his court for invocation of Goddess Saraswati. Even a decade ago we enjoyed the richness of Bismillah Khan’s shehnai, many of his compositions are dedicated to deities.

Shiekh Mohammad a saint from Maharashtra has been the major figure in the Warkari tradition, built his work around god Vithoba (God standing on brick), which is the major part of Bhakti tradition in Maharashtra. Saints like him and others like Ramdev Pir, Satya Pir stand tall in synthesizing the trends of cultural integration. We have Miyan Mir, another Pir in Punjab who was invited to lay the foundation of Golden temple. Even today villages and towns of different parts of India have Sufi shrines and Bhakti saint memorials, where people from all religions throng and pay their respects.

This syncretism was deeply expressed by Kabir, Nanak and Tulsidas in particular. They reflected the synthetic trends and the influence of both religions in their lives and works. Nanak went on to pick up from Hinduism and Islam both, while Tulsidas mentions in his Kavitavali about living in a mosque. Kabir communicated with people in simple Hindi and reflected the ‘building of bridges’ between the two communities.

Communal politics in India, which began in the colonial period went on to associate culture and traditions exclusively with religion. Today the seeds of division have gone so deep that in recent times we saw the eminent painter M.F. Husain being hounded to the extent that he had to leave the country. His roots were in the village where there was a serious mix of Hindu-Muslim traditions and he regarded Hindu themes as part of his heritage. Interestingly his work did not come under attack till the decade of 1980s, when the communal cauldron started affecting different aspects of our society and vehemence of intolerant elements went on destroying the creations of people like Husain. Hindi film and TV world has the best of such traditions in likes of Shakeel Badayuni (Man Tarpat Haridarshan ko Aaj-Baiju Bawra) and Javed Akhtar (O Palanhare Nirgun aur Nyare-Lagan) writing beautiful devotional songs and Rahi Masoom Raza scripting B.R. Chopda mega serial Mahabharat.

Another aspect related to attacks on Basheer is also related to the interpretation of the Lord Ram story. In the subcontinent and even in the far East hundreds of versions of the Ram saga are prevalent. The Hindutva politics has picked up a version of Ram story which is that of Ramanand Sagar’s serial. The classical essay of A. K. Ramanujan, ‘One hundred Ramayanas’, was forced out of the curricula in Delhi University. This brilliant essay narrates the beauty of the diverse telling of Ramayana. Ambedkar’s ‘Riddles of Hindusim’ criticising Ram for banishment of Sita and punishing Shambuk, also met with a hostile reception.

How do we restore the complex cultural, religious, literary pluralism of India is something which the social movements need to ponder over in times to come.

Ram Puniyani was a professor in biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and took voluntary retirement in December 2004 to work full time for communal harmony in India. He is involved with human rights activities from last two decades.He is associated with various secular and democratic initiatives like All India Secular Forum, Center for Study of Society and Secularism and ANHAD. Response only to ram.puniyani@gmail.com
01 October, 2015
TheCitizen.in

 

By Suhail Qasim Mir

The lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq (50) and brutally beating up his son, Danish (22) by a mob in Dadri, UP for allegedly consuming and storing beef marks the travesty of the democratic and non-violent credentials of India. The culture of tolerance and secularism, which India is boastful about, seems to be misplaced. When endeavours are being made all over the world to embark new journeys towards peace and reconciliation, India seems to be moving back into history. Imposing ideals from a mythic past, which are objectionable to a large section of the population, seems to be the course thatIndia has chosen.

India celebrates itself as the world’s largest democracy and takes pride in having the longest written constitution. And it is this constitution which provides the right to freedom of religion to its citizens. However despite its secular Constitution, India remains strikingly unequal. The recent beef bans and the violence surrounding this issue is an eloquent testimony. The state in a democratic set up can’t force and tell the individuals what to eat and what not to. The right to choose between the things is the essence of democracy. In every sense of the word there is actually an attempt to uphold one single Hindu culture defined by hindutva ideology by subduing every other culture. Ban on the beef, the consumption of which is an intrinsic part of the indigenous food culture of Dalits and Muslims, is a clear manifestation of Brahminical food fascism.The forced majoritarianism will go a long way in polarising the society and leave it for manipulation by few ogres to serve their vested interests.

For some petty political brownie points, politicians in India are busy dividing people along religious lines and ironically people get divided because most of the population in India due to illiteracy or low education can’t make a difference between right and wrong. So masses are not to be blamed. There is somebody else fanning the communal fires and helming India towards a horrible annihilation. Though beef ban has been a contentious issue in India since times immemorial but it is only with the change of the guard at centre that the issue has surfaced again. The RSS and other fringe groups with their anti-Muslim ideology remain undeterred because they remain unbridled, in fact they ironically derive their strength from the present government which itself is founded upon the Hindutva bedrock.

