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By Niles Williamson

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, accused the United States Thursday of initiating a new Cold War with Russia and expressed fears that the conflict could escalate into a nuclear Third World War.

Gorbachev made his comments as fighting escalated in Ukraine between forces directed by the US- and European Union-backed government in Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.

“Plainly speaking, the US has already dragged us into a new Cold War, trying to openly implement its idea of triumphalism,” the former Soviet leader told Interfax. “What’s next? Unfortunately, I cannot be sure that the Cold War will not bring about a ‘hot’ one. I’m afraid [the United States] might take the risk.”

He criticized the US and the EU for continuing to press for more economic sanctions against Russia. “All we hear from the US and the EU now is sanctions against Russia,” he continued. “Are they completely out of their minds? The US has been totally ‘lost in the jungle’ and is dragging us there as well.”

Earlier this month, Gorbachev gave an interview to the German news magazine Der Spiegel about the ongoing conflict between the US, EU and Russia over Ukraine. While he stated that it was “something that shouldn’t even be considered,” Gorbachev warned that a major war in Europe would “inevitably lead to a nuclear war.” He added, “If one side loses its nerves in this inflamed atmosphere, then we won’t survive the coming years.”

In the same interview, Gorbachev lamented these developments as the outcome of Washington’s construction of a “mega empire” in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev, as the initiator in the late 1980s of the process of capitalist restoration, in the form of the policies of “perestroika” and “glasnost,” bears a huge degree of responsibility for the current crisis in Ukraine and the expansion of NATO. At the time, he argued that the relentless drive of imperialism toward war had been replaced by the pursuit of universal “human values.”

The decision of the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy to preserve its own interests by liquidating the Soviet Union and restoring capitalism allowed NATO to expand its reach to Russia’s Western border.

Gorbachev was not alone in warning of the dangers involved in the Ukraine conflict. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has been involved in countless crimes of US imperialism, spoke Thursday before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, declaring himself “uneasy about beginning a process of military engagement [in Ukraine] without knowing where it will lead us and what we’ll do to sustain it.”

The 91-year-old Kissinger added: “I believe we should avoid taking incremental steps before we know how far we are willing to go. This is a territory 300 miles from Moscow, and therefore has special security implications.”

The ongoing imperialist operations in Ukraine, from last year’s US- and EU-backed fascist-spearheaded coup to the ongoing fighting in the Donbass, as well as the current sanctions regime against Russia, are aimed at asserting US hegemony over all of the former Soviet Union and ultimately breaking the Russian Federation itself into a series of semi-colonies, opening the way for the plunder of its vast natural resources.

While there had been signs in recent weeks of a desire on the part of some EU states, in particular France and Italy, to begin rebuilding diplomatic relations with Russia, a deadly rocket attack on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol last weekend brought the EU members back into line behind the sanctions regime.

An emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers on Thursday decided to extend travel bans and bank account freezes against 132 Russian citizens and 28 organizations until September of this year. The foreign ministers will meet again on February 12 to discuss escalating the current tranche of economic sanctions against Russia.

Speaking after the meeting, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier stated menacingly, “If there is an offensive towards Mariupol or other regions, one will need to respond with clear and harsher measures.”

In the wake of the EU foreign ministers meeting, Donetsk was subjected to a new round of artillery shelling. At least five civilians were reported killed when mortars struck a crowd of several hundred people waiting outside a community center for the distribution of relief aid.

Another two civilians were reported killed after a mortar shell landed near a bus stop. Artillery shelling throughout the day on Friday in western Donetsk killed at least five more civilians.

The pro-Russian separatists continued their assault on a key railway hub between Donetsk and Luhansk, taking control of the village of Vuhlehirsk, just west of a city, Debaltseve, where at least 8,000 Ukrainian forces are currently entrenched. While the city’s civilian population of 25,000 has for the most part been evacuated, at least seven civilians were reported killed by shelling on Friday.

Semen Semenchenko, founder of the Ukrainian nationalist Donbas Battalion militia, which has been integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine, reported that Kiev-backed forces in Debaltseve had been fired upon by artillery shells, mortars and grad rockets.

Ceasefire talks hosted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that were set to resume on Friday failed to even get off the ground. Vladislav Deinego and Denis Pushilin, representatives of the pro-Russian separatists, announced they were leaving Minsk for Moscow after Kiev’s representative, former president Leonid Kuchma, failed to show.

The Ukrainian government and its backers in the US and the EU have shown little desire to reach a compromise with the rebels. Speaking in the UN Security Council last week, US Ambassador Samantha Power dismissed the latest Russian peace plan as an “occupation plan.”

On Friday, in a desperate attempt to stimulate its economy and avoid a devastating recession, the Russian central bank made a surprise announcement that it was cutting its key interest rate by two percentage points, to 15 percent. This decision came little more than a month after it raised the same interest rate by 6.5 percentage points, to 17 percent, in an attempt to stem the decline of the ruble, which has lost more than 17 percent of its value since the beginning of the year.

The sudden move by the Bank of Russia is an indication that the sanctions regime, combined with the collapse of oil prices, is contributing to a mounting political and economic crisis within Russia. According to preliminary reports from Russia’s Statistics Services, the country’s economy grew by a mere 0.6 percent in 2014. Citigroup projects that, if the average price of Brent crude oil remains deflated, Russia’s economy will contract by 3 percent in 2015.

31 January, 2015
WSWS.org

By Ramzy Baroud

Whenever the word ‘refugee’ is uttered, I think of my mother. When Zionist militias began their systematic onslaught and ‘cleansing’ of the Palestinian Arab population of historic Palestine in 1948, she, along with her family, ran away from the once peaceful village of Beit Daras.

Back then, Zarefah was six. Her father died in a refugee camp in a tent provided by the Quakers soon after he had been separated from his land. She collected scrap metal to survive.

My grandmother Mariam, would venture out to the ‘death zone’ that bordered the separated and newly established state of Israel from Gaza’s refugee camps to collect figs and oranges. She faced death every day. Her children were all refugees, living in shatat – the Diaspora.

My mother lived to be 42. Her life was tremendously difficult. She married a refugee, my dad, and together they brought seven refugees into this world – my brothers, my sister and myself. One died as a toddler, for there was no medicine in the refugee camp’s clinic.

No matter where we are, in time and place, we carry our refugee ID cards, our undefinable nationalities, our precious status, our parents’ burden, our ancestors’ pain.

In fact, we have a name for it. It is called waja’ – ‘aching’ – a character that unifies millions of Palestinian refugees all across the globe. With our refugee population now dominated by second, third or even fourth generation refugees, it seems that our waja’ is what we hold in common most. Our geographies may differ, our languages, our political allegiances, our cultures, but ultimately, we meet around the painful experiences that we have internalized throughout generations.

My mother used to say – ihna yalfalastinieen damitna qaribeh – tears for us Palestinians are always close by. But our readiness to shed tears is not a sign of weakness, far from it. It is because throughout the years we managed to internalize our own exile, and its many ramifications, along with the exiles of everyone else’s. The emotional burden is just too great.

We mask the unbearable aching somehow, but it is always close to the surface. If we hear a single melody by Marcel Khalifeh or Sheikh Imam, or a few verses by Mahmoud Darwish, the wound is as fresh as ever.

Most of us no longer live in tents, but we are reminded of our refugee status every single day, by the Israeli occupation, by the Gaza siege and the internally-displaced Palestinians in Israel, by the Iraq war and the displacement of the already displaced Palestinians there, by the despicable living conditions of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East.

But for us, Syria has been our greatest waja’ in years. Aside from the fact that most of Syria’s half a million Palestinian refugees are on the run again , living the pain of displacement and loss for the second, third, or even fourth time. Nine million Syrian refugees are now duplicating the Palestinian tragedy, charting the early course of the Palestinian Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948.

Watching the destitution of the Syrian refugees is like rewinding the past , in all of its awful details. And watching Arab states clamor to aid the refugees with ample words and little action feels as if we are living Arab betrayal all over again.

I watched my grandparents die, followed by my parents and many of my peers. All of them died refugees, carrying the same status and the same lost hope of return. The most they ever received from the ‘international community’ was a few sacks of rice and cheap cooking oil. And of course, numerous tents.

With time our refugee status morphed from being a ‘problem’ to an integral part of our identities. Being a ‘refugee’ at this stage means insisting on the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees as enshrined in international law. That status is no longer just a mere reference to physical displacement but also to a political, even a national identity.

Political division may, at times, dominate Palestinian society, but we will always be united by the fact that we are refugees with a common cause: going home. While for the Palestinians of Yarmouk near Damascus, being a refugee is a matter of life and death – often by starvation – for the larger Palestinian collective, the meaning of the word has become more involved: it has been etched onto our skin forever.

But what can one say by way of advice to the relatively new refugees of Syria, considering that we are yet to liberate ourselves from a status that we never sought?

There can be only reminders and a few warnings:

First, may your displacement end soon. May you never live the waja’ of displacement to the extent that you embrace it as a part of your identity, and pass it on from one generation to another. May it be a kind of fleeting pain or passing nightmare, but never a pervasive everyday reality.

