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By Eric Draitser

Today’s headlines are filled with reports of the imminent fall of the Syrian city of Kobani to forces of the Islamic State (ISIS). There are terrifying descriptions of an imminent massacre and the looming threat to Turkey as Islamic State forces move ever closer to the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkish President Erdogan waxes poetic about how he “warned the West” about the threat IS would pose and the dangers of inaction. It seems that everyone, including security experts and pundits, agree that the situation is critical and that US bombardment alone is powerless to protect the town or halt IS.

And yet, somehow lost amid the din of cries for intervention is the simple fact that it is US policy and the actions of the aforementioned Erdogan along with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Israel that created ISIS, nurtured it in its infancy, promoted its development, and unleashed it on Iraq and Syria. And now, for those same leaders, along with a chorus of interventionist voices in the media establishment, to sound the alarm is not only cynical and utterly disingenuous, it is a shining example of the arrogance of empire.

Kobani and the Story Not Being Told

As fighters of the Islamic State (IS) continue their charge towards the mostly Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish-Syrian border, deep cracks in the edifice of the US-led coalition against IS have begun to emerge. Diplomatic infighting has shattered the illusion of a cohesive and unified coalition cobbled together by Washington. Not only have a number of countries been apprehensive about getting deeply involved in yet another unwinnable war in the Middle East led by the US, some ostensible allies have used the crisis as an opportunity to achieve political objectives. Perhaps the world leader in cynical opportunism this week is Turkish President Erdogan who has thus far refused to involve his forces in the war on Syria unless that war has as its ultimate aim the toppling of Syrian President Assad.

On October 7th, the NY Times ran a story with the headline Turkish Inaction on ISIS Advance Dismays the US which quoted a senior Obama administration official saying, “There’s growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its border…After all the fulminating about Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe, they’re inventing reasons not to act to avoid another catastrophe…This isn’t how a NATO ally acts.” While the obvious implication is that Erdogan could cost the US the chance at a successful anti-terror operation, there is a subtle subtext that has gone almost entirely unnoticed; Turkey sees in ISIS an opportunity, not a threat.

And this is precisely the point. IS is in fact a creation of NATO intelligence agencies (including Turkey), and it is achieving by force and propaganda what Washington, London, Riyadh, Doha, Tel Aviv, and Ankara never could – the expansion of the war in Syria.

Since at least late 2011, US intelligence has been working diligently along the Turkish-Syrian border to funnel arms and fighters into Syria in hopes of bringing down the Assad regime. As the NY Times reported in June 2012:

C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government… The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar… The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbors would do so.

It should be emphasized and repeated from the mountaintops that Erdogan’s government, according even to senior Obama administration officials, has been intimately involved in hosting, arming, financing, and providing safe haven to precisely the same terrorists who today are regarded as the greatest threat in the region. The notion that “Syria’s neighbors” are providing arms is a not so thinly veiled reference to the key role of Turkish intelligence in coordinating the attempted regime change inside Syria. And so, when Erdogan demands a No Fly Zone in Syrian airspace as a precondition for Turkish boots on the ground, he does so knowing that Syria would rightly interpret a Turkish invasion as, well, a Turkish invasion.

The notion that Turkey, the country perhaps most directly responsible for the rise of ISIS, is somehow failing NATO and the Kurds by not taking action is a complete inversion of reality. It is the equivalent of publicly reprimanding an arsonist for not actively helping fight the fire he started. If the so called “international community” were serious about demanding action from Ankara, perhaps it could start by asking the following questions:

What is the relationship between Turkish intelligence, its secret base/training center at Adana, and the terror groups now subsumed into the group known as ISIS or the Islamic State? Does the Turkish government deny the countless media reports, including those by mainstream news outlets such as Reuters, alleging direct coordination of the terror elements inside Syria dating back to 2012?
To what extent is Turkey using the rise of ISIS as leverage over both its “Kurdish problem” and its perceived regional rival in Iran?
Why does Turkey reserve the right to use military force against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which it regards as “terrorists,” while refusing to use military force to protect Kurds against actual terrorists? (Note: this is not to imply that Turkish military force inside Syria is acceptable)
Does Turkey truly believe that it can effect regime change in Syria through ISIS proxies and still contain the threat to itself and its citizens?
Naturally, such questions are unlikely to be asked, but positing them is critical if we are to cut through the propaganda now emanating both from Ankara and Washington. Each interested party responsible for the destabilization of Syria (US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, et al) is busy trying to scapegoat the other in vain attempts to distance themselves from this crisis of their own making.

Kobani and Interventionist Propaganda

Recent days have seen a flood of stories describing the imminent massacre about to unleashed in Kobani by ISIS. Much of what has been written has noted the obvious hypocrisy of intervention – that it is never applied equally, but only when politically expedient for the intervening country. In particular, focus has been placed on US intervention on behalf of Iraqi Kurds, and the conspicuous refusal to intervene on behalf of Kurds in Syria.

Naturally, such a comparison begs the question as to the morality, not to mention political and military practicality, of such interventions. The implication is that “If it was good enough for Iraq, why shouldn’t it be good enough for Syria?” Never mind the fact that the US war in Iraq is one of the great crimes against humanity in recent decades, a nakedly imperialist war fought not for the Kurds, but for profit and geopolitical and strategic aims. Never mind the fact that Obama’s recent strikes inside Iraq had little to do with the Yazidi minority, and much to do with effecting regime change against Maliki and reasserting US influence in a country that had been moving rapidly into Iran’s sphere of influence.

The Guardian published a particularly well-written op-ed which made just such a parallel. The author poses the following question: “Why did the United States rush to protect Kurds in Iraq – when Isis fighters started advancing toward Irbil and embarking on a genocidal rampage against the Kurdish-speaking religious minority Yazidis – but do little to save Syrian Kurds in Kobani from the same threat?” There is a deception, or at the very least a clearly dishonest equivalence made between the two, implicit in this question. Namely, that intervention in either case is actually intended to achieve the publicly stated objective. It is not. Quite the contrary, such humanitarian concern is merely the pretext by which US-NATO-GCC is able to carry out its military option for effecting regime change in a country that has steadfastly resisted it for three and a half years.

The piece in the Guardian, like nearly every pro-intervention article written about Syria and ISIS betrays either an ignorance of, or more likely, tacit approval of, military aggression against Syria. Those who have been following the Syria conflict since 2011 know perfectly well that what we are witnessing is not a new development, but rather a realignment of propaganda strategy, a reframing of the issue from “down with the brutal dictator” to “down with ISIS.” This is the new false narrative with which the world is being presented. Either you must support military incursion into Syria without any coordination with the legally recognized government in Damascus, or you support ISIS and the slaughter of Syrian Kurds. This is a clever use of propaganda, not an honest examination of the material reality on the ground.

The responsibility for what happens in Kobani must be laid at the feet of the real perpetrators: ISIS and its patrons and sponsors in Ankara, Riyadh, Doha, and Washington. Those who posture as if there is simply no solution to the situation other than more American bombs would do well to actually investigate the causes of this cancer in the region, rather than proclaiming their commitment to eradicating the symptoms. Perhaps their investigation could start with a few real questions for Turkey and the United States?

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

10 October 2014

By news.com.au

TIM Clark is no MH370 conspiracy theory crackpot.

As the recently knighted Emirates president and CEO told Aviation Week in July: “Something is not right here and we need to get to the bottom of it.”

Now, seven months after the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Sir Tim has cast doubt on the official version of events.

In an extraordinary interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, he challenges the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s conclusion this week that MH370 flew south over the Indian Ocean on autopilot for five hours until it ran out of fuel and fell out of the sky, forcing 239 passengers into a watery grave.

Instead, Sir Tim believes it is far more likely that “MH370 was under control, probably until the very end”, questions the veracity of the “so-called electronic satellite ‘handshake’” used by analysts to pinpoint the probable crash site and insists the mysterious cargo in the hold (removed from the manifest by Malaysian authorities) is a crucial clue to the puzzle.

That an aircraft the size of MH370 can simply disappear without a trace, “not even a seat cushion” was downright “suspicious”, he said.

The executive has vowed that he will not rest until the truth is known, declaring: “I will continue to ask questions and make a nuisance of myself, even as others would like to bury it.”

And as the head of the largest operator of the Boeing 777 in the world (Emirates has a fleet of 127), “I need to know how anybody could interdict our systems”.

Investigators have said the plane’s tracking systems were deliberately disabled by somebody with extensive aviation knowledge in order to take it off radar.

Here are the highlights from the controversial Der Spiegel interview:

What do you think happened?

Clark: My own view is that probably control was taken of that airplane. It’s anybody’s guess who did what. We need to know who was on the plane in the detail that obviously some people do know. We need to know what was in the hold of the aircraft. And we need to continue to press all those who were involved in the analysis of what happened for more information. I do not subscribe to the view that the Boeing 777, which is one of the most advanced in the world and has the most advanced communication platforms, needs to be improved with the introduction of some kind of additional tracking system. MH 370 should never have been allowed to enter a non-trackable situation.

What do you mean by that?

Clark: The transponders are under the control of the flight deck. These are tracking devices, aircraft identifiers that work in the secondary radar regime. If you turn off that transponder in a secondary radar regime, that particular airplane disappears from the radar screen. That should never be allowed to happen. Irrespective of when the pilot decides to disable the transponder, the aircraft should be able to be tracked.

What about other monitoring methods?

Clark: The other means of constantly monitoring the progress of an aircraft is ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System). It is designed primarily for companies to monitor what its planes are doing. We use it to monitor aircraft systems and engine performance. At Emirates, we track every single aircraft from the ground, every component and engine of the aircraft at any point on the planet. Very often, we are able to track systemic faults before the pilots do.

How might it have been possible to disable that tracking system?

Clark: Disabling it is no simple thing and our pilots are not trained to do so. But on flight MH 370, this thing was somehow disabled, to the degree that the ground tracking capability was eliminated. We must find systems to allow ACARS to continue uninterrupted, irrespective of who is controlling the aircraft. If you have that, with the satellite constellations that we have today even in remote ocean regions, we still have monitoring capability. So you don’t have to introduce additional tracking systems.

What, then, are you proposing?

Clark: My recommendation to aircraft manufacturers that they find a way to make it impossible to disable ACARS from the flight deck. And the transponder as well. I’m still struggling to come up with a reason why a pilot should be able to put the transponder into standby or to switch it off. MH 370 was, in my opinion, under control, probably until the very end.

If that is the case, then why would the pilots spend five hours heading straight towards Antarctica?

Clark: If they did! I am saying that all the “facts” of this particular incident must be challenged and examined with full transparency. We are nowhere near that. There is plenty of information out there, which we need to be far more forthright, transparent and candid about. Every single second of that flight needs to be examined up until it, theoretically, ended up in the Indian Ocean — for which they still haven’t found a trace, not even a seat cushion.

Does that surprise you? The possible crash area west of Australia is vast and the search there only began following considerable delays.

Clark: Our experience tells us that in water incidents, where the aircraft has gone down, there is always something. We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is, apart from this so-called electronic satellite “handshake,” which I question as well.

At what point on the presumed flight path of MH370 do your doubts begin?

Clark: There hasn’t been one overwater incident in the history of civil aviation — apart from Amelia Earhart in 1939 — that has not been at least five or 10 per cent trackable. But MH 370 has simply disappeared. For me, that raises a degree of suspicion. I’m totally dissatisfied with what has been coming out of all of this.

What can be done to improve the investigation’s transparency?
Clark: I’m not in a position to do it; I’m essentially an airline manager. But I will continue to ask questions and make a nuisance of myself, even as others would like to bury it. We have an obligation to the passengers and crew of MH 370 and their families. We have an obligation to not sweep this under the carpet, but to sort it out and do better than we have done.

MH 370 remains one of the great aviation mysteries. Personally, I have the concern that we will treat it as such and move on. At the most, it might then make an appearance on National Geographic as one of aviation’s great mysteries. We mustn’t allow this to happen. We must know what caused that airplane to disappear.

10 October 2014

 

Paper presented at the conference on Buddhist- Muslim Tensions in the Bay of Bengal, organized by the Center for Asian Research, Arizona State University, USA, 8 and 9 October 2014.

In this paper I shall attempt to analyze the underlying causes of tension and violence between Buddhists and Muslims in three countries around the Bay of Bengal, namely, Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Are there certain common threads that run through the three cases? How have geopolitical factors impacted upon Buddhist-Muslim relations?
I shall also examine how governments and people in the region have addressed challenges arising from relations between the two communities. This will include the role played by civil society actors. The paper will end with reflections on Buddhist-Muslim relations in the context of a changing world.

Thailand.

