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By Ralph Nader

The photographs in the New York Times told contrasting stories last week. One showed two Taliban soldiers in civilian clothes and sandals, with their rifles, standing in front of a captured U.N. vehicle. The Taliban forces had taken the northern provincial capital of Kunduz. The other photograph showed Afghan army soldiers fully equipped with modern gear, weapons, and vehicles.

Guess who is winning? An estimated thirty-thousand Taliban soldiers with no air force, navy, or heavy weapons have been holding down ten times more Afghan army and police and over 100,000 U.S. soldiers with the world’s most modern weaponry – for eight years.

ISIS forces from Syria have taken over large areas of northern and western Iraq, including its second largest city, Mosul, and the battered city of Fallujah. ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria are estimated to number no more than 35,000. Like the Taliban, ISIS fighters, who vary in their military training, primarily have light weaponry. That is when they are not taking control of the fleeing, much larger, Iraqi army’s armored vehicles and ammunition from the United States.

Against vastly greater numbers of Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. weapons, U.S. planes bombing daily, 24/7 aerial surveillance, and U.S. military advisors at the ground level, so far ISIS is still holding most of its territory and is still dominant in large parts of Syria.

The American people are entitled to know how all this military might and the trillions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, since 2003 and 2001 respectively, can produce such negative fallouts.

Certainly these failures have little to do with observing the restraints of international law. Presidents Bush and Obama have sent military power anywhere and everywhere, regardless of national boundaries and the resulting immense civilian casualties, in those tragic, blown-apart countries.

The current perception of the U.S. in these countries is that of invaders on a rampage. Recruiting motivated fighters, including a seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers, is easier when the invaders come from western countries that for over a century have been known for attacking, carving up boundaries for artificial states, intervening, overthrowing, propping up domestic dictators, and generally siding with oligarchic or colonizing interests that brutalize the mass of the people.

It hasn’t helped for these invasions to be supported by an alien culture rooted in the Christian crusades against Islam centuries ago, whose jingoism in the U.S. continues among some evangelical groups today.

But of course more contemporary situations are, first and foremost, the wonton destruction and violent chaos that comes with such invasions. With the absence of any functioning central governments and the dominance of tribal societies, the sheer complexity of the invaders trying to figure out the intricate “politics” between and within tribes and clans turns into an immense, ongoing trap for the western military forces.

When the U.S. started taking sides with the Shiites against the Sunnis in Iraq, or between different clans and tribes in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers, not knowing the language or customs, were left with handing out $100 bills to build alliances. Our government air-shipped and distributed crates of this money. With the local economies at a standstill, public facilities collapsed, fear gripped families from violent streets and roads, and all havoc broke lose in the struggle for safety and survival.

Afghan soldiers, who are paid only $120 a month, will do almost anything to supplement their income, including selling weapons. At higher levels, bribes, payoffs, extortions create an underground economic system. The combination of lack of understanding, the systemic bribes, and the ensuing corruption has produced a climate of chaos.

Then there is the reckless slaughter of civilians – wedding parties, schools, clinics, peasant boys collecting fire-wood on a hillside – from supposedly pinpoint, accurate airplanes, helicopter gunships, drones, or missiles. Hatred of the Americans spreads as people lose their loved ones.

Our “blowback” policies are fueling the expansion of al-Qaeda offshoots and new violent groups in over 20 countries. On 9/11, the “threat” was coming from a corner of one country – northeastern Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney prevaricator frenzy led to local bounty hunters taking innocent captives, falsely labeled as “terrorists,” who were sent to the prisons in Guantanamo, Cuba. These actions have damaged our country’s reputation all over the world.

All this could have been avoided had we heeded the advice of retired, high-ranking military, national security, and diplomatic officials not to invade Iraq and their advice not to overreact in Afghanistan. But the supine mass media, and an overall cowardly Congress let the lies, deceptions, and cover-ups by the Bush regime go unchallenged and, as Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) put it, Bush/Cheney “lied us into the Iraq War.”

It isn’t as if the Taliban and ISIS are winning the “hearts and minds” of the local people. On the contrary, while promising law and order, they treat local populations quite brutally, with few exceptions. But the locals have long been treated brutally by the police, army, and militias jockeying for the spoils of conflict. Unfortunately, there is still no semblance of ground-level security.

All Empires fail and eventually devour themselves. The U.S. Empire is no different. Look at the harm to and drain on our soldiers, our domestic economy, the costly, boomeranging, endless wars overseas and what empire building has done to spread anxieties and lower the expectation level of the American people for their public budgets and public services.