Second, you must be prepared for the worst. My grandparents left their new blankets in their village before they fled to the refugee camps because they feared they would have been ruined by the dust of the journey. Alas, the camps became home, and the blankets were confiscated as the rest of Palestine was. Please remain hopeful, but realistic.

Third, don’t believe the ‘international community’ when they make promises. They never deliver , and when they do, it is always for ulterior motives that might bring you more harm than good. In fact, the term itself is illusory, mostly used in reference to western countries which have wronged you as they have us.

Fourth, don’t trust Arab regimes. They lie. They feel not your pain . They hear not your pleas, nor do they care. They have invested so much in destroying your countries, and so little in redeeming their sins. They speak of aid that rarely arrives and political initiatives that constitute mostly press releases. But they will take every opportunity to remind you of their virtues. In fact, your victimhood becomes a platform for their greatness . They thrive at your expense, thus will invest to further your misery.

Fifth, preserve your dignity. I know, it is never easy to maintain your pride when you sleep in a barren street covered in cardboard boxes. A mother would do whatever she can to help her children pass into safety. No matter, you must never allow the wolves awaiting you at every border to exploit your desperation. You must never allow the Emir, or his children or some rich businessman or sympathetic celebrity to use you as a photo-op. Do not ever kneel. Don’t ever kiss a hand. Don’t give anyone the satisfaction to exploit your pain.

Sixth, remain united. There is strength in unity when one is a refugee. Don’t allow political squabbles to distract you from the greater battle at hand: surviving until the day you return home, and you will.

Seventh, love Syria. Yours is an unparalleled civilization. Your history is rife with triumphs that were ultimately of your own making. Even if you must leave to distant lands , keep Syria in your hearts. This too shall pass, and Syria shall redeem its glory, once the brutes vanquish. Only the spirit of the people shall survive. It is not wishful thinking. It is history.

Dear Syrian refugee, it has been 66 years and counting since my people’s dispossession began. We are yet to return, but that is a battle for my children, and their children to fight. I hope yours ends soon. Until then, please remember the tent is just a tent, and the gusts of cold wind are but of a passing storm.

And until you return home to Syria, don’t let the refugee become who you are, as you are so much more.

– Ramzy Baroud – www.ramzybaroud.net – is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com.

29 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Alan Hart

A longer version of my headline would be this. How President Obama could take on and defeat the Zionist lobby and secure for himself the freedom to put America’s own best interests first in the Middle East and wider Muslim.

In the course of a prime time address to his fellow Americans, Obama could do it with just one sentence. This one.

“To our Jewish citizens I have to say the time has come for you to decide whether you are Americans first or not.”

More on that in a moment.

At the time of writing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress (I think they are best described as traitors) are on a collision course with the Obama administration.

The issue is the determination of Netanyahu and his collaborators to wreck the prospect of a comprehensive agreement with Iran over its nuclear programme. The wrecking mechanism is a new bill under discussion for more sanctions on Iran.

Here’s what Obama said on this subject in his State of the Nation address (my emphasis added).

QUOTE

Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material. Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran; secures America and our allies – including Israel; while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict. There are no guarantees that negotiations will succeed, and I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran. But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails – alienating America from its allies; and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again. It doesn’t make sense . That is why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress . The American people expect us to only go to war as a last resort, and I intend to stay true to that wisdom.

UNQUOTE

Hours later Republican John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, issued an invitation to Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress (the House and the Senate) for the unstated purpose of mobilizing enough senators to override an Obama veto of a new bill for more sanctions on Iran . (There are 100 senators and to override an Obama veto the Republican majority with 54 seats would need the support of 13 of the 44 Democrats and 2 Independents).

When Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress in May 2011 he got 29 standing ovations, four more than Obama was given during his State of the Nation address earlier that year. (The loudest and most prolonged applause was for Netanyahu’s declarations that Israel will not return to the 1967 borders; that there will be no right of return for the Palestinians; and that an undivided Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel).

According to the very well informed Robert E. Hunter, Boehner was set up to invite Netanyahu by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. If so it’s more than reasonable to assume that Netanyahu himself was the originator of the idea.

When he addresses both Houses of Congress on 3 March he will have two main objectives.

One will be to put fire into the bellies of enough members of Congress to guarantee that, if necessary, an Obama veto on a bill for more sanctions on Iran will be overridden. In other words he will be seeking to demonstrate that he not the president is the boss.

The other will be to improve his chances of remaining prime minister after Israel’s forthcoming elections by taking some wind out of the opposition’s sails. That wind is being generated by a significant number of Israeli Jews who don’t want Netanyahu to continue as prime minister because they believe, with very good reason, that he is putting Israel’s special relationship with America at great risk. When he returns to Israel he imagines he will be able to say something like, “It’s true that my relationship with President Obama is not so good, but I command much more support than he does where it matters most – in Congress.”

Behind closed doors at the White House, which was not consulted, the invitation for Netanyahu to address both Houses of Congress provoked extreme anger. One unnamed official told Ha’aretz that Netanyahu had “spat ” in President Obama’s face. (Two weeks previously Obama telephoned Netanyahu to demand that he toned down his pro-sanctions rhetoric). Also revealed was that the “chickenshit” epithet with which an anonymous administration official branded Netanyahu several months ago was mild compared to the language used in the White House when news of Netanyahu’s intentions came in.

The reasons why Obama wants a comprehensive agreement with Iran, which I believe is there for the taking subject only to America agreeing not to drag out the ending of all sanctions on Iran, include the following.

* He knows that Iran is NOT developing nuclear weapons and does not want to develop them . (It follows that he also knows Netanyahu has been playing the Iranian nuclear threat card with great success to take attention away from Israel’s on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank).

* He fears, with very good reason, that if the prospects for a comprehensive agreement with Iran are sabotaged, its hardliners may well demand that Iran changes course and develops nuclear weapons for deterrence . (These hardliners know that the Bush-Blair war on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would not have happened if it had possessed nuclear weapons). In other words, and as Obama also knows, the sabotaging of a comprehensive agreement with Iran could set in motion a doomsday scenario in which an American president could be manipulated into going to war with Iran, a war that would have catastrophic consequences for the region and, almost certainly, the whole world.

* He knows that America needs Iran’s assistance if ISIS and other forms of violent Islamic fundamentalism are to be contained and ultimately defeated.

* He knows that American big business wants a comprehensive agreement with Iran because it is fully aware that European big business is fed up with the sanctions on Iran and could well break ranks with the U.S. and do wealth-generating and job-creating business with it if a comprehensive agreement is sabotaged by Zionism and its stooges in Congress and the mainstream media. In that event Europe not America would have the lion’s share of the lucrative business to be done with Iran for many years to come.

In summary Zionist lobby prisoner Obama has a complete understanding of why it is in the best interests of America that a comprehensive deal with Iran is done.

If the time comes when it seems that the Zionist lobby will have the Senate votes needed to override a presidential veto on a new bill for more sanctions on Iran, Obama will have a choice: either to surrender to Zionism’s will and become complicit by default in the betrayal of America’s own best interests, or, to take the Zionist lobby on and defeat it.

My view is that he could set in motion a change of political dynamics to ensure the Zionist lobby’s defeat by taking to the bully pulpit – going over the heads of Congress with a prime time television and radio address in which he would spell out, explicitly, why it is in America’s own best that a comprehensive deal with Iran be done.

He could also point out that even if the day did come when Iran possessed nuclear bombs, the notion that it would use them to launch a first strike on Israel is ludicrous because doing so would invite Iran’s complete destruction. On this point he could add that those in Congress who insist that Iran poses a threat to Israel’s existence are recycling Zionist propaganda nonsense.

That said Obama could then deploy his rhetorical nuclear bomb – a statement to the effect that it is time for American Jews to decide whether they are Americans first or not.

And he could put flesh on that bone by adding something like this.

“The question our American Jewish citizens need to come to grips with is the following. Is it acceptable that a lobby which represents the views of less than a quarter of America’s Jews, and by no means speaks for all Israeli Jews, can cause Congress to defy policies enunciated by the elected president of the United states and commander-in-chief of its armed forces?”

If I was drafting a bully pulpit speech for Obama I would have him add that while he understood and empathised with American and European Jewish fears that anti-Semitism is on the rise, he could not leave unsaid the fact that the prime cause of the creeping transformation of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism is Israel’s behaviour – its defiance of international law and all that comes with it, including on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank and brutal rejection of the Palestinian claim for an acceptable amount of justice .

QUESTION . How would Jewish Americans respond if the Zionist lobby continues its campaign to kill the prospect of a comprehensive agreement with Iran and President Obama confronted it in the way I have suggested above?

While I was thinking about the answer I read an open letter to President Obama by the Jewish American writer David Harris-Gershon. As published by Tikkun Daily it reads as follows (my emphasis added).

QUOTE

You don’t know my name, though you know the names of those who represent hundreds of thousands of American Jews who, like me, publicly support your diplomatic efforts with Iran.

And while you don’t know my name, you know that I and those like me represent 52 percent of U.S. Jews who support your diplomatic efforts over those presented by Congressional Republicans and Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who are now shamelessly working, behind your back, in concert to undermine your administration’s historic gains.