Of the three countries around the Bay of Bengal, it is the conflict involving Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims in Southern Thailand which has been going on for the longest while.(1) It has its roots in the Thai (Siamese) conquest of the independent Malay Sultanate of Pattani in 1785. Right from the beginning, the Malay Muslims of Pattani resisted Siamese Buddhist rule as evidenced in rebellions in 1791 and 1808. However, the Thai rulers maintained their grip and further consolidated their position through the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 which acknowledged a segment of the area covered by the old Sultanate — known today as Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Satun and Songkla — as part of the Thai kingdom.
Because Thai rulers, especially some of the authoritarian military strongmen in the post second world war decades sought to assimilate Malay Muslims into the Thai way of life, resentment on the part of the latter gave rise to a series of liberation movements such as the Barisan Revolusi Nasional Pattani Melayu (BRN) in 1960, the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) in 1968 and BERSATU in 1989.( 2) Since these movements pursued their goal of an independent nation called Pattani Darulsalam through violence, the Thai state also responded with force. The level of violence on both sides has ebbed and flowed over the decades.
After a lull of sorts for a few years in the nineteen nineties, which seemed to coincide with the growth of democracy in Thailand, a new round of violence suddenly erupted in January 2004. It began “when an organized group of more than 50 men, according to some sources, raided an army depot in Narathiwat killing four soldiers and stealing some 100 rifles and a large quantity of ammunitions. Eighteen schools were also simultaneously set alight in what appeared to be well-coordinated attacks. Immediately after this incident more violence broke out with acts of arson, drive-by shootings and attacks against government officials and property.” (3) The kidnapping of a Muslim human rights lawyer who was defending some alleged Muslim terrorists, the arbitrary arrest and detention of a number of so-called Muslim militants and the inspection of mosques and madrasas (Islamic religious schools) by Thai officials, further exacerbated the situation.
To make matters worse, Thai security forces “killed 107 suspected militants, many of whom were members of a local soccer team, who were accused of planning acts of terrorism. Thirty-two were gunned down inside the historic Krue Se Mosque in Pattani” (4) in April 2004. Though a government commission of inquiry found security personnel guilty of excessive force against the militants, Krue Se created a lot of anger against the government among the Muslims.
Muslim anger reached a crescendo when another incident happened in October 2004. While “trying to break up a demonstration at the Tak Bai Police Station by about 1500 protesters who were demanding the release of six men accused of giving weapons to Islamic militants Thai security forces shot dead six protesters and detained over one thousand three hundred people. The detainees were then stacked like logs into a number of military trucks and transferred to a military camp on a journey which lasted as long as five hours for some of the detainees. Many later alleged that they were maltreated and even tortured and abused by the Thai security forces while under detention. As a result of this, almost 80 people died of suffocation while there were also claims that many more had been left unaccounted.”(5) The Tak Bai incident ignited a huge international outcry especially in the Muslim world. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was harshly condemned by groups and individuals right across the globe. His image was in tatters.
As expected, Tak Bai generated even more acts of violence from both the militants and the government. In March 2012 for instance the militants coordinated car-bomb attacks in various parts of the South. The government now deploys about 60,000 security personnel in the three Malay Muslim provinces of Patani, Yala and Narathiwat. It has been estimated that since 2004, some 6000 people have been killed in the conflict, 60% of them Muslim and about 40% Buddhist.
The question that one should ask at this point is this: What are the underlying causes of violence and conflict in Southern Thailand? Some of the answers have already been provided. The conquest of an independent entity with a different religion, culture and language which wants to maintain its own identity is an important explanation for the unending conflict. The situation has been exacerbated by concerted attempts by Thai elites at different times to assimilate Malay Muslims into what they regard as the nation’s identity. It arises from an inability on the part of the Thai elite to appreciate the fact that because of the way they perceive and practice their religion, Malay Muslims may exhibit a strong antipathy towards certain symbols, rituals and forms associated with the Thai Buddhist majority. The well-known Thai Malay-Muslim intellectual, Dr. Surin Pitsuwan — one of Thailand’s most effective inter-ethnic, inter-religious bridge-builders — has provided a number of examples of a collision as it were between two different cosmologies. He recounts an incident way back from 1983 when Ministry of Education officials in Bangkok thought it was alright to place a Buddha image beside the flagpole during the morning ceremony of singing the national anthem in those schools where there were also many Muslim students. (6) In more recent years, Muslim villagers receiving personal loans have been charged interest (usury) and scholarships awarded to students have been drawn from legalized gambling funds. (7) This lack of sensitivity to the religious sentiments of a minority is sometimes the product of a majoritarian psychology. It feeds the drive towards assimilation which is one of the causes of the alienation of the Malay Muslim in the South.
When the drive towards assimilation is accompanied by authoritarian elite postures and policies, there is a real danger of serious damage to inter-ethnic relations. This happened when Thaksin Shinawatra was in power in the years leading to the tragic events of 2004. According to a researcher he “resorted to combative measures to tackle problems in the South, refusing to negotiate and compromise. He ordered the dissolution of the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre on April 1, 2002 and transferred the then Army Chief, Fourth Army Commander, Defense Minister, Provincial Governors, the Police Chief and Interior Minister to other posts and filled the vacancies with his close confidants who would comply to his demand for a quick solution.” (8) He ignored wise counsel on the resolution of the problems of the South in a peaceful manner. Instead, he initiated draconian measures and declared an emergency which further estranged the Malay Muslim population. This explains in part the abysmal performance of his party, the Thai Rak Thai, (TRT) in the Malay Muslim provinces in the February 2005 General Election. Although TRT “won overwhelmingly in all of Thailand securing more than a two-thirds majority, it suffered a major setback in the southern provinces where it lost all but one constituency.” (9).
That the authoritarian approach is counter-productive becomes obvious when one contrasts it with the relative success of accommodative, conciliatory measures adopted within a democratic framework in addressing Malay Muslim challenges in Thailand. Such measures related to the acceptance of Islamic banking practices, the introduction of organized halal certification, and the streamlining of religious education, instituted in the democratic ethos of the nineties, have been among some of the attempts to provide Malay Muslims in the South with a sense of belonging to the larger Thai nation. Malay Muslims themselves have sought to advance their needs and interests through articulation and action via the democratic process.
It was not just Shinawatra’s authoritarianism that turned the Malay Muslims against him. His open support for the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 and his readiness to send Thai soldiers to fight under the banner of the invader disappointed and angered a lot of Muslims in the country. It was partly because of strong Muslim opposition that the Thai contingent was withdrawn from Iraq within a year.
So far I have looked at those causes of the Thai Buddhist -Malay Muslim conflict which are connected to the Thai State and the Thai elites. But Malay Muslims opposed to the State are also responsible in a sense for the perpetuation of the conflict. Apart from their resort to violence, with all its dire consequences for the people in the region and the nation as a whole, many of the militant groups also subscribe to ideas about Islam and society which appear to be exclusive rather than inclusive, parochial rather than universal, retrogressive rather than progressive. There is some evidence to suggest that this is the result of the exposure of some of the key elements in these groups to narrow, conservative teachings associated with some of the madrasas in the three provinces, apart from Islamic institutions in South Asia and West Asia. In more concrete language, there is a Wahabi strain in the ideological outlook of a significant segment of the movement for the independence of the southern provinces. It is this outlook that hinders and hampers the ability of its leaders and followers to understand and empathize with the Buddhist Other.

Myanmar

There are some important parallels between Thailand and Myanmar as my analysis of the conflict in Myanmar will reveal. But before that, I shall present a brief overview of the conflict itself — a conflict between a largely Buddhist elite and a Muslim ethnic minority known as the Rohingyas. It is this conflict that has captured media headlines in various parts of the world in the last few years.
Discrimination against the Rohingyas, in a sense, began soon after a Burmese king annexed Arakan (now known as Rakhine) in 1784, the province in which the Rohingyas have lived for centuries, perhaps since the eighth century. There were episodes of violence though there were also long periods of relative harmony between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Rakhine and between Muslims and Buddhists in the rest of Myanmar. In fact, in the early years of Independence, (10) Rohingyas were recognized as full citizens and participated in various sectors of national life, including politics and culture, apart from the economy. They served in parliament and “held positions in the country’s security forces and other ministries.” (11) Their language was broadcasted over the national broadcasting service three times a week and they were “ permitted to form their own communal, professional and student associations bearing the name “ Rohingya,” and above all, granted a special administrative region for the two large pockets in western Burma made up of 70 percent Rohingya Muslims.” (12) Of course, the Rohingyas, given their long association with commerce, were economically active in Rakhine and in Myanmar as a whole.
Things began to change for the Rohingyas in early 1978. In the guise of a crackdown on illegal immigrants, the government started to target Rohingyas. 200,000 of them were forced to leave and relocate in Bangladesh. Their specific ethno-cultural identity was denied and they were labelled “Bengalis” since some recently domiciled groups in Rakhine had links with Bangladesh, the nation with which Rakhine shares a border. This operation against the Rohingyas culminated in a 1982 law which formally removed them from the list of officially recognized ethnic and religious minorities. It implied that Rohingyas qua Rohingyas were no longer citizens of Myanmar! In its recently concluded population census from 30 March 2014 to 10 April 2014 — the first in three decades — the Myanmar government refused to recognize the Rohingyas as a distinct ethnic group.
It is the abrogation of their status as citizens which sounded the death-knell for the Rohingyas. Since 1982 there has been systematic marginalization and even oppression of this minority. It is important to emphasize at this point that it was a harsh, authoritarian military government that stripped the Rohingyas of their citizenship. For more than three decades, they have been subjected to what the well-known scholar-activist from Myanmar, Maung Zarni, describes as “a government-organized, systematic campaign of mass killing, terror, torture, attempts to prevent births, forced labor, severe restrictions on physical movement, large-scale internal displacement of an estimated 140,000 people, sexual violence, arbitrary arrest, summary execution, land-grabbing and community destruction.” (13) It is because of the disastrous impact of all this that life conditions for the Rohingyas are abysmal. Zarni highlights that their “doctor-patient ratio is 1:80,000 ( the national average is about 1: 400), the infant mortality rate is three times the country’s average, and 90 percent of Rohingya are deliberately left illiterate in a country with one of the highest adult literacy rates in all of Asia.” (14)
It explains why in the last twenty to thirty years there has been a mass exodus of Rohingyas to a number of countries, notably, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Canada and Saudi Arabia. The exodus, Zarni argues, is a direct consequence of all the acts of commission and omission against this minority of 1.3 million people. He asserts boldly that, “The military-controlled state of Myanmar — now headed by ex-general Thein Sein and his quasi-civilian government in Naypyidaw — has both paved the way for and carried out ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. Ethnocide of the Rohingya has empowered the racist, ultra-nationalists among the local Buddhist Rakhine, national leaders and Buddhist society at large to dehumanize the Rohingya.” (15).
It is against this backdrop that one should view the serious eruptions of violence that have occurred in recent years. In June 2012 for instance a number of Muslim males were killed when angry Buddhist mobs attacked a bus incensed by a baseless allegation that some passengers on that bus had raped and murdered a young Buddhist woman. In October of the same year there was another violent clash that resulted in the death of more than a hundred people mostly Rohingya.(16) There was another major episode in March 2013 that began in the district of Meikhtila. It resulted in forty-four deaths. 2014 has also witnessed violence between the two communities.
What are the principal causes of this continuous turmoil and violence?
As in the case of Thailand, the annexation and incorporation of a kingdom populated by a numerically significant ethnic and religious community that is distinct and different from the kingdom that had invaded the former appears to have been a contributory factor. But unlike Thailand, the minority in question was at various points in history — and certainly in the first couple of decades after Independence — accepted into the mainstream which might suggest that the genesis of the conflict did not have that great an impact.
It is equally significant that the acceptance of the Rohingyas coincided more or less with that period in Myanmar’s political history before the military which usurped power in 1962 succeeded in tightening its grip upon authority. The earlier part of this period especially between 1948 and 1958 when Myanmar was a parliamentary democracy was a time when not only the Rohingyas but also other minorities such as the Shans, Kachins, Chins and Karens had some political and cultural space to articulate their rights and to protect their identities.(17) It shows that ethnic minorities are relatively safer and more secure within a democratic framework, as the Thai experience also proves to a limited degree.
Needless to say, Myanmar establishes yet again that military authoritarianism — this is also true of Thailand — is the greatest challenge to the integrity of minority groups like the Rohingyas. Indeed, the situation is much worse in Myanmar for a majoritarian military mindset has been wedded to an ideology that unashamedly expresses hate and fear towards a small, weak and helpless minority. It is this politics of hate and fear that has spawned an ethnocide that is riddled with religious bigotry. The Muslim dimension of Rohingya identity has become the object of a form of Islamophobia.
This is why right at the forefront of this virulent campaign against Rohingya Muslims and Muslims in general in Myanmar are some Buddhist monks with substantial followings like Ashin Wirathu of Mandalay who in his speeches has presented Muslims — given their alleged fertility — as a huge demographic threat to the Buddhist majority. He has also railed against the Muslim role in the economy.( 18) The 969 movement of which he is a leading light seeks to discourage Buddhists from patronizing Muslim businesses and wants the State to impose severe restrictions upon Buddhist-Muslim marriages. (19) That the 969 movement is growing is an indication of the danger posed by ethno-religious chauvinism parading as Buddhist nationalism in an ethnically and religiously diverse society. Wirathu and others of his ilk have succeeded to some extent in fusing rabid ethnicity with religious bigotry — a combustible combination which threatens to subvert some other societies too in Asia and elsewhere.
It is partly because of the ethno-religious chauvinism of some monks and a segment of Buddhist society that a section of the Rohingyas and Muslims in Myanmar have begun to adopt more exclusive and antagonistic positions on issues pertaining to religion.(20) They are reluctant to reach out to Buddhists in their neighborhood and work-place. They have become increasingly susceptible to narrow, sometimes even fanatical interpretations of Islam propagated by Wahabi preachers and the like.
What this suggests is that popular sentiments among Buddhists and, to an extent, Muslim Rohingyas do not conduce towards the promotion of better understanding and harmony between the two communities. Because these sentiments are not only pervasive but also entrenched, politicians seeking power and position in the forthcoming general elections in 2015 will not dare to swim against the tide. On the contrary, most of them are already exploiting and manipulating religious and ethnic emotions for votes. The party linked to the ruling elite for instance, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, is projecting itself as the true defender of Burmese, Buddhist identity. Even the National League for Democracy (NLD) of Aung San Suu Kyi which enjoys some support among the Rohingyas has maintained a deafening silence in the face of their persecution because it needs the endorsement of the majority Buddhist community especially the Buddhist clergy. This shows that while democracy allows for the representation of community interests, the electoral process sometimes serves as a conduit for the escalation of religious and ethnic emotions which in turn leads to a deterioration in inter-community relations. In other words, electoral democracy can also be a cause for inter-religious tensions and inter-ethnic ruptures.
This brings us to yet another cause which, in a manner of speaking, lies outside Myanmar. Geopolitical rivalries may also be responsible for the perpetuation of the conflict between a segment of the Buddhist community and the Rohingyas. For more than a decade and a half now, the United States has been concerned about what it perceives as growing Chinese influence over the government of Myanmar. This influence manifests itself in various ways, especially through Chinese investments in infrastructure development, trade and aid. China has also developed extensive linkages with plans and projects aimed at harnessing Myanmar’s rich, untapped resources. Given Myanmar’s strategic location vis-à-vis the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, the US is apprehensive that China may use its economic ties with Myanmar to extend its reach into the Bay and the Ocean. This could have an adverse impact upon the US’s dominant position in the Indian Ocean — reflected in its base in Diego Garcia — and its global hegemony.
This is why when the Myanmar government itself under Thien Sein began to open up to the US mainly because it did not want to become overly dependent on just one big power — its neighbor to the North — the US seized the opportunity to cultivate good ties with a nation it had shunned for decades. While developing these ties, the US, has through some NGOs such as the Soros outfits and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) continued to support the Rohingyas and other minorities. Going on the basis of how the US Administration has operated in other countries, its support for the Rohingyas is a subtle warning to the Myanmar government that it should not tilt too far towards Beijing; otherwise the US will create problems for her through other channels. To put it in another way, it is quite conceivable that in order to ensure it has influence over Myanmar, the US may want the Rohingyas to continue to stand up to the Myanmar government. It would not be the first time that support for a genuine human rights cause also serves a geopolitical agenda. (21)

Sri Lanka.

