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By Dan Glazebrook

Following the 1991 Gulf war, the late lamented US comedian Bill Hicks performed a routine of a US general at a press conference. “Iraq has incredible weapons. Incredible,” the general said. ‘How do you know that?,’ he was asked. “Oh, well, uh – we looked at the receipt”.

In the aftermath of the Russian plane crash in Egypt last week, Britain in particular has been quick to claim that the crash was the result of a “terrorist bomb”, presumably planted by ISIS. So what is it that makes Cameron so sure that the terrorist group created by his Syria policy has the necessary training, equipment and wherewithal to carry out that attack? Did he look at the receipt?

After all, the lame ‘evidence’ we have actually been graced with by the US and British governments so far is no evidence whatsoever. The British claim to have intercepted “chatter” about the attack between ISIS’s Syria and Sinai operations which even the Times admits was “probably deliberately planted to prove to the Americans and British that ISIS operatives were behind the bomb plot”. Of course ISIS would want to claim it; but such claims are far from confirming they actually did it. The US, for their part, claim that their satellite picked up a ‘heat flash’, suggesting an explosion. But, as the Times again points out, a bomb is not the only possible cause of such an explosion: “the aeroplane suffered a sudden violent event – probably a structural failure that snapped off the tail. The question is whether the cause was a bomb or a fracture in the fuselage. An exploding fuel tank is also an outside possibility”. The UK seem to be pretty sure it was terrorism and presumably they have reason to believe this. But whatever that reason is, it is not the reason we have been given.

What is clear is that if the plane was brought down by a bomb, and that bomb was planted by ISIS, it marks a major development for the group. According to Raffaello Pantucci of the Royal United Services Institute, an attack of this kind by ISIS would “herald an unseen level of sophistication in their bomb-making, as well as the ability to smuggle a device on board.” But as well as a new technical feat, such an attack would represent an alarming change in tactics. The Times yesterday argued that “If the plane crash did turn out to be the work of an Islamic State affiliate in Sinai, it would mark a significant departure for the jihadist group, which had yet to launch a large-scale attack against civilians”. So, if the plane was indeed brought down by an ISIS-in-Sinai bomb, either the group have suddenly been blessed with some amazing new technology, or they have suddenly decided to change tactics to mass killings of civilians. If the latter, isn’t it a little odd that, after more than a year of Western airstrikes apparently aimed at ISIS, the group has failed to launch such an attack against Western civilians – yet are able to respond within weeks to a campaign of Russian airstrikes which, according to the West, do not even target ISIS??

Either way, the crash couldn’t have been timed more perfectly from the point of view of Western geopolitics. After four years of setbacks, the West’s Syrian ‘regime change’ (that euphemism for wholesale state destruction) operation now faces the prospect of imminent total defeat courtesy of Russia’s intervention. And options for how to salvage that operation are very limited indeed. Full scale occupation is a non-starter; following Iraq and Afghanistan, both the US and British armies are now officially incapable of mounting such ventures. The Libya option – supporting death squads on the ground with NATO air cover – has always come up against Russian opposition, but has now been effectively rendered impossible. And relying on anti-government death squads alone is simply very unlikely to succeed, however many TOWs and manpads are feverishly thrown into the fire; after all, there are only so many terrorists and mercenaries who can be shipped in, and, as Mike Whitney put it, the world may have already reached “peak terrorist”. Forcing Russia out – and turning US and British airpower openly and decisively against the Syrian state – has thus become a key objective for Western planners. But how to do it? What would turn Russians against the intervention? The Times yesterday: “So far the war in Syria has been quite popular….[but] if it turns out that the war prompts terrorists to wreak vengeance on ordinary Russians by secreting explosives on planes, that gung-ho attitude could change” – or, at least, that is presumably what the Times is hoping.

And downing the plane on Egyptian soil just before Sisi’s first state visit to Britain? It couldn’t have served British strategy better if the bomb had been planted directly by MI6 themselves (which certainly shouldn’t be ruled out by the way, and certainly not simply on the racist grounds that ‘of course we don’t do that sort of thing’ – in other words, that only brown people are capable of an atrocity so hideous).

Egypt is at a historical crossroads. Having moved from the socialist camp into the West’s ‘orbit’ during the Sadat era in the 1970s, Egypt’s leadership has become ever less willing to be dictated to by Washington and London: a process that began in the latter part of Mubarak’s rule, and has continued under Sisi. Along with Russia, Egypt has played a leading “spoiler role”, as Sukant Chandan puts it, in the West’s regime change operation in Syria – and has not been forgiven for it. In addition, Mubarak’s government had been dragging its feet on the privatization and ‘structural adjustment’ demanded by the IMF: and tourism was and is a major source of income helping to reduce the country’s dependence on the international banksters. But since last Saturday, all that is now in the balance; as the Financial Times commented, suspicions that the crash was caused by a bomb “are likely to prove disastrous to the country’s struggling tourism industry”. “Of course this will have a huge negative impact on Egypt” announced British foreign secretary Philip Hammond matter-of-factly following Britain’s decision to stop British flights to Egypt – seemingly without an ounce of regret. It is interesting, in this regard, that early suggestions that the plane could have been brought down by a shoulder-to-air missile (of the type now being supplied by the CIA to the insurgency in Syria, according to the Wall Street Journal) – as ISIS themselves actually claimed to have done – were very quickly replaced with speculation that it must have been an onboard bomb. This was a very useful way to shift blame away from the equippers of terrorism, and onto ‘lazy, corrupt Egyptian airport staff’ who let the bomber through – all the better to humiliate Egypt and undermine its tourist industry. The likely massive loss of tourist income will force the Egyptians to go back to the IMF, who will, of course, demand their pound of flesh in the form of mass privatisations and ‘austerity’.

But it is not only Egypt’s economic dependency on the West that will be deepened by the crash – Britain, in particular, appears to be using the crash as leverage to reinsinuate itself into Egypt’s military and security apparatus. Firstly, British officials have been taking every opportunity to humiliate Egypt, trying to convince the world that Egypt is perilously unstable, and that only by outsourcing security to the West can it be safe again. When Sisi arrived in the country this week, noted the Times, “Britain openly contradicted the Egyptian leader and suggested that he was not in full control of the Sinai peninsula” whilst an Egyptian official “commented that the dispatch of six officials to check the security arrangements at Sharm el-Sheikh airport was ‘like treating us as children’”. And lo and behold, following Sisi’s visit, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon announced that “the UK would establish a small military team in Egypt to counter terrorism and extremism.” As I have written about here, the spread of terrorism throughout the MENA region by NATO’s Libya operation has laid the groundwork for a renewed Western push to convince global South states that they need to deepen ‘military co-operation’ with the West. Thus, where economic dependence on Western finance and markets is in terminal decline (largely due to the rise of China), a new military dependence is being fostered. This is especially so for states such as Nigeria, Egypt and Iraq – one-time client states of the West gradually being pulled out of its orbit – with the West using the threat of terrorism as a means of forcing them back into the Western fold. A classic protection racket, in other words.

Finally, of course, the British government has not missed the opportunity to use the tragedy to push for deeper British involvement in Syria. Michael Fallon, Britain’s Defence Minister, has been spending the last two days explaining how the case for bombing Syria would be strengthened if it were proven the plane was brought down by ISIS. Quite how more deeply insinuating one of the death squads’ leading state backers into Syria would somehow reduce the power of the death squads is, of course, not explained; such is the nature of imperialism.