The promulgated beef ban across several states of India is not just about weaning the choice of people about what to eat and what not to, but, essentially undermining all those people who don’t affiliate to the Hinduva ideology. Nobody in India talks about prohibition of liquor and other intoxicating substances when the constitution in the Article 48 openly advocates for prohibition of such substances. Why? Because the mainstream Hindu culture doesn’t oppose it and banning it would mean a loss of huge electorate. So everything is meticulously calculated, religion is manipulated for political interests and so fissures are created in the society.

India is marked by a myriad diversity; people here are divided along the lines of cast, religion, region, language, ethnicity and gender. Each group has its own culture and a way of life and thus forcing one major culture and expecting everybody to abstain from beef eating and cow slaughter just because some groups don’t do it is bound to create a feeling of oppression and alienation. And it is in this context when these groups develop anti national feelings and turn outlaws.

Obscure groups such as Viswa Hindu Parishat (VHP) are trying to impose a culture often through violent means, infringing upon the fundamental rights and seeking to subdue the diversity of India. It is essential for pseudo nationalists and the Hindutva fringe groups to realise that only by taking every community on-board can India stay in one piece. What essentially is required is the utmost need for reconcilement and accommodation.

Suhail Qasim Mir, Alumni, Jamia Millia Islamia Email: suhailmir24@gmail.com

Also Read

India’s Beef Ban Turns Bloody, Consumes A Man’s Life

By Countercurrents.org

01 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Michael Billington

In October 1983, EIR and the Fusion Energy Foundation, both founded by Lyndon LaRouche, held a conference in Bangkok, co-sponsored by Thailand’s Ministry of Transportation and the Global Infrastructure Fund (GIF), part of Japan’s Mitsubishi Research Insti-tute, promoting the construction of a sea-level canal across the Isthmus of Kra in southern Thailand. A second conference on the same theme, also in Bangkok, was held a year later, in October 1984. Launching of this great project, which would represent a “keystone” for economic development throughout the Pacific region, was close to realization.

The process was subverted, by a combination of foreign inter-vention and opposition from certain powerful forces within Thailand. However, despite extreme instability in Thailand at the time of this writing, including a military seizure of power in May 2014, the po-tential for launching this project is definitively back on the table, with significant backing from China and Japan.

The Canal

Although the shipping distance saved by the construction of the Kra Canal is not comparable to that of the other two great canals, the Suez and the Panama—it will shorten the length of a trip from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea by about 900 miles—it will nonetheless carry as much traffic as either of those canals, due both to the shorter route, and to the overcrowding of the shipping lanes in the Malacca Strait. That waterway carried more than 50,000 ships per year in 1983, but EIR projections at the time indicated, correctly, that economic growth in China and India would necessitate an additional route via a sea-level canal.

But the concept behind the Kra Canal goes far deeper than sim-ply facilitating shipping. As Lyndon LaRouche told the 1983 Bang-kok Conference: “The prospect of establishing a sea-level waterway through the Isthmus of Thailand, ought to be seen not only as an im-portant development of basic economic infrastructure both for Thai-land and the cooperating nations of the region; this proposed canal should also be seen as a keystone, around which might be constructed a healthy and balanced development of needed basic infrastructure in a more general way.”

That conference, entitled “The Development of the Pacific and Indian Ocean Basins,” presented the Kra Canal, together with con-struction of new deep-water ports at either end, and industrial zones in adjacent areas, as the central hub of an Asian-wide development approach based on projects including the development of the Mekong River basin, major water control projects in China, and water and power projects in the Ganges-Brahmaputra region of India. This, in turn, was part of a global “Great Projects” approach promoted by La-Rouche, and by Mitsubishi’s GIF.

The conferences also presented stark warnings that the failure to build the Kra Canal, and the industrial development parks associated with it, would lead inevitably to turmoil in the regions of southern

Thailand, already suffering from underdevelopment and ethnic ten-sions between the Buddhist and Muslim populations in the region. Further, it was warned that the overcrowding of the Strait of Malacca would create a strategic crisis, because the Strait is a key bottleneck for oil and other trade for the Far East, especially a growing China, and thus vulnerable to sabotage and piracy.

Project Dimensions

We can compare the dimensions of a proposed Kra Canal with other well-known canals. The width of the Kra Isthmus at its narrowest point is about 27 miles; compare this to the width of the Panama Canal—48 miles. The length of the various proposed locations for the Kra Canal range between 30 and 60 miles. The Suez Canal, for com-parison, has a length of 119 miles.

