Archives: Articles

31 May 2013

@ WorldTribune.com

LONDON — After two years of civil war, support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was said to have sharply increased.

NATO has been studying data that told of a sharp rise in support for Assad. The data, compiled by Western-sponsored activists and organizations, showed that a majority of Syrians were alarmed by the Al Qaida takeover of the Sunni revolt and preferred to return to Assad, Middle East Newsline reported.

“The people are sick of the war and hate the jihadists more than Assad,” a Western source familiar with the data said. “Assad is winning the war mostly because the people are cooperating with him against the rebels.”

The data, relayed to NATO over the last month, asserted that 70 percent of Syrians support the Assad regime. Another 20 percent were deemed neutral and the remaining 10 percent expressed support for the rebels.

The sources said no formal polling was taken in Syria, racked by two years of civil war in which 90,000 people were reported killed. They said the data came from a range of activists and independent organizations that were working in Syria, particularly in relief efforts.

The data was relayed to NATO as the Western alliance has been divided over whether to intervene in Syria. Britain and France were said to have been preparing to send weapons to the rebels while the United States was focusing on protecting Syria’s southern neighbor Jordan.

A report to NATO said Syrians have undergone a change of heart over the last six months. The change was seen most in the majority Sunni community, which was long thought to have supported the revolt.

“The Sunnis have no love for Assad, but the great majority of the community is withdrawing from the revolt,” the source said. “What is left is the foreign fighters who are sponsored by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They are seen by the Sunnis as far worse than Assad.”

By Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence

31 May, 2013

@Redersupportednews.org

A few evenings ago, as the sky began to darken here in Kabul, Afghanistan, a small group of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, (APVs), gathered for an informal presentation about WikiLeaks, its chief editor Julian Assange, and its most prominent contributor, Bradley Manning. Basir Bita, a regular visitor to the APV household, began the evening’s discussion noting that June 1st will mark the beginning of Bradley Manning’s fourth year in prison. Two days later his trial will begin, a trial which could sadly result in his imprisonment for a life sentence. June 1st also begins an international week of support and solidarity, aimed at thanking Bradley Manning. #ThankManning!

Basir believes that the vast majority of Afghans are among myriads world-wide who have Manning to thank for information they will need in struggles for freedom, security, and peace. He wishes that more people would find the courage to stand up to military and government forces, especially their own, and act as “whistle-blowers.”

I often hear Afghan individuals and groups express longing for a far more democratic process than is allowed them in a country dominated by warlords, the U.S./NATO militaries, and their commanders. In the U.S., a lack of crucial information increasingly threatens democratic processes. How can people make informed choices if their leaders deliberately withhold crucial information from them? Manning’s disclosures have brought desperately needed light to the U.S. and to countries around the world, including struggling countries like Afghanistan.

Hakim, who mentors the Afghan Peace Volunteers, recalled that Bradley Manning passed on documents that record 91,730 “Significant Actions,” or “SIGACTS” undertaken here by the U.S. /ISAF forces, of which 75,000 were released by WikiLeaks. These SIGACTS include attacks by drones, sometimes invisible drones, and night raids.

Our group turned to discussing the history of WikiLeaks, how it formed and how it now functions. Those most familiar with computers and internet explained the process of disclosing information by anonymously following a computerized route to a “dropbox.”

In fact, the Afghan Peace Volunteers themselves have been communicating with Julian Assange.

Last winter, Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire had stayed with them shortly before she traveled to London for a visit to Julian Assange. Through Mairead, they had sent Assange a letter of solidarity.

The APVs heard that Manning has been more isolated than Assange; they all shook their heads when Basir reminded them that Bradley Manning was initially in solitary confinement for eleven months.

Ghulamai thought through the ironic process of how governments designate some documents ‘secret,’ and how he would presume that the person who shares those secrets was a ‘criminal.’ But Ali said that governments chiefly hide ‘secrets’ from the public to maintain power. Hakim asked Abdulhai to imagine himself as the head of a government or of a large family. “If you are working for the good of the family or the state, would you need to do things secretly?” he asked.

“No,” Abdulhai replied. “If I have power, and I am truly working for the best interests of my people, I will not need to do things in secret.”

There was a keen conversation about who Bradley Manning was and what he did. Bradley Manning’s own words, which journalists had to actually smuggle out of his pre-trial hearing, described how Bradley’s mind had largely been made up by watching the secret video that he would come to release under the title “Collateral Murder:”

They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as quote “dead bastards” unquote and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers. At one point in the video there’s an individual on the ground attempting to crawl to safety. The individual is seriously wounded. Instead of calling for medical attention to the location, one of the aerial weapons team crew members verbally asks for the wounded person to pick up a weapon so that he can have a reason to engage. For me, this seems similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass.