As the leader of Israel, Netanyahu often claims to speak for all Jews, absurdly conflating his political ideals with those of American Jewry. But he does not speak for most of us. Indeed, there are over three million American Jews for whom he does not speak. Over three million voices in the American Jewish community who reject current efforts to scuttle historic nuclear negotiations with Iran. Who reject efforts to undermine peaceful diplomacy. And who reject John Boehner’s outrageous breach of protocol by inviting a foreign leader to deliver a response to your State of the Union address.

I know you are rightly outraged, viewing Netanyahu as having spat in your face after your consistent defence of Israel on the international stage. I know that you and officials in your administration feel as though there should be consequences for what is about to transpire on March 3, when Netanyahu will rise before Congress as the leader of a foreign ‘ally’ and publicly reject your diplomatic efforts for political gain back home.

This, in my view, should be the consequence: the amplification of ‘pro-Israel’ voices like mine in the American Jewish community who reject Netanyahu, be it for his desire to bomb Iran, his desire to continue Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians or his expansion of settlements and rejection of peace.

I’m not actually asking for a personal invitation to the White House, though I would certainly not turn one down. What I’m asking is that you invite American Jewish leaders and activists to the White House on March 3 to publicly amplify those liberal and progressive voices Netanyahu claims to represent. I’m asking that you use this as an opportunity to reveal to the American public that most American Jews see Netanyahu as a harmful force, both in Israel, in the Middle East and in the world. I’m asking that you give us a chance to support your diplomatic efforts with Iran passionately and eloquently as Congress rises repeatedly to applaud Netanyahu’s damaging rhetoric.

And after you have done so, I ask that you invite civil leaders and activists in the Iranian-American and Palestinian-American communities in order to amplify their pro-diplomacy, pro-peace voices.

The New York Times calls what Israel and the GOP have done to be a disrespectful “breach of sense and diplomacy.” What NYT editors did not say is that this breach is an opportunity, now that the hole is gaping, for you to counter Netanyahu’s voice with powerful ones which exist within the nation you lead.

I ask that you let us help you lead.

Best,
An American Jew

UNQUOTE

I agree with Harris-Gershon. Netanyahu, the Zionist lobby and Boehner have overplayed their hand to such an extent that they have created an opportunity for Obama to take them on. If he does the result will be what Harris-Gershon is calling for – an amplification of American Jewish voices which reject Netanyahu and all he represents and the support of a significant (possibly overwhelming) majority of America’s Jews for Obama’s efforts to secure a comprehensive agreement with Iran. And that would be a major and very public defeat for the Zionist lobby, a defeat which I think would mark the beginning of the end of its ability to call the policy shots.

It should be noted that even Fox News (repeat even Fox News!) lashed out at Netanyahu for his “egregious snub of Obama”. Anchorman Chris Wallace said he was shocked and called Netanyahu’s move “wicked.” He also said he thought Netanyahu’s strategy was “very risky”.

It is but I hope it’s a risk Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby won’t back away from because they can be beaten, thanks to the incredibly arrogant and stupid way they have overplayed their hand.

Footnote

In the Fox News discussion with Chris Wallace from which I quoted anchorman Shep Smith made the following comment.

QUOTE

George Bush used to say “You must stop the expansion of the settlements,” so what does Israel do? They move on with expanding the settlements. This president says, “You gotta stop expanding the settlements,” and they just keep expanding the settlements.” It seems like they think we don’t pay attention and that we’re just a bunch of complete morons.

UNQUOTE

That was more or less my opinion of the Fox News presenters, but if they are now coming to grips with the fact that Netanyahu is dangerously deluded and is, as Harris-Gershon put it, harmful in Israel, the Middle East and the world, I’ll revise my opinion.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent.
29 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

26 January, 2015

YANGON – During the course of his pre-organized mass meeting on 16 January, 2015, Ah-shin Wirathu, self-declared Nationalistic leader, attacked United Nations Special Rapporteur to Myanmar, Ms. Yanghee Lee and women activists. Hate speech, intimidation and degradation of human dignity will not be tolerated in Myanmar.

In his verbal assault on Ms. Lee, Ah-shin Wirathu specifically attacked her for her support of Rohingya Muslims and interfaith marriage. The interfaith movement in our country is strong, and this incident has publicly detracted from it. As a Buddhist Monk, Ah-shin Wirathu has marred the face of clergy and tarnished our country’s image. Religious authorities everywhere should be outraged by such disgraceful representation.

Hate speech is an unacceptable practice in Myanmar, as our country moves toward democratic change, and we condemn it wholeheartedly. We believe that moving forward, clergy, especially, have a responsibility to act as exemplary leaders of love, peace, openness and respect. Ah-shin Wirathu’s speech stands in direct opposition to religiosity and morality. We must, therefore, indicate to the international community and reiterate to ourselves that hate speech is inexcusable in Myanmar and an impediment to democratic progress.

Myanmar Peace and Human Rights Consortium members will continue to condemn any person who employs hate speech and insults the dignity of others.

Contact:

Myo Win, Steering Member, starmywin@gmail.com

Myanmar Peace and Human Rights Consortium
All member organizations support the actions of the Myanmar Peace and Human Rights
Consortium.
Equality Myanmar – Myanmar, Land Core Group – Myanmar Lawyers Network in Yangon –
Karen Women’s Empowerment Group – The National Youth Congress – SMILE Education and
Development Foundation – Shwe Minn Tha Foundation – The Myanmar Journalist Union –
Thabyay Education Foundation – International Organization Membership:

By Jon V Kofas

The global significance of the election in Greece is the symbolism of popular opposition to:

a) Western-imposed austerity that results in income redistribution from the bottom 80% the population to the top 20%;

b) Blatant disregard for national sovereignty of debtor nations by the hegemonic creditor governments that represent finance capital;

c) Popular democracy can prevail despite the massive propaganda by the mainstream media demonizing any political party or movement appealing for social justice;

d) Contagion effect, as other political movements, PODEMOS in Spain for example, will follow the precedent set by the Greek election

e) A major blow to the neoliberal model of development under globalization that the West has been presenting as “the only way” to conduct economic and social policy.

f) The EU and the US will exert immense pressure on the newly-elected government to pursue neoliberal policies with some watered down version of social and economic policies that take into account the working class and waning middle class. In short, a strategy of co-optation has already begun, so that the center-left party becomes in essence a neoliberal one in policy but remains center-left in rhetoric.

g) If co-optation fails, the challenge of the financial and political elites now is to prevent popular political parties in other nations asserting national sovereignty and social justice as cornerstones of their platform. This means that there will be an international overt – media propaganda – and covert efforts through political and economic means – to undermine, discredit and topple the elected government and bring about regime change.

On 25 January 2015, Greece elected SYRIZA, a left-of-center regime opposed to the harsh austerity measures that the IMF and EU had imposed along with a series of policies that essentially resulted in the super-concentration of wealth in the hands of a few thousand families while 50% of youth were unemployed in an economy where “formal unemployment” remains at 26% and the poverty rates at one third of the population. These are Great Depression conditions, but the defenders of austerity and neoliberalism insist that there is no alternative.

The initial Western press reaction ranged from panic to caution about SYRIZA that people chose to lead them. Nothing about the process of democracy working, nothing about popular sovereignty, nothing about the sense of hope, real or not, that the new government instills in a country that has seen its income drop by one-third and the middle class destroyed. The only issue is that neoliberalism now threatened beyond Greece, in Spain, Italy, Portugal and other debtor nations that will dare choose governments representing the majority and not banks and corporations.

Some media outlets called SYRIZA Communist, others radical left, others populist left. Not a single mainstream media outlet bothered to explain the ideological orientation of the political party or its platform, other than to state it opposes austerity, opposition that right wing political parties across Europe also share. Instead of stating the ideological position and specific platform of the party, the mainstream Western media simply warned that SYRIZA poses a threat to markets and to EU’s stability, as though the EU has been stable in the past five years when SYRIZA was in the opposition.

SYRIZA is a coalition of Socialist and reformist centrist political elements that rests on an ideology of reformism within the system. Its ideology has roots in European Socialism, with strong elements of the Euro-Communism of the 1970s. Eclectic and rooted in the concept of social justice that entails creating a strong social welfare safety net, the ideology of SYRIZA is classic European social democratic, despite rhetoric that tends to carry over to Socialism. The party platform includes private sector backed by the state, a multi-dimensional foreign trade policy and a foreign policy rooted in national interests rather than Western imperial interests intended to destabilize the Middle East and Balkans.

The triumph of neoliberalism – a trend that started under the conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s – was complete with the downfall of the Communist bloc and the global economic integration in which Communist China became the engine for global growth since the 1990s.

The symbolic significance of SYRIZA winning the election has shocked the neoliberals across Europe, because they fear national sovereignty and popular resistance to globalization. Throughout the 20th century, the Western countries tried everything from political and economic pressure to military coercion to pursue their interests in non-Western countries as well as the periphery of Europe. The goal was always integration under the patron-client model, a model of hegemony by the Western countries – the patrons – over the rest they see as client states serving Western economic, political and military interests. The anathema for the West has always been a strong state representing national interests and opposed to the patron-client integration model.