From Myanmar to Sri Lanka, there are some similarities in some of the causes behind Buddhist-Muslim tensions. I shall analyze these similarities after I have looked at the nature of the conflict itself between elements from the two communities.
In the last two years in particular, Muslims who constitute 9 percent of the Sri Lankan population have been the target of a campaign with Buddhist monks at the core that seeks to marginalize and suppress them. Mosques have been vandalized and defaced. Women wearing the hijab have been harassed. Buddhists have been discouraged from patronizing Muslim owned restaurants and shops. Muslims have been pushed out of areas where they have been living for hundreds of years. Buddhists have been advised not to take contraceptive pills because the Muslim birthrate is allegedly much higher and they will one day take over Sri Lanka and make it into an “Islamic State.” (22)
At the center of this campaign is the drive to rid the country of halal certification.(23) Some Buddhists argue that requiring shops and supermarkets to carry the halal label is an unjust imposition of an Islamic tenet upon the ninety-one percent non-Muslim population. The halal issue has divided society and intensified negative sentiments towards the Muslim minority.
The group behind the halal issue, the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) is the most radical anti-Muslim group in Sri Lanka today. Its leader is a Buddhist monk, Galagod Aththe Gnanasara Thero who has developed a significant following through his pronouncements and actions which denigrate the Muslims and Christians while seeking to glorify Buddhism and Sinhala identity.(24) The BBS and Gnanasara insist that the purity of Sri Lanka as a Buddhist, Sinhalese state should be protected and preserved from the pollution of minorities such as the Muslims who are determined to cling on to their own way of life.
And indeed, for some Buddhists in Sri Lanka it is the Muslim attachment to halal products, a distinct attire for women, a notion of identity that separates the latter from the former, which is the real problem. The Muslims, they allege, do not want to conform to the demands of a Buddhist state. It has given rise to tensions and conflicts between the majority and the minority.
What explains the deteriorating relationship between a segment of the Sinhalese, Buddhist population and the Muslim community? Perhaps the most important reason is linked indirectly to the decades-long conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils which was to all intents and purposes a full-blown civil war. The war and the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 appears to have boosted Sinhalese pride and confidence which within certain sections of the populace has morphed into a sort of chauvinism. It is a chauvinism which insists upon privileging the position of the Sinhalese Buddhist in society and finds its ultimate expression in the idea of a Sinhalese Buddhist state that marginalizes its non-Buddhist minorities. The Muslim minority with its somewhat distinct identity has borne the brunt of this post-war Sinhalese Buddhist chauvinism. The Christian minority, it should be observed, has also been targeted as evidenced by attacks upon churches and pastors. (25)
Because Buddhism has been dragged into this present phase of Sinhalese chauvinism, Buddhist monks are in the forefront of concerted moves to demonize Muslims and Islam. Given their moral stature, their stance has had a negative impact upon inter-ethnic relations. As antipathy towards Muslims grows among the people, politicians are also exploiting communal sentiments for political gain. A few ministers in the government of president Rajapaksa have been openly playing the anti-Muslim card. (26)
Of course, there are both monks and politicians who argue that increasing Wahabi type thinking and practices among Sri Lankan Muslims have also exacerbated the situation. Money and missionaries from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies are the source. It is said that wealthy Saudis have also been buying land and properties from Sinhalese some of which are then converted to mosques and madrasas.
If one reflected upon these causes, one would realize that there are some similarities to Myanmar. Majoritarian chauvinism would be one of them. The role of monks and politicians would be another. The growth of narrow, exclusive attitudes among the Muslim minority would be a third parallel. There is perhaps a fourth parallel related to geopolitics.
Like the Myanmar government, the Rajapaksa presidency has also developed close ties to Beijing. In fact, the war brought Rajapaksa closer to Beijing as China became one of the main suppliers of weapons to the government. Sri Lankan naval facilities have also been made available to Chinese warships. Expanding military ties between the two nations should be viewed in the light of growing Sri Lanka-China trade and economic exchanges. The US, needless to say, is uneasy about this bilateral relationship. So is Britain. It is one of the reasons why both these countries and other Western states are targeting Sri Lanka on its human rights record. They have been extremely critical of Sri Lanka’s alleged suppression of, and discrimination against, the Tamil minority during and after the war. Now they are focusing upon the government’s alleged failure to protect the Muslim minority. Once again, a nation’s human rights performance is on the radar screen — perhaps for valid reasons — but the actual motive for the scrutiny may be something else. To state the obvious, Sri Lanka’s military relationship with China impacts upon the US hegemon’s interests in the Indian Ocean.

 
The Common Threads.

Reflecting upon the experiences of the three countries in the Bay of Bengal, one is now in a position to draw out some common threads which are important in understanding Buddhist- Muslim conflicts within the domestic sphere.
One, it would be unwise to ignore the historical roots of a conflict. It is these roots —in the case of Thailand and Myanmar — that explain some of the concerns that color the conflict to this day though the depth of their impact would vary from situation to situation.
Two, harsh, authoritarian rule, often associated with the military, appears to be a major cause of the perpetuation of a conflict. A majoritarian psychology that justifies exclusiveness and dominance underpins such rule.
Three, the persecution of the Muslim minority takes certain predictable forms. The hijab (Muslim female attire) is often targeted. Mosques, Muslim businesses and Muslim birth rates are also targets. In Sri Lanka an important Muslim identity –marker — halal certification — has attracted extraordinary attention from leaders claiming to represent the Buddhist majority.
Four, more significant, in both Myanmar and Sri Lanka, an ideology of hate and fear that distorts Buddhism and dovetails it to narrow nationalism has emerged justifying exclusiveness and dominance. Some monks have projected themselves as the interpreters of this ideology. They have consciously lent moral legitimacy to the marginalization and persecution of the Muslim minority.
Five, if monks are the creators and interpreters of this ideology, politicians are their peddlers. In all three countries politicians have manipulated issues related to Buddhist-Muslim ties in pursuit of their own political agendas. Electoral politics seems to have whetted their appetite for such manipulation.
Six, narrow, bigoted attitudes among some Muslims in all three countries — sometimes a reaction against some of the positions adopted by elements among the majority —have aggravated the situation. Such attitudes also stem from atavistic interpretations of the religion by Muslim religious leaders themselves.
Seven, democratic governance may in some instances help to reduce tensions, reconcile antagonistic positions and offer solutions to inter-ethnic conflicts. But when mass sentiments are mobilized along ethnic lines, democracy becomes a conduit for the articulation of base communal feelings which invariably threaten inter-ethnic peace.
The Geopolitical Dimension.

Outside domestic politics, there is yet another common thread which this analysis has revealed. This is the geopolitical dimension of the conflicts in the region. In both Myanmar and Sri Lanka —- less obvious in the case of Thailand — Buddhist-Muslim tensions are now enmeshed in the larger struggle for geopolitical influence in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean between an established superpower and an emerging world power.
The US, there is no need to repeat, is as determined as ever to maintain its dominance over the Indian Ocean and will brook no rival. This is a crucial aspect of its “Pivot to Asia”, euphemistically described today as “rebalancing.” Since the US perpetuates dominance partly through regimes that are allied to it, the present inclination of the governments in Myanmar and Sri Lanka — as I have noted — is not to its liking. This is why it is quite conceivable that the US Administration will continue to be actively involved in the politics of the two countries. China, on the other hand, realizes that as its economic muscles get stronger, it needs greater access to both resources and routes. (27) Its ties with Myanmar ensures the first while its relationship to Sri Lanka facilitates the second. As it seeks access, China is bound to collide with the superpower that is bent upon perpetuating its hegemonic control. At the moment, there has been no open flare-up between the two in the Indian Ocean — unlike the South China Sea or the North China Sea where skirmishes between the Philippines and China, on the one hand, and Japan and China, on the other, conceal and camouflage deeper tensions between the US and China.
However, the danger of a more insidious conflict between the two is ever present. In order to curb and control the growing influence of China in Asia, the US elite may choose to employ a tactic that most imperial powers have resorted to in their desire to perpetuate their hegemony. It may play community against community, religious group against religious group in different countries in the region. In other words, it could embark upon a policy of “divide and rule.” Muslims and Buddhists — more than other religious communities in Asia — should be cognizant of this. In a number of countries all over the continent, Buddhists are the majority and Muslims are a minority and vice-versa. In the three countries that are part of this study, for instance, Buddhists are the majority community while Muslims are a minority. However, in Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslims are in the majority and Buddhists are a minority group. It is significant, that in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with its 600 million inhabitants, 42% are Muslim and 40% are Buddhist. If Muslims and Buddhists are embroiled in continuous friction and conflict not only will individual ASEAN states suffer but ASEAN as a regional entity will also be crippled.
This will only serve the interests of those who want to see ASEAN sapped of its strength. China will be deeply concerned if ASEAN is in turmoil. When your neighborhood is in chaos, your own peace and stability will be adversely affected. This is why it is critical that Muslims and Buddhists who live cheek by jowl, within and without ASEAN, develop harmonious relations between them. They should not allow anyone to exploit their differences with the aim of controlling and dominating their societies.

Addressing Challenges.

How will Buddhists and Muslims cultivate harmonious relations? How much has been done so far to overcome the challenges facing the two communities? I shall first focus upon the efforts of governments, inter-governmental organizations and international bodies and then examine the contributions of civil society actors, specifically NGOs.

Governments, Inter-Governmental Organizations and International Bodies.

Since the sixties the Thai government has made attempts to solve the conflict in southern Thailand. These attempts have come in fits and starts. The first serious endeavor to address the root causes of the conflict and propose viable short-term and long-term remedies was through the establishment of a National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) in March 2005. The NRC chaired by a former Prime Minister, Anand Panyarachun had representatives from different religious and ethnic backgrounds. One-third of its members were Muslims from the South. Buddhist monks, social activists, academics and other public figures were also members of the NRC.
The NRC submitted its report to the Thaksin government in June 2006. It produced some outstanding recommendations. It proposed the establishment of a Strategic Administrative Center for Southern Border Provinces.( 28) Through this center, the local population in the South, specifically the Malay Muslims of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, would manage their own affairs. The Pattani-Malay language would be recognized as a working language in the three Malay majority provinces. Aspects of Islamic law would also be applied. The NRC also suggested ways of dealing with the problem of unemployment, of improving the education system and of building confidence in the judicial process. It called upon the authorities to act decisively against state officials who abuse their power. The NRC even urged the state to engage with the militant groups through sustained dialogue.
Unfortunately, the NRC’s enlightened report was never implemented. It became a victim of Thailand’s highly charged, partisan, divisive politics. Since 2006, it is this divisive politics that has taken center stage. Now a military junta is back in the saddle of power. It is doubtful if it would be inclined to address the challenge of the South. Consolidating its own power would be its main preoccupation.
In passing, it should be observed that over the last 20 years or so, there have been moves to involve the Malaysian government obliquely in the challenge of restoring peace and stability in the South. The Malaysian government has been receptive to these overtures but the complexity of the situation especially the problem of identifying the real leaders of the militant groups, and the approach adopted by some elements in the Thai security hierarchy who place a high premium on law and order above everything else, have stymied these efforts.

When one compares Thailand to Myanmar, one gets the impression that the Myanmar government is not even prepared to acknowledge that there are issues connected to the Rohingyas that should be addressed. It has denied that certain massacres ever took place. Even when it admits that the security forces had killed Rohingyas, there is hardly any attempt to prosecute the wrongdoers. This is one of the reasons why some analysts have concluded that the state is complicit in at least some of the massacres.
The Myanmar government is also hostile towards any attempt to involve so-called “outsiders” in resolving the Rohingya issue. ASEAN of which Myanmar is a member has not been allowed to discuss the plight of the Rohingyas, mainly because of the staunch opposition from the Myanmar government. It is only on the sidelines of ASEAN summits or other conferences that other ASEAN leaders have tried to talk to the Myanmar president about his country’s treatment of the Rohingyas. Besides, it should be remembered that ASEAN itself has a fundamental rule about “non-interference” in the internal affairs of member states.
Another inter-governmental organization, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), was also given the cold shoulder when it attempted to seek some answers to questions about the Rohingyas. When a delegation from the OIC led by its then Secretary-General, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, visited riot-hit areas and Rohingya refugee camps in Rakhine in November 2013, it was greeted by anti-OIC demonstrators opposed to the visit. It is suspected that the demonstration was organized with the connivance of the government.
The government also rejected outright the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly’s human rights committee of 19 November 2013 which urged the Myanmar government to grant citizenship to the stateless Rohingyas. The resolution also asked the government to curb violence against Muslims. (29)
It is apparent that while the Myanmar government does not want to come to grips with the question of citizenship for the Rohingyas, it will not accept advice or guidance from any regional, inter-governmental or international organization. Perhaps it knows that its quiet defiance of world opinion will not result in sanctions being imposed against it or in other punitive measures for the simple reason that everyone is now vying to invest in resource-rich Myanmar.
The attitude of the Sri Lankan government towards the problem of rising tensions between the Buddhist majority and the Muslim minority is not very positive either. True, it recognizes that there have been incidents which have led to a deterioration in inter-religious ties. But the government does not act firmly and decisively against the guilty. Indeed, there have been occasions when law enforcement agencies appear to be reluctant to rein in an overtly aggressive monk or a Muslim baiting politician. This has given rise to allegations that certain ministers and public officials are complicit. They are protecting or even encouraging BBS. It explains why the state appears to lack the political will to fight hate speech and acts of sacrilege against the Muslim minority.
Like their Myanmar counterparts, the Sri Lankan elites also bristle at criticisms from “outsiders.” (30) Individual Western governments have been taken to task for their comments on the country just as the Sri Lankan government was offended by the OIC’s condemnation of its handling of the Muslim minority. A number of UN human rights experts and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have also incurred the wrath of Sri Lankan officials for their negative views on the Sri Lankan government’s human rights record vis-a- vis its Muslim minority.
While a lot of these criticisms have a basis, one should not be naïve and ignore the possibility — given other situations — that there may be some exaggeration. There may not be incontrovertible evidence in some instances to support the contention of some government critics that it is the government that is orchestrating all the attacks against the Muslims. One should also bear in mind that there are external actors who have a stake in chastising and denigrating the Sri Lankan government. As noted previously, it serves their geopolitical agenda.
My analysis has shown that for different reasons the three governments have not done enough to address the challenges related to Buddhist –Muslim ties in their respective countries. Neither are inter-governmental and international organizations in a position to act. This leaves us with civil society actors or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). What have they done to reduce friction and conflict between Buddhists and Muslims in the region and enhance harmony and amity between the two?