In a world, then, where Western power is in steep decline, terrorism is fast becoming one of the last few viable options for extending its hegemony and undermining the rising power of the global South. If this attack was conducted by ISIS, then, how kind it was of them to take it upon themselves to act as the vanguard of Western imperial interests. And how obliging of the hundreds of Western agents in the organization not to do anything to stop them.

An earlier version of this article first appeared on RT.com

Dan Glazebrook is a political journalist and author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis

9 November 2015

By AWD news

Kuwait City — According to Kuwaiti Al Qabas daily, the flamboyant Saudi Prince and entrepreneur, al-Waleed bin Talal posited that his country must reconsider its regional commitments and devise a new strategy to combat Iran’s increasing influence in Gulf States by forging a Defense pact with Tel Aviv to deter any possible Iranian moves in the light of unfolding developments in the Syria and Moscow’s military intervention.

“The whole Middle-East dispute is tantamount to matter of life and death for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from my vantage point ,and I know that Iranians seek to unseat the Saudi regime by playing the Palestinian card , hence to foil their plots Saudi Arabia and Israel must bolster their relations and form a united front to stymie Tehran’s ambitious agenda,” Kuwaiti News Agency (KUNA) quoted Prince al-Waleed as saying on Tuesday , adding, Riyadh and Tel Aviv must achieve a modus vivendi , for Saudi policy in regard to Arab-Israeli crisis is no longer tenable.

Iran seeks to buttress its presence in the Mediterranean by supporting Assad regime in Syria, added Prince al-Waleed, but to the chagrin of Riyadh and its sister Gulf sheikhdoms , Putin’s Russia has become a real co-belligerent force in Syrian 4-year-old civil war by attacking CIA-trained Islamist rebels. Here surfaces the paramount importance of Saudi-Israeli nexus to frustrate Russia-Iran-Hezbollah axis.

” I will side with the Jewish nation and its democratic aspirations in case of outbreak of a Palestinian Intifada( uprising) and i shall exert all my influence to break any ominous Arab initiatives set to condemn Tel Aviv , because I deem the Arab-Israeli entente and future friendship necessary to impede the Iranian dangerous encroachment,” Al Qabas cited the Saudi media tycoon as he is in a regional tour, visiting the other Gulf Arab littoral states–Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman–to muster support for Saudi-backed Islamist rebels in Syria.

No longer able to justify its illegal military presence in Bahrain – a tiny Arabian Gulf Kingdom, occupied by Saudi forces to stifle the 2011 pro-deaconry movement–, some high-profile Saudi officials, namely Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, voiced their willingness to annex Bahrain. These flagrant statements drew wide condemnation from nearly every quarter of the Arab world.

“…you know the union with Bahrain doesn’t explicitly mean to annex our dear neighbors, but in fact we are wary about the future of Bahrain, its people security and well-being. Bahrain is the home to U.S. fifth fleet which its presence is of vital interest for Saudi Arabia, thus we can not permit Iran to wreak havoc in our back yard,” said the Saudi Prince, vindicating his previous brash comments regarding the annexation of Bahrain.

27 October 2015
www.awdnews.com

A recent study suggests the “War on Terror” has had two million victims, but reporter Nafeez Ahmed claims this may be only a fraction of the total dead from Western wars.

By MintPress News Desk

WASHINGTON — A study released earlier this year revealed the shocking death toll of the United States’s “War on Terror” since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but the true body count could be even higher.

Published in March by Physicians for Social Responsibility, the study, conducted by a team that included some Nobel Prize winners, determined that at least 1.3 million people have died as a result of war since Sept.11, 2001, but the real figure might be as high as two million. The study was an attempt to “close the gaps” in existing research, including studies like the Iraq Body Count,” which puts the number of violent deaths in that country at about 219,000 since 2003, based on media reports of the time period.

Investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, writing in April for Middle East Eye, explained some of the ways the previous figures fell short, according to the physicians’ research:

“For instance, although 40,000 corpses had been buried in Najaf since the launch of the war, IBC [Iraq Body Count] recorded only 1,354 deaths in Najaf for the same period. That example shows how wide the gap is between IBC’s Najaf figure and the actual death toll – in this case, by a factor of over 30.

Such gaps are replete throughout IBC’s database. In another instance, IBC recorded just three airstrikes in a period in 2005, when the number of air attacks had in fact increased from 25 to 120 that year. Again, the gap here is by a factor of 40.”

The physicians behind the study also praised a controversial report from the medical journal The Lancet that placed the toll count far higher than that of Iraq Body Count, at closer to one million dead. In addition to the war in Iraq, the PSR study added additional victims from other countries where the United States has waged war:

“To this, the PSR study adds at least 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, killed as the direct or indirect consequence of US-led war: a ‘conservative’ total of 1.3 million. The real figure could easily be ‘in excess of 2 million’.”

These figures may still be underestimating the real death toll, according to Ahmed. These studies only account for the victims of violent conflict, but not the many more who will die as a result of the damage war brings to crucial infrastructure, from roads to farms to hospitals — not to mention devastating sanctions like those placed on Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991. He continues:

“Undisputed UN figures show that 1.7 million Iraqi civilians died due to the West’s brutal sanctions regime, half of whom were children.

The mass death was seemingly intended. Among items banned by the UN sanctions were chemicals and equipment essential for Iraq’s national water treatment system. A secret US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) document discovered by Professor Thomas Nagy of the School of Business at George Washington University amounted, he said, to ‘an early blueprint for genocide against the people of Iraq.’”

Similar figures for Afghanistan, he reports, could bring totals to four million or more.

As Ahmed points out in his article, the majority of those killed in these wars and those suffering most from these wars, statistically speaking, were Muslim — a stark contrast to the common view that radical Muslim terrorists are the deadliest group in the Middle East. Rather, it would seem the American military are the worst killers, and the death toll resembles religious genocide. In 2009, Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard, wrote in Foreign Policy:

“How many Muslims has the United States killed in the past thirty years, and how many Americans have been killed by Muslims? Coming up with a precise answer to this question is probably impossible, but it is also not necessary, because the rough numbers are so clearly lopsided.”

Or, as Ben Affleck famously quipped to Bill Maher last year: “We’ve killed more Muslims than they’ve killed us by an awful lot.”

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3 August 2015

www.mintpressnews.com

 

By Afro-Middle East Centre

The outcome of Turkey’s 1 November snap election was an unexpected surge in support for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) which will comfortably dominate parliament with 49 per cent of the vote (up from 41 per cent in the June election) and 57 per cent of parliamentary seats. This is in stark contrast to the results of the June election that had produced a hung parliament and led to five months of political and economic instability. This latest outcome sets a different scene for the country’s future social, political and economic agendas as the AKP takes 317 of the 550 parliamentary seats.

With large numbers of refugees arriving in Turkey daily, the Syrian crisis certainly influenced the the socio-economic environment and the election, but there is little doubt that the resumption of violence between the state and the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) was extremely crucial in how votes would be cast. While opposition media, particularly those aligned to the Gulen/Hizmet movement, portray the outcome as a personal victory for the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the results highlight the collective weakness of the three main opposition parties, underlined by the spectacular losses suffered by the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – which shed 40 parliamentary seats – and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) – with a decrease of 21 seats. Both parties could have been king-makers in a coalition government after June but, like the AKP, they gambled on securing more seats in the second election. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) maintained its position, losing only two seats.

