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By Franklin Lamb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future reports may.

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

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

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

01 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Rania Khalek

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burning children, from Gaza to Duma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From killer to leaders

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

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

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

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

“Self-genocide”

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

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

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

Over half of those killed in the attack were children.

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

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

“Chemotherapy”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Killings babies permitted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growing racism

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

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

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

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

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

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

02 August, 2015
Electronicintifada.net

 

By Thomas Gaist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01 August, 2015
WSWS.org

By Shamus Cooke

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

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

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

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

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

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

And The Middle East Eye reported:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This danger was also acknowledged by The New York Times:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

By Mickey Z.

On July 25, 1990, Saddam Hussein entertained a guest at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie.

Glaspie told the Iraqi president: “I have direct instructions from President (George H.W.) Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait.”

Glaspie then asked, point blank: “Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait’s borders?”

“As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait,” replied Hussein, deploying his own rendition of wartime spin. “There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance.”

When asked by Glaspie what solutions would be “acceptable,” Hussein was forthright: “If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab — our strategic goal in our war with Iran — we will make concessions. But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq [Note: Hussein viewed Kuwait as part of Iraq] then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be.”

At this point, ever aware of the power dynamics at play, Hussein queried Glapsie: “What is the United States’ opinion on this?”

“We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait,” Glaspie answered. “Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

Eight days later, Iraq invaded Kuwait and provided the Land of the Free™ with the pretext it needed to commence a relentless onslaught in the name of keeping the world safe for petroleum. Which brings me to a forgotten anniversary.

While Aug. 6, of course, marks the 70th anniversary of the nuking of Hiroshima, it also marks a quarter-century since the U.S. war against Iraq was initially launched. For most people — particularly willfully ignorant anti-war activists — the starting date for the war in Iraq is March 19, 2003. However, to accept that date is to put far too much blame on one party and one president. A more accurate and useful starting date is Aug. 6, 1990 when — at the behest of the United States — the United Nations Security Council imposed murderous sanctions upon the people of Iraq.

It is widely accepted that these sanctions were responsible for the deaths of roughly 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five. U.S. Ambassador the UN in the mid-90s was Madeleine Albright. In 1996, Leslie Stahl asked her on 60 Minutes if a half-million dead Iraqi children was a price worth paying to pursue American foreign policy. Albright famously replied: “We think the price is worth it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4

Mickey Z. is the author of 12 books, most recently Occupy this Book: Mickey Z. on Activism. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on the Web here and here. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.

31 July, 2015
World News Trust

 

By Siv O’Neall

Yanis Varoufakis says about Europe:

“A clueless political personnel, in denial of the systemic nature of the crisis, is pursuing policies akin to carpet-bombing the economy of proud European nations in order to save them.” (‘Yanis Varoufakis Sums Up Europe In One Sentence’, February 6, 2015 – zerohedge)
The Greek crisis is very much the work of the so-called ‘free market’ where anything goes. Big banks, led by Goldman Sachs and other vicious speculators pounced on unhappy Greece already in crisis situation due to slack governments, tax evasion and a high level of corruption. The unscrupulous vultures had now secretly stored away booties at the expense of the Greek people.

After all this and five years of austerity suffered by the largely innocent Greek people the EU is now firmly requesting that jobless and hungry Greeks tighten their belts even more. How can you be more jobless than jobless and how can you be hungrier than hungry, unless you are dead. Greece is now a dying nation.

One point is important to mention in the context of the Greek disaster. I doubt if the IMF should even be included any more in this now so popular term ‘Troika’. Very recently, before and after the July 5 referendum, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF has been saying more and more openly that Greece must get significant debt relief. What is this – the IMF with a human face? It has actually come to an open war between Lagarde and the German chancellor Angela Merkel, the new iron lady. Welcome to the Thatcher club, dear Angela. It may have taken us a long time to recognize your true colors, but it does seem that here is the new fascist who wants to rule Europe single-handedly.
Lagarde Insists on Greek Debt Easing as Germany Allows Talks (Bloomberg)

There is one voice in this tragedy that is worth listening to at this time, His name is Yanis Varoufakis and he is the former Greek minister of finance for the Syriza government.

Yanis Varoufakis , the brilliant Greek-Australian economist, left his post as visiting professor at the University of Texas in Austin to become the new finance minister of the Syriza government in Greece.

“In November 2010, he and Stuart Holland, a former British Labour Party MP and economics professor at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), published Modest Proposal, a set of economic policies aimed at overcoming the euro crisis

“In 2013, Version 4.0 of A Modest Proposal appeared with the American economist James K. Galbraith as a third co-author.” (Wikipedia)
Varoufakis knows who to blame for the fiasco that made all the hopes collapse that we had tied to the Syriza government. After the sunny Sunday’s Greek referendum on July 5, just hours after the Greek people’s resounding NO victory and their jubilant dancing in the streets, their joy fell apart.

The Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) sweated walrus grease from their brows and they ’knew’ immediately (cheered by the German chancellor) that Yanis Varoufakis had to go. He had already gone. He resigned under pressure from his government (pressured by the EU). It was clear then that Tsipras and Syriza had already capitulated. The seemingly so brave and well-intentioned Alexis Tsipras fell apart. Juncker, Merkel and Co. could breathe again. Syriza had been as powerful a threat to Big Business as it has been a source of hope for democracy to the people.

Varoufakis asks us all: Why are the members of Eurogroup (whoever they are… Big question.) all saying that no other viable basis exists for a solution to the Greek crisis? Austerity, more austerity is all the EU can come up with. The billions in the past two bailouts went to the lenders, the banks, and the Greek government got a nickel to throw to its hungry people. (The Guardian)

“It did not have to be this way”, says Yanis Varoufakis, “On June 19, I communicated to the German government and to the troika an alternative proposal, as part of a document entitled ‘Ending the Greek Crisis’”[1]

Here is Varoufakis’ own proposal:

“Greece’s Proposals to End the Crisis: My intervention at today’s Eurogroup

“”Five months ago, in my very first Eurogroup intervention, I put it to you that the new Greek government faced a dual task:

“We had to earn a precious currency without depleting an important capital good.”

“And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride,” the sharp-tongued Varoufakis wrote,
(Ode to a Grecian finance minister as Varoufakis steps down – Marketwatch)

“In a discussion with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz on invitation of U.S. economic think tank ‘Institute for New Economic Thinking’, Varoufakis stated on 9 April 2015 that “the Greek state does not have the capacity to develop public assets.” Therefore, he announced that his government was “restarting the privatization process.” However, unlike the former governments they would insist on establishing public–private partnerships with the state retaining a minority stake to generate state revenues.” (Wikipedia)

‘Europe’, the Troika, does not like him. Why? Simple. Because he does not like them. He sees them for what they are – a power-hungry limited group of people who are all set on doing away with any form of sovereignty and independence of European individual nations in order to make the EU a hegemonic bloc alongside the U.S., working with the U.S. and the Corporatocracy and totally disregarding democracy. There are no more sovereign countries in Europe of today. For any form of decision-making, there is only ‘Europe’, the EU, that is Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, the Yes-sayers and the like-minded and power-hungry stooges.

Hear the Troika screaming and the media picking it up and repeating: “Blame the Greeks” (some of them were indeed to blame and slack governments were also guilty) – but above all don’t blame the banks and speculators who were responsible for the shenanigans that took place before 2010. Hide it all under the rug and let’s just go on pretending we believe in what we are screaming so loud – so say the leading members of the EU, with Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker screaming the loudest.