Not repeatedly doing what has failed is the first step toward correction. How much better and cheaper it would be if years ago we became a humanitarian power – well received by the deprived billions in these anguished lands.

What changes are needed to get out of these quagmires and leave a semblance of recovery behind? Press those gaggles of presidential candidates, who war-monger with impunity or who are dodging this grave matter, for answers. Make them listen to you.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and “Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us” (a novel).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

10 October, 2015
Nader.org

 

By Bill Van Auken

The Obama administration Friday announced an “operational pause” of the disastrously failed Pentagon program for arming and training “vetted rebels” in Turkey and sending them back across the border into Syria.

Instead, Pentagon and White House officials indicated, the focus will now shift to cementing ties with leaders of existing “rebel” militias, consisting overwhelmingly of Sunni Islamist forces with connections to Al Qaeda. US backing to these groups will apparently include both arms and ammunition as well as close air support from warplanes deployed by the US and its so-called coalition.

The policy shift follows the revelation last month by General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US Central Command, that only “four or five” individual US-trained fighters were then on the ground in Syria, and barely 100 more were undergoing training. This, after the allocation of $500 million for the Pentagon to train over 5,000 such fighters within the first year.

Austin’s revelation was followed within weeks by the Pentagon being forced to retract its initial denial of verified reports that a group of US-trained fighters sent into Syria had immediately turned over its vehicles and weaponry to the al-Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

The change in strategy also follows a first week of Russian airstrikes against Islamist forces in Syria, including some that had previously received arms shipments organized by the CIA. Beginning in 2011, the US spy agency set up a clandestine station in Turkey and organized the funneling into Syria of weaponry from Libyan stockpiles after the US-NATO war for regime change had succeeded in toppling and murdering Muammar Gaddafi.

Both Washington and Moscow claim to be waging their respective military campaigns in Syria for the purpose of destroying the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Al Qaeda offshoot that is the direct product of the unleashing of death and destruction against Iraq, Libya and Syria itself by the US military and CIA.

In reality, however, the US and Russian governments are fighting for opposite aims: Washington, to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad and install an American puppet regime; and Moscow to prop up the Assad government, its sole Middle Eastern ally.

The administration has come under increasing criticism from Republican opponents and sections of the US military and intelligence complex for its supposed “inaction” in the face of the Russian offensive in Syria. This found expression Friday in a column published under the joint byline of Obama’s former defense secretary, Robert Gates, and former Bush administration national security adviser Condoleezza Rice entitled “Countering Putin.”

It calls for actions to “create a better military balance of power on the ground,” including the creation of “no-fly zones” as well as “robust support” for various anti-regime forces and an effort to “solidify our relationship with Turkey,” a principal sponsor of the Islamist militias inside Syria.

The Obama administration’s announcement was also preceded by a letter sent to the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA by a bipartisan group of Senate critics of the administration’s Syria policy calling for an end to the “rebel” training program.

“The Syria Train and Equip Program goes beyond simply being an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. As many of us initially warned, it is now aiding the very forces we aim to defeat,” stated the letter, which was signed by Democratic senators Tom Udall (New Mexico), Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Chris Murphy (Connecticut) along with Republican Mike Lee (Utah).

The shift in policy announced Friday will not alter this aspect of the program, but only remove the fig leaf of “moderate” Syrian forces, with the handing over of weapons directly to the Islamists who constitute the dominant force among the anti-Assad “rebels.”

The Pentagon has acknowledged that among the principal obstacles to its training program was the vetting process that was supposed to have excluded those whose views were close to Al Qaeda’s, and the requirement that they engage ISIS as the main enemy, rather than the Assad government. It was unable to find such recruits in anywhere near the numbers projected.

President Barack Obama acknowledged in a press conference last week that the Pentagon’s train-and-equip program “has not worked the way it was supposed to.” He added, “And part of the reason, frankly, is because when we tried to get them to just focus on ISIL,” i.e., ISIS.

It appears that the administration’s answer to this failure is to drop these previous restrictions, providing direct US military aid to forces fighting for the overthrow of the Syrian government, including Islamists who would have been excluded from the Pentagon training program.

In the first announcement of the new program, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, speaking in London following a meeting with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, said that it would be modeled on “the work we’ve done with the Kurds in northern Syria … That’s exactly the kind of example that we would like to pursue with other groups in other parts of Syria going forward. That is going to be the core of the President’s concept.”