The AKP’s revival as majority party with four million votes more votes than in June can be attributed mainly to a popular desire for ‘stability’ which, many voters believed, can be delivered only by the ruling party. Further, the Kurdish issue and related violence loomed large, and coalition governments in Turkey have historically failed to help in resolving the Kurdish question. Turks became instinctively distrustful of coalition governments after the turbulent 1990s when frequent military interventions into politics became the norm. This week’s outcome can, thus, also be read as an attempt by voters to prevent a situation where Turkey can only be governed by a coalition. Five months ago analysts and exit polls predicted the AKP’s decline as a result of internal and external pressures, particularly because of contestation between the party and its former ally, the Fethullah Gulen movement. The Gulenists’ withdrawing support from the AKP in June strongly influenced the party’s poor showing.

In five months the HDP, which celebrated in June for the 13 per cent of the vote it had received, lost three per cent, while its leadership aimed for 20 per cent. To voters for whom stability was a priority – especially conservative Kurdish voters, the HDP’s unwillingness to distance itself from and condemn the PKK was a major factor for its losses. Votes that the HDP received in June from those who viewed a strong HDP as a check on the AKP’s exercise of power, especially in light of corruption allegations against AKP officials, now switched to the AKP. Some observers suggest that the shock decline in AKP votes in June was a result of punitive voting because of a stagnant economy and rising instability brought on by the Syrian crisis. And nationalists wanted to punish the AKP for its seemingly-dovish approach to the PKK. Images of armed PKK members at check points in Kurdish areas such as Cizre stirred anti-AKP sentiment even within its traditional support base.

But the return of violence on a daily basis – with bombings in Turkey’s major cities, and the Turkish army at war with both the PKK and Islamic State group and with deaths on both sides of the state-Kurdish conflict – turned a large number of voters away from the HDP back to the AKP. Most HDP votes this week came from Turkey’s east, suggesting that Kurds in other areas switched their votes back to the AKP. The ruling party seems to be considered by many as a safe bet during tumultuous times. Some critics argue that the AKP manufactured ‘instability’ in the past five months in order to return precisely the result that this election did, that while the government has not been responsible for all the violence, it created the conditions for it and helped paint the PKK (and politicised Kurds more generally) as Turkey’s enemy – in order to win back the parliament.

Since, in the immediate aftermath of the election, Erdogan has pledged to liquidate the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s imprisoned leader, will likely face increased pressure from Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), which will want him to support a political solution to the conflict – a difficult prospect for the imprisoned leader of an armed group. If he is unwilling, as he will be, he will be made to seem irrelevant and the assumption would be that the PKK strategic leadership centre had shifted to the commanders in the Qandil Mountains. He will likely spend much more time in prison, at least until the AKP decides it wants to revive talks with the PKK.

HDP leaders will face similar pressures. To continue to be recognised as the political voice of Turkish Kurds (at least by the state), they will be expected to distance themselves from the PKK. It will also have to consider how it might strengthen its appeal both to Kurds and to Turkish leftists who supported it in June, but might have deserted it in November. As with all parties, the HDP’s survival partly depends on the Turkish economy. This will be a critical factor for the HDP which won most seats through votes obtained in the east where the economy has been particularly hard hit as a result of the government-PKK battles. To complicate matters further for the HDP, it will have to navigate its ‘debt’ to the Gulen movement whose members voted for the HDP as a way of blocking the AKP and opposing Erdogan.

But with the Kurdish question again becoming the most pressing domestic issue – especially with the renewed war between the state and the PKK, the government will want a strong Kurdish political partner that can be an interlocutor with the PKK and encourage it back to the negotiations table in the event that the AKP decided to revert to that strategy. The AKP then will likely see the HDP as such a partner and will want to change that adversarial relationship into one of cooperation.

Paradoxically, the AKP also retained votes from supporters who had been critical of the party’s negotiations with the PKK, but who did not shift their votes to the hardline Turkish nationalist MHP; and it won the votes of MHP nationalists who were encouraged by the government’s recent (deadly) confrontations with the PKK. The MHP’s identity-based policies are viewed by many as incapable of dealing with the new reality, including that of Kurdish parliamentarians, and is losing even leaders because of this. The AKP, then, succeeded in winning the votes of both conservative Kurds (from the HDP), and nationalist Turks (from the MHP) – even though that seems counter-intuitive.

Another factor contributing to the AKP’s success was the revision of its candidate lists since the June election. Many well-known leaders who had reached their three-term limit were unable to stand in June, but, having ‘missed’ an election, became eligible again. In a period of uncertainty the electorate seems to have taken comfort in personalities from the past who are tried and trusted.

While in most elections a weak economy results in the incumbent ruling party losing support, in Turkey it has meant that voters supported the incumbent because they believed it could rescue the economy – as it did over a decade ago.

While the Syrian war is ever-present for all Turks – especially since Turkey hosts two million Syrian refugees who have been partly blamed for the country’s economic woes – it and other foreign policy issues were less important in this election than the PKK issue.

With the question of parliament’s make-up settled for another term, there have been two broad perspectives on a future under the AKP. The optimistic view is that the government, with a secure majority, will be able to deal with the economic, foreign policy and Kurdish issues. The other is that the vote was unfair because of repression, and that the AKP will become more authoritarian, further restrict free expression and increase polarisation.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s prime minister and AKP’s chief, acknowledged in his victory speech that polarisation was a problem, and he pledged to form a government that will embrace all Turks. Will he seriously address the problem? Will he reflect that pledge in a new cabinet that includes members of other parties? For many critics of the AKP, the big concern is what they see as Erdogan’s authoritarian tendency and his desire to change Turkey’s political system into a presidential one. Whether this desire or Davutoglu’s pledge will trump will have long-term implications for Turkey.

Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) has been established in South Africa as a non-profit organisation. Its funds are raised through grants and donations as well as through training and commissioned research that it conducts for the private and public sectors.

6 November 2015

By Chandra Muzaffar

Current trends in Malaysian society do not generate much optimism about the future. Gleaned from the electoral landscape, there are two trends one should focus upon: one, associated with the ruling Barisan Nasional, specifically UMNO, the coalition’s pillar and the nation’s biggest and most influential political party; the other, linked to the Pakatan, mainly the DAP, the largest political party in the opposition.

We shall evaluate briefly these two actors in relation to five critical aspects of national life — integrity; economic realities; political structure; religion; and ethnic relations.

Integrity

While the UMNO led government has initiated some institutional measures to enhance integrity such as anti-corruption courts and integrity pacts, it has given very little attention to the variety of proposals made by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Institute Integrity Malaysia (IIM) in the last few years to combat elite corruption. This is largely because of powerful vested interests which have become deeply entrenched. The government’s approach to the 1MDB controversy testifies to this.

The opposition appears to be more determined to curb graft. The DAP state government in Penang under Lim Guan Eng requires its Executive Councillors and Assembly members to declare their assets (though not their liabilities) to the public. After seven years in power, there is no whiff of any financial scandal. The PKR-led Selangor state government sought to minimize political interference in governmental decisions pertaining to contracts and projects under its former Mentri Besar, Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim. Kelantan, which has been under PAS stewardship for 25 years now is not tainted with corruption largely because of the moral rectitude of the late Dato Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, who was Mentri Besar for 23 years.

Economic Realities

The UMNO-BN leadership recognizes that the bottom 40% of urban Malaysia is struggling to make ends meet. It has offered some remedies in the form of assistance programmes but they are largely palliative and do not address the root causes of relative deprivation. It is not just a question of raising incomes or upgrading skills. The ownership and control of key resources that the bottom 40% depend upon — land, water, energy — will have to be re-appraised. Likewise, the distribution of goods and services which impact upon the cost of living will have to be reviewed to ensure greater access and equity for the poorer half of society.