NGOs and the Quest for Muslim-Buddhist Harmony

NGOs from within and without the region have been vocal articulators on issues pertaining to Buddhist-Muslim relations in Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Given the breadth of their work, it will not be possible to offer even a brief review of their activities. What I will do instead is to look at the role played by my own NGO, the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) on the question of Muslim-Buddhist ties for eighteen years. JUST’s modest contribution is in a sense a microcosm of what NGOs as a whole have been doing in this area.
In trying to address challenges faced by the two communities, JUST, a multi-religious international NGO with a Muslim majority based in Malaysia, has partnered a handful of Buddhist NGOs. The International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB) has been our constant partner in this endeavor. We have also joined hands with Soka Gakkai Malaysia at various times and cooperated with the Taiwanese Buddhist monk, Master Shin Tao’s Global Family for Love and Peace and his Museum of World Religions in organizing Muslim-Buddhist dialogues in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Paris.
JUST’s first venture into the realm of Buddhist-Muslim dialogue was in 1996 when it joined the Bangkok based Santi Pracha Dhamma Institute, an educational outfit under the spiritual leadership of Ajarn Sulak Sivaraksa, one of the founders of INEB, to convene a conference in Penang, Malaysia on the theme “Alternative Politics for Asia” which sought to establish the relevance of eternal spiritual and moral values garnered from Islam and Buddhism for the transformation of contemporary Asia. (31) Since then JUST has initiated and participated in numerous Buddhist-Muslim dialogues in different parts of the world.
By and large, there are three dimensions to JUST’s approach to Muslim – Buddhist relations which may resonate with the work of other NGOs as well. One, addressing eruptions in relations between the two communities in a fair and equitable manner. Two, proposing mechanisms and instruments to improve relations between Muslims and Buddhists. Three, emphasizing shared values and principles in the philosophies of the two religions that could help to strengthen their bond as they struggle for a more just and compassionate world which enhances the dignity of all living beings.
One, from the very outset, JUST reckoned that eruptions that occur from time to time in the interaction between Buddhists and Muslims will have to be addressed with courage and integrity. Hence, our strong stand against the destruction of the Bamiyan statues in Afghanistan in 2001 which gave birth to JUST’s international campaign on the protection of places of worship that elicited support from a wide spectrum of groups and individuals from all over the world. (32). At the same time, incidents like Tak Bai in Thailand in 2004 or the persecution of the Rohingyas in Myanmar in recent years have also evoked a principled response from JUST. It is because of our just position on what are perceived as Buddhist or Muslim concerns that we have succeeded in gaining the trust of both communities which is a vital prerequisite for keeping the channels of dialogue open.
Two, JUST realizes that it is not enough to take positions on issues of concern. NGOs should also come up with specific ideas on how to resolve inter-religious challenges. This is why in June 2006, JUST, together with the Santi Pracha Dhamma Institute and INEB, proposed the establishment of a Buddhist-Muslim Citizens’ Commission for Southeast Asia in the Dusit Declaration that we adopted at our joint conference.(33) It was hoped that the Commission would help foster “a more inclusive and universal approach to both religions informed by values of justice, compassion and forgiveness.” (34). Unfortunately, the Commission did not take off mainly because of a lack of financial resources. Another attempt is now being made to forge a shared platform. This time, JUST and INEB, have been joined by the New York based Religions for Peace and the Muhammadiyyah movement from Indonesia. The new body is called the Buddhist-Muslim Forum (BMF) and was launched in Sri Lanka in August 2013.( 35)
Three, nourishing a more inclusive and universal understanding of Islam and Buddhism is part of a larger mission to convince adherents of both religions that they should connect with the essential values and principles of faith that transcend religious boundaries. JUST has attempted to put across this message through a 1+2+7 formula. What is this formula? (36)
The first principle is that both Islam and Buddhism recognize the primacy of the spiritual and the moral as against the material and the sensate. For Islam, the root of that spiritual basis of human existence is Allah; for Buddhism it is Nibbana. This fundamental principle is linked in turn to two other inter-related principles: the principle of upholding what is right and the principle of prohibiting what is wrong. It is significant that the concept of virtue in Islam and Buddhism bears many striking similarities. Honesty, truthfulness, kindness, a sense of justice, a feeling of compassion towards the weak are values which both religions cherish.
Justice is the leitmotif of the Quran. Justice was the hallmark of the Buddhist emperor, Asoka. Compassion was the outstanding quality of the Buddha. Every chapter in the Quran, except one, begins with the proclamation, “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful …”
Equally significant, both Islam and Buddhism adopt a similar position on a whole gamut of vices. It is not just murder or theft or lying that they regard as wrongdoings. Gambling, the consumption of intoxicants and adultery are condemned in the two religions.
The concept of right and wrong found in Islam and Buddhism suggests that the basic moral structure in the two religions is quite similar. Out of this moral structure, I have derived 7 principles applicable to different spheres of living which run parallel in Islam and Buddhism. They are as follows:-
1) Living in harmony with the environment and protecting natural resources for future generations.
2) Establishing government and political authority on a moral basis.
3) Developing the economy guided by ethical principles.
4) Strengthening the family as the moral foundation of society.
5) Reinforcing the integrity and cohesiveness of the community.
6) Ensuring amicable, cordial relations between different religious and cultural communities.
7) Evolving a culture that strengthens human character and fortifies values such as justice, compassion, love, freedom, equality and honesty. (37)

These shared principles and values it should be emphasized do not imply in any way that the two religions are the same. There are vast differences in theology and ritual which distinguish Islam from Buddhism. Nonetheless, they uphold certain ethical concerns which are fundamental to the life of a practicing Muslim or Buddhist.
It is in this regard that the 1+2+7 formula could serve as a basis for Muslim –Buddhist cooperation for the larger good of humankind.

Reflections.

Of course, the 1+2+7 formula will mean little for segments of Buddhists and Muslims in Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka ensnared in friction and conflict. Nonetheless, those of us who are committed to ensuring peace and harmony between Buddhists and Muslims in the region and beyond should not cease to remind both communities of what is good and beautiful in their religions. By the same measure, however difficult the situation may be in some societies, we cannot abandon our duty to speak truth to power — whether it appears in political or religious garb, at the national or international level.
And the truth will be heard because we live in an age where marginalized, dissident voices can no longer be ignored. If the ravings of bigots sometimes saturate the air, it is because the wise have chosen to remain silent. With all the channels of communication that are available to all of us today, it is an unforgivable sin to remain silent in the face of bigotry and hatred.
For Buddhists and Muslims in the Bay of Bengal nothing is more urgent at this moment than speaking and acting on behalf of justice and compassion — the sort of justice and compassion that understands the pain of the other.

Chandra Muzaffar, Phd
Malaysia.
2 September 2014.

 

END NOTES
1) According to population statistics estimates for 2014, of the 67.3 million people in Thailand, only 3% are Malay Muslims.
2) For more details see Wan Kadir bin Che Man The Moros of Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand ( Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1990)
3) See Omar Farouk Bajunid, “ The Malaysian Factor in the Prospects for Peace in Southern Thailand” in Understanding Conflict and Approaching Peace in Southern Thailand Imtiyaz Yusuf and Lars Peter Schmidt ( editors) ( Bangkok: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2006) Second Revised Edition. p. 196.
4) Ibid, p. 197
5) Ibid, p. 198
6) See Surin Pitsuwan, “ Keynote Address — The Cosmologies of the Southern Conflict” Ibid, p. 285
7) Bajunid, Op. Cit, p. 214
8) See Ukrist Pathmanand, “ Religious Issues in Political Conflict During the Late Thaksin Government” in Religion and Democracy in Thailand Imtiyaz Yusuf and Canan Atilgan ( editors) ( Bangkok: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2008) pp. 83-4.
9) Bajunid Op.Cit p. 215
10) Myanmar, then known as the Union of Burma achieved Independence from British colonial rule in 1948. The Father of Burmese Independence, Aung San, envisaged a multi-ethnic nation dedicated to freedom and justice.
11) Maung Zarni, “ The systematic Repression of the Rohingya Minority Continues” JUST Commentary ( Online) March 2014, p. 11
12) Ibid. p. 11
13) Ibid. p. 11
14) Ibid. p.11
15) Muang Zarni, “ British Aid for Myanmar Ethnic Cleansing” JUST Commentary August 2013, p.7
16) These killings are discussed in Mozammel Haque, “ Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims” The Muslim World December 2012 pp. 12-15.
17) For an in-depth analysis see, Josef Silverstein, Burmese Politics; The Dilemma of National Unity ( New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1980)
18) Wirathu says that he wants to protect Buddhists in Rakhine from “Bengalis” terrorizing them. According to some media reports he has now changed and appears to be more inclined towards peace and non-violence.
19) 9 stands for the nine special attributes of the Buddha; 6 for the six special attributes of his Dhamma; and 9 for the nine special attributes of his Sangha.
20) As an example, the Muslims are also playing a numerological game to counter Buddhist 969 propaganda in a country with a strong orientation towards numerology. Some of them have intensified their attachment to 786 which in parts of Muslim South Asia is associated with the proclamation, “In the name of Allah, the Merciful and the Compassionate.”
21) There are numerous examples of this in Human Wrongs Chandra Muzaffar ( editor) (Penang, Malaysia: JUST World Trust, 1996).
22) See Religious Violence in Sri Lanka January 2013 — December 2013 An Update of Muslim Concerns Presented by the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, August 2013.
23) See Hate Incidents against Muslims: January — April 2014 especially entry for January 7 2014.
24) For a peep into his attitudes see Sri Lanka’s Militant Monk Rejects Dalai Lama as Spiritual Leader July 22 2014.
25) See Religious Violence in Sri Lanka Op.Cit Annexure 11 Violence Against Christians.
26) Ibid
27) This is elaborated in my “ Containing China: A Flawed Agenda” Hegemony,Justice; Peace ( Shah Alam, Malaysia: Arah Publications, 2008)
28) See Imtiyaz Yusuf, “Introduction” Understanding Conflict Op.Cit. pp. 12-3
29) See “Myanmar Rejects UN Resolution on Rohingya Muslims” Reuters Yangon 21 November 2013.
30) See “ Sri Lanka Must Do More To Rein In Hate Speech, Faith-Based Violence — UN Rights Experts” UN News Centre 2 July 2014
31) The book that came out of that dialogue is entitled, Sulak Sivaraksa and Chandra Muzaffar Alternative Politics for Asia: A Buddhist- Muslim Dialogue ( Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: International Movement for a Just World, 1999).
32) For details see “ Protection of Places of Worship” JUST Commentary July 2003 and “Successful Conclusion to Civil Society Campaign on Protection of Places of Worship ” JUST Commentary August 2004
33) See “Dusit Declaration” JUST Commentary July 2006.
34) Ibid
35) The Buddhist-Muslim Forum was launched at a meeting attended by activists from a few organizations including JUST and INEB in Galle, Sri Lanka in August 2013.
36) This is enunciated in my “Muslims and Buddhists in Asia” in Muslims, Dialogue Terror (Petaling Jaya, Malaysia: International Movement for a Just World, 2003)
37) Ibid

 

By John Pilger

In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”.

As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty.

As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery – including the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields – I am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again.A telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had much in common with today’s Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They, too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.

According to Pol Pot, his movement had consisted of “fewer than 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty and leaders”. Once Nixon’s and Kissinger’s B52 bombers had gone to work as part of “Operation Menu”, the west’s ultimate demon could not believe his luck.

The Americans dropped the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on rural Cambodia during 1969-73. They levelled village after village, returning to bomb the rubble and corpses. The craters left monstrous necklaces of carnage, still visible from the air. The terror was unimaginable. A former Khmer Rouge official described how the survivors “froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told … That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over.”

A Finnish Government Commission of Enquiry estimated that 600,000 Cambodians died in the ensuing civil war and described the bombing as the “first stage in a decade of genocide”. What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot, their beneficiary, completed.Under their bombs, the Khmer Rouge grew to a formidable army of 200,000.

ISIS has a similar past and present. By most scholarly measure, Bush and Blair’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the deaths of some 700,000 people — in a country that had no history of jihadism. The Kurds had done territorial and political deals; Sunni and Shia had class and sectarian differences, but they were at peace; intermarriage was common. Three years before the invasion, I drove the length of Iraq without fear. On the way I met people proud, above all, to be Iraqis, the heirs of a civilization that seemed, for them, a presence.

Bush and Blair blew all this to bits. Iraq is now a nest of jihadism. Al-Qaeda – like Pol Pot’s “jihadists” – seized the opportunity provided by the onslaught of Shock and Awe and the civil war that followed. “Rebel” Syria offered even greater rewards, with CIA and Gulf state ratlines of weapons, logistics and money running through Turkey. The arrival of foreign recruits was inevitable. A former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote recently, “The [Cameron] government seems to be following the example of Tony Blair, who ignored consistent advice from the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6 that our Middle East policy – and in particular our Middle East wars – had been a principal driver in the recruitment of Muslims in Britain for terrorism here.”

ISIS is the progeny of those in Washington and London who, in destroying Iraq as both a state and a society, conspired to commit an epic crime against humanity. Like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, ISIS are the mutations of a western state terror dispensed by a venal imperial elite undeterred by the consequences of actions taken at great remove in distance and culture. Their culpability is unmentionable in “our” societies.

It is 23 years since this holocaust enveloped Iraq, immediately after the first Gulf War, when the US and Britain hijacked the United Nations Security Council and imposed punitive “sanctions” on the Iraqi population – ironically, reinforcing the domestic authority of Saddam Hussein. It was like a medieval siege. Almost everything that sustained a modern state was, in the jargon, “blocked” — from chlorine for making the water supply safe to school pencils, parts for X-ray machines, common painkillers and drugs to combat previously unknown cancers carried in the dust from the southern battlefields contaminated with Depleted Uranium.

Just before Christmas 1999, the Department of Trade and Industry in London restricted the export of vaccines meant to protect Iraqi children against diphtheria and yellow fever. Kim Howells, a medical doctor and parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Blair government, explained why. “The children’s vaccines”, he said, “were capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction”. The British Government could get away with such an outrage because media reporting of Iraq – much of it manipulated by the Foreign Office — blamed Saddam Hussein for everything.

Under a bogus “humanitarian” Oil for Food Programme, $100 was allotted for each Iraqi to live on for a year. This figure had to pay for the entire society’s infrastructure and essential services, such as power and water. “Imagine,” the UN Assistant Secretary General, Hans Von Sponeck, told me, “setting that pittance against the lack of clean water, and the fact that the majority of sick people cannot afford treatment, and the sheer trauma of getting from day to day, and you have a glimpse of the nightmare. And make no mistake, this is deliberate. I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but now it is unavoidable.”

Disgusted, Von Sponeck resigned as UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq. His predecessor, Denis Halliday, an equally distinguished senior UN official, had also resigned. “I was instructed,” Halliday said, “to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults.”

A study by the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, found that between 1991 and 1998, the height of the blockade, there were 500,000 “excess” deaths of Iraqi infants under the age of five. An American TV reporter put this to Madeleine Albright, US Ambassador to the United Nations, asking her, “Is the price worth it?” Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”

In 2007, the senior British official responsible for the sanctions, Carne Ross, known as “Mr. Iraq”, told a parliamentary selection committee, “[The US and UK governments] effectively denied the entire population a means to live.”When I interviewed Carne Ross three years later, he was consumed by regret and contrition. “I feel ashamed,” he said. He is today a rare truth-teller of how governments deceive and how a compliant media plays a critical role in disseminating and maintaining the deception. “We would feed [journalists] factoids of sanitised intelligence,” he said, “or we’d freeze them out.”

On 25 September, a headline in the Guardian read: “Faced with the horror of Isis we must act.”The “we must act” is a ghost risen, a warning of the suppression of informed memory, facts, lessons learned and regrets or shame. The author of the article was Peter Hain, the former Foreign Office minister responsible for Iraq under Blair. In 1998, when Denis Halliday revealed the extent of the suffering in Iraq for which the Blair Government shared primary responsibility, Hain abused him on the BBC’s Newsnight as an “apologist for Saddam”. In 2003, Hain backed Blair’s invasion of stricken Iraq on the basis of transparent lies. At a subsequent Labour Party conference, he dismissed the invasion as a “fringe issue”.

Now Hain is demanding “air strikes, drones, military equipment and other support” for those “facing genocide” in Iraq and Syria. This will further “the imperative of a political solution”. Obama has the same in mind as he lifts what he calls the “restrictions” on US bombing and drone attacks. This means that missiles and 500-pound bombs can smash the homes of peasant people, as they are doing without restriction in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia — as they did in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. On 23 September, a Tomahawk cruise missile hit a village in Idlib Province in Syria, killing as many as a dozen civilians, including women and children. None waved a black flag.

The day Hain’s article appeared, Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck happened to be in London and came to visit me. They were not shocked by the lethal hypocrisy of a politician, but lamented the enduring, almost inexplicable absence of intelligent diplomacy in negotiating a semblance of truce. Across the world, from Northern Ireland to Nepal, those regarding each other as terrorists and heretics have faced each other across a table. Why not now in Iraq and Syria.