While saddened by the aerial weapons team crew’s lack of concern about human life, I was disturbed by the response of the discovery of injured children at the scene. In the video, you can see that the bongo truck driving up to assist the wounded individual. In response the aerial weapons team crew— as soon as the individuals are a threat, they repeatedly request for authorization to fire on the bongo truck and once granted they engage the vehicle at least six times. Together, the APVs watched the deeply disturbing “Collateral Damage” video itself. They were avid to learn what they could do to support and thank Bradley Manning. Yet they’re aware of the risks faced by people who organize public demonstrations in Afghanistan.

It’s far easier to stand up for Bradley where I live, back in the U.S. I hope many more of us will devote the time and energy we owe this young man for risking everything, as he did, to enlighten us and the world.

The Afghan Peace Volunteers are eager for ways to link with others worldwide to express thanks and concern for a remarkably brave and conscience-driven 25-year old man whose courage and whose light is so acutely needed in this darkening time. I’ve seen the fierce light of these young people and, knowing them, I’m certain that others will be seeing it too in the years ahead. Are we readying signals with which to answer them, are we preparing ways to show people like them, and like Julian Assange, and like Bradley Manning, that they are not alone?

By Mariam Karouny

31 May, 2013

@ Reuters

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia has prevailed over its small but ambitious Gulf neighbor Qatar to impose itself as the main outside force supporting the Syrian rebels, a move that may curb the influence of Qatari-backed Islamist militants.

Though governments in neither Riyadh nor Doha would provide official comment, several senior sources in the region told Reuters that the past week’s wrangling among Syria’s opposition factions in Istanbul was largely a struggle for control between the two Gulf monarchies, in which Saudi power finally won out.

“Saudi Arabia is now formally in charge of the Syria issue,” said a senior rebel military commander in one of northern Syria’s border provinces where Qatar has until now been the main supplier of arms to those fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

The outcome, many Syrian opposition leaders hope, could strengthen them in both negotiations and on the battlefield – while hampering some of the anti-Western Islamist hardliners in their ranks whom they say Qatar has been helping with weaponry.

Anger at a failure by one such Qatari-backed Islamist unit in a battle in April that gave Syrian government forces control of a key highway helped galvanize the Saudis, sources said, while Qatari and Islamist efforts to control the opposition political body backfired by angering Riyadh and Western powers.

The northern rebel commander said Saudi leaders would no longer let Qatar take the lead but would themselves take over the dominant role in channeling support into Syria.

“The Saudis met leaders of the Free Syrian Army, including officers from the Military Council in Jordan and Turkey, and have agreed that they will be supporting the rebels,” he said after attending one of those meetings himself.

Prince Salman bin Sultan, a senior Saudi security official, was now running relations with the Syrian rebels, backed by his elder brother, intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Qatar also gave ground in the political field, accepting finally, late on Thursday, that the National Coalition should add a non-Islamist bloc backed by Saudi Arabia.

“In the end Qatar did not want a confrontation with Saudi Arabia and accepted the expansion,” said a source close to the liberals who were allowed to join a body which the United States and European Union want to become a transitional government.

The rebels, whose disunity has been a hindrance both in the field and in maneuvering for a possible international peace conference in the coming weeks, still face a huge task to topple Assad, who has long labeled his enemies Islamist “terrorists” and has his own powerful allies abroad, notably Iran and Russia.

Washington and EU powers have been reluctant to send arms, partly for fear of them reaching anti-Western rebels, including some aligned with al Qaeda. But Britain and France this week ended an EU arms embargo and tighter, Saudi supervision of supply channels could make it easier for London and Paris to start sending weapons if planned peace talks fail.

SAUDI CONTROL

Describing the shift in military supervision, several sources from the political and military leadership of the Syrian opposition and a Saudi source said that anyone, whether a state or among wealthy Arabs who have been making private donations to the rebel cause, would now need the Saudi princes’ approval over what is supplied to whom if they wish to send arms into Syria.

Qatari help was still expected. But a division between a Qatari sphere of influence on the northern border with Turkey and a Saudi sphere on the southern, Jordanian border was over.

“The goal is to be effective and avoid arms getting into the wrong hands like before,” said a senior Saudi source. “Saudi and Qatar share the same goal. We want to see an end to Bashar’s rule and stop the bloodshed of the innocent Syrian people.”

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are close allies in many respects: both armed by the United States, as Sunni Muslims they share an interest in thwarting Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran and its Arab allies – Shi’ites in Iraq and Lebanon and Assad’s Syrian Alawites. Both also want to preserve the absolute domestic power of the ruling dynasties and Western demand for their vast energy resources.

But their interests diverge, particularly over Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups viewed with suspicion by Western powers and in Riyadh. As in Syria, Qatar has delivered extensive financial and other support to Islamists who have risen to prominence in Egypt and Libya as a result of the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests of 2011.