The opposition’s economic policies have also not examined larger structural challenges of this sort in a consistent manner. True, its alternative budget for 2016 promises to implement a capital gains tax and an inheritance tax which would be equitable. But it could have tried to explore how the role of the cooperative movement for instance could be reinforced in both the production and distribution of certain goods and services to strengthen the position of the working-class. The re-organization of agriculture, which the opposition’s budget highlights, could have also been linked to building dynamic rural cooperatives.

Political Structure

For all its warts and pimples, Malaysia is still a functioning democracy. In some respects, democratic space has widened in the last few years with the abolition of the Internal Security Act (ISA), changes to the University and the University Colleges Act (UCCA) and the introduction of a Peaceful Assembly Act — all accomplished under Dato Sri Najib’s tutelage. The new media has also been a major contributory factor. Nonetheless, dissent, especially when it raises questions about the exercise of power at the apex, is often severely curbed. A true participatory democracy anchored in local, grassroots communities is nowhere on the horizon.

Through its commitment to local government elections, the DAP continues to uphold an important principle of grassroots democracy. But there is little evidence to show that it is seeking to change the top-down approach to democracy and governance — which is part of the national ethos — even in those areas within its jurisdiction in Penang.

Religion

Freedom of worship and celebration of religious diversity — hallmarks of UMNO-BN rule for decades — are very much part of the social reality. And yet there are worrying signs which have become more pronounced over time. As Islam became more prominent in the public arena from the late seventies onwards expressing itself through form rather than substance, many of its adherents also became more exclusive in their outlook especially in matters relating to interaction with non-Muslims. At the same time, because their understanding of faith has undergone a transformation of sorts propelled by the pressures of urbanization and external influences, more and more Muslims in the middle and upper echelons of society have become advocates of an “Islamic State” that emphasizes prohibition and punishment. It has willy-nilly created an environment that erroneously views hudud as pivotal to Islam when it is God-Consciousness reflected in justice and compassion which defines the religion. Hudud has not only driven a wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims in Peninsular Malaysia but has also generated a great deal of uneasiness among Sarawakians and Sabahans including Muslims.

Hudud has also split the opposition. It has split DAP from PAS and is one of the implicit reasons why a number of PAS leaders and activists have broken away from the party to form the Parti Amanah Negara (PAN). How the different opposition parties will deal with this issue in the coming months will determine to an extent the fate of the opposition. The hudud issue is in a sense interwoven with the bigger and more complex challenge of what the role of Islam is in Malaysian society. Neither the opposition nor the BN has the answer.

Ethnic Relations

UMNO and the BN have all along adopted a two pronged approach to ethnic relations. One, keep the Malays and the other communities in their own silos. Mobilize and organize along ethnic lines. View issues and individuals through ethnic lenses. Two, ensure that at the elite level in particular there is an appreciable degree of inter-ethnic cooperation and amity. So ethnic mobilization and inter-ethnic cooperation go hand and hand.

It is a formula that ensured the BN’s electoral success for quite a long while. It was partly responsible for guaranteeing inter-ethnic peace in the country. However, since the 2008 general election, the formula has ceased to be viable. Given the massive erosion of support from the BN among Chinese and Indian voters, it is not possible any more to bring those communities into an inter-ethnic relationship with the Malays and UMNO. And for a lot of urban Malays who perceive UMNO as a party that has gone astray and is no longer connected to them, the party is not on their radar screen. If a silo based, static approach to the maintenance of inter-ethnic peace does not command any meaning, is UMNO-BN capable of evolving an alternative?

Though opposition parties are formally less ethnic, their electoral appeal is still shaped by ethnic politics. What is worse, they are in no position to offer a formula for inter-ethnic cooperation given the huge ideological chasm that separates PAS from DAP. The DAP on its own will not be able to win substantial Malay support partly because it has little empathy for the history and identity of the land which is central to the Malay vision of the nation. Will the DAP’s partners — PKR and PAN — be able to fill that vacuum?

In the ultimate analysis, it is because UMNO-BN, on the one hand, and DAP- Pakatan, on the other, both lack inter-ethnic credentials vital for governing a multi-ethnic society like ours that the future does not inspire hope.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Yayasan 1Malaysia.
Petaling Jaya.

10 November 2015.

By Maung Zarni

With a constitution that safeguards its immense power and wealth, the military knows that, unlike in 1990, it doesn’t need a crackdown to keep its regime intact

Though in exile 6,000 miles away from Myanmar, I can almost taste the euphoria. Aung San Suu Kyi’s wildly popular opposition – the National League for Democracy – has won a landslide in the multiparty elections, and 31 million voters, most apparently backing the NLD, are savouring a long-awaited moment of jubilation. The NLD leader, whom they call Amay or mother, appeared on TV, her eyes shining with tears of joy.

Even foreign journalists covering the country in the 25 years since Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest have scarcely been able to conceal their excitement at the prospect of a new era of freedom and democracy, ushered in through her non-violent, pragmatic leadership.

Myanmar’s Mandela moment has arrived. Or has it?

A sober analysis may be in order. Aside from the fact that Myanmar’s military leaders have, constitutionally, blocked any possibility of “the Woman” with her two “impure-blooded sons” and “foreign privileges” assuming the presidency, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party faces huge barriers to turn a resounding electoral mandate into a real step towards a genuinely representative government.

And this is not the first time the public has felt euphoric about the power of its votes. In May 1990 Aung San Suu Kyi and her then fledgling opposition party won a decisive mandate taking 82% of the parliamentary seats and 62% of the total votes. That landslide came despite the fact that the generals placed her and her senior colleagues under house arrest on the eve of the elections, in effect barring them from the electoral process. So the opposition knows how it feels to fail to convert this mandate a quarter-century ago into a real political gain or put the country on the path of democracy.

The generals annulled the results of that election and imprisoned hundreds of newly elected MPs. Their excuse was that the NLD had been infiltrated by communists, considered a threat to national security.

Now, 25 years on, Myanmar finds itself in a similar situation. This time the ruling military has prepared itself to meet the popular challenge for democratisation through electoral politics. To appreciate how difficult it is for Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition to move the country in a genuinely democratic direction, it is imperative to understand how the military – fascist at root, and authoritarian in outlook and operation – defines and approaches the issue of electoral democracy.

To start with, elections overseen by the generals are held not to usher in a representative government as it is understood in any system worthy of the term “democracy”; but to legitimise the system they call “discipline-flourishing democracy”. This means the military serves as the ultimate custodian with the power to discipline any elected government or MP who dares to stray from the military’s chosen path and its definition of parliamentary democracy.

The main instrument is the 2008 constitution, which elevates core interests of the military (such as the military budget, appointments, business conglomerates and security matters) above the law and parliamentary oversight.

Specifically, the constitution authorises the commander-in-chief to appoint and control all cabinet members in charge of departments relating to the apparatus of state security, such as defence, home affairs and border affairs (dealing with ethnic and strategic matters). He also approves all presidential and vice-presidential candidates. In other words, this top-ranking soldier can stage a coup any time he deems fit.

In addition, he holds the constitutional authority to in effect veto any popularly elected government’s attempt to amend the 2008 constitution, which of course safeguards the military’s prerogatives. Even if the NLD now forms a government, the all-powerful military can and will reject any changes that seek to convert the generals’ discipline-flourishing democracy into something more democratic and less disciplined.

It is little wonder then that Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief, with a smile on his face, wrote off popular fears that the army might stage a coup, annul the results, and lock up the new MPs . A coup was “not conceivable”, he said.