The US coordination with the Kurds, particularly during the ISIS siege of the Syrian city of Kobani, on the Turkish border, involved Kurds providing ground forces, while identifying targets and calling in airstrikes by US warplanes.

As part of the new program, Pentagon officials said that the US military would train “enablers,” leading members of various militias, who would be instructed in how to coordinate with American warplanes in targeting and striking forces on the ground.

The Kurdish “example” has been rendered problematic by Washington’s alliance with Turkey, which has allowed US airstrikes to be launched from Incirlik Air Base and other bases inside Turkey in return for Washington’s tacit approval of Turkish bombing of the Kurds.

The identity of the “other groups” with whom Washington wants to replicate this strategy is far from clear. Some media reports named the “Syrian Arab Coalition” as a likely recipient of US weapons and close air support. Prior to Friday’s announcement, however, no one had ever heard of this coalition, which appears to be something that the Pentagon hopes to cobble together from existing “rebel” groups.

The dominant forces fighting the Assad government consist of ISIS, which Washington claims to be committed to destroying, the al-Nusra Front, which is on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, and Ahrar al-Sham, another Islamist group whose founders came out of Al Qaeda. Other smaller factions are largely fighting in alliance with these forces.

To the extent that the US military provides air support to these militias, it may well come into direct conflict with Russian warplanes that are bombing them.

Far from a tactical retreat, it appears that the suspension of the Pentagon’s train-and-equip program is only setting the stage for a far bloodier war inside Syria, while heightening the real danger of a military clash between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia.

10 October, 2015
WSWS.org

 

Yayasan 1Malaysia welcomes the call made by the Conference of Rulers to the Government to expedite the completion of investigations related to 1MDB and to take “appropriate stern action” against all found to be implicated in the scandal. The Rulers also asked all concerned to extend “real and sincere cooperation” for the investigation to achieve its objectives. In this regard, the Rulers also emphasized the importance of all enforcement agencies and regulatory institutions fulfilling “God’s trust and the people’s faith with transparency, credibility and integrity.” It is equally significant that the Rulers cautioned that our inter-religious harmony should “never be sacrificed for shallow political aims.”

One hopes that all those who wield power and influence in Malaysian society at this point in time will pay close attention to every word in the statement of the Conference of Rulers. The advice contained therein, if followed scrupulously, will help to resolve some serious challenges pertaining to integrity and honesty in governance facing the nation today. If, on the other hand, the wise counsel of the Rulers is ignored, and the truth continues to be concealed and camouflaged through Machiavellian political machinations, the people will suffer and the future of the nation will be imperiled.

Our nation is at a crossroads. The national leadership has to do what is morally right NOW.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,

Chairman,Board of Trustees, Yayasan 1Malaysia.

Petaling Jaya.

7 October 2015.

By Bill Van Auken

In a joint statement Friday, Washington and its allies in the war for regime change in Syria issued a condemnation of Russia’s recent airstrikes in that country, demanding that Moscow confine any military action to attacks on Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) targets.

“These military actions constitute a further escalation and will only fuel more extremism and radicalization,” the statement warned.

This essential message was echoed by French President Francois Hollande, who met Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Paris. Russia, Holland declared, must “only hit” ISIS.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who appeared together with Hollande following a summit meeting on the crisis in Ukraine, which was also attended by Putin, stated, “Both of us insisted on the fact that IS [ISIS] is the enemy we should be fighting.”

These warnings and condemnations came as Russian warplanes carried out a third day of strikes, hitting targets in Raqqa, the de facto capital of the ISIS-controlled region of Syria in the east, as well as Islamist “rebel” position further west, including in Darat al-Izza, a town in western Aleppo, and Maarat al-Nu’man, in Idlib province.

Speaking in Paris, Putin said that Russia’s actions in Syria were directed against “ISIL [ISIS], Al-Nusra Front and others.”

“The main targets are Daesh [the Arab acronym for ISIS] groups situated closest to Damascus,” Alexei Pushkov, a top Russian Foreign Ministry official, said. He added that the Russian airstrikes could continue for up to four months.

What is most notable about the joint statement by the US and its allies, as well as remarks made in appearances by Western officials and in the coverage of the controversy in the corporate-controlled media, is the reluctance to state who it is that is being defended against Russian attack.

There have been vague references to “the moderate Sunni opposition,” which President Barack Obama invoked at a White House press conference Friday. He used the same appearance to accuse Moscow of waging a “campaign to simply try to destroy anybody who is disgusted and fed up with Mr. Assad’s behavior.”