The height of the interior mountain chain where the Kra Canal would be constructed is about 246 feet. Com-pare this to the height at the Galliard cut of the Panama Canal, which is slightly lower, at 210 feet.

The Strait of Malacca is not sufficiently deep for many large ships to pass through. The Strait is 620 miles

The proposed site of the Kra Canal EIRNS long but very narrow—less than 1.6 miles at the narrow-est and only 82 feet deep at the shallowest point. Current-ly, large ships are required to travel much further south, to the Lombok Strait, near Java, which has a depth of 820 feet. The Kra

Canal would save about 1,200 miles in shipping transport in Asia; its depth, as projected in engineering studies, is expected to be 110 feet.

The Malacca Strait is by far the most heavily traveled of the world’s strategic passageways, with more than twice the traffic of the Suez and Panama Canals combined. By a recent estimate, one-fifth of world trade goes through the Malacca Strait. Congestion or obstruction of the Strait, whether accidental or intentional, would dramatically increase the cost of trade and would cause severe danger to the economies of East Asian nations, which depend on oil from the Mideast.

Peace Through Development

A report on the 1983 Bangkok Conference, published in Fusion magazine (July/August 1984), addressed Thailand’s security issue: “A major included strategic factor also deserves the attention of Thai policy makers. Contrary to some reported opinion and concern that a canal through the southern part of the Golden Peninsula would have nega-tive security implications, severing the ethnically and religiously ill-in-tegrated southernmost part of the nation from the rest of the country, the opposite consequence would be the projected outcome. The canal complex, as a major industrial growth-spot, would function as an inte-grating and unifying factor, joining together the southern, central, and northern provinces in a large common endeavor capable of inspiring the entire nation, uplifting the economic condition of the southern popula-tion, and thus reducing the potential for dissatisfaction and dissension.”

General Saiyud Kerdphol, a former Supreme Commander of the Thai Armed Forces, in addressing the 1984 EIR Bangkok Conference, said: “Development and security must go hand in hand as a coordi-nated effort. We must recognize that economic, political, and social development all contribute to security—but that security, in itself, is not development.”

Lyndon LaRouche addressed the importance of the Kra Canal for the entirety of the Asia-Pacific region in a May 2014 interview with the

Fortune Times, a Chinese language journal in Singapore, saying that he had “specific, professional knowledge concerning the importance and feasibility of such an undertaking, and its profound implications for the entirety of major neighboring regions such as, most promi-nently, China and India, but also the entire region of the China-India development process throughout the Pacific region generally….

“Divide the maritime region of East and South Asia into three principal categories: China, a giant; India, a giant; and the maritime connection, throughout Southeast Asia’s maritime regions, today. Add the impact of such triadic maritime and related connections, to the physical-economic relations to the Americas to the East, and the Middle East’s underbelly and Africa. Then, the potency of a Kra Canal development appears not only as an eminently feasible feature, but a strategic political-economic force for the planet.

“The most common opposition to the Kra Canal, from within that region itself, is located precisely in Singapore. The chief source of resis-tance from Singapore, is entirely, global, British-imperial military-stra-tegic interests. The completion of the Kra Canal, is not technologically difficult, if and when we take into account the massively beneficial im-pact of the creation of such a project; it would be principally the British imperial-strategic interests in the entire Indian-Ocean region, which has long remained the principal obstacle to the Kra during modern times. There are two truly great nations in Asia: India, and the more populous China. The sheer volume of maritime trade between the two great nations of Asia, and their connections through the South Asia maritime regions, represents the potentially beneficial, and also effi-cient project for the entire region of the Pacific and Indian Ocean re-gions, and the co-development of the major regions of Planet Earth as a whole. Water is still the most economically efficient mode of economic transport among the regions of the planet.

“On Singapore as such, Singapore itself, when freed from British strategic imperatives, will benefit far more from the success of the Kra Canal development, than that development would ever bring without the development of the Kra!”

The role of the British in preventing the construction of the Kra Canal goes back to 1897, when the British made a secret agreement with Siam (Thailand), which forbade the construction of a canal through the Isthmus of Kra without British consent. The agreement also brought exclusive commercial concessions in the area under British control. This Imperial policy of “no development” continued throughout the 20th Century. At the end of World War II, the Siamese Government, which had allowed the Japanese to occupy the country was forced to impose even stricter limits on its economic development, not to men-tion the heavy war reparations imposed on them.