The Financial Times reports:

“Something is rotten with the eurozone’s hideous restrictions on sovereignty”

The European Commission (the EC, the EU, or call it the Troika if you like) is completely set on removing all sovereign power from the individual European countries. I am not saying that the national governments have clean hands, but at least we voted for them and we have to take part of the blame if there is something rotten in our nation.

We, the real left in France and all over Europe, have known from the beginning that Europe was as undemocratic as the U.S. wanted it to be. It was a U.S. dream to make Europe a united vassal. Their dream came true. With a bang. Only the unelected officers of the European Commission have any say whatsoever. The only elected body in the EU is the Parliament, which has no power at all, a symbolic right to utter a word here and there is all. The Parliament is the carnation in the buttonhole.

Merkel and all the dictator-presidents of the European Commission didn’t think we would ever discover the hidden truth about this Europe of the very very few. Be they Barroso or Juncker, they melt into one as far as taking all power away from the individual countries and from the people.

If by any chance it has still until today eluded you that EU equals fascism, Yanis Varoufakis is here to open your eyes.

Notes:

[1] “The Greek government proposes to bundle public assets (excluding those pertinent to the country’s security, public amenities, and cultural heritage) into a central holding company to be separated from the government administration and to be managed as a private entity, under the aegis of the Greek Parliament, with the goal of maximizing the value of its underlying assets and creating a homegrown investment stream. The Greek state will be the sole shareholder, but will not guarantee its liabilities or debt.

“The holding company would play an active role readying the assets for sale. It would “issue a fully collateralized bond on the international capital markets” to raise €30-40 billion ($32-43 billion), which, “taking into account the present value of assets,” would “be invested in modernizing and restructuring the assets under its management.”” (Europe’s Vindictive Privatization Plan For Greece)

Siv O’Neall is an Axis of Logic columnist, based in France. Her insightful essays are republished and read worldwide. She can be reached at siv@axisoflogic.com.
01 August, 2015
Axis of Logic

 

By Jon Kofas

Introduction

There is an underlying assumption that the more political parties a country has the more democracy it has, and that the more democracy it has the more social justice and egalitarianism it enjoys. If this were indeed the case, then a number of countries around the world with many political parties, including Italy and Greece, Israel and India, Philippines and Romania, to name a few, must be Paradise on earth. There is no correlation between a multiparty system and greater “democracy” any more than there is a correlation between greater social justice and bourgeois democracy. This is a 19th century north-Western European concept when the urban middle class and capitalists were mainly Liberal while the aristocracy and rural classes were conservative, thus the two-party system reflected a socioeconomic and cultural divide where religion played a role in the rural areas and education in the urban ones.

A product of the European Enlightenment, the US followed the European political trends of creating bourgeois political parties representing capital. When the working class movement became a force in society owing to the changing division of labor under industrial capitalism, new ideologies emerged from Socialism to Anarchism and varieties of others on the left as well as extreme right wing ones, including Fascism that has its origins in the late 19th century. The evolution of bourgeois society gave birth to social groups that did not find expression in the traditional political parties and wanted to have their own voice at a time that minorities, women and workers were not represented. Despite pressure from the grassroots for representation, in the US the mainstream political parties always managed to co-opt third party movements protesting a particular facet of society.
Whether a country developed a two-party system or a multi-party system, popular rule expressing individual rights remained a core value of bourgeois democracy, rather than government taking into account collective interests. Under the political umbrella of any democratic system that has ever existed, capitalism has been at its core and this means a social order based on hierarchy of capital. During the 20th century, democracy became synonymous with capitalism not just in the US but in most countries around the world. One reason for the success of political parties claiming their allegiance to “democracy” is their embracing of a pluralistic value system under an open society where the consumer is synonymous with the citizen. The US has led the way in the effort to identify democracy with capitalism and the citizen with the consumer.

The phenomenal success of the two-party system rests in convincing the majority of the people that this is “the democratic process”, rather than representative of capitalist class interest factions. This has been achieved in the name of “nationalism” and “national interest” rhetoric, as the two-party system identifies itself with the nation-state and national interest that it equates with the market economy. At the same time, the two-party system projects the image that a political party representing the working class is outside the constitutional and societal purview of the “national interest”, therefore, it lacks legitimacy. This was as true before the Bolshevik Revolution as it was after when the bourgeois political parties in the US as well as throughout the Western World stigmatized working class political parties as representing labor unions, as though labor unions were an anathema to society and only pro-capitalist political parties enjoyed legitimacy.

The issue of legitimacy in the eyes of the public is of the utmost importance for a political party to succeed as much as is the need for the state claiming to be pluralistic to tolerate all voices to be heard. In the case of the US, this has not been the case throughout its history. Therefore, it is not surprising that a working class political party never developed. The government persecuted grassroots organizing of labor unions and political activists representing the working class, while the corporate media followed the government in doing its best to stigmatize any working class movement.

Having no political party to express their interests, the working class in the US and in many countries around the world turned to the two political parties representing capital. Labeling a political party “Labor” or “Socialist” as many have done in Europe and around the world is of course meaningless because their policies are anti-labor and anti-socialist as much as the policies of the US Democratic Party are hardly “democratic”. The median worth of a US congressman is $1 million and the total cost for the congressional races amounted to $3.7 billion in 2012, campaign contributions mostly from millionaires. Given the profile of the average US representative in Congress, and considering that a congressman has no chance of making a career unless s/he promotes capital through legislation to the detriment of middle class and workers’ interests how can such a representative claim to be anything other than an agent for capitalists?

Synoptic View of Third-Party Movements in America

Both George Washington and John Adams dreaded the idea of a two-party system, arguing that it was tantamount to a form of despotism for two factions to alternate power. John Adams wrote: There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution. Is the two-party system the reason that the vast majority of the people never realize the mythical American Dream because the two parties represent the capitalist class, or does the problem rest elsewhere?

Unlike Europe, the US does not have a history of multi-party system primarily because the media and mainstream institutions limit their focus on the two major parties. However, even in Europe, there is a two-party system that essentially entails alternating in government. This is as true of Great Britain as of France and Germany, but also of most countries, including southern Europe, although all of these countries have more than two parties. The common factor between the US two-party system and the Europe is that on both sides of the Atlantic the ruling political parties represent the same socioeconomic elites that make sure there is policy continuity. In short, the political elites alternating power make certain that the interests of the privileged socioeconomic elites are not compromised by a third political force representing the working class.

Within the varied interests of the capitalist class in the last two centuries there have been political parties that tried to break the monopoly of the dominant two-party system. In 1848, the Free Soil Party, the first major third party won 5% of the vote. The Republican Party quickly absorbed it because Abraham Lincoln after all became the champion of the anti-slave movement and the Civil War obviated the need for the Free Soil Party. In 1892, the Populist Party, which derived much of inspiration from Jeffersonian democracy, finally merged with the Democrat Party at the turn of the century. This was during the Gilded Age when the very rich were enjoying institutional hegemony and it was clear that both Republican and Democrat parties represented the wealthy to the neglect of the rest of citizens at a time that the depression of the 1890s caused immense hardship across America.

Throughout the 20th century, from the Progressive Era when the lower middle class demanded representation to the early 21st century when the Green movement became popular, all third-party political movements have been co-opted by one of the two dominant parties that have faithfully represented the institutional structure. Franklin D. Roosevelt managed to co-opt the leftists and de-radicalize the general population while securing Democrat Party dominance from 1932 until 1952. The same pattern of co-optation that has been true of left-wing movements Absorbed by the Democrat party also holds true of right-wing parties that the Republic Party absorbs. In 1948, Strom Thurmond’s State’s Rights Party constituency became part of the Republican Party, as did George Wallace’s American Independent Party in 1968, although there were Democrat voters in both of those as there were in John Anderson’s Independent Party in 1980 and even in Ross Perot’s Reform party that was eventually absorbed by Republicans.