How did Greece along with many other EU and non-EU countries fall into debt? The number one culprit was that the fiscal system favored the top income earners, the financial elites foreign and domestic, forcing the state to engage in heavy borrowing to meet its needs, among them a very expensive defense program that added nothing to the productive capacity of the economy. The austerity and neo-liberal solution resulted in a sharp rise of the public debt which cannot possibly be serviced under any conditions short of a 50% haircut with the investors taking the loss.

The economy has been experiencing negative growth under austerity, unemployment and poverty rates are the highest in the EU, and the prospects for development are almost nil in the absence of massive investment that has been absent. Despite this reality, the representatives of the Western financial elites have already condemned SYRIZA even before it has had the chance to take power.

Defending neo-liberalism and corporate welfare, which means massive transfer of public funds from social programs to corporations, a number of bank representatives have argued that SYRIZA must either comply with IMF-EU austerity, or face the consequences of no credit from the European Central Bank. Naturally, this means that Greece must accept integration under the German-imposed patron-client model, or face a possible exodus from the euro.

Saxo Bank chief economist Simon Smith argued that: “The troika (ECB, EU & IMF) are now in a bind. If they cede to [Greece’s] demands, then markets will display no faith in the ability of other eurozone members to stick to austerity policies. If they stand their ground and Greece leaves, then the irreversible nature of the single currency would have been broken, which would make other peripheral nations more vulnerable as investors would be prepared to price in exit in certain circumstances.”

The rating agency Standard and Poor’s immediately warned the new government of a possible downgrade if it deviates from the IMF-EU austerity program and neo-liberal policies. Similar warning have come pouring in from official circles and banks across Europe. These are reminders that Greece has no leverage and that the patron-client integration model, austerity and neo-liberalism will remain exactly as the G-7 and financial markets dictate. By contrast, the new prime minister Alexis Tsipras visited the memorial site of Nazi war-crime victims, symbolically reminding Germany that it owes billions in war reparations to Greece, while reminding the West about the absence of justice when it comes to relations between core countries and periphery within the EU. Of course, the EU and US will try both co-optation and coersion and will even threaten to isolate Greece if it dares defy austerity measures and neo-liberalism.

The Europeans know very well that if Greece leaves the euro it will be even more costly for the creditor nations and the markets than if it remains and cuts a deal to reduce its public debt and payments it cannot possibly afford to make unless it impoverishes more than half of its population. The financial and political elites have major challenges not because SYRIZA won the election in January 2015, for that may prove highly symbolic victory for popular democracy, but because the rest of the world, especially the rest of EU, needed a concrete example to point the way to an alternative that at least addresses some social justice and gross socioeconomic inequality issues. If Spain follows the Greek example, that will not be just a symbolic defeat for neo-liberalism, but a substantive one with serious political and economic consequences for the EU. Fear and dread of popular democracy and national sovereignty on the part of the financial elites and mainstream political parties remains very strong motivator for the strategies they adopt to combat any efforts to water down neo-liberalism and the patron-client integration model on a world scale.

In foreign policy, SYRIZA will try to pursue a policy that tries to take into account the roles of China and Russia, while remaining part of the Western sphere of influence. Greek foreign policy government will depend on many factors. It is true that SYRIZA, like PASOK in the early 1980s, will have a rhetorical commitment of a more balanced foreign policy that takes into account Russia’s interests in Greece and throughout the EU. In the last analysis, Greece is a NATO member, it is an EU member and it has constrictive conditions placed on it. On the other hand, Turkey is also a NATO member, but does not necessarily follow whatever the EU and US dictate. My guess is a foreign policy that at least takes into account China and Russia, while making accommodations to the West without submitting completely to the West as have previous regimes. One last caveat here, there is a huge difference between rhetoric politicians use for domestic and international consumption and what measures they take. SYRIZA has what I call “non-aligned” rhetoric employed, but in the end it will have to accommodate the West more than its leaders now realize.

28 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Jon V Kofas is a novelist.

By Kim Scipes

A talk by John Mearsheimer and Rick Rozoff, Evanston , Illinois , January 10, 2015

Two widely recognized authorities on big power politics and NATO recently gave a public talk on the current situation in the Ukraine at the Evanston ( Illinois ) Public Library. Organized by the Evanston Neighbors for Peace, John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago ( http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu ), and Rick Rozoff, a long-time activist who maintains the “Stop NATO—Opposition to Global Militarism” web site ( https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com ), spent three hours recently trying to cut through the lies and obfuscation that the US public has been fed around the current developments in Ukraine.

Mearsheimer began the session, and was followed by Rozoff. Afterwards, they responded to each other’s presentation and then took questions and statements from the public, making this a very lively and informative session. This reporter was present throughout and took notes from the presentations; this reporter inserted sub-headings within to help readability.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER

Mearsheimer started off, noting the “significant deterioration in US-Russian foreign relations.” He argued this situation is “fundamentally wrong.”

He gave background to what’s going on. Basically, US-Russian relations were ok until February 22, 2014 . Since then, things have gone “down the toilet bowl.” (On February 22, 2014 , there was a coup in Kiev , Ukraine , where protestors—which the support of the US Government—overthrew the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych.)

Before February 22, there was no evidence of American or European policy makers being concerned with Ukraine . US Ambassador to Russia , Michael McFaul, stated there was “no reason to contain Russia ,” and said that the US did not see [Russian President Vladimir] Putin as an “aggressor.” There was no evidence to suggest otherwise.

Since the coup, Russia has encouraged the citizens of Crimea—a Russian speaking area that had been given to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954—to reunite with Russia, which they did via a local referendum in March 2014. At the same time, there’s been a war “by virtually all accounts” in the Eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian government on one side, and Russia-supporting rebels on the other.

The US blames Putin for all of the turmoil. According to Mearsheimer, the US is acting “like kids who never understand what they’ve done wrong.” Some commentators have called Putin “a new Hitler,” which Mearsheimer says such arguments are “ludicrous in the extreme”: nothing that Putin has done has ever put him in the category of Hitler.

Mearsheimer says, “The Russians have made clear that Ukraine is a core strategic area.” In other words, they will defend it at all costs: their response to crisis in Ukraine is similar to what the US would do if a nuclear-armed “opponent” were to try to take over Canada or Mexico .

Mearsheimer said there were three things going on in Ukraine : NATO was trying to expand, the EU (European Union) was trying to expand, and that the US was trying to “promote democracy” in Ukraine and Georgia : basically, the idea was to put the Western powers directly on the borders of Russia . And they were trying to do this by incorporating Ukraine (as well as Georgia ) into NATO and the EU.

Some Relevant Historical Background

When the Soviet Union allowed its Empire in Eastern Europe to collapse in 1989 without sending in tanks, US President George Herbert Walker Bush (the old man) told Mikhail Gorbachev that the US would not take advantage of the situation and would not expand NATO eastward. [Apparently, Gorbachev accepted Bush at his word, and this was never written down—KS.] NATO did not expand eastward until 1999, when it expanded under Bill Clinton. In 2004, under George W. Bush, it expanded to include the Baltic States . In April 2008, at a NATO Summit in Bucharest , Romania , NATO offered membership to the former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia . In August 2008, there was the war between Russia and Georgia , where the Russians said unequivocally, NO WAY.

At the same time, the EU was expanding eastward, trying to incorporate as many countries in Eastern Europe into its monetary and trading zone. They were steadily trying to incorporate Ukraine as well.

At the same time, the West was also trying to “promote democracy,” and getting pro-Western leaders into positions of political leadership in these countries, including Ukraine . The so-called “Orange Revolution” in 2004 was intended to do this.

The Russians were spooked by these three strategies, especially when combined, like they were.

Where things hit the crisis level was the result of Ukraine ‘s president Viktor Yanukovych’s flirting with accepting a EU economic package for this country during the Fall of 2013. Ultimately, Yanukovych decided to “deep six” the deal, and decided to accept an economic package from Russia . This lead to massive protests inside Ukraine—particularly in the European-leaning western part of the country—and these protests led to the February 22 coup, which forced Yanukovych out of office and out of the country.

Russia’s Response to the Coup

Mearsheimer labeled Russia ‘s response “highly understandable.” Russia made clear this situation was “categorically unacceptable.” He said that if we wanted a good analogy, we should look at the US response to the Soviet Union ‘s placement of missiles in Cuba in 1962 or even the Monroe Doctrine itself, which he described as telling other world powers to stay out of “our neighborhood,” the entire Western Hemisphere .

As Mearsheimer summed it up, “Great Powers are very sensitive to disruptions on their borders and in their neighborhoods.”

He stressed it again: Russia ‘s response is “completely understandable.” Putin and the Russians are not going to allow Ukraine to join NATO: they see this as an “existential threat.”