Article Seven of the 1946 Anglo-Thai Treaty states that: The Siamese Government undertake that no canal linking the In-dian Ocean and Gulf of Siam shall be cut across Siamese territory with-out the prior concurrence of the Government of the United Kingdom.

Although this imperial treaty was eventually overturned, the Brit-ish banking outpost in Asia, the City-State of Singapore, has remained the primary obstacle to the construction of the Kra Canal. However, Sin-gapore agreed in August 2014 to become a Founding Member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), initiated by China to pro-vide a new source of funding for precisely this kind of regional infra-structure development, which may lead Singapore to lift its objections.

Centuries of Plans

The first call for a Kra Canal came from Thai King Rama I in 1793, who proposed a canal from Songkhla on the eastern shore on the Gulf of Thailand, to the Indian Ocean on the western shore, just above the Malacca Strait. The concept was taken up in the 1950s, and again in the 1970s, but a combination of instability internally and in the region, due to the colonial warfare in Indochina, prevented any significant re-gional cooperation.

However, a feasibility study, commissioned by K.Y. Chow of the

Thai Oil Refining Company, was completed in 1973 by the American engineering firms Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton (TAMS) and Robert R. Nathan Associates, in collaboration with Lawrence Liver-more National Laboratory. The study was updated by the Fusion En-ergy Foundation in preparation for the 1983 conference.

Peaceful Nuclear Explosives

A key aspect of the planning for the Kra Canal has been the po-tential advantages of the use of peaceful nuclear explosives (PNE) to carry out the excavations on the most difficult terrain. Today, the use of PNEs is completely left out of all discussions of the Kra Canal, due to the hysteria created by the enemies of development against any-thing nuclear. This particular form of anti-scientific brainwashing was not as extensive at the time of the 1983 conference in Bangkok, and the discussion demonstrated the enormous advantages for Thailand and the world in using this safe, controlled form of nuclear explosive.

With PNEs, the construction time and the cost of building the canal would be nearly cut in half. In addition, the assembly of the re-quired advanced nuclear engineering and scientific manpower would facilitate the development of nuclear-related industries, as well as nuclear energy plants. A spokesman from Lawrence Livermore who attended the conference suggested that a major nuclear isotope separa-tion plant could be constructed as part of the Kra Canal complex.

While some industrial progress was made across Asia in the 1980s and early 1990s, the speculative “globalization” bubble of the 1990s drew Asia in—with hot money and process industries substituting for basic infrastructure development—until the speculators pulled the plug in the 1997-98 crash, collapsing the Thai economy under hedge fund looting and International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities.

One of the leading proponents of the Kra Canal has been former Prime Minister Gen. (ret.) Chavalit Youngchiyudh, who also founded the Thai-Chinese Culture and Economy Association. Thailand’s close cooperation with China, now substantially stronger than in the 1980s, has created a new interest in the project, because China views infra-structure investment in foreign lands, especially in the Asian region, as mutually beneficial over the long term, rather than restricting invest-ments to projects that promise immediate short-term profit to private investors, as is the dominant Group of Seven (G-7) policy today. This is the nature of China’s proposed AIIB, which Thailand has agreed to join as a founding member.

In Japan, the Mitsubishi GIF is still committed to the project, while other leading economists are now deeply interested. Former Japanese

Finance Ministry official and Representative to the IMF Daisuke Ko-tegawa has emphasized that Japan-China cooperation with Thailand in the construction of the Kra Canal, which would be of significant mutual benefit to the two Asian economic giants, represents precisely the kind of project that must be undertaken together, as a means of overcoming the mounting tensions between them.

With the election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of India, it is now likely that India will also be anxious to join in the Kra Canal project. Modi’s campaign slogan was “development, development, de-velopment,” and he intends to build on the extremely close economic relations he established with China and Japan as Chief Minister of Gujarat. The Kra Canal will thus become increasingly crucial to the expanding trade between East and South Asia.

August 2014

 

By Taj Hashmi

Recently, yet another Arab Muslim faced racial and religious discrimination in America. After being tipped off by a school teacher, the police arrested Ahmed Mohamed – a 14-year old school student at Irving, Texas – for bringing a device to school, which he claimed was a clock he made to impress his science teacher. Although the device did not look like a bomb, the police arrested and detained the boy for several hours on charges of bringing a hoax-bomb to school.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Mohamed has become a celebrity. Millions of Americans condemned the way his teachers and police treated him. President Obama formally invited him to the White House, which was an exceptional gesture of goodwill towards Muslims, and a unique way of saying “sorry” to someone unnecessarily traumatized and humiliated. Several American celebrities also congratulated Ahmed, and invited him to meet them personally.