For his part, the acting chairman of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development party – the former general Htay Oo – was heard conceding that his party had suffered big losses in many areas. But in spite of his own defeat, he looked unnaturally relaxed when he said that the ruling party would accept any outcome, including an NLD landslide, and that the mission of the generals was to put the country on the path of democracy. He can say this, because of course it is the military’s version of democracy.

Having secured their ill-gotten gains – billions of dollars amassed from the proceeds of jade, natural gas and other national assets and a quarter-century of the military’s “Burmese Way to Capitalism”- and with the constitutional right to take power back 24/7, the generals will keep on smiling.

It is win-win: incremental change with echoes of the Arab spring, without bloodshed or chaos. The public and opposition get to experience another ephemeral wave of euphoria. And democratic governments in Washington, London, Paris or Canberra can now hold up Burma as a success story of the kind of business, diplomatic and military engagement they practise vis-a-vis China. Aung San Suu Kyi can feel vindicated about her Mandela-like status and her choice of a pragmatic strategy of no longer rocking the boat and fighting hard for human rights.

Never mind that the “ democracy” midwifed by these powerful actors excludes and undermines the welfare and interests of the country’s jailed student and labour activists, farmers, ethnic minorities in the civil war zones, and the disenfranchised Rohingya people and other Muslims.

9 November 2015

Maung Zarni (www.maungzarni.net) is a London-based scholar with the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, at the Sleuk Rith Institute. He is a former visiting fellow at the LSE

http://www.theguardian.com/

By Andrew Fowler

George W. Bush wore a suitably sombre grey suit to deliver his “axis of evil” speech, which began laying out the case for the US invasion of Iraq. Few could have faulted his performance on that day in January 2002, just four months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. He told the applauding joint sitting of the US House of Representatives and Senate that Iraq was allied with terrorists, and posed “a grave and growing danger” to US interests through possession of “weapons of mass destruction”.

What we now know is that Bush’s performance was just an act.There was nothing to link Iraq to terrorism.

Yet more than 10 years later the leaders who took us to war are still in denial. Just this week former British prime minister Tony Blair issued what amounted to a non-apology as he tried to spin his way out of the trouble he expects from the findings of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq War. But what has been forgotten is the role of many journalists who led the charge to war.

Eight months after Bush’s address with the drumbeat of war growing ever louder, /The New York Times /reporter Judith Miller, who often boasted the Pentagon had given her clearance to see secret information, crossed the line from journalist to pro-war activist. On September 8, 2002, Miller wrote about “Mr Hussein’s dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions”. It was a bald statement of fact without any attribution.

The story, “US says Hussein intensified quest for A-bomb parts”, quoted not a single person by name, and relied entirely on US government sources.

Miller and /The New York Times/, with its uncorroborated, unquestioning reporting, had provided the perfect vehicle for the White House. Over the following 24 hours they saturated the airwaves stirring fear of a nuclear Armageddon. On NBC’s /Meet the Press/, vice-president Dick Cheney cited /The New York Times/ article and accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.

On CNN, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that “there will always be some uncertainty” in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon but, in a phrase as polished as it was hollow, added: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” On CBS, Bush cited satellite photos that showed “unexplained
construction” at Iraqi sites that weapons inspectors had previously searched for indications Saddam was trying to develop nuclear arms. “I don’t know what more evidence we need,” Bush said. The news flashed around the world that the White House had “confirmed a report in /The New York Times/” that Saddam Hussein had been attempting to get equipment to produce nuclear weapons.

Australian prime minister John Howard added to the misleading game,saying the intelligence that had come out of the United States “if accurate confirms the intelligence that we have been given”. The fact is it was the same intelligence that the United States had already given to Australia.

Howard made great play of the possibility that “Iraq has not abandoned her aspiration for nuclear capacity”. By suggesting /The New York Times/ story added yet another layer of confirmation, Howard was taking part in the Australian version of the style of journalism that Miller and the White House specialised in: the story leaked to Miller and published in /The New York Times/ had been confirmed by the very people who leaked it in the first place. Iraq’s nuclear ambitions were now accepted as fact. Even the BBC’s prestigious
/Panorama/ program, “The Case Against Saddam”, broadcast on September 23, 2002, embraced this “evidence”, suggesting Saddam was trying to get systems to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons production.

The program acted as a reinforcement of Blair’s claim that Saddam’s missiles could hit British territory in Cyprus with only 45 minutes warning.

The /Panorama/ report formed the basis of a /Four Corners/ broadcast two weeks later but the bald assertions of “fact” were balanced by other interviews in the ABC version, bringing a swift letter of rebuke to the program. /Panorama/ was not happy that /Four Corners/ had not accepted its editorial line.

While Miller had given the White House exactly what it wanted on the nuclear story, she now shared the spoils of a second report. It involved Iraqi defector Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri who told CIA interrogators that he had personally visited 20 weapons of mass destruction sites in Iraq. The fact that a CIA lie detector test showed the whole story was fabricated had little impact on what the White House wanted. Miller’s story quoting al-Haideri ran in /The New York Times/, while the exclusive TV rights went to a little-known
Australian journalist Paul Moran who was working for the Australian ABC.

Moran was well placed to get the story. He had been employed by a CIA-funded organisation, the Washington-based Rendon Group, whose main role was to manipulate the media to support the war. The Rendon Group had even created the Iraqi National Congress, the anti-Saddam organisation which had delivered up al-Haideri to Miller. Now Moran’s
al-Haideri interview, packed with disinformation and fabrication, went around the world, picked up by dozens of TV stations.

When US troops reached Baghdad, /The Australian/ published an editorial, “Coalition of the Whining Got it Wrong”, which ended with words that gave perfect meaning to irony: “Never underestimate the power of ideology and myth, in this case anti-Americanism, to trump reality. But at least we know for sure it is not love, but being a left-wing intellectual, that means never having to say you’re sorry.”

The disinformation war claimed the reputations of many journalists who either failed to question their governments, or worse still deliberately championed the case for the invasion which led to the deaths of an estimated half a million Iraqis. There was at least one other casualty of this war created by fabricated news: Moran died in a car-bomb attack in northern Iraq.

This article contains excerpts from Andrew Fowler’s book The War on Journalism: Media Moguls, Whistleblowers and the Price of Freedom (Penguin Random House, 2015).

2 November 2015

By Afro-Middle East Centre

The recent uprising in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian West Bank points to a clear disillusionment among Palestinian youth, largely caused by Israel’s occupation, its Judaisation of Jerusalem, and the complicity of certain Palestinian political parties.

The intensification of the conflict since the beginning of October, which has caused the deaths of over sixty Palestinians and ten Israelis, was ignited by increased Israeli government sanctioning of visits of nationalist, religious Jews to the Aqsa Mosque, many of whom seek the compound’s destruction. Israel has also severely restricted Muslims access to Al-Aqsa, and increased its monitoring of Muslim groups operating at the compound. In late August and September, Israeli police prevented Palestinian women and men under fifty from visiting the mosque before noon, and in September the Murabitun and Murabitat, informal groups of men and women who offer religious classes and attempt to ensure the ban on Jewish prayer is observed, were declared illegal.

These measures have contravened the ‘status quo’, a situation that has been in place since the eighteenth century, and in terms of which the Aqsa compound will be controlled by Muslims; people of other faiths will be allowed access to the compound but will not be allowed to pray there. This status quo has been repeatedly ratified and upheld over the past two and half centuries – even after Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in 1967, and annexed to Israel in 1980. The 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan commits Israel to ‘respect the special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem’. Currently, by mutual agreement between Jordan and Israel, the Aqsa Mosque compound is administered by the Jordanian Waqf. This body also, supposedly in consultation with Israel, monitors Jewish access to the site. Israeli Jewish groups entering the compound are supposed to be accompanied by police, and Waqf guides are to ensure no Jews pray on the site.