Accordingly, they “took Crimea,” although they had 25,000 troops stationed there under a long-term lease that allowed the Russian Black Sea Fleet to harbor at Sevastopol; obviously, they didn’t want to risk that lease being terminated, causing them to loose that naval base. The Russians have also helped facilitate troubles in eastern Ukraine . According to Mearsheimer, however, they will not invade. He notes that Russia is in both serious economic and political trouble—the West’s sanctions have hurt Russia, but probably the bigger, immediate problem is the collapse of global oil prices—but he argues that the conventional forces of Russian cannot swallow Ukraine; they have limited military capabilities. He says an invasion by Russia is “not in the cards: there’s no evidence that they want to do it and they aren’t capable,” either.

What the Russians can do, however, is wreck the country as a functioning society.

In response, the West keeps telling the government in Ukraine to keep playing hardball with the Russians. Mearsheimer thinks this is misleading Ukraine . He said it’s stupid to tell Ukrainians to keep screwing themselves by poking the Russians. “Putin is certain to make sure Ukraine will not be part of the West.”

From Here?

Mearsheimer thinks there is a simple solution to the crisis: take NATO and EU expansion off the table. His idea is to make Ukraine a neutral border state.

He argues that Putin hasn’t wanted to pick a fight, and the evidence shows that there really wasn’t a problem in Ukraine until the Fall of 2013, after Yanukovych decided to take a Russian deal instead of one with the EU. He states simply, “Putin did not create the crisis.”

Mearsheimer thinks that the US is being “foolish in the extreme” to keep supporting the Ukrainians’ conflict with Russia . He argues this makes the chance of a war more dangerous.

RICK ROZOFF

Rozoff started off by thanking Mearsheimer for speaking truth to power in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault” (September-October 2014). He then pointed out this was Day 270 of the “anti-terrorist operation” by Ukraine , and the “Fifth Act” of NATO’s expansion.

Most Americans never even consider NATO, especially after the dissolution of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe , which was touted as “the end of the Cold War.” Rozoff pointed out that despite the supposed end, NATO has been very aggressively expanding eastward toward Russia , which was the heartland of the Soviet Union .

• This began in 1990, when East Germany was absorbed into Germany . (GHW Bush Administration);

• In 1999, at the 50 th anniversary of the founding of NATO, in a NATO Summit in Washington , DC , NATO engaged in its first post-Cold War expansion, inviting Poland , Hungary and Poland to join it. ( Clinton Administration).

• In 2004, Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania (the “ Baltic States ”) joined, along with Slovenia and Slovakia (parts of former Yugoslavia ), Bulgaria and Romania (GWB Administration).

• In 2009, Croatia (part of former Yugoslavia ) and Albania joined, although they had been invited in 2008, under the GW Bush Administration. By 2009, NATO had increased its membership by 75%, now having 28 full members and 49 “partner” countries, for a total of 77 country members. Over 70% of the total world spending on military weaponry is done by these nations.

(To get a good geo-political understanding of NATO, go to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANATO_partnerships.svg . By NATO_cooperations_partners.svg: *BlankMap-World-Microstates.svg: Nuclear Vacuum NATO_Cooperations_Partners.png: Alinor derivative work: Patrick [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.) All countries except for Russia are in some relationship with NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including Australia and Columbia !

• In 2008, both Georgia and Ukraine were told they could eventually become members.

Rozoff pointed out that not only had NATO been expanding aggressively, it has now fought in a number of wars, most far away from Europe . It forces fought in the 1994-95 war in Yugoslavia , and then again in 1999, when it carried out a 78 day bombing campaign in support of Kosovo’s succession. After that, it sent forces to Afghanistan beginning in 2001, forces “for training” in Iraq in 2004, ships for anti-piracy duty in the Gulf of Aden (off of Somalia ), and then in 2011, it led the war on Libya .

But NATO engages in war-like activities (called “exercises”) designed to enhance its war-fighting capabilities. For example, Rozoff talked about a March 2014 NATO exercise above the Artic Circle . This “exercise” involved 16,000 troops from 16 nations and took place approximately 200 miles from Russia .

Rozoff pointed out that this aggressive behavior towards Russia, up to and including developments in Ukraine—and he said it could only be seen that way by the Russians, despite whatever rationales were mouthed by NATO—was very dangerous. He mentioned that Mikhail Gorbachev had even suggested recently that things in Ukraine could easily get out of hand, and that ultimately could lead to nuclear war.

Rozoff ended his talk with arguing the need to disband NATO, which he called “the biggest threat to world peace.”

DISCUSSION

Mearsheimer states that the ruling elite of Ukraine wants to be part of the West, not Russia . However, he argues, “they do not have a right to do whatever they want.” He says their problem is what he called “bad geography.” The Russians consider Ukraine to be a core strategic region. He says that the West is leading Ukraine “down a primrose path” that can only end up hurting Ukraine .

An audience member asked about US activities in Ukraine being connected to economic interests?

Mearsheimer stated that the there’s no doubt that the US is economically interested in Ukraine , but he argues there is no need to try to pull Ukraine away from Russia . The sanctions that the Obama Administration and the EU have imposed on Russia have “severely damaged” Russia , but it’s leading to blowback (i.e., unintended consequences) on Western Europe . He believes that some of the current EU economic problems are being caused by the Ukraine crisis. He says German business elites clearly are opposed to economic sanctions against Russia .

Someone else asked if Russia could withstand economic sanctions along with the collapse of oil prices?

Mearsheimer says this is a great crisis for Russia, but he does not think Russia will collapse—and that they will not give up, as Ukraine is a core strategic area for them. He says that Russia has two things going for it: “they have arms, including nuclear weapons, and hydrocarbon.” He pointed out that the EU is the second largest consumer of hydrocarbon in the world.

Someone else asked what was the US role in the 2013 protests/2014 coup in Ukraine ? Mearsheimer said he didn’t know. He said it was hard to get details.

This reporter—a scholar who has done research on the US “democracy promotion” activities—then made a contribution to the discussion. He said that Americans were working closely with the protestors who came to power in the coup. He pointed out that Victoria Nuland, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and US Senator John McCain—the Chairman of the International Republican Institute, which is a core institute of the US government’s so-called National Endowment for Democracy—participated in protests in Kiev . However, he said he doesn’t know if the US had facilitated the coup, but that there has been a lot of “democracy promotion” money sent to Ukraine to develop political parties, and this went to opposition politicians who opposed the democratically elected government.

Another audience member pointed out that he understood there had been considerable monies sent to the Ukraine opposition by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (a right-wing foundation) of Germany , as well as USAID (US Agency for International Development). He also stated he had been in Ukraine recently, and specifically noted that there were people from fascist organizations involved in the opposition, and they now held important positions in the post coup government.

With that last interaction, the session was closed. Thus ended a very informative program that helped clear up a lot of misinformation about currents in eastern Europe and specifically Ukraine . It’s importance became even more clear as President Obama, in his January 20 th State of the Union speech, claimed that it was Putin who was the aggressor in Ukraine —more disinformation by the Commander in Chief.

Kim Scipes, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University in Westville , Indiana , although he lives in Chicago .

27 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

When the former Goldman Sachs executive who runs the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that he was going to print 720 billion euros annually with which to purchase bad debts from the politically connected big banks, the euro sank and the stock market and Swiss franc shot up. As in the US, quantitative easing (QE) serves to enrich the already rich. It has no other purpose.

The well-heeled financial institutions that bought up the troubled sovereign debt of Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain at low prices will now sell the bonds to the ECB for high prices. And despite depression level unemployment in most of Europe and austerity imposed on citizens, the stock market rose in anticipation that much of the 60 billion new euros that will be created each month will find its way into equity prices. Liquidity fuels the stock market.

Where else can the money to go? Some will go into Swiss francs and some into gold while gold is still available, but for the most part the ECB is running the printing press in order to boost the wealth of the stock-owning One Percent. The Federal Reserve and the ECB have taken the West back to the days when a handful of aristocrats owned everything.

The stock markets are bubbles blown by central bank money creation. On the basis of traditional reasoning there is no sound reason to be in equities, and sound investors have avoided them.

But there is no return anywhere else, and as the central banks are run by the rich for the rich, sound reasoning has proved to be a mistake for the past six years. This shows that corruption can prevail for an indeterminable period over fundamentals.

As I demonstrated in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, first Goldman Sachs deceived lenders into over-lending to the Greek government. Then Goldman Sachs former executives took over Greece’s financial affairs and forced austerity upon the population in order to prevent losses to the foreign lenders.

This established a new principle in Europe, one that the IMF has relentlessly applied to Latin American and Third World debtors. The principle is that when foreign lenders make mistakes and over-lend to foreign governments, loading them up with debt, the bankers’ mistakes are rectified by robbing the poor populations. Pensions, social services, and public employment are cut, valuable resources are sold off to foreigners for pennies on the dollar, and the government is forced to support US foreign policy. John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man describes the process perfectly. If you haven’t read Perkins book, you have little idea how corrupt and vicious the United States is. Indeed, Perkins shows that over-lending is intentional in order to set up the country for looting.

This is what Goldman Sachs did to Greece, intentionally or unintentionally.

It took the Greeks a long time to realize it. Apparently, 36.5 percent of the population was awoken by rising poverty, unemployment, and suicide rates. That figure, a little over one-third of the vote, was enough to put Syriza in power in the just concluded Greek election, throwing out the corrupt New Democracy party that has consistently sold out the Greek people to the foreign banks. Nevertheless, 27.7 percent of the Greeks, if the vote reporting is correct, voted for the party that has sacrificed the Greek people to the banksters. Even in Greece, a country accustomed to outpourings of people into the streets, a significant percentage of the population is sufficiently brainwashed to vote against their own interests.