Keen to punch above its weight in the world, independent of its dominant Saudi neighbor, Qatar hosts both a major U.S. air base and influential Islamists exiled from other Arab states; while preserving autocracy at home it has also aided liberals abroad, not least through its Al Jazeera satellite TV channel.

Saudi Arabia, whose king enjoys special status with the Sunni rebels as guardian of the holy city of Mecca, has long been suspicious of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the Cold War, it lent it support as a counterbalance to leftist Arab nationalism which threatened the traditional Gulf monarchies. But the U.S.-allied kingdom now sees political Islam as a graver threat.

Riyadh’s view of Syrian Islamist rebels is also influenced to some extent by its experience backing Arabs who flocked to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s; some returned home, like the Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, to wage a campaign of violence intended to topple the house of Saud.

“FINAL STRAWS”

Two events finally prompted Saudi Arabia and the United States to lose patience with Qatar’s Syrian role – one on the battlefield and another among the political opposition in exile.

In mid-April, Assad’s troops broke a six-month rebel blockade of the Wadi al-Deif military base on Syria’s key north-south highway, after a rebel brigade that was seen as close to Qatar broke ranks – exposing fellow fighters to a government counterattack that led to the deaths of 68 of their number.

A rebel commander, based near Damascus and familiar with the unit which buckled, said its failure had been due to its leaders having preferred using their local power to get rich rather than fighting Assad – a common accusation among the fractious rebels:

“Qatar’s bet … failed especially in the Wadi al-Deif battle. The regime managed to break through them after they became the new local warlords, caring for money and power not the cause,” the senior commander told Reuters. That battlefield collapse infuriated Qatar’s allies in the anti-Assad alliance.

“The straw that broke the camel’s back was the failure to take over Wadi al-Deif camp,” the commander said.

In diplomatic struggles, Western nations were angered by the appointment by the opposition in mid-March of Ghassan Hitto as the exiles’ prime minister. He was seen by Western diplomats as Qatar’s Islamist candidate and Hitto’s rejection of talks with Assad’s government was seen as a block to negotiating a peace.

For one Western diplomat familiar with deliberations in the Friends of Syria alliance that backs the rebels, choosing Hitto was “the final straw” in galvanizing the Western powers behind the move to rein in Qatar by promoting Saudi leadership.

“They wanted to clip the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood,” the Syrian commander from the north said.

For Saudi Arabia and its Western allies, concerned that the fall of Assad might mean a hostile, Islamist state, Qatar’s flaw was an enthusiasm for winning the war – as it helped Libyan rebels do in 2011 – without ensuring how any peace might look.

A Syrian rebel military source who has been close to Saudi officials expressed it thus: “Qatar tried to carve out a role for itself. But it did so without wisdom: they had no clear plan or a view of what would happen later. They just want to win.”

By Countercurrents.org

29 May, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

More than two million people, marched a few days ago against Monsanto, the agro-monster, in more than 400 cities in 52 countries.

There are confusion among many regarding GMO. The following information provided by Earth Open Source* helps understand the issue:

Genetically modified (GM) crops are promoted on the basis of a range of far-reaching claims from the GM crop industry and its supporters.

They say that GM crops:

• Are an extension of natural breeding and do not pose different risks from naturally bred crops

• Are safe to eat and can be more nutritious than naturally bred crops

• Are strictly regulated for safety

• Increase crop yields

• Reduce pesticide use

• Benefit farmers and make their lives easier

• Bring economic benefits

• Benefit the environment

• Can help solve problems caused by climate change

• Reduce energy use

• Will help feed the world.

However, a large and growing body of scientific and other authoritative evidence shows that these claims are not true. On the contrary, evidence presented in this report indicates that GM crops:

• Are laboratory-made, using technology that is totally different from natural breeding methods, and pose different risks from non-GM crops

• Can be toxic, allergenic or less nutritious than their natural counterparts

• Are not adequately regulated to ensure safety

• Do not increase yield potential

• Do not reduce pesticide use but increase it

• Create serious problems for farmers, including herbicide-tolerant “superweeds”, compromised soil quality, and increased disease susceptibility in crops

• Have mixed economic effects

• Harm soil quality, disrupt ecosystems, and reduce biodiversity

• Do not offer effective solutions to climate change

• Are as energy-hungry as any other chemically-farmed crops

• Cannot solve the problem of world hunger but distract from its real causes – poverty, lack of access to food and, increasingly, lack of access to land to grow it on.

Based on the evidence presented in this report, there is no need to take risks with GM crops when effective, readily available, and sustainable solutions to the problems that GM technology is claimed to address already exist.

Conventional plant breeding, in some cases helped by safe modern technologies like gene mapping and marker assisted selection, continues to outperform GM in producing high-yield, drought-tolerant, and pest- and disease-resistant crops that can meet our present and future food needs.

Books

• The Organic & Non-GMO Report Newsletter – The Best Resource to Keep Updated on GE Foods.