The status quo has been violated by Israel numerous times in recent years. For example, Israel often restricts Muslim access to the Aqsa Mosque compound, ranging from completely closing the Old City for Muslims to imposing age limits on those wanting to attend Friday prayers. There are also certain permanent restrictions that are less well-known. A recent privately commissioned report claims that the Israeli government has instructed that when there are Jews present in the compound, Muslim men and women under the age of 50 should not be allowed to enter. Since Israeli groups tour the compound throughout the week, this means that Muslims under 50 are not allowed access to the site every morning from Sunday to Thursday.

Further inflaming the situation, cabinet ministers, including agriculture minister Uri Ariel, who previously advocated the building of the Third Temple on the cite, visited the compound in recent weeks. This raised the ire of many Palestinians who fear the mosque is threatened with partition, as happened to Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque after Zionist fundamentalist Baruch Goldstein massacred twenty-nine worshippers in February 1994 while they were praying. The latest Israeli violations resulted in protests, then running battles inside the compound between Palestinian defenders and Israelis, and culminating in a series of into lone wolf knife attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers.

The Israeli army responded in its usual, heavy-handed way, and Israel’s defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, called for a shoot first policy on ‘stabbers and stone throwers’. Neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem have been blockaded by Israeli occupation forces; extra police reservists and civil and border police have been deployed; and the homes of alleged attackers have been destroyed. This further worsened the situation, and the protests and attacks on soldiers have spread to other areas in the West Bank.

These incidents take place within a context of Israel’s increased and intensified control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Settler numbers have increased from 150 000 during the Oslo negotiations in 1993 to over 500 000 in 2015, and, to protect these, Israel has instituted measures such as restrictions on Palestinian movement and a minimum ten year jail term for Palestinian’s convicted of stone throwing. Palestinians in the West Bank have also increasingly become victims of settlers’ ‘price tag’ attacks, with little or no repercussions for the perpetrators. The Israeli NGO Yesh Din reports that convictions are obtained in less than two per cent of cases and that over eighty-five per cent of cases are closed before the indictment stage.

Adding to Palestinian frustration, the Palestinian Authority has become increasingly ineffective. Corruption, a lack of political will, and security coordination with Israel (a requirement of the Oslo Agreement), mean that many Palestinians view the PA as part of the problem. Many Palestinian youth – born around the time of the Oslo negotiations or thereafter– have become disillusioned with the PA’s broken promises, causing them to seek different means of articulating their dissatisfaction. This has been compounded by a cynicism among Palestinians about the role of the international community and Arab states. With negotiations non-existent, Palestinians see no end in sight for the Israeli occupation as the region’s and the world’s attention is consumed by the growth of the Islamic State group (IS), and conflicts in Syria, Libya and Ukraine.

Most major Palestinian parties have responded in a haphazard and even contradictory manner. Fatah has called for calm, and deployed its security apparatus to quell the protests in some areas, leading many to accuse it of complicity. Later, it attempted to co-opt the protests, arguing that they were against the occupation. Hamas, on the other hand, expressed support for the protests, advocating the formation of a unified Palestinian position to defend and escalate the uprising. There is little chance, however, that Hamas will want to militarise the uprising from Gaza. It has been accused by some Palestinians of wanting to benefit from the crisis, and its hands-off approach – while repeatedly calling for unity – is likely so that it does not give the impression that it wants to take control of the uprising. It is noteworthy that no party has yet sought to take the lead and formally support the protests, especially the stabbings of Israeli soldiers and settlers. The uprising, thus, is largely a leaderless revolt of Palestinian youth.

Questions over whether this may herald the beginning of the Third Intifada abound, particularly since the people’s anger is similar to that which preceded the first two intifadas, and the lives of Palestinians are more miserable now, especially considering the dire socio-economic conditions of ordinary Palestinians. Compounding this is the hopelessness caused by the lack of leadership. However, the absence of a coherent national movement and established party support raises questions about the sustainability of the protests. It is debatable whether Palestinians will be able to continue the current protest actions and endure its consequences long enough to realise substantial change without the support of established political parties. Furthermore, political fragmentation and the impact of neoliberalism have prevented ordinary Palestinians from being able to formulate a unifying vision.

The Israeli government, supported by Jordan and the Middle East quartet (the USA, EU, Russia and UN), has announced that the status quo at Al-Aqsa will remain in force, and that surveillance cameras will be installed at the compound in an attempt to prevent the protests from spreading. However, this is a disingenuous attempt to deflect attention from the fact that Israel has already been working to alter facts on the ground.

In 2014, over 11 000 Jewish religious nationalist visitors were allowed into the compound, twenty-eight per cent up from the previous year and almost double the 2009 figure. Further, the frequency of these visits increased from bi-weekly in 2012 to around twice or thrice a week in 2014. In August, the head of the notorious Third Temple Movement, Yehuda Glick, privately met with Netanyahu, and subsequently claimed the government was attuned to the needs of fundamentalist Jews regarding Al-Aqsa. The struggle over protection of the compound is thus likely to further intensify and these provocations will ensure that protests endure. This is especially since the protests over Al-Aqsa are a reflection of dissatisfaction with the larger problem of Israel’s occupation, the corruption of the PA, and the lack of political leadership.

2 November 2015

Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC)

What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me About the American Empire

By Howard Zinn
[Republished from April 1, 2008]

With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.

However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the “Good War,” even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American “Empire.”

I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called “The Age of Imperialism.” It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire — or period of “imperialism.”

I recall the classroom map (labeled “Western Expansion”) which presented the march across the continent as a natural, almost biological phenomenon. That huge acquisition of land called “The Louisiana Purchase” hinted at nothing but vacant land acquired. There was no sense that this territory had been occupied by hundreds of Indian tribes which would have to be annihilated or forced from their homes — what we now call “ethnic cleansing” — so that whites could settle the land, and later railroads could crisscross it, presaging “civilization” and its brutal discontents.

Neither the discussions of “Jacksonian democracy” in history courses, nor the popular book by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson, told me about the “Trail of Tears,” the deadly forced march of “the five civilized tribes” westward from Georgia and Alabama across the Mississippi, leaving 4,000 dead in their wake. No treatment of the Civil War mentioned the Sand Creek massacre of hundreds of Indian villagers in Colorado just as “emancipation” was proclaimed for black people by Lincoln’s administration.

That classroom map also had a section to the south and west labeled “Mexican Cession.” This was a handy euphemism for the aggressive war against Mexico in 1846 in which the United States seized half of that country’s land, giving us California and the great Southwest. The term “Manifest Destiny,” used at that time, soon of course became more universal. On the eve of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Washington Post saw beyond Cuba: “We are face to face with a strange destiny. The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle.”

The violent march across the continent, and even the invasion of Cuba, appeared to be within a natural sphere of U.S. interest. After all, hadn’t the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declared the Western Hemisphere to be under our protection? But with hardly a pause after Cuba came the invasion of the Philippines, halfway around the world. The word “imperialism” now seemed a fitting one for U.S. actions. Indeed, that long, cruel war — treated quickly and superficially in the history books — gave rise to an Anti-Imperialist League, in which William James and Mark Twain were leading figures. But this was not something I learned in university either.