Can Syriza do anything? It remains to be seen, but probably not. If the political party had received 55% or 65% or 75% of the vote, yes. But the largest vote at 36.5% does not show a unified country aware of its plight and its looting at the hands of rich banksters. The vote shows that a significant percentage of the Greek population supports foreign looting of Greece.

Moreover, Syriza is up against the heavies: the German and Netherlands banks who hold Greece’s loans and the governments that back the banks, the European Union which is using the sovereign debt crisis to destroy the sovereignty of the individual countries that comprise the European Union, Washington which backs EU sovereign power over the individual countries as it is easier to control one government than a couple of dozen.

Already the Western financial presstitutes are warning Syriza not to endanger its membership in the common currency by diverting from the austerity model imposed from abroad on Greek citizens with the complicity of New Democracy.

Apparently, there is a lack of formal means of exiting the EU and the euro, but nevertheless Greece can be threatened with being thrown out. Greece should welcome being thrown out.

Exiting the EU and the euro is the best thing that can happen to Greece. A country without its own currency is not a sovereign country. It is a vassal state of another power. A country without its own currency cannot finance its own needs. Although the UK is a member of the EU, the UK kept its own currency and is not subject to control by the ECB. A country without its own money is powerless. It is a non-entity.

If the US did not have its own dollar, the US would be of no consequence whatsoever on the world scene.

The EU and the euro were deception and trickery. Countries lost their sovereignty. So much for Western “self-rule,” “freedom,” “democracy,” all slogans without content. In the entire West there is nothing but the looting of people by the One Percent who control the governments.

In America, the looting does not rely on indebtedness, because the US dollar is the reserve currency and the US can print all the money needed in order to pay its bills and redeem its debt. In America the looting of labor has been through jobs offshoring.

American corporations discovered, and if they did not they were informed by Wall Street to move offshore or be taken over, that they could raise profits by moving their manufacturing operations abroad. The lower labor cost resulted in higher profits, higher share prices, huge managerial bonuses based on “performance,” and shareholder capital gains. Offshoring greatly increased the inequality in income and wealth in the US. Capital succeeded in looting labor.

The displaced well-paid manufacturing workers, if they were able to find replacement jobs, worked part-time minimum wage jobs at Walmart and Home Depot.

Economists, if they are entitled to the designation, such as Michael Porter and Matthew Slaughter, promised Americans that the fictional “New Economy” would produce better, higher-paying, and cleaner jobs for Americans than the “dirty fingernail” jobs that we were fortunate our corporations were moving offshore.

Years later, as I have proven conclusively, there is no sign of these “New Economy” jobs. What we have instead is a sharp decline in the labor force participation rate as the unemployed cannot find jobs. The replacement jobs for the manufacturing jobs are mainly part-time domestic service jobs.
People have to hold 2 or 3 of these jobs to make ends meet. These part time jobs offer no medical or pension benefits.

Now that this fact, once controversial believe it or not, has proven completely true, the same bought-and-paid-for spokespersons for robbing labor and destroying unions claim, without a shred of evidence, that the offshored jobs are coming home.

According to these propagandists, we now have what is called “reshoring.” A “reshoring” propagandist claims that the growth of “reshoring” over the past four years is 1,775 percent, an 18 times increase. http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/2015/A.T.Kearny-No-Data-Supporting-Reshoring-0112151.html

There is no sign whatsoever of these alleged “reshoring” jobs in the monthly BLS payroll jobs statistics.

What reshoring is all about is propaganda to counteract the belated realization that “free trade” agreements and job offshoring were not beneficial to the American economy or its work force, but were beneficial only to the super-rich.

Like people throughout history, the American people are being turned into serfs and slaves because the fools believe the lies that are fed to them. They sit in front of Fox News, CNN, and whatever. They read the New York Times. If you want to learn how badly Americans have been served by the so-called media, read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the United States.

The media helps the government, and the private interests that profit from their control of government, control the brainwashed public. We have to invade Afghanistan because a faction there fighting for political control of the country is protecting Osama bin Laden, whom the US accuses without any proof of embarrassing the mighty US with the 9/11 attack. We have to invade Iraq because Saddam has “weapons of mass destruction” that he surely has despite the reports to the contrary by the weapons inspectors. We have to overthrow Gaddafi because of a slate of lies that have best been forgotten. We have to overthrow Assad because he used chemical weapons even though all evidence is to the contrary. Russia is responsible for Ukraine problems, not because the US overthrew the elected democratic government but because Russia accepted a 97.6% vote of Crimeans to rejoin Russia where the province had resided for hundreds of years before a Ukrainian Soviet leader, Khrushchev, stuck Crimea into Ukraine, at the time a part of the Soviet Union along with Russia.

War, War, War, that is all Washington wants. It enriches the military/security complex, the largest component of the US GNP and the largest contributor, along with Wall Street and the Israel Lobby, to US political campaigns.

Anyone or any organization that offers truth to the lies is demonized. Last week the new chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, listed the Russian TV Internet service Russia Today as the equivalent of Boko Haram and the Islamic State terrorist groups. This absurd accusation is a prelude to closing down RT in the US just as Washington’s puppet UK government closed down Iran’s Press TV. http://rt.com/usa/225819-rt-isis-point-view-competition/

In other words, Anglo-Americans are not permitted any different news than what is served to them by “their” governments.

That is the state of “freedom” in the West today.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

27 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Farooque Chowdhury

A historic verdict has been announced in Greece. The people in Greece have achieved a historic victory. The just concluded election in Greece announces the victory. The cheering people’s smiling bright faces reflect the verdict: Death to Austerity, Assert People’s Sovereign Power. Europe is now waiting for an impact of the victory. It’s a victory against the bankers engaged with virtual criminal acts: stealing of people’s property with a constitutional coverage and instituting a regime change with a peaceful appearance.

SYRIZA, the Radical Coalition of the Left, in Greece has shown the way people reject bankers’ crude cruelty. The coalition’s election result is the show of the people’s opinion. The coalition said: Hope has won. SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras told: SYRIZA’s win meant an end to austerity and humiliation. The country’s debt inspections were a thing of the past. “The sovereign Greek people today have given a clear, strong, indisputable mandate. Greece has turned a page. Greece is leaving behind the destructive austerity, fear and authoritarianism. It is leaving behind five years of humiliation and pain.”

With the Great Financial Crisis bankers unmasked the modern myth of bourgeois democracy in Greece. The political force the bankers deployed exposed the myth of capitalism in the country. Their single act – austerity – did the unmasking job. They taught the Greek people lessons of bourgeois democracy and capitalism. The lessons led the people to reject the programs imposed by the bankers, the speculators, the swindlers.

The people of Greece experienced tricks of bourgeois economy, its forgery in accounting system, its so-called accountability and sham-transparency over the years. They experienced capitalism’s “innocent” business – speculation. Their experience got enriched with bubbles bankers created and busted. And, they experienced bankers’ political power.

Over the years, capitalism in Greece created havoc. It brought speculation, and crises. These ultimately brought in capitalism-made disasters in the life of the people. Chain of incidents appeared as text book on capitalism, its real face, capacity and character. In the life of the people, that was a Greek tragedy.

The people in Greece was “awarded” with the state’s mismanagement with accounts, faults in the state’s accounting system, which were actually lies. Capitalists tried to make people believe that their state machine doesn’t know mathematics although the state was running all the shows of ruling over the people, counting debts and interests without error, finding out tricky ways to transfer all its loads of failure on the shoulder of the people, and feeding bankers’ hunger. The same state machine calculated the number of employees to be retrenched and the public institutions and establishments to be sold out to feed the “starving” bankers.

The “efficient” acts virtually dismantled the people’s normal life. Their economic life was shattered as they found sick public health services, rickety educational institutions, crumbling public works. Unemployed, hungry citizens turned facts of daily life in Greece. Groups of people went back to rural areas simply for survival, simply for having three meals-a-day; mothers were failing to feed children; middle class homes took appearance of Third World poor’s shelters; company executives, members of middle class, were standing in food lines. Suicide rates increased in the society. The austerity program turned out a, as Alexis said, “vicious cycle”.

Starving Greeks found bankers began dictating Greece. Orders were issued from bankers’ financial and political centers. It was not a Greek government, but a bankers’ troika – the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) – began ruling the life of the people. There were bankers’ dictations: put this public institution on the auction market, retrench this number of employees, cut down pension, and let the people starve, and let the people enjoy punishment for the misdeeds we’ve wrought.

The people found a regime change in the country as the bankers demanded. The people experienced capitalism, its crushing power, bourgeois democracy, its ultimate accountability – to the dominating interests. And, they experienced loss of dignity and honor as their fate was being debated in the parliament of another country, a Third World experience.

There were frustration and protests. There were marches and demonstrations. And, there were police batons, use of people-control equipment, and police barricades obstructing people’s march. The people were not allowed to reach parliament. The parliament was responsive to the troika, the international banking bosses, to Brussels and Berlin.