In every election, there are many candidates for president, from serious to the absurd. The media, however, ignores all political parties, unless it is one that poses no threat to the status quo, such as the Libertarian or Green Party. By contrast, the Communist Party if the USA has usually run a candidate for national office, but no television, radio or print media would cover its issue. This does not mean that the Communist Party has always been serious about presenting a platform and candidates that would at least carry some political weight. However, about the only way the Communist Party could possibly receive media attention, even heavily biased one would be if it ran the Pope as a candidate.

Are Americans Hoping for a Messiah Politician? Donald Trump as a Self-Proclaimed Messiah

America has always romanticized what it calls its unique brand of “democracy” and the hero-politician that comes along to unify the country. Although there are the revered presidents that include Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, for the most part politics in America has always been fragmented and not just in the post-Cold War era as some have suggested. Using foreign policy and foreign enemies to rally public support behind the flag has its limitations in time of relative peace. For this reason, politicians focus on targeted enemies within the country. The Republicans in the 1850s focused on slave-owners, while two decades later the enemy was the labor organizer. The Democrats in the 1930s focused on strengthening the central government to preserve capitalism while creating a social safety net to prevent revolution, while a decade later they focused on combating Communism at home by bringing dissidents before Congressional committees that blacklisted people who refused to accept bourgeois consensus politics.

The hero-politician in American history was not necessarily a president, governor or senator who was committed to social justice, but one who managed to transcend the individual interest groups and forge popular consensus so that the political economy could continue to thrive. Toward this goal of building consensus in a society that is politically fragmented largely because a substantial segment of voters remains apathetic, the strategy that has worked is populism (popular cause or causes among a segment of the voters), especially on the part of the Republicans from the Barry Goldwater candidacy in the 1960s until the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party today. Populism works not just in the US but in all countries, because it projects an image of “reform” in the interest of the people, but in essence its goal is to secure the election and continue to serve capital as faithfully as ever. Billionaire Donald Trump is such a person today who has chosen xenophobia as the focus of his campaign to excite the Republican Party base.

Trump attracts attention for several reasons. First, he is a billionaire and a celebrity, something the mainstream media focuses on whether one is running for office or not because the purpose is to promote capitalism and its values. Second, Trump combined the traditional Rockefeller Republican because he is a New York billionaire with the appeal of a right-wing populist focused on xenophobia. Historically, the xenophobia issue has roots that date back to the 19th century and it also plays well not only with the racist crowd, but also the middle class that is looking for someone to blame given that the economy has recovered but living standards continue to decline amid a growing socioeconomic gap.

I a recent essay I wrote that people not just in the US but around the world are looking for a Messiah politician and the one that presents himself or herself closer to the image will secure votes. On the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton is simply not capable of presenting herself and does not even try to do so as a Messiah politician, whereas Trump does and actually appeals to a segment of the social conservatives who do not like “Washington insiders” and they do not like the other Republican candidates because they are not giving the right wing someone to blame for all the problems society suffers. Although it is highly unlikely he will ever be elected president, Trump has chosen the right wing populist issue xenophobia as catalytic for his presidential bid in 2016.

Xenophobia is a very clear issue that the average conservative voter understands as much in the US as in Europe where racism also runs very high among conservatives. Xenophobia serves as a cover for political, economic and social problems society faces, but which are difficult to solve under the existing system without harming the interests of capital. Running against Washington insiders as a protest candidate from the right, Trump is appealing to many Republicans especially since he is a billionaire who embraces the values of Wall Street. The idea that Trump is a deviation from the mainstream of the Republic Party is utterly absurd, because this is not the party of Eisenhower, but of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

In an interview, Trump vowed to “get the bad ones out,” meaning the bad illegal immigrants estimated at 11 million. “I’m gonna get rid of the bad ones fast, and I’m gonna send them back. We’re not going to be putting them in prisons here and pay for them for the next 40 years.” Asked about the illegal aliens who are “not bad”, Trump replied: “We’re going to see what we’re going to see. It’s a very hard thing from a moral standpoint, from a physical standpoint, you don’t get them out. …Some are going to have to go and some – Hey, we’re just going to see what happens. It’s a very, very big subject and a very complicated subject….The wall’s going to be built. We’re going to have a great border.”

This simplistic racist perspective, if not completely unrealistic and impractical approach to a very complex subject with economic and social ramifications is rather typical of how a right-wing populist proposes to solve what his political party perceives as a problem that must be solved so that all of America’s problems simply melt away and every citizen can finally enjoy the fruits of the American Dream. Although there are those who argue Trump is doing damage to the party, in fact he is energizing the racist, xenophobic, warmongering base that is motivated by fear that there is an enemy out there – the Mexican, the Muslim, the outside world that has intruded into the American way of life and threatening it. It is not the neoliberal policies and the corporate welfare system that is responsible for the decline of the middle class, but the “outsiders” and those intruding in US soil. If only they did not exist, America would have no problems. The GOP cannot discredit Trump because he is the mirror of his party, as the preliminary polls indicate nationally as well as in several states.

If a third party is created what 5 main issues should it address?

If a third party is created, it cannot be a single-issue party, like that of Ross Perot who focused on the debt and built all other issues around that theme. A political party must have a popular base, and in my view the growing lower middle class and workers constitute the largest popular base. They are not represented by either political party, no matter the rhetoric from any candidate. Bernie Sanders is closest to this profile, but even his platform is not much different than that of the Republican Party in 1956.

If there were five top issues on which a new political party could form its platform, my list would include the following. Not that the issues I have listed have even the remotest possibility that a third political party would adopt them, but they are at the core of challenges that America faces in the 21st century.

1. Social Justice

This is almost an alien concept in the political dialogue of American politicians from both parties. The rights and general welfare of all people, not just one small social class that finances political campaigns in return for legislation that keeps this social class privileged while the remainder of the population suffers, is an anathema in political discourse. In fact, not even mainstream academics raise this issue publicly, because they know it does not pay to offend the establishment. What is social justice? Is it a utopian fantasy that advocates equality not just of opportunity, but at all levels as judged by outcomes in the social, political, economic and cultural domains? Social justice in a bourgeois society expects that the basic economic needs of human beings are met, and that society is free of poverty and violence, of xenophobia and racism, of sexism and homophobia, of social inequalities that private and/or public institutions promote.

2. Downward socioeconomic mobilization

It is no secret that downward socioeconomic mobility is a reality in American society in the last four decades. This is largely because of the Reagan neoliberal commitment to transfer massive wealth from the lower classes to the elites, and to transfer public resources from social welfare to corporate welfare. Social programs, education and health care, social security, affordable housing, minimum wage and a massive gap between the highest paid corporate executives and the average worker are some of the reasons for the downward mobility in America. Some politicians on both political parties agree there is a problem with the declining middle class but not a single one, except Bernie Sanders, blames the capitalist system for it. Instead, the fault rests with government, as though this is an entity that comes to Washington from Mars rather than the lobbyist peddling influence.

3. Human Rights, Civil Rights and Police State Methods

Rights of political prisoners, civil rights of minorities, crime and justice are inter-related issues and have to do with the correlation between the institutionalization of the “war on terror” that has had an impact on the decline of respect for human rights, civil rights and criminalizing minorities and the poor. Police harassing, arresting, and killings black and Latino youth in cold blood is not an isolated event, but a pattern of behavior across the country. The statistics on the US prison population speaks very clearly about the racist criminal justice system that exists, even under a black president. The US refusal to respect UN human right charter also speaks volumes of the arrogance and duplicity of US policy, because the same government in Washington demands compliance with UN human rights by other countries, including Cuba and Iran. It is amazing that the US media has no sense of self-reflection when it demands that all other countries respect human rights, civil rights, women’s rights, and refrain from police state methods, but the US is guilty of the very things it accuses its adversaries. This is the ultimate absurdity of “American Exceptionalism”.