The “Sole Superpower” Comes into View

Reading outside the classroom, however, I began to fit the pieces of history into a larger mosaic. What at first had seemed like a purely passive foreign policy in the decade leading up to the First World War now appeared as a succession of violent interventions: the seizure of the Panama Canal zone from Colombia, a naval bombardment of the Mexican coast, the dispatch of the Marines to almost every country in Central America, occupying armies sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the much-decorated General Smedley Butler, who participated in many of those interventions, wrote later: “I was an errand boy for Wall Street.”

At the very time I was learning this history — the years after World War II — the United States was becoming not just another imperial power, but the world’s leading superpower. Determined to maintain and expand its monopoly on nuclear weapons, it was taking over remote islands in the Pacific, forcing the inhabitants to leave, and turning the islands into deadly playgrounds for more atomic tests.

In his memoir, No Place to Hide, Dr. David Bradley, who monitored radiation in those tests, described what was left behind as the testing teams went home: “[R]adioactivity, contamination, the wrecked island of Bikini and its sad-eyed patient exiles.” The tests in the Pacific were followed, over the years, by more tests in the deserts of Utah and Nevada, more than a thousand tests in all.

When the war in Korea began in 1950, I was still studying history as a graduate student at Columbia University. Nothing in my classes prepared me to understand American policy in Asia. But I was reading I. F. Stone’s Weekly. Stone was among the very few journalists who questioned the official justification for sending an army to Korea. It seemed clear to me then that it was not the invasion of South Korea by the North that prompted U.S. intervention, but the desire of the United States to have a firm foothold on the continent of Asia, especially now that the Communists were in power in China.

Years later, as the covert intervention in Vietnam grew into a massive and brutal military operation, the imperial designs of the United States became yet clearer to me. In 1967, I wrote a little book called Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. By that time I was heavily involved in the movement against the war.

When I read the hundreds of pages of the Pentagon Papers entrusted to me by Daniel Ellsberg, what jumped out at me were the secret memos from the National Security Council. Explaining the U.S. interest in Southeast Asia, they spoke bluntly of the country’s motives as a quest for “tin, rubber, oil.”

Neither the desertions of soldiers in the Mexican War, nor the draft riots of the Civil War, not the anti-imperialist groups at the turn of the century, nor the strong opposition to World War I — indeed no antiwar movement in the history of the nation reached the scale of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. At least part of that opposition rested on an understanding that more than Vietnam was at stake, that the brutal war in that tiny country was part of a grander imperial design.

Various interventions following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam seemed to reflect the desperate need of the still-reigning superpower — even after the fall of its powerful rival, the Soviet Union — to establish its dominance everywhere. Hence the invasion of Grenada in 1982, the bombing assault on Panama in 1989, the first Gulf war of 1991. Was George Bush Sr. heartsick over Saddam Hussein’s seizure of Kuwait, or was he using that event as an opportunity to move U.S. power firmly into the coveted oil region of the Middle East? Given the history of the United States, given its obsession with Middle Eastern oil dating from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1945 deal with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and the CIA’s overthrow of the democratic Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953, it is not hard to decide that question.

Justifying Empire

The ruthless attacks of September 11th (as the official 9/11 Commission acknowledged) derived from fierce hatred of U.S. expansion in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even before that event, the Defense Department acknowledged, according to Chalmers Johnson’s book The Sorrows of Empire, the existence of more than 700 American military bases outside of the United States.

Since that date, with the initiation of a “war on terrorism,” many more bases have been established or expanded: in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, the desert of Qatar, the Gulf of Oman, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else a compliant nation could be bribed or coerced.

When I was bombing cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and France in the Second World War, the moral justification was so simple and clear as to be beyond discussion: We were saving the world from the evil of fascism. I was therefore startled to hear from a gunner on another crew — what we had in common was that we both read books — that he considered this “an imperialist war.” Both sides, he said, were motivated by ambitions of control and conquest. We argued without resolving the issue. Ironically, tragically, not long after our discussion, this fellow was shot down and killed on a mission.

In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. My motive, like that of so many, was innocent of imperial ambition. It was to help defeat fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.

The motive of the U.S. establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of “The American Century.” The time had arrived, he said, for the United States “to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit.”

We can hardly ask for a more candid, blunter declaration of imperial design. It has been echoed in recent years by the intellectual handmaidens of the Bush administration, but with assurances that the motive of this “influence” is benign, that the “purposes” — whether in Luce’s formulation or more recent ones — are noble, that this is an “imperialism lite.” As George Bush said in his second inaugural address: “Spreading liberty around the world is the calling of our time.” The New York Timescalled that speech “striking for its idealism.”

The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project — Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used “her navy and her army… as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression.” And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: “The values you learned here will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world.”

For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes — in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.

Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense — that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization — begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist. He wrote the classic A People’s History of the United States and A People’s History of American Empire, told in comics form, with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle. He taught at Spelman College, a black women’s college in Atlanta, where he became active in the civil rights movement. After being fired by Spelman for his support of student protesters, Zinn became a professor of political science at Boston University. He was the author of many books, including an autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. He received the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Eugene V. Debs award for his writing and political activism.

(Reprinted from TomDispatch by permission of author or representative)
4 October 2015

By Franklin Lamb

Damascus: Increasing numbers of Syria’s women and men, considered by this observer as this war-torn country’s ‘Monument Citizens’ have recently expanded the scope and range of cultural heritage site protection and preservation on behalf of humanity.

In addition to documenting heritage site damage through 3-D photography at the scene, many reconstruction projects are also underway. A few have been nearly restored including in Lattakia al Mahalbeh Castle, in Old Homs, and nearby Crac des Chavaliers, the 11th Century Crusader Castle, al Khawabi Castle , Tartous, Al Omari Mosque, Bosra, Tell Mozan, Al Hassakeh and the Citadels of Salah ad-Din, Masyaf, and the Damascus Citadel to mention a few.

Archeological site access remains the major impediment for Syria’s ‘Monument Citizens” according to archaeologist Mayassa Deeb, who put on hold her doctoral dissertation at Damascus University in order to supervise groups that photograph and then carefully package artifacts from around the country. Limited access may remain unchanged for the foreseeable future given current conditions in 2/3 of this war-torn country, now in its 5th year of conflict with displacement of more than half of its pre-conflict population of 23 million, including at least 120,000 more people just this month (between Oct. 5 and Oct. 22). This latest refugee exodus occurred in the Aleppo, Hama and Idlib governorates where terrified citizens fled toward the Turkish border as most people in Aleppo moved toward villages and towns in the government controlled countryside west of the city.

There are many impediments to the work of Syria’s irrepressible Monument Citizens given the vast archeological damage here. Some1,300 sites have been documented using recent, high-resolution satellite imagery technology. Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in more than 25% of more than 10,000 archaeological sites in Syria have also been targeted by looters with the frequency and severity of looting varying significantly depending of which faction in the conflict controls the specific area. As of 10/25/2015, more than 16,000 looter pits have been photographed just in the ancient city of of Apamea. A Dartmouth University study published last month in Near Eastern Archaeology confirms that at least a quarter of Syria’s archaeological sites have been looted in the past four years with the Islamic State (Da’ish) being the worst offender. But there have also been extensive losses from sites under the control of other forces and no group involved in the Syrian conflict has clean hands. This organized plunder has dwarfed the thefts by desperate civilians who continue to mine Syria’s heritage sites to pay for food. Looted objects are arriving in neighboring countries including Lebanon brought in by militia seeking to trade them for weapons. Among those reportedly active in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley are organized crime agents and middle men on behalf of ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and Free Syrian Army brigades.

