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By William Blum

Williamblum.org

“Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for ‘objectivity’. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.” – Michael Parenti

An exchange in January with Paul Farhi, Washington Post columnist, about coverage of US foreign policy:

Dear Mr. Farhi,

Now that you’ve done a study of al-Jazeera’s political bias in supporting Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, is it perhaps now time for a study of the US mass media’s bias on US foreign policy? And if you doubt the extent and depth of this bias, consider this:

There are more than 1,400 daily newspapers in the United States. Can you name a single paper, or a single TV network, that was unequivocally opposed to the American wars carried out against Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam? Or even opposed to any two of these wars? How about one? In 1968, six years into the Vietnam war, the Boston Globe 1

surveyed the editorial positions of 39 leading US papers concerning the war and found that “none advocated a pull-out”.

Now, can you name an American daily newspaper or TV network that more or less gives any support to any US government ODE (Officially Designated Enemy)? Like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela or his successor, Nicolás Maduro; Fidel or Raúl Castro of Cuba; Bashar al-Assad of Syria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran; Rafael Correa of Ecuador; or Evo Morales of Bolivia? I mean that presents the ODE’s point of view in a reasonably fair manner most of the time? Or any ODE of the recent past like Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Moammar Gaddafi of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, or Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti?

Who in the mainstream media supports Hamas of Gaza? Or Hezbollah of Lebanon? Who in the mainstream media is outspokenly critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians? And keeps his or her job?

Who in the mainstream media treats Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning as the heroes they are?

And this same mainstream media tell us that Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, et al. do not have a real opposition media.

The ideology of the American mainstream media is the belief that they don’t have any ideology; that they are instead what they call “objective”. I submit that there is something more important in journalism than objectivity. It is capturing the essence, or the truth, if you will, with the proper context and history. This can, as well, serve as “enlightenment”.

It’s been said that the political spectrum concerning US foreign policy in the America mainstream media “runs the gamut from A to B”.

Sincerely, William Blum, Washington, DC

(followed by some of my writing credentials)

–

Reply from Paul Farhi:

I think you’re conflating news coverage with editorial policy. They are not the same. What a newspaper advocates on its editorial page (the Vietnam example you cite) isn’t the same as what or how the story is covered in the news columns. News MAY have some advocacy in it, but it’s not supposed to, and not nearly as overt or blatant as an editorial or opinion column. Go back over all of your ODE examples and ask yourself if the news coverage was the same as the opinions about those ODEs. In most cases. I doubt it was.

–

Dear Mr. Farhi,

Thank you for your remarkably prompt answer.

Your point about the difference between news coverage and editorial policy is important, but the fact is, as a daily, and careful, reader of the Post for the past 20 years I can attest to the extensive bias in its foreign policy coverage in the areas I listed. Juan Ferrero in Latin America and Kathy Lally in the Mideast are but two prime examples. The bias, most commonly, is one of omission more than commission; which is to say it’s what they leave out that distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies. My Anti-Empire Report contains many examples of these omissions, as well as some errors of commission.

Incidentally, since 1995 I have written dozens of letters to the Post pointing out errors in foreign-policy coverage. Not one has been printed.

Happy New Year

–

I present here an extreme example of bias by omission, in the entire American mainstream media: In my last report I wrote of the committee appointed by the president to study NSA abuses – Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies – which actually came up with a few unexpected recommendations in its report presented December 13, the most interesting of which perhaps are these two:

“Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry.”

“Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems.”

So what do we have here? The NSA being used to steal industrial secrets; nothing to do with fighting terrorism. And the NSA stealing money and otherwise sabotaging unnamed financial systems, which may also represent gaining industrial advantage for the United States.

Long-time readers of this report may have come to the realization that I’m not an ecstatic admirer of US foreign policy. But this stuff shocks even me. It’s the gross pettiness of “The World’s Only Superpower”.

A careful search of the extensive Lexis-Nexis database failed to turn up a single American mainstream media source, print or broadcast, that mentioned this revelation. I found it only on those websites which carried my report, plus three other sites: Techdirt, Lawfare, and Crikey (First Digital Media).

For another very interesting and extreme example of bias by omission, as well as commission, very typical of US foreign policy coverage in the mainstream media: First read the January 31, page one, Washington Post article making fun of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba.

Then read the response from two Americans who have spent a lot of time in Venezuela, are fluent in Spanish, and whose opinions about the article I solicited.

I lived in Chile during the 1972-73 period under Salvadore Allende and his Socialist Party. The conservative Chilean media’s sarcastic claims at the time about shortages and socialist incompetence were identical to what we’ve been seeing for years in the United States concerning Venezuela and Cuba. The Washington Post article on Venezuela referred to above could have been lifted out of Chile’s El Mercurio, 1973.

[Note to readers: Please do not send me the usual complaints about my using the name “America(n)” to refer to “The United States”. I find it to be a meaningless issue, if not plain silly.]

JFK, RFK, and some myths about US foreign policy

On April 30, 1964, five months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was interviewed by John B. Martin in one of a series of oral history sessions with RFK. Part of the interview appears in the book “JFK Conservative” by Ira Stoll, published three months ago. (pages 192-3)

RFK: The president … had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam.

MARTIN: What was the overwhelming reason?

RFK: Just the loss of all of Southeast Asia if you lost Vietnam. I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall.

MARTIN: What if it did?

RFK: Just have profound effects as far as our position throughout the world, and our position in a rather vital part of the world. Also it would affect what happened in India, of course, which in turn has an effect on the Middle East. Just as it would have, everybody felt, a very adverse effect. It would have an effect on Indonesia, hundred million population. All of those countries would be affected by the fall of Vietnam to the Communists.

MARTIN: There was never any consideration given to pulling out?

RFK: No.

MARTIN: … The president was convinced that we had to keep, had to stay in there …

RFK: Yes.

MARTIN: … And couldn’t lose it.

RFK: Yes.

These remarks are rather instructive from several points of view:

1. Robert Kennedy contradicts the many people who are convinced that, had he lived, JFK would have brought the US involvement in Vietnam to a fairly prompt end, instead of it continuing for ten more terrible years. The author, Stoll, quotes a few of these people. And these other statements are just as convincing as RFK’s statements presented here. And if that is not confusing enough, Stoll then quotes RFK himself in 1967 speaking unmistakably in support of the war.

It appears that we’ll never know with any kind of certainty what would have happened if JFK had not been assassinated, but I still go by his Cold War record in concluding that US foreign policy would have continued along its imperial, anti-communist path. In Kennedy’s short time in office the United States unleashed many different types of hostility, from attempts to overthrow governments and suppress political movements to assassination attempts against leaders and actual military combat; with one or more of these occurring in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, British Guiana, Iraq, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Brazil.

2. “Just have profound effects as far as our position throughout the world, and our position in a rather vital part of the world.”

Ah yes, a vital part of the world. Has there ever been any part of the world, or any country, that the US has intervened in that was not vital? Vital to American interests? Vital to our national security? Of great strategic importance? Here’s President Carter in his 1980 State of the Union Address: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America”.

“What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war.” – Simone Weil (1909-1943), French philosopher

3. If the US lost Vietnam “everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall.”

As I once wrote:

Thus it was that the worst of Washington’s fears had come to pass: All of Indochina – Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos – had fallen to the Communists. During the initial period of US involvement in Indochina in the 1950s, John Foster Dulles, Dwight Eisenhower and other American officials regularly issued doomsday pronouncements of the type known as the “Domino Theory”, warning that if Indochina should fall, other nations in Asia would topple over as well. In one instance, President Eisenhower listed no less than Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Indonesia amongst the anticipated “falling dominos”. 2

Such warnings were repeated periodically over the next decade by succeeding administrations and other supporters of US policy in Indochina as a key argument in defense of such policy. The fact that these ominous predictions turned out to have no basis in reality did not deter Washington officialdom from promulgating the same dogma up until the 1990s about almost each new world “trouble-spot”, testimony to their unshakable faith in the existence and inter-workings of the International Communist Conspiracy.

Killing suicide

Suicide bombers have become an international tragedy. One can not sit in a restaurant or wait for a bus or go for a walk downtown, in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq or Russia or Syria and elsewhere without fearing for one’s life from a person walking innocently by or a car that just quietly parked nearby. The Pentagon has been working for years to devise a means of countering this powerful weapon.

As far as we know, they haven’t come up with anything. So I’d like to suggest a possible solution. Go to the very source. Flood selected Islamic societies with this message: “There is no heavenly reward for dying a martyr. There are no 72 beautiful virgins waiting to reward you for giving your life for jihad. No virgins at all. No sex at all.”

Using every means of communication, from Facebook to skywriting, from billboards to television, plant the seed of doubt, perhaps the very first such seed the young men have ever experienced. As some wise anonymous soul once wrote:

A person is unambivalent only with regard to those few beliefs, attitudes and characteristics which are truly universal in his experience. Thus a man might believe that the world is flat without really being aware that he did so – if everyone in his society shared the assumption. The flatness of the world would be simply a “self-evident” fact. But if he once became conscious of thinking that the world is flat, he would be capable of conceiving that it might be otherwise. He might then be spurred to invent elaborate proofs of its flatness, but he would have lost the innocence of absolute and unambivalent belief.

We have to capture the minds of these suicide bombers. At the same time we can work on our own soldiers. Making them fully conscious of their belief, their precious belief, that their government means well, that they’re fighting for freedom and democracy, and for that thing called “American exceptionalism”. It could save them from committing their own form of suicide.

Notes

1. Boston Globe, February 18, 1968, p.2-A

2. New York Times, April 8, 1954

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2

06 February, 2014

 

 

By Kourosh Ziabari

Countercurrents.org

It’s now three years that Syria has been engulfed in a destructive civil war which is leading nowhere but simply continues to claim the lives of innocent civilians falling prey to the greediness and voracity of the imperial powers and those who intend to disintegrate Syria and disrupt the solidarity of its people.

It’s reported that since March 2011, more than 130,000 Syrians were killed in the clashes that have erupted inside the war-torn country, and more than 2 million others were displaced.

The Western mainstream media persistently try to portray the violence in Syria as part of the wave of revolutionary movements in the Arab world that started from Tunisia three years ago known as the Arab Spring, but the irony is that there is virtually no sign of a popular uprising or civil movement in Syria that can quality the unrest in this country as a revolution. What is happening in Syria is an unspeakable, all-out sectarian conflict fueled by the foreign powers and terrorists from more than 80 countries whose ultimate objective is to tear the country apart and dismantle it as an integral part of the axis of resistance.

In a systematic and organized way, the United States and some of its regional and trans-regional allies have concocted a scheme for Balkanizing Syria through embroiling the country’s different religious sects in an erosive and seemingly unending clash; Sunnis against the Alawites and Twelver Shiites against the Christians. This will ultimately result in acrimony, quarrel and bitterness in Syria and pave the way for what the enemies of peace and harmony in Syria have been looking for: the dismantlement of the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Some analysts believe that Syria is paying the price for its resistance against Israel. Of course Israel, which directly benefits from conflict and unrest in Syria, is inclined to see a chaotic, turbulent and tumultuous Syria rather than a Syria which is unified, strong and powerful. This belief that Israel sees its interest in the continuation of unrest in Syria is substantiated by many analysts and politicians who have closely monitored the developments in the Middle East in the recent years. In an interview with Press TV in September 2012, the former Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Abdullatif Sener said “the unrest in Syria benefits Israel, because Syria is one of a few countries standing against Tel Aviv.” According to Sener, Israel seeks to weaken Syria to undermine the Palestinians and Hezbollah.

Even there are some Israeli officials who are not afraid of openly bragging about their ambition for destabilizing Syria, saying that the emergence of Syria without Bashar al-Assad or any other leader who is opposed to the policies of Tel Aviv would be the most favorable outcome of the civil war in the Arab country. On January 26, 2012, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth carried the statements made by former Military Intelligence Chief and Head of the Institute for National Security Studies Amos Yadlin who said “the changes in Syria bear strategic benefits for Israel.” Yadlin, however, further went on to disclose his real intentions for the region and stated that Iran should also be subject to political transformations emanating from the Arab Spring: “If the revolution finds its way to Tehran it could save Israel the huge dilemma of choosing between two alternatives – a viable nuclear Iran or preventing a nuclear Iran.”

All the parties involved in this erosive conflict, including the United States, the European powers, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Israel pursue certain interests in Syria. But all of them converge on the point that Bashar al-Assad must go, and a leader should be put in place that follows the orders given to him rather than representing the will and interest of his people. Under such circumstances, the United States will never object that the Syrian government is not a democratic and representative government and is inattentive to the calls of its people; but when Bashar al-Assad is in power, his campaign against the extremists, takfiris and insurgents would be tantamount to a “killing of his own people” and should be condemned!

All things considered, the war that is being waged on Syria, with the involvement of those dangerous killers whom the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry honorably brands as “moderate terrorists” is leading to an erosive, obnoxious and bloody sectarian conflict which one can hardly think of an end for. Those who are pitting the Shiites against the Sunnis and vice versa are making use of the diversity of denominations in Islam as an instrument to spread unrest and confusion among the Muslims and undermine their unity and integrity. They fear that the growth of the Muslim community will entail a heavy price for them.

And unfortunately, the extremist takfiris and salafists who are being dispatched to Syria en masse by certain countries in the region on behalf of the imperial powers are taking the artificial battle they’ve invoked between the Shiites and Sunnis to the neighboring countries, and one can only think of their intentions in terms of a pernicious effort to provoke the different sects of Muslims, including the Sunnis and Shiites, to commit violence against each other and engage them in internal conflicts. This is in line with the efforts made by the United States and some of its allies that are trying their best to plunder the natural resources of the Muslim nations and dominating their lands.

The recent bombings in Lebanon and Iraq which the takfiri, salafist and Al-Qaeda fighters claim the responsibility for indicate that the sectarian conflict that has come into sight from Syria is spilling into the other Middle East nations, and can be considered a blaze which will take in and burn the whole region in a tragic manner.

For instance, it was reported on January 16 that a suicide car bombing killed at least 5 people and wounded 42 others in the northwestern Lebanese city of Hermel. Hermel is a Shiite-majority city in the Beqaa Governorate where Hezbollah wields a remarkable influence, and it’s said that the members of Al-Nusra Front, which undertook the responsibility for the bombing, are planning more attacks in such areas to punish the Shiite population of Lebanon for their crime of supporting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On February 2, the British paper The Independent published an article in which it elaborated on the growth of sectarian conflict in the Middle East as a result of the protraction of violence and bloodshed in Syria, writing that the Lebanese communities are being dragged into the “neighbor’s civil war” simply because it’s perceived that they support the side of the conflict which is disfavored by the “big boss” and its friends, namely the United States, its NATO and Arab allies. However, the January 16 bombing was not the first instance of assault on the “100 percent Shiite” Hermel district. According to The Independent, over the past two years, more than 150 rockets were fired into Hermel by the Al-Nusra Front. The town is targeted mostly because it’s an important logistical hub for Hezbollah, which has openly sided with Bashar al-Assad in his battle against the insurgents and foreign-backed mercenaries, and is known as the “capital of resistance.”

Although it’s difficult to demonstrate that the bloodletting and violence in Syria has caused sectarian conflict, it can be maintained that the three-year civil war in Syria has very bold sectarian overtones and many of the motivations of the parties involved in the war are sectarian. Unquestionably, one is that the takfiris and salafists in Syria are dismayed that the Sunni majority country is ruled by a Shiite Alawite government, and their consternation has gone to such extremes that they have taken up arms against the government, brutally behead its supporters and kill whoever they think is somewhat related to or supportive of the government.

I remember talking to a Syrian citizen a few weeks ago. She told me that Bashar al-Assad has always maintained a policy of preserving balance and equilibrium between the followers of divine religions in Syria, and religious tolerance is something which is widely practiced in the country. She was saying that the Alawites and other Shiites, Sunnis and the Christian and Jewish minorities have always lived with each other peacefully and interacted constructively, and this atmosphere was created by Bashar al-Assad, but it’s really indeterminate and unclear what will happen if he goes, either voluntarily or by force, and what the next leader will do to maintain religious equality.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria has confirmed in a recent report that sectarian violence has increased in Syria, and there are other reports testifying that sectarian conflict is being expanded into Lebanon and Iraq and is likely to engulf the whole Middle East very soon.

The fact that takfiris, salafists and other fundamentalists who don’t accept as Muslim whoever is politically opposed to them are now gaining power and contributing to the Balkanization of Syria is really disturbing, and it seems that nothing worthwhile comes out of the negotiation rooms in Geneva that can help Syria see the face of peace and tranquility once again; however, experience has shown that whenever the decision-making is entrusted to the people themselves, they make the best choices. It’s up to the Syrian people to decide whether they want Bashar al-Assad to remain in power or not. Killing and terrorizing will not help find an answer to the dilemma.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian Journalist, writer and media correspondent

06 February, 2014

 

Countercurrents.org

As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hurried to his helicopter ready to take off at the end of a visit to Iraq last year, it was becoming clearer that the Americans have lost control of a country they wished to mold to their liking. His departure on March 24, 2013 was the conclusion of a ‘surprise’ visit meant to mark the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Ten years prior, the US had stormed Baghdad, unleashing one of the 20th century’s most brutal and longest conflicts. Since then, Iraq has not ceased to bleed.

Kerry offered nothing of value on that visit, save the same predictable clichés of Iraq’s supposedly successful democracy, as a testament to some imagined triumph of American values. But it was telling that a decade of war was not even enough to assure an ordinary trip for the American diplomat. It was a ‘surprise’ because no amount of coordination between the US embassy, then consisting of 16,000 staff, and the Iraqi government, could guarantee Kerry’s safety.

Yet something sinister was brewing in Iraq. Mostly Muslim Sunni tribesmen were fed up with the political paradigm imposed by the Americans almost immediately upon their arrival, which divided the country based on sectarian lines. The Sunni areas, in the center and west of the country, paid a terrible price for the US invasion that empowered political elites purported to speak on behalf of the Shia. The latter, who were mostly predisposed by Iranian interests, began to slowly diversify their allegiance. Initially, they played the game per US rules, and served as an iron fist against those who dared resist the occupation. But as years passed, the likes of current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, found in Iran a more stable ally: where sect, politics and economic interests seamlessly align. Thus, Iraq was ruled over by a strange, albeit undeclared troika in which the US and Iran had great political leverage where the Shia-dominated government cleverly attempted to find balance, and survive.

Of course, a country with the size and history of Iraq doesn’t easily descend into sectarian madness on its own. But Shia and Sunni politicians and intellectuals who refused to adhere to the prevailing intolerant political archetype were long sidelined – killed, imprisoned, deported and simply had no space in today’s Iraq- as national identity was banished by sect, tribe, religion and race.

Currently, the staff of the US embassy stands at 5,100, and American companies are abandoning their investments in the south of Iraq where the vast majority of the country’s oil exists. It is in the south that al-Maliki has the upper hand. He, of course, doesn’t speak on behalf of all Shia, and is extremely intolerant of dissidents. In 2008, he fought a brutal war to seize control of Basra from Shia militias who challenged his rule. Later, he struck the Mehdi Army of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr in a Baghdad suburb. He won in both instances, but at a terrible toll. His Shia rivals would be glad to see him go.

Maliki’s most brutal battles however have been reserved for dissenting Sunnis. His government, as has become the habit of most Arab dictators, is claiming to have been fighting terrorism since day one, and is yet to abandon the slogans it propagates. While militant Sunni groups, some affiliated with al-Qaeda, have indeed taken advantage of the ensuing chaos to promote their own ideology, and solicit greater support for their cause, Iraq’s Sunnis have suffered humiliation of many folds throughout the years long before al-Qaeda was introduced to Iraq – courtesy of the US invasion.

Iraq’s Sunni tribes, despite every attempt at negotiating a dignified formulation to help millions of people escape the inferno of war, were dismissed and humiliated. The likes of former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was notorious for his targeting of Sunni tribes and mercilessness with any community that in any way supported or tolerated the resistance. Due to strong support by Shia militias, which served as the core of today’s Iraqi army, and Kurdish militias in the north, the resistance was isolated and brutalized.

That history is not only relevant, but it is not history to begin with. It is the agonizing reality. When the last US military column snaked out of Iraq into Kuwait in Dec. 2011, the US was leaving Iraq with the worst possible scenario: a sectarian central government that was beyond corrupt, plus many ruthless parties vying for power or revenge and sectarian polarization at its most extreme manifestation.

Nonetheless, Iraq is still very important to the Americans. It is perhaps a failed military experiment, but it is still rich of oil and natural gas. Moreover, Iraq is getting richer, the draft of the Iraqi budget for 2014 “anticipates average exports of 3.4m barrels/day (b/d), up 1m b/d from the previous year,” according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Radical shifts are certainly on the horizon,” reported Forbes on the future of the oil market. Something is driving speculation and that “something is Iraq.” (Jan 31) Iraq’s prospected oil production potential “dwarfs everything else”, reported Canada’s Globe & Mail, citing Henry Groppe, a respected oil and gas analyst. “It’s the thing that everybody ought to be watching and following as closely as possible,” he said.

Drawing its conclusions for the 2012 Iraq Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency reported that Iraq could be “reaching output in excess of 9 mb/d by 2020”, which “would equal the highest sustained growth in the history of the global oil industry.”

And many are indeed watching. Kerry and the US administration are hardly fond of Maliki, for the latter is too close to Tehran to be trusted. But he is Iraq’s strongest man commanding about 930,000 security personnel “spread across the army, police force and intelligence services,” according to the BBC, and that for the Americans must count for something.

However, Iraq’s riches cannot be easily obtained. Sure, the country’s strong parties are comforted by the fact that the army crackdown on Sunni tribes, al-Qaeda affiliated militias and other groups in al-Anbar and elsewhere is happening outside the country’s main oil field. But they shouldn’t discount just how quickly civil wars spiral out of control. The death toll in 2013 was alarmingly high, over 8,000, mostly civilians, according to the UN. It is the highest since 2008.

Iraq’s ‘bad years’ seem to be making a comeback. This time the US has little leverage over Iraq to control the events from afar. “This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis,” Kerry said in recent comments during a visit to Jerusalem. Indeed, with little military and diplomatic presence, the US can do very little. In fact, they have done enough.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).

06 February, 2014

By Siji Jabbar

Just before France conceded to African demands for independence in the 1960s, it carefully organised its former colonies (CFA countries) in a system of “compulsory solidarity” which consisted of obliging the 14 African states to put 65 percent of their foreign currency reserves into the French Treasury, plus another 20 percent for financial liabilities.

This means these 14 African countries only ever have access to 15 percent of their own money! If they need more they have to borrow their own money from the French at commercial rates.

And this has been the case since the 1960s. Believe it or not it gets worse.

France has the first right to buy or reject any natural resources found in the land of the Francophone countries.

So even if the African countries can get better prices elsewhere, they can’t sell to anybody until France says it doesn’t need the resources. In the award of government contracts, French companies must be considered first; only after that can these countries look elsewhere. It doesn’t matter if the CFA countries can obtain better value for money elsewhere.

Presidents of CFA countries that have tried to leave the CFA zone have had political and financial pressure put on them by successive French presidents.

Thus, these African states are French taxpayers — taxed at a staggering rate — yet the citizens of these countries aren’t French and don’t have access to the public goods and services their money helps pay for. CFA zones are solicited to provide private funding to French politicians during elections in France.

The above is a summary of an article we came across in the February issue of the New African (and from an interview given by Professor Mamadou Koulibaly, Speaker of the Ivorian National Assembly, Professor of Economics, and author of the book “The Servitude of the Colonial Pact”), and we hope they won’t mind us sharing it with you influx.

Currently, there is the awkward case in Abidjan where, before the elections, former president Gbagbo’s government wanted to build a third major bridge to link the central business district (called Plateau) to the rest of the city, from which it is separated by a lagoon.

By Colonial Pact tradition, the contract must go to a French company, which incidentally has quoted an astronomical price — to be paid in euros or US dollars.

Not happy, Gbagbo’s government sought a second quote from the Chinese, who offered to build the bridge at half the price quoted by the French company, and — wait for this — payment would be in cocoa beans, of which Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s largest producer.

But, unsurprisingly, the French said “non, you can’t do that”.

Overall the Colonial Pact gives the French a dominant and privileged position over Francophone Africa, but in Côte d’Ivoire, the jewel of the former French possessions in Africa, the French are overly dominant.

Outside parliament, almost all the major utilities — water, electricity, telephone, transport, ports and major banks — are run by French companies or French interests. The same story is found in commerce, construction, and agriculture. In short, the Colonial Pact has created a legal mechanism under which France obtains a special place in the political and economic life of its former colonies.?

In what meaningful way can any of the 14 CFA countries be said to be independent? If this isn’t illegal and an international crime, then what is? What is it going to take for this state of indentured servitude to end?

How much have the CFA countries lost as a result of this 50-year (and counting) “agreement”?

Do French people know they’re living off the wealth of African countries and have been doing so for over half a century? And if they know, do they give a damn? When will France start paying back money they’ve sucked from these countries, not only directly from the interest on cash reserves and loans these countries have had to take out, but also on lost earnings from the natural resources the countries sold to France below market rates as well as the lost earnings resulting from awarding contracts to French companies when other contractors could have done things for less?

Does any such “agreement” exist between Britain and its former colonies, or did they really let go when they let go? — This Is Africa.

February 3, 2014

AA investigates attacks against Muslims carried out by the Christian militia known as the “anti-balaka,” meaning “anti-machete.”

By Assed Baig

BANGUI

Since the outbreak of the conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR), reports have focused on the Muslim rebel seleka group and the atrocities it has been accused of perpetrating against civilians.

But little, if anything, has been reported about attacks against Muslims carried out by the Christian militia known as the “anti-balaka,” meaning “anti-machete.”

In Kilometer 5, a bustling Muslim neighborhood in the capital Bangui, 48-year-old Bashir sat on a plastic rug at the back of some shops off the main road.

He used to live in Fouh, a predominately Christian area of the capital that also had a Muslim minority.

“When the trouble started, the anti-balaka attacked the Muslims in the area,” Bashir, wearing a traditional white dara (a long open cloak) and a white hat, told Anadolu Agency.

“The local mosque was destroyed, just like my home,” he lamented.

Bashir claimed to have witnessed the murder of four people, including his younger brother, before he managed to escape.

“The machete hit him on the side of the neck,” he recalled tearfully.

“There were so many people – not just anti-balaka, but Christians from around the area.”

Hundreds have been confirmed killed in recent days in Bangui alone – victims of tit-for-tat sectarian violence between seleka and anti-balaka militias.

CAR, a mineral-rich landlocked country, descended into anarchy in March, when Seleka rebels ousted Christian president François Bozize, who had come to power in a 2003 coup.

According to UN estimates, more than 400,000 people – nearly ten percent of the country’s 4.6 million-strong population – have abandoned their homes as a result of the violence.

-Mutilated-

Yahiya Abu Bakr, chairman of a committee that oversees the local mosque, said at least 108 Muslims from the area had been killed in recent violence.

“Women, children, even pregnant women were slaughtered by the anti-Balaka,” he claimed.

“The anti-balaka cut off people’s limbs,” Abu Bakr told AA. “I also saw bodies that had their genitals removed,” he said.

“We perform the funeral prayers here, so I know about the injuries sustained by those that were killed,” insisted Abu Bakr.

The most recent funeral was on Saturday.

AA reporter was shown mobile-phone footage allegedly filmed at the scene of anti-Balaka attacks perpetrated last week.

The gruesome video shows several people lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Some appeared to have been horrifically mutilated as they breathed their last.

People standing around the dying Muslims were shouting “la ila ha illallah” – “There is no God but Allah” – apparently encouraging the dying men to pronounce the Muslim declaration of faith before they expired.

At one point, the video shows a man who is still alive being picked up and laid onto a stretcher, pieces of his mutilated body hanging off.

There was no way of independently verifying the video, its content or where or when it had been filmed.

“We want peace,” asserted Abu Bakr, the mosque chairman.

“We are ready to call for it, but the anti-balaka are the ones that are doing the provocations by killing Muslims and destroying mosques,” he said.

Not far from the mosque, a number of internally displaced Muslims took shelter.

“They killed four of my children: two sons and two daughters,” Salma, who declined to give her second name, told AA.

The slain children, she said, were aged ten, eight, six and two.

The mother – visibly traumatized – made very little eye contact as she braided her young daughter’s hair.

She stopped a few times with a blank and distant look in her eyes.

“My father and mother were also killed in the attack,” added Salma.

As a French military convoy made its way through the Muslim neighborhood, Umar Didi watched it scornfully.

“They are the troublemakers!” he shouted.

“People were killed in front of French soldiers who did nothing,” he claimed.

Umar Hussain, a Muslim businessman, suggested to have witnessed such an incident.

“During the troubles, some people decided to carry knives with them for their own protection because there was a lot of looting and the anti-balaka had gone on a killing spree,” he told AA.

“The French disarmed some people in front of the Christian mobs, and then just left them at the mob’s mercy,” Hussain claimed.

“The mob murdered them in the most brutal way, while the French stood by and did nothing. How is this peacekeeping?” he asked.

A spokesman for the French troops deployed in the country was not immediately available to comment on the specific incident.

But General Francisco Soriano, commander of the French contingent, has acknowledged “misconceptions” about his troops.

“Our operation is not partial,” he told reporters on Tuesday at the French military base near Bangui airport. “We take into consideration both parties.”

Hussain, for his part, angrily disagreed.

“We don’t trust the French because we’ve seen their one-sided actions,” he fumed.

“How can they just leave people to be slaughtered – and watch while it takes place?”

18 December 2013 

By Robert J. Burrowes

In a recent report titled ‘Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality’

http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf

Oxfam informs us that ‘Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population’. Their report goes on to recommend that the World Economic Forum http://www.weforum.org/ , an elite gathering held annually in Davos, Switzerland, take economic and political measures to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth.

And in his explanation of why he attended the recent Forum in Davos, Kumi Naidoo, the Executive Director of Greenpeace International tells us ‘If we manage to shift the consciousness of one CEO or senior political leader, who may do the same with a couple of his peers, then I think it is worth it. It is also worth being there, listening and observing, understanding some of the forces that shape our world and importantly feeding that information back to the rest of Greenpeace and other civil society

allies.’ http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/world-economic-forum/blog/47959/

As anyone who pays even the slightest realistic attention to the global elite already knows, the elite’s efforts to maximise its political and economic clout, and hence its wealth, at the expense of everyone else and the Earth itself, are carefully crafted. And this is not going to change on our recommendation or because we talk to them, or even because we listen to them. Moreover, the reason is simple.

The global elite is insane. And it is incredibly violent.

I would like to illustrate this insanity and violence briefly, explain what I mean by ‘insane’ and then outline a strategy to resist it.

In a video statement in 2012, the world’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, called for Australian workers to be paid $A2 per day – see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDAwGqlIp7E and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2198868/Gina-Rinehart-Worlds-richest-woman-calls-Australian-workers-paid-2-day.html#ixzz25icvufYb – in a national economy where the current legal minimum wage is $A124 per day for a full-time adult worker. But Rinehart is not alone in advocating or, indeed, implementing such policies. Slave ‘wages’ are a common occurrence all over the world as most factory workers, particularly those employed by the world’s largest corporations in Africa, Asia and Central/South America, can readily testify.

We also know that 50,000 people (85% of them children) die in Africa, Asia and Central/South America each and every day essentially because they do not have enough to eat: http://starvation.net/ This is a death rate that results in a cumulative death total that dwarfs both the death rate and the total number of deaths in all war throughout human history. Incredibly, even the number of deaths on 6 and 9 August 1945, when nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulted in less than 50,000 individual deaths for each of these two days (and each of those subsequent). Apart from this, we know that about one billion people around the world go to bed in a semi-starved condition each night. Moreover, we know that the global elite takes deliberate measures to maintain and exacerbate this cruel state of affairs by planning and working to implement such atrociously unjust economic arrangements as those outlined in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) on top of the already highly damaging economic structures and relationships of capitalism.

How do you feel when you read these facts? If you are like me, you are horrified at the thought that you might starve yourself, you empathise deeply with those who suffer this fate and you make some effort to ameliorate it or change it (ranging from giving a donation, preferably to an organisation with more political savvy than Oxfam and Greenpeace, to campaigning to resist implementation of the TPP and TAFTA). You do this because you feel empathy, sympathy and compassion. You do this because you

perceive the injustice and you want to take some action, at least, to change it. You identify with your fellow human beings who are suffering.

Insanity is widely understood to refer to a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behaviour or social interaction; it describes someone who is considered to be seriously mentally ill.

Do you believe that individual members of the global elite share your perception (which is shaped by your empathy, sympathy and compassion)? Who is normal: you or them? Are individual members of the global elite behaving and interacting as you would? Do they share your conception of what a desirable human community – with its basis in such values as love, solidarity, equity, justice and sustainability – might look like?

It is clear to me that, as a result of the violence they each suffered as a child, we can readily conclude that each individual within the global elite falls within the definition of ‘insane’: someone who is incapable of ‘normal perception, behaviour and social interaction’, someone who is incapable of love, compassion, empathy and sympathy. And this is why they do not join efforts to restructure the global economy to ensure distributive justice for all and disburse their personal wealth to those most in need as a measure of their commitment to the creation of a humane world based on equity, justice and sustainability.

So how did this insanity occur? In essence, these individuals suffered an extraordinary level of terror and violence during childhood leaving them particularly badly emotionally damaged. See ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence Specifically, for example, two central psychological characteristics of these individuals are that they are terrified and self-hating but, because they unconsciously suppress their awareness of this terror and self-hatred (because it is too painful to feel), they project it as fear of and hatred for ‘legitimised’ victim groups, including working people and ‘poor’ people in Africa, Asia and Central/South America. Because of the violence they suffered as children, these individuals never developed a conscience, they never developed the capacity to love, and they never developed the emotional responses of compassion, empathy and sympathy. And this is why they do not care.

It takes persistent violence inflicted throughout childhood to destroy an individual’s innate capacity to develop love, compassion, empathy and sympathy. Tragically, any member of the global elite, as well as any of their paid agents in the professional class (the political lackeys who generate the delinquent legislative frameworks that facilitate the exploitation of ordinary people, the business executives who undertake the daily management of this exploitation, the academics who justify it, the judges and lawyers who defend it and repress its opponents, and the media personnel who obscure the truth about it), has suffered this degree of violence, or very close to it, throughout their childhood.

And this is why these individuals are incapable of understanding that hoarded money and resources cannot provide them with security, particularly in the world that is coming. They are incapable of understanding that true security is the result of cooperative human relationships and a cooperative relationship between humans and the natural world.

Resisting Elite Violence Strategically

So how do we strategically resist the insanity and violence of the global elite? How do we replace elite-controlled structures with ones that meet the needs of all human beings as well as the planet and other species? And how do we do all of this within a timeframe in which the Earth’s ecological limits are not fundamentally breached?

To do all of these things, we need an integrated strategy that tackles the fundamental cause of violence while tackling all of its symptoms simultaneously. This strategy has four primary elements.

First, and most importantly, we must review our child-raising practices to exclude all types of violence (including those I have labelled ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’) so that we no longer create insane individuals and perpetrators of violence. See ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’

http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/ Let us create people of conscience, people of courage, people who care.

Second, we must noncooperate, in a strategic manner, with elite-controlled structures and processes while simultaneously creating alternative, local structures that allow us to self-reliantly meet our own needs in an ecologically sustainable manner. Anita McKone and I have mapped out a fifteen-year strategy for doing this in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ http://tinyurl.com/flametree

Third, we must keep planning and implementing sophisticated campaigns of nonviolent resistance to prevent/halt wars, end economic exploitation and save threatened ecosystems, as well as strategies of nonviolent defense to liberate Palestinians, Tibetans and other oppressed populations in those circumstances in which elite violence must be directly confronted (see Robert J. Burrowes ‘The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach’, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996 and Gene Sharp

‘The Politics of Nonviolent Action’, Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973).

And fourth, we must courageously pay the price of violent elite repression when we resist nonviolently, knowing that many of us are going to be imprisoned (sometimes as ‘psychiatric’ patients), some of us will be tortured and a great many of us will be killed.

In summary, if we are to effectively resist the elite’s violence in our lives and take concrete steps to create our nonviolent world community, then we must recognise that individual members of the global elite are insane and cannot take responsibility for ending their violence. Instead, we must take responsibility for ending their violence while creating a world in which damaged individuals are unlikely to be created and, if they are created, they cannot wreak havoc on the rest of us.

If you would like to consider publicly committing yourself to helping to make this nonviolent world a reality, you can read (and, if you wish, sign online) ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981.

05 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Joseph Kishore

29 January, 2014

@ WSWS.org

US President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday was, perhaps even more than his previous addresses, a cynical and reactionary charade. Empty rhetoric was combined with a complete disconnect from the reality confronting millions of people and an assertion of executive power.

The thrust of the speech was a mixture of pro-business nostrums, militarist jingoism and a jumble of penny-ante proposals. The media’s attempt to promote the speech as a major address on inequality was a deliberate falsification aimed at drumming up interest among a generally indifferent and hostile population.

Instead it was a threadbare attempt to cover over the reality of the past year, a year in which the mask fell off a society riven by historically unprecedented levels of social inequality and mass poverty, overseen by a vast police-state spying apparatus, on the verge of another global war of incalculable consequences and presided over by the most right-wing administration in US history.

Obama himself spoke before the members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate, the majority of them millionaires, as a representative of the financial aristocracy and the military-intelligence apparatus.

He began by painting the US as a country undergoing a booming economic recovery, with “the lowest unemployment rate in over five years,” a “rebounding housing market” and a growing manufacturing sector. He did not mention that the unemployment rate has fallen largely due to millions of people having given up the search for work, or that the very small increase in manufacturing jobs is due to the collapse of wages encouraged by the administration.

On economic policy, Obama began with a call to make things “easier for more companies” through tax breaks. The two parties, he said, were agreed that, “our tax code is riddled with wasteful, complicated loopholes that punish businesses investing here, and reward companies that keep profits abroad.” He called for a lowering of corporate tax rates, with media reports indicating that this might be as much as 7 percentage points.

In the midst of his praise for the supposed resurgence of manufacturing in America, Obama failed to mention that the historical center of American manufacturing, Detroit, is currently in bankruptcy. With the support of the administration, the courts are being utilized to force through deep cuts in pensions and cut off access to culture and other social rights.

Obama did, however, praise the new CEO of GM, Mary Barra, who was invited to the speech as a special guest. Barra, touted as the first female CEO of a major auto company, is planning to accelerate cost cutting in Europe and America in order to increase already surging profits in the auto industry. He also praised Detroit Manufacturing Systems, an auto parts supplier that has worked closely with the unions to hire workers at a fraction of their former wages.

The president, who has done more than any of his predecessors to funnel money into Wall Street, acknowledged that “corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those at the top have never done better,” as if the policies of his own administration had nothing to do with it. He quickly claimed, however, that the American people “don’t resent those who, by virtue of their efforts, achieve incredible success.”

Presumably Obama was referring to the likes of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Obama’s favored banker, who, despite the repeated and documented criminal activities of his company, has not only gone unpunished, but last week received a 74 percent pay raise.

Obama made as brief a reference as possible to the fact that at the end of last year, due to the actions of Democrats and Republicans, 1.6 million people were cut off of extended unemployment benefits. At the same time, he called for “reforming unemployment insurance so that it’s more effective in today’s economy,” which could only mean introducing greater restrictions on eligibility.

The president was also silent on the Democrats and Republicans having just agreed to slash $8.7 billion from food stamps, only the second cut in the program since it was founded (the first coming just a few months ago). He touted a right-wing immigration reform and his health care overhaul, an opening shot against all the social programs introduced in the 1930s and 1960s.

The headline proposal from Obama, intended as a sop to the trade unions and the administration’s liberal and pseudo-left supporters, was an executive order to require federal contractors to pay a minimum wage of $10.10. This requirement will only apply to new or renewed contracts, not existing ones.

In the run-up to the speech, there was a concerted effort in the media to paint a picture of partisan gridlock, which Obama was proposing to overcome through executive actions. Given that Obama’s actual proposals amount to nothing, and that the parties are agreed on fundamentals, Obama’s repeated insistence that “I’m going to do” what is required has the distinct and ominous odor of a presidential dictatorship.

It is notable that even though it is an election year, Obama made no call for voters to elect individuals pledged to implement his proposals. Rather the speech was an assertion, from an individual who more than any other has presided over the shredding of large sections of the Constitution, that the president has the power to act regardless of opposition. The target of these actions is the working class.

There was almost no mention of the vast police-state spying apparatus that has been revealed over the past year. The president sits on top of a military-intelligence complex that monitors the communications of virtually the entire planet. The day before Obama’s remarks, the latest information from Edward Snowden revealed that the US and its UK partners collect data from cell phone applications in order to determine the “political alignments” of millions of users worldwide.

Obama’s only reference to the collapse of democratic rights was to defend the “vital work of our intelligence community” while promising token reforms in order to boost “public confidence, here and abroad, that the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated.” In fact, these reforms are intended to ensure that the government can go on violating this privacy.

As Obama spoke, Snowden remained in exile in Russia, facing death threats from US military and intelligence officials.

Obama heaped praise on the military, citing a plan for the long-term presence of tens of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan, insisting that the danger from Al Qaeda remains and threatening countries around the world. He welcomed recent moves from the Iranian regime to accommodate the demands of American imperialism and threatened that if Tehran fails to toe the line, war remains an option.

Obama lent support to the protests stoked by the US and European powers in Ukraine, led by extreme nationalist and fascistic forces. He pledged to “continue to focus on the Asia-Pacific,” a reference to the “pivot to Asia” that is aimed at countering China’s rise and threatens to unleash a global conflict.

As has become traditional in such events, Obama singled out individuals in the audience, generally victims of the policies of the ruling class, who are exploited to make various political points. Nowhere was this more sickening than at the end of the speech, when the president heaped praise on a veteran severely maimed by an explosion in Afghanistan.

The assembled congressmen—responsible for wars of aggression that inflicted a similar fate on thousands of Americans, while killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis—gave a lengthy standing ovation to one of the victims of their criminal policies. This spectacle was a fitting conclusion to a nauseating political ritual.

By Prahlad Shekhawat

30 January, 2014

@ Countercurrents.org

The Davos World Economic Forum is an exclusive or excluding club where the rich and mighty proponents of the neo-liberal economic model and corporate bosses converge to celebrate their self fulfilling prophecy. In a year of a huge economic downturn they cannot get away with their splendid complacency. The World Social Forum has emerged as a significant counterpoint to the World Economic Forum. After the collapse of the movement for the New International Economic Order in the eighties and after the disillusionment with ritualism of the UN sponsored summits and conclaves, the World Social Forum claims to provide a silver lining for struggling societies particularly in poor countries. The peace, environmental, women and human rights movements are especially able to converge at the Social Forum.

The World Social Forum (WSF) characterises itself as not an organisation, not a united front, but an open meeting place for thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals and inter-linking for action through groups and movements of civil society. It is opposed to neo-liberalism and domination of the world by capital or any form of imperialism. It is committed to building planetary society directed towards furthering relations among mankind and between it and the earth.

The forum is particularly opposed to militarism, racism, casteism, religious fanaticism, sectarian violence and patriarchy. It stands for universal human rights, justice, real participatory democracy, equality, solidarity among people and genders and planetary citizenship to build a new world. Its fight for peace and collective security implies confronting poverty, discriminations, domination and the creation of an alternative sustainable society. The Social Forum has laudable achievements beginning with the incipient rallying call against the World Economic Forum and the maturing into a huge global movement with inspiring ideals beginning with the World Social Forums in Porto Allegre in Brazil . Some regional Social Forums have been held in different parts of the world.

If the total interest is calculated the external debt of the countries of the South has been repaid several times over. Illegitimate, unjust and fraudulent, debt functions as an instrument of domination, depriving people of their fundamental human rights with the sole aim of increasing international usury. The Social Forum demands unconditional cancellation of debt and the reparation of historical, social and ecological debts. The countries demanding repayment of debt have engaged in exploitation of the natural resources and knowledge systems of the South.

Water, land, food, forests, seeds, culture and people’s identities are common assets of humanity for present and future generations. It is essential to preserve biodiversity. People have the rights to safe and permanent food free from genetically modified organisms. Food sovereignty at the national, regional and local level is a basic human right; in this regard democratic land reforms and peasant’s access to land are fundamental requirements.

The Social Forum points out that the United States government, in its efforts to protect the interests of big corporations, arrogantly walked away from negotiations on global warming, the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the Convention on Biodiversity, the UN conference on racism and intolerance and the talks to reduce the supply of small arms, proving once again that US unilateralism undermines attempts to find multilateral solutions to global problems.

All this is happening in the context of a global recession. The neo-liberal economic model feeds the greed of the corporations and is destroying the rights, living conditions and livelihoods of people. Using every means to protect their ‘share value’, multinational companies lay off workers; slash wages and close factories, squeezing the last dollar from workers. Governments faced with this economic crisis respond by cutting social sector expenditures and permanently reducing worker’s rights. This recession exposes the fact that the neo-liberal promise of growth and prosperity is not true.

Two leading figures of the global civil society, Vandana Shiva and Helena Norberg-Hodge, advocate a de-linking from world markets and focusing on local sustainable self-reliant economies. They say, ‘WTO should only be responsible for preventing dumping of goods by rich countries in poor countries while Oxfam and other groups seek better terms of trade to reform the global economy.’

Some of the proposals for an alternative world order that have been proposed at the WSF, are: 1 A tax on international speculative equity finance such as the Tobin tax to fund the social sector in poor countries and close tax havens.

2 Humanise and democratise institutions like WTO,World Bank, IMF and make multinational corporation more accountable and socially responsible under a global democratic regime. 3 Minimise agriculture subsides in rich countries.

4 Emphasise the UN Human Development Agenda over narrow economic growth. 5 Strengthen and implement agreement reached at Rio Earth Summit, other environment summits and Kyoto Protocol 6 Planetary citizenship should lead to a world parliament of people. 7 Move from national security and power towards human and environmental security agenda. 7 Situate internet search engines outside the United States who should not be allowed to get away from reducing democratic globalisation to global illegal spying breaching privacy and liberty

The forum epitomises two related tendencies. First, it is the shift from national and international security to human and global environmental security. The second is the shift from international state treaties and conventions to trans-national people’s alliances. At the Mumbai WSF, there emerged a tension between two strategies. The first emphasised a unified party model seeking a cohesive strategy. The second view which prevailed, stressed a multiplicity model seeking plurality of approaches with no intention of merging view points. The forum’s deliberations have three aspects; denunciation of neo-liberal globalisation, share and express ideals and ideas, formulate proposals for the alternative.

The limitations of the World Economic Forum and its idea of progress have been well revealed. It remains to be seen if the World Social Forum runs the risk of being relegated to the realm of utopian idealism in this cruel, unfair world of political realism. Can bridges be built between the two extremes: mainstream neo-liberal model and the alternative movement signified by the Social Forum so that a common middle ground can be found for the sake of our common humanity? Is another world possible?

Prahlad Shekhawat prahladsingh.com

Director, Alternative Development and Research Center,Jaipur.

Writer & Freelance Journalist.* Writing a column in Hindustan Times

Expert Consultant on Indian Society to the US Embassy New Delhi

Author of 3 books on aspects of Human Development,Culture and Well-being.*A poetry book.

New Book;New Pathways for Human Progress, to be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing UK

Ex-Associate Professor,Institute of Development Studies,Jaipur**Teacher;Transcendental Meditation

Ex-Research Associate, International Institute of Social Studies,The Hague,Netherlands

Studied Creative Writing, Exeter College, Oxford University ** Lectured in Europe and Japan

M.A Development Studies, International Institute of Social Studies,The Hague, Netherlands

By Farida Khanam

India is a multi-religious society. It is imperative that harmony be maintained in a multi-religious society like India in which people have to live with differences. Now, difference is not simply a part of religion. In fact, it is an essential part of nature. It is a part of God’s creation plan itself. So we have no option other than to live with differences.

Harmony can only be maintained if we learn the formula of ‘difference management’ rather than seeking to eliminate differences. We have to understand that we have no option but to tolerate differences.

“Be tolerant; enjoin what is right; and avoid the ignorant.”[1]

Almost all major religions tell their adherents how to live in a multi-religious society with peace and harmony. We find this formula in the famous words of Jesus Christ:

“Love your enemies.”[2]

Love your enemy means to manage the problem of enmity by the power of love.

The same principle is given in the Quran in these words:

“Good and evil deeds are not equal. Repel evil with what is better; then you will see that one who was once your enemy has become your dearest friend.”[3]

There is nothing mysterious about this. It is a well-known law of nature. It means that everyone is our potential friend. We have only to turn this potential into an actuality.

This Islamic principle was best represented by the Muslim Sufis in India. One Sufi poet has described this principle in this line in Persian:

“We don’t know the stories of kings and generals. We know only the stories of love and compassion.”

Muslim Sufis have devoted themselves to spreading the message of harmony, love and compassion for centuries. Due to these peaceful efforts on the part of the Sufis and saints, this spirit of love and compassion was so deeply embedded in our society that it became part and parcel of our value system.

The social integration we find today in India owes greatly to the efforts made by our Sufis and saints. In every field of life in India, people of different faiths work together in a peaceful atmosphere. This owes to a large extent due to the religious and spiritual spirit the Sufis and saints inculcated among the Indian people. It is true that there were some unpleasant events in Indian history, but they should be seen as exceptions rather than the rule.

According to the Indian experience, a multi-religious or multi-cultural society is not an evil. Rather, it is a blessing. Trying to eliminate differences destroys the very fabric of our own interests, and so we have no way other than to adjust to differences. This means that a multi-religious society leads us to make necessary adjustments. Consciously or unconsciously, this principle has been adopted on a large scale by the Indian people. We can see its effects all around us.

Center for Peace and Spirituality

In India, we have many non-governmental groups that are undertaking interfaith dialogue. One such NGO with which I am associated is the Center for Peace and Spirituality, or CPS International. Founded by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, the organization conducts interfaith efforts by presenting the true face of Islam based on peace and tolerance. At CPS, we believe that we are living in a world of multi-religious, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic societies – a world of differences. A reformer has rightly said that nature abhors uniformity. This means that ‘difference’ is a part of nature and it exists in every aspect of life. The art of ‘difference management’ in the context of religious plurality is only possible through meaningful and positive dialogue between people on all aspects of life, including religion.

According to my understanding of Islam, the aim of dialogue is to seek peaceful solutions to controversial matters in spite of their differences. By giving people respect and honour, difference can sometimes turn into blessings. The result will be dialogue, a sharing of views, which can result in intellectual development, which is a boon for everyone concerned. I would like to put forward to you some of the teachings of Islam that CPS International puts forward in its efforts:

1. All mankind is a single family: Islam teaches that all mankind is a single family. The Quran declares: “O mankind! Fear your Lord, who created you from a single soul. He created its mate from it and from the two of them spread countless men and women [throughout the earth]”.[4]

This means that all men and women share a common ancestor. That is, all men and women are a blood brothers and blood sisters to one another. There is complete commonality between different races and groups of people.

2. Do unto others, as you would be done by: According to a hadith report contained in the Sahih Muslim, the Prophet of Islam is reported to have said: “Do with others what you want others to do with you”. The same maxim is to be found in Judaism. As mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Hillel the Elder is known to have said: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” This is a universal teaching, which is found in almost every religion. This religious teaching gives us a very simple criterion for living as a good member of society. Everybody knows what is good for him and what is bad for him. Apply this personal experience to every member of society. If everyone observes this formula of moral conduct, the whole society will emerge as a good society. This formula, a common religious formula, is the simplest for social construction.

3. Peace: The Quran lays great emphasis on peace. For example, there is a verse in the Quran which says: “Reconciliation is best.”[5]That is, in the case of controversy, adopt a peaceful rather than a confrontational course of action. Giving prime importance to this verse, the Sufis have adopted the following formula: ‘Sulk-e-Kul’ (Peace with all).This concept has also been adopted by other religions as their basic teaching. For example, the Bible says: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”[6] It is a fact that peace is a common teaching of all the religions. It is also a fact that peace is the summum bonum; peace is the greatest good which leads to the building of a better society; without peace, there is no development. Peace provides the environment in which every group can flourish without being harmful to others. Peaceful living is the most important part of moral living.

Regulation of Society

India is a multi-religious society. It is important that a harmonious relationship between be established between members of different faiths who live in the country. All religious groups should work towards this goal. This is all the more important as no religious activity can be carried out in the absence of normal social conditions. It is, therefore, in the best interests of all the religions that moral behaviour be recognized as the greatest means of normalizing the relationship between the different sections of a society and ensuring peaceable living conditions. In view of this, we can understand that every religion teaches its members to adopt a good moral standard.

There are ample references in all the religions that provide us with a good base for building a better society through partnership. This is the basic role of every religion. Without playing this role, religion becomes irrelevant to humanity.

One very important principle taught in Islam is that of positive status quoism, that is, accepting the prevailing situation. Using this principle, one can maintain unilateral ethics at all times. Here are a few examples of the Prophet of Islam in this regard:

When the Prophet Muhammad began his mission of tawhid (unity of God) in ancient Makkah, there existed, as usual, a status quo. The Quraysh had assumed the leadership of the town, and, in line with their beliefs, they had established an idolatrous system. Now, the question arose as to how the Prophet Muhammad should begin his work. It might have seemed that the status quo under the hegemony of the Quraysh would have to be abolished and only then would the path be cleared for Prophet’s mission. At that juncture, certain basic guidance was revealed to the Prophet. God declared in the Quran: “So, surely with every hardship there is ease; surely, with every hardship there is ease.”[7]

This verse showed the Prophet of Islam that in spite of the obstacles, by the very law of nature, opportunities for the furtherance of the aims he was working for also existed side by side. Therefore, no attempt to change the status quo was to be made in the first stage itself. Without disturbing the prevailing situation, such opportunities as were available in other fields were to be utilized to promote the Islamic mission.

The method Islam prescribes for the achievement of our goals and the model we find in the life of the Prophet can be described, in brief, as a method and model based on positive status quoism—that is, remaining in harmony with the status quo and launching one’s efforts in the sphere of the possible. In this respect, it may be called ‘positive status quoism’.

However, the status quoism of the Prophet did not simply mean accepting the extant sets of circumstances for all time. It meant, rather, carving out a path by adopting a non-confrontational policy within the existing set-up. Far from leading to a state of inertia, this was a planned course of action.

The Prophet of Islam followed this principle in his life at Makkah as well as at Madinah. This is one of the reasons for his achieving such great success–within a short period of 23 years–as had never been achieved by anyone throughout the entire course of human history. The great benefit of such status quoism is that, by adopting this policy, one is instantly able to avail of opportunities for carrying out one’s projects. One is in a position to utilize one’s energies fully in one’s mission without wasting an iota of effort. By avoiding unnecessary clash and confrontation, one is able to devote oneself to constructive activity to the fullest extent.

In social matters, positive status quoism is thus an unalterable policy of Islam. It was by opting for this policy that the Prophet and his companions forged the great history of Islam, which heralded a new era in human civilization. It is through following this principle that any individual can maintain unilateral ethics.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to share an example of inter-community harmony in India. At a seminar on ‘Religion and Humanitarianism’ held under the auspices of the Zakir Husain Institute of Islamic Studies, at the Jamia Millia Islamia, in New Delhi in 1993, one of the speakers, Dr. Bishambhar Nath Pandey, recalled an incident that took place in 1926 in what is now Madhya Pradesh. A Hindu procession had been planned to provoke Muslims into rioting. The procession, beating drums and shouting slogans, was deliberately organized on a Friday. Ten thousand strong, it arrived in front of a mosque, exactly at prayer time, where it started to create an uproar.

Now Mr. Karamat Husain, a reputed political activist of the town, had gained prior knowledge of this plan. Before the arrival of the procession, he reached the mosque along with a hundred of his colleagues, each of whom he had provided with a garland. When the procession came to a halt in front of the mosque, he asked the other Muslims who had come there to pray to remain silent. Then, initiating a pre-preplanned move, he came out of the mosque with his colleagues and walked towards the procession. He neither told the procession to go by another route nor demanded that they stop shouting slogans. Instead, he said—“We welcome you!” And then he and his colleagues began garlanding the Hindus one by one. Now the entire atmosphere underwent a sea change! The processionists stopped forthwith. Those who had gathered there to cause a riot began embracing the Muslims. The atmosphere of enmity had been dispelled and had changed all at once into an atmosphere of amity!

This is exemplary of how we should maintain interfaith harmony in India. A multi-religious society like India needs religious groups to work together to ensure interfaith harmony through dialogue to maintaining positive relations between members of society.

Farida Khanam teaches at the Dept. of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

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[1]Quran 7:199

[2]New Testament: Matthew 5:44

[3]Quran 41:34

[4]Quran 4:1

[5]Quran 4:128

[6]Matthew 5:9

[7]Quran 94:5-6

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

31 January, 2014

@ Countercurrents.org

The Geneva II conference which claims to be seeking to end the war in Syria seems designed to fail and instead to provide an excuse for military intervention by the United States and its allies.  Human rights activist, Ajamu Baraka, describes the negotiations as an ‘Orwellian subterfuge’ designed to provide justification for war and a lot of facts support his view.

The negotiations are destined to fail because of the way they have been set-up and the preconditions of the United States and its allies in the Syrian opposition demanding that President Bashar al-Assad agree to leave government before negotiations go forward.

The set-up for failure begins with the limited participation. The rigged nature of the negotiations was demonstrated when the UN had to rescind an invitation to Iran to participate at the demand of the United States and the Syrian opposition group. Iran is a close ally of Syria and keeping them out of the negotiations is an effort to weaken and isolate Syria. It is an indication of a desire by the United States for a pre-ordained conclusion rather than a fair negotiation between the parties.

The exclusion of Syrian civil society from these negotiations, beyond the militant fighters , is especially egregious.  Many of these groups were working for transformation of Syria before the terrorism and war began.  One example is the exclusion of woman, although women from across Syria have been meeting and put together a Syrian Women’s Charter for Peace, their request to be included in the talks has been denied. Women and children comprise the majority of the millions who have been internally displaced or forced to flee the country. And they have suffered in horrible ways.

Only one opposition group is included, the Syrian National Coalition, one favored by the United States but rejected by 13 key rebel groups in Syria . There are scores of others involved in the bloodshed in Syria, but these on-the-ground fighters are not included.  How can peace, even a partial peace like a cease-fire, be negotiated if those involved in the fighting are not participating?

In fact, an agreement by the participants to stop fighting would entrap Assad. Groups not included in the negotiations will continue to fight and Assad will respond. When Assad responds to attacks, he will be accused of violating the peace agreement. This will provide an excuse for outside military intervention. The U.S. and its allies will claim: ‘Assad is violating the peace agreement; there is no other choice than to enforce the agreement with military force.’

The second and most important problem with the negotiations is the precondition of the United States and the Syrian National Coalition that Assad must agree to step down before negotiations can begin.  The U.S. and its allies falsely claim that the removal of Assad has already been agreed to the “Geneva communiqué” signed by Syria’s ally, Russia.  As Shamus Cooke points out, the communiqué  does indeed call for a negotiated political transition, but nowhere does it state that such a transition must exclude Assad.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry kicked off the conference by demanding the removal of President Bashar al-Assad from power. And, this has become the central issue in the discussions so far, leading to a stalemate. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, accused the U.S. and its Middle East allies, particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia, of supporting terrorist groups seeking to destabilize Syria and working to put forward their own plans for a new government. The Syrians put forward their own plan that would begin with ridding the nation of foreign terrorists. They argue it is up to the Syrian people to decide who their leaders are and what type of government they want.

The kick-off of the conference coincided with a propaganda campaign. A report funded by Qatar claimed the Assad government had tortured and killed 11,000 prisoners. There has been a history of torture in Syria; in fact, the United States sent people to be tortured in Syria as part of its rendition program , so on its face the claim does not seem far-fetched. But did they prove the case?

Reporter Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor points out some of the problems with the report. He writes it is “ a single source report, from an unidentified man, who is related by marriage to a similarly unidentified member of the ‘Syrian National Movement.’” The Syrian National Movement is an opposition group funded by Qatar that has been trying to remove Assad since 2011. Further, the report was rushed to publication; the source was “interviewed on Jan. 12, 13 and 18 of this year. The report was provided to reporters yesterday, Jan. 20.” This resulted in no thorough examination of the photographs. Further, Murphy reports the document actually indicates 835 individual cases were examined, not all of them were shown to have been killed or tortured, and the 11,000 figure that made headlines was an extrapolation.

Yet, this has been trumpeted in the media as fact. A Washington Post editorial published on January 22 treated the 11,000 killed and tortured by Assad without any doubt. They quote Secretary Kerry saying the report shows Syria conducting “ systematic torture and execution of thousands of prisoners .” The editorial revealed how the peace process could lead to war: “ Mr. Obama probably could force the measures Mr. Brahimi is seeking [i.e. Assad resigning] by presenting Mr. Assad with the choice of accepting them or enduring U.S. airstrikes. ”  It is notable that the Post is putting military strikes on the agenda now – even before the negotiations fail or a peace agreement is violated.

The US media had been pushing for war with Syria during the last run-up to war when Obama decided to send the decision to Congress.  Thanks to opposition across the political spectrum in Congress and among the American people, the war was prevented.  Russia’s intervention which put forward a compromise that ridded the Syrian government of chemical weapons provided a face-saving escape for the Obama administration.

Since then the claims that Sarin gas was used by the Syrian government from Syrian-held territory have been put into doubt. The New York Times, Human Rights Watch and others who favored a U.S. attack had claimed the rockets came from Syrian territory based on a vector analysis of the angle of the rockets.  But, this fell apart when experts concluded the rockets did not have the range to reach the targets.  The NY Times was forced to quietly distance itself from a front page story making these claims.

We are already seeing a media drum beat for war gearing up.  The media is consistent in repeating several lies about the Syrian negotiations, and constantly blaming Assad for refusing to abide by non-existent requirements of the Geneva communiqué. We can expect the hawkish U.S. media to escalate the drumbeat and put forward war propaganda as the failure of the peace negotiations continues.

And Reuters reports that weapons aid to Syria has been “secretly” approved by Congress.  Weapons approved include anti-tank weapons and small arms.  Reuters writes “ The weapons deliveries have been funded by the U.S. Congress, in votes behind closed doors, through the end of government fiscal year 2014, which ends on September 30. . .” How does the Congress have secret votes to approve war-making actions?  According to Reuters “Congress approved funding for weapons deliveries to the Syrian rebels in classified sections of defense appropriations legislation, two sources familiar with the matter said.”

So, on one hand the U.S. claims to be seeking peace and with the other it is fueling war with weapons. In public, the Congress opposed war with Syria, but in secret votes it provides funding for weapons for the Syrian war.

Americans who oppose war better get prepared now.  There has been a long-term agenda to remove the Assad family from power in Syria and the U.S. foreign policy establishment has not given up on that goal, nor have U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. This seems to be one more time when peace negotiations are a likely prelude to war unless the people of the United States see through these actions and prevent it.

This article was originally published on Truthout .

We discussed these matters in detail with Ajamu Baraka and Alli McCracken of CODEPINK on our radio show, Clearing The FOG, this week.  You can listen here .

Kevin Zeese, JD and Margaret Flowers, MD are participants in PopularResistance.org ; they co-direct  It’s Our Economy  and co-host  Clearing the FOG . Their twitters are  @KBZeese  and  MFlowers8 .