Americans in general are nice and civil, generous and hospitable; but simultaneously, they could be very conceited, rude, hyperbolic, and hypocritical. For some strange reasons, Americans could be very prejudicial to ideologies, people and culture different from theirs. On the one hand, they are obsessed with freedom, human rights, and equal opportunity; on the other, they are insensitive to violating others’ freedom, human rights and equal opportunities, albeit in the name of freedom, democracy and justice. America is a land of obsessions. And Americans in general are programmed to believe in whatever their government, leaders and media want them to believe.

America’s Muslim obsession is a post-Cold War phenomenon, further accentuated after 9/11. As sections of Americans are obsessed with Islam and Muslims, “Muslim” seems to be the new “Black” in the American psyche. “Muslim” is also the new “Red”, the equivalent of a “Communist infiltrator” during the Cold War. Since Muslims and terrorists are almost synonymous in the US, some American employers – including universities – have unofficially restricted hiring Muslim candidates since 9/11.

“Muslim” has become such a dirty word in the US that even politicians and educated people do not shy away from calling Obama a “Muslim” alien. No wonder, two recent polls reveal 29 per cent of Americans, and 43 to 54 per cent of Republican voters (66 per cent of Trump supporters) believe Obama is a Muslim.

Most American politicians, intellectuals, analysts and policymakers are divided between the ultra-right conservative and rightist moderate categories. Unlike Canada, Western Europe or Australia, socialists and social democrats are almost nonexistent in America; people like Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul are simply “unelectable”. Only religious and social issues like gay marriage, abortion, and affordable healthcare for every American draw the line between conservatives and “radicals” in this country. Invading Muslim-majority countries on phony issues; wasting billions of dollars on such invasions; and killing millions of innocent civilians in the process are virtually non-issues for Americans.

The US has been the most disruptive force in the Muslim World since the end of World War II – it toppled five regimes in Syria alone, between 1949 and 1955. During the last 70 years, America toppled regimes in Iran (1953), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and many more elsewhere in the world. It has been instrumental in creating Islamist militant/terrorist groups, directly or indirectly. Ever since 9/11, Muslims have been at the receiving end of American prejudice and hate crime. Many Americans are programmed to believe Muslim terrorists, and distant and militarily insignificant Iran are potential security threats to their country. The average Americans’ Muslim and Iranophobia today may be likened to their apprehensions about the “evil designs” of tiny Cuba, during the Cold War.

At a recent town hall meeting, a man wearing a Trump T-shirt asked Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump as to how he would address the “Muslim Problem” in America. Muslims were killing Americans, the man alleged. Instead of rebuffing the man, Trump told him: “You know, … a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening.” “It wasn’t people from Sweden that blew up the World Trade Center”, Trump quipped in defence of his equivocal answer to the man. He said in a speech: “If you’re from Syria and you’re a Christian, you cannot come into this country”. Yet another Republican Presidential candidate, Ben Carson publicly stated: “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation”. “Islam is inconsistent with America’s values and principles”, he emphasized.

However, on the flip side of this hatemongering, not only liberal Americans and media, but some Republican politicians also strongly disagreed with Trump and Carson. Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican Presidential candidate, defended American Muslims as loyal citizens. Muslim soldiers had been to Iraq and Afghanistan – “fighting our freedom, risking their lives” – he pointed out. He also asked Carson to apologize to the Muslims. Speaking on the Senate floor, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid slammed Carson for his “disgusting remarks” against Muslims. “Shame on Dr. Carson. Shame on any person who spews such hateful rhetoric,” he stressed.

Prominent Americans, Chomsky, Carter, General (ret) Wesley Clarke and Paul Craig Roberts among others regularly lambast Washington for unnecessary wars, and killing of innocent Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, Syrians, Pakistanis and others. While Carter believes America is no longer a democracy but an oligarchy, Paul Craig Roberts (Assistant Secretary of Treasury during the Reagan administration) writes: “Washington is a black hole into which all sanity is sucked out of government deliberations”.

So far so good! Nevertheless, neither Trump nor Carson lost support among conservative Americans. Rather, as Carson asserted, within 24 hours of saying that he would not support a Muslim in the White House, he raised a million dollars. “The money has been coming so fast, it’s hard to even keep up with it”, he told the media. Thanks to the successful demonization of Islam and Muslims in America, some people are still suspicious of anything Islamic or Muslim. In 2006, Six Muslim imams were removed from a domestic flight in Minneapolis, and detained for several hours after some passengers and crewmembers complained of “suspicious behaviour”, including prayers in Arabic at the gate.