• Genetic Roulette by Jeffrey Smith

The Health Risks of GE Foods

Resources

• Watch the documentary Unnatural Selection and the entire GMO Trilogy Film Series free online.

• Hazards of GE Foods and Crops – Why We Need a Global Moratorium by Ronnie Cummins

• Download this PowerPoint by Frank Kutka on the effects of the biotech industry and the call for sustainable agriculture.

• The Truth about PLU Codes

• Doctors: Pesticides Used on GMOs Are “Real Chemical Weapons”

* Organic Consumers Association, “GMO Myths and Truths”, http://www.organicconsumers.org/gelink.cfm

By Joseph Camilleri

29 May 2013

Will the ethics of war become collateral damage as America’s use of drone technology takes off? writes Joseph Camilleri.

In an important speech delivered last week president Barack Obama has defended the use of drones by invoking the just war doctrine.

This much awaited justification rests on two fallacies: that the United States is formally at war; and that it can be just to kill someone for a crime in the absence of a fair trial.

Why did the US president feel compelled to offer this lengthy but belated explanation of America’s drone policy? Put simply, because the use of drones is now increasingly contentious as it becomes the favoured response of the US military and intelligence establishment to the terrorist threat – from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond.

A number of terrorists have no doubt been killed, but so have many others, including civilians. One estimate puts the death toll since 2004 at between 1,963 and 3,293. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham estimates the number to be 4,700.

The great attraction of the drone is that the killing appears risk free. The need to deploy US troops on distant and dangerous terrain is greatly reduced while those who direct the drone are safely ensconced thousands of miles away at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The CIA has been flying unarmed drones over Afghanistan since 2000. Drones were actually used during the air war against the Taliban in late 2001, but it was not until February 2002 that the CIA first used a drone for a pure CIA ‘kill operation’.

Since then covert unmanned target killing has become common place.

The defence of drone strikes offered by Obama boils down to three key propositions:

• terrorism is a serious and ongoing threat, therefore the US remains ‘at war’;
• when detention and prosecution of terrorists is not possible, target killing becomes legitimate;
• assassination by drones is the lesser of two evils, reducing the likely number of military and civilian casualties;

This line of argument is deeply flawed. Countries and communities are subject to all kinds of threat, including serious loss of life and property – whether it is at the hands of deranged individuals or criminal groups of various kinds. The narcotics trade and human trafficking are just two examples.

But a country is not at war with such groups except in a symbolic or metaphorical sense. In these instances countries are not strictly speaking engaged in war. They are not taking military action against the military threat posed by another state – action which is clearly subject to the laws of armed conflict.

Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush, launched the ‘war on terror’ precisely because it offered the United States a way of dealing with suspected terrorists outside the confines of the rule of law.

As a consequence, enhanced interrogation techniques (generally classified as torture), ‘extraordinary rendition’ and indefinite detention at Guantanamo became integral to the ‘war on terror’.

Now in the fifth year of his presidency, Obama is still trying to distance himself from the Guantanamo fiasco, only to find himself ensnared in another can of worms – covert targeted assassinations also conducted in the name of the ‘war on terror’.

But is targeted killing ‘war’ and, if so, is it in accord with the laws of war?

What is clear is that targeted killing does not engage the enemy in battle, since drone attacks occur in times and places where there is no armed conflict.

How, then, can we be confident that those designated for death pose an imminent, dangerous and violent threat? Who is authorised to make these decisions? And, what if the designation proves to be mistaken – something which is known to have happened more than once? Who then bears responsibility? And what are the processes by which those responsible for those mistakes can be brought to account?

It is difficult to see how surreptitious and riskless killing can be in any way regarded as war in a conventional sense, and how it can be subjected to the most basic rules of armed conflict, including hors de combat immunity and the possibility of individual surrender.

But this is just the beginning of the dilemma.

Who are these suspected terrorists? They do not represent an enemy state. They have no fixed address, and often have no clear organisational links.

While some may be thought to have prominent leadership roles in Al Qaeda, the majority do not. Some may be members of state-sponsored networks, but most are likely to be members of autonomous shadowy cells and extremist groups.

How can such a disparate and elusive group be engaged in anything approaching what we normally regard as ‘war’?

All of which has another far-reaching implication. By virtue of their mobility and effective statelessness, these suspects can move rapidly from one country to another. What happens when a particular country is opposed to the use of American drones over its territory? Will the US accept that judgment? Or will it pursue its targeting regardless, in defiance of that state’s sovereignty?

The US president cannot but be aware of these pitfalls. This is why he has attempted to limit the hostile fallout by stipulating that: there must be near-certainty that no civilian casualties will result. He has also called for a review leading to additional oversight of drone attacks.

But key questions remain unanswered: Who is authorised to make these decisions? Will the decision process be transparent? Who is to bear responsibility in the event of mistaken decisions? In what sense, if any, will US actions be subject to the international rule of law?