4. Restructuring of the political system.

The existing political system is heavily dependent on financial contributions and lobbyists exerting policy influence. Despite many organizations trying to express their voice, everything from gay rights groups to environmental and labor unions ones, the voice that matters at the local, state and federal levels is that of large businesses. For example, if there is a choice for a city to invest in a new stadium for a football team versus public education, the money will go to subsidize the very wealthy owner of the football team at the expense of public education. Both the football franchise and education have their voices heard in government, but only that of the millionaire football owner matters. This is only a small sample of how government pours resources into the private sector at the expense of the public and calls it democracy.

Ending corporate control of the political process – campaign finance and government reform so that politicians are not accountable to the corporate sector but to the general public would go a long way in building democracy in America. All political candidates agree that the influence of money in politics is corrupting the system, but they have done nothing about it for decades. Beyond eliminating the direct role of private campaign money, the political system itself must be geared to serving ALL people and not merely the capitalist class as it has been and have the media call this democracy.

5. Foreign Policy and Defense

Foreign policy based on defense of the nation’s the territorial integrity ought to be the criteria and not “imperial” policies intended to expand US corporate interests throughout the world by any means necessary from direct military intervention to covert operations. The defense budget is the largest in the world for a country that clearly has very serious public debt problems eating away at the middle class socioeconomic fabric. The massive spending on defense intended to maintain the defense industries healthy and provide the illusion of security as well as leverage for the US to secure market share is unsustainable.

The reality of China as the world’ preeminent economic power in the 21st century is one the US helped create because it spent itself to second place during the Cold War and the manufactured “war on terror”. These are anachronistic policies, of the mid-20th century and have no place in our time. The behavior of the US in foreign affairs is very much reminiscent of the British Empire in its decline when it tried just about everything militarily, but still continued to decline. In the absence of crafting a new alliance system that rethinks the value of OAS, SEATO and NATO, the US will eventually spend itself to oblivion no differently than Great Britain.

Conclusions

The success of the major political parties in the US as well as in most countries around the world is indeed the co-optation strategy that manages to pay lip service to the middle class and workers but subordinates their interests to capital. Democracy allows for open access into the system that projects the image of theoretical equal participation by all citizens and political movements when in reality participation is limited to representatives of capital. Given this reality, a multi-party system or a two-party system amounts to the same thing because ultimately the government will represent capital. If a government emerges in a country where it tries to compromise the interests of capital, the rest of the world, governments and international financial institutions, make it so difficult for such a government to succeed that it capitulates.

New political parties arise out of a need on the part of a segment in society that feels the existing political parties are not representative of all people. Influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Founding Fathers viewed political parties as factions unrepresentative of the general welfare. The reality of class politics meant that political parties were a necessary mechanism around which competing elites of the early American republic revolved to express their interests. Interestingly enough, throughout the republic’s two-hundred history, many Americans unlike their European counterparts, do not have a strong party affiliation. Even today, between 40 and 50 percent of the citizens polled declare independent of party affiliation. This is in itself inactive that neither party particularly expresses their interests and aspirations, although most people vote their aspirations rather than actual interests.
The third party in the US can either come from the conservative camp or from the left-of-center camp and it is highly unlikely to attract much popular support because the media inculcate into the public the idea that “consensus” politics is and must remain at the heart of American society. In other words, the implication is that a Socialist candidate whose platform could represent the majority of the population is not consensus because such a candidate would not incorporate the interests of the wealthiest Americans.

We have evidence from history that small third parties act as spoilers for one or the other major parties, but they hardly make a dent in the political process or in society. In a country as large as the US, it takes an incredible amount of money under the existing system to finance a political campaign and run against the major parties that enjoy the backing not just of the media, but of the entire institutional structure. The two political parties have been operating on the assumption that the voters have two choices and of course both work within an existing political, economic and social structure intended to preserve the status quo, rather than change it. The entrenched two-party political system also serves capital that is behind the two political parties.

No matter how much these two try to differentiate themselves, their differences are mostly on social and cultural issues, rather than systemic economic and political ones. For example, even the platform of Democrat Bernie Sanders, a person the media sees as a Socialist, is actually about the same as that of the Republican Party in 1956 when Eisenhower was the incumbent president. This is proof of how far to the right the left Democrats have moved and how far to the extreme right the Republicans have moved.

Regardless of whether a third and a fourth party emerge in the US, the system will remain the same until such time as a major economic crisis results in a social crisis and the political system begins to crack while a new one emerges, presumably on that better serves the majority and not just the top one-third of the population with one-percent owning most of the wealth and determining policy for the rest of the 99 percent because they are able to finance political campaigns.

A political party that is organized “top-down”, instead of emerging from the grassroots is obviously a reflection of the elites that created it to preserve and expand their interests. When a grassroots movement tries to organize because it feels marginalized in society, the result is that the mainstream quickly co-opts it and de-radicalizes its followers. This happened in the depression of the 1890s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The dominant political parties have the party machine tools at the local, state and national levels to bring any dissident movement into the mainstream. Otherwise, with the help of the media, they destroy it. Therefore, I do not see a viable third-party movement or movements until the next deep recession in America later this century, perhaps in the 2030s or 2040s. Because deep recessions or depressions cause economic polarization, the inevitable result will be social and political polarization, the ingredients which we see present in American society today that is much more polarized just beneath the surface than the “consensus-oriented” political, economic and media elites would have the public believe.

Jon Kofas is a retired university Professor from Indiana University.

27 July, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Juan Cole

What was at first announced as a new Turkish turn toward attacks on Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) on Friday has quickly become largely a campaign against Kurds instead. It is being alleged that the Turkish Air Force launched dozens of strikes against bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party over the border in Iraq on Saturday, and just 4 against Daesh positions in Syria.

#BREAKING Sources tell CNN Türk last night Turkish jets made 159 sorties against #PKK camps in N.Iraq&hit 400 targets pic.twitter.com/oGVJmKsGbs

— CNN Türk ENG (@CNNTURK_ENG) July 25, 2015

Political cartoonists had fun with the mismatched sense of priorities:

Erdogan vs. #ISIS (BY Marian KEMENSKY) #Turkey #TurkeyAttackKurdsNotISIS pic.twitter.com/MXuzCKNs33

— Scimonium (@scimonium) July 26, 2015

What is weird about the Turkish campaign against the Kurdish forces is that they have been the only really effective fighters against Daesh with the exception of Shiite militias in Iraq. If you were going to launch a campaign against Daesh, would you do it by damaging Daesh’s most effective foe on the ground?

Early on Sunday Turkish police in the capital of Ankara dispersed hundreds of Kurdish activists who gathered to protest the bombardments, and arrested 25. the headlines say something about the protesters not wanting the campaign against Daesh, but these were mostly Kurds and they weren’t demonstrating in favor of the beheaders. Turkey’s twin campaign has a propaganda element that the press is sometimes falling for.

Some 550 persons have been detained by Turkish police, including a prominent Salafi preacher suspected of ties to Daesh/ ISIL. But Kurdish activists maintain that a large number of the arrestees are not Daesh at all but just Kurdish Turks. In other words, the AKP government is taking advantage of its alleged turn against Daesh actually to crack down on the Kurds instead.