Interestingly, non-Muslim extremists killed nearly twice as many people than by Muslim extremists in the recent past; 19 terrorist attacks by non-Muslims, and seven by Islamist militants, took place in America since 9/11. “With non-Muslims, the media bends over backward to identify some psychological traits that may have pushed them over the edge,” said Abdul Cader Asmal, a retired physician and a spokesman for Muslims in Boston. “Whereas if it’s a Muslim, the assumption is that they must have done it because of their religion”, he observes. We know analysts and media assumed Muslim militants (not a White extremist) had carried out the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, in 1995.

Although Islamist terrorists in the last 14 years (since 9/11) have killed 77 people, and around 14,000 people die annually in homicide attacks, yet in view of the hyped up counterterrorism (CT) activities and the preparation for the “Global War on Terror” in America, Washington’s sense of priority (or its absence) is simply dumbfounding, bizarre and unbelievable.

However, one cannot be that naive to give American policymakers, military-industrial complex, media and analysts the benefit of the doubt that their extremely costly and counterproductive CT efforts, the endless “War on Terror”, and Islamophobia are not by design but by default. They know it well invading one country after another, and playing the Islamist Terror card have so far paid rich dividends. However, Washington cannot make peace with Muslims within and Muslims abroad by simply denouncing Islamophobia.

Last but not least, inviting Ahmed Mohamed to the White House will not permanently appease Muslims anywhere. It is high time America stops supporting autocrats and human rights violators like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Sheikhdoms, Egypt, Israel, and anti-Assad forces in Syria. It must stop demonizing Iran too. Washington must realize – sooner the better – not only Muslims but also others have started believing in the conspiracy theories about 9/11, and the enigmatic rise of the so-called Islamic State. As Muslims in America deserve dignity and equal opportunities, so do Muslims abroad.

The writer teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University. Sage has recently published his latest book, Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

29 September, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Today is the 70th anniversary of the UN. It is not clear how much good the UN has done. Some UN Blue Hemet peacekeeping operations had limited success. But mainly Washington has used the UN for war, such as the Korean War and Washington’s Cold War against the Soviet Union. In our time Washington had UN tanks sent in against Bosnian Serbs during the period that Washington was dismantling Yugoslavia and Serbia and accusing Serbian leaders, who tried to defend the integrity of their country against Washington’s aggression, of “war crimes.”

The UN supported Washington’s sanctions against Iraq that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked about it, Clinton’s Secretary of State said, with typical American heartlessness, that the deaths of the children were worth it. In 2006 the UN voted sanctions against Iran for exercising its right as a signatory of the non-proliferation treaty to develop atomic energy. Washington claimed without any evidence that Iran was building a nuclear weapon in violation of the non-proliferation treaty, and this lie was accepted by the UN. Washington’s false claim was repudiated by all 16 US intelligence agencies and by the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran, but in the face of the factual evidence the US government and its presstitute media pressed the claim to the point that Russia had to intervene and take the matter out of Washington’s warmonger hands. Russia’s intervention to prevent US military attacks on Iran and Syria resulted in the demonization of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. “Facts?!, Washington don’t need no stinkin’ facts! We got power!” Today at the UN Obama asserted America’s over-riding power many times: the strongest military in the world, the strongest economy in the world.

The UN has done nothing to stop Washington’s invasions and bombings, illegal under international law, of seven countries or Obama’s overthrow by coup of democratic governments in Honduras and Ukraine, with more in the works.

The UN does provide a forum for countries and populations within countries that are suffering oppression to post complaints—except, of course, for the Palestinians, who, despite the boundaries shown on maps and centuries of habitation by Palestinians, are not even recognized by the UN as a state.

On this 70th anniversary of the UN, I have spent much of the day listening to the various speeches. The most truthful ones were delivered by the presidents of Russia and Iran. The presidents of Russia and Iran refused to accept the Washington-serving reality or Matrix that Obama sought to impose on the world with his speech. Both presidents forcefully challenged the false reality that the propagandistic Western media and its government masters seek to create in order to continue to exercise their hegemony over everyone else.

What about China? China’s president left the fireworks to Putin, but set the stage for Putin by rejecting US claims of hegemony: “The future of the world must be shaped by all countries.” China’s president spoke in veiled terms against Western neoliberal economics and declared that “China’s vote in the UN will always belong to the developing countries.”

In the masterly way of Chinese diplomacy, the President of China spoke in a non-threatening, non-provocative way. His criticisms of the West were indirect. He gave a short speech and was much applauded.

Obama followed second to the President of Brazil, who used her opportunity for PR for Brazil, at least for the most part. Obama gave us the traditional Washington spiel:

The US has worked to prevent a third world war, to promote democracy by overthrowing governments with violence, to respect the dignity and equal worth of all peoples except for the Russians in Ukraine and Muslims in Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan.