Greece stood as one of the burning examples of debacles in bourgeois democracy. It was a shameless show.

In 1947, Truman declared measures concerning Greece and Turkey that got an identity: Truman Doctrine. One of the sentences in the doctrine said: “[W]e must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.” It was a sentence formed shrewdly. History laughed. The people in Greece were “assisted” to work out their “destinies” in bankers’ way! The Great Financial Crisis helped find out the fact.

A far-right force with masked Nazi face – the Golden Dawn – was gaining ground in Greece as usually happens during periods of crisis. It was spewing flames of hatred with the idea “I’m the best”, a complete Nazi philosophy, an anti-people idea. Labor from other countries were being threatened and assaulted.

This perspective – financial/banking/credit crises, dictation, humiliation, austerity, hardship, poverty, unemployment, starvation, and people’s aspiration for a better, dignified and honorable life – brought SYRIZA to the forefront. Planned, consistent, organized political work instead of only slogan-mongering and only festoon-wavering mobilized the people, and people have expressed their aspiration reflected in the just concluded poll result.

But crossings of politics are there. Arithmetic of bourgeois democracy is there. And, there are games, plans and tricks of and pressure from bankers. A few of the tricks are in Athens and a few are in other capital cities. Warnings have already been issued. Carrots have also been shown.

Jens Weidmann, the Governor of the German Central Bank, said: Greece will continue to receive assistance provided that the agreements made are upheld. There are no considerations for a debt haircut. In Germany, the ruling CDU party has already insisted: Greece should stick to the austerity program. Rating agency the Standard & Poor’s in a statement warned: It may downgrade rating of European countries where Eurosceptic parties may assume power. The S&P considers SYRIZA as one of the most “credit negative” parties. SYRIZA has to face those.

Once again, scientific theories on capital, finance, bank, class power, state, and people’s organization, awareness and mobilization will be put on test in Greece. It will be an opportunity to learn. Not only will the people of Greece learn from the lesson. People of other countries, especially the countries in Europe will also learn from the experience.
A failure or success of SYRIZA will lead to many questions, and possible answers. Compromises and adjustments are to be made as the left coalition lacks functional majority. The left coalition leadership has to find out variations in compromises. Adventurist slogans will not help.

Whatever the parliament in Athens witnesses in the coming weeks the poll result in Greece stands as people’s rejection of bankers’ economy and politics. The people have utilized an opportunity they have found in the arena of politics. The opportunity has been made by people power, not anarchism, adventurism and anti-people violence.

Farooque Chowdhury is Dhaka-based freelancer.

26 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

World renowned political science professor says he has ‘no sympathy’ for staff at Charlie Hebdo

By Mustafa Caglayan

In Nazi Germany, there was an anti-Semitic weekly newspaper called Der Stürmer.

Run by Julius Streicher, it was notorious for being one of the most virulent advocates of the persecution of Jews during the 1930s.

What everybody remembers about Der Stürmer was its morbid caricatures of Jews, the people who were facing widespread discrimination and persecution during the era.

Its depictions endorsed all of the common stereotypes about Jews – a hook nose, lustful, greedy.

“Let’s say, … amidst all of this death and destruction, two young Jews barged into the headquarters of the editorial offices of Der Stürmer, and they killed the staff for having humiliated them, degraded them, demeaned them, insulted them,” queried Norman Finkelstein, a professor of political science and author of numerous books including “The Holocaust Industry” and “Method and Madness.”

“How would I react to that?,” said Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.

Finkelstein was drawing an analogy between a hypothetical attack on the German newspaper and the deadly Jan. 7 attack at the Paris headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, that left 12 people dead, including its editor and prominent cartoonists. The weekly is known for printing controversial material, including derogatory cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and 2012.

The attack sparked a global massive outcry, with millions in France and across the world taking to the streets to support freedom of the press behind the rallying cry of “Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.”

What the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad achieved was “not satire,” and what they provoked was not “ideas,” Finkelstein said.

Satire is when one directs it either at oneself, causes his or her people to think twice about what they are doing and saying, or directs it at people who have power and privilege, he said.

“But when somebody is down and out, desperate, destitute, when you mock them, when you mock a homeless person, that is not satire,” Finkelstein said.

“That is, I give you the word, sadism. There’s a very big difference between satire and sadism. Charlie Hebdo is sadism. It’s not satire”

The “desperate and despised people” of today are Muslims, he said, considering the number of Muslim countries racked by death and destruction as in the case of Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

“So, two despairing and desperate young men act out their despair and desperation against this political pornography no different than Der Stürmer, who in the midst of all of this death and destruction decide its somehow noble to degrade, demean, humiliate and insult the people. I’m sorry, maybe it is very politically incorrect. I have no sympathy for [the staff of Charlie Hebdo]. Should they have been killed? Of course not. But of course, Streicher shouldn’t have been hung. I don’t hear that from many people,” said Finkelstein.

Streicher was among those who stood trial on charges at Nürnberg, following World War II. He was hung for those cartoons.

Finkelstein said some might argue that they have the right to mock even desperate and destitute people, and they probably have this right, he said, “But you also have the right to say ‘I don’t want to put it in my magazine … When you put it in, you are taking responsibility for it.”

Finkelstein compared the controversial Charlie Hebdo caricatures to the “fighting words,” doctrine, a category of speech penalized under American jurisprudence.

The doctrine refers to certain words that would likely cause the person to whom they are directed, to commit an act of violence. They are a category of speech unprotected by the First Amendment.

“You are not allowed to utter fighting words, because they are equivalent of a smack to the face and it is asking for trouble,” Finkelstein said.

“So, are the Charlie Hebdo caricatures the equivalent of fighting words? They call it satire. That is not satire. It is just epithets, there is nothing funny about it. If you find it funny, depicting Jews in big lips and (a) hook nose is also funny.”

Finkelstein pointed to the contradictions in the Western world’s perception of the freedom of the press by giving the example of the pornographic magazine Hustler, whose publisher, Larry Flynt, was shot and left paralyzed in 1978 by a white supremacist serial killer for printing a cartoon depicting interracial sex.

“I don’t remember everyone celebrating ‘We are Larry Flynt’ or ‘We are Hustler,’” he said. “Should he have been attacked? Of course not. But nobody suddenly turned this into a political principle of one side or the other.”

The West’s embrace of the Charlie Hebdo caricatures was because the drawings were directed at and ridiculed Muslims, he said.

The characterization by the French of Muslims as being barbaric is hypocritical considering the killings of thousands of people during France’s colonial occupation of Algeria, and the French public’s reaction to the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962, according to Finkelstein.

The first mass demonstration in Paris against the war “did not come until 1960, two years before the war was over,” he said. “Everybody supported the French annihilatory war in Algeria.”

He said French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s apartment was bombed twice in 1961 and 1962, as was the office of his magazine, Les Temps Modernes, after he came out in full force against the war.

Finkelstein, who has been described as an “American radical,” said the pretensions of the West about Muslim attire exposed a dramatic contradiction in the face of the West’s attitude toward natives in lands they occupied during colonialism.

“When Europeans came to North America, the thing they said about the native Americans was that they were so barbaric, because they walked around naked. The European women were wearing three layers of clothes. Then they came to North America, and decided that the native Americans were backward because they all walked around naked. And now, we walk around naked, and we say that the Muslims are backward because they wear so much clothes,” he said.

“Can you imagine anything more barbaric? Banning women wearing headscarves?” he asked, referring to the 2004 ban on headscarves in French public service jobs.

Finkelstein’s work, accusing Jews of exploiting the memory of Holocaust for political gain and criticizing Israel for oppressing the Palestinians, has made him a controversial figure even within the Jewish community.

He was denied a tenure as a professor at DePaul University in 2007 after a highly publicized feud with fellow academic Alan Dershowitz, an ardent supporter of Israel. Dershowitz reportedly lobbied the administration of DePaul, a Roman Catholic university in Chicago, to deny him tenure.

Finkelstein, who currently teaches at Sakarya University in Turkey, said the decision was based on “transparently political grounds.”

19 Janury 2015

By Joseph Massad

The French may be better known to themselves, and among West Europeans and white Americans, as top fashion designers and culinary masters whose language of amour is most fit for romance.

White Americans, like the Germans and the British, however, have a love-hate relationship with the French but clearly more love than hate as evidenced most recently by the publication in The New York Times of an op-ed piece by Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front.

As for much of the rest of the world — extending from the Antilles to Northern, Western and Central Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia — the French are seen as practiced killers and torturers, whose lovely and refined language is used not to describe a sumptuous creamy sauce or a plunging neckline on an evening dress, let alone for courting and flirtation, but rather to inflict pain and suffering on untold millions.

Yet the dominant French culture insists on seeing itself through its own eyes, and most French people are appalled that anyone in the world would even question their refined and rosy image of themselves.