Kurdish news agencies closed,kurdish people arrested,jets bomb PKK targets,and Turkey says “we fight with ISIS” #TurkeyAttackKurdsNotISIS

— Nurcan Baysal (@baysal_nurcan) July 25, 2015

The PKK had had a truce with the Turkish government since 2013, but a PKK spokesman said Saturday that the truce, and any peace process are at an end given the bombing campaign Ankara launched against them.

The US and Turkey consider the PKK a terrorist organization, and in the past it has been extremely violent. In the 1980s and after some 30,000 persons died in southeastern Turkey in a dirty war between the PKK guerrillas and the Turkish army. Some 20% of Turkey’s 75 million people are ethnic Kurds, who mainly live in the hardscrabble southeast of the country. Very few Kurdish Turks are separatists, but Ankara is obsessed with the danger that they might turn in a secessionist direction, encouraged by moves toward autonomy of Kurds in Syria (Rojava) and in northern Iraq (the Kurdistan Regional Government).

The PKK seemed a spent force 15 years ago, but the Bush invasion and occupation of Iraq destroyed that country’s security and some 5000 PKK commandos fled Turkey to camps on the Iraqi side of the border.

The pro-Kurdish left of center Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which has 13 percent of seats in the Turkish parliament, complained that

“It is unacceptable for [Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan] and the Justice and Development Party [AKP] to make their war on the Kurdish people part of their war on Daesh.”

The turn of Kurdish Turks to parliamentary politics and their entry into parliament in the recent elections could have formed a basis for improved Turkish-Kurdish relations. Instead, the Islamically-tinged AKP seems to have seen this development as a threat and appears to want to polarize the country so as to weaken and isolate the Kurds.

The HDP believes that the bombardment of PKK positions is an electoral ploy intended to whip up nationalist Turkish fervor in case there are snap elections because Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of the center-right ruling Justice and Development Party could not put together a coalition with another party.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, the bombings put KRG President Massoud Barzani in a bind. He had sought better relations with Ankara after the rise of Daesh, Salafi Arab organization that relentlessly attacks Kurds. People are accusing him of letting Turkey bomb Kurdish territory, and President Erdogan said after a phone call with Barzani that the Kurdistan Regional Government leader approved of the bombardment of PKK positions. Barzani himself denied saying any such thing and he demanded that Turkey stop its aerial bombardment immediately. Barzani’s forces, the Peshmerga, and the PKK fighters had not gotten along until last summer, when they united against the depredations of Daesh. Barzani’s government is center-right whereas the PKK are leftists and former Communists.

The HDP theory is that Erdogan is doing all this to win the next parliamentary elections which could come as early as four months from now if coalition talks between the AKP and its rival, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) fail. I don’t know if that is true. I can’t actually see how AKP could improve its fortunes by mobilizing Turkish Kurds. Maybe AKP leaders are convinced they lost the last election, or didn’t get 51% of seats, because of low turnout among ethnic Turks?

In any case, sensible analysts agree that Erdogan’s decision to ruin the truce with the PKK is a fateful one, and that it could throw Turkey into disarray.

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan.

27 July, 2015
Informed Comment

 

By Dr. S. Manzoor Alam

The Muslim world has presently earned the dubious distinction of being the centre of religious extremism and intolerance. Armed militias dominate the political landscape of Muslim countries. Factional conflicts, sectarian violence, deficit of democracy and intolerance of dissent are ubiquitous. They prevent the Muslim countries from making any progress socially, economically, and politically. Moreover, they have torn to pieces the peaceful and compassionate image of Islam. This traumatic development in the Muslim countries is indeed most surprising because until 1979 most Muslim countries were marked for their moderate, liberal and tolerant form of Islam. Peace and tranquility prevailed in most of the countries. Saudi Arabia was the only country which pursued puritanical Islam and had imposed strict Shariah laws. This, however, did not disturb the peaceful environment prevailing in other Muslim countries.

It will be interesting to analyze the factors that led to the dramatic emergence of religious extremism in the Muslim World which radically transformed it into a violence prone society. An unbiased observation highlights the fact that it is a product of the rivalry during the cold war period (1945-1990), between the two super powers, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. They have been largely responsible for injecting the Muslim world with religious extremism and the culture of violence. Three case studies will substantiate this point. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003; and American and NATO military intervention against Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 are notable political events which induced religious extremism and intolerance, sectarian violence and terrorism in Muslim countries.

The Soviet Union considered Afghanistan to be an integral part of its area of influence. Therefore, it took keen interest in its affairs. From 1955 it had provided military training and equipment to the Afghan army. By 1973 half of the Afghan army had been trained in the Soviet Union. It was also keen to install a communist type of government in Kabul. In pursuance of this objective it encouraged and helped the formation of People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in 1965 based totally on communistic ideology owing allegiance to Moscow.

Noor Taraki became prime minister of Afghanistan in 1978 and was keen to rule Afghanistan on communistic lines. Further in March 1979 he signed a defense agreement with the Soviet Union which allowed it to intervene directly in the affairs of Afghanistan.

The Muslim tribes of Afghanistan revolted against the imposition of communistic rule. As the revolt spread rapidly and widely Moscow realized that Taraki would not be able to control the situation. He was executed and replaced by Babrek Karmal. Meanwhile, the Afghan resistance movement gained momentum and intensified. The Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 in order to occupy strategic points in Afghanistan, particularly Kabul. It was a massive movement of troops, more than 100,000, with lightning speed. They used a variety of weapons to facilitate the movement of ground troops and to kill as many Mujahidin guerillas as possible. Besides other lethal weapons they also dropped enhanced blast bombs and blockbuster bombs which when exploded sent out lethal shock waves in a large radius kill zone.

The American administration looked upon Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in a larger geo-political perspective. It considered it to be a part of the Soviet Union’s ‘warm water’ policy in order to control the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf region. A consortium of countries was formed including the USA, UK, China, and Saudi Arabia, to provide maximum financial and weapons’ aid to Mujahidin in order to bleed the Soviet Union. The Mujahidin also attracted Jihadists practically from all over the Muslim world because they considered Communism a great threat to Islam. A major programme of financial aid was utilised for the purchase of weapons and intensive training of the Mujahidin in guerilla warfare and use of modern weapons such as heavy machine guns, Kalashnikov assault rifles, shoulder fired stringer missiles, etc. The C.I.A. spent about 3 billion dollars in providing training and weapons to the Mujahidin to fight the Soviet forces. The Soviet forces eventually withdrew in 1989 after incurring a loss of billions of dollars and lives of thousands of soldiers. By the time they withdrew they had shattered Afghanistan’s economy. After the end of the war the United States abandoned Afghanistan. It quietly stopped its financial aid when it was most needed and did not participate in rebuilding its devastated economy.