Obama declared Washington’s purpose to “prevent bigger countries from imposing their will on smaller ones.” Imposing its will is what Washington has been doing throughout its history and especially under Obama’s regime.

All those refugees overrunning Europe? Washington has nothing to do with it. The refugees are the fault of Assad who drops bombs on people. When Assad drops bombs it oppresses people, but when Washington drops bombs it liberates them. Obama justified Washington’s violence as liberation from “dictators,” such as Assad in Syria, who garnered 80% of the vote in the last election, a vote of confidence that Obama never received and never will.

Obama said that it wasn’t Washington that violated Ukraine’s sovereignty with a coup that overthrew a democratically elected government. It was Russia, whose president invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimera and is trying to annex the other breakaway republics, Russian populations who object to the Russophobia of Washington’s puppet government in Ukraine.

Obama said with a straight face that sending 60 percent of the US fleet to bottle up China in the South China Sea was not an act of American aggression but the protection of the free flow of commerce. Obama implied that China was a threat to the free flow of commerce, but, of course, Washington’s real concern is that China is expanding its influence by expanding the free flow of commerce.

Obama denied that the US and Israel employ violence. This is what Russia and Syria do, asserted Obama with no evidence. Obama said that he had Libya attacked in order to “prevent a massacre,” but, of course, the NATO attack on Libya perpetrated a massacre, an ongoing one. But it was all Gaddafi’s fault. He was going to massacre his own people, so Washington did it for him.

Obama justified all of Washington’s violence against millions of peoples on the grounds that Washington is well-meaning and saving the world from dictators. Obama attempted to cover up Washington’s massive war crimes, crimes that have killed and displaced millions of peoples in seven countries, with feel good rhetoric about standing up to dictators.

Did the UN General Assembly buy it? Probably the only one present sufficiently stupid to buy it was the UK’s Cameron. The rest of Washington’s vassals went through the motion of supporting Obama’s propaganda, but there was no conviction in their voices.

Vladimir Putin would have none of it. He said that the UN works, if it works, by compromise and not by the imposition of one country’s will, but after the end of the Cold War “a single center of domination arose in the world”—the “exceptional” country. This country, Putin said, seeks its own course which is not one of compromise or attention to the interests of others.

In response to Obama’s speech that Russia and its ally Syria wear the black hats, Putin said in reference to Obama’s speech that “one should not manipulate words.”

Putin said that Washington repeats its mistakes by relying on violence which results in poverty and social destruction. He asked Obama: “Do you realize what you have done?”

Yes, Washington realizes it, but Washington will not admit it.

Putin said that “ambitious America accuses Russia of ambitions” while Washington’s ambitions run wild, and that the West cloaks its aggression as fighting terrorism while Washington finances and encourages terrorism.

The President of Iran said that terrorism was created by the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and by US support for the Zionist destruction of Palestine.

Obama’s speech made clear that Washington accepts no responsibility for the destruction of the lives and prospects of millions of Muslims. The refugees from Washington’s wars who are overflowing Europe are the fault of Assad, Obama declared.

Obama’s claim to represent “international norms” was an assertion of US hegemony, and was recognized as such by the General Assembly.

What the world is faced with is two rogue anti-democratic governments—the US and Israel—that believe that their “exceptionalism” makes them above the law. International norms mean Washington’s and Israel’s norms. Countries that do not comply with international norms are countries that do not comply with Washington and Israel’s dictates.

The presidents of Russia, China, and Iran did not accept Washington’s definition of “international norms.”

The lines are drawn. Unless the American people come to their senses and expel the Washington warmongers, war is our future.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
29 September, 2015
Paulcraigroberts.org

 

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Washington’s IQ follows the Fed’s interest rate — it is negative. Washington is a black hole into which all sanity is sucked out of government deliberations.

Washington’s failures are everywhere visible. We can see the failures in Washington’s wars and in Washington’s approach to China and Russia.

The visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was scheduled for the week-end following the Pope’s visit to Washington. Was this Washington’s way of demoting China’s status by having its president play second fiddle to the Pope? The President of China is here for week-end news coverage? Why didn’t Obama just tell him to go to hell?

Washington’s cyber incompetence and inability to maintain cyber security is being blamed on China. The day before Xi Jinping’s arrival in Washington, the White House press secretary warmed up President Jinping’s visit by announcing that Obama might threaten China with financial sanctions.

And not to miss an opportunity to threaten or insult the President of China, the US Secretary of Commerce fired off a warning that the Obama regime was too unhappy with China’s business practices for the Chinese president to expect a smooth meeting in Washington.