Beyond this, the United States needs to consider the political and strategic fallout of drone attacks. The use of the drone has already created enormous ill will towards the United States in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This is hardly surprising when a drone supposedly targeting a terrorist ends up killing members of a wedding party.

And if the United States wishes to argue that targeted killings are a legitimate instrument against enemies of the American state, what is to prevent, Russia, China, Iran, Syria or any number of other countries from using precisely the same argument in years to come.

Does president Obama intend a drone arms race to become part of his legacy?

Professor Joseph A Camilleri OAM is Professor Emeritus at La Trobe University. View his full profile here.

By DAWOOD AULEEAR

29 May 2013

@ Le Mauricien

The barbaric and horrendous knife attack on the British soldier last week should be added to the growing list of heinous crimes perpetrated by two antagonists. The killers justified their acts as a tit for tat for the crimes committed by the West in Muslim lands. “The only reason we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily” recally a recent headline : “A British soldier has been jailed for stabbing a 10-year-old boy after getting drunk on vodka while serving in Afghanistan.”

There is little hue and cry in the West, contrary to the outbursts of violence in the Islamic world, about the West’s crimes because Media outlets in the West and particularly in the US simply keep mum. The victims of the West’s crimes are made faceless, their families nearly never appear on TV and according to SALON, Supreme Court Judges have collaborated with US Administration to bar victims access to American courts and thus deprive them of means to have their stories heard. The Patriotic Act and the threat on whistle blowers push victims into silence.

The confessions at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, of Gen. James Cartwright and Sen. Lindsey Graham speak volumes : Americans have the right to kill enemies even while they are “asleep”, that they don’t “have to wake them up before they shoot them” and “make it a fair fight”. Michael Moore’s mockery summarizes Western reaction : “I am outraged that we can’t kill people in other countries without them trying to kill us !”

Let us face the fact : All attempts at lives are unjustifiable and must appall us. Violence caused by the deranged is known to exist from the time of Adam’s sons. Agents of the Inquisition burned heretics to death to shorten their time in purgatory. It is our duty to stop the spiral of violence. The targeting of terrorists by the West is failing to bring about a surrender of the “Islamic” Jihadis. It is important to understand the Muslim mind. A Muslim is taught that cowardice is a worst form of disbelief and all forms of injustice have to be opposed, if needs be, by force. The pool of Muslims ready to die for a “just” cause is unfathomable.

There is a glimmer of hope now to see mayhem on the decline as both President Obama and Hollande have made sober declarations, worthy of statesmen, and proposed alternative and constructive ways of tackling this evil of violence. Let us hope they live up to their words and the Jihadis respond equally as men of honour.

By Shamus Cooke

28 May, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

For a president that is executing Bush’s “war on terror” against Al-Qaeda and “it’s affiliates,” it seems odd that President Obama has targeted the secular Syrian government for “regime change.”

Equally odd is that Obama’s strongest military ally on the ground in Syria- the best equipped and effective fighting force against the Syrian Government — is Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has affiliated itself with  al-Qaeda, and aims to turn Syria into an extremist Islamic state that enforces a fundamentalist version of Sharia law.

It’s difficult to know exactly how al-Nursa received its guns, but one can make an educated guess. For example, The New York Times explained in detail how the CIA has been in a massive arms trafficking operation that has already funneled thousands of tons of guns from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syria:

“The C.I.A. role in facilitating the [weapons] shipments… gave the United States a degree of influence over the process [of weapon distribution]…American officials have confirmed that senior White House officials were regularly briefed on the [weapons] shipments.”

Where are the guns winding up in this massive arms trafficking operation? An important question to ask is: which rebels in Syria have guns and which ones don’t.    The Guardian reports :

“The [secular] Free Syrian Army’s shortage of weapons and other resources compared with [jihadist] Jabhat al-Nusra is a recurrent theme… ‘If you join al-Nusra, there is always a gun for you but many of the FSA brigades can’t even provide bullets for their fighters,’…3,000 FSA [Free Syrian Army] men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition…Al-Nusra fighters rarely withdraw for shortage of ammunition…”

While it’s difficult to know if CIA trafficked guns are going directly or indirectly to al-Nursa, it’s extremely likely that these guns are going directly into the hands of ideological cousins of al-Nursa, since the Syrian rebels are completely dominated by Islamic extremists.

For example, when the Economist magazine was outlining the most important fighting groups in Syria, “Who’s Who in the Syrian Battlefield,”  they noted with regret that the only important non-Islamist group was in the Kurdish areas, which is virtually an autonomous zone. As far as the secular U.S.-backed fighting group, The Supreme Military Command, the Economist conceded it “has little control on the ground.” Keep in mind that the Economist is very much in favor of a U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.