Like Ebola from West Africa, a bacteria called “perpetual war” has crossed the Atlantic. Lord Richards, until recently head of the British military, wants “boots on the ground” now. There is a vapid, almost sociopathic verboseness from Cameron, Obama and their “coalition of the willing” – notably Australia’s aggressively weird Tony Abbott — as they prescribe more violence delivered from 30,000 feet on places where the blood of previous adventures never dried. They have never seen bombing and they apparently love it so much they want it to overthrow their one potentially valuable ally, Syria. This is nothing new, as the following leaked UK-US intelligence file illustrates:

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative [sic] forces … a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals [and] to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria. CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main [sic] incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals… a necessary degree of fear… frontier and [staged] border clashes [will] provide a pretext for intervention… the CIA and SIS should use… capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

That was written in 1957, though it could have been written yesterday. In the imperial world, nothing essentially changes. Last year, the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas revealed that “two years before the Arab spring”, he was told in London that a war on Syria was planned.“I am going to tell you something,” he said in an interview with the French TV channel LPC, “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria … Britain was organising an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister for Foreign Affairs, if I would like to participate … This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned.”

The only effective opponents of ISIS are accredited demons of the west – Syria, Iran, Hezbollah.The obstacle is Turkey, an “ally” and a member of Nato, which has conspired with the CIA, MI6 and the Gulf medievalists to channel support to the Syrian “rebels”, including those now calling themselves ISIS. Supporting Turkey in its long-held ambition for regional dominance by overthrowing the Assad government beckons a major conventional war and the horrific dismemberment of the most ethnically diverse state in the Middle East.

A truce – however difficult to achieve – is the only way out of this imperial maze; otherwise, the beheadings will continue. That genuine negotiations with Syria should be seen as “morally questionable” (the Guardian) suggests that the assumptions of moral superiority among those who supported the war criminal Blair remain not only absurd, but dangerous.

Together with a truce, there should be an immediate cessation of all shipments of war materials to Israel and recognition of the State of Palestine. The issue of Palestine is the region’s most festering open wound, and the oft-stated justification for the rise of Islamic extremism. Osama bin Laden made that clear. Palestine also offers hope. Give justice to the Palestinians and you begin to change the world around them.

More than 40 years ago, the Nixon-Kissinger bombing of Cambodia unleashed a torrent of suffering from which that country has never recovered. The same is true of the Blair-Bush crime in Iraq. With impeccable timing, Henry Kissinger’s latest self-serving tome has just been released with its satirical title, “World Order”. In one fawning review, Kissinger is described as a “key shaper of a world order that remained stable for a quarter of a century”. Tell that to the people of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Chile, East Timor and all the other victims of his “statecraft”. Only when “we” recognise the war criminals in our midst will the blood begin to dry.

John Pilger is a London-based journalist, film-maker and author.

9 October 2014

 

By Shamus Cooke

“Power concedes nothing without a demand” -Frederick Douglas

A historic showdown is shaking Hong Kong’s core, between the Chinese government and the mass movement confronting it. The people demand the removal of the Beijing appointed Governor and insist that they vote on his replacement. The Chinese government has vowed zero concessions, creating an inevitable collision with potentially revolutionary effects.

The government has twice made attempts to crush the movement with violence; both failed miserably. Each time thousands of new people entered the movement in response. The following day after pro-government gangs attacked the protestors an estimated 200,000 people mobilized. And after each new, even larger mobilization the fresh threats by the government look increasingly pathetic.

A student leader of the protests was quoted in The New York Times:

“We know that every time they assault us, we resist harder, and we know we’re on the right path, otherwise the government wouldn’t have been so afraid of us.”

This resembles a dynamic often referred to as the “whip of the counter-revolution,” where government violence “whips” people into action, pushing the movement forward.

The mass movement has created a no-win situation for the Chinese government. It’s the same problem all governments face when targeted by a mass movement with a strong demand: if the government surrenders it loudly pronounces its weakness, inviting more attacks that utilize the same strategy of massive ongoing mobilizations. It’s very risky for an elite-dedicated government to show it can be moved by the people mobilized.

It’s especially risky for China, since there are other regions watching Hong Kong closely that will either be motivated or intimidated by the results. China has an especially vulnerable underbelly with its periphery, particularly Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet.

People assumed that Taiwan would gradually fall back into China’s orbit, but this logic is being questioned as the process towards reunification has stalled. This has infuriated Beijing, and led some to question whether the government is losing control of its periphery. Any protest success in Hong Kong will only power those in Taiwan looking to maintain their distance from China.

An emerging super power cannot tolerate such blatant roadblocks to expansion. The Chinese government is tired of acting passively, both domestically and internationally, when it feels capable of expediting events by force. Smashing the Hong Kong movement will set an example to other regions and ethnic groups inside China’s borders. Failing to smash the movement, however, will have the exact opposite effect.

But the Chinese government faces an even bigger danger at its very core — the Chinese working class. From the Economist magazine:

“… it remains possible that [General Secretary Xi Jinping] will authorize force. That would be a disaster for Hong Kong, and it would not solve Mr. Xi’s problem. For mainland China, too, is becoming restless.”

For a decade the Chinese working class has waged a fight-back against the ultra-exploitation that increased during the transition to capitalism. China now has American-style inequality gaps. During the capitalist transition, 30 million state workers were fired in the massive privatization of state resources that created billionaires while also creating ever larger demands on worker productivity — working faster and/or longer hours —to boost corporate profits.

The racist stereotype of the docile Chinese wage slave has been shattered by collective action. Business Week reports:

“From 2000 through 2013, at least 10 protests have drawn more than 10,000 people…the most common triggers are land grabs by local officials, labor issues, pollution, and ethnic tensions. Underpaid teachers, homeowners, and coal miners have all taken to the streets at one point or another. There is no definitive tally of how many protests are staged each year in China, but one estimate by researchers at Nankai University put the number at 90,000 in 2009.”

These strikes and protests have successfully raised wages and benefits in China, which have repeatedly been declared “bad news for corporate profits.”

The higher wages have threatened China’s capitalist business model, which over-relies on cheap exports that are grounded in slave wages. China’s labor movement has successfully raised the price of labor, and now neighbor nations are using slave labor to challenge China’s exports. If the protests in Hong Kong are successful, unions in China will be inspired to make new, bolder demands. And a healthy Chinese labor movement will inevitably infect the labor movements of neighboring nations.
The protests have already shaken awake the Hong Kong labor movement, helping ensure an even broader base of support. The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions recently announced a strike in support of the student movement and included four demands:

“the immediate release of all the arrested, an end to the suppression of peaceful assembly, replacing the ‘fake universal suffrage’ formula with the genuine political reform workers have been demanding, and the resignation of Chief Executive Leung Chun Ying.”

This is significant because Hong Kong unions have a long history of organizing mass protests, including the successful one in 2003 of 500,000 people that eventually led to the resignation of Hong Kong’s governor. They city has a tradition of mass protests where every year tens of thousands — often hundreds of thousands — mobilize for or against various issues usually related to democratic rights. This tradition began in 1989 when 1.5 million marched to show sympathy with the Tiananmen Square protests.

But mass movements don’t always work. Tiananmen Square was drowned in blood, as have recent protests in Thailand. But in 2002 mass protests in Venezuela defeated a military coup that sought to oust President Hugo Chavez. Egyptians successfully used the tactic to oust a dictator and then struck again against his successor.

The x factor in every mass movement is the army and whether soldiers are willing to kill their fellow countrymen on government orders. When the Iranian revolution used ongoing mobilizations to oust a U.S.-backed dictator, the turning point was when the Shah’s troops were deemed “unreliable” to follow government orders to kill protesters.

When soldiers refuse to fire on protesters — a common feature of revolution — the magical armor of government is shattered, and state power becomes powerless. While recognizing the feebleness of government in the face of mass opposition, the people begin to recognize their own collective power.

All of China is watching Hong Kong closely, as is the whole of Asia. The entire region is affected by China’s economic-gravitational weight, and if the region follows in Hong Kong’s footsteps, it’s capable of dragging the rest of the world behind it.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).

07 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Glen Barry

The surging Ebola epidemic is the result of broad-based ecological and social collapse including rainforest loss, over-population, poverty and war. This preventable environmental and human tragedy demonstrates the extent to which the world has gone dramatically wrong; as ecosystem collapse, inequity, grotesque injustice, religious extremism, nationalistic militarism, and resurgent authoritarianism threaten our species and planet’s very being.

Any humane person is appalled by the escalating Ebola crisis, and let’s be clear expressing these concerns regarding causation is NOT an attempt to hijack a tragedy. Things happen for a reason, and Ebola was preventable, and future catastrophes of potentially greater magnitude can be foreseen and avoided by the truth.

The single greatest truth underlying the Ebola tragedy is that humanity is systematically dismantling the ecosystems that make Earth habitable. In particular, the potential for Ebola outbreaks and threats from other emergent diseases is made worse by cutting down forests [1]. Exponentially growing human populations and consumption – be it subsistence agriculture or mining for luxury consumer items – are pushing deeper into African old-growth forests where Ebola circulated before spillover into humans.

Poverty stricken communities in West Africa are increasingly desperate, and are eating infected “bushmeat” such as bats and gorilla, bringing them into contact with infected wildlife blood. Increasingly fragmented forests, further diminished by climate change, are forcing bats to find other places to live that are often amongst human communities.

Some 90% of West Africa’s original forests have already been lost. Over half of Liberia’s old-growth forests have recently been sold for industrial logging by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s post-war government. Only 4% of Sierra Leone’s forest cover remains and they are expected to totally disappear soon under the pressure of logging, agriculture, and mining.

My recently published peer-reviewed scientific research [2] on ecosystem loss and biosphere collapse indicates more natural ecosystems have been loss than the global environment can handle without collapsing. Yesterday, new science reported that 50% of Earth’s wildlife has died (in fact been murdered) in the last 40 years [3].

Loss of natural life-giving habitats has consequences. We are each witnesses to and participants in global ecosystem collapse.

There are other major social ills which potentially foster global pandemics. Rising inequity, abject poverty, and lack of justice threaten Earth’s and humanity’s very being. These ills and global ecosystem collapse are causing increased nationalistic war, migration and rise of authoritarian corporatism. West Africa has been ravaged by war and poverty for decades, which shows little signs of abating, particularly since natural habitats for community based sustainable development are nearly gone.

War breeds disease. It is no coincidence that 1918 flu pandemic – the last great global disease outbreak that killed an estimated 50-100 million – occurred just as the ravages of World War I were ending. Conditions after ecosystems are stripped by over-population and poverty are not that different – each providing ravaged landscapes that are prime habitat for disease organisms.

West Africa’s ecological collapse has brought people into contact with blood from infected animals causing the Ebola epidemic. Once human infection occurs, ecologically denuded, conflict ridden, over-populated, and squalid impoverished communities are ripe for a pandemic. As the Ebola virus threatens to become endemic to the region, it potentially offers a permanent base from which infections can indefinitely continue to spread globally.

Since 911 America has slashed all other spending as it militarizes, viewing all sources of conflict as resolvable by waging perma-war. Africa needs doctors and the U.S. sends the military. Both terrorism and infectious disease are best prevented by long-term investments in equitably reducing poverty and meeting human needs – including universal health-care, living wage jobs, education, and establishment of greater global medical rapid response capabilities.

We are all in this together. Our over-populated, over-consuming, inequitable human dominated Earth continues to wildly careen toward biosphere collapse as sheer sum consumption overwhelms nature. West Africa’s 2010 population of 317 million people is still growing at 2.35%, and is expected to nearly double in 25 years, even as squalor, lack of basic needs, ecosystem loss, and pestilence increase. This can never, ever be ecologically or socially sustainable, and can only end in ruin.

Equity, education, condoms, and lower taxes and other incentives to stabilize and then reduce human population are a huge part of the solution for a just, equitable, and sustainable future. Otherwise Earth will limit human numbers with Ebola and worse. It may be happening already.

We are one human family and in a globalized world no nation is an island unto itself. By failing to invest in reducing poverty and in meeting basic human needs in Africa and globally (even as we temporarily enrich ourselves by gorging upon the destruction of their natural ecosystems), we in the over-developed world ensure that much of the world is fertile ground for disease and war. There is no way to keep Ebola and other social and ecological scourges out of Europe and America if they overwhelm the rest of humanity.

Ebola is what happens when the rich ignore poverty, as well as environmental and social decline, falsely believing they are not their concern. There can be no security ever again for anybody as long as billions live in abject poverty on a couple dollars a day as a few hundred people control half of Earth’s wealth.

We learn the meaning of enough and how to share or it is the end of being.

Walmart parking lots and iPads don’t sustain or feed you. Healthy ecosystems and land do. The hairless ape with opposable thumbs – that once showed so much potential – has instead become an out of control, barbaric and ecocidal beast with barely more sentience of its environmental constraints than yeast on sugar.

Ebola is very, very serious but can be beat with public health investments, courage, and by dealing with underlying causes. In the short-term, it is absolutely vital that the world organizes a massive infusion of doctors and quarantined hospital beds into West Africa immediately, even as we work on the long-term solutions highlighted here.

Ultimately commitments to sustainable community development, universal health care and education, free family planning, global demilitarization, equity, and ecosystem protection and restoration are the only means to minimize the risk of emergent disease. Unless we come together now as one human family and change fast – by cutting emissions, protecting ecosystems, having fewer kids, ending war, investing in ending abject poverty, and embracing agro-ecology – we face biosphere collapse and the end of being.

A pathway exists to global ecological sustainability; yet it requires shared sacrifice and for us all to be strong, as we come together to vigorously resist all sources of ecocide. It is up to each and every one of us to commit our full being to sustaining ecology and living gently upon Earth… or our ONE SHARED BIOSPHERE collapses and being ends

I desperately hope that Ebola does not become a global pandemic killing hundreds of millions or even billions. But if it does, it is a natural response from an Earth under siege defending herself from our own ignorant yet willful actions. We have some urgent changes to make as a species, let’s get going today before it is too late.
Dr. Glen Barry is the President and Founder of Ecological Internet (EI). He is recognized internationally by the environmental movement as a leading global visionary, ecological policy critic and public intellectual committed to communicating the severity of global ecological crises – and related justice, rights and equity issues – while actively organizing with others sufficient solutions

05 October, 2014
Ecointernet.org

By Taj Hashmi

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies …. There is an alternative to national bankruptcy, a bigger police state, trillion-dollar wars, and a government that draws ever more parasitically on the productive energies of the American people.”

– Ron Paul, US Presidential Candidate (2008 & 2012)

“Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power…. That is how the American Empire functions.”

— Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of Treasury (1981-82)

American duplicities, arm-twisting diplomacy and overpowering influence of the Military-Industrial Complex have already undermine American values leading us to decades of devastating warfare in almost every continent. Meanwhile, as an Iranian “insider” Hossein Mousavian believes, if attacked by Israel or the US, the already nervous and estranged Iran would definitely go for the nuclear option by withdrawing from the NPT. Now, in view of the growing nuclear buildup in Pakistan and Iran’s potential to become a nuclear power, how the US is likely to react to these developments is anybody’s guess. Since America is fast moving towards “The Golden Age of Special Operations”, drone operations or “wars by remote” on a massive scale by abandoning the “boots-on-the-ground” policy, will be the new way of fighting America’s new wars in the coming years, and mostly in the Muslim World.