In contrast, when Obama visited China, the Chinese government treated him with politeness and respect.

China is America’s largest creditor after the Federal Reserve. If the Chinese government were so inclined, China could cause Washington many serious economic, financial, and military problems. Yet China pursues peace while Washington issues threats.

Like China, Russia, too, has a foreign policy independent of Washington’s, and it is the independence of their foreign policies that puts China and Russia on the outs with Washington.

Washington considers countries with independent foreign policies to be threats. Libya, Iraq, and Syria had independent foreign policies. Washington has destroyed two of the three and is working on the third. Iran, Russia, and China have independent foreign policies. Consequently, Washington sees these countries as threats and portrays them to the American people as such.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will meet with Obama next week at the UN meeting in New York. It is a meeting that seems destined to go nowhere. Putin wants to offer Obama Russian help in defeating ISIS, but Obama wants to use ISIS to overthrow Syrian President Assad, install a puppet government, and throw Russia out of its only Mediterranean seaport at Tartus, Syria. Obama wants to press Putin to hand over Russian Crimea and the break-away republics that refuse to submit to the Russophobic government that Washington has installed in Kiev.

Despite Washington’s hostility, Xi Jinping and Putin continue to try to work with Washington even at the risk of being humiliated in the eyes of their peoples. How many slights, accusations, and names (such as “the new Hitler”) can Putin and Xi Jinping accept before losing face at home? How can they lead if their peoples feel the shame inflicted on their leaders by Washington?

Xi Jinping and Putin are clearly men of peace. Are they deluded or are they making every effort to save the world from the final war?

One has to assume that Putin and Xi Jinping are aware of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the basis of US foreign and military policies, but perhaps they cannot believe that anything so audaciously absurd can be real. In brief, the Wolfowitz Doctrine states that Washington’s principal objective is to prevent the rise of countries that could be sufficiently powerful to resist American hegemony. Thus, Washington’s attack on Russia via Ukraine and Washington’s re-militarization of Japan as an instrument against China, despite the strong opposition of 80 percent of the Japanese population.

“Democracy?” “Washington’s hegemony don’t need no stinkin’ democracy,” declares Washington’s puppet ruler of Japan as he, as Washington’s faithful servant, over-rides the vast majority of the Japanese population.

Meanwhile, the real basis of US power—its economy—continues to crumble. Middle class jobs have disappeared by the millions. US infrastructure is crumbling. Young American women, overwhelmed with student debts, rent, and transportation costs, and nothing but lowly-paid part-time jobs, post on Internet sites their pleas to be made mistresses of men with sufficient means to help them with their bills. This is the image of a Third World country.

In 2004 I predicted in a nationally televised conference in Washington, DC, that the US would be a Third World country in 20 years. Noam Chomsky says we are already there now in 2015. Here is a recent quote from Chomsky:

“Look around the country. This country is falling apart. Even when you come back from Argentina to the United States it looks like a third world country, and when you come back from Europe even more so. The infrastructure is collapsing. Nothing works. The transportation system doesn’t work. The health system is a total scandal–twice the per capita cost of other countries and not very good outcomes. Point by point. The schools are declining . . .”

Another indication of a third world country is large inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. According to the CIA itself, the United States now has one of the worst distributions of income of all countries in the world. The distribution of income in the US is worse than in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Guyana, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malawi, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, UK, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html

The concentration of US income and wealth in the hands of the very rich is a new development in my lifetime. I ascribe it to two things. One is the offshoring of American jobs. Offshoring moved high productivity, high-value-added American jobs to countries where the excess supply of labor results in wages well below labor’s contribution to the value of output. The lower labor costs abroad transform what had been higher American wages and salaries and, thereby, US household incomes, into corporate profits, bonuses for corporate executives, and capital gains for shareholders, and in the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that had made the US an “opportunity society.”

The other cause of the extreme inequality that now prevails in the US is what Michael Hudson calls the financialization of the economy that permits banks to redirect income away from driving the economy to the payment of interest in service of debt issued by the banks.

Both of these developments maximize income and wealth for the One Percent at the expense of the population and economy.

As Michael Hudson and I have discovered, neoliberal economics is blind to reality and serves to justify the destruction of the economic prospects of the Western World. It remains to be seen if Russia and China can develop a different economics or whether these rising superpowers will fall victim to the “junk economics” that has destroyed the West. With so many Chinese and Russian economists educated in the US tradition, the prospects of Russia and China might not be any better than ours.

The entire world could go down the tubes together.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

26 September, 2015
Paulcraigroberts.org