The New York Times also confirmed the complete dominance of extremists on the rebel side:

“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”

Thus, the minority of secular rebel fighters are not leading the civil war and will not be in power if Assad falls. Instead, honest Syrian revolutionaries will instantly fall victim to the extremists, who will immediately proceed to a mopping-up mission of their former allies.

It’s now clear that Obama’s foreign policy in Syria is actively encouraging terrorism. Many rebel-controlled areas in Syria are now new safe havens for terrorists, and there have been hundreds of terrorist bombing attacks against the Syrian government, many of which have targeted civilian areas.

While the U.S. is pouring arms into the jihadist-controlled areas, they have also downplayed the atrocities committed by these rebels, which are well documented on Youtube and include a multitude of war crimes that include beheadings, group execution of prisoners, ethnic cleansing , and the recent episode where a famous rebel commander was videotaped mutilating a dead Syrian solider and eating his heart.

By minimizing this barbarism the Obama administration ensures that it will continue, since the extremists are empowered by U.S. support and are shielded in the U.S. media and protected from international political pressures.

One question the U.S. media never thinks of asking is: Where did all these Islamic extremists come from and why? The Sunni Islamic opposition inside Syria has long been religiously moderate, implying that many of the extremists are foreigners.

The ideological source of this extremism came from Saudi Arabian religious figures and their allies, who use Islam as a political tool to target nations “unfriendly” to Saudi Arabia and the United States. The most glaring example of this in regard to Syria was the Fatwa (official interpretation/statement) issued by 107 Islamic scholars that denounced the Syrian government and encouraged Muslims to fight against it. The statement essentially encouraged jihad, though the word wasn’t mentioned explicitly.

The statement includes:

“It is a duty for all Muslims to support the revolutionaries in Syria [against the government] “so that they can successfully complete their revolution and attain their rights and their freedom.”

The hypocrisy of such a statement is almost too glaring: the many Saudi figures who signed the document that want “freedom” in Syria are not demanding freedom in Saudi Arabia, by far the country with the least amount of freedoms in the world.

With Saudi Arabia and Qatar providing guns to the Syrian rebels — with help from the CIA — the Saudi religious figures attached to the Saudi regime give religious/political support by misleading devout Muslims to flock to Syria to attack a country of Muslims, thus creating the giant sectarian divisions we now see throughout the Islamic world.

The vast majority of this Islamic sectarian warfare is exported by Saudi Arabia, which funds radical Islamic schools all over the Middle East that attract the downtrodden of these countries by providing basic social services that the host country is too poor — or unwilling — to provide.  There is an informative chapter on this dynamic in Vijay Prashad’s excellent book, A People’s History of the Third World.

Now the debate among U.S.-NATO countries is whether to give more sophisticated weaponry to the extremist-dominated rebels in Syria. The Obama Administration is pressuring the European Union to drop its arms embargo on Syria so that a new torrent of weapons can flood the country (apparently the CIA operations haven’t yet completely drenched Syria with guns).

In response to the “drop the embargo” discussion, Oxfam intelligently responded by saying:

“Sending arms to the Syrian opposition won’t create a level playing field. Instead, it risks further fueling an arms free-for-all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience from other conflict zones tells us that this crisis will only drag on for far longer if more and more arms are poured into the country.”

One EU diplomat gave a scathing rebuke to the Obama Administration’s claim that it could ensure that new weapons wouldn’t wind up in “the wrong hands” in Syria:

“It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms,” the diplomat said. “If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.”

In Syria the weapons are needed by those doing the brunt of the fighting. Again, the al-Nursa extremists are widely acknowledged to be the most effective fighting force against the Syrian government, the guns will thus flow to them.

Obama has taken the saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” to irrational heights, and in so doing is helping to produce a new generation of Islamic extremists that will help fuel the U.S.-led never-ending “war on terror.”  The real intention of the War on Terror is not to stop terrorists, but to target nation states that are opposed to U.S. foreign policy: Iraq and Libya — like Syria — were both secular countries at the time of their being invaded; Afghanistan was invaded even though the vast majority of those involved in the 9-11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia. There was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the U.S. invaded, just like there was no terrorist problem in Syria before the U.S.-backed rebels came onto the scene.

It’s blatantly obvious to most Americans that Syria and Iran are at the top of Obama’s war list, a much higher priority than any terrorist group. This is why Obama is tolerating the terrorist groups inside Syira; they are being used as tools against his real target, Syria and then Iran.

The Syrian people must be left to themselves to decide their future. The United States is utterly incapable of “helping” countries by using military means, as the fractured nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya painfully prove. The global anti-war movement must demand Hands Off Syria!

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action ( www.workerscompass.org ). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/08/free-syrian-army-rebels-defect-islamist-group

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/daily-chart-12

http://www.islam21c.com/fataawa/2407-fatwa-on-syria-by-107-scholars

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/22/syria-arms-embargo-rebels

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/22/syria-arms-embargo-rebels?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position5

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/divided-europe-imperils-syrian-arms-embargo-8632376.html

By Joseph Stiglitz, Guardian UK

28 May 13

@ Readersupportednews.org

Big corporates are gaming one nation’s taxpayers against another’s: we need a global deal to make them pay their way

The world looked on agog as Tim Cook, the head of Apple, said his company had paid all the taxes owed – seeming to say that it paid all the taxes it should have paid. There is, of course, a big difference between the two. It’s no surprise that a company with the resources and ingenuity of Apple would do what it could to avoid paying as much tax as it could within the law. While the supreme court, in its Citizens United case seems to have said that corporations are people, with all the rights attendant thereto, this legal fiction didn’t endow corporations with a sense of moral responsibility; and they have the Plastic Man capacity to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time – to be everywhere when it comes to selling their products, and nowhere when it comes to reporting the profits derived from those sales.

Apple, like Google, has benefited enormously from what the US and other western governments provide: highly educated workers trained in universities that are supported both directly by government and indirectly (through generous charitable deductions). The basic research on which their products rest was paid for by taxpayer-supported developments – the internet, without which they couldn’t exist. Their prosperity depends in part on our legal system – including strong enforcement of intellectual property rights; they asked (and got) government to force countries around the world to adopt our standards, in some cases, at great costs to the lives and development of those in emerging markets and developing countries. Yes, they brought genius and organisational skills, for which they justly receive kudos. But while Newton was at least modest enough to note that he stood on the shoulders of giants, these titans of industry have no compunction about being free riders, taking generously from the benefits afforded by our system, but not willing to contribute commensurately. Without public support, the wellspring from which future innovation and growth will come will dry up – not to say what will happen to our increasingly divided society.

It is not even true that higher corporate tax rates would necessarily significantly decrease investment. As Apple has shown, it can finance anything it wants to with debt – including paying dividends, another ploy to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. But interest payments are tax deductible – which means that to the extent that investment is debt-financed, the cost of capital and returns are both changed commensurately, with no adverse effect on investment. And with the low rate of taxation on capital gains, returns on equity are treated even more favorably. Still more benefits accrue from other details of the tax code, such as accelerated depreciation and the tax treatment of research and development expenditures.

It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. It is a tax system that is pivotal in creating the increasing inequality that marks most advanced countries today – with America standing out in the forefront and the UK not far behind. It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child’s life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.

Globalisation has made us increasingly interdependent. These international corporations are the big beneficiaries of globalisation – it is not, for instance, the average American worker and those in many other countries, who, partly under the pressure from globalisation, has seen his income fully adjusted for inflation, including the lowering of prices that globalisation has brought about, fall year after year, to the point where a fulltime male worker in the US has an income lower than four decades ago. Our multinationals have learned how to exploit globalisation in every sense of the term – including exploiting the tax loopholes that allow them to evade their global social responsibilities.

The US could not have a functioning corporate income tax system if we had elected to have a transfer price system (where firms “make up” the prices of goods and services that one part buys from another, allowing profits to be booked to one state or another). As it is, Apple is evidently able to move profits around to avoid Californian state taxes. The US has developed a formulaic system, where global profits are allocated on the basis of employment, sales and capital goods. But there is plenty of room to further fine-tune the system in response to the easier ability to shift profits around when a major source of the real “value-added” is intellectual property.

Some have suggested that while the sources of production (value added) are difficult to identify, the destination is less so (though with reshipping, this may not be so clear); they suggest a destination-based system. But such a system would not necessarily be fair – providing no revenues to the countries that have borne the costs of production. But a destination system would clearly be better than the current one.

Even if the US were not rewarded for its global publicly supported scientific contributions and the intellectual property built on them, at least the country would be rewarded for its unbridled consumerism, which provides incentives for such innovation. It would be good if there could be an international agreement on the taxation of corporate profits. In the absence of such an agreement, any country that threatened to impose fair corporate taxes would be punished – production (and jobs) would be taken elsewhere. In some cases, countries can call their bluff. Others may feel the risk is too high. But what cannot be escaped are customers.

The US by itself could go a long way to moving reform along: any firm selling goods there could be obliged to pay a tax on its global profits, at say a rate of 30%, based on a consolidated balance sheet, but with a deduction for corporate profits taxes paid in other jurisdictions (up to some limit). In other words, the US would set itself up as enforcing a global minimum tax regime. Some might opt out of selling in the US, but I doubt that many would.

The problem of multinational corporate tax avoidance is deeper, and requires more profound reform, including dealing with tax havens that shelter money for tax-evaders and facilitate money-laundering. Google and Apple hire the most talented lawyers, who know how to avoid taxes staying within the law. But there should be no room in our system for countries that are complicitous in tax avoidance. Why should taxpayers in Germany help bail out citizens in a country whose business model was based on tax avoidance and a race to the bottom – and why should citizens in any country allow their companies to take advantage of these predatory countries?

To say that Apple or Google simply took advantage of the current system is to let them off the hook too easily: the system didn’t just come into being on its own. It was shaped from the start by lobbyists from large multinationals. Companies like General Electric lobbied for, and got, provisions that enabled them to avoid even more taxes. They lobbied for, and got, amnesty provisions that allowed them to bring their money back to the US at a special low rate, on the promise that the money would be invested in the country; and then they figured out how to comply with the letter of the law, while avoiding the spirit and intention. If Apple and Google stand for the opportunities afforded by globalisation, their attitudes towards tax avoidance have made them emblematic of what can, and is, going wrong with that system.

By Kathy Kelly

28 May, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

When she was 24 years old, in 1979, Fahima Vorgetts left Afghanistan.  By reputation, she had been outspoken, even rebellious, in her opposition to injustice and oppression; and family and friends, concerned for her safety, had urged her to go abroad.  Twenty-three years later, returning for the first time to her homeland, she barely recognized war-torn streets in urban areas where she had once lived.  She saw and felt the anguish of villagers who couldn’t feed or shelter their families, and no less able to accept such unjust suffering than she’d been half her life before, Fahima decided to make it her task to help alleviate the abysmal conditions faced by ordinary Afghans living at or below the poverty line – by helping to build independent women’s enterprises wherever she could.  She trusted in the old adage that if a person is hungry it’s an even greater gift to teach the person how to fish than to only give the person fish.

Last week, our small delegation here in Kabul traveled around the city with her to visit several clinics and “shuras,” or women’s councils that she has opened.

The first clinic we visited has been here since 2006. Two women, a doctor and a midwife, told us that they are part of a staff who work in three shifts to keep the clinic open “24-7.”  Not one of their patients has died while being treated at the clinic.

Next we visited two villages, one Pashtun and the other Tajik, on the outskirts of Kabul.

“Why did you pick this village?” asked Jake Donaldson, an M.D. from Ventura, CA who joined us here in Kabul about a week ago.  “I didn’t pick them,” Fahima exclaimed. “They picked me.”

A year previously, the villagers had asked her to build a clinic and a literacy center.  She had told them that if they would agree to organize a women’s cooperative and pool their resources to hire teachers, midwives and nurses, she herself would build the physical building and help with supplies.

In each village, we visited a newly constructed building which will house a clinic, a women’s cooperative for jewelry-making, tailoring, and canning, a set of literacy classes for children and adults, and even a public shower which families can sign up to use.  A young teacher invited us to step inside his classroom where about fifty children, girls and boys, were learning their alphabet in the first week of a literacy class.  Several villagers proudly showed us the well they had dug, powered by a generator. The well will help them irrigate their land as well as supply clean drinking water for the village.

Before we left, a male village elder described to Fahima how valuable her work has been for his village.  Fahima seemed to blush a bit as she gratefully acknowledged his compliment.

Such appreciative words, along with the children’s eager expressions, seem to be the main compensation for her tireless work.  “I and the board members of The Afghan Women’s Fund are 100% volunteers,” Fahima assures me.  “Our board members are people of tremendous integrity.”

On the day before our tour, Fahima had come to the Afghan Peace Volunteer home to speak to the seamstresses who run a sewing cooperative here and encourage them to hold on at all costs to their dignity.  She urged them never to prefer handouts to hard work in self-sustaining projects.  Fahima had helped the seamstresses begin their cooperative effort at the Volunteer house when she purchased sewing machines for them a little over a year ago.

“Not all of the projects I’ve tried to start have worked out,” said Fahima. “Sometimes people are hampered by conservative values and some families don’t want to allow women to leave their homes. Most often, it is war or the security situation that prevents success.”

She firmly believes that war will never solve problems in her country – or anywhere else, for that matter.

Fahima is outspoken, even blunt, as she speaks about warlords and war profiteers.   She has good reason to be bitter over the cruelties inflicted on ordinary Afghans by all those interested in filling their own pockets and expanding control of Afghanistan’s resources.  She advises the Afghan Peace Volunteers with the voice and love of a mother. “The world is gripped by a class war in which the 1% elite, irrespective of nationality or ethnicity and including the Afghan and U.S./NATO elite, have been ganging up to control, divide, oppress and profit from us, the ordinary 99%. Resist these ‘dark times’, resist war and weapons, educate yourselves, and work together in friendship.”

Fahima’s spirit of youthful rebellion clearly hasn’t been snuffed out by age or experience.  Her practical compassion is like a compass for all of us who learn about her work.

For more about the Afghan Women Fund, go to www.Afghanwomensfund.org

Kathy Kelly, ( kathy@vcnv.org ), co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence ( www.vcnv.org ). She is living in Kabul for the month of May as a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers ( http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/ ).