The United States committed a formidable disservice to Islam and irreparably damaged its image by preparing, printing and distributing widely literature on Islamic extremism, among the Mujahidin which included Pakistanis and foreigners. The Washington Post investigated and disclosed that for “the last 20 years, in order to motivate the Afghans and particularly the student community to launch jihad against the communist government in Afghanistan and against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan to support the besieged Babrek Karmal regime, fed the Afghans with the jihadist, extremist and fundamentalist doctrines of Islam. Thus one whole generation was indoctrinated with the radical, fundamentalist ideology which is prone to fanaticism and violence”. The CIA spent $52 million on the production of this extremist literature. They were all produced at the Afghan Center of Nebraska University, Omaha.(Washington Post, March 23rd 2002, Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway.) These books were reprinted and distributed, with a grant of $6.5 million to the University of Nebraska even after Mr. George W. Bush had taken over the Presidency in 2001. The UNICEF also printed and distributed this Jihadi literature after deleting some portions pertaining to violence. Even the Taliban liked them. They were included by the Taliban in the core curriculum of schools in Afghanistan. Thus the literature that was produced to evoke hatred against communists and bleed the Soviet Union has become a powerful tool in the struggle against the Americans and other western powers and to impose extremism on Muslim countries that follow moderate and liberal Islam

American Invasion of Afghanistan (October, 2001)

The Taliban inspired by the extremist literature produced by the Nebraska University launched a resistance movement against the American invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. They fought vigorously a guerrilla war with the American and NATO forces with the same weapons, using the same strategy, which the Americans had taught the Mujahidin to fight against the communist Soviet Union. The communists failed to subdue them despite their superior fire power and were forced to withdraw. This is precisely what happened with the American and NATO forces. After waging a 13 year long war they just could not subdue the Taliban despite their technologically advanced arsenal of weapons. They have also been forced to withdraw. The Taliban have emerged far more powerful. They have completely destabilized the Afghan government installed by the Americans.

Invasion of Iraq March 2003

The inspiring extremist Islamic literature produced by the Nebraska University was accessible to all the Mujahidin who had come to Afghanistan from across the Muslim world to fight against the Soviet Union. It inspired Muslim militant organizations against Western intervention in Muslim countries. Iraq provides the most tangible example of the rise of extremism and fanaticism inspired by the Nebraska University produced Jihadi literature. Saddam Hussein was a dictator who had totally crushed Islamic extremism. During his regime there was zero tolerance of dissent. Saddam, a Sunni, had brutally treated the Shias who dissented and had massacred them in thousands because most of the Shias had supported the communist oriented regime of Abdul Karim Kasim which was toppled by the Baath Party in a coup. Subsequently the situation was normalized and Sunni-Shia relations improved considerably. The Shias constitud the bulk of Iraq army fighting against Iran during 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war. –

At the instigation of Israel, George W. Bush, President of the United States decided to invade Iraq on March 23, 2003 on false and fabricated grounds that it was producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was an act of blatant aggression and was deeply resented by all Iraqis. The American forces were treated as occupiers and resistance to their occupation commenced spontaneously and it aggravated considerably when Paul Bremmer, Administrator of Iraq, in May 2003 adopted a policy of ‘debathification’ of Iraqi army and administration. In one stroke he dismissed 5,000 Iraqis working as senior administrators. Further, 385,000 army personnel and 285,000 employees of the Ministry of Interior were thrown out of their jobs. Most of those dismissed went underground and joined the insurgents and the insurgency went crazy. Thus the invasion of Iraq unleashed the extremist forces, which were suppressed by Saddam Husain, with disastrous consequences for Iraq, the Middle East and for world peace.

Meanwhile, a large number of insurgent groups emerged but the most organized and powerful of them was Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, led by the fanatic Masab Al-Zarqawi. It included a large number of foreign jihadists from across the world including many who had participated in the Afghan campaign against the Soviet Union. They also had the support of the dismissed Baathist army personnel who knew how to make bombs and land mines. They fought vigorously a guerilla war against the American and British forces. The Americans and the British were totally nonplussed and had no clue how to suppress insurgency.

By the end of 2006, insurgency was at its peak. The Americans had realized that they could not control it because Shias and Sunnis were united in acts of insurgency. In sheer desperation they conceived of a deplorable strategy to incite sectarian violence and maximize religious differences between Shias and Sunnis. They wanted to create bad blood between them and spoil their harmonious relations. They succeeded to a large extent. It was most visible in Baghdad where it assumed the shape of a civil war. However, this strategy did not in any way reduce the intensity of the insurgency. The extremist group of Al-Qaida Mesopotamia founded by Masab Al-Zarqavi, even after his death, continued to harass and kill the American soldiers who were completely demoralized and wanted to quit Iraq as early as possible. By the time the Americans decided to leave, the extremist Al-Qaida Mesopotamia had emerged-as the dominant Islamic militant group. Ironically “one of the great of the perversities of the so- called war on t
error is that fundamentalist forces have flourished as a direct consequence of it” (Owen Jones: Guardian, London) Thus the major contribution of American Invasion of Iraq was to destroy its sectarian harmony, degrade and destroy its moderate and liberal Islam and promote Islamic extremism and fanaticism. (Refer: Manzoor Alam (2009): War on Terrorism or American or Strategy for Global Dominance pp 163-234)

Chaos and Extremism in Libya – NATO’S Role.

NATO’S intervention in Libya is a classic example where military action on humanitarian grounds transformed a country with sound law and order into a chaotic and disturbed society. Libya under Gaddafi was hell for radical and militant Islamists. He had not only controlled Islamic extremism but had almost crushed it. There was no justification what so ever for NATO’s intervention in Libyan affairs because Libya was neither supporting nor sponsoring terrorism. In fact, Gaddafi had voluntarily abandoned his nuclearisation programme and shipped all nuclear materials and equipment he had assembled to the United States. Further he was fully cooperating with the United States on counter terrorism because he was deeply worried about the rising tide of militant Islam in Libya.

A small section of Libya’s population, influenced by the Arab spring, had revolted against Gaddafi’s rule. He had almost succeeded in quelling their rebellion when his opponents started falsely propagating that he was committing genocide and blood bath. Without verifying the news, despite having a powerful spy network, the NATO powers, particularly the United States, went to the UN Security Council and got Resolution 1973 approved to impose a “No Flying Zone” in Libya and to protect civilian life. This mandate was unilaterally altered to regime change by President Obama. The rebels were in total retreat. Gaddafi’s forces were moving towards Benghazi, the last citadel of rebels in order to expel them from their last sanctuary. Meanwhile, a group of supporters of the rebels, in Switzerland, raised a hue and cry that there would be genocide and blood bath if Gaddafi’s forces were allowed to enter Benghazi. This was a false and fabricated news. According to Kuperman, Gaddafi only targeted the combatants. The civilian casualties were minimum. Nonetheless the western media exaggerated this false news. The NATO powers without checking the veracity of the news promptly started military action. France struck Gaddafi’s army moving toward Benghazi by air and halted its advance. The American Air Force struck Gaddafi’s convoy when it was moving out of Surte. Gaddafi was seriously wounded. He was captured by the rebels and mercilessly executed. Gaddafi’s forces could not enter Benghazi and the rebels returned. The peace and tranquility which Gaddafi had almost restored in Libya was totally shattered and replaced by absolute chaos. The NATO powers initiated this sordid action when his western educated younger son, Saiful Islam, was almost nominated to succeed Gaddafi. He was planning to initiate far reaching reforms in the political system of Libya. He is now rotting in jail. (Refer: Alan J Kuperman: Obama’s Libya Debacle). In his article “Libya the Disaster We Have Created”s, Owen Jones has rightly stated that “while many of these military interventions have left nations shattered, western governments have resembled the customer who walks away whistling, hoping no one has noticed the mess left behind.”(The Guardian, October 1, 2014)

The NATO powers after paralyzing the economy of Libya, destroying its infrastructure and devastating its administrative machinery quietly withdrew totally oblivious of the damage they had inflicted. It was their responsibility to control the chaotic situation there, restore law and order and peace and tranquility. Owen Jones pertinently points out that “No wonder western governments and journalists who hailed the success of this intervention are so silent. But here are the consequences of their war, and they must take responsibility for them”.

It may be noticed that after NATO’s and United States’ military intervention in Libya it has been overrun by armed militias, deteriorating human rights situation and mounting chaos. Gaddafi had crushed Islamic extremism which is now hyperactive. Libya is split into factions and violent factional conflicts have become an inherent part of its politics. It is governed by two governments which are dominated by two powerful militias, Zintan and Misrata. Even the ISIS has established a strong foothold in Surte and Derna where they enjoy popular support and cannot be dislodged easily. Libya is also exporting Islamic extremism and has helped the establishment of a large Islamic state in Mali. It is also exporting lethal and non- lethal weapons from the Gaddafi arsenal. If affairs in Libya are not adequately rectified it may emerge as the greatest menace to peace and political stability in North Africa and the Middle East. Despite all the devastation they have caused and the mayhem they have created, the United S
tates and NATO still claim it as a “Model Intervention”. In fact, it is rather a “Bad Model” and a total debacle.

In conclusion it may be observed that American military interventions in Muslim countries have invariably left a legacy of Islamic extremism and fanaticism which are a grave threat to political stability in the Muslim countries and world peace.

27 July 2015

Dr. S. Manzoor Alam, Ph.D (Edinburgh),
Former Vice Chancellor, University of Kashmir, India.
60 Milburn Drive, Hillsborough, New Jersey- 08844 , U.S.A.

 

By Pepe Escobar

Let’s start with the geopolitical Big Bang you know nothing about, the one that occurred just two weeks ago. Here are its results: from now on, any possible future attack on Iran threatened by the Pentagon (in conjunction with NATO) would essentially be an assault on the planning of an interlocking set of organizations — the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union), the AIIB (the new Chinese-founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), and the NDB (the BRICS’ New Development Bank) — whose acronyms you’re unlikely to recognize either. Still, they represent an emerging new order in Eurasia.

Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Islamabad, and New Delhi have been actively establishing interlocking security guarantees. They have been simultaneously calling the Atlanticist bluff when it comes to the endless drumbeat of attention given to the flimsy meme of Iran’s “nuclear weapons program.” And a few days before the Vienna nuclear negotiations finally culminated in an agreement, all of this came together at a twin BRICS/SCO summit in Ufa, Russia — a place you’ve undoubtedly never heard of and a meeting that got next to no attention in the U.S. And yet sooner or later, these developments will ensure that the War Party in Washington and assorted neocons (as well as neoliberalcons) already breathing hard over the Iran deal will sweat bullets as their narratives about how the world works crumble.

The Eurasian Silk Road

With the Vienna deal, whose interminable build-up I had the dubious pleasure of following closely, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his diplomatic team have pulled the near-impossible out of an extremely crumpled magician’s hat: an agreement that might actually end sanctions against their country from an asymmetric, largely manufactured conflict.

Think of that meeting in Ufa, the capital of Russia’s Bashkortostan, as a preamble to the long-delayed agreement in Vienna. It caught the new dynamics of the Eurasian continent and signaled the future geopolitical Big Bangness of it all. At Ufa, from July 8th to 10th, the 7th BRICS summit and the 15th Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit overlapped just as a possible Vienna deal was devouring one deadline after another.

Consider it a diplomatic masterstroke of Vladmir Putin’s Russia to have merged those two summits with an informal meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Call it a soft power declaration of war against Washington’s imperial logic, one that would highlight the breadth and depth of an evolving Sino-Russian strategic partnership. Putting all those heads of state attending each of the meetings under one roof, Moscow offered a vision of an emerging, coordinated geopolitical structure anchored in Eurasian integration. Thus, the importance of Iran: no matter what happens post-Vienna, Iran will be a vital hub/node/crossroads in Eurasia for this new structure.

If you read the declaration that came out of the BRICS summit, one detail should strike you: the austerity-ridden European Union (EU) is barely mentioned. And that’s not an oversight. From the point of view of the leaders of key BRICS nations, they are offering a new approach to Eurasia, the very opposite of the language of sanctions.

Here are just a few examples of the dizzying activity that took place at Ufa, all of it ignored by the American mainstream media. In their meetings, President Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi worked in a practical way to advance what is essentially a Chinese vision of a future Eurasia knit together by a series of interlocking “new Silk Roads.” Modi approved more Chinese investment in his country, while Xi and Modi together pledged to work to solve the joint border issues that have dogged their countries and, in at least one case, led to war.

The NDB, the BRICS’ response to the World Bank, was officially launched with $50 billion in start-up capital. Focused on funding major infrastructure projects in the BRICS nations, it is capable of accumulating as much as $400 billion in capital, according to its president, Kundapur Vaman Kamath. Later, it plans to focus on funding such ventures in other developing nations across the Global South — all in their own currencies, which means bypassing the U.S. dollar. Given its membership, the NDB’s money will clearly be closely linked to the new Silk Roads. As Brazilian Development Bank President Luciano Coutinhostressed, in the near future it may also assist European non-EU member states like Serbia and Macedonia. Think of this as the NDB’s attempt to break a Brussels monopoly on Greater Europe. Kamath even advanced the possibility of someday aidingin the reconstruction of Syria.

You won’t be surprised to learn that both the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the NDB are headquartered in China and will work to complement each other’s efforts. At the same time, Russia’s foreign investment arm, the Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), signed a memorandum of understanding with funds from other BRICS countries and so launched an informal investment consortium in which China’s Silk Road Fund and India’s Infrastructure Development Finance Company will be key partners.

Full Spectrum Transportation Dominance

On the ground level, this should be thought of as part of the New Great Game in Eurasia. Its flip side is the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Pacific and the Atlantic version of the same, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, both of which Washington is trying to advance to maintain U.S. global economic dominance. The question these conflicting plans raise is how to integrate trade and commerce across that vast region. From the Chinese and Russian perspectives, Eurasia is to be integrated via a complex network of superhighways, high-speed rail lines, ports, airports, pipelines, and fiber optic cables. By land, sea, and air, the resulting New Silk Roads are meant to create an economic version of the Pentagon’s doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance” — a vision that already has Chinese corporate executives crisscrossing Eurasia sealing infrastructure deals.

For Beijing — back to a 7% growth rate in the second quarter of 2015 despite a recent near-panic on the country’s stock markets — it makes perfect economic sense: as labor costs rise, production will be relocated from the country’s Eastern seaboard to its cheaper Western reaches, while the natural outlets for the production of just about everything will be those parallel and interlocking “belts” of the new Silk Roads.

Meanwhile, Russia is pushing to modernize and diversify its energy-exploitation-dependent economy. Among other things, its leaders hope that the mix of those developing Silk Roads and the tying together of the Eurasian Economic Union — Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan — will translate into myriad transportation and construction projects for which the country’s industrial and engineering know-how will prove crucial.

As the EEU has begun establishing free trade zones with India, Iran, Vietnam, Egypt, and Latin America’s Mercosur bloc (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela), the initial stages of this integration process already reach beyond Eurasia. Meanwhile, the SCO, which began as little more than a security forum, is expanding and moving into the field of economic cooperation. Its countries, especially four Central Asian “stans” (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan) will rely ever more on the Chinese-driven Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the NDB. At Ufa, India and Pakistan finalized an upgrading process in which they have moved from observers to members of the SCO. This makes it an alternative G8.

In the meantime, when it comes to embattled Afghanistan, the BRICS nations and the SCO have now called upon “the armed opposition to disarm, accept the Constitution of Afghanistan, and cut ties with Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist organizations.” Translation: within the framework of Afghan national unity, the organization would accept the Taliban as part of a future government. Their hopes, with the integration of the region in mind, would be for a future stable Afghanistan able to absorb more Chinese, Russian, Indian, and Iranian investment, and the construction — finally! — of a long-planned, $10 billion, 1,420-kilometer-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline that would benefit those energy-hungry new SCO members, Pakistan and India. (They would each receive 42% of the gas, the remaining 16% going to Afghanistan.)

Central Asia is, at the moment, geographic ground zero for the convergence of the economic urges of China, Russia, and India. It was no happenstance that, on his way to Ufa, Prime Minister Modi stopped off in Central Asia. Like the Chinese leadership in Beijing, Moscow looks forward (as a recent document puts it) to the “interpenetration and integration of the EEU and the Silk Road Economic Belt” into a “Greater Eurasia” and a “steady, developing, safe common neighborhood” for both Russia and China.

And don’t forget Iran. In early 2016, once economic sanctions are fully lifted, it is expected to join the SCO, turning it into a G9. As its foreign minister, Javad Zarif, made clear recently to Russia’s Channel 1 television, Tehran considers the two countries strategic partners. “Russia,” he said, “has been the most important participant in Iran’s nuclear program and it will continue under the current agreement to be Iran’s major nuclear partner.” The same will, he added, be true when it comes to “oil and gas cooperation,” given the shared interest of those two energy-rich nations in “maintaining stability in global market prices.”

Got Corridor, Will Travel

Across Eurasia, BRICS nations are moving on integration projects. A developing Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridor is a typical example. It is now being reconfigured as a multilane highway between India and China. Meanwhile, Iran and Russia are developing a transportation corridor from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the Caspian Sea and the Volga River. Azerbaijan will be connected to the Caspian part of this corridor, while India is planning to use Iran’s southern ports to improve its access to Russia and Central Asia. Now, add in a maritime corridor that will stretch from the Indian city of Mumbai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and then on to the southern Russian city of Astrakhan. And this just scratches the surface of the planning underway.

Years ago, Vladimir Putin suggested that there could be a “Greater Europe” stretching from Lisbon, Portugal, on the Atlantic to the Russian city of Vladivostok on the Pacific. The EU, under Washington’s thumb, ignored him. Then the Chinese started dreaming about and planning new Silk Roads that would, in reverse Marco Polo fashion, extend from Shanghai to Venice (and then on to Berlin).

Thanks to a set of cross-pollinating political institutions, investment funds, development banks, financial systems, and infrastructure projects that, to date, remain largely under Washington’s radar, a free-trade Eurasian heartland is being born. It will someday link China and Russia to Europe, Southwest Asia, and even Africa. It promises to be an astounding development. Keep your eyes, if you can, on the accumulating facts on the ground, even if they are rarely covered in the American media. They represent the New Great — emphasis on that word — Game in Eurasia.

Location, Location, Location

Tehran is now deeply invested in strengthening its connections to this new Eurasia and the man to watch on this score is Ali Akbar Velayati. He is the head of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research and senior foreign policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Velayati stresses that security in Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and the Caucasus hinges on the further enhancement of a Beijing-Moscow-Tehran triple entente.

As he knows, geo-strategically Iran is all about location, location, location. That country offers the best access to open seas in the region apart from Russia and is the only obvious east-west/north-south crossroads for trade from the Central Asian “stans.” Little wonder then that Iran will soon be an SCO member, even as its “partnership” with Russia is certain to evolve. Its energy resources are already crucial to and considered a matter of national security for China and, in the thinking of that country’s leadership, Iran also fulfills a key role as a hub in those Silk Roads they are planning.

That growing web of literal roads, rail lines, and energy pipelines, asTomDispatch has previously reported, represents Beijing’s response to the Obama administration’s announced “pivot to Asia” and the U.S. Navy’s urge to meddle in the South China Sea. Beijing is choosing to project power via a vast set of infrastructure projects, especially high-speed rail lines that will reach from its eastern seaboard deep into Eurasia. In this fashion, the Chinese-built railway from Urumqi in Xinjiang Province to Almaty in Kazakhstan will undoubtedly someday be extended to Iran and traverse that country on its way to the Persian Gulf.

A New World for Pentagon Planners

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last month, Vladimir Putin told PBS’s Charlie Rose that Moscow and Beijing had always wanted a genuine partnership with the United States, but were spurned by Washington. Hats off, then, to the “leadership” of the Obama administration. Somehow, it has managed to bring together two former geopolitical rivals, while solidifying their pan-Eurasian grand strategy.

Even the recent deal with Iran in Vienna is unlikely — especially given the war hawks in Congress — to truly end Washington’s 36-year-long Great Wall of Mistrust with Iran. Instead, the odds are that Iran, freed from sanctions, will indeed be absorbed into the Sino-Russian project to integrate Eurasia, which leads us to the spectacle of Washington’s warriors, unable to act effectively, yet screaming like banshees.

NATO’s supreme commander Dr. Strangelove, sorry, American General Philip Breedlove, insists that the West must create a rapid-reaction force — online — to counteract Russia’s “false narratives.” Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter claims to be seriously considering unilaterally redeploying nuclear-capable missiles in Europe. The nominee to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Commandant Joseph Dunford, recently directly labeled Russia America’s true “existential threat”; Air Force General Paul Selva, nominated to be the new vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, seconded that assessment, using the same phrase and putting Russia, China and Iran, in that order, as more threatening than the Islamic State (ISIS). In the meantime, Republican presidential candidates and a bevy of congressional war hawks simply shout and fume when it comes to both the Iranian deal and the Russians.

In response to the Ukrainian situation and the “threat” of a resurgent Russia (behind which stands a resurgent China), a Washington-centric militarization of Europe is proceeding apace. NATO is now reportedly obsessed with what’s being called “strategy rethink” — as in drawing up detailed futuristic war scenarios on European soil. As economist Michael Hudson has pointed out, even financial politics are becoming militarized and linked to NATO’s new Cold War 2.0.

In its latest National Military Strategy, the Pentagon suggests that the risk of an American war with another nation (as opposed to terror outfits), while low, is “growing” and identifies four nations as “threats”: North Korea, a case apart, and predictably the three nations that form the new Eurasian core: Russia, China, and Iran. They are depicted in the document as “revisionist states,” openly defying what the Pentagon identifies as “international security and stability”; that is, the distinctly un-level playing field created by globalized, exclusionary, turbo-charged casino capitalism and Washington’s brand of militarism.

The Pentagon, of course, does not do diplomacy. Seemingly unaware of the Vienna negotiations, it continued to accuse Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons. And that “military option” against Iran is never off the table.

So consider it the Mother of All Blockbusters to watch how the Pentagon and the war hawks in Congress will react to the post-Vienna and — though it was barely noticed in Washington — the post-Ufa environment, especially under a new White House tenant in 2017.

It will be a spectacle. Count on it. Will the next version of Washington try to make it up to “lost” Russia or send in the troops? Will it contain China or the “caliphate” of ISIS? Will it work with Iran to fight ISIS or spurn it? Will it truly pivot to Asia for good and ditch the Middle East or vice-versa? Or might it try to contain Russia, China, and Iran simultaneously or find some way to play them against each other?

In the end, whatever Washington may do, it will certainly reflect a fear of the increasing strategic depth Russia and China are developing economically, a reality now becoming visible across Eurasia. At Ufa, Putin told Xi on the record: “Combining efforts, no doubt we [Russia and China] will overcome all the problems before us.”

Read “efforts” as new Silk Roads, that Eurasian Economic Union, the growing BRICS block, the expanding Shanghai Cooperation Organization, those China-based banks, and all the rest of what adds up to the beginning of a new integration of significant parts of the Eurasian land mass. As for Washington, fly like an eagle? Try instead: scream like a banshee.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times, an analyst for RTand Sputnik, and a TomDispatch regular. His latest book is Empire of Chaos. Follow him on Facebook by clicking here.

Copyright 2015 Pepe Escobar

23 July, 2015
TomDispatch.com