In reality, the forces on the ground that the US and its allies are defending and which they are demanding that Russia stop bombing are dominated by the Al-Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

Some media accounts have referred to Russian bombs hitting the positions of Jaysh al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib. This “army” consists of a coalition of Al-Nusra and other Al Qaeda-connected Islamist militias that are backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. After massacring Druze villagers in Idlib, they are threatening to move into Latakia province, which is predominantly Alawite and has been a key base of support for Assad, and where Russia’s main military forces have been deployed.

Darat al-Izza, the town in western Aleppo hit by Russian bombs, is also controlled by a similar coalition dominated by Al-Nusra fighters.

This is to whom Obama was referring when he declared at his press conference that Russia “doesn’t distinguish between ISIL and a moderate Sunni opposition that wants to see Mr. Assad go… From their perspective, they’re all terrorists, and that’s a recipe for disaster.”

From Washington’s own perspective, Al-Nusra was also terrorist; at least it was three years ago when the Obama administration added the group to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. At that time, the State Department cited hundreds of attacks by Al-Nusra, including suicide bombings, in which it said “numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.” The ruling found that Al-Nusra was merely another name for Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Three years later, it is clear that Washington is in what constitutes, at the very least, a de facto alliance with Al-Nusra, which, alongside ISIS, constitutes the most powerful anti-Assad militia. US arms funneled in to CIA-backed “rebels” have largely ended up in Al-Nusra’s stockpiles, while the minuscule number of “vetted rebels” trained and armed by the Pentagon in its notoriously failed program have, virtually to a man, defected to Al-Nusra or turned their weapons over to the militia.

Former US General David Petraeus, who headed the CIA and commanded US forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, last month urged Washington to further its position on the ground in Syria by recruiting sections of the Al-Nusra Front as US proxy troops against the Assad government.

“It might be possible at some point to peel off so-called ‘reconcilables’ who would be willing to renounce Nusra and align with the moderate opposition…to fight against Nusra, ISIL and Assad,” Petraeus said during an interview with CNN.

After 14 years of invoking Al Qaeda terrorism as the all-purpose bogeyman for justifying wars abroad and repression at home, Washington is now coming to the defense of the group in Syria, seeking to preserve it as a military force for overthrowing the Syrian government and thereby weakening both Russia and Iran.

Russia’s intervention is unquestionably directed at preventing the fall of the Syrian government to the onslaught of attacks by Islamist Sunni sectarian militias armed to the teeth and funded with billions of dollars by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Western powers, all under the guiding hand of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The airstrikes ordered by Moscow are ratcheting up the threat of military confrontation with the US, which is continuing to conduct its own bombing raids in Syria together with a “coalition” consisting primarily of the reactionary Sunni oil sheikdoms. France has also begun its own independent air campaign over its former colonial possession.

Moreover, the Russian intervention cannot provide a progressive way out of the Syrian crisis, directed as it is toward the defense of the interests of the Russian state and the parasitic and criminal class of post-Soviet oligarchs that it represents.

Nonetheless, for Washington and its allies to condemn Russia for military “escalation” and acting to “fuel extremism and radicalization” in Syria is the height of hypocrisy.

The brutal civil war that has claimed the lives of up to 300,000 Syrians and turned many millions more into refugees and displaced persons was instigated, funded and armed by the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Western powers. They sought to repeat the “success” registered by the US-NATO war in Libya, which ended in the toppling and murder of its secular leader Muammar Gaddafi and the plunging of the country into a bloody war between rival militias and governments, along with economic, political and social disintegration that continues to this day.

Meanwhile, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are reported to have organized the shipment of planeloads of weapons to Turkish airbases for distribution to the Sunni Islamist militias.

The reactionary oil monarchies are demanding that the Syrian civil war end in the deposing of Assad and the installation of a puppet regime more amendable to their interests.

While voicing support for a negotiated settlement, Washington’s aim also remains regime change, placing it and Russia, the world’s two largest nuclear powers, on a collision course.
03 October, 2015
WSWS.org

 

By Francis Khoo Thwe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 October 2015

By Rori Donaghy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Generational change and power politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foreign policy and financial crises

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plotting a change at the top

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mohammed bin Salman seeking a promotion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

22 September 2015

By Kenneth Eade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

By Eric Zuesse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

By Ram Puniyani

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

By Suhail Qasim Mir

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By Countercurrents.org

01 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org