It appears that by the 2020s the “unipolar world” having America, as the global superpower will nearly disappear. The newly emerging democracies in the Arab World, including Egypt and Iraq; and possibly, an assertively pro-Muslim Turkey with very loose to non-existent ties with NATO and Israel; and possibly a nuclear-armed Iran in league with avowedly anti-American Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the long run will challenge American hegemony in the greater Middle East, South and Central Asia. By then the centers of economic development will further drift from the West to Asia, mainly to China and India. China is most likely to emerge as the main patron of this conglomerate of oil-rich and nuclear-armed nations. On the other hand, in view of the growing Russian influence in the region – as reflected in its veto against any UN-led invasion of Syria in early 2012 (China also vetoed against the proposal) – Russia is also expected to join the anti-American / anti-NATO conglomerate. As losing face or losing global hegemony is least desirable to American hawks and imperialists, they will try to reverse the process through major wars, first against some “manageable foes” like Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and then possibly against Pakistan and others. Rising Saudi defense budget, $46 billion in 2011, is likely to further polarize the Middle East between pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian forces. American client states in the Arab World are likely to join the fray. Direct confrontation and even a prolonged war between Sunni Gulf states and Iran under Saudi leadership with American support and instigation is another most likely scenario in the coming years.

Meanwhile, America has made total mess of Iraq and Afghanistan, albeit to the advantage of the Military-Industrial Complex who made most of the “trillion-dollar-profit” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As we know, America started messing up with Iraq since the 1950s. Saddam Hussein was in CIA’s payroll up to the early 1960s and later he was in the best of terms with Reagan and Bush Sr. until he was duped into invading Kuwait in 1990 by the US Ambassador. During the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988), America provided intelligence and logistics to Saddam Hussein against Iran. The whole world watched Donald Rumsfeld meeting Saddam Hussein in Baghdad during the War. However, soon after the end of the Iraq-Iran war in a stalemate, America clipped the wing of Saddam Hussein after he had become “menacingly powerful” to the detriment of its allies in the Middle East. American Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie on purpose misled Saddam Hussein, and sort of, gave him the green signal. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 led to the American-led invasion of Iraq, the “Operation Desert Storm”, in early 1991, which Saddam Hussein classified as the “Mother of All Battles”. The US ambassador is said to have told Saddam Hussein, it appears, only to encourage him to invade Kuwait:

But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 1960s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi (Chedli Klibi, Secretary General of the Arab League) or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly.

We all know how preposterous was the American argument in favor of the second US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although many Americans still believe that there was an “intelligence failure” on part of the CIA – it misread and thought Saddam Hussein had the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and was building nuclear bombs – from Bush Jr. to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and almost every big wig in the US administration deliberately lied to the Americans and the whole world about the so-called WMD. We also know the real motive behind the invasion, giving the most powerful lobbies in America, Britain, Italy, Spain, Australia and other allied powers the opportunity to make billions as “profits” or “dividends” of the war. We also know that directly or indirectly the invaders killed more than a million Iraqis and the country is in total mess. It is, however, an irony that the “liberated” Iraq (and Afghanistan) is very close to Iran, America’s main nemesis in the Middle East. It is only a question of time when Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Afghan, Pakistani, Arab and Central Asian Shiites will come closer to each other to threaten American interests in the Middle East, South and Central Asia.

Finally, one may re-iterate the following positions in the light of the foregoing discussion on the nature and extent of American imperialism; if the Empire is likely to hit again on a massive scale to prolong the ongoing conflicts; and if there is a way out of a devastatingly destabilizing future in the coming decades. We know nothing in particular has all of a sudden gone wrong with Islam, and so many things seem to be going wrong with America (since 1492), we need an understanding of the factors –people, events and ideas – that have turned the richest country into the most hated empire in our times. Thanks to Reagan’s Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts’s succinct definition of the American Empire, we already know that the Empire “ extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power ”. He also tells us that the empire-builders have modified the US Constitution in the name of national security in such a manner that “Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent”. Craig Roberts’ appraisal is a good follow up of what President Eisenhower singled out in 1961 as the main perpetrator of all modern wars that America participated in after the Second World War, America’s Military-Industrial-Congressional Lobby.

The foregoing discussion leads us to the conclusion that we are fast entering the post-terrorist phase of history where state-terrorism and state-sponsored violence in the name of global peace, freedom, democracy, religion and sovereignty have been destabilizing the world. Several millions have already fell victims to state-sponsored violence, from Hiroshima to Vietnam, Rwanda-Burundi to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And many more are likely to follow them in the coming decades, mostly from the Muslim World. Now, one may raise the question: Is there a way out of the foreseeable mega wars in the names of the “War on Terror” or “Islam-in-Danger”? We know the answer, which might sound very sophomoric, that is the American people should force their government to restrain the Military-Industrial Complex from promoting wars and conflicts; make the Israeli Lobby accountable to US laws and regulations; and America should help resolve inter-state conflicts, especially over disputed territories (such as the Palestine, Taiwan and Kashmir problems) by simply not exercising its veto power in the UN and by not supporting either of the parties with money, arms or troops. America should also withdraw support from autocracies, especially in the Muslim World, as lack of democracy and freedom proliferates extremism and terrorism. Last but not least, there is no reason to assume that the ongoing Hundred-Year-War will remain confined to the asymmetric wars between the Empire and smaller states and non-state actors in the Muslim World. If not addressed, the conflicts would proliferate to engulf many more countries, including superpowers like China and Russia. One must always keep in mind that apparently insignificant event, such as the Sarajevo Incident, led to World War I and Hitler’s invasion of Poland to World War II. Unfortunately, we have already crossed the threshold of many more similar events, including 9/11 and unlawful invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. How America behaves with regard to Iran and Syria will be the most important catalysts in this regard.

It is time American civil societies, veterans and their family members, and common people take pro-active measures to demilitarize the American psyche for the sake of global peace and justice. They should know – as Eisenhower pointed out – American Military Industrial Complex is at the roots of all major wars America has fought since 1945. They should all take General Wesley Clark (ret) seriously, who revealed the US secret plan to invade seven countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Iran even before it invaded Afghanistan. The plan was revealed to the General ten days after 9/11 by some top brasses at the Pentagon. As General Clark reveals, what is most worrisome is that the US loves to use the hammer (its military) to fix whatever it thinks has gone wrong anywhere in the world. The US loves to invade countries because its military is great “to take down governments”. The American Congress (Eisenhower’s “Congressional Lobby”) and policy makers at the State Department (Senator Fulbright’s “Voodoo Magicians”) are too powerful and manipulative to be restrained by half-hearted peace initiatives by Americans. Last but not least, the bulk of Americans are so naïve, politically inert and indifferent that they hardly raise any question about their country’s foreign policy and invasions of one country after another (America wages a major war almost after every ten years) in the name of freedom and security of America. Again, Americans are too “patriotic” to question the justifications for the wars their country initiates in distant lands, or the ones their leaders are contemplating to wage in the near future.

Taj Hashmi teaches at Austin Peay State University Clarksville, Tennessee

23 August, 2012
Countercurrents.org

 

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The ISIL or IS threat is a smokescreen. The strength of the ISIL has deliberately been inflated to get public support for the Pentagon and to justify the illegal bombing of Syria. It has also been used to justify the mobilization of what is looking more and more like a large-scale US-led military buildup in the Middle East. The firepower and military assets being committed go beyond what is needed for merely fighting the ISIL death squads.

While the US has assured its citizens and the world that troops will not be sent on the ground, this is very unlikely. In the first instance, it is unlikely because boots on the ground are needed to monitor and select targets. Moreover, Washington sees the campaign against the ISIL fighters as something that will take years. This is doublespeak. What is being described is a permanent military deployment or, in the case of Iraq, redeployment. This force could eventually morph into a broader assault force threatening Syria, Iran, and Lebanon.

US-Syrian and US-Iranian Security Dialogue?

Before the US-led bombings in Syria started there were unverified reports being circulated that Washington had started a dialogue with Damascus through Russian and Iraqi channels to discuss military coordination and the Pentagon bombing campaign in Syria. There was something very off though. Agents of confusion were at work in an attempt to legitimize the bombardment of the Syrian Arab Republic.

The claims of US-Syrian cooperation via Russian and Iraqi channels are part of a sinister series of misinformation and disinformation. Before the claims about US cooperation with Syria, similar claims were being made about US-Iranian cooperation in Iraq.

Earlier, Washington and the US media tried to give the impression that an agreement on military cooperation was made between itself and Tehran to fight ISIL and to cooperate inside Iraq. This was widely refuted in the harshest of words by numerous members of the Iranian political establishment and high-ranking Iranian military commanders as disinformation.

After the Iranians clearly indicated that Washington’s claims were fiction, the US claimed that it would not be appropriate for Iran to join its anti-ISIL coalition. Iran rebutted. Washington was dishonestly misrepresenting the facts, because US officials had asked Tehran to join the anti-ISIL coalition several times.

Before he was discharged from the hospital after a prostate surgery, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest ranking official in Iran, told Iranian television on September 9, 2014, that the US had requested that Tehran and Washington cooperate together inside Iraq on three different occasions. He explained that the US ambassador to Iraq had relayed a message to the Iranian ambassador to Iraq to join the US, then, in his own words, «the same [John Kerry] — who had said in front of the camera and in front of the eyes of all the world that they do not want Iran to cooperate with them — requested [from] Dr. Zarif that Iran cooperate with them on this issue, but Dr. Zarif turned this [request] down.» The third request was made by US Undersecretary Wendy Sherman to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Khamenei additionally made it clear that he categorically ruled out any cooperation with Washington on the issue. «On this issue, we will not cooperate with America particularly because their hands are dirty,» he publicly confirmed while explaining that Washington had ill intentions and nefarious designs in Iraq and Syria.

Like Russia, Iran has been supporting Syria and Iraq against ISIL. Also like Moscow, Tehran is committed to fighting it, but will not join Washington’s anti-ISIL coalition.

New Invasion(s) and Regime Change Project(s) in the Pipeline?

As was pointed out on June 20, 2014, in Washington’s eyes Nouri Al-Malaki’s federal government in Baghdad had to be removed for refusing to join the US siege against the Syrians, being aligned to Iran, selling oil to the Chinese, and buying weapons from the Russian Federation. Iraq’s decision to be part of an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline also undermined the objectives of the US and its allies to control the flow of energy in the Middle East and to obstruct Eurasian integration. [1]

There were also two other unforgivable cardinal sins that Al-Malaki’s government in Baghdad committed in Washington’s eye. These offenses, however, should be put into geopolitical context first.

Remember the post-September 11, 2001 (post-9/11) catchphrase of the Bush II Administration during the start of its serial wars? It went like this: «Anyone can go to Baghdad, but real men go to Tehran!» The point of this warmongering catchphrase is that Baghdad and Damascus have been viewed as pathways for the Pentagon towards Tehran. [2]

Like Syria, Al-Malaki government’s cardinal sins were tied to blocking the pathway to Tehran. Firstly, the Iraqi government evicted the Pentagon from Iraq at the end of 2011, which removed US troops stationed directly on Iran’s western border. Secondly, the Iraqi federal government was working to expel anti-government Iranian militants from Iraq and to close Camp Ashraf, which could be used in a war or regime change operations against Iran.

Ashraf was a base for the military wing of the Iraqi-based Mujahidin-e-Khalq (MEK/MOK/MKO). The MEK is an anti-government Iranian organization that is bent on regime change in Tehran. It has even openly endorsed US-led attacks on Iran and Syria.

Although the US government itself considers the MEK a terrorist organization, Washington began to deepen its ties with the MEK when it and its staunch British allies invaded Iraq. Disingenuously and ironically, the US and Britain used Saddam Hussein’s support for the MEK to justify labeling Iraq as a state-sponsor of terrorism and to also justify the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Since then the US has been nurturing the MEK.

Since 2003, the US has been funding the MEK. Washington has been protecting the MEK, because it wants to keep them on a leash as either leverage against Tehran or to have the option of one day installing the MEK into power in Tehran as part of a regime change operation against Iran. The MEK has literally become incorporated into the Pentagon and CIA toolboxes against Tehran. Even when the US transferred control of Camp Ashraf to Baghdad, the Pentagon kept forces inside the MEK camp.

Eventually the MEK forces would mostly be relocated in 2012 to the former US base known as Camp Liberty. Camp Liberty is now called by an Arabic name, Camp Hurriya.

The Istanbul bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, Scott Peterson described how US officials began to really put their weight behind the MEK during the start of the Arab Spring in 2011. This is tied to Washington’s regime change dreams. Peterson wrote that US officials «rarely mention the MEK’s violent and anti-American past, and portray the group not as terrorists but as freedom fighters with ‘values just like us,’ as democrats-in-waiting ready to serve as a vanguard of regime change in Iran.» [3]

Washington Has Not Abandoned Dreams of Regime Change in Tehran

Washington has not abandoned its dreams for regime change in Tehran. Is it a coincidence that the US and EU support for the MEK is increasing, especially when the ISIL threat in Iraq began to be noticed publicly?

Six hundred parliamentarians and politicians from mostly NATO countries were flown in for a large MEK gathering in the Parisian northeastern suburb of Villepinte that called for regime change in Iran on June 27, 2014. Warmongers and morally bankrupt figures like former US senator Joseph Lieberman, Israeli mouthpiece and apologist Alan Dershowhitz, former Bush II official and Fox News pundit John Bolton, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and French former minister and United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNIMIK) chief Bernard Kouchner all met the MEK to promote regime change and war. According to the MEK, over 80, 000 people attended the regime change rally. Supporters of the insurgencies in Iraq and Syria were also present at the Villepinte gathering calling for regime change in Iraq, Syria, and Iran.

The irony is that the money for the event most probably came from the US government itself. US allies probably contributed too. This money has gone to the MEK’s lobbying initiatives with the US Congress and US Department of State, which in effect is recycling US funding. People like Rudy Giuliani — probably one of the most hated mayors in the history of New York City until he took advantage of the tragic events of 9/11 — are now effectively lobbyists for the MEK. «Many of these former high-ranking US officials — who represent the full political spectrum — have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the MEK,» according to the Christian Science Monitor. [4]

Giuliani has been speaking at MEK events at least as far back as 2010. In 2011, he publicly pushed for regime change in Tehran and Damascus at a MEK gathering. «How about we follow an Arab Spring with a Persian Summer?» he rhetorically declared. [5] Giuliani’s next sentence revealed just how much of a scion of US foreign policy the initiative to support the MEK truly is: «We need regime change in Iran, more than we do in Egypt or Libya, and just as we need it in Syria.» [6]

Joseph Lieberman’s friend and fellow war advocate Senator John McCain was unable to make the trip to the Parisian suburb in Seine-Saint-Denis, but addressed the regime change gathering via video. Congressman Edward Royce, the chair of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, also showed his support for regime change in Iran through a video message. So did Senator Carl Levin and Senator Robert Menendez.