Colonial barbarities

The reason for this contrast is a matter of both history and present French policies. Let us start with the historical: a report on French colonial atrocities in Indochina for the years 1930-33, following the outbreak of the Yen Bay mutiny in February 1930, lists some of the monstrous torture methods dear to French officers. According to the famed French activist Andrée Viollis, the torture methods included — in addition to the use of electricity — deprivation of food, bastinado (the whipping of the soles of the feet), pins hammered under the nails, half-hangings, deprivation of water and pincers on the temples (forcing the eyes outward) among others. A more delicate method included the use of “a razor blade, to cut the skin of the legs in long furrows, to fill the wound with cotton and then burn the cotton.”

In 1947-48, the French colonial authorities went on a rampage in Madagascar, killing and raping the population, and torching whole villages, as punishment for the Nationalist Malagasy uprising. Some of the more specifically French practices and torture specialties unleashed on the people of Madagascar included “death flights,” where people would be thrown from military planes in the middle of the sea to drown and become “disappeared.”

This murderous method was such a proud French specialty that the French colonial authorities in Algeria would continue its use several years later during the Battle of Algiers in 1956-57. In the Algerian case, French paratroopers decided to modify the method when corpses of Algerians began to surface, exposing the practice. The modification consisted of attaching concrete blocks to the feet of the victims to ensure their sinking permanently (the US-supported Argentinian generals would find this very helpful to their efforts in suppressing resistance to their dictatorship in the late 1970s).

These are not ad hoc methods of torture that the French devised on the spot, but well-studied and well-practiced cruelties. In the Algeria of the nineteenth century, General Saint-Arnaud would burn Algerian revolutionaries alive in caves and his soldiers would rape Algerian women, as would French soldiers throughout the Algerian revolution of the 1950s and early 1960s.

Estimates of those the French killed include a million Vietnamese and a million Algerians. As for Madagascar, estimates have it that upwards of 100,000 people were killed by the French. These are just a few examples of French colonial barbarities in some colonies and not an exhaustive list by any means. French colonialism, under the grandiose heading of a mission civilisatrice, has clearly failed to civilize, most of all, the French themselves. The mission, it would seem, remains unaccomplished!

Secular Catholicism

The matter of how the French are perceived is not limited only to history but is relevant to the present. While assimilating the natives into the ways of the colonizing French was the core of the French colonial program, this philosophy has come to haunt the French after they partially retreated from the colonies and found that immigrant Africans, Arabs and Indochinese, among others, are not “assimilable” into the ways of the “French.” It seems that only German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and certainly Hungarian immigrants to France can be assimilated now into French society, but not the darker and especially non-Christian immigrants.

The massacre of French Algerians committed by the French police in October 1961, which was clearly inspired by the “death flights” specialty of the French army in Algeria and Madagascar, resulted in the killing of upwards of 200 Muslim demonstrators (some estimates go as high as 400) by shooting them dead or throwing them in the River Seine.

It took the Catholic-dominated French government until 1998 to acknowledge that the police killed a mere 40 of the 200 to 400 French Muslims. Victims of the French Catholic-dominated government see such barbaric and cruel acts as a main feature of French Catholic culture, indeed as definitional of it. And not only is this not exclusive to French Muslims (French colonial authorities invented the category of “Français musulmans” in nineteenth century Algeria to legally require Algerians to denounce “Islamic law,” including polygamy, in order to have access to full French citizenship), French Jews too understand French Catholic anti-Semitism as a central feature of French Catholic culture.

After all, French Jews had been subjected by Napoleon in 1806 to a similar litmus — or is it Catholic? — test by which they had to allay his fears that Jewish polygamy and divorce laws that contradicted French state laws would not be practiced as a condition for Jewish emancipation. Of course these state laws just happened to be in line with Catholic monogamy, but not with Jewish polygamy. Yet the French continue to see and present themselves to the world and to themselves as sensitive and pensive lovers, engagé intellectuals and defenders of secularism, or “laïcité”!

It is this last point that has become part of the official and unofficial racist and sectarian campaigns by the reigning French Catholics, “laïcs” of course, against French Muslims, let alone Muslims outside France. It is there that French Muslims are thought of as somehow having geographic, religious and cultural origins outside France, something of which French citizens of Italian, German, Russian, Spanish or Hungarian immigrant origins are never accused.

If the French Catholics insisted that Algerian Muslims and Jews must become French in Algeria under French rule (French Jews of Algerian background are said to have successfully made the transition since the 1870 Crémieux decree which transformed them legally from Algerians into French citizens, a status that was later revoked under the collaborationist Vichy regime during the Second World War, revealing the tenuousness of French Catholic tolerance), the same French Catholics would insist that French people of Algerian Muslim background in France must also assimilate into some phantasmatic Frenchness that is allegedly secular or “laïc” and definitely not Christian.

It is unclear whether the Bretons, the Corsicans, or the Basques and Alsatians — the latter were thought by President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2011 to be still living in Germany — have already fully assimilated into this alleged Frenchness or are still awaiting new instructions.

Values of the republic

In the aftermath of the attack on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo by two French Muslim men, and the attack on a French Jewish supermarket by a third (the geographic origins of the parents of these men were immediately identified by the French media as germane if not central to their crimes), former French president of Hungarian Catholic origins Nicolas Sarkozy (his maternal grandfather is a Greek Jew who converted to Catholicism), proposed “expelling any [French Muslim] imam who holds views that do not respect the values of the republic.”

It is not clear if Sarkozy would agree with proposals that he should be expelled to Hungary or to Greece were he to espouse views “that do not respect the values of the republic.” It also remains unclear if this should also be the fate awaiting French Catholic priests and French Jewish rabbis if they are found disrespectful of such values, although if the situation of Jews under Vichy is any indication, the rabbis too will not be spared.

Contrary to the self-perception of most French Catholics, the problem with the contemporary dominant French Catholic (“laïc”) culture is, if anything, its lack of refinement. French racism is articulated often in the most vulgar of ways without any palliatives or euphemisms. In this, the French are unlike their peers in the American and British settings, where racism is often couched in more socially acceptable language that hides behind it the very same racist vulgarity. The vulgarity of French Catholic racism, however, is most similar to that of Israeli Jewish racism, which also often has no truck with circumlocutions and other linguistic cosmetics.

The ongoing policies and crimes of the French government in Mali, in Libya and in Afghanistan, to name the three most prominent sites of French military interventions, continue. When French troops opened fire on a civilian car in 2011 killing three civilians in Afghanistan, including a pregnant woman and a child, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet expressed “deep sorrow” over the deaths but said the soldiers had acted in self-defense as the car had “refused to stop despite repeated warnings.”

The ongoing French support of Syrian jihadists, including French and NATO facilitation, if not encouragement, of French Muslims to join the battles in Syria, belie the official horror of French Catholics at the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its decapitation practices. Perhaps French Muslim members of ISIS assimilated French Catholic culture far too well, especially as relates to intolerance and decapitation — for the French state’s “laïc” practice of executing criminals through decapitation by the guillotine continued until 1977, with the last person decapitated being coincidentally a French Muslim criminal.

Who should assimilate?

This France is the France that accuses its Muslim population of refusing to assimilate to its ways, but never questions why it thinks it should not assimilate to their ways — since French Muslims too are as much part of France and its culture as French Catholics are and since France is no longer the exclusive property of French Catholics to do with as they please. Perhaps French Catholics (should we just call them Gaulois?) could learn some tolerance from French Muslims.

After all, it is French Muslims who have endured and continue to the best of their abilities to tolerate the decades-long racism and intolerance of French Catholics. Could French Catholics in turn learn to tolerate the tolerance of French Muslims? Shocking as this last idea may be to French Catholic and sectarian racists (who are of course “laïcs”), these same people never thought it shocking when as a colonial minority they sought to force the majority of the colonized to assimilate to their ways — whatever their ways are of course.

One is never sure if French Muslims are expected to adopt the torture and murderous methods of French Catholics and their “laïc” intolerance as part of their assimilation process. If indeed this is what is required, then the only three successfully assimilated French Muslims are none other than Cherif and Saïd Kouachi, the brothers who attacked Charlie Hebdo, and Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked the Jewish supermarket.

Amazingly enough, the French government refused to acknowledge what well-assimilated Frenchmen the Kouachi brothers were and asked the Algerian government to have them buried in Algeria, a country to which they had never been, rather than in France where they had assimilated in an exemplary fashion. The Algerian government duly refused to allow the burial of the two Frenchmen on its soil. France got the same answer from the government of Mali, which refused a French government request to send them the body of the French citizen Coulibaly for burial.

Despite the horrific magnitude of the three men’s deeds, their crimes remain numerically modest and pale in comparison with the far more cruel French Catholic and “laïc” monstrosities that have reached genocidal proportions across the globe. Had the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly lived, however, they would have still needed many more lessons in cruelty and violent intolerance before they could become fully assimilated into true Catholic and laïc Frenchness.

It is the rest of French Muslims who continue to resist assimilation into Catholic and “laïc” Frenchness and continue to refuse to follow the example of intolerant French Catholic and “laïc” racists and their few Muslim emulators. For the majority of French Muslims, their answer to these French Catholic and laïc invitations to assimilation is an explicit “thanks, but no thanks,” or in the refined language of the French: “Merci, très peu pour nous!”

Joseph Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. His most recent book is Islam in Liberalism.

The Electronic Intifada
22 January 2015