Syria’s numbers of Monument Citizens are increasing and they come from all walks of life, local shopkeepers, youngsters whose nearby archeological sites have been an important part of their childhood, older Syrians who often feel a strong, seemingly genetic bond with this cradle of civilization, archeologists, some military personnel, museum staff, and people from the general population who cherish their and our cultural heritage and are adamant about protecting and preserving it. They sometimes work individually, but more frequently in pairs or groups, sometimes under the watchful eyes of friendly ‘lookouts.’ But youngsters sometimes take unnecessary risks from this observer’s fatherly perspective.

Syria’s ‘Monument Citizens’ insist that they eschew politics. “While I would admit to you that archeology can get political, governments come and governments go but our cultural heritage, who we are, remains for millennia. “one graduate from Damascus University’s Archeological college, who describes herself as a “cultural warrior” explained to this observer, adding, “If we allow our cultural heritage to be destroyed, given all the hegemonic invaders these days seeking advantages in our country, we may be destroying the only bond the Syrian people have left that can help heal this country once this war is over.” Her roommate added before beginning to sob, “Our children will never have the chance to see Syria the way we did growing up. Our neighborhood in Palmyra was our museum. This insanity must be stooped!”

As Der Speigel’s Katrin Elger, commented recently after a visit with some of Syria’s Monument Citizens: “From an archaeologist’s vantage point, all the major players in Syria’s proxy war are but a blip on history’s radar. Islamist fundamentalists, even superpowers like Russia and the United States are newcomers compared even to the youngest monuments in Syria.” I believe most Syrians would agree.

A major inspiration and role model for many of Syria’s Monument Citizens is the international patriot, archeologist Dr. Maamoun Abdel-Karim, Director-general of Syria’s Museums and Antiques. Shortly after conflict began, this tenured Damascus University Professor was summoned to take the lead in preserving Syria’s antiquities. As much of the world has come to know, Dr. Maamoun has been indefatigable is his work. His devotion has helped develop many unique contacts across Syria as he monitors and reports the latest damage while at the same time planning-and in several locations when security conditions permit, he is actually beginning and completing some restoration projects with his staff and Monument Citizens. His colleagues across Syria, often under the watchful eyes of ISIS or other Islamist groups in off-limits areas, use everything from WhatsApp or Skype when available, word of mouth or anonymous scribbled messages to advance their Monument Citizens work. In many areas, Dr. Maamoun has mobilized local Monument Citizens to protect heritage sites and in some cases, locals have persuaded rebels themselves to help. In others, his fellow Monument Citizens have documented and where possible, photographed the destruction creating a database for researchers,.

In Deir Ezzor, now an Islamic State stronghold on the Iraq-Syria border, volunteers aided staff of Dr. Maamoun and wrapped 16,000 cuneiform tablets in paper towels, packed them in plastic boxes, and shipped them to Damascus.: Each one was individually photographed, added to a and then carefully wrapped them in linen and placed in small Tupperware containers, which were then packed in wooden crates lined with thick foam for storage in a safe location.

The continuing invaluable work of Syria’s “Monument Citizens” reminds one of the global cultural heritage protection projects during WW II when in 1943 on orders from Supreme Commander General Dwight Eisenhower approximately 400 service personnel and countless civilians in Germany and elsewhere in Europe labored to safeguard historic and cultural monuments from war damage. The mandate of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program (MFAA) was to protect and preserve cultural heritage sites and to stop the looting of antiquities. As the conflict came to a close, the ‘Monuments Men” primary mission evolved to locating and returning works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been looted, hoarded and in many cases sold by the Nazis and their collaborators. Earlier this month, the United States Congress granted the Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the WW II Monuments Men, in recognition of their heroic role in the preservation, protection, and restitution of monuments, works of art, and artifacts of cultural importance during and following World War II. They are the subject of George Clooney’s new film by the same name.

New teams of Syrian ‘Monument Citizens” are today forming dozens of 5-member 3-D digital camera photography teams to record every possible damaged and not yet damaged site wherever and whenever possible. Scores of Syrian nationalists have just begun an approximately 3-4-month key project known widely as the Oxford University Institute of Digital Archeology’s Million Image Database. This relatively new application of recently developed technology is a large-scale scholarly project targeting both object documentation, and trafficked object identification. Scores of Syria’s ‘Monument Citizens’ will use easy-to-use 3-D cameras to document archeological sites and objects in their area. Images and videos collected in the nearly 14,000 images capacity memory cards will be send for processing to the project’s technical team in the United Kingdom via uploads to the project’s website. Some of these images will be used to create detailed maps of Syrian sites, and to create 3-D models of buildings and artifacts that will be useable as blueprints for full-scale reconstruction. The project website is closed to the public to protect volunteer’s anonymity and also to ensure that the initiative remains a purely scholarly venture, not a social media platform for activists, according to Alexy Karenowska, the project’s director of technology. But Ms. Karenowska assures that as this project progresses through the work of Syria’s Monument Citizens, it will soon be available to the public. The images are to be collated in a huge, publically accessible database, available to all and under development in collaboration with UNESCO. Syria’s ‘Monument Citizens’ are helping create an ever-growing archaeological catalogue which brings together scholarly information about sites and artifacts, raises awareness of cultural heritage and cultural heritage preservation, and provides a new platform for the identification of trafficked objects. The database will be integrable with existing catalogues and lists of known missing or stolen items and employ the latest image comparison and feature recognition based search technology, removing the need for those inspecting suspect cargos or objects to have specialist knowledge.

There are also Monument Citizens operating outside of Syria. Examples include several who operate back and forth between southern Turkey and northern Syria who have done major work and have achieved an emergency preservation of the Ma’arra museum in northern Syria’s Idlib province, famous for its world-class collection of Roman and Byzantine mosaics from the 3rd to 6th centuries A.D. They have also placed more than 1,700 ancient artifacts in secured places.

A couple of other examples of ex-pat Syrian Monument Citizens. The Aleppo Project, also based outside Syria, released on 10/20/2015 its first 3D modeled reconstructions of this under siege former economic hub of Syria. Its website is an open collaboration among Monument Citizens who are planning for the future of a city torn apart by war. Its objectives include gathering as much information as possible about the past of the city, and plan for restoration projects to the day security conditions allow.

Another is the New Palmyra Project, which released its first 3D modeled reconstructions on October 20, 2015 of the ISIS (Da’ish) seriously damaged cultural heritage treasure. Three more Triumphal columns were destroyed this month as three ISIS victims were murdered at their base when they were blown up.

The Non-profit CyArk has digitally preserved scores of the world’s most famous cultural sites, this month announced its most ambitious effort yet – Project Anqa, a joint project with the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to digitally document and preserve dozens of at-risk sites in Syria.

Another example of ‘Monument Citizen” self-directed initiatives across Syrian borders is a lovely Syrian refugee couple who this observer crossed paths with the other day in a muddy rain-drenched camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley and who explained their personal “Monument Citizen” work. The couple poses as buyers of looted antiques entering Lebanon from Syria and then they photograph and catalogue the photos. An American interested in the subject of Syria’s Endangered Heritage was pleased to be able to present these Syrian ‘Monument citizens” with a 3-D digital camera and accessories, pictured below, in aid of their stellar “cultural triage,” work protecting when possible and documenting Syria’s Endangered Heritage.

None of the Monument Citizens this observer has been honored to meet in Syria gainsay the reality of our globally shared cultural heritage crisis in their country nor the urgent work and planning that needs to be done now.

May they succeed in their work and leadership in protecting and preserving our joint heritage and may we all hail Syria’s Monument Citizens as they work to save the future of our past.

Franklin Lamb is the author of the just published volume, Syria’s Endangered Heritage.He is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com
31 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org