Large delegations from the US, France, Spain, Canada, and Albania were present. Aside from the aforementioned individuals, other notable American attendees to the June 27, 2014 event included the following:

1. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the lower chamber (House of Representatives) in the bicameral US Congress;

2. John Dennis Hastert; another former speaker of the House of Representatives;

3. George William Casey Jr., who commanded the multinational military force that invaded and occupied Iraq;

4. Hugh Shelton, a computer software executive and former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff;

5. James Conway, the former chief of the US Marine Corps

6. Louis Freeh, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);

7. Lloyd Poe, the US Representative who sits on (1) the US House Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats and chairs (2) the US House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non‐proliferation and Trade;

8. Daniel Davis, a US Representative from Illinois;

9. Loretta Sánchez, a US Representative from California;

10. Michael B. Mukasey, a former attorney-general of the US;

11. Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont;

12. William Richardson, the former secretary of the US Department of Energy;

13. Robert Torricelli, a former legislator in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate senator who is the legally representative of the MEK in Iraq;

14. Francis Townsend, former Homeland Security advisor to George W. Bush Jr.;

15. Linda Chavez, a former chief White House director;

16. Robert Joseph, the former US undersecretary that ran the (1) Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, (2) the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, and the (3) Bureau of Political-Military Affairs;

17. Philip Crowley, the former assistant-secretary of state responsible for public affairs;

18. David Phillips, the military police commander who restructured the Iraqi police and was responsible for guarding Camp Ashraf and Saddam Hussein as a prisoner;

19. Marc Ginsberg, the senior vice-president of the public relations firm APCO Worldwide and former US ambassador and US presidential adviser for Middle East policy.

Like the US presence, the French presence included officials. Aside from Bernard Kouchner, from France some of the notable attendees were the following individuals:

1. Michèle Alliot-Marie, a French politician who among her cabinet portfolios was responsible for the military and foreign affairs at different times;

2. Rama Yade, vice president of the conservative Radical Party of France;

3. Gilbert Mitterrand, the president of the human rights foundation France Libertés, which has focused on ethnic groups such as Kurds, Chechens, and Tibetans;

4. Martin Vallton, the mayor of Villepinte.

From Spain the notable attendees were the following:

1. Pedro Agramunt Font de Mora, the Spanish chair of the European People’s Party (EPP) and its allies in the Council of Europe;

2. Jordi Xucla, the Spanish chair of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Group in the Council of Europe;

3. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a Spanish politician and one of the fourteen vice-presidents of the European Union’s European Parliament;

4. José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the former prime minister of Spain (who was also visibly accompanied by his wife Sonsoles Espinosa Díaz).

Other notable attendees from other Euro-Atlantic countries included:

1. Pandli Majko, the former prime minster of Albania;

2. Kim Campbell, the former prime minister of Canada

3. Geir Haarde, the former prime minister of Iceland;

4. Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian senator;

5. Alexander Carile, a member of the British House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament

6. Giulio Maria Terzi, the former foreign minister of Italy;

7. Adrianus Melkert, a former Dutch cabinet minister, a former World Bank executive, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s former special envoy to Iraq.

Not only regime change was talked about, but the cross-border crisis in Iraq and Syria was a major subject. Fox News gave the event special coverage. Just in July, the MEK’s leadership had condemned Iranian support to the Iraqi federal government in its fight against the ISIL, yet since the US had began to nominally fight the ISIL the MEK has begun to hold its tongue.

Before the regime change gathering, the MEK’s leader Maryam Rajavi — who the MEK has designated as the president of Iran since 1993 — even meet with the puppet Syrian National Council’s leader Ahmed Jarba in Paris to discuss cooperation on May 23, 2014.

Regime Change in Damascus through Mission Creep in Syria

The bombing campaign that the US has started in Syria is illegal and a violation of the UN Charter. This is why the Pentagon took the step of claiming that the US-led bombing campaign was prompted by the threat of an «imminent» attack that was being planned against the territory of the US. This allegation was made to give legal cover to the bombardment of Syrian territory through a warped argument under Article 51 of the UN Charter that allows a UN member to legally attack another country if an imminent attack by the said country is about to take place on the UN member.

Barack Obama and the US government have done their best to confuse and blur reality through a series of different steps they have taken to claim legitimacy for violating international law by bombing Syria without the authorization of Damascus. Although US Ambassador Samantha Powers informed Syria’s permanent representative to the UN that US-led attacks would be launched on Al-Raqqa Governate, informing Bashar Al-Jaafari through a formal unilateral notification does not amount to being given the legal consent of Syria.

The US-led attacks on Syria do not have the backing of the UN Security Council either. The US government, however, has tried to spin the September 19, 2014, meeting of the UN Security Council that John Kerry chaired as a sign that the UN Security Council and international community are backing its bombing campaign.

Nor is it a coincidence that just when the US assembled its multinational coalition to fight the ISIL and its pseudo-caliphate, that John Kerry conveniently mentions that Syria has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). While admitting that Syria did not use any material prohibited by the CWC, Kerry told US legislators that Damascus had breached its commitments to the CWC on September 18, 2014. In other words, Washington intends to go after Syria and pursue regime change in Damascus. If this does not make it clear, then the fact that the US will use Saudi Arabia to train more anti-government forces should. [7]

A US brinkmanship strategy to justify a US-led bombing campaign against Syria has been put into action with the intent of creating a pretext for expanding the illegal US-led airstrikes in Syria that started on September 22, 2014.

What the US envisions is a long-term bombing campaign, which also threatens Lebanon and Iran. According to Ali Khamenei, the US wants to bomb both Iraq and Syria using ISIL as a smokescreen on the basis of the model in Pakistan. More correctly, the situation should be compared to the AfPak (Af-Pak) model. The US has used the spillover of instability from Afghanistan into Pakistan and the spread of the Taliban as a pretext for bombing Pakistan. Iraq and Syria have been merged as one conflict zone, which Ibrahim Al-Marashi, using a neologism, has described as the rise of «Syraq.»

The Broader Objective: Disrupting Eurasian Integration

While the US has been pretending to fight the same terrorist and death squads that it has created, the Chinese and their partners have been busy working to integrate Eurasia. America’s «Global War on Terror» has been paralleled with the rebuilding of the Silk Road. This is the real story and motivation for Washington’s insistence to fight and remobilize in the Middle East. It is also the reason why the US has been pushing Ukraine to confront Russia and the EU to sanction the Russian Federation.

America wants to disrupt the reemerging Silk Road and its expanding trade network. While Kerry has been busy frightening audiences about the ISIL and its atrocities, the Chinese have been busy sweeping the map by making deals across Asia and the Indian Ocean. This is part of the westward march of the Chinese dragon.

Parallel to Kerry’s travels, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Sri Lanka and went to the Maldives. Sri Lanka is already part of China’s Maritime Silk Road project. The Maldivians are newer entries; agreements have been reached to include the island-nation into the Maritime Silk Road network and infrastructure that China is busy constructing to expand maritime trade between East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Nor is it a coincidence that two Chinese destroyers docked at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in the Persian Gulf to conduct joint drills with Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf.

Parallel to east-west trade, a north-south trade and transport network is being developed. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was in Kazakhstan recently where he and his Kazakhstani counterpart, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, confirmed that trade was due to see manifold increases. The completion of the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway, which will create a north-south transit route, is being awaited. Cooperation between Tehran and the Eurasian Union was also discussed by the two presidents. On the other western side of the Caspian Sea, a parallel north-south corridor running from Russia to Iran through the Republic of Azerbaijan has been in the works.

The anti-Russia sanctions are beginning to cause uneasiness in the European Union. The real losers in the sanctions in Russia are the members of the European Union. Russia has demonstrated that it has options. Moscow has already launched the construction of its mega natural gas Yakutia–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok pipeline (also known as the Power of Siberia pipeline) to deliver gas to China while BRICS partner South Africa has signed a historic deal on nuclear energy with Rosatom.

Moscow’s influence on the world stage is very clear. Its influence has been on the rise in the Middle East and Latin America. Even in NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, Russian influence is on the rise. The Russian government has recently compiled a list of over one hundred old Soviet construction projects that it would like to recuperate.

An alternative to US and EU sanctions is beginning to emerge in Eurasia. Aside from the oil-for-goods deal that Tehran and Moscow signed, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced that Iran and Russia had made several new agreements worth seventy billion euro. Sanctions will soon merely isolate the US and the EU. The Iranians have also announced that they are working with their Chinese and Russian partners to overcome the US and EU sanctions regime.

America is being rolled back. It cannot pivot to the Asia-Pacific until matters are settled in the Middle East and Eastern Europe against the Russian, Iranians, Syrians, and their allies. That is why Washington is doing its best to disrupt, divide, redraw, bargain and co-opt. When it comes down to it, the US is not concerned about fighting the ISIL, which has been serving Washington’s interests in the Middle East. America’s main concern is about preserving its crumbling empire and preventing Eurasian integration.

An award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is the author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa.

26 September 2014

By Prof. James F. Tracy

Modern propaganda techniques utilized by the corporate state to enforce anti-democratic and destructive policies routinely entail the manufacture and manipulation of news events to mold public opinion and, as Edward Bernays put it, “engineer consent” toward certain ends.

Such events include not only overt political appeals, but also acts of seemingly spontaneous terrorism and militarism that traumatize the body politic into ultimately accepting false narratives as political and historical realities.

Western states’ development and utilization of propaganda closely parallels the steady decay of political enfranchisement and engagement throughout the twentieth century. Upon securing a second term in 1916, the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson plunged the United States into the most violent and homicidal war in human history. Wilson, a former Princeton University academician groomed for public office by Wall Street bankers, assembled a group of progressive-left journalists and publicists to “sell the war” to the American people.

George Creel, Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays and Harold Lasswell all played influential roles in the newly-formed Committee on Public Information, and would go on to be major figures in political thought, public relations, and psychological warfare research.

The sales effort was unparalleled in its scale and sophistication. The CPI was not only able to officially censor news and information, but essentially manufacture these as well. Acting in the role of a multifaceted advertising agency, Creel’s operation “examined the different ways that information flowed to the population and flooded these channels with pro-war material.”

The Committee’s domestic organ was comprised of 19 subdivisions, each devoted to a specific type of propaganda, one of which was a Division of News that distributed over 6,000 press releases and acted as the chief avenue for war-related information. On an average week, more than 20,000 newspaper columns carried data provided through CPI propaganda. The Division of Syndicated Features enlisted the help of popular novelists, short story writers, and essayists. These mainstream American authors presented the official line in a readily accessible form reaching twelve million people every month. Similar endeavors existed for cinema, impromptu soapbox oratory (Four Minute Men), and outright advertising at home and abroad.[1]

With the experiences and observations of these war marketers variously recounted and developed throughout the 1920s (Lippmann, Public Opinion, The Phantom Public, Bernays, Propaganda, Crystallizing Public Opinion, Creel, How We Advertised America, Lasswell, Propaganda and the World War), alongside the influence of their elite colleagues and associates, the young publicists’ optimism concerning popular democracy guided by informed opinion was sobered with the realization that public sentiment was actually far more susceptible to persuasion than had been previously understood. The proposed solutions to guarantee something akin to democracy in an increasingly confusing world lay in “objective” journalism guided by organized intelligence (Lippmann) and propaganda, or what Edward Bernays termed “public relations.”

The argument laid out in Lippmann’s Public Opinion was partly motivated by the US Senate’s rejection of membership in the League of Nations. An adviser to the Wilson administration, a central figure behind intelligence gathering that informed postwar geopolitical dynamics laid out at the Paris Peace Conference, and an early member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Lippmann increasingly viewed popular democracy as plagued by a hopelessly ill-informed public opinion incapable of comprehending the growing complexities of modern society. Only experts could be entrusted with assessing, understanding, and acting on the knowledge accorded through their respective professions and fields.

Along these lines, journalism should mimic the then-fledgling social sciences by pursuing objectivity and deferring to the compartmentalized expertise of established authority figures. News and information could similarly be analyzed, edited, and coordinated to ensure accuracy by journalists exercising similar technocratic methods. Although Lippmann does not exactly specify what body would oversee such a process of “organized intelligence,” his postwar activities and ties provides a clue.

Edward Bernays’ advocacy for public opinion management is much more practical and overt. Whereas Lippmann suggests a regimented democracy via technocratic news and information processing, Bernays stresses a privileged elite’s overt manipulation of how the populace interprets reality itself. Such manipulation necessitates contrived associations, figures and events that appear authentic and spontaneous. “Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval,” Bernays notes,

“and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public’s consent to a program or goal … We reject government authoritarianism or regimentation, but we are willing to be persuaded by the written or spoken word. The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.[2]

Bernays demonstrates an affinity with Lippmann’s notion of elite expediency when pursuing prerogatives and decision-making the public at large cannot be entrusted to interpret. In such instances,

democratic leaders must play their part in leading the public through the engineering of consent to socially constructive goals and values. This role naturally imposes upon them the obligation to use educational processes, as well as other available techniques, to bring about as complete an understanding as possible.[3]

Written in the early 1950s, these observations become especially apt in the latter half of the twentieth century, where the US is typically a major aggressor in foreign (and eventually domestic) affairs. Yet what does Bernays mean by, for example, “educational processes”? An indication may be found by noting his central role in the promotion of tobacco use, municipal water fluoridation, and the overthrow of the democratically-elected Arbenz regime in Guatemala.[4]

With the advent of the national security state in 1947, secret programs emerge where the people are as a matter of course intentionally left unaware of the state’s true rationales and objectives.

Indeed, a wealth of contemporary historical examples suggest how the “engineering of consent” is wholly calculating and anti-democratic, and where the crises requiring such drastic and immediate public relations and military measures are themselves the result of the same leadership’s policies and actions. The US economic provocation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Tonkin Gulf incident precipitating US military occupation of Vietnam are obvious examples of such manufactured events.

Similar techniques are apparent in the major political assassinations of the 1960s, where to this day the public is prompted to partake in the false reality that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole culprit in the murder of President John F. Kennedy, much as Sirhan Sirhan was responsible for the death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

In fact, in each instance overwhelming evidence points to Central Intelligence Agency involvement in orchestrating the assassinations while training and presenting Oswald and Sirhan as the would-be assassins.

The US government’s assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., probably the most influential African American public persona of the twentieth century, is not even open to debate, having been soundly proven in a court of law.[5] Yet as with the Kennedys, it is a genuine public relations achievement that much of the American population is oblivious to the deeper dynamics of these political slayings that are routinely overlooked or inaccurately recounted in public discourse.

Along these lines, in the historical context of Operation Gladio, the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing, the events of September 11, 2001, the London 7/7/2005 bombings, and lesser episodes such as the “shoe” and “underwear” bombers, the engineering of consent has reached staggering new heights where state-orchestrated terrorism is used to mold public opinion toward acceptance of militarized policing operations, the continued erosion of civil liberties, and major sustained aggression against moderate Middle Eastern nations to cartelize scarce resources and politically reconfigure an entire region of the world.

Again, the public is essentially compelled to believe that political extremism of one form or another is the cause of each event, even in light of how the sophistication and scope of the Oklahoma City and 9/11 “attacks” suggest high-level forces at work. If one is to delve beneath the public relations narrative of each event, the recent Newtown massacre and Boston Marathon bombing likewise appear to have broader agendas where the public is again purposely misled.

Conventional journalists and academics are reluctant to publicly address such phenomena for fear of being called “conspiracy theorists.” In the case of academe this has severely curtailed serious and potentially crucial inquiry into such deep events and phenomena in lieu of what are often innocuous intellectual exchanges divorced from actually existing social and political realities that cry out for serious interrogation and critique.

The achievements of modern public relations are further evident in the Warren and 9/11 Commissions themselves, both of which have spun the fantastic myths of Allan Dulles and Peter Zelikow respectively, and that today maintain footholds in public discourse and consciousness.

Indeed, the “conspiracy theory” meme, a propaganda campaign waged by the CIA beginning in the mid-1960s to counter criticism of the Warren Commission report, is perhaps as little-known as Operation Mockingbird, the CIA program where hundreds of journalists and publishers actively devoted their services to spread Agency disinformation. The overall effect of these combined operations has been an immensely successful program continues to shape the contours of American political life and mediated reality.[6]

The present socio-political condition and suppression of popular democracy are triumphs of modern propaganda technique. So are they also manifest in the corporate state’s efforts to engineer public acquiescence toward such things as the colossal frauds of genetically modified organisms masquerading as “food,” toxic polypharmacy disguised as “medicine,” and the police state and “war on terror” seeking to preserve “national security.”

James Tracy is an educator located in South Florida. His work on media history, politics and culture has appeared in a wide variety of academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative news and opinion outlets.
29 September 2014

By Sara Flounders

Demonstrations in Hong Kong, China, raising demands on the procedures to be followed in city elections in 2017, have become an international issue and a source of political confusion.

The protests, called Occupy Central, have received enormous and very favorable U.S. media coverage. Every news report describes with great enthusiasm the occupation of central business parts of Hong Kong as “pro-democracy” protests. The demonstrations, which began on Sept. 22, gained momentum after Hong Kong police used tear gas to open roads and government buildings.

In evaluating an emerging movement it is important to look at what political forces are supporting the movement. What are the demands raised by the movement, who are they appealing to, and what is the social composition of those in motion?

The U.S. and British governments have issued statements of support for the demonstrations. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to heed the demands of the protesters. Wang responded by calling for respect for China’s sovereignty. Britain, which stole Hong Kong from China in 1842 and held it as a colony for 155 years under a government appointed by London, is supporting the call for “democracy” in Hong Kong. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg summoned the Chinese ambassador in order to convey the British government’s alarm.

At the present time these imperialists may not expect to overturn the central role of the Chinese Communist Party in governing China. But Occupy Central in Hong Kong is a battering ram, aimed at weakening the role of the state in the Chinese economy.

The imperialists hope to embolden the bourgeois elements and encourage the increasingly strong capitalist class within China to become more aggressive and demand the overturn of socialist norms established after the 1949 socialist revolution, including the leading role of the Communist Party in a strong sovereign state.

Police repression: Mexico, Italy, Philippines

In Mexico, tens of thousands of students have been protesting curriculum changes and new fees. More than 50,000 demonstrated in Mexico City for the third time. In western Mexico, 57 students from a teaching college went missing after gunslingers fired on a demonstration they were attending, killing three students and wounding three others. A Guerrero official says witnesses identified the shooters as local police officers. Mass graves have now been uncovered in an area terrorized by police and gangs.

On Oct. 2, in Naples, Italy, national police attacked demonstrators protesting against austerity and a meeting of the European Central Bank. Cops fired tear gas and water canons at thousands of protesters.

Thousands of courageous demonstrators in Manila opposed the signing of an agreement with the U.S. for an escalating rotation of U.S. troops, ships and planes into the Philippines during President Obama’s visit last April. They faced water cannons, tear gas and mass arrests.

Did any White House officials meet with Mexican officials to express concern for the killed or missing students? Did any British officials summon Italian officials to convey alarm at the tear gas and water cannons? Was there world media attention to the attacks on Philippine youth? Where was the media frenzy?

Why is it so dramatically different regarding Occupy Central in Hong Kong?

The use of tear gas by Hong Kong police is denounced by the same officials who have been silent as militarized police in U.S. cities routinely use not only tear gas but tanks, armored personnel carriers, live ammunition, electric tasers, rubber bullets, stun guns, dogs and drones in routine police sweeps.

To hear U.S. officials denouncing restrictions on candidates in Hong Kong is especially offensive to anyone familiar with the election procedures in the U.S. today. Millions of dollars are required to run a campaign here. Candidates go through multiple layers of vetting by corporate powers and by the two pro-imperialist political party apparatuses. Restrictive ballot measures are in place in every state and city election.

‘Color revolutions’

Officials and publications in China characterize the actions of Occupy Central as a U.S.-funded “color revolution” and compare it to the upheavals that swept Ukraine and former Soviet republics.

Several commentaries have described in some detail the extensive role of the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy and the Democratic National Institute, along with corporate foundations’ funding of leaders and the protest movement in Hong Kong.

Thousands of nongovernmental organizations with large staffs are based in Hong Kong. Their stated goal is to build democracy. Their real purpose is to undermine the central role of the Chinese Communist Party in the organization of Chinese society. Hong Kong, unlike the rest of China, has allowed these U.S.-funded NGOs and political associations almost unlimited access for decades.

Hong Kong’s special status

Hong Kong’s importance is not due to its size. Its population of 7.5 million people is half of 1 percent of the population of China. But Hong Kong is a leading center of finance capital. According to the 2011 World Economic Forum, Hong Kong had already overtaken London, New York and Singapore in financial access, business environment, banking and financial services, institutional environment, nonbanking financial services and financial markets.

Hong Kong acts as the financial gateway to China. It has a guaranteed, banking-friendly, special administrative status. It is known for its financial services with insurance, law, accounting and many hundreds of well-established professional service firms. Capitalists based in Hong Kong are today the largest foreign investors in China.

The city of Hong Kong also has the greatest extremes of wealth and poverty in the world. The city is famous for glittering skyscrapers and luxury malls and is home to some of the world’s richest people. But half live in overcrowded and crumbling public housing. One-fifth live below the poverty line.

More than 170,000 “working poor” live in cage-like, subdivided flats. The stacked wire “dog crates” are 6 feet long by 3 feet high and wide, with 30 crates to a room. The city has no minimum wage.

Occupy?

Although using the name, street tactics and appeal of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Occupy Central has not made one demand on the banks in Hong Kong.

In contrast, Occupy Wall Street was a movement that focused the outrage of tens of thousands of youth on the criminal role of the Wall Street banks, particularly in extracting from the U.S. government a trillion-dollar bailout that saved the largest banks while leaving millions of homes of working people in foreclosure, along with millions unemployed.

In Hong Kong the role of the banks is enshrined in law for the next 50 years. How can this be overlooked? Understanding the special status of the former British colony of Hong Kong within China is a key part of understanding who Occupy Central represents.

Colonial status

Hong Kong, as a British colony from 1842 to 1997, had no elections nor any form of democracy. For 155 years its governors were appointed by Britain.

Hong Kong came into existence as a colony based on a series of unequal treaties imposed by British imperialism. Rather than pay in silver, Britain imposed the sale of opium into China in exchange for tea, spices, silk and porcelain, valuable trade items coveted in the West. The growing sale of opium was resisted by the Qing Dynasty, which confiscated more than 2 million pounds of opium in 1838.

British armored and steam-powered gunboats, in the name of “free trade,” opened fire on Chinese cities on the Pearl and Yangtze rivers, where bamboo, wood and thatch were common building materials. Cities and warehouses burst into flames. British forces seized the island of Hong Kong with its many natural harbors at the mouth of the vital Pearl River as a naval base and military staging point for future wars in China.

The 1842 Treaty of Nanking demanded China pay heavy indemnities and gave Britain and other foreign nationals a privileged position of extraterritoriality in China, along with ceding open treaty ports and turning over the Island of Hong Kong. Racist segregation of Chinese people was the practice in Hong Kong and all the “foreign concessions.”

In the Second Opium War 15 years later, British, French, U.S., Japanese and imperial Russian merchants made further demands, involving gunboats and thousands of troops. China was forced under duress to lease additional territory and open more cities. The demands continued. A 99-year lease for the islands surrounding Hong Kong, called the “new Territories,” was signed in 1898. China lapsed into a period of devastating famines, civil wars and contending warlords, with underdevelopment and great poverty for the great majority.

Revolution of 1949

The Chinese Revolution that culminated in 1949, under the revolutionary leadership of Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party, ended the unequal treaties and the racist treatment of Chinese people in their own country and began the reorganization of the Chinese economy on a socialist basis.

But Hong Kong remained in British imperialist hands; Macau continued in the hands of old Portuguese colonialists; and on the island of Taiwan the defeated, reactionary Kuomintang regime led by dictator Chiang Kai-shek survived as a U.S. protectorate. The imperialist countries in the West and Japan denied technological and industrial development to the impoverished and underdeveloped People’s China.

In the 1980s socialist China began opening to Western capitalist investment on a steadily expanding basis. The capitalist market in China and the influence of capitalist property relations have seriously eroded socialist ownership. But the centrality of the Communist Party in politics and the economy has not been broken.

Just as the imperialists 100 and 200 years ago sabotaged any restraint on their economic domination, today Wall Street continues scheming to regain unimpeded access to all of China’s markets.

HKSAR: Special Administrative Region of China

In 1997, the 99-year British lease was scheduled to end on the British colony of Hong Kong. In 1984, China signed an agreement with Britain on the future status of Hong Kong. It was called the Hong Kong Basic Law.

In order to avoid instability and closing of the foreign investment flowing through Hong Kong, the Chinese government, while insisting on the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, agreed to guarantee capitalist relations there for 50 years under an agreement called “One Country, Two Systems,” an idea originally proposed by Communist Party General Secretary Deng Xiaoping.

Hong Kong became the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. In the agreement with British imperialism, the HKSAR would retain the status of an international financial center with free flow of capital. The Hong Kong dollar remained freely convertible.

The status of property rights, contracts, ownership of enterprises, rights of inheritance and foreign investment was all guaranteed. The agreement stipulated that Hong Kong’s capitalist system itself and its “way of life” would remain unchanged until 2047. A network of private schools, universities and the large corporate media did not change hands. The Hong Kong Basic Law further stated that the socialist system and socialist policies would not be practiced in HKSAR.

Hong Kong bankers, financiers and industrialists were assured autonomy, except in foreign and defense affairs, where the People’s Republic of China would have full say. It is this minimal control that Occupy Central is now challenging with the demand that Chief Executive Cy Leung must resign.

An antiquated judiciary based on British Common Law upholds the laws that defend the harshest private property relations. Small claims courts, landlord courts, labor courts, juvenile courts, coroner’s courts and courts of appeals all enforce old capitalist laws, not the laws in place for the 99.5 percent living in the rest of China.

Hong Kong judges still wear British-style outfits, including wigs made of horsehair, with white gloves, girdles and scarlet robes added for official ceremonies.

The guarantee of unrestricted capitalism in Hong Kong for 50 years means that some of the starkest extremes of wealth and poverty exist side by side.

U.S. funded NGOs

Fearful of democratic change coming from the working class as soon as the British signed the agreement in 1984, the ruling class began to violate it, putting in place new political parties and organizations to operate after the return of the territory to China. After 145 years of appointed government, they pompously called for democratic change.

Three years before the 1997 handover of sovereignty, the British changed the constitution and set up district boards, urban and regional councils, and a legislative council. These top-down reforms were strongly opposed by the Chinese government as a violation of the agreement and a tactic to subvert its political system.

But more insidious than the official changes was the vast expansion of U.S. “soft power” in Hong Kong.

Today more than 30,000 NGOs are registered in Hong Kong. They cover every aspect of life. (Social Indicators of Hong Kong)

The U.S. funds NGOs for political subversion through the U.S. State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development, which makes grants to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), National Democratic Institute (NDI), National Republican Institute, Ford Foundation, Carter Center, Asia Foundation, Freedom House, Soros’s Open Society and Human Rights Watch, among others.

All these groups and many more fund projects that claim to be supporting and promoting human rights, democracy, a free press and electoral reform. This funding of social networks operates for the same purposes in Latin America and the Caribbean, throughout the Middle East and Africa, and in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics.

U.S. imperialism has not established democracy in any of its hundreds of interventions, wars, drone attacks, coups or global surveillance. But “promoting democracy” has become a cover for attacks on the sovereignty of countries all around the world.

Of course, religious groups and other states, especially those in the European Union, also fund political associations and social networks in Hong Kong and everywhere across the globe. A few of these groups may genuinely operate independently and provide aid to immigrant workers, help low-paid workers organize, or address housing and health needs of the most unrepresented in Hong Kong. But for the most part, the NGOs are a network of “civil society” organizations controlled by and for U.S. corporate power.

A growing number of articles in the Chinese press have connected the dots of the leaders of Occupy Central and the U.S.-funded NGOs.

According to China.org.cn, “Each and every ‘Occupy Central’ leader is either directly linked to the U.S. State Department, NED, and NDI, or involved in one of NDI’s many schemes.” (Oct. 6)

Occupy Central’s self-proclaimed leader, Benny Tai, is a law professor who has received NDI and NED grants and was on the board of the NDI-funded Center for Comparative and Public Law. He attended many NDI-funded conferences. This is also true for another prominent Occupy Central figure, Audrey Eu.

Also, according to China.org.cn, “Martin Lee, founding chairman of Hong Kong’s Democrat Party, is another prominent figure who has come out in support of Occupy Central. Just this year, Lee was in Washington meeting directly with Vice President Joseph Biden and Rep. Nancy Pelosi and even took part in an NED talk hosted specifically for him and his agenda of “democracy” in Hong Kong. Lee even has a NED page dedicated to him after he was awarded NED’s Democracy Award in 1997. With him in Washington was Anson Chan, another prominent figure currently supporting the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong’s streets.”

A number of publications in the West are picking up on these exposés, including Counterpunch in “Hong Kong and the Democracy Question”; Global Research in “U.S. Now Admits It Is Funding Occupy Central in Hong Kong”; and InfoWars.com in “Is the U.S. Secretly Egging on Hong Kong Protesters?”

Even a Hong Kong poll showed that most of those making $10,000 a year or less opposed the protests, while support was highest among people making $100,000 a year or more.

Wall Street is not satisfied with the deep inroads that capitalism has made into China and is increasingly fearful of Chinese competition in global markets. The U.S. pressure for political liberalization in China is to promote further economic opening and further privatization of state industries.

U.S. and British imperialism hope to use Hong Kong as they did 150 years ago as a stronghold for pushing deeper politically into China. Today, however, they are not facing a backward feudal dynasty.

As U.S. corporate dominance in production and finance slips, the Asia pivot of the Obama administration means that the U.S. ruling class and its military apparatus has made the decision to become more confrontational toward Russia and China.

Opponents of U.S. wars and organizations defending workers’ interests in the U.S. can play an important role by refusing to align with U.S. schemes aimed at overturning pro-socialist norms inside China and undermining Chinese sovereignty.
Sara Flounders is an American political writer and has been active in ‘progressive’ and anti-war organizing since the 1960s.